Ella
Fall break was just Friday and Monday off from school, like a practice session for Thanksgiving. We took the bus down Friday afternoon and planned to stay until Monday afternoon. Mom picked us up because she had the day off too and drove us to the house. I had a duffel, a suitcase and my backpack. I wanted to do some of my delicate laundry at home where the washer actually had a gentle cycle. Tucker just had a big green army-style backpack.
We carried the bags into the foyer and Tucker stared up the spiral staircase that commands the middle of our house. She looked worried.
“Dad’s an architect, remember,” I whispered to her. “This is basically his third kid.”
“Oh yeah,” she said quietly.
“Mom, we’re going to put all our stuff in my room for now,” I called to her where she’d stopped to sort the mail onto the little table in the foyer.
I motioned to Tucker, who picked up my second suitcase and followed me up the grand staircase. My room was the second door at the top, just after the door to the master suite that ran along one whole side of the house. I went in and dropped my bags by the open door to the attached bathroom.
“It’s not pink,” Tucker said when she saw my bedroom.
“Really? You’ve seen my room at school and you thought I’d sleep in pink at home?”
A little grin cracked the startled mask of her face. “I was hoping you did so I could tease you about it.”
“Foiled!”
My bedroom was a smoky blue-gray-green color with a light tan-gold trim. I didn’t tell Tucker that I went through a pink phase when I was eleven, and then a bright gemstone green phase that Dad said was terrible to paint over.
“It’s very…you,” Tucker said. She put both bags down next to my bed.
I glanced around the room and wondered what her bedroom at home looked like. Mine was on the spare side now that I didn’t live here all the time: there was a double bed with a small table on one side and a bookcase against the wall on the other side, then the closet across from the foot of the bed and a little desk by the big window. Most of the room was neat, except for the bookcase. I’d run out of room for books and notebooks and notes, so they were all piled onto the shelves on top of each other.
“Let me show you something really cool,” I said and stepped back out of the room.
I went around the curving hallway, past the utility room to where the hall dead-ended in a shallow bookcase. The catch for the door was the fourth shelf and when I touched it, the bookcase swung out. Inside was a room just a little smaller than my bedroom with two walls lined with books and a small desk under the far window.
Tucker followed me into the room and walked slowly along one wall, her fingers tracing the books.
“I want one of these,” she said in a thick voice.
“Secret room?” I asked.
“Library.”
“If you don’t mind an old air mattress, you can sleep in here. There’s also Amy’s room, but it’s full of Mom’s files right now.”
She nodded and went back to looking at the titles of the books.
“I’m going to check in with Mom,” I told her. “I’ll be back in a few.”
Mom was in the kitchen making a list on a piece of paper. She looked up when I came around the corner and smiled.
“Is your friend settling in?” she asked.
I turned one of the dining room chairs perpendicular to the table and sat. “She’s in the library. Can she sleep up there? She really likes the books.”
“Of course. I’m headed to the store, do you want to come?”
I shook my head.
“What do you eat for breakfast these days?”
I detailed my favorite options along with what we’d like to drink and my top picks in ice cream flavors. Then I went back upstairs. When I peeked into the library, Tucker was sitting at the desk with a book open in front of her. I tiptoed back out of the doorway and went downstairs to put in my first load of laundry.
* * *
Friday night we watched movies. My parents went to bed while we were still in the middle of one. When that one finished, Tucker said, “I’m tired but I’m not sleepy. I kind of want to watch the next one.”
“Let’s watch it upstairs,” I suggested.
The old air mattress that Dad had inflated and put in the library easily fit two people and with all the pillows off my bed we could prop ourselves into a halfway sitting posture against the wall. I got my laptop and put it on my legs where Tucker and I could both see it.
We started up the show and then all I could think about was the warmth of Tucker next to me. She put her arm around my shoulders and I leaned into her. I felt every centimeter of her body where it touched mine but I had no idea what to do or even what I wanted. Was this friendly or more? Did I owe some kind of loyalty to Shen even though we’d only been to a movie with his cousin? I told myself that if anything I owed it to him to figure out what I liked, though I had to admit that was a pretty thin rationalization. It sort of didn’t matter what else I thought then because I was very clear that I didn’t want that moment with Tucker to end.
She reached across my legs under the blanket to adjust the angle of the laptop and then her hand rested on my leg and stayed there. I felt as if her fingers were moving up my thigh with microscopic slowness, but then I thought that might be wishful thinking. Her hand moved again, maybe a whole centimeter.
“Tucker,” I said and turned toward her.
Her face was inches from mine. She leaned down and kissed me. Her lips were bigger than mine and so soft I melted into them.
The arm around my shoulders shifted and her hand went up the back of my neck and into my hair. I got my hands untangled from the blanket enough to slide around her back and press myself closer. She kissed me harder and all I could feel was her lips and tongue and how hot her skin was through the material of her T-shirt.
