Les Tales (23 page)

Jerica, a merchant banker, had been sleeping with three of the tellers at the bank where she worked, a neighbor in Chloe's apartment complex, even one of her old professors at UCLA. It had been humiliating. Then Jerica had had the nerve to try and play her for a fool again, telling Chloe that there hadn't been anyone else, when the evidence had slapped Chloe so hard in the face that she practically got whiplash. When a woman approached her with Jerica's cum-stained panties, explicit text messages and tit-for-tat crotch shots, Chloe didn't even have the luxury of disbelief.

But Jerica had been a player when Chloe met her.
Chloe
had been the fool for trying to change someone who was obviously still enjoying the way she lived her life. To be honest, though, the most beguiling thing about Jerica was that she looked like Kai.

“And that's who you left Khaulah for?” Her mother shook her head.

“Noelle,” Kai said with a squeeze of her best friend's hand as they sat around the lunch table. “That's not what she needs right now.”

“Sorry, honey.” Her mother took a bite of her shrimp and grits, her dark eyes flickering with a wicked humor that Chloe had never quite gotten used to.

“Noelle is just kidding,” Kai said. She sliced into a fried green tomato and brought a piece to her mouth.

“No, she's not.” Chloe wrinkled her nose. “Anyway, I know I made a mistake with Jerica. That's in the past now. I have New York and a new life to look forward to.”

“Darling . . .” Her mother grew serious. “You know I tease you sometimes, but I just worry you won't find the right partner for you. Someone who loves and cherishes you like you deserve.” She squeezed Chloe's hand. “By the time I was your age, I already had Duncan in my life.”

Chloe tugged back her hand to sip her mango iced tea. “Kai's still single, and I don't see you worrying about her.”

“Oh, I do worry.” Her mother glanced at Kai with a grin. “But you're still not old enough yet to hear those conversations.”

Kai chuckled. “Shit,
I'm
not old enough.”

The two friends shared a smile.

After lunch, they went back to the house. In the foyer, Kai announced that she was about to leave and give the two women time alone.

Chloe hugged Kai good-bye, the familiar feeling of longing mixed with relief sitting in her chest. She wanted Kai near but knew that she shouldn't. Every time she'd thought over the years of declaring her love for her mother's best friend, she'd forced herself to remember what the two women were to each other.

Noelle Williams had gotten pregnant in high school, when she was much younger than Chloe. She had barely known what to do with a child, as she was still one herself, a smart sixteen-year-old with a formerly bright future in front of her.

Kai, her best friend since kindergarten and an out lesbian all their lives, had been supportive of her friend throughout her entire pregnancy and the birth of her child, standing in place of Chloe's father, who had been a high school senior at the time and had run as far from the responsibility of parenthood as his Harvard scholarship could carry him.

Even when Kai left for college, and eventually a job in New York, she remained a constant in her best friend's life, helping to soothe her worries when Chloe came out as a lesbian, assuring Noelle, who was worried that her daughter would cut off her hair and start dressing like a boy, that if Chloe hadn't shown those proclivities before, it was unlikely she'd start doing so now.

“She's a femme who likes makeup and clothes,” Chloe remembered overhearing Kai say to her mother once.

And quietly, Chloe had said to herself that she was a femme who liked girls who dressed like boys. Much later—once Noelle had calmed down about Chloe's compromised future entailing a house, a husband, and two-point-five children—she'd asked her daughter if it was because of Kai that she wanted to be a lesbian. Did the older woman glamorize her gay life so much that it made Chloe want to be her?

Chloe could only say no. She didn't feel it was okay for her, as a fifteen year-old, to say that she didn't want to
be
Kai, but that she wanted to be
with
her. No. Her mother would not have appreciated that at all.

While her mother walked Kai to the door, Chloe sat on the couch and waited out their good-bye. She leaned back and listened to the sound of Kai's quiet steps in the loafers that she preferred, her feet barely making a sound against the wooden floor compared to the click of her mother's high heels. Chloe took a deep breath, trembling, as she thought again of Kai's body. Her easy confidence and the way she moved with a slow, coiled energy made Chloe wonder how she would be in bed.

Her mother came back into the living room and sat on the couch next to Chloe. “Okay. What aren't you telling me?”

Chloe shook herself from her daydream of Kai's body. “What do you mean?”

