CHAPTER 31
“Good morning,” she said and kissed Sarai’s collarbone.
“It’s Sunday, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because that means we don’t have to get up for work,” Sarai replied, smiling as she opened her eyes to look up at her.
Gabi, who was lying on her side, propped up on her elbow and smiled back down at the naked woman next to her.
This whole thing was still so unbelievable to her.
How had she gone from getting a new job in a different town, being nervous about making the massive move, not finding a place to live, to seeing Sarai Kaplan in a bar after all these years, and now, being able to call Sarai her girlfriend?
Then, a sound from just outside Sarai’s door gave her thoughts a pause, and she looked up to ensure that Arlowe – because it would be Arlowe and not Enya – hadn’t decided to walk right in without knocking, when both of them were still lying naked and barely covered up.
“I locked it after I came back from the bathroom,” Sarai told her. “We’re fine.” She wrapped her arms around Gabi’s neck and pulled her face down to her. “And good morning.”
They shared a sweet but way-too-brief kiss, and Gabi rested her forehead against Sarai’s for a moment because she didn’t want to move.
Yesterday still felt a little like a dream, kind of like the feeling she’d get after taking a midday nap, which wasn’t all that often these days.
She’d wake up, wonder for a second where she was, check the time to see how long she’d been asleep right after she’d figure that out, and she’d be groggy for an hour or so, but the whole previous evening and night felt like it had happened in a dream that she’d been having a lot recently.
In fact, the only way she knew for sure that they’d actually spent their entire Saturday night making love was because they hadn’t bothered to put their clothes on to fall asleep.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, running a thumb over Sarai’s swollen bottom lip.
“I am, but I’m not moving just yet.”
“I can make you something and bring it back here. We can eat in bed.”
“If I’m not moving, you’re not moving,” Sarai said with a little laugh.
Then, Sarai shifted, giving Gabi an indication of what she was hoping for, so Gabi moved on top of her and settled between Sarai’s spread legs before there was a noise outside the door that sounded like someone mumbling.
“Just Enya, reciting words in another language to herself like a totally normal person on a Sunday morning,” Sarai said with a soft smile.
“So, no regrets?”
“What?” Sarai asked, taken aback slightly. “About last night? No way. You thought I’d–”
“I wanted to check. You said you wanted to take things slow, but when I woke up and saw you lying there, looking so beautiful, I just needed to make sure that I hadn’t somehow convinced you to go faster than you’d wanted.”
“No, Gabs. No convincing was necessary last night. I wanted to be with you. When I said I wanted slow, it was because I wanted to make sure that we could do this. We’re still getting used to things, but I know we can now.”
Gabi nodded and pressed her lips to Sarai’s for a soft, slow kiss.
“Are you a fan of morning–”
“Obviously, yes. I’m the one who wanted you on top of me. Now, shut up and kiss me,” Sarai interrupted, making Gabi laugh before she finally did shut up and kissed her.
Her hand snaked down between their bodies where she found Sarai wet and likely a little sore because they hadn’t stopped touching each other until around three in the morning.
Gabi hadn’t ever had that much sex before, and her body was sore, too, but they’d waited so long for this; she wasn’t about to stop now.
As she brought Sarai higher, using her fingers against her clit, she thought about how improbable her new relationship really was.
This town wasn’t a big one. The city next to it was.
Yes, it was growing, but when she’d last known Sarai, the woman had planned on living in New York, LA, Boston, or San Francisco.
Chicago had been a maybe. She’d wanted a job in marketing with a big company.
When Gabi had gone to MIT, she remembered thinking about reaching out to Sarai because if she’d landed in Boston or even New York, they could’ve met up for coffee or drinks or something.
She hadn’t, though, and it had been, in part, because of her father’s death and the fact that her mother had needed so much from her back then.
School had been intense on top of all of that, so she’d put that plan behind her, finished school, gotten a job, stayed there for a while, and then, Chase had mentioned a new opportunity at his company in what was becoming the new Silicon Valley of the East Coast. Now, she was listening to Sarai Kaplan, her girlfriend, come down from another orgasm that Gabi had provided, and she was so happy.
She knew it was the beginning, and things could always go wrong or end, but this, what they’d started, felt so right to her.