Her right hand traveled farther up my leg. It sent a jolt of wanting her and an equal surge of fear into my gut. I pulled away from the kiss.
“What’s wrong?”
“Too fast,” I said and my voice came out squeaky because I was breathing so quickly.
“Okay,” she said with a wide smile. “It’s okay. We can just kiss if you like that.”
“I do,” I admitted. “I just never…”
“I thought you’d kissed girls before,” she said.
“Kissing is all I’ve ever done. With anyone.”
She took her hand off my leg and hugged me. I realized I was shaking.
“It’s okay, baby,” she said and to my horror, I started crying into the side of her neck.
I had to stop after a minute and go find a tissue to blow my nose. When I came back from the bathroom, Tucker had moved the laptop off to one side. The screensaver was playing. That and the dim light from the windows was the only illumination in the room, giving everything a ghostly look. Tucker ran a hand through her hair, settling it all to the right, and patted the mattress next to her.
I wasn’t sure how close to sit now. Most of my previous makeout sessions ended with someone saying they had to get home or get back to studying, not with me bursting into tears. I sat close enough that we could touch, but not so close that we actually were.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked.
“Everything.”
“Even kissing?”
“Well, no. I like that part,” I admitted.
“Touching?” she asked.
“No. I mean, not the general kind.”
“There’s a specific kind?” she asked and then said, “Oh. There is, isn’t there?”
I nodded.
“If I promise no specific touching, can I kiss you again?”
I nodded again and she closed the distance between us.
* * *
On Saturday, Tucker was a lot more talkative and I was a lot more tired. We’d been up just kissing until about two a.m. and then I lay awake in my bed for at least another hour thinking about it. And just so nothing would look suspicious, I got up early with Mom to chat and help make breakfast, so by noon my eyeballs felt gritty.
We went out shopping with Mom. She and Tucker had a lively conversation about the nutritional value of organic produce, while I mostly smiled from my seat on the passenger’s side.
My parents know better than to have a drawn-out conversation with me about genetically modified food, but Tucker didn’t. It’s one of those topics that I’ve read about a lot but actually haven’t formed a strong opinion on yet—at least not until I’ve had some time in a lab and can understand that level of the science. Not having a strong opinion means I can get pretty silly in an argument and it took Tucker a while to realize I was winding her up.
She caught on while we were at the big farmers’ market. It’s a huge building that fills up with vendors every weekend and Mom likes it because she can find weird spices there—most of which she never uses. I think seeing them on her shelves makes her happy. The most arcane and esoteric of the spices aren’t found in the nice heated building, though; they’re outside in the back parking lot where people are selling out of their cars.
It wasn’t quite freezing, but it was a damp, chilly day and I shifted from foot to foot trying to warm up.
“How many languages does your mom know?” Tucker asked as Mom switched from English to Hindi to barter about a price.
“She’s only fluent in three,” I said. “But she has a smattering of a few others and I think she’s been working on her Farsi.”
“Wow. What’s that like?”
“I suck at languages,” I said.
“I mean having educated parents?”
I tried to see the expression on her face without turning my head noticeably. Her eyes stared at something far away. I moved a step closer to her so that our shoulders touched.
“It’s great,” I admitted. She would know if I lied about it. “I mean, it’s tough to win an argument with them, but I wouldn’t trade it. I think if Mom didn’t know so much about other cultures…coming out would have been so much harder. But your mom—”
“Dropped out of high school because she was pregnant with the twins,” Tucker said flatly.
She didn’t talk about her family much so I just kept quiet to see if she’d say more.
“And then when she got pregnant with me, my dad just split.” She paused for a long time before she added, “Mari’s dad isn’t the same as mine, but she’s my favorite sister. I tell her that all the time and that she looks like me, only prettier. She’ll be fourteen soon and I worry about her so much. I think seeing our mother’s life scared her—she says she’s sworn off boys until she’s graduated and got a job.”
“We kind of lucked out,” I said and Tucker gave me a questioning look. “Neither of us is going to accidentally get pregnant.”
She laughed and pressed her shoulder closer to mine. “You’re shivering,” she said.
“I should’ve worn my winter coat.”
She unzipped the front of her heavy army surplus-style jacket and held it open. I didn’t move but I smiled a little. She stepped behind me and wrapped her jacket around both of us.
“Put your hands in my pockets,” she said.
I did and she put her hands over mine. They were like generators throwing off heat.
“Do you wish you could get pregnant?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I said and tried to keep my voice light. It was hard to voice what I actually wished, even to myself, because that part was all so complicated.
“Me either,” she said.
“Will you someday? Do you think?”
“I have no idea. Maybe when I’m older and if I have money. I don’t want to have a kid if I don’t have money,” Tucker said. “Any kid of mine, I want to be able to give her everything.”
Mom had moved on from the open hatchback of the Honda to another car where a wizened-looking woman was selling plastic baggies of who knows what ground powders. Even though Mom wasn’t wearing a hat and had on only her fall coat, she didn’t seem to feel the cold the way I did.