“There's something going on with you. You haven't said anything, but I can see it on your face. Kai senses it too.”

Chloe forced herself to relax beneath her mother's penetrating stare. “Your senses might be a little off. Everything's fine.”

Her mother held her gaze for a long while. “Just because you're almost twenty-four doesn't make me worry any less about you. And it doesn't make you too old to confide in me.” Her mother propped her elbow against the back of the couch and faced Chloe. “Please keep that in mind.”

“I will.”

Her mother drew a deep breath. “Okay. I understand if you're not ready to tell me what it is. Maybe you can talk with Kai.”

Chloe automatically shook her head, recoiling at the mere idea of sharing her secret with the object of her desire. “No.”

“Ah, then there
is
something.” Her mother looked both pleased and worried. “That's what I thought. And that's fine. I hope you can resolve it while you're here. Whatever it is.”

Can I make this attraction disappear in the next few weeks?
She plucked at the knee of her jeans, avoiding her mother's eyes. “I hope so too.”

A slender hand tapped Chloe's thigh. “Well, if you're going to mope around the house, you might as well help me out in the kitchen.” Her mother stood up. “I'm baking scones for a client.”

“Almond butter?” Despite her recent meal, her taste buds perked up. “If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to distract me.”

Her mother squeezed her waist, surrounding her with the scent of skin-warmed patchouli. “But you do know better, don't you?”

Chloe smiled and leaned into Noelle Graham's shoulder, grateful for her love and perceptiveness. Just then her cell phone chimed.

“Excuse me a sec,” Chloe said absently as she plucked her cell from her back pocket.

“Hey, girl,” a warm and Southern sweet voice sang in her ear.

It was her friend Zahra, who still lived in Atlanta. They had grown up together in the same neighborhood and had taken divergent paths after high school. Zahra had decided to stay in Atlanta and go to Spelman College, while Chloe had left for LA. But they had remained close during the five years they had spent on opposite coasts.

“What's up?”

“You made it home yet?”

Her mother gave a little wave, indicating she was heading to the kitchen. Chloe nodded and propped her hand on her hip, slowly crossing the living room while talking to her friend.

“Yeah, about two hours ago. I just got back from lunch with Mom and Kai.”

“Oh, yeah, that hottie Kai.” Zahra laughed, a husky and filthy sound. “When are you finally going to get a piece of that?”

“Stop it!” Chloe hissed, flashing a panicked glance at the doorway her mother had just disappeared through. “Don't say that.”

“As if you haven't been thinking it for the past two hours.”

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, regretting the day, drunk and horny from cheap Southern Comfort, she had confessed her Kai crush to Zahra. It was something that her friend had never allowed her to forget, bringing it up at the most inconvenient times, so she barely had a chance to forget about her foolish and impractical desires.

“I haven't!”

“Liar!” Zahra chuckled. “Anyway, I didn't call to torture you about your fantasy lover. My boss gave me free tickets to the fair for next Saturday. I think you should come with me.”

“I think I
will
come with you.” Chloe grinned.

She and Zahra had gone together to the fair as kids, but some of her best memories were from being there with her mother and with Kai, a girls' day and night out that usually started with brunch and ended with hot cider in front of the crackling fireplace.

“Good. I'm glad I didn't have to work too hard to convince you to come with me.”

Through the phone, Chloe heard the sound of glass tapping glass, the gurgle of liquid, as if Zahra was pouring herself some wine.

“I know you don't like to work for it,” Chloe said.

“Damn right.”

Chloe laughed again. “Just text me what time you want to go, and I'll be ready.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Zahra said. “Now, go back to baking cookies, or whatever
Cosby Show
shit you and your mom are about to get into. This vibrator is about to start screaming my name.”

“Too much damn information.” Chloe hung up the phone at the sound of her friend's laughter.

It was good to have someone who knew her that well. Someone to tease her about her childhood crush and the fact that she and her mother always baked together. That was one of the things she'd missed out in LA, with only strangers around her, for five years. It was good to be home.

 

 

Chloe went to bed that night with that same feeling of contentment at being home and with her family. After a long hot shower, she slipped between the sheets, Diana King's latest album playing on her iPod.

Now that she was away from the warm smells and the beautiful chaos of her mother's kitchen, the memories of what she'd been trying to escape by leaving California came flooding back to her. Jerica. The lover who had been the most like Kai. So much like her that Chloe had even convinced herself that she was in love with her. At least for a little while.

