A Story of Now (39 page)

“You know,” she says quietly but quickly, still holding Mia’s hand. “I inappropriately kiss people sometimes when I’m drunk, yeah. So do you, clearly. But you and me? I think it’s more than that. And I just want you to know that I am not just being trashy right now. I’m not drunk, and I want to kiss you.” She shakes the hand in hers. “And what I actually was trying to say last night was that I think something is happening with us and to ask if you felt it too or if you knew what it was, you know?” Claire feels almost breathless from the urgency and terror of delivering this short monologue. She’s not used to communicating in such a forthright way, but it’s necessary. It all feels too vital in this moment not to, in case it all slips right back into uncertainty again.

Mia nods slowly and stares down at her bare feet.

“Hey.” Claire tugs gently on the hand, wanting to bring her back from wherever it is she has gone.

“I’m so sorry, Claire,” Mia whispers, gaze still fixed on the ground.

“What for?” Claire is suddenly frozen. Is she going to bail again? She can’t do this again.
She can’t
.

“For being so weird. I’ve been awful.”

“No, you haven’t. Well, okay, a bit weird.” Claire smiles.

And Mia offers a small smile in return.

Claire reaches out, relieved, and pulls at a length of Mia’s hair. Mia steps in closer, close enough for Claire to take a hold of the front of her T-shirt and draw her near. “But it’s okay. You’ve been figuring stuff out. A
lot
of stuff.”

Mia looks up at her, right into her eyes. And she looks at Claire for the longest time, so long Claire starts to feel self-conscious, almost as if she wants to step away from its force. Finally, Mia shakes her head and bites back a shy smile. “You’re so beautiful.”

And just for a second, Claire feels as though she no longer knows which way is upright or how the hell she’s going to stay there. So she pulls Mia toward her, an anchor, draws her arms around her waist, and rests her forehead against Mia’s, breathing in that heady, light scent that accompanies her wherever she goes.

Eventually, Mia pulls back and looks down at her. Now she’s the one chewing on her lip, her face still slightly overcast.

So Claire recovers herself and grins coyly at that tense face in front of her. “I don’t know what you’re worried about, Mee. You’re pretty good at this lesbian thing,” she jokes to crash them back down to earth because she thinks maybe Mia needs it. She needs to be reminded of the ease that did, and should still be able to, exist between them. “You definitely know how to compliment the ladies.”

“Ha ha.” She meets Claire’s gaze again and grins.

It worked. Claire lifts an arm and wraps it around Mia’s neck. “Well, you’re beautiful, too, you know.”

And Mia doesn’t say anything, just closes in on her with another kiss. And there they stay, taking their sweet time. Claire supports Mia as she leans into her, and the wooden frame of the old house does its bit to keep Claire upright. They linger here in this moment and learn the feel of being in each other’s arms, of the way their faces and lips and finally their tongues feel against each other’s.

Mia pulls back for a moment and looks at her again, her eyes sleepily narrowed. And there’s that feeling again, like the hand on the small of her back. Claire feels insanely, unprecedentedly shy, but happy.
This is happening
, she tells herself.

And the way Mia smiles at her, as though to register her agreement, makes Claire wonder if she accidentally said it aloud.

Claire has no idea how long they stand there and kiss with only the sound of their breathing and the background of crickets for company. And she doesn’t know how long they would have stayed either, if they hadn’t started at the sudden sound of the back door as it flew violently open, and footsteps ran out onto the porch just around the corner from them. They freeze, hold on to each other, and grin into the dim light, hiding in the shadows of the wall.

“Wait!” someone shouts before they run back inside.

They let out a mutual sigh of relief, and Mia buries her face in Claire’s neck with a soft, breathy laugh.

“Should we go back in before they come looking for us?” Claire whispers as she wonders how close they are to getting caught. She doesn’t want anything to destroy this new place they’ve created for themselves. She would rather leave it now and rebuild it later than have it shattered by the outside world and for Mia to back off again.

But Mia shakes her head. “No.” She moves in to kiss Claire again, more forcefully this time. “I don’t want to go back in. I want to stay here with you.”

