One last stop, p.20
One Last Stop, page 20
She kisses like she wants you to picture what else she could do given the chance: the swing of her hips if you passed her on the street, every beer bottle she’s ever had her mouth around. Like she wants you to know, down to your guts, the sound her boots make on the concrete floor of a punk show, the split lips and the way her skin smells sweet at the end of the night, all the things she’s capable of. She kisses like she’s making a reputation.
And August … August cheats.
Because she does have a head start. She spent weeks learning what Jane likes. So she grabs at her hair and tugs, nips at her bottom lip, tilts her chin up and bares her neck for Jane’s lips, just to hear the soft little moans that fall out of her mouth, high on the feeling of giving Jane exactly what she wants. It’s better than any of their first kisses, any memory, red hot and real under her hands. The city glides past through the window, framing them in, and August’s skin is on fire. Her skin is on fire, and Jane’s dragging her fingers through the embers.
“These fuckin’ thigh highs,” Jane mutters. Her hand grazes over the top of one, short fingernails skimming the place where elastic cuts into August’s thigh. She was nervous when she put them on, afraid of looking like she was trying too hard, worried about the way they dig into her soft fat. “What the fuck, August?”
“What—ah—about them?”
“They’re criminal, that’s what,” Jane says, pressing her thumb hard enough into the flesh there that August hisses, knowing it’ll leave a mark.
Jane snaps the elastic over the same spot, and the sharp pain goes straight through her and out her mouth in a breathless “fuck.”
“August,” Jane says. She dips into her shoulder, nosing at her collarbone through her shirt, and August’s brain slowly surfaces. “August, what do you want?”
“I wanna … kiss you.”
“You are kissing me,” Jane says. “What else do you want?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not embarrassing.”
“It is when you’ve never done it before,” August blurts out, and Jane stills.
“Is that it?” she says. “You’ve never had sex with a girl before?”
August feels her face flush. “I’ve never had sex with anyone before.”
“Oh,” Jane says. “Oh.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s—”
“It’s okay,” Jane says easily. “I don’t care. I mean—I care, it just doesn’t bother me.” She traces a thumb up the inside of August’s thigh, and her mouth melts into a loose smirk when August gasps quietly. “But you have to tell me what you want.”
August watches Jane lick her bottom lip, and a thousand images flash through her mind so fast, she feels like she might black out—Jane’s short hair between her fingers, her teeth digging into the ink lines on Jane’s bicep, wet fingers, wet mouths, wet everywhere, Jane’s low voice pitched up an octave, Jane’s eyes burning up at her from the end of the bed, the insides of Jane’s knees, miles of skin shining with sweat and the light through her bedroom window. She wants Jane’s hands fisted in her bed sheets. She wants the impossible.
“I want you to touch me,” she finally makes herself say. “But we can’t.”
And the train stops. The lights go off.
For a second, August thinks she did black out, until her eyes pick out the shape of Jane squinting back at her in the dark.
“Shit,” August says. “Did it just—?”
“Yeah.”
August blinks, waiting for her vision to adjust. She’s suddenly painfully aware of herself, of Jane’s fingers wrapped around her wrist. “Emergency lights?”
Jane closes her eyes, mouthing along as she counts the seconds in her head. She opens them.
“I don’t think they’re coming on.”
August looks at her. Jane looks back.
“So we’re … trapped on a dark train,” August says.
“Yeah.”
“Alone.”
“Yes.”
“With no chance for anyone else to get on.”
“Correct.”
“On the bridge,” August says, more slowly. “Where no one can see us.”
She shifts, adjusting her weight on Jane’s thigh, and closes her mouth on the sound that tries to slip out at the friction.
“August.”
“No, you’re right,” August says, moving to slide Jane’s hand off her, “it’s a bad idea—”
Jane’s grip tightens.
“That is literally the opposite of what I was about to say.”
August blinks once, twice. “Really?”
“I mean … what if it’s the only chance we get?”