The sheets rustled as she turned over in the bed, a pillow pressed to her stomach.

Jerica, younger than Kai by almost fifteen years, was arrogant and self-consciously sexy. But at the time Chloe saw those things as simply confidence. Jerica was aware that she looked good, with her long, wavy hair, seductive brown eyes, and athletic body. But she had no idea everything about her was a pale copy of another woman. A better woman.

There were nights when they made love and Jerica's fingers gripped Chloe's hips while she took her from behind, the splendid friction of their strap-on sex and the doggie-style position allowing Chloe to imagine that it was Kai who was fucking her. Kai stroking her so deeply with her detachable dick that Chloe felt the heat of it in her throat and her tightening nipples. Her head flinging back as she bit her lip and barely stopped herself from crying out the wrong name.

She stirred restlessly in the sheets, her thighs sticky with the remembered pleasure of those nights. She pressed her fingers between her legs and hissed in arousal. It was easy to let go of the specter of Jerica and reach for the preferred fantasy of Kai, the pain and betrayal of what she'd endured in California floating away as she called up the ready image of her dream lover. Kai's mouth on her pussy, the glittering beacon of her eyes guiding Chloe toward orgasm.

She moaned and quivered in the bed.

Late evening sunlight draped over the large fairgrounds, haloing the Ferris wheel, the cotton-candy carts, food stands, and the scarlet big-top tent that loomed above it all. Chloe leaned against the wall leading to the public restrooms, waiting for Zahra. To pass the time, she watched the other fairgoers wander past, talking and enjoying themselves, some carrying large stuffed toys they'd won. The smells of barbecue, freshly popped kettle corn, and roasting corn on the cob laced the air.

A woman walked in Chloe's direction to go into the restroom, then did a double take when she saw Chloe. She nearly slammed into the wall as she tried unsuccessfully to walk and stare at the same time. The woman, a pretty femme in a maxi dress, with a lush Afro, smiled at Chloe, blushed, then disappeared around the wall toward the restroom.

Zahra came from the restroom, brushing a hand down the front of her tight jeans. Her long straightened and colored hair fluttered around her face as she shook her head. “Remind me never to take that sixty-four-ounce lemonade challenge again.”

Chloe laughed. “I already told you not to do it.”

“Yes, but did you see that hot stud behind the counter? I swear, she was eyeing me.”

“You swear that everybody is eyeing you.”

“Aren't they?” Zahra stuck a pink lollipop in her mouth and struck a pose. Ass out, D-cup breasts on display in a low-cut gingham blouse, pouty lips fastened to the sticky candy.

With her thick hair pressed out around her shoulders and down her back, her big black eyes, and a mouth that had brought many women to their knees, Zahra was absolutely gorgeous. Her body was stacked in all the right places, and she never hesitated about showing it off.

When the two girls had met in middle school, Zahra had introduced herself by saying they either had to be best friends or enemies for life, since Chloe was the only girl at school as pretty as her.

“Girl, come on!” Chloe rolled her eyes and grabbed her friend's elbow.

They had been at the fair for more than two hours, most of the time spent eating the ridiculous fair food, including doughnut hamburgers, and staring at the pretty
young
stud behind the counter at the lemonade stand. Although she was having fun with Zahra, Chloe was ready to do something else.

Zahra bumped her hip. “Let's ride the roller coaster next. I feel a need for a good long scream.”

Chloe grinned. “Is that why you've been trying to get that young girl from behind the counter of the lemonade stand?”

“Oh, that's a very good idea.” Zahra's black eyes twinkled, as if she'd never thought of it. “Let's go by there one more time and give her one last chance to ask me out.”

Before Chloe could protest, her friend was dragging her toward the bright yellow lemonade stand, which already had a long line in front of it, mostly what seemed to be thirsty femmes waiting for a taste of that same stud Zahra wanted. But the girl wasn't behind the counter.

Her friend made a sound of disappointment. “Damn! She probably already went home for the day.”

“I'd like to go home with you, though.”

They both turned around at sound of the low feminine voice. The stud from behind the counter at the lemonade stand. The girl had changed her clothes—she was definitely a girl, probably still in college by the looks of her. Before her short locks had been pulled back from her face with a headband, but now she wore her hair loose around her face. And instead of a stained white apron, she wore a striped polo shirt, a bow tie, and skinny jeans. Very queer boi.

