The Space Between Us

The sun had moved, and she was alone. She was still beautiful. Something pensive in her face as she tapped away at her keyboard made me pause. She’d pushed her hair behind her ears, in which she wore simple and elegant pearls I knew had to be real despite the size. Not Jangle Bangles, either. She might sell that stuff, but she didn’t wear it. She had faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but they didn’t take anything away from her beauty.

She caught me staring. “Hey.”

“Oh. Hey. You’re still here. Can’t get enough of the caramel crunch, huh?” I gestured toward the row of self-serve carafes.

“I’m fully caffeinated.” She showed me her empty mug. “But I got my money’s worth today, I’ll tell you that.”

“Joy’s going to charge you rent,” I said with a glance over my shoulder to the counter. Joy was serving Eric, actually giving him a bit of a flirtatious smile. “Jeez, that guy can make even Joy tingly.”

Meredith closed her laptop. “It’s all in the smile. I think he makes everyone a little tingly.”

“Yeah,” I said fondly, watching Eric take his plate and mug to his favorite table and lay out his paper.

“You missed some good stories today.” Meredith leaned back in her seat. “The things people get up to, you’d never believe it.”

“I’m sure I would. Want me to take that for you?” I pointed to her empty mug and the plate beside it. “How was the apple crumb?”

“Tesla,” she murmured.

I stopped with my hand halfway to the table, caught like the Tin Man with his ax up. “Hmm?”

“We should do something.”

I forced myself to take the dishes, though they rattled when I lifted them. “Like what?”

“Something fun. Out of this place.” She twitched her fingers in Joy’s direction. “Without your boss hovering over us.”

“Sure. That sounds great.” I picked up her napkin, too, faintly imprinted with her lipstick. It crumpled in my fingers. I didn’t want to throw it away.

“What time do you get off tomorrow?”

“I work early, so three.”

“How about we grab some dinner or something? Maybe hit a club?” She paused. “It’s a Friday night. You don’t have a date or anything, do you?”

“Me? Oh. No.” I laughed.

“Good,” Meredith said, as though everything had been settled. “You do now.”

Chapter 8

“You look pretty.” Simone watched me carefully as I applied eyeliner and shadow. “Can I have some?”

“You want some pretty?” I turned from the mirror to look at the kid. With her blond hair and big blue eyes, there was no question who she belonged to: Elaine all the way. But she had something of her dad in the set of her mouth when she wanted something. I held up the square box of eye shadows in one hand, my angled brush in the other. “Green or blue?”

“I like the sparkly.”

I eyed the tube of liquid glitter eyeliner. “That might be a little too much for you, kiddo. It’s messy and …”

Her baby brother could really put on the waterworks, but Simone wasn’t much of a tantrum thrower. She could throw a mean pout, though, and now that rosebud mouth turned down with such skill there was no way I could deny her. I sighed. “Your mama might be mad at me.”

More likely it would be her daddy who gave me the lecture about tarting up his four-year-old, but Vic wasn’t any better at denying Simone when she wanted something. She sighed, tiny shoulders shrugging. The pout stayed put.

“Fine. C’mere.” I put down the shadows and pulled out the glitter liner. “But you have to promise, promise, promise me you’ll take a shower later and without complaining, you hear me? Because it’s really important you wash off all your makeup before you go to sleep, anyway.”

“So you don’t get zits,” Simone said, with the sort of happy grin a kid gets when she’s having her way.

“Yep. No zits.” At twenty-six I thought I should’ve grown out of zits, but I usually had a sweet monthly reminder that that wasn’t the case. “Sit up here.”

She hopped up on the edge of my sink, her little feet banging against the cabinet beneath until I gave her a stern look and she stopped. I told her to close her eyes, then outlined the upper lids with the glitter liner. It was just cheap stuff, marketed to tweens, using the face of some ditzy pop idol, but as with all things glittery and sparkly, I loved it. So did Simone. She hummed happily as I painted a design on her cheek using a different color of liquid liner—surely her dad couldn’t complain about that, right? It was like face-painting at a carnival.

“There. What do you think?”

She twisted to peer in the mirror, brow furrowed. She looked more like her dad when she did that. Critical. Then she grinned. “I like the flower!”

