Chapter 2
2148 Words
Chapter Two
It was just the tiniest of moans, quiet and beneath my breath, but I was certain she’d heard it.
She was too close not to have.
Internally, I was panicking. Externally, I was probably all tensed up, completely giving the game away.
I can remember how it had happened with so much detail… The sun was setting, the wind was picking up, and we were both getting cold.
So Jettie curled up and lay her head on my lap – something that made me feel unreasonably anxious considering we were best friends – and together we shared the largest towel we had, draped it over and around us like a blanket. The towel had dried off long ago in the baking Floridian sun.
You know when you’ve got a really good friend when you can sit in silence with them, and it’s not awkward.
Well, that would typically be the case between Jettie and I. There were countless times we had just enjoyed each other’s company, whiling away the hours after school, chit chat spontaneously cropping up as though riding on the arm of the sporadic breezes that broke the otherwise sticky air.
But this time, I was feeling very awkward, especially with her head right there on my lap… so close to… well, you know where.
My emotions were all a crisscrossed mess, contradiction and conflict. Throughout the day, I’d become increasingly aware of my feelings for Jettie, had started to realize that what I’d assumed was an affection of friendship was actually something much, much deeper. I was coming into my own as a young woman, anyway, and what had once been innocent was now no longer so.
With her lying with her head in my lap, one of her hands was resting – unknowingly, carelessly, unimportantly – on the bare skin on the inside of my thigh.
Jettie was a fidgeter. If she didn’t have something to play with, she’d pick at the skin on the side of her thumb.
We all have our habits. At least she didn’t chew her nails down to the pink.
Anyway, she was rubbing her thumb against my thigh over and over again, and damn if it wasn’t sending sparks of electricity thrilling through me… converging right in my center.
I could feel myself growing aroused, my breaths shortening, my heart quickening.
Almost unconsciously I stroked her hair a couple of times, and each time I caught myself doing it, I almost died of shock.
I mean, it wasn’t the first time I’d stroked her hair… but it was the first time I felt a sharp sense of shame and embarrassment in doing so.
Like I was about to give away the game.
The game, until that moment, I hadn’t even known I was playing in.
But she kept rubbing her thumb on my thigh, absent-mindedly, while we watched the sunset.
The tension inside me was as taught as an overtuned guitar string. I felt like I could snap at any moment.
And then, for some reason, she moved her whole hand up my leg.
And I couldn’t believe it… and I almost died of shame and embarrassment because of it… but I let out a small moan.
At that moment, the wind picked up. If Jettie heard it, she didn’t tell me.
But I knew I’d made the sound.
I realized Jettie had pushed her hand up my thigh to support her weight as she sat up.
The sun dipped below the horizon.
It was time to go home.
I blinked myself back into the present, and set the photograph of Jettie and I back onto the drawer. I’d deal with the glass later.
Right now, I definitely needed a shower.
Maybe a cold one.
“Stop it,” I muttered to myself as I walked up the steps to the bathroom. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
Against my will, tears formed in my eyes. It was getting realer and realer… the thought that I might never see her again after this summer.
The thought that my love would go unrequited.
I knew that I’d love again. We all do. We’re human.
But my first love?
Maybe I was being young… maybe I was being naïve, but f**k it, I wanted to be naïve.
First loves are special, and for some people, it works out, and, oh, how I envy those people.
I know for most it doesn’t… but for some… why couldn’t I be one of those select few?
I shook my head, as though trying to fling the thoughts of both hope and hopelessness off of me, like they were droplets of water.
Logically, I knew how to look at this situation I was in. We were going to part ways, and that would be better.
I’d forget about her with time, or perhaps I should say get over her.
It would be healthier to sever.
What was I going to do, live the rest of my life in love with her while she lived the rest of her life falling in love with some guy, having kids, a family?
Come on… how stupid would that be.
I may be young, but I’m not an i***t. I wouldn’t want to waste my life doing that.
Life isn’t like some kind of kid’s fairy tale movie.
We all don’t get the ones we pine for in some great romantic fashion.
And it’s not like those movies ever had lesbians in them, anyway.
But I was conflicted. I wanted to remember Jettie, wanted to cherish her and the time we’d spent as best friends together.
But I also wanted to excise her, slice out that part of my life that I shared with her so that I wouldn’t have to feel any kind of pain.
That thought right there made me angry. I grew defensive for her reflexively.
I took a few breaths, calmed my mind, and decided that tonight I was going to get as drunk as possible on all of Mom’s beer, calories be damned.
They say you shouldn’t drown your sorrows, that it’s not good for you and that it doesn’t fix anything.
Why is it, then, that it feels like such a f*****g good idea?
So, I’m not sure what the big deal is about shower beers.
Warm water plus cold-but-warming-up beer does not equal a good time, not in my books. Seems like just another stupid boyish rite of passage.