“Damn, you clean up nice,” Zahra said. She approached the girl, looking predatory and femme sexy with her blouse-popping cleavage and dark, wet smile.

Chloe could see the night was going to end with the hard piece of jailbait sitting in Zahra's passenger seat instead of her. It was a good thing that she always traveled with enough money to get herself back home, no matter where she was.

“Hey.” Chloe nodded at the girl, who gave her a lingering glance and a quick hello, before turning back to Zahra. “I'm going to take a look around the grounds for a while, Z,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Zahra looked like her mind was already in the girl's pants. “We could all just hang out together.” The tone of her voice said something else entirely.

“No, I need to walk off all the food I just ate,” Chloe said. “Besides, there's a watermelon-judging contest I want to see that started . . .” She glanced at her nonexistent wristwatch. “About ten minutes ago. If I hurry, I can catch the seedless entries.”

“Oh, okay.” Her friend's voice was distracted. “I'll see you later. Text me if you need something.”

And why would I do that?
“Sure.” Chloe turned and left them.

Although Chloe loved Zahra dearly, she knew her friend was a sucker for a handsome girl with muscles. They'd gone out together countless times, only to end up taking separate cars at the end of the night because Zahra had found a girl she wanted.

Chloe wasn't worried. She was in the town she'd grown up in and at a fair she had gone to over a dozen times. She had money in her pocket and pepper spray ready for any emergency. Still, although she enjoyed the fair, it wasn't necessarily a place she ever wanted to be by herself. But if she had no choice, then she would make the most of it. She paid for a ticket to ride the Ferris wheel and climbed into one of the cars alone.

The lush curtain of evening was falling, the sunlight already turning a darker gold in the sky. She squinted behind her sunglasses as the wheel swept up with a lurch and a squeak, carrying her slowly into the sky. Chloe leaned back in the car and looked out over the fairgrounds. At the people, the clowns, the brightly colored tents, and the roller coaster, which rippled like the outline of a mountain range on the other side of the park. She wasn't a big fan of roller coasters and had gone on one only once, on a dare from Kai when she was a teenager. It had been terrifying, and she hadn't done it since.

Kai.
Even with all the distractions of the day, the older woman hadn't been far from her mind. While she'd watched her friend flirt with her stud, she'd thought about Kai. Wondered what she was doing. If she was dating anybody. What it would be like to share something as simple as an evening alone with her.

Useless thoughts.

She shook her head, holding on to the metal bar of the Ferris wheel car as it swung down, slowly descending back to earth. The attendant, a pimply boy with braces, unlocked her from the car and helped her step down.

“Thanks.”

She turned away, adjusting her purse under her arm.

“You want to go back up again?”

The sound of Kai's voice took her by surprise. “Hey! What are you doing here?” It was like she'd conjured the other woman from her daydreams.

Although, not even in her dreams had Kai looked that good. She wore scuffed cowboy boots, jeans that clung to her firm thighs, a faded Angela Davis T-shirt with a ripped collar, and a brown leather jacket. Her locks were pulled back from her face, showing off her bright eyes and firm lips. Chloe frowned at the hint of tension around the other woman's mouth.

“I'm here with a couple of friends.” Kai waved absently behind her. “But I was walking back from the turkey-leg stand when I noticed you up in the air all alone.” Kai glanced behind her, as if she expected someone to materialize behind Chloe. “Who are you with?”

“I came with Zahra, but she met up with someone else.” But as the words fell off her tongue, she thought they sounded a little pathetic. “Not that I mind,” she rushed to reassure Kai. The last thing she wanted was for the other woman to feel sorry for her.

“I'm sure you don't,” Kai said with the barest smile. “You've always been pretty independent. Noelle and I always loved that about you.”

I wish you could love me the way I love you.
Chloe stared into Kai's eyes as the crowd moved around them, unable to look away. Then she cleared her throat, forcing herself to get a grip. “So, are you going to go back to your friends now?”

“No. I think they can fend for themselves. Despite your independence, I don't like the idea of you being out here on your own.”

Chloe frowned. “I'm twenty-three, Kai. Not thirteen.”

“I know very well how old you are, Chloe.” She glanced up at the Ferris wheel. “So, how about that repeat ride?”

Chloe shrugged. She didn't have anything else to do. “Okay.”

