Chapter 1
They left around midnight, earlier than usual but neither of them fought it when their friends started to thin out.
Becca hugged everyone goodbye with her characteristic warmth, Ellie waved from behind her, and then they were outside in the warm Austin night, the noise of the bar falling away behind them as they started the ten-minute walk back to their apartment.
The air was humid for late winter, carrying the faint smell of food trucks along with whatever someone was smoking down a side alley they walked past. The streets around Rainey were still busy, clusters of people moving between bars, rideshares pulling up and pulling away, the distant thump of bass from somewhere further down the block.
Above all of it the downtown skyline glowed, those newer towers that seemed to multiply every time Ellie looked, the Austin that was rapidly becoming something different from the Austin they'd moved to a year ago.
Normally they talked on the walk home. They talked about everything, always had. They were the sort of couple who could turn a ten-minute walk into a forty-minute conversation without noticing. But tonight Ellie was quiet and she knew that Becca could tell.
Ellie was trying to think and failing. Her body was still doing the thing it had been doing since the bar, the low hum of something new running through her, and every time she tried to put a thought together it scattered.
She kept replaying the same fragments: the woman's hand on Becca's arm, Becca's hair pushed back behind her ear, that laugh, and each time she replayed them her stomach went tight, and her skin felt warm, and she was no closer to understanding any of it.
"You're being very quiet," Becca said after a couple of blocks. Her voice was gentle, careful. The voice she used when she suspected something was wrong but didn't want to push.
"Just tired," Ellie replied, and knew immediately that it was the wrong answer because Becca could always tell when she was lying.
Becca was silent for a few more steps. Then: "Is this about the woman at the bar?"
Ellie felt her jaw tighten. "No." Said with much more tension that she’d meant.
"Because if it is, I want you to know that she came up to me. I didn't seek her out. She was friendly and we talked, and yes she was flirting, and I probably should have shut it down sooner, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I'm sorry if…”
"You don't need to apologise."
"I feel like I do." Becca reached for Ellie's hand as they walked. Ellie let her take it but didn't squeeze back, not out of coldness but simply because she was concentrating on not saying something she hadn't figured out yet. "Ellie, I would never... you know I would never."
"I know."
"Then what's going on? Talk to me."
They walked in silence for another half a block.
They were on a quieter stretch now, residential, the bars behind them, the sound of their footsteps on the sidewalk and the distant hum of Congress Avenue the only noise.
A cyclist passed them going the other way.
Somewhere a dog barked once and stopped.
Ellie tried to form her thoughts into something coherent.
She tried three different opening sentences in her head and gave up on all of them because they all came across as too confrontational, and that really wasn’t it.
The analytical part of her brain, the part that spent all day solving problems in clean logical sequences at work, was completely useless here.
This wasn't a problem with a solution. This was a feeling she didn't have a clue how to name.
"I wasn't jealous," she said eventually, and it still came out wrong, too flat, like a statement read from a card rather than something she felt.
Becca looked at her. "You seem jealous."
"I know I do. I know it looks like that.
But that's not..." Ellie stopped walking and Becca stopped with her.
They were stood under a streetlight outside a new apartment building, moths circling above them, the light making Becca's face half bright and half shadow.
She looked beautiful, patient, and a little worried, roughly in that order, which made Ellie feel worse because she wasn't giving Becca anything to work with.
"That's not what?" Becca asked softly.
Ellie opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "I don't know how to say what I'm trying to say."
"Try anyway. I'll catch up."
That was such a Becca thing to say… the professional therapist in her, making space, but also the woman who had known Ellie since they were teenagers and had heard every clumsy, half-formed thought Ellie had ever had and loved her through all of them.
Ellie felt a wave of gratitude and then, beneath it, that same heat from the bar, because even now, even standing on a sidewalk having an awkward semi-argument, Becca was the most gorgeous woman she'd ever seen and she wanted her in a way that felt heightened tonight, elevated even more than usual.
"When I saw her talking to you," Ellie started slowly, picking each word like she was crossing a minefield…
not too far from the truth, she realised.
“When I came back from the restroom and you were there with her and she was… she was into you, obviously into you, touching your arm, and you were…” She swallowed.
“You were responding to it. My first reaction was jealousy. I felt it, I definitely did. But then I kept watching, and the jealousy was definitely there but there was something else too, something beneath it.”
Becca was very still. Listening in the way she listened, with her whole body, her eyes on Ellie's face.
"And the something else was..." Ellie felt her cheeks going red.
"I don't know what the word is. I watched her want you and it made me want you.
Not in a claiming way, not like I needed to go and take you back from her.
More like... seeing you through her eyes.
Seeing what she saw. This incredible, beautiful woman, and she wanted you so badly, and I could see you enjoying being wanted, and it... " She trailed off.
"It turned you on," Becca said quietly.
Ellie's face was on fire. "Yeah." She couldn’t believe she’d admitted to it.
The silence that followed was long enough for a car to pass them, headlights sweeping across Becca's face and revealing an expression that Ellie couldn't read.
