“The door of the house opens. It’s you, coming out of the house, coming towards me, smiling, pleased. It’s you, and it’s me, and I knew it would end like this, that you would be there, had always been there; it was just a matter of time. Everything is imprinted forever with what it once was.”

— Jeanette Winterson

*****

Jennie giggles by her side as Lisa locks the front door on the ground floor. This is what she’s been reduced to. Goddamn giggling.

Too much sex leaves her boneless, and apparently, infatuated and amused by the smallest things. The ache between her legs is a welcome soreness even if the exorbitant amount of sex they’ve been having has her reverting back to teenage euphoria.

Lisa cranes for a view over Jennie’s shoulder to the bookshop next door before turning back to put a finger to her lips. Shhh, she mimes. Then, reaching for Jennie’s hand, she leads them away at a brisk pace like they are escaping the night.

Their first proper day in London is off to an early start. They sneak into the streets moments after daylight slips past the crack between Lisa’s drapes, rushing out on the heels of her abrupt timetable announcement, “Date starts now.” Not even the leftover muscle burn from last night’s activities could impede her To Do list. Too many naps, a completely screwed sleep schedule, and the excitement of finally being together in every conceivable way, motivate a before dawn rise to soak up the waking hours.

The reason for the sneaking around doesn’t become apparent until a tube ride later when they are standing in front of a large white sign—two upside down pink triangles sandwiching the words, Gay’s the Word—hanging above an awning and a set of doors, both also white. Stacks of books are artfully displayed in the oversize window.

Jennie squeezes Lisa’s side, nudging for an explanation.

“We’re cheating,” Lisa imparts, voice lowered and head bent down to Jennie’s level, as if to avoid lurking spies who might be within earshot. “This is my favourite bookshop. Don’t tell Kath or her grandmother.”

It takes a second to jog her memory but then kind and patient grey eyes come to mind. Jennie recalls how Cassie had lent a sympathetic ear last summer when it seemed like the universe was conspiring with fate to keep her and Lisa apart. The missed timing, the heartache of being so close but not, crying into a stranger’s cup of tea, flying home solo and newly broken; it was unimaginable then that she would be here now—Lisa’s arm around her shoulder, her hand in Lisa’s back pocket, bodies drawn together by familiar smiles and gazes. The small intimacies of love passing between them as quiet and affecting as the soft morning breeze.

The difference a year makes.

“My lips are sealed.” Jennie plays along, brushing the underside of Lisa’s jaw with closed lips until it causes her set to widen. Another smile, broader around the edge.

“It’s one of the few remaining LGBTQ booksellers in London,” Lisa briefs but Jennie only partially takes in the information, preoccupied with the small gasps her mouth nearing Lisa’s ear elicit. She hums at the appropriate junctures as Lisa recounts the bookshop’s storied meaning, how it has remained a stalwart presence in the city for forty years while most others have sadly shuttered.

“Of all the sights and sounds, this is where you take me on our first London date?” Jennie asks once Lisa finishes her abridged version of its pride history, her voice markedly falling in volume towards the end when the warmth of Jennie’s breath in the shell of her ear tinges the top pink. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any gayer.”

Lisa pinches her side in retaliation before wordlessly stepping behind her, placing hands on Jennie’s waist, and turns them round forty-five degrees. She points straight ahead.

The balance of power tips, Jennie’s focus now the one at risk. It’s difficult to pay attention to or even ascertain whatever it is Lisa wants her to see when a hand has moved higher up her ribs, holding Jennie steady against Lisa’s front.

The physical proximity, in light of their renewed intimacy, hampers all concentration except on the flexing of slender fingers and the memory of where they’d repeatedly been only hours earlier. Jennie has to wilfully shake off thoughts of public sex in the street in order to tune into her tour guide.

“See the taller one,” Lisa directs her gaze towards a cluster of buildings in the distance, a mix of brick colours peeping up from behind a row of older looking buildings, “that’s my office.” She pivots them back to face the bookshop. “This is my hideaway between meetings. I’d come here to pick up a book and then,” Lisa turns them once more, thirty degrees counterclockwise to a storefront with painted vines covering the façade, “coffee,” and a final full ninety degrees, “and sit by the square that way.”

Jennie leans further back against her chest, taking Lisa’s hands to wrap around her front and joining their fingers. The square is only visible by the top of trees that are reaching skyward to where the sun makes an appearance between the break of morning clouds. They take in the tranquil scene together.

Little stands out of the greenery that Jennie can spot from this distance. Lisa’s fascination with nature has always been one of her favourite quirks of the architect for whom the built and natural environment co-exist in harmony. She wonders what in particular of that tall copse gives Lisa pause.

“Your favourite trees?”

“Sorta but not exactly. I thought, maybe,” shyness colours Lisa’s speech when she resumes her explanation in a quieter, hushed tone, “I could show you my London. Where I go, what I see.”

The significance of the gesture stops Jennie’s fingering pattern on the back of her hand. Not just trees.