“Yeah,” August agrees. It really is a good point, pragmatically. They have finite resources of time and privacy. Also, August will die if Jane doesn’t touch her within the next thirty seconds. Which is another logistical consideration. “You—yeah.”
“Yeah? You sure?”
“Yeah. Yes. Please.”
It happens fast—August inhales, exhales, and suddenly Jane’s jacket is gone, thrown blindly at the nearest seat, and they’re kissing, hands everywhere, messy and wet and full of small sounds. August’s hair keeps getting in the way, and when she breaks off to rip a ponytail holder off her wrist and haphazardly pull it back, Jane’s at her neck, tongue soothing over every spot she introduces her teeth to. Everything goes fuzzy, and August realizes Jane has taken her glasses off and chucked them in the direction of her jacket.
Somehow the buttons of August’s shirt are undone, and she can’t think about anything but wanting more, wanting skin on skin. She wants to rip their clothes off, use her teeth and her fingernails if she has to, and can’t—not here, not the way she wants. Still, she slides her fingertips under the waistband of Jane’s jeans, catches the hem of her T-shirt, and she waits half a second for Jane to stop kissing her and nod before she’s untucking and pushing it up, and oh God, there she is, this is happening.
In the moonlight, Jane’s body is kinetic. She shivers and tenses and relaxes under August’s hands, a nipped-in waist and sharp hip bones, a simple black bra, gentle ridges of ribs, tattoos winding up and down her skin like spilled ink. And August—August has never gotten this far before, not really, but something takes over, and she’s dropping a kiss on Jane’s sternum, and she’s pressing her open mouth to the swell just above the cup of her bra, the devastating give of it. Every part of Jane is spartan, practical, made into what it is by years of survival, and yet, somehow, it gives. She always gives.
It occurs to August that Jane is thinner than her, and maybe she should care that her own hips are wider and her stomach is softer, but Jane’s hands are on her, pushing her shirt open, everywhere she’s afraid to be touched—the shape of her waist, the dimples of her thighs, the fullness of her chest. And Jane groans and says, for the third time of the night, “What the fuck, August?”
August has to choke down a sigh to say, “What?”
“Look at you,” she says, dragging her thumbs out from the center of August’s stomach to her hips, skimming over the waistband of her skirt. She leans in and tucks her face under August’s collar, bites her shoulder, presses a kiss there, then pulls back and just looks at her. Looks at her like she doesn’t ever want to stop looking. “You’re like—like a fucking painting or something stupid like that, what the fuck. You just walk around like this all the time.”
“I—” August’s mouth tries to form several words, maybe even some that make sense, but Jane’s hands are spanning her waist, brushing the delicate lace edges of her bra, and her mouth is trailing lower, and all that comes out is, “I didn’t know. You—I didn’t know you thought that.”
Jane’s eyes flash up to her, glinting wicked in the low light.
“You have no fuckin’ idea, girl,” Jane says, and then she’s pushing the lace out of the way.
There are hands, and mouths, and fingertips, and tongues, and a sound coming out of August somewhere between a hiss and a sigh, and there’s Jane’s breath hot on her skin. There are, objectively, a lot of things going on, August understands vaguely, but all she can think is want—how much, how hard, how deep she’s been wanting it, Jane’s been wanting it, all of it held between Jane’s lips now, pressing and blooming through her, so keen that it hurts. Jane bites down, and August sucks in a breath through her teeth.
The hand on August’s thigh is inching up her skirt, fabric gathering at Jane’s wrist. When Jane leans into August’s ear, the cotton of Jane’s bra is against her, the insistent heat of her body, the unbearable slide of skin against hers.
“I wanna go down on you,” Jane murmurs. “Is that cool?”
August’s eyes snap open.
“Wha-what the fuck kind of question is that?”
Jane’s head drops back with a bark of laughter, eyes shut and lips swollen, the line of her throat obscene and gorgeous.
“I need a yes or no.”