The ride on the Ferris wheel was different with Kai at her side. Chloe was more aware of everything—the sun's heat on her face, a deeper chill in the fall air as the day retreated, Kai's particular scent. She shivered with awareness in her corner of the car, her stomach dipping and swaying with her nervousness. The other woman smelled differently today, like cinnamon and cloves. The spicy fragrance twined in her locks and in her clothes, inviting Chloe's nose closer. She deliberately stayed on her side of the car.

“What kind of incense do you burn?” she asked suddenly.

Kai glanced at her, an eyebrow raised in surprise. She knew that Chloe didn't like incense, that the smoke irritated her nose. “A few kinds,” she said. “Depending on my mood.”

“Oh. Whatever it is you burned today smells good.” She'd been to Kai's place countless times in her life. The downtown Decatur condo, with its view of the square and the quiet area Chloe had always loved. Kai's condo was as charming and lovely as Kai was and always smelled like some sort of incense or fragrant oil.

“I didn't burn any today.”

Chloe tightened her hand on the bar across her lap, realizing that it was the other woman's body oil that made her smell so delectable, a sweet scent she wanted to sniff the source of and burrow into. Had she rubbed the oil on her breasts? Were there traces of it between her thighs? Would the oil be sweet to the taste or bitter, like forbidden fruit?

Jesus!

She savagely bit her lip to curb her lustful thoughts.

“It's okay, you know,” Kai said.

“What do you mean?”

“Just relax with me. You don't have to worry about whatever is on your mind so heavily these days. Look at this beautiful day. Let it ease into your spirit and take you away from all your troubles.” Her soft voice drifted around them.

The Ferris wheel car creaked as they climbed higher into the air. A cool wind brushed against Chloe's face, stroking her lips.

“Are you taking the same advice?” Chloe had noticed a faint tightening around Kai's mouth, which was unusual for her. A sign that she was worried about something.

“I'm doing my best.” The older woman flashed a smile, although muted shadows lurked in the green and gold depths of her eyes. “But things will unfold as the universe determines.”

Chloe couldn't hold back her smile. Despite Kai's corporate job, she was a bit of a hippie. She had an altar at home, where she burned candles and honored her ancestors. She loved festivals like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and Burning Man. And she had never seen an incense cone she could resist. But she also loved to make money, and she enjoyed skiing and everything else that her six-figure job afforded her. Chloe loved those contradictions.

People saw Kai as this tough dyke in charge, with her long copper-colored locks, intense eyes, and a face that was almost too handsome to be real. But it made her feel special to know that under all that, Kai was a kind woman who'd rather lie in a hammock and listen to Tibetan chants than watch TV. That she had a laugh so big and wide, it invited others to join in. That she was the perfect partner to a woman who could appreciate her.

“Yes, they will,” Chloe said, responding to Kai's comment about the universe's will. “For better or for worse.”

“Baby, in the end it's usually for the better.”

Chloe shivered at the endearment. Was this the real reason she had come back to Atlanta? To hear Kai call her “baby” and to bask in the older woman's company? To get more of the real thing before she went off again on a search for a suitable imitation?

But I don't want another imitation. I want the real thing.
“Are you seeing anyone these days?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“It's a question.” Chloe shrugged. “We're two grown women having an adult conversation, right?”

Kai's gaze flickered down Chloe's body. “Yes, we are.” She tightened and released her hands around the car's safety bar. “No, I'm not seeing anybody right now. I'm actually in my second year of celibacy.”

“Celibacy?” Chloe didn't bother to hide her shock. A woman like Kai was walking sex. Inspiring a thousand wet dreams with her long-legged and loose-limbed stride, that sexy smile, and that finely muscled body, which made women want to drop to their knees in worship. “Why?”

Kai laughed. “Don't look so surprised. It hasn't been a hardship,” she said. “Sex is not that much of a big deal to me.” Then she clamped her lips shut. “I can't believe I'm talking about this with you.”

“If it was not me, then whom?”

The older woman chuckled again. “Are you quoting Trina, the Baddest Bitch?”

Chloe was surprised again. “What do you know about that?”

“I may be almost forty, but I'm not dead.”

“Ha! That's very true.” She snuck another look at Kai's heart-stopping body. “Maybe you and I can hang out, after all.”

The older woman flashed a wicked grin. “I'm not sure you're ready for that.”