Chapter 16 College Girl Stuff, Alcohol, Whatever
COLLEGE GIRL STUFF, ALCOHOL, WHATEVER
IVY
Evidently, my breaking point for how long I can sit on an emotional outburst is about nine hours.
Because the second Delilah enters the bedroom after putting Sadie to sleep and rubbing cocoa butter on her belly to prevent stretch marks (does that even work?
Or is it a ploy from Big Cocoa Butter to sell lotion?) I unload all over her before the door even clicks shut.
“Delilah, I’m so sorry. I have no excuse for kissing you and saying those things today, but I did and I can’t apologize enough.
He’s just so fucking infuriating and I’ve been holding my tongue for years because he was your boyfriend and then your husband and Sadie’s father, but Jesus fuck, Lilah.
If he was willing to put you down like that in front of me and Artie and Bindy/Bandy/Brandy, what the fuck was he saying to you behind closed doors?
I never should have kissed you. I never should have implied that we were together or having sex or whatever.
I just couldn’t take his snivelling little face anymore, and I remembered what you said about us being together being the ultimate blow to his pride, and it all just came out.
“I shouldn’t have challenged him to a dick-measuring contest either.
That was immature and I’m better than that.
But for what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure any one of my dildos could take his ineffective penis in a fight any day of the week.
But god, Lilah. I am so sorry. Please forgive me.
I can totally take the fall for this, however you want to deal with it.
You want to fake date to piss Earl off until the ink is dry on the divorce papers?
I’ll do it. You want me to tell the town I had some sort of psychotic break today and it was all some figment of my warped imagination?
I’ll do it, and I’m not even sure I’d be lying because I’m feeling pretty out of my mind right now.
Just don’t leave me. Don’t move out. Don’t stop being my friend.
I can’t live without you and Sadie and Little Bean.
I’ll do anything to fix this Lilah. Anything. ”
By the time I’m done, I’m practically panting from a lack of air getting to my lungs.
I’m pretty sure that all came out as one incoherent word and not an actual thought, but Sapho help me if I have to repeat myself because not only am I mortified and sweaty, I’m not sure I have any idea what I just said.
And by the looks of it, neither does Delilah.
She’s staring at me, one hand on the swell of her belly that is all shiny from the lotion and the other resting on her breastbone, where her cleavage is on full display in the wireless sleep bra that is most definitely a size too small for her pregnant boobs.
That can’t be comfortable, but fuck if I don’t notice her breasts look damn good spilling over the top of the cups.
Her brown eyes are darting back and forth between mine, those pretty pink lips that I now know feel like pillows and taste like heaven slightly pursed as she looks at me.
“Wow. That was…a lot. I feel like you should go on some kind of talent show for those speed-talking abilities,” she says finally, and I huff out a sarcastic laugh.
“C’mon, Lilah. Be serious. Put me out of my misery, here.”
I watch as Delilah pushes her tongue into her cheek, then clacks her teeth together.
She crosses the room, props her butt against the dresser and crosses her arms under her boobs which pushes them up even further.
Not the distraction I need right now, but fuck it.
I might as well take in the sight of her glorious cleavage while I can.
“What if you didn’t have to do either of those things?” she asks after a long moment of intense silence.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if you didn’t have to pretend to be in the midst of a psychotic break or act like my fake girlfriend until the drama blows over?”
“That’d be nice, but this is Fox Hole. We can try to pretend it didn’t happen all we want, but you know as well as I do that the gossip mongers aren’t going to let a kiss between you and me go, even if it was pretend.
I bet someone got a picture and it gets plastered on the front page of the Sunday Gazette in the morning.
” I run a hand through my short hair as I plop into a seat on the edge of the bed.
“Ivy. What if…what if we kept on kissing each other? Like for real?”
Delilah’s face has contorted into a sort of shy excitement that I haven’t seen since we were teenagers.