CHAPTER 49

And it’s the desire contained in that kiss and in that declaration that decides it, that makes Claire even braver. She bites her lip, takes Mia by the hand, and leads her to the sleeping porch. Opening the door, she pulls Mia inside. With the door safely closed behind them, she leans against the frame, pulls Mia into another deeper kiss, and slides her tongue against hers.

Mia’s only reply is to press herself up against Claire, diminishing any distance between them, and to kiss her right back.

And again Claire has to steel herself just to remain standing. When she’s achieved the status of being safely upright, she works her hands slowly up the back of Mia’s T-shirt. She starts in the middle and follows her spine downward along the soft sling of her lower back to the waistband of her shorts and then all the way back up to her shoulders. Mia breaks away from the kiss, meets her gaze for a brief moment, and takes hold of Claire’s hips. She ducks her head, drops a kiss on Claire’s neck where it curves into her shoulder, and again a little higher up. Then she glides her hands around to Claire’s front and inches them upward over her top, along her stomach, not stopping until her hands are just under the seams of her bra.

Claire sucks in a breath, leans harder against the door as Mia kisses her just under her ear and smoothes her hands slowly up over Claire’s breasts. She kisses her throat before she moves to the other side of her neck. There is a dizzying sprint of blood around Claire’s body as she locks her knees and tips her head back against the door to make room for whatever Mia wants to do now.

Suddenly, Mia pauses in her journey along her neck, leans in, and presses her cheek there instead, head bowed. Her hands slide slowly off Claire’s breasts and back to her waist and pause there. She stands stock-still and breathes quietly into Claire’s neck.

Claire’s hands also come to a halt. Confused by this abrupt standstill, she holds on to Mia’s arms and waits for a cue. In this silence, she can once again hear the muffled bangs and yells from inside and the sudden quiet of the crickets.

Claire slides a hand up to the nape of Mia’s neck. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Mia mutters. “I think I’m just…nervous or something.” She kisses Claire’s shoulder.

Claire bows her head, brows knitted. She shakes Mia and smiles. “Why are you nervous? You’ve at least done this before.”

“I know, but I was really drunk.”

Claire giggles.

“And I didn’t
like
her,” Mia mumbles without raising her head.

Claire stops laughing as she realises the weight that is possibly contained in that statement.

“And because,” she buries her face deeper into Claire’s neck, “with you I want it to be good.”

“It will be,” Claire shoots back without even a thought.

Her rapid-fire, cocky response makes them both giggle, which, for some reason, makes everything so much easier. The air around them lightens.

That’s when Claire decides that, even though Mia initiated this, she’s the one who will have to keep it going. She will not let this dissolve into uncertainty or slink back into the undefined attraction that it has been for so long between them. They need to make this into what it is. She takes Mia by her T-shirt again and pulls her slowly over to the bed.

Mia, obedient, sits in front of her. She looks up at Claire and bites her lip, clearly trying to hold back the giggles. They can just meet gazes by the light of the porch. It’s just enough to light the way, but not enough to confront.

“Don’t laugh,” Claire orders her although she is smiling herself. She leans down and cups Mia’s face, then kisses her and pushes her back against the mattress.

Mia lies against the covers, throws her arms up over her face, and shakes her head, smiling. “I have no idea why I’m laughing.” Then a moment later, she looks up at Claire from behind her arms, takes a deep breath, and lets it out. “Yes, I do.”

“So stop it.”

“Okay.” Mia repeats the headshake, but more fervently this time, as though trying to shake something loose. “Yes, fuck it. I’m not going to be nervous.”

And now it’s Claire who wants to laugh because she realises she has never heard Mia drop the f-bomb before. And if this is the occasion that calls for it, she knows she should feel honoured. “Good,” she whispers instead of laughing.

Claire climbs onto the bed slowly, and stops with her knees on either side of Mia. She places her hands on either side of Mia’s shoulders. She kisses her lightly once and then dips her head and runs her tongue slowly along Mia’s neck, trying to invoke the same sensations for Mia as she did for Claire just minutes ago by the door. And the sound of Mia’s rapid inward breath tells her that imitation has been the sincerest form of flattery.