“Good. Now,” I said, lifting her down and patting her on the rear, “scram, kid, I gotta get ready.”

“You’re going on a date,” Simone crooned in a sing-song voice. “Right? That’s what Daddy told Mama.”

“Oh, did he?” It was my turn to frown then. Just a little. I glanced at myself in the mirror.

“Yep.” In the glass, Simone’s reflection shrugged, barely interested.

“Well … sure, I’m going on a date.”

“Are you gonna kiss him?”

I turned to look at her. “Where do you get this stuff?”

“TV,” Simone said blithely.

“You should read more,” I muttered, which was ridiculous, since the kid wasn’t even in preschool. “Now go on. Get out of here. I’m busy, kid.”

She did reluctantly, my date preparations apparently more interesting even than the television. From upstairs I heard the pounding of small feet and the cries of welcome—Vic was home. I’d probably have to face him, too, before I went out.

Sure enough, I found them all in the kitchen when I emerged from the basement. Elaine, her belly leading the way as she moved from the pot of mac-n-cheese on the stove to the table, gave me a once-over, but said nothing. Vic, on the other hand, snorted softly and shook his head. But he didn’t say anything, which told me a lot—there were times in the past when he’d have been unable to keep his mouth shut. Marriage had mellowed him.

“Have a good time,” Elaine said as she plopped a spoonful of yellow noodles on Max’s plate. “Be careful.”

I laughed. Just going on this “date” felt like the opposite of careful. “I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.”

“We’ll leave the light on for you,” Vic said.

“Oooh, you and Tom what’s-his-face from Motel 6.” I paused to squeeze Vic’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

“Cap said your car will be ready tomorrow.” Vic held up his plate for his own portion of macaroni and gave me a long, steady look. “I can give you a ride to the shop in the morning, if you want.”

It was his way of asking if I planned on coming home. Number one, it wasn’t really his business. Number two, I doubted I’d have a different offer. Three, I had my brother’s car anyway, so I just smiled and winked at him, a response guaranteed to drive Vic batty. Elaine laughed, though. For someone who loved him enough to marry him and have his babies, she surely did like to tease.

It was good for him, to be teased like that. And to be loved.

“Later, gators,” I said, and was out the door before any grubby hands could streak my clothes.

Meredith had called it a date, and I assumed she’d meant it whimsically. Still, I’d dressed accordingly. My heart beat faster, my palms a little sweaty, and I felt as much anticipation as if it were a date. Maybe more.

We’d agreed to meet at The Slaughtered Lamb because, according to Meredith, they had a shepherd’s pie to die for, and live music. Some Irish band I didn’t know. It was tucked neatly off a side street and not part of the Second Street strip of bars and clubs, so while I’d been there once or twice, it wasn’t a place I hung out in regularly.

Meredith did, apparently, based on the way the guy at the door greeted her and the waitress smiled when she showed us to our table. Meredith settled into her seat and pulled off her leather gloves with the sigh of a woman grateful to be out of the cold, while I thought seriously about leaving my mittens on to disguise the sudden trembling of my fingers.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Meredith said when the waitress had handed us our menus and left. “I love the scarf.”

It wasn’t anything fancy, just a strip of teal silk I’d tied to one side of my throat above the boat neckline of my peasant blouse. I touched it, though, when she admired it.

“Very fifties French sailor,” she said. “Very Audrey Hepburn.”

That had been the sort of look I was going for, with makeup to match. “Thanks.”

And after that, it was fine.

Most of it was her way. How easy she made it to be with her. She was different here than she was in the Mocha. A little less bright, a little softer, her voice more a murmur, so that I had to lean across the table to catch what she was saying, though I never had any trouble hearing her laughter.

I liked making her laugh.

“See,” she said, when I’d finished describing to her the situation with my brother and his roommate. “You have a great talent for telling stories. I don’t know why you’re so hesitant to join in at the Mocha.”

“I don’t want to share my secrets with strangers. Then they wouldn’t be secrets anymore.”

“Why’s it have to be a secret?” She smiled.