Now… a glass of wine in a warm bath… yes, I could definitely dig that. Or even a cocktail.
But beer?
I once saw a bunch of boys try to make a dog drink beer at a house party I was walking past that was spilling out onto the street.
The dog wasn’t interested at all.
It made me think that there probably isn’t a single human on earth who liked the taste of beer the first time they tried it. We all just force ourselves to get used to it, and then pretend to like it.
That was before it became hipster-ized, anyway. Now it’s all craft beers with descriptions on the label that read like parodies.
I downed the beer in one go and then focused on the hot water pouring over my skin.
I suppose if I had to describe myself physically, it would be as ‘cute’. I’m short – only five-foot-three – with shoulder-length blonde hair that I tend to pull into a ponytail, a button nose, and large green eyes. My chin comes to a sharp point, which at the wrong angles can make me look like some kind of plotting evil mistress from a children’s cartoon.
Jettie had always told me, however, that I looked innocent, and that she was glad she was the only one who got to see my ‘wild side’. She said it was down to the eyes, big and watery, like I was always on the verge of tears, a deer in perpetual headlights.
I don’t know how ‘wild’ I’d call myself, but I do feel like I have a rebellious streak. After all, I did persuade Jettie to get a tattoo with me when we were both sixteen – that was fun, and more painful than I thought it’d be.
I remember telling her to relax, that it can’t be as painful as everyone seems to hype it up as being.
Turns out, it does kinda hurt. A lot.
When Jettie was getting her tattoo – a birdhouse on her shoulder – I held her hand the entire time, and she squeezed it tight.
I watched as she squeezed a lone tear out of her eye, and then we made eye contact and laughed.
I’m sure that the tattoo artist knew we were both under eighteen, but, you know, he wasn’t exactly the reputable type.
And, looking back, it was probably stupid of us to go to him.
Jettie watched with fascination as I got my tattoo done – a Harley Davidson chopper – on my shoulder.
My Dad loved to ride, and he died in an accident when I was just a young kid. I can’t even remember his face. What I remember is his face from photographs, but not his face in motion, in real life.
Once Jettie saw a picture of my Dad and asked me about him. I was a little embarrassed because I couldn’t actually tell her all that much. Mom doesn’t like to talk about him.
Jettie had come over to the house many times to sleep over. Her parents were always fighting, and she spent more nights sleeping over at my house over the Christmas holiday than she did at her own.
It was always the worst during the holidays, she told me.
Remembering the times she’d slept over here – as recently as two weeks ago – started me thinking about how she’d be standing where I was right now, sometimes, beneath the cascading water, her naked, perfect body glistening.
Jettie had a great body. She was tall – five-eight – and had a beautifully flat stomach and amazing breasts.
As far as genetic lotteries are concerned, she definitely lucked out.
I can’t even begin to estimate how many times I’d stood here, in the shower, right after she’d showered.
The thought of her, naked, beneath the water… it turned me on.
I’m not embarrassed to say – well, okay, I’m a little embarrassed to say – that I’d stood here and m*********d many a time when she slept over.
I felt conflicted about it, too. On the one hand, it was creepy, wasn’t it? But on the other… well, I was attracted to her, and confused by how I felt.
I’m not sure if I was even really aware it was her that was turning me on, thoughts of her, having feelings for her.
It’s hard to tell, sometimes.
I blinked myself into the present, and realized that I’d been absently rubbing myself while I thought about her.
Just like that… it happens just like that.
My p***y ached for touch, and I felt that tight ball of energy and anticipation deep inside me, but… I didn’t want to do this.
I couldn’t keep thinking about her, especially since I was about to lose her.
I had to cut the emotional ties now, and that meant no more envisioning her while I touched myself to completion.
I became angry with myself, then. Just ten minutes ago I’d told myself the very same thing, and yet here I am, lost in reverie again, imagining her, wanting to masturbate to the thought of her.
God, I felt pathetic.
I washed my and conditioned my hair, and wrapped up my shower far quicker than I had anticipated.
What the hell, saves water, right?
With my robe around me, and my hair tied up in a towel, I went back to the kitchen and grabbed myself another beer, quite prepared to lock myself in my room for the rest of eternity.
As I twisted the top off, the phone rang.
“f**k it,” I said to myself. It was probably just Mom calling to check in. I’d let the machine get it.
The phone rang once, twice, three times, and then the machine picked up. I heard Mom’s voice, and I downed my beer in three huge gulps.
I retrieved another beer, heard the tone of the machine.
Just when I was about to take another huge sip, my head already swimming, I heard the last voice I expected to hear.
Maybe even the last voice I wanted to hear in that moment.
“Kathy,” the voice said. “I’m… we need to talk.”
My heart stopped.
My world drained away.
It was Jettie.
“Kathy, are you there? I’m coming over.”
Shit.
- Writer
