Best Lesbian Romance 2009 Read online

  I kept my eyes on my chai, the way the spices met and swirled at the top.

  “So, I have a surprise for you,” Sun said. “I brought it back from Singapore.”

  Her at the bazaar, choosing something just for me. It was better than the blue tapestry. I pressed my palms tighter to the mug. Stay still.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” I said.

  Sun laughed, husky and rich.

  “Maybe you don’t want it then?”

  But she didn’t wait for me to answer. Just stood and lifted something from a side table—a silver tray holding a squeeze bottle, some cotton balls, a clear glass bowl of liquid. Sun set the tray on the table between us.

  I picked up the squeeze bottle. The dark liquid inside smelled like cloves and ginger.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Sun’s smile reminded me of Mona Lisa. Half smile, just her lips, sly.

  “Henna,” she said.

  “Like body paint?”

  “It’s more like a stain. More permanent.”

  Sun flipped her hand over—on her palm, right in the center, a cluster of small flowers in reddish-brown. Tiny, intricate. I wanted to feel them. I squeezed the bottle so hard that a bit of henna came out the top. Stay still.

  Sun leaned forward and put her fingers over my fingers around the bottle. “I want to henna you.”

  I was distracted by her warm fingers. Maybe I could feel her fingerprints pressing into the back of my hands. Maybe I could feel the henna design scratching lightly. I couldn’t be sure.

  “What? I mean, you do?”

  Sun took the henna bottle from me. She turned the bottle over and over in her palm, watching it spin.

  “Yes,” she said, “but only if you don’t mind. I saw this woman in Singapore, and she had her whole body done for a wedding. Hands, face…her feet.”

  I dipped one fingertip into the clear bowl on the tray. The liquid smelled like lemonade.

  “Sugar lemon water,” Sun said. “It helps the henna set.”

  I put the fingers wet against my chai mug, let the heat seep in. I didn’t dare move—I didn’t want to distract her from her story. It was selfish, but I wanted to hear her tell how she’d thought about me in Singapore.

  Sun turned the bottle over, pressed in the sides, and some henna came out of the metal tip onto a napkin. It was even darker against the white napkin, the color of clay mud.

  I stayed quiet, waiting.

  “Her feet…” Sun said. “They were so beautiful, and they… they made me think of you. When we used to play beach volleyball. Remember?”

  Sun looked up then, her dark eyes on my face.

  “I remember,” I said.

  “I always watched you when we played, your feet,” she said. “You had such beautiful feet.”

  Something started in my belly, worked its way into a giggle.

  “My feet?”

  Sun poked the metal tip of the bottle against the napkin. Made three small dots in a row.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said.

  I had to take her hand then, put my fingers over her fingers on the bottle. Hold her still.

  “I’m not laughing,” I said. “Well, okay, maybe a little. But my feet, Sun? I’ve been…”

  I stopped. How to tell her I’d been lusting after her for all these years, her eyes, those small hands, her laugh, when she’d been…she’d been watching my feet?

  Sun pulled her hands out from under mine, leaving only cold air. She put the bottle back on the silver tray.

  “You’re right,” she said as she lifted the tray from the table. “I’m sorry, that was stupid. Let’s just have our chai. You can tell me about the teaching, how that’s going.”

  “Sun, wait.” I reached for her hand, for her arm, but only caught the corner of the tray. Liquid splashed onto the silver, sending up the sweet scent of lemon and sugar between us.

  Keeping my hand on that tray, just on the corner, feeling the carved designs, feeling Sun pulling away from me, I thought it was the hardest thing. And then I realized that I had to say something. That was so much harder.

  “Sun,” I said. “Yes, I’d love to have you paint my feet.”

  “You’ll be cold,” Sun had said. She was right. Now I was on her living room floor, leaning against the front of her couch, my jeans rolled up to the knees and a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. A thick towel was folded beneath my feet.

  Sun was on the floor, cross-legged in front of me. She lifted my foot, held it with her palms under my heel. Her touch sent shivers up my leg.