I drew my fork through the mashed potatoes left on my plate. She’d been right about the shepherd’s pie. “I have to face those people every day at work. I don’t want them knowing about my sex life.”

“We don’t only talk about sex. We talk about lots of things.” Meredith had eaten only half her food, and now she pushed her plate away with her fingertips.

I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and thought of how she’d left the imprint of her lips behind on the one I’d eventually tossed in the trash. “What is it about secrets and stories you like so much, anyway?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always liked knowing things about people. I guess you could say … I’m a collector.”

“Of what?”

“People,” Meredith said. “Interesting people.”

“How do you do that?” I asked, meaning to sound light, but realizing I was leaning closer again.

“I watch them for a while, see if they look interesting. You can’t always tell at first.”

I nodded. “Of course not.”

“So I talk to them. See if they don’t seem stuck-up. If they’re cool, I get them to tell me about themselves. People like talking about themselves, Tesla.” She paused. Smiled a bit reproachfully. “Most people do, anyway.”

I thought of the group she gathered around her at the Mocha. I was probably my least interesting at work, where Joy managed to suck the life out of any attempts at creativity. “Did you collect me?”

“Doing my best,” Meredith said, with another of those smiles that turned me inside out. She cocked her head. “I’m not a stranger, am I?”

I wasn’t quite sure what she was, but it wasn’t that. “No.”

She looked around the bar, which had become steadily more crowded as the evening went on, but still offered us a lot of privacy. “And you’re not at work.”

“Thank God.”

Meredith was the one who leaned, this time. “So, Tesla. Tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

She pretended to think, in such an exaggerated way I was sure she’d already thought of what she wanted to hear before she’d even asked. “What’s the best sex you’ve ever had?”

“You go first.” I made the same offer I’d made the last time I told her a story, but again, she put me off.

“The best sex I’ve ever had is always the last sex I had,” Meredith told me. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Lucky you,” I murmured.

She leaned closer. The table was just large enough for our two plates and glasses, and since I’d already leaned in a bit myself, she got pretty close. Her pupils had gone wide in the dim light, giving her a look of innocence completely at odds with the tilt of her mouth.

“So. Tell me,” she said, and again, I did.

Chapter 9

Her name was Melissa. She was two years older than me, and unlike the other partners I’d had, she came on to me first. We were camping, of all the crazy things to be doing in the late fall, but the leaves were turning colors, the rates at the state park campgrounds had gone down, and I was friends with a bunch of people who liked to go out into the woods and get liquored up and rowdy.

She had dark, dark hair that fell to her ass in long, straight lines. Her hair was heavy. Even now I can remember the weight of it against me, how when she slept next to me her hair would cover me, warm as a blanket. She had dark eyes, too, tilted at the corners, and she wore eyeliner to emphasize them.

We had mutual friends and had met a bunch of times before, but we weren’t quite friends ourselves. When we got to the set of matching cabins we’d rented for the weekend, people started pairing off—some of them couples, some friends who’d already decided they were going to bunk together. I didn’t mind sharing with a guy, but I didn’t want to share a room with Shawn, who had some personal hygiene problems. Kent had a nervous laugh and bad acne, which wouldn’t have been an issue except that rumor also had it that he had the hots for me—and I didn’t feel like fending off his advances and ruining the weekend for all of us by turning him down. I hadn’t met the other three girls, Cindy, Dee and Tina, before, so when Melissa asked me casually if I wanted to room with her, I said sure.

“We got the room with only one bed,” she said, as if she was surprised, and I like to think she was. “Hope you don’t mind sharing.”

I didn’t care. We dumped our things and headed out to the campfire, where there was plenty of beer and marshmallows. And if she sat a little closer to me on the downed log that served as a bench, well … there were a lot of people and not many places to sit.

I didn’t realize Melissa liked me romantically until we were taking a hike along one of the trails toward what was supposed to be a “pretty bitchin’ waterfall,” according to Scott, one of the guys who’d organized the trip. When she took my hand, linking her fingers casually through mine, I must’ve looked startled.

“Is this okay?” Her palm was warm on mine, her fingers strong.

“Sure.” And it was, actually. Before that moment I couldn’t have told you if, my crush on Marilyn Monroe aside, I liked girls. Not definitively, anyway.