“Up here,” Sarai said through her heavy breathing and pressed her fingertip to her lips as she lifted both eyebrows. “Please.”
“You want me up there?” Gabi teased.
“Yes, I do.”
Gabi smirked, climbed up Sarai’s body until she had a knee on either side of her head, and Sarai gripped her hips and lowered her to her waiting mouth.
They hadn’t done this last night. They’d gone down on each other, yes, but neither of them had sat on the other’s face, and when Sarai began licking her, Gabi really regretted not doing this the previous night, too.
This way, she could control the pressure and the sensations she wanted a little better, so she lifted an inch or so and moved her hips back and forth because she wanted Sarai to just barely touch her to start.
“You’re driving me crazy,” Sarai said and gripped her hips a little bit harder.
“You’re driving me crazy. That’s what I want, though. Don’t stop.”
She pushed her hips forward a bit and pulled them back with every rhythmic stroke of Sarai’s tongue.
Several minutes later, her hands were on the wall behind the bed, and she was rocking those hips against Sarai’s face, moaning her pleasure and not caring about who might be listening in the hallway or even hearing them from the kitchen.
“God, yes!” she let out as Sarai sucked her.
She stopped her hips to let Sarai take her over the edge, and then, she collapsed back on her palms, leaving her center only about a foot away from Sarai’s wet face and her ass on Sarai’s stomach.
She looked like she was about to do a crab walk, which was probably why Sarai started laughing quietly.
“Shut up,” Gabi told her and giggled.
“You can stay right there, you know? I’m really enjoying my morning view so far today.”
Sarai ran her index finger over her clit, which was still very sensitive, and Gabi gasped, flinched, and moved off her because she couldn’t handle anything more right now. She ended up with her head at the end of the bed, flopped back, and stared up at the ceiling.
“Think they heard us?”
“Oh, definitely,” Sarai replied. “Think I care?”
“I guess not.” Gabi laughed a deep laugh that she recognized as her after-sex laugh. “Arlowe has her answer about us having sex now, huh?”
“She had her answer last night.”
“We were that loud?”
“They walked in right when you were coming, so yeah, I think they heard us. Well, you; they heard you.”
“God… Your friends know what I sound like when I come?” she asked, embarrassed, and covered her eyes with her arm.
“They know what I sound like, too. These walls aren’t that thick, Gabs.
I’ve heard them both before. It’s really unpleasant and not something I want to think about.
I’d much rather think about you and I hopping in that shower across the hall together, and me getting to rub that amazingly smelling body wash you’re always using all over you. Then, we can have breakfast.”
“You like my body wash?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sarai said.
Gabi removed her arm from over her eyes and asked, “And it’s okay that we take a shower together?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know.” Gabi sat up. “No one handed me the rule list before I moved in. I only found out about the whole voting and veto thing and then the vault thing after I signed the lease.”
“Well, I vote that we take a shower together and that we keep whatever we do in that shower in the vault. What do you say?”
Gabi smiled at her and said, “I don’t have any clothes in here. I guess I need to borrow something so that I don’t have to walk across the hall naked.”
“Oh, shit!” Sarai exclaimed and promptly covered her mouth with her hand.
“What?”
“Our clothes.”
◆◆◆
About thirty minutes later, Gabi walked into the kitchen with Sarai.
They had opted not to hold hands or to dry their hair, so after their shower, where they’d focused on cleaning only, they’d just brushed each other’s hair like schoolgirls on a playground.
It had been adorable, but they had kept that in the vault, too.
Then, they’d dressed in their separate rooms and joined back up in the hallway, ready for Arlowe to pounce.
“Good morning,” Arlowe said calmly before she took a bite of her cereal.
“Hey,” Enya added without looking up.
“Hi,” Sarai said while Gabi was too busy looking out the back window, where she could easily see all of their clothes, the blanket, their snacks, and the knocked-over water bottles in the grass.
“Oh, hey,” she spoke when Sarai elbowed her back to attention.
“So, Stella wasn’t feeling well?” Sarai asked, redirecting everyone’s attention in a clear attempt to avoid an interrogation from Arlowe. “Babe, coffee?”
“Yeah,” Gabi replied as she moved to sit down in her usual chair.
“She had a stomach thing. It hit her right before we got there, I think,” Arlowe said. “She still wanted to go, but Violet told her no and started playing nurse, and not in the sexy way, so we just left.”