  “Okay?” she asked.

  I nodded, but didn’t trust myself to speak. Her hands on my feet, her gaze there too, I had never imagined. I’d always thought my feet were ugly—tiny and short, the way they curved out near my big toe. But Sun’s hands told another story, her fingers around my toes, sliding up over the ball of my foot.

  “You have to stop shivering so I can start,” she said.

  I tried. Held my teeth together tight, but it just made the rest of my body shake harder.

  Sun snugged my foot against the inside of her thigh, right up against the thin fabric of her skirt, and held it until it didn’t shake anymore. My foot was still, but the inside of my body was all shakes. Sun picked up her squeeze bottle, moved it in circles over the top of my foot without touching the tip to my skin.

  “I’m just working out the design,” she said. “Some people use books, but I liked the way the women did it, just stared at the skin until they found the pattern there.”

  I must have looked skeptical because she said, “Close your eyes, relax. Have faith.”

  I did as she said. At least the close-my-eyes part. I wasn’t sure the ability to relax was an option for me. But I willed myself to breathe slow, in and out.

  Soon the cool point of the bottle touched the side of my foot, near the instep. The metal tip traced my skin in a pattern I couldn’t distinguish. After a few twists and turns of the tip, the still warm henna pulsed into my skin. It was like a massage but with lines of henna instead of fingers. Warm and tingling with spices, the henna patterns made my foot feel alive.

  I realized I didn’t pay attention to my feet, not ever. They got me from one place to another, they sometimes wore cute shoes. That was about it. But with Sun’s attention—the way she tilted my foot to get better access or the way she pressed her thumb to my instep to hold me still—I wondered. What was it about feet that made her want to do this? Was it just a friendship thing? Or was it something more? I wanted to ask, but I was afraid. And so I just stayed still with my eyes closed and my feet in Sun’s hands.

  When she finished with the henna, Sun dipped cotton balls in the lemon-sugar water and patted it all over my feet. The gentle way she applied the cool, sticky liquid made me feel once again like I was being pampered. When she stopped, the skin on my feet felt like it was hardening, like if I moved, it might crack and slough off like an old shell that I’d outgrown.

  “All done,” Sun said.

  I opened my eyes. I’d been in that half-dozing state that comes with massages and daydreams. My feet were covered with intricate brownish patterns. Flowers and twirls and other things that I didn’t have names for.

  “They’re beautiful,” I said. I thought I meant her designs, but maybe I meant my feet too. The patterns and the sticky sheen of the lemon juice seemed to bring out the curves of my feet and toes. Seemed to make them sensual. Not mine, but someone else’s.

  “I told you,” Sun said. Her throaty laugh. “So, you can’t really move for a while. You want a book or something?”

  She had her hand still on my leg, between my ankle and the bottom of my rolled jeans.

  “We could just…talk,” I said. It sounded like something out of a bad movie. I wanted to take the words back as soon as they were words. My face burned hot, even as my feet were freezing.

  Sun didn’t seem to notice. She scooted next to me on the couch, her shoulder pressed into mine. Her feet sneaked
under the blanket that covered my legs. She leaned her head on my shoulder so that her long hair fell against my neck.

  That’s the thing they never tell you about being a girl who likes girls. You get to have another girl pressed up against you, have a friend who hugs you to her, or who dreams about painting your feet in a faraway market—and it might mean everything. Or it might mean nothing. Just friends.

  “Sun,” I said. My eyes focused on my new feet. Sometimes you changed one thing and the whole world looked different.

  “Hmm?” she said.

  “Have you ever, you know, liked a girl?” I wanted to stop talking as soon as I started, but—words, you can never take them back. Before, I’d had to force the words out, how I’d been okay with her painting my feet. Now I couldn’t shut up.

  Sun was smarter than I was. I’d known that for a long time. She didn’t say anything. She turned her head toward me until her breath was warm against my neck. Her lips pressed warm against my skin. First kiss. It wasn’t even on the lips, just against the pulse that beat fast in my neck. Yet my skin tingled just like it had beneath the henna.