I’d put the Murphy boys years into my past, Vic even further back than that. I’d had a few boyfriends in between, nobody serious. Nobody who’d made me feel as thrilled as Melissa did when she took my hand.

We slept together in the same bed that entire weekend, and though I lay awake listening to the sound of her breathing as she fell asleep, and waiting for her to touch me, Melissa never did. She didn’t move fast like that, she said seriously on our last morning there, when we’d both rolled over to stare into each other’s eyes.

“I’m not in this for giggles,” she said. “I want you to be sure this is what you want.”

By that point, I wanted it. I wanted her. It had grown from a kind of giggly curiosity into full-blown desire, hot and aching in my blood. But I didn’t know how to make the first move on a girl. I wasn’t afraid she’d turn me down, but it was like I was a virgin all over again. I had no idea where to put my hands, which way to tilt my head to go in for a kiss.

We saw each other for two more weeks before she kissed me. It seemed longer than forever. And then when she did, her mouth was so soft, so different from a guy’s, that I could only sit there with my eyes closed and let her do it.

“You can kiss me back.” She was amused.

So I did.

I closed my eyes again and opened my mouth, and kissed Melissa with everything I had. I lost myself in the taste of her. Strawberry lip gloss. In the perfume of her shampoo and the weight of her hair against the backs of my hands when I buried them in it. And most of all, her softness.

Her belly, smooth and curving, firm but not muscled. Her arms, the skin like satin. The column of her throat without the lump of an Adam’s apple to distract me. Her smooth cheeks, no beard stubble. Everything about her was smooth and soft and sweet, and I soaked it all in as we made out for hours. She took her time with me, and I didn’t quite know how to handle it.

“Relax,” Melissa breathed against my mouth. “We have all night.”

We used all of it, too. I’d been happy to demand multiple orgasms from the guys I’d slept with in the past, but since they only ever got that singleton climax, when they were done, so was the fucking. It wasn’t like that with Melissa. With her mouth and her hands she built me up until I was close to the edge of coming, then eased me off.

Melissa was the first person to make me come just with her tongue. I went up, up and over into bliss. Then again, until I broke with it. I wasn’t in the habit of crying during sex, but I wept a little at how good it felt.

That amused her, too. So did my clumsy attempt at going down on her—I was willing enough, and I had a good idea of what would work on women, since I could imagine what worked on me. But I was too hard, too fast.

“Too focused,” she told me, holding my face in her hands as I looked up at her from between her legs. “Think butterfly, not bee.”

Eventually, I figured out how to make her clit pulse under my tongue, her pussy to clench my fingers. I learned to make her come, then come again with barely a pause, come so hard the bed shook and she cried out.

“And that,” I said to Meredith, “was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

Chapter 10

I’d embellished the story—not lying, but deliberately putting in details I might otherwise have left out because, I’ll admit it, I wanted to see what she’d do. I’d felt a little pressured by Meredith in her quest for stories. And I’d felt a little put out by her bragging that she’d kissed a girl.

But mostly, I wanted her to know that I was a woman who knew how to make another woman come. I went all the way.

“What happened?” she asked.

I laughed, rueful but not without humor. “Oh. Well. Four months into it, she dumped me.”

“For another woman?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Melissa didn’t go for guys. Not ever.”

Meredith looked sympathetic. “Why’d she dump you? What a bitch.”

I’d thought as much at the time.

Melissa had been blunt, I could give her that. “Seriously, Tesla, do you think you can imagine spending the rest of your life with me? Having kids, all that? Because when I’m in it, I want it to be for the long haul. With someone like me.”

Since she said this just after I’d finished giving her three orgasms in a row, using tricks she’d taught me, I’d been appropriately affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means,” was all Melissa had said, and that was that. The end of it. She took up with someone more like her, whatever that meant.

“The last I heard they were still together. Two kids,” I added. “I guess she found what she was looking for.”

“So … what did she mean?” Meredith asked. “Someone like her? Someone more … gay?”

I shrugged and lifted my glass to drink. It left a wet circle on the napkin, and when I put the glass down, I fitted it exactly to the outline, then looked up at Meredith. “I guess so.”