It’s the same lip-chewing grin and sparkling, wide-eyed gaze she’d get whenever she was gushing about whatever boy she was crushing on that week.
I’m so taken aback by the way she nervously drums her fingers against her bicep that I almost miss her question.
And when it does register, my brain goes completely offline.
“I…you want…you…what?!”
Delilah drops her arms to her sides and stares at her feet, her blush spreading from the tip of her button nose all the way down her chest.
“Shit, this is hard. I feel like a fucking teenager.” Her brows knit as she looks back up at me, this time as serious as I’ve ever seen her.
“I have feelings for you, Vee. Romantic feelings. Romantic and…sexual feelings. I have for a while. Longer than I think I even realized. And they’ve been eating away at me for weeks.
You’re all I can think about. Your lips, your body, the way you crack your neck when you’re deep in thought and I can see all the muscles and tendons straining against your skin.
How you stand up for me and Sadie and take care of us.
The way you love me like no one else does.
I can’t…I can’t keep it in anymore. I thought for a while it was just the pregnancy hormones and all the changes and the divorce but it’s not. It’s you, Vee. I fucking want you.”
I swear on everything gay and holy, my heart has completely stopped beating. The fact that I haven’t dropped dead yet is a medical marvel that will surely be studied by doctors for decades to come.
“But you’re straight.” And I can’t do this.
I’m so far past the point in my life where I entertain curious straight girls and inevitably end up with my heart broken.
I’m certainly past the point in my life where I get my heart broken by Delilah.
I’ve spent too long building all these walls around my heart for that very reason.
I can’t let her come in with a wrecking ball and demolish them to pieces just because she…
To be honest, I have no idea what she’s thinking. Maybe Little Bean has stolen all her nutrients and turned her brain to mush.
“Am I straight, Vee? Or is that something you’ve just assumed about me?”
“I mean, I can’t imagine anyone other than a raging heterosexual woman or a very down on his luck gay man wanting to see Earl Ellis Booth naked, so yeah. I think you might be straight.”
Delilah rolls her eyes and pushes off the dress, crossing the room until she’s right in front of me.
The smell of cocoa butter and the faintest trace of strawberries invade my senses, and while I’m busy getting nose drunk on her delectable scent, Delilah does something that shocks me to my very core.
She climbs on top of me, kneeling on the bed and straddling my thighs while lowering her ass into my lap.
Her arms loop around my neck and she leans forward, brushing the tip of her nose across mine.
Little Bean sits between us, their protrusion the only thing keeping Lilah’s chest from pressing right up against mine, keeping those diamond nipples from scraping against my skin.
I don’t know when my hands find her hips, but she is soft and warm under my palms, flames licking at my skin from her nearness. In just my white tank top and the loose boxers I like to wear to bed, I might as well be naked for how much of our bare skin is touching.
“I’m not straight, Vee. Never have been. It’s something I think I’ve always known, but I shoved it down because…”
“Because why?” I ask, my tongue swiping over my too-dry lips.
“Because for so long, the only woman I ever thought about that way was you. When we were young, I’d lay in bed at night and try so hard not to think about you when I touched myself.
We’d cuddle on the couch watching movies and I couldn’t focus because I wanted you to kiss me so bad.
But any other time I felt those feelings, it was about a boy.
I thought I was just confused, that maybe we were just closer than the other best friends I knew.
Then you left Fox Hole, and I went to college and then before you know it, I was married to Earl. ”
Delilah has thought about me.
Delilah has thought about me.
Delilah has thought about me.
Holy shit balls, I did not see this coming.
All this time I’ve been suppressing my attraction and fighting like hell to avoid the ‘lesbian falls in love with her best friend’ stereotype and all the while, Delilah was crushing on me and trying to convince herself she wasn’t?
She was thinking about me while she got herself off?
The irony of it all is almost cruel.
And does she still think about me when she gets herself off?