  She shifted her weight until she faced me, and then brought one leg over mine to straddle me. Her skirt covered my legs and hers.

  How often had I dreamed of this moment and not this moment over the years? In my dreams, I was always the perfect lover, could tell by Sun’s body how to touch her. But this wasn’t a dream, this was Sun, rising above me. Real as day.

  I didn’t know what to do. My hands were so still at my sides that it was like they were the thing painted, the part of me that should be immobile. Sun settled herself against me, her body warm where it met mine. She picked up my hands and put them beneath her skirt. With the flat of her palms, she pressed my hands to her thighs. Her skin was smooth and muscled. When she was convinced my hands would stay there, she let go of them and leaned over and kissed me. This time on the lips. This time pushing her tongue between my lips into the corners of my mouth.

  My mouth filled with the tang and spice of her tongue. Ginger and cloves. Her fingers on the edges of my lips as she kissed me added the flavor of sweet lemon. Beneath it all, there was the taste of Sun. It was a flavor I’d smelled for years—alderwood soap and lilac lotion.

  She pushed her thigh hard against my hand. I took it as the hint that it was, and let my fingers explore the skin there. I brought one hand into her vee, expecting panties. Her lips, clean-shaven and silky, met my fingers.

  We both moaned as I touched her there, my finger sinking into the shallow groove between her lips. She was wet already, and when I ran my finger up and down, she grew wetter still, covering the end of my finger.

  As we kissed, Sun’s fingers traveled down from my lips and across my shoulders to find their way to my nipples. She feathered them with her thumbs, touching me so lightly I thought I might be imagining the movement of her fingers. But my nipples knew better, hardening and pressing toward her soft touch.

  I entered Sun with two fingers, and she broke the kiss and sat up straight, sighing. I wanted to see her—all these years of dreaming of what she looked like, and I didn’t know if I’d get another chance. I untied her skirt and pushed the fabric back until I could see her lower half. In her belly button, a small red stone. Her hips spread over my legs. The bare, shiny cleft of her pussy, the same dark brown as the rest of her.

  I dipped two fingers inside her to watch them go in. Just the tips. With her hands on my shoulders, Sun lowered herself slowly over my fingers. I could feel her skin sliding over them, stretching around them. It seemed she was going to make it last forever, but then she was down on my hands, my fingers all the way inside her. She stayed that way for a second, then rose and lowered herself again.

  “Don’t move…your feet,” she said, as though I was the one moving and not her. I wiggled my fingers inside her, just to show that I had the power to move something. I loved that the movement made it hard for her to get the rest of her words out. “You’ll ruin…all…all my hard work.”

  “Okay,” I said. Which sounded stupid. I would have done anything she’d asked. Not moving? That was a cinch.

  She pressed her fingers to my lips, and I opened my mouth. My tongue on her fingers was lemon pucker and soft skin. Pulling her fingers from my mouth, Sun leaned back a little, opening her center to me. I could see her pussy lips and the hardening pink nub of her clit. She put her wet fingers there, back and forth. I worked my fingers harder inside her so she didn’t have to move so much, and she let herself go slack a little.

  “Don’t stop,” she said. “Don’t…”

  Her eyes were closed and I watched her. Watched the way her thighs tightened as she rocked back and forth. The way she lowered herself over my fingers, sucking them inside her. The way her clit glistened and peeked beneath her fingers. And when she came, the way everything quivered and flowed, skin and arousal and breath.

  After a few minutes, Sun rolled to the side of me. Her breath still moved in and out of her in fast little gulps. She pulled her wrap-around skirt around her lower half like a blanket and rested her head on my belly. My T-shirt had ridden up, and her cheek on my belly was warm and damp, like she had a fever.

  My insides felt all twisted up, trying to take everything in: my arousal, my disbelief that this had actually happened, my fear of the future. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, still damp from Sun.