“Yes, okay, Jesus.”
“They call me Jane, actually,” Jane says, and August rolls her eyes as Jane sinks down to one knee.
“That’s the worst line I’ve ever heard,” August says, fighting to keep her breath steady as Jane tugs on the top of one of her thigh highs with her teeth. The elastic snaps back, and Jane grins against the inside of August’s thigh at the little yelp it earns her. “Did that shit really work on girls in the ’70s?”
“It seems,” Jane says, kissing her way up, and August knows her hand is shaking when she pushes it into the hair at the crown of Jane’s head, but she’ll be goddamned if she’ll act like it, “to be working just fine now.”
“I don’t know.” Jane’s fingers catch on the waistband of August’s underwear. August stares across the car at a Brooklinen ad, of all ridiculous things, because if she confronts the reality of Jane kneeling between her legs and tugging her underwear down her thighs, she’s going to have a full-scale mental collapse. “Don’t get too cocky.”
“You might wanna use the door,” Jane says, “for balance.”
“Why?”
“Because in a minute you’re not gonna be able to feel your legs,” Jane says, and when August finally looks down at her, mouth open in shock, she’s smiling innocently. She pushes the hem of August’s skirt up and says, “Hold this for me, yeah? I’m busy.”
“Absolutely fuck you.” August laughs, and she does as she’s asked.
Truthfully: Jane has never once made a promise she couldn’t back up.
August turns her head to the side, trying to ground herself to the sturdiness of the door against her back, the way her shirt bunches up between her shoulder blades when she shivers, how her breath clouds the glass in a steady, too-fast rhythm. Through the glass, the city is shining—the bridges and buildings, the carousel on the edge of the water, the pinpricks of boats in the distance, and she’s trying to take stock of it all, of how it feels to have someone so impossibly close to her for the first time. She can’t believe she gets to have all this, this view and this girl on her knees.
August has stepped inside a million other moments with Jane and a million other girls, but nobody else can have this one.
If this were one of Jane’s memories, she can almost imagine how Jane would tell it: a girl with long hair twisted up messily, her shirt thrown open, moonlight turning the lace on her chest to gossamer, her mouth slipping open around a broken sound, underwear around her knees and looking absolutely wrecked. She looks up at August, a strand of dark hair falling across her eyes, mouth busy, and August knows she’d tell it herself in five words: girl, tongue, subway, saw God.
August never knew—she never worked it out in her head, exactly, what would qualify as sex with someone who has the same type of body as hers, no matter how much she wanted it, pictured it with one hand beneath the sheets. She didn’t think she’d know, since she’s never done any of it, where the line is. But this, this—Jane’s mouth on her, wet fingers, every hum and hitch of Jane’s breath getting her off as much as a touch, the give and take of how good it feels to make someone else feel good—is sex. It’s sex, and August is drowning in it. She wants more. She wants to fill her lungs up.
“Jane,” she says, and it comes out weak from the back of her throat. Her knuckles are white in Jane’s hair, so she makes herself relax them, drags her fingers down to Jane’s sharp cheekbone. “Jane.”
“Hm?”
“Fuck, I—come back,” she grinds out. “Up here. Please.”
When August pulls her into another kiss, she can taste herself on Jane’s tongue, and that, more than anything, the fierce wave of possessiveness it pulls over her, is what has her fumbling at the fastenings of Jane’s jeans.
It’s a blur—August doesn’t know how she senses what to do. There’s supposed to be an awkward learning curve with someone you’ve never fucked before, but there’s not. There’s this flow between them that’s never made any goddamn sense since that static shock the day they met, and it’s like she’s found her way into this girl’s jeans a thousand times, like Jane’s had her figured out for years. She thinks dazedly that maybe it’s time to start believing in something. The fucking divine construction of Jane’s fingers when they press into her, maybe—that’s a higher power for sure.
