Chapter 19 #2
“No!” I said, my voice coming out in a disappointed tone, and we both laughed.
“I could tell everyone thought I was straight. And—I mean, I always had boyfriends. I think I thought—like, some magical girl would fall into my path and she’d know and—god, I have no idea.
I wasn’t brave like you. I didn’t know how to just—be gay. ”
Rebecca grinned at me. “Gardner, you came out to me and then had me in your bed in a manner of minutes. I’d say you were actually pretty good at being gay.”
“Stop,” I said with a laugh. I’d had no idea one day I could laugh about it.
“Seriously, though,” Rebecca said, and sipped her drink. “Damn. Anyway, I also think it felt different for you because it was different. By the time that night rolled around, I was already—we’ll call it platonically—crazy about you.”
I sipped my drink silently for a few moments, my tongue prickling with tartness. If I were a different person I would have crawled across the table and kissed Rebecca deeply, sucked the smoky sharp taste from her mouth.
“What are you thinking?” Rebecca asked.
I looked away, peered through a window across the room at the outdoor patio twinkling with fairy lights. “I had this whole story about who I was, how I treated you, what that summer meant. It was the happiest I ever was, and I ran away from it. Not just you, but—”
Rebecca nodded, reached across the table for my hand. I knew the sightlines were supposed to be safe for this booth, knew that I was gazing into the eyes of a niche lesbian celebrity, knew that I was drinking in a queer bar, and still pulled my hand back like the villain I maybe still was.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “Anyway, this whole story I told myself—it feels like you showed up and rewrote it. I know how clichéd it is to say that I don’t know who I am anymore …”
“I think you know exactly who you are,” she said. “I just think you’ve done a good job at hiding it.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could get a word out, Rebecca sat up and leaned in close to me again.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean that you’re not out. I only meant that I know what it’s like to put on my armor to go out into the world. I try really hard to remember to take it off as often as I can, though.”
“Princess Platinum can’t take off her suit,” I said. “All she can do is hope no one needs her to activate her powers, so she can spend more time as Chrissy Jenkins.”
“Right,” Rebecca said. “That’s the fate of the girl you play.”
“I don’t know what we’re doing,” I admitted. “I never let myself get into these situations.”
“I’m not asking you for anything,” Rebecca said.
I could tell she was trying to be kind, but like I’d once wished for a magical girl to unlock everything for me, it was hard to imagine not giving in to anything Rebecca asked of me now.
Not that I exactly had the best track record there.
“I’ve already made it clear—I hope?—that I’m aware that this is—well, it feels dishonest to say a terrible decision when it feels this way. ”
“How does it feel?” I asked.
“I think you’re well aware how it feels, Gardner,” she said with a smirk.
And we silently finished our drinks, letting the room’s noise fill in our silence.
I glanced out the window again once a DJ had set up.
A small dance floor had filled up quickly, and I watched a young couple move together, a dark-haired girl’s hands on a blonde girl’s hips, the blonde’s arms wrapped around the brunette’s shoulders.
“I wish I could dance with you,” I murmured.
“Yeah, I wish you could dance with me too,” Rebecca said.
It nearly knocked me over thinking about the fact that, no matter how it felt, we’d never get a happy ending.
We could never finish this thing we’d started.
Not back then, definitely not now. It had nothing to do with me here, or me in New Mexico, or me touring the world talking about how it felt to activate Princess Platinum’s suit one more time, or even Rebecca in New York searching for her tethered wife.
We had miraculously ended up in the same place at the exact same time, now twice, and we still couldn’t make this work. Not for good.
Sadie returned, though, with a couple more drinks, and I argued with her to let us pay, and when Rebecca stepped in to take my side on the matter, she sounded so smooth and competent that I laughed to cover up the rush of desire that blazed through me.
I wanted to get out of there, to get Rebecca back in my bed, but I also deeply loved this little corner where I could simply exist with her in the world.
The bar filled up, though, as we sipped our second drinks, and even though I stayed as unseen as Max had promised in the corner, it was a busier space than I’d been in without security in a long time. My body prickled with an awareness of the potential crush of the crowd.
“You OK?” Rebecca asked.
