CHAPTER 15
Kristina
“I’m thinking none of this yet, but if you want to come back later, we can,” she said, looking toward the den that was filled with sex toys.
“Okay,” Debra replied.
“So, should we go to your bedroom or maybe mine?”
“Yours is fine,” Debra stated with little enthusiasm.
Kristina was wondering, as they walked down the hall, if Debra had no enthusiasm because Kristina didn’t appeal to her physically, or if it was just nerves.
Debra looked older than her, but she wasn’t sure by how much.
It didn’t matter to her, though. Age wasn’t important in someone she could fall in love with.
Debra had short brown hair that was tucked behind her ears and blue eyes that were beautiful but also appeared a bit broken.
Kristina wondered if Debra could see the brokenness in her green eyes.
Maybe Debra just wasn’t a fan of redheads.
Kristina was the only redhead here, and Debra probably wished she hadn’t gotten paired with her first. Her ex-wife hadn’t been a fan of her red hair.
In the beginning, it had been fine, and she’d had no complaints, but as they had gotten deeper into their marriage, little comments had emerged about how red hair was not her favorite, and one day, a box of an at-home hair color kit had appeared on their bathroom counter.
“I just picked it up. It was on sale,” her then-wife had said. “I thought it might be fun for us to do this together.”
But by together, she meant that Kristina would dye her hair brown because her ex-wife wanted to see what it would look like. Kristina hadn’t done it. She’d hidden the color kit inside the cabinet under the sink, and later, she had made it disappear in the trash.
“We should start with these cards, right?” Debra asked when they arrived in the room. “They’ve got our names on them. Well, the stack was labeled for us anyway, and there are numbers, so I think we’re supposed to ask the questions in order.”
“Okay,” Kristina replied and sat on the end of the bed.
Debra did the same but left a couple of feet of space between them.
“Um… The first question is a hard one. Wow. Okay.”
Kristina chuckled and asked, “What is it?”
“What brings you here?” Debra read the question and turned the card in order to let Kristina see.
“Oh. She’s making us dive right in there, huh?”
“The next one is, ‘What were you like in high school?’ So, yeah, I’d say we’re going deep.” Debra chuckled.
It was husky and almost as if Debra had been a smoker for decades, but her teeth weren’t yellow at all, and she wasn’t thin in that way that a lot of smokers were at times. Debra had curves, and she carried them well.
“So, what brings you here?” Debra asked.
“Oh. Well, I know that we’re supposed to spend at least thirty minutes doing this, but I think my answer could take up the whole time. Do you maybe want to start instead?” She laughed a little.
Debra looked down at the stack of cards in her hands and seemed to be considering how to respond to that.
“It’s okay. I can start,” Kristina amended.
“No, it’s okay. I don’t think I was expecting this to be the first thing I did here, so it’s kind of hitting me all at once.
” Debra looked up and over at Kristina then.
“My wife died about five years ago, and I haven’t dated or anything since.
I thought this might be a pressure-free, or at least, a low-pressure way to put myself back out there.
It’s one week, and if I didn’t click with anyone, I’d just go home, but if I did, maybe it could be something, you know? ”
“Oh, Debra, I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” Debra replied. “She was only forty years old. We were supposed to have our whole lives together, and it’s been really hard.
I think I spent the first two years after her death mostly numb.
Then, I started to slowly donate some of her stuff and keep the rest. I’m not sure when I actually accepted that she was gone, though.
Maybe recently. Therapy has been helpful, but there’s only so much it can do.
And I just told you that I go to therapy and talked all about my wife.
” Debra laughed a bit. “That is not why you came here, I’m sure. ”
“Hey, it’s okay.” Kristina placed her hand on Debra’s. “How did she die? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
“Rear-ended by a drunk driver. She was okay at first, or at least, they thought she was okay. I got to the hospital, and she started going downhill from there because she had some internal bleeding. She had just enough time to tell me to find someone else. In her final minutes, before they took her back to surgery, she somehow knew that she wouldn’t make it, and she told me to find someone else. ”
Debra shook her head.
“It sounds like she loved you very much.”
“High school sweethearts.”
“What?” Kristina asked, feeling infinitely more awful at hearing that.
“Yeah… I know. Makes it worse, doesn’t it?
We met in high school and became friends.
Started dating in secret our senior year.
We managed to make it through going to different colleges and moved in together as roommates after that.
No one seemed to think anything of it. Eventually, we came out to our families, had a civil union ceremony, and when it became legal, we got married.
I was lucky enough to know her for twenty-six years and to be hers for most of them. ”
“I’m sorry, Debra. Then again, I’m sure you’re probably tired of hearing people tell you they’re sorry, huh?”
“No, I understand. It’s a natural response.” She nodded as if deciding something. “Now, you. What brings you here?”
“Oh. I’m divorced. My ex-wife was fine when I married her, or so I thought, but she turned into a not very nice person toward the end of our marriage.
It’s taken me some time and, yes, some therapy as well, to get me to a place where I could sign up for something crazy like this.
It’s not at all like me.” Kristina laughed softly.