It’s over in a gasp, a trip over some edge August doesn’t see until they’re suddenly there, an open-mouthed kiss that’s more a hot exchange of breath than anything else, teeth and skin, a low swear. Jane slumps forward, her shoulder digging into August’s chest, one hand still tucked neatly beneath the lace of August’s bra, and August feels alive. She feels present, somehow, here. Exactly, really here. She smears a messy kiss across the top of Jane’s cheek and feels like Jane is the first thing she’s ever touched in her life.
“You were right,” August says.
“About what?”
“I can’t feel my legs.”
Jane laughs, and the lights come back on.
Jane moves first, picking her head up to glare at the lights. And it’s so ridiculous, so funny and unbelievable and Jane, perturbed at the world for daring to defy her instead of the other way around, that August has to laugh.
“Get your hand off my boob. We’re in public,” she says as the train eases back into motion.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jane snorts, and she stumbles back half a step to let August button her shirt. She watches August shimmy her underwear back up her thighs with devilish interest, looking pleased with herself, and August would blush if she weren’t already pink from everything else.
Jane buttons her jeans and tucks her shirt in and disentangles August’s glasses from her jacket, and then she’s crowding back into August’s space, gently sliding her glasses on.
“I can’t believe you threw them,” August says. “They could have fallen on the floor and picked up a bacterial infection. You could have given me conjunctivitis.”
“Mmm, yeah, say more big words.”
“It’s not sexy!” August says, even as her smile gets so big it hurts, even as she lets Jane press her into the door. “I could have lost an eye!”
“I was in a hurry,” Jane says. “I haven’t gotten laid in forty-five years.”
“Technicality,” August says.
“Let me have this,” Jane says, trailing her smiling mouth over August’s pulse.
“Okay.” August laughs, and she does.
They kiss again, and again, melting kisses that barely hold the weight of what just happened, and August keeps waiting. August keeps waiting for one of them to say something that will change everything, but they don’t. They just kiss until they pull into a station in Brooklyn, and a bleary commuter climbs on with a coffee and an unamused expression, and Jane muffles a laugh in her neck.
It’s good, August thinks, that they don’t say anything. Jane loves like summer for a reason—she doesn’t stick around. August knows it. Jane knows it. There’s nothing either of them can do about it.
It’s enough, August decides. To have her like this, here, for now. Time, place, person.
10
New Restaurant Lucille’s Burgers Opens in French Quarter
PUBLISHED AUGUST 17, 1972
[Photo: An older woman in an apron stands in front of a bar, arms crossed, while a young woman in the background carries a tray of burgers]
Lucille Clement remembers growing up in her mother’s kitchen while waitress Biyu Su delivers orders to customers.
Robert Gautreaux for The Times-Picayune
“So you’re sleeping with Jane?”
August turns, toothbrush in mouth. Niko’s looking at her from the end of the hallway, holding a golden barrel cactus the size of a basketball between two tattooed hands.
She managed to dodge him when she stumbled back into the apartment at five in the morning with her shirt buttoned wrong and the shape of Jane’s mouth bruised onto the side of her neck. But she should have known she could only avoid the resident psychic for so long.
She spits and rinses. “Can you not do that?”
“Sorry, was I skulking? Sometimes I skulk without realizing.”
“No, the thing where you know things about my personal life just by looking at me.” She racks her toothbrush. “But also the skulking.”
He pulls a face. “I don’t mean to, it’s just, like … the energy you put out about Jane. It’s burning a new hole in the ozone layer.”
“You know, the old hole in the ozone layer closed up.”
“I feel that you are deflecting.”
“I can send you a National Geographic article about it.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Niko says. “But I’m happy for you. You care so much about her, and she cares so much about you.”
August stares into the mirror, getting the rare chance to watch herself turn pink. It happens in big, unattractive splotches. This is what Jane sees. It’s a miracle she wants to have sex with her.
Sex. She and Jane had sex. She and Jane are, if they can figure out the logistics, possibly going to have more sex. August isn’t a virgin anymore.