I shrugged. “It just got so packed.”
“Let’s go.” She took her wallet out of her black bag and peeled off a small stack of bills. “I’ll get up first, walk you right toward the exit, OK?”
It was like having security after all.
At home I leashed up Rosie, who was bouncing up and down like a rubber ball. “I should take her out.”
“Want company?” she asked, and of course I did, so we walked the little loop together.
Even at night it was a lovely view; my place was just below the hills of Griffith Park, and it felt like much of Los Angeles lay at our feet in the other direction.
Rosie was so excited about Rebecca’s guest appearance that it took forever to get her to fulfill the purposes of the walk, and I worried when Rebecca’s phone was out by the time we approached my house again that her Lyft would already be awaiting her.
“Does Rosie allow you to have overnight guests?” Rebecca asked.
“Contrary to how things look, I really am in charge here,” I said.
Rebecca grinned and grabbed her bag before following me to my bedroom, where I unbuttoned every tiny button, unhooked her bra, and pushed her back on my bed so I could shove aside all that black filmy material to get my mouth on her.
“I forgot what a bossy top you are,” Rebecca said, laughing. I couldn’t respond because I was licking a half-circle under one of her breasts, then the other, and the thought of lifting my tongue from her salty dewy skin felt inconceivable. “I did bring a present for you.”
I managed to pause, though my fingertips still danced at the waist of her jeans. Of course I’d noticed that her bag was in my bedroom and that it might have meant something.
She leaned over and pulled out an object that looked vaguely familiar. “See?”
“Oh my god,” I said, as it came into full view. “Is that a vibrator that looks vaguely like a People’s Choice Award?”
“Excellent eye,” she said, leaning over again. “And I’d say more than vaguely. There’s lube in here somewhere.”
“So you’ve been walking around all day with a vibrator and lube in your bag?” I asked, feeling a jolt between my legs at the thought of it. “For me?”
“Not all day,” she said, unbuttoning and unzipping her jeans. “Just all night. I thought you might want to fuck me with it.”
I nodded frantically, helping pull off her jeans and her socks.
Today her underwear was pink lace, and I couldn’t resist stroking the textured fabric between her legs.
I remembered being young, feeling so in control that I’d toy with her, hold off her pleasure, make her beg for it.
Maybe I was a bossy top, because I still loved it.
I felt powerful as she grew wetter, as she moaned, as her hips rolled seeking out my hand.
Finally, though, I slid off her underwear and held her gaze as I slipped the tip of the vibrator into her, clicked it to its lowest setting. “More?”
“More,” she said, as I slid further into her, turned up the buzz higher.
She wrapped her legs around my waist, which was when I realized we’d both been so impatient I was still somehow fully dressed.
I wanted to feel the soft plush of her inner thighs against my bare hips, but the thought of pausing was impossible.
I kept up my rhythm plunging into her as she clutched at me and moaned my name into my ear.
It didn’t take long before her hips were more frantic, her breath came hot and fast on my neck, and her head tipped back as she cried out.
I shifted so I could lean down to press my mouth to her, and within moments Rebecca came with a near-scream.
“Fuck,” she muttered, grabbing me roughly by the collar and pulling me up to kiss me. “That was incredible.”
“I can’t believe I’m still literally fully dressed,” I said, and she laughed and kissed me again, like she couldn’t stop, like she couldn’t get enough of me.
“Let’s do it now, though,” she said, pulling back the jacket, tossing it on the pile with her things, undressing me until everything I’d been wearing was on that pile except for her thin gold necklace. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so sexy, so wanted, so right just as I was.
“What about you?” Rebecca asked, kissing the base of my neck, my shoulders, the space between my breasts she always paid extra attention to.
Her desire seemed so specific for me that I could hardly wrap my mind around it.
“I know you weren’t … into penetration before.
But you’re allowed to change, of course. ”
“No, of course,” I said. “I know this is … a really cisnormative thing to say, but back then I’d never liked sex that much before you.
Which I’d associated with penetration, when it was just that I didn’t want to have sex with men and hadn’t completely figured that out yet.
It sounds so weird and problematic when I say it now, though—”