That was rare. Ellie could almost always read Becca, but right now her wife's face was doing something complicated, several things at once layered on top of each other.
"Say something," Ellie whispered.
Becca took a breath. "I'm not sure what you want me to say."
"Anything. Tell me I'm being weird. Tell me it's fine. Tell me you think I need therapy." A weak attempt at humour that didn't land because Ellie's voice was shaking slightly.
"You don't need therapy," Becca said, and a smile broke through. "Or if you do, not for this." She stepped closer and took both of Ellie's hands. "Can I be honest with you?"
"Please."
"When she was talking to me... when she was flirting with me...
I liked it." Becca held Ellie's gaze. "I feel terrible saying that but I liked it.
Not because I wanted her, or not only because of that.
It was more like... I haven't had that in so long.
Someone new finding me attractive, that tension of not knowing what's going to happen next.
We got together so young, El. I've never experienced that as an adult.
And tonight, for just a few minutes, I did, and it felt...
" She searched for the word. "Electric."
Ellie nodded because her throat was too tight to speak.
"But here's the thing," Becca continued.
"The whole time she was talking to me, the whole time I was enjoying it, part of me was thinking about you watching. I didn't know you were, but I was imagining that you were. I kept thinking, where’s Ellie? I want her to see this, to be part of this. What would Ellie think if she could see me right now? And that thought, you seeing me like that, that was what made it electric. Not her. When I saw you watching, when I smiled at you, I loved that.”
They stood there under the streetlight, hands held between them, looking at each other.
"That's fucked up, isn't it?" Becca said with something that was half a laugh and half something else.
"Maybe," Ellie replied. "But I was watching. And I couldn't stop."
Becca stepped closer still and kissed her.
It started soft, reassuring, but within a few seconds it changed…
Ellie felt it when Becca’s grip on her hand tightened, when Becca pressed her body closer, in the way that the kiss deepened and then deepened even more until Ellie’s back was against the glass window of a closed store and Becca was kissing her like they were nineteen again and had just discovered that their mouths could do some very fun things indeed.
They broke apart, breathing hard.
“Home,” Ellie said. “Now.”
***
Their apartment was on the sixth floor of a building just south of Lady Bird Lake, modern, floor-to-ceiling windows, two bedrooms and a large living area, too nice for a couple their age but which Ellie’s tech salary made possible.
They barely made it through the door. Becca's mouth was on Ellie's before the lock clicked, her hands pulling at Ellie's shirt, and Ellie responded in kind, pushing Becca back against the hallway wall with a force that surprised them both.
This wasn't their normal way of doing this.
Their normal way was good, it was loving and considerate, and they knew exactly how to make each other feel incredible, but it was rarely this desperate, this immediate, this fuelled by something other than simple desire.
Ellie kissed down Becca's neck while Becca's head fell back against the wall, her breath already coming in short gasps. Ellie's hands went to the hem of Becca's top and pushed it up, feeling the warm skin of her stomach, her ribs, the underside of her bra.
"Bedroom," Becca breathed. "I need you in bed."
They left a trail of clothes along the hallway, Becca's top, Ellie's shirt, a shoe each, stumbling through to their bedroom where the lights were off and the glow of downtown Austin came in through the windows, painting everything in yellows and blues.
Ellie pushed Becca back onto the bed and climbed over her, kissing her passionately while Becca's hands worked to undo Ellie's jeans, pushing them down far enough for Ellie to kick them off.
In the dim light Becca was breathtaking, her eyes luminous, her lips parted, her dark hair a mess already, and Ellie felt that same disorienting double-vision from the bar…
seeing Becca as herself, as the woman she loved, but also as a stranger might see her, as someone staggeringly desirable who could belong to anyone.
That thought, could belong to anyone but belongs to me, sent a surge of heat through her that was so intense she had to pause, her hands braced on either side of Becca's head, just breathing.
"What?" Becca whispered, reaching up to touch Ellie's face.
"Nothing. Just looking at you."
"Look at me later," Becca replied, pulling Ellie down into another kiss.
They found their way out of the rest of their clothes and when they were naked Ellie took her time, kissing down Becca's throat, across her collarbone, lower, her mouth following a path she knew by heart while Becca's breathing grew heavier and her hands reached for Ellie's hair.
Ellie kissed between Becca's breasts, took one nipple in her mouth and felt Becca push towards her, a gasp escaping her lips.
She kissed lower, across Becca's stomach, feeling the muscles tense under her lips, and then lower still, settling between Becca's legs, kissing along the inside of her thigh and feeling Becca's hips move towards her impatiently.
When Ellie's mouth found her, Becca let out a long, slow moan that filled the bedroom.
Ellie knew exactly what to do here, knew Becca's body as well as she knew her own, knew the pace and pressure, the precise angles that would take Becca apart but slowly, not too fast. She settled into the rhythm of it, the taste of her, the small sounds Becca made that guided her, and she could feel Becca starting to build.
And then, into the silence of the room, Becca spoke.
"Her name is Sara."