  “Sun, why now, after all this time?” She was quiet for so long that I wished I hadn’t asked. Why couldn’t I just shush and let things happen? What if this was a one-time thing? Now all I would remember about the ending of it was how I’d pushed.

  Sun’s head stirred on my belly, but she didn’t look up.

  “I just…” When she exhaled, her breath tickled my skin. “I thought about you a lot in Singapore, and I realized I was just afraid. So I made up this plan: I’d offer to do your feet, and if you laughed or freaked, then I’d be able to say it was just an idea. And we could just stay friends.”

  Another small silence. This time I was able to keep my mouth closed. I stayed still and waited while she kissed the skin above my belly button.

  “But you didn’t laugh. Well, okay you laughed a little, but you were willing. You didn’t make me feel stupid.”

  She scooted up and put her head back on my shoulder. We both looked down at my feet, white beneath the hardening henna. They say that the thing you want is right in front of you, if only you know where to look. But sometimes it takes the thing you want to show you where to look, so that you’re both looking at the same thing.

  I wiggled my toes, careful not to crack the drying henna. “How long will they last?” I asked.

  “Depends on how well you take care of them.”

  “And if I didn’t? How soon would you have to do them again? Like, what if I took my jeans off right now, messed them all up?”

  I couldn’t see Sun’s smile, but I could feel her cheek as it pushed out against my shoulder. She didn’t answer my question. She just sat up and reached for the button of my jeans with both hands.

  IN FLIGHT

  Andrea Dale

  I met Pam at the hawk rehabilitation center. She was a member of the staff; I was volunteering in the gift shop to help pay off a rash of parking tickets that weren’t really mine but had been racked up by my now very ex-girlfriend, Jennifer, on my car.

  I was still dealing with a lot of anger toward Jennifer. It wasn’t always conscious but it was constant; at any moment, I could stop and feel the acidic burn in my chest. She’d fucked me over good, in just about every way imaginable. She’d stiffed me on the rent, made off with the widescreen TV and DVD player we’d bought together, and left me without enough money to pay the damn parking tickets. She’d buggered off before I’d found out about the tickets, and I’d had no way to prove they weren’t mine.

  The only time I wasn’t seething was when I was with the birds.

  I’d been learning about each one—the golden eagle, the Harris ha
wk, the peregrine falcon, the kestrel. There were the various owls, too, snowy and barn and screech. I’d been given the preliminary tour, which involved tidbits of information like “don’t open the cages ever” and “don’t stick your fingers near the birds” and “for the love of all that’s holy, don’t feed them.” In my spare time, I’d been snatching a read of a few pages of books in the gift shop. I knew how delicate the birds’ digestive balance was in captivity; just a few ounces in either direction would mess them up.

  All the birds were here permanently; they’d never be released into the wild. They’d been injured beyond repair, or had been bred in captivity and never known the free skies.

  And yet they were all so serene, so peaceful. So in control, in a way I couldn’t imagine ever feeling again. Even caged they were alert and proud, their eyes glittering with a strange intelligence. They saw everything, even if they didn’t react with more than a flick of their heads or a rustle of their wings.

  Pam’s dark eyes also seemed to never miss a thing, and she moved with a similar slow grace. But she had a quick, friendly smile and a soft laugh. She was lean and rugged, and smelled of the sunscreen she faithfully coated herself with several times a day. She kept her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and I couldn’t quite tell if the streaks of gold were from the sun or an expensive salon. I suspected the former. Her hands were long-fingered, her nails short because she worked with birds and ropes and thick leather gloves.

  I suppose I went out there after my shift that Saturday as much to see her as to stroll among the cages and admire the birds.

  When she asked me to help out because one of the handlers had come down with the flu and she was short-staffed, I suppose I agreed for the same reasons.

  Despite Jennifer’s betrayal, I was also glad for the excuse to spend some quality time with Pam. The thought of a relationship made my stomach hurt, but I could still enjoy Pam’s sleek legs encased in worn, fitted jeans or khaki shorts, her firm breasts high and round beneath her green tank top and long-sleeved, unbuttoned cotton shirt.