“Eating pussy didn’t make you gay enough?” she mused, sounding as if she didn’t really expect an answer.

“I’m not gay. I’m not straight.” I pointed this out because it was important. “And I’m not wild, either.”

“You’ve done so much,” Meredith said, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “And I’ve done … nothing.”

I laughed. “You kissed a girl. And you liked it.”

Her eyes gleamed. Did I imagine she looked at my mouth as she licked her lips? Maybe not.

“That was nothing,” she said.

“You wanted a story,” I told her with another shrug. “It’s not a secret. But it was the truth.”

“That story was worth the price of dinner.”

I hadn’t known my words could have such value.

Meredith reached across the table to cover my hand with hers, fingers squeezing. “Tesla, baby, don’t worry about it. Besides, the person who asks for the date is supposed to pay, right?”

She gave me a twinkly-eyed grin to show she wasn’t serious. Not about the date part, anyway.

She didn’t have to try too hard to convince me to go dancing. I worked the evening shift the next day, which usually sucked on Saturdays but for which I’d be thankful when I didn’t have to work Sunday morning. By the time we got to the Pharmacy, the line was already spilling out onto the sidewalk. With dollar drinks and a band downstairs, and two floors of dance music above, it was a popular spot. We showed our IDs and pushed our way inside.

Meredith wasn’t interested in the lower level. She glanced over at the bar, where a college-age guy who already looked wasted had been settled into a barber chair, a scantily clad server hovering over him, with a bottle ready to pour into his mouth, and a belt to spank him with—if he was sober enough, after, to stand up and bend over for it.

Meredith rolled her eyes and pointed to the stairs. Conversation was worthless here. I made to follow her through the crowd, but a pair of giggly bachelorette party girls in tiaras got between us. I knew where Meredith was headed; it was no big deal. But she looked back to see if I was there, and frowned at the intrusion. She reached around them, pushing them subtly to the side, and grabbed my hand. Our fingers linked, twisting as she turned toward the stairs again.

This time, I had no trouble keeping up with her.

It didn’t mean anything, that hand-holding. Nor did the way she let the contact linger when we got upstairs, where the dance floor was less crowded, when she could have easily let me go. I knew better than to expect any interest from her. Not like that, anyway, whether she’d once kissed a girl or not.

“Want a drink?” She said this directly into my ear, her breath hot, the whisper of her lips against my skin enough to make me shiver.

She smelled expensive and delicious. I shook my head. She pulled away enough to look into my eyes, her head tilted, the red and blue and green and gold lights of the dance floor dancing across her face like sunshine through stained glass. She hadn’t let go of my hand. Her fingers squeezed. She leaned in closer as someone passed behind her.

“Sure? A beer?”

“No, thanks.” I gently took my hand from hers and feigned an interest in the crowd. “You go ahead.”

Shit. I should’ve offered to buy her drink, since she’d paid for my dinner. But Meredith was already scouting the bar, and nodded toward an older guy leaning against it, a beer in his hand. He was scouting, too.

“He’ll buy it for you,” she told me. “I can get him to.”

I had to laugh at that. I had no doubts Meredith could get that stranger to buy us both whatever she wanted him to. “I’m good.”

She was gone in the next second. I watched her make magic with the guy at the bar. She was so good at it. She tipped back her head, laughing, shaking her long hair. She even held up her wedding rings and flashed them, giving the guy a playful “no-no” wag of her finger, though the look she shot me said she had him right where she wanted him. She’d be making him think the drinks were his idea.

Sure enough, she came back across the room with a mojito in one hand and a beer for me in the other. He watched her the whole way, not quite with the lolling tongue of a cartoon dog … but close. Meredith didn’t glance back, not once. She pressed the cold bottle into my palm, and her eyes gleamed when she grinned at me.

“Drink up,” she said. “And then let’s dance.”

Tonight it seemed as though all the men were interested in observing the cultural phenomenon of the bachelorette party. True, those women were making quite a scene. At least three different groups, with matching T-shirts or tiaras or penis necklaces, had sort of taken over the place. There wasn’t much room for men on the dance floor with all the cavorting and circle dancing going on.