“Honestly, I haven’t even been with anyone since her, and I applied on a whim, but here I am now, and I’m kind of just proud of myself for showing up. ”
“Me too,” Debra said with a little laugh. “I thought I’d chicken out.”
“Yes!” Kristina agreed and laughed harder.
“But I don’t know; something inside me told me that I had to do this for myself.
Same reason as you, most likely. I haven’t been with anyone since, and I’m tired of being alone, so I thought this was low pressure.
If I meet someone, that’s great. If I don’t, I go home, and no one even knows I was here. ”
“Exactly,” Debra said. “So, should we try the next one? What were you like in high school?”
“I was a late bloomer in all ways, I think, so that’s pretty easy. I was a nerd with red hair who got picked on a lot.”
“I like red hair.”
“You do?”
Debra nodded and said, “And I wasn’t a nerd, exactly, but I was an introvert who kind of kept mostly to herself.”
“I was in the band,” Kristina shared.
“Me too,” Debra replied with excitement and pointed at herself. “Clarinet.”
“Flute,” she said, pointing to herself. “I wanted to play the drums, but my mom wouldn’t let me. Too loud.”
“Has she not heard a flute when it’s not played right by a kid who’s learning?”
Kristina laughed again and said, “She sure did after she got me one.”
“Okay. Question three. Greatest talent?”
“The flute.”
Debra laughed and said, “Funny.”
“No, really. I play professionally. I’m in a small orchestra at home, do lessons, and play weddings and stuff.”
“Oh, wow. Sorry, I didn’t know that.”
“It’s okay. How could you? What’s your greatest talent?”
“Numbers. Putting them together and making sense of them. I’m an accountant. I’m actually the head of finance at a corporation, but I’m an accountant at heart.”
“Numbers? Damn. I’m surprisingly bad at numbers. You know how they say music is supposed to help you with things like that? It didn’t help me. I really just didn’t like math, so I never put the time in, but that’s amazing.”
“Okay. Next question,” Debra said and read it herself first. “Oh, interesting. Have you ever cheated on a past partner?”
“She really went all-in, didn’t she?” Kristina laughed and leaned back on her hands, getting a little more comfortable. “No, I’ve never cheated on anyone.”
“Me neither.”
“Was your wife your only partner?”
“In life, yes,” Debra said. “I had sex with a girl in high school before her, though, and she was with someone else before me, too. Neither of us was out back then, even to each other, so I slept with a girl in my biology class who was also in the closet, but it didn’t go anywhere after that.
My wife had a boyfriend for a few months our junior year, and they had sex. She didn’t care for it.”
“I can imagine,” Kristina replied.
“I’ve never been with a man. You?”
“Nope,” she replied. “I knew I was gay pretty early on. I did date boys in high school to hide it, but when they were ready to take things further, I conveniently ended things.”
Debra laughed, and Kristina liked the sound of it.
She liked Debra herself, too, but something was telling her that this wasn’t a love connection.
She wondered at the thought that Nia had put into the questions on the note cards because the order and the depth of them seemed pretty specific to the two of them, and she decided to be brave and maybe offer something that they could both use.
“Debra?”
“Huh?”
Debra looked back at her.
“Do you maybe want to put the cards down now?”
“Oh. You don’t want to go the full thirty minutes? Sorry, I’m a bit of a rule follower. I’m also pretty nervous right now, which is why my knuckles are white on these cards.”
Debra laughed a bit again, and this time, Kristina could definitely feel her nervousness.
“What’s something you miss about sex?”
“That’s not on the next card.” Debra looked down. “It asks about our weirdest habit or quirk.”
“Let’s go off-script for a minute,” she suggested.
“Okay.”
“I miss a woman paying attention to my whole body,” she admitted. “The foreplay. I love a good orgasm, but I miss a woman touching me everywhere first. What about you?”
“I miss a woman going down on me,” Debra answered softly. “I like fingers, and some toys are good, too, but I love a woman’s mouth on me. Is that okay to say?”
“Of course, it is,” Kristina replied. “I love that part. My wife liked it enough, especially in the beginning, but didn’t want it often.”
“Mine loved it,” Debra said with a little chuckle. “And when I went down on her, too.”
“Well, since I love doing that, and you love receiving that, maybe I could do that to you tonight?”
Debra’s eyes widened a bit.
“Or not. It was just a suggestion. I was thinking it might be a nice way for us both to get back into things.”
“No, that… that would be great,” Debra said. “And I love foreplay. I could maybe do that for you.”
“Yeah?” she asked with a lifted eyebrow.
“It’s been a long time. I might not be any good at the whole giving you an orgasm part, but I’d love to try.”
“Same for me.” Kristina smiled at her. “Maybe that’s… why we were paired together first.”
“Why?”
“Because we could do this scary thing with and for each other, knowing, at least in some respects, what the other person might be going through. There’s no pressure; just two people making each other feel good, hopefully, but mostly, making the other person feel comfortable and safe. A warm-up.” She smiled wider.
“Yeah, I think I’d like that,” Debra replied and smiled, too. “You are a very beautiful woman, Kristina.”
“So are you,” she said before she leaned over and kissed Debra gently on the lips. “Shall we?”