She looks up, and Mia smiles at her again. But this time it’s a different, slower kind of smile. And the next thing Claire knows, Mia tugs gently at her tank and pulls it up around her armpits. Claire obediently drops her neck so Mia can draw it gently over her head. It falls onto the bed beside them, and Mia smooths her hands over Claire’s bared skin as she explores this new territory of her waist and her back and up over her shoulders. And for an indulgent moment, Claire hangs her head and savours the feeling of those exploring hands.

When she can bring herself to move, she pulls back and sits up so she is astride Mia’s legs. She takes hold of the bottom of Mia’s T-shirt and pushes it upward. Mia bites her lip and complies, looking self-conscious but willing. She arches her back slightly as Claire slides it up over her torso. Now she knows they are finally ready to admit they want the same thing from each other.

Claire immediately drops her hands onto the smooth, tanned breadth of Mia’s stomach. She slowly runs her hand over the skin and around Mia’s waist and circles her belly button lightly with her finger as Mia moves her own hands up to rest them at the hem of Claire’s shorts.

Claire inhales a deep breath and takes a brief, slightly stunned moment for herself, still not entirely sure how they got from this morning to this moment. She traces the ridges of Mia’s ribcage with her index fingers and realises she has absolutely no clue about what she is going to do. It’s a fact that might normally be daunting but right now, strangely, is not. For some reason she feels as though the ground is within her depth, as if terrified
can
co-exist with happy. She can command this moment just from the sheer wanting of it.

And when she finally looks down, Mia looks right back at her, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, expectant, her face stripped of all that uncertainty of the last twenty-four hours. In this moment, she looks calmly bound to whatever is about to happen. Claire feels a rush of something that’s part relief, part tenderness, but mostly desire.

Mia still doesn’t move, and Claire—happy to be the instigator—smiles and drops a kiss into the dip of skin just below where Mia’s bra meets in the middle, and then another just above. She moves her face over Mia’s, thrilling at the feel of their skin pressed together.

Claire pauses a breath away from her and looks down.

Mia gives her the smallest of smiles as a tiny, tense furrow appears between her brows.

“Hey, it’s just me,” Claire whispers.

Mia reaches up and strokes Claire’s face. “It’s just you.”

And that is as far as they manage to get in the undressing department.

Because the next thing she knows, they are under some sort of bizarre siege. Whatever it is that the others have been up to inside the house seems to have escalated. People spill out of the door and onto the porch, the driveway, and the path around the house. Every thump and every shout sounds closer and closer, threatening to breach the perimeter of their small corner of the world.

There seems to be some kind of game in action, one that largely involves a lot of running and yelling and loud splashes and even the occasional excited bark from Blue. When Claire first hears the sound of water being thrown across the porch, she pauses a moment and lets her mind drift into a brief prayer that whatever they’re doing isn’t in the house too. Then she simply tries to block it out. But the noise of voices and footsteps and these watery clashes are so close sometimes she feels as though she could reach out and touch the people making the sounds.

It feels perilous to be even semi-topless, to be this exposed with everyone in such close, risky proximity. The glass and screen walls of this room don’t offer much more than a mental barrier between them and this calamitous world outside. There is an unspoken consensus between them that the threat of imminent incursion makes it too hazardous to bare themselves any further.

Yet at the same time, she doesn’t want to relinquish the territory of skin each has gained. This is not ground she is willing to cede. Not now. So they stay shackled in their remaining clothes and make do because there’s no other choice. Claire knows there’s nowhere they can go where they will gain any more privacy or distance from the others. But she also knows they cannot stop now. This is not even a question in her mind.

Just as she begins to get used to the noise, getting cocky again as they thread their limbs together and explore new ground, a set of footsteps suddenly runs right up to near the window and comes to a stop. The person pants loudly as if out of breath.

Mia pulls back, and her eyes widen slightly.

Claire stares back and shakes her head, silently insistent.
Ignore them
, she pleads with her eyes.
Ignore it
.