I lowered my voice to a near whisper. “Before…Mom wanted me to freeze some of my, you know, guy genetic stuff. Just in case someday I wanted to have kids of my own.”
“Damn,” Tucker said.
“I wouldn’t do it. I don’t want to be someone’s worthless Y chromosome,” I said and had to stop talking because I was a lot closer to crying than I expected.
Tucker hugged me hard and didn’t say anything.
* * *
Saturday night I was exhausted, but that didn’t prevent another, shorter span of kissing Tucker. I felt like it brought up more questions than it answered, but I wasn’t in any mood to argue since she was a great kisser. It was hard for me to tell if I liked it so much because of how much I liked her, or if she had a lot of natural talent, or if this was some clue about liking girls or boys or both.
On Sunday we took her out to a fancy brunch for her birthday and then Mom dropped us off at the mall and I took her shopping. She got herself a new pair of jeans with a gift card her aunt sent her, and I insisted she let me buy her an HD eReader.
“You’ll really like how you can save your highlights, trust me,” I told her.
We ended the day reading and Tucker surprised me by saying she was going to head to bed early. My parents did the same and then I went up and got into bed to do more reading since I wasn’t tired. After about a half hour, I heard a quiet knock on my door. Tucker grinned at me and I smiled back and motioned her into the room.
She climbed into my bed. We kissed for a while and then she tugged at my shirt.
“Can we take this off?” she asked.
“You first,” I said.
She stripped her shirt off in one quick motion. In the moonlight her normally tan skin looked golden, as if she were a painting of herself, with her broad shoulders and her large breasts perfectly balancing each other.
I pulled my shirt off and only tangled it on my elbow for a moment due to nerves. I felt extra self-conscious because everything about me was smaller than Tucker. Had the hormones done everything they needed to do to make me enough of a woman for her?
She put her hands on my waist, both of us kneeling on the bed, and kissed me again as she pulled our bodies together. My fear cracked like ice and started floating apart as soon as her skin met mine.
Later when we were lying down and stopping to catch our breath, she said, “We should take these off,” and gestured at her boxer briefs and my pajama bottoms.
“I think I’d like that,” I said. “But I’m not ready to…I mean, would we be girlfriends and stuff?”
“Mostly stuff,” she said with a little laugh. “Do you want to be girlfriends?”
“Would it be okay if I didn’t?”
“Yes,” Tucker answered in a long sigh. “I might still be with Lindy when we get back.”
“I don’t like her,” I whispered.
“But you like me,” Tucker said.
“Oh yes, I just don’t know—” She cut me off with a kiss.
I didn’t know how many women Tucker had been with, but it was plenty more than my zero.
She leaned on one elbow and traced fingertips down my collarbones and around my chest. It tickled and felt great and strange all at the same time because she was looking at me and the expression on her face was really happy. I tried to just lie still but I couldn’t stop touching her also.
Her hands cupped my breasts and then she bent down to kiss all over them. I felt the velvet of her lips, moments of quick suction, and the heavy press of her breasts against my ribs.
She scooted down and put her fingers on the waistband of my pajama bottoms, then looked at me.
“Is this okay?”
“I don’t know.” The fear was surfacing again, iceberg-style, with more underneath.
She put her hands on my thighs and electric currents shot up and down my legs, but mostly up.
“I want you,” she said. “Do you…?”
I slid my pajama bottoms over my hips and kicked them off under the sheets. I wanted this with Tucker and I also wanted to get it over with.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” Tucker whispered.
“As beautiful as science can make me?” I offered and immediately regretted it. I shouldn’t be reminding her that I was different. Not now. What if she decided she didn’t want this?
She laughed. “I love science.” Her fingers started touching me so gently I almost couldn’t feel them at first. “You have to tell me if I do something you don’t like,” she said. “Or something you really do. Okay?”
I nodded but I was too scared and keyed up to be able to say anything. She crawled back up the bed and held me and kissed me again until I started to relax, and then made her way back down.
Her fingers were too light still; I could barely feel them and it brought the edge of panic into my gut. After the surgery, for months I was afraid to touch myself. I mean not just touch but try to orgasm. I knew there could be nerve damage. Not so much these days, but it can happen—and I tried to be brave and tell myself it would be okay, but I didn’t want a sex life that was just okay.
And I could, that was the great thing, but could I have an orgasm with another person? Was I like the other girls Tucker had been with? How stupid was I to pick a lesbian for my first—at least with a guy he wouldn’t pay that much attention, but then that had its own issues. I mean, what if he plain didn’t fit?
Tucker’s fingers shifted, pressed harder and I gasped. She stopped.
“Good or bad?” she asked.
“Good,” I breathed.
She grinned and kept changing the angle and pressure of her touch until my brain stopped its crazy spinning. I held onto her shoulders and gave in to the sensations she created for me.