It turns out Lisa’s idea of a date in London is actually a Lisa day in London. She is offering glimpses into what Jennie had been missing out on, the minutiae of Lisa’s life, her everyday routine. The seemingly mundane and inconsequential, yet not hollowed of meaning by the way Lisa’s eyes have glazed over ever so slightly.

A forlorn look briefly flits across Lisa’s face before solemn features resettle into a tender smile again.

“I’d love to see your London,” Jennie accepts, matching Lisa’s softness of voice and tucking away her observation of the break in bliss for another time. In lieu, she tucks deeper into Lisa’s hold.

For now, Jennie is content to follow her girlfriend’s itinerary, to pull a page from her English diary. She wants to know how many paces of Lisa’s long strides it takes to go from office to café to square. Wants to discover what words behind those white doors holds her attention. Which roast she prefers that the barista has memorised. Which spot of grass at the park has browned from her bum’s imprint.

She thinks of Lisa, book in hand, coffee by her side, whiling the time away in the pages of some sapphic love story. A bruising of her lower lip during the juicy part, the workday and its stresses forgotten.

The imagery worms its way into the recesses of memory until it taps into a mirrored New York one. Prospect in summer, the two of them entangled on a blanket on the grass, Jennie’s head on Lisa’s lap and playing with her hand as Lisa reads to her.

The urge to unite the two visuals—thoughts of inserting herself into this Lisa’s routine—propels Jennie forward, aimless of direction as disoriented as she is after all the spinning around.

“Let’s go! Show me your homoerotic favs, you homo.”

She doesn’t get far. Lisa pulls on the waistband of her jeans, lassoing her back with an oomph. Jennie lands within kissing reach that Lisa immediately takes advantage to close the gap.

Jennie’s mouth moves with blind commitment. Parks and books on either side of the Atlantic are instantly forgotten.

“Caffeine first, love,” Lisa says with a chuckle when Jennie whimpers at her withdrawal, the l word easily slipping from swollen lips. Jennie’s whole body heats at the warmth of the pet name. (The burn is unsurprisingly most concentrated between her legs.)

“Gay’s doesn’t open for another hour.” Lisa links their hands and re-orients them. “C’mon, Steep does mostly specialty teas but also has the best drip.”

—

It is the best drip Jennie has ever had, if not the most eccentric that asks her to slurp out of a bowl instead of a cup. The coffee shop is quaint, in a dreamy, woodland forest way with clouds as light pendants and tree stumps as seating.

They sit extremely close together, made possible by the furniture’s open structure, knees knocking one another. Lisa’s hand is on her thigh, maintaining vigilant contact in the unlikely scenario Jennie gets lost in the narrow six hundred square feet space.

There are only two other customers, similarly huddled in private conversation, but not so intimately engaged in silent commune between eyes and lips. Lisa’s gaze has always been about as opaque as a fish tank when it comes to telegraphing her intention to kiss.

Presently, the deepness to those verdant eyes tells Jennie a kiss alone won’t satiate the lust between them, the sexual tension built up since the airport only temporarily abated last night. It is taut enough to snap at a moment’s notice.

If it’s possible to envy the rim of a teacup—Lisa had opted for herbal while Jennie went with something necessarily much stronger—Jennie says nothing of the press of lips against ceramic leaving a lipstick mark that she absolutely does not imagine bearing on her inner thigh.

The vivid visual loses none of its potency when Lisa blows on the steam of her drink, while continuing to stare intensely past the eddying air.

It occurs to Jennie that if they don’t pace themselves, she will leave London once again without seeing the city, though for a decidedly different reason this second go. Because, with how Lisa keeps looking at her like Jennie is the last remaining tea leaf in the world that she wants nothing more than to steep in, there is no chance they will spend the rest of their time seeing anything but Lisa’s thousand thread-count bedsheets. There would be two empty seats at Minnie’s dinner the following night if they continue the way they have been.

So against Jennie’s instincts, she internally commits to resisting Lisa’s hearteyes. The inevitable futility of the endeavour is a given but nonetheless she tries.

(There’s no chance she’ll make it to the weekend.)

Not attuned to the change in program, Lisa leans in, zeroing onto Jennie’s lips, seemingly unencumbered by any notion of sacrificing restraint. At the last second Jennie turns her face, pretending to point to something on the menu and leaving Lisa’s mouth stopping awkwardly short of their destination.

Lisa recovers by pretending to remove lint from Jennie’s shoulder while Jennie pretends like she isn’t dying inside from laughter. Her self-denial is worth the displeased look alone, all shock and sulk.

Jennie’s efforts at subtlety soon lose traction.

“Is that how it’ll be?” Lisa huffs, after her third attempt is rebuked with yet another turn of cheek. The motion earns a bite on Jennie’s shoulder, where all possible lint in existence is no longer there. Her stifled laugh turns into a yelp.

“What?” Jennie fakes not knowing, cupping her bowl of coffee and hiding her smile inside.

Lisa gives her a weighted look, one eyebrow quirked that is part appraisal, part strategising. Then, her back straightens and her eyes flicker something knowing. Scheming. “Pfft,” she expels after drawn out beats that have Jennie nervous for what that knowledge might be.

Jennie’s regret is immediate as Lisa withdraws her hand where it had been clasped with hers, making an unhurried showing of untangling their fingers, one by one. Angling her body away, Lisa takes a turn at hiding her reaction behind her cup.

Siberia at winter’s height is warmer than the cold Jennie suddenly finds herself battling against. She promptly sticks her hands between her legs. For warmth. For strength. For resolve not to reach out.

What she doesn’t expect is for Lisa to invade her space again after putting her tea down, coming in within a hair’s width of their noses touching.

Immediately disregarding her determination of a minute ago, Jennie reflexively closes her eyes as Lisa inclines her head forward. But just as Jennie parts her lips anticipating the kiss, Lisa turns off-course, redirecting to ask into Jennie’s ear.

“Are you sure,” Lisa pauses to let Jennie’s shudder pass following a faint tug of her earlobe between warm lips, “this is a game you want to play?”

The whisper of eyelashes against Jennie’s cheek makes it a difficult question to answer with any degree of neutrality, nevermind conviction.

“Yep.” Jennie swallows, the affirmation barely eking out as Lisa lightly brushes against the shell of her ear again. She inelegantly scoots away, causing an audible squeak of her seat that goes ignored. “I’m good.”

Lisa is undeterred. She brings up her other hand to run fingers along Jennie’s cheek and jaw, the path traced as much by tender starry eyes as an unhidden agenda of mischief. She takes her time to map out the constellations of Jennie’s summer freckles. Spends long minutes paying attention to the beauty mark first, then lips next. Face on fire aside, Jennie fights to keep from opening her mouth that wants to draw Lisa’s fingers in.

“You were also good at begging last night,” Lisa concludes at the end of her study. Her girlfriend has the audacity to close her eyes and lower her voice to a rasp. “Please, Lisa. ”

Jennie gawks, nearly knocking their heads by the force of her affront, the heat of her glare burning brighter than her flush of embarrassment.

“I’m extremely polite,” she grumps, her arms cross at the chest, which is puffed up indignant.

They both know there was nothing polite about the obscene things she was moaning while Lisa was doing obscene things between her legs.

Lisa runs the same tormenting fingers up her bare thighs, moving no further once they reach the fringes of Jennie’s cutoffs. In undecided relief or disappointment, her mutinous lungs emit a catch of breath.

“One night, and you’re done?”

“No.” Jennie’s succinct but throaty reply very much communicates she is far from done.

“Then?”

“It’s a marathon. Trying to stay hydrated.”

Lisa laughs, a lovely sound that only worsens Jennie’s thirst.

“We’re using running metaphors now?”

Jennie shrugs and has to look away to resist kissing her smirk off. “Uh-huh. Something something miles, something something not the finish line.”

“Ok, then,” Lisa accepts Jennie’s obscure wisdom via misquoted sport analogies. “Prepare for some very intense, athletic admiring ... from afar.”

Before Jennie can respond, the low-level threat is summarily followed through when Lisa withdraws completely to sit across from her.

Forget Siberia, Jennie might as well be flung into outer space. The new distance has the mercury dropping dramatically. There’s a calculating silence where Jennie considers the merits of her plan to stay away.

But temperatures quickly rise again when Lisa crosses her legs in slow motion that intentionally accentuates the expanse of skin on display by very short, black shorts that covers about as much as a runner’s fitted bottom.

“That’s just mean,” Jennie accuses, refusing eye contact after blinking away her lust.

“You started it.”

“How so?”

Jennie looks up to catch Lisa waving a hand at her personhood, as if to indicate Jennie’s general existence is the cause of Lisa’s impulse control problems.

Ever the opportunist, with Jennie’s attention on her again, Lisa uncrosses her legs then stands to fake-stretch, arms going straight up to raise hands above her head, fingers interlocking and palms turning towards the ceiling in some sort of yoga pose. Lisa takes a deep breath—while Jennie loses hers—and lifts on her heels in such a way that all the weight of her body is on her toes. The action not only lengthens her legs but exposes her stomach. Lisa holds the position for uncounted seconds as tight abdominal muscles assault Jennie’s field of vision. Jennie doesn’t know exactly for how long she’s gone without air but she feels lightheaded.

She has to drag her eyes away again, fixing them on a safer spot on the untouched croissant in front of her.

“We were so rushed this morning, I didn’t get a workout in,” Lisa laments with inflated distress when she comes back down, her replanted feet reminding Jennie to breathe again. “No exercise.”

It’s a blatant lie. They snuck in more than enough physical exertion—the enjoyable kind—in the wee hours before dawn, in the bed, then the shower, and twice on the couch. The evidence of it plainest in the patch of discoloured skin above Jennie’s breast and just below the dip of her shirt’s collar, the hickey still throbbing pleasurably.

Lisa’s stomach bears its own bruising evidence. Jennie’s eyes trail the taut muscles that she had gotten off on while riding out the remnants of her dream, after she woke up to a slow grinding against her ass and Lisa’s breath hot on the back of her neck. She wasn’t the only one fantasising. Quick manoeuvring by insistent hands had her on top and bucking with abandon without a single greeting uttered between them. Lisa had slipped inside