It’s not the most pressing question I have right now, but it’s the answer I’m most desperate for.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“I was scared that I actually was confused and if I told you or made a move and realized I wasn’t into it, that I’d lose you. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t lose you or make you feel used or like you were just some experiment I had to get out of my system, so I kept it to myself.”
I don’t know if Delilah realizes that she’s begun lightly rocking her hips, but the feel of her ass dragging against the tops of my thighs is mesmerizing and completely distracting.
Still, I find myself gripping her hips tighter, quietly urging her to keep going while drinking in the sound of her breathing.
“Lilah, have you ever been with a woman?” The words taste like ash on my tongue, but I have to know.
A small part of me is upset that she’s been lying to me all this time and even though I need to know what else she’s been keeping from me, I refuse to get mad at her.
Getting angry would make me a hypocrite.
I’ve been keeping my feelings about her to myself for years.
I can allow her to have her secrets as well.
“Sort of. There was this girl, Ashley, in my European Art History class sophomore year in college. We used to get together to study and make out in her apartment. And there were a couple of times where we’d go to a party and then go back to her place and masturbate together, but we never actually touched each other.
I tried to take it further once, but she blew me off.
She said just because we liked to make out and watch each other come didn’t mean we were lesbians.
She said it was just college girl stuff, alcohol, whatever.
I don’t know. It made me question myself and my feelings.
And after that I definitely couldn’t tell you what I’d been thinking, because what if I only liked kissing girls but not having sex or being in a relationship with them?
Like I said, I was confused for a long time.
And then I was confused and married for an even longer time. ”
“And now?”
“Now,” Delilah leans forward and touches her lips to mine.
Not a kiss, but a promise of something I’m desperate for more of.
“Now, I’ve kissed you, Vee. I know what your mouth tastes like.
I know what you feel like when you’re pressed against me at night.
And I know that there is nothing confusing or heterosexual about the things I’m dying to do to you.
There’s nothing friendly about the way I want to hold your hand and kiss you and call you mine.
And there’s certainly nothing straight about the way I want to get you out of these clothes and find out if you’re as sweet everywhere else as your lips. ”
This time when Delilah touches her mouth to mine, it's to nip at my bottom lip.
The bite sends a lightning bolt of lust straight through me, igniting every nerve ending and turning me into a live wire.
I slip my hands into the waistband of her silk sleep shorts, letting the molten heat of her skin fan the flames of my desire.
There’s so much I need to know, so much we need to talk about. We’re standing on the precipice of a fall that is bound to change everything and even though I know that I need to think before I jump, Delilah finally—finally—kisses me and nothing else matters anymore.
It’s hotter than the kiss this afternoon, because this one isn’t for show.
There’s no easing into it. It’s frantic, the way we come together.
All teeth and tongues and short fingernails digging into flesh.
Delilah tastes like sunshine and strawberries and her minty toothpaste, and when I suck the tip of her tongue between my lips, the vibration of her moan sends a rush of arousal through me, dampening my inner thighs.
She claws at me, scratching my neck and scalp as she buries her fingers into my hair as though she’s trying to pull me closer, or maybe climb inside of me.
Her bump and the way she’s straddling both my legs instead of just one makes it impossible for her to press her core against me the way I know she wants to from how she wiggles.
“You want to be mine, Delilah?” I murmur against her lips, unwilling to pull away long enough for her to change her mind.
I can feel her nod, can hear her affirmation in the way she whines into the kiss.
I slide my hands further down until I can get two good, full grips on her unctuous ass cheeks, then stand and deposit her on the bed in one fluid motion that even I’m surprised I pulled off.
Delilah yelps when she bounces against the mattress, her pupils wide and blow out with lust when I spread her legs and crawl between them until I can settle my thigh over pussy and tease her with the promise of friction.
“Vee, what are you doing?” She breathes when I ghost my lips along one breast and then the other, grazing my teeth over her nipple through her bra.
“I’m doing what I do best, Lilah. I’m taking care of you.”