“She texted me this morning that Stella’s feeling better,” Enya added.
“That’s good,” Sarai replied as she went about making coffee.
Enya and, most importantly, Arlowe seemed content to just be eating their breakfast, so Gabi’s eyes kept landing on the backyard, and she wondered if either of them had noticed what was out there. She needed to come up with a reason to go outside and pick everything up.
“Want cereal or something else?” Sarai asked her. “We have eggs.”
Sarai then set a cup of coffee in front of Gabi, wrapped her arms around her neck, and leaned down from behind her to kiss her on the cheek.
“Um… Yeah. Sure.”
“Which one?” Sarai asked with a chuckle.
“Yeah, it was an and-or question there, Gabi,” Arlowe said, looking over at her.
“Whatever you’re having is fine,” she replied.
“Well, she already had you this morning,” Arlowe noted.
Sarai let go of Gabi then, walked around to where Arlowe was sitting, and playfully smacked her on the back of the head.
“Ow!” Arlowe laughed. “Come on… I get some credit. I held it in.”
“For about a minute. You get no credit for that.”
“If it’s any consolation, you should know that we heard it all the way from in here, so Gabi clearly enjoyed it. And I heard Sarai practically scream your name last night, so you were doing something right.”
“Not a consolation,” Gabi said. “Embarrassing.”
“Not embarrassing,” Enya replied and looked over at Gabi. “We’re used to it. And Arlowe’s right: we could hear Sarai pretty easily, and that’s never happened before. She’s usually really quiet.”
“Okay, enough,” Sarai said from over by the fridge.
“Agreed. I don’t really need to hear anything about my girlfriend having sex with other people, even if it, apparently, wasn’t all that good.”
“Hey!” Sarai said, turning around. “Oh, wait. That’s not a dig against me. That’s a dig on them.”
“I couldn’t hear them, either, Sarai,” Arlowe said with a laugh.
“I hate you all,” Sarai stated and pulled eggs out of the fridge. “Except you. I don’t hate you.”
Gabi smiled over at her and turned to see Enya staring at her.
“It’s really not embarrassing. It happens when you live with other people.”
“Yeah. What’s embarrassing is that you two went out to the backyard to hang out and ended up getting naked out there because you couldn’t keep it in your pants to at least make it back inside the house, which is all of twenty feet from that soaked blanket out there,” Arlowe said.
“Now, I should get credit for holding that in for as long as I did.”
“I think I’ll just go pick everything up,” Gabi said.
“We have neighbors, you two. Neighbors… With children…”
“It was dark. No one saw anything,” Sarai defended as she cracked an egg into a bowl.
“Says you. There are cameras, Sarai.”
“Oh, my God!” Sarai exclaimed and stopped as the second egg hit the rim of the bowl.
“Cameras?” Gabi asked and closed her eyes, knowing the answer.
“The security cameras that we have on the front and the back of the house, along with the one above the side door in the garage.” Arlowe smirked. “We have computer equipment in here worth a lot of money.”
“Oh, my God,” Sarai repeated.
“And we got the good cameras, too. Night vision isn’t perfect, but it’s still clearer than on some other, cheaper ones. Let’s just say that I got a notification on my phone around six last night that there was movement in the backyard.”
“Oh, my God…” Sarai repeated again.
“I didn’t watch it once I figured out that it was only you two. You still had your clothes on. Anyway, I turned the back camera off and deleted the videos off the cloud.”
“Oh, my God…” Sarai repeated even quieter.
“I think she might need you to snap her out of that,” Enya suggested to Gabi and nodded at Sarai, who was still frozen, holding an egg.
“Babe?” Gabi walked over to her, took the egg from her hand, and placed it back into the carton. “You okay there?”
“Arlowe saw us having sex.”
“No, she didn’t. She turned the camera off. We’re okay.” She rubbed Sarai’s back and let out a little laugh. “You’re being really cute right now.”
“For the record, I’m not doing the dishes, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, or mowing the lawn for a while,” Arlowe announced. “I’m thinking a month would do.”
“Oh, my God…” Sarai said again.
“Yeah, I should definitely get credit for holding that one in for as long as I did,” Arlowe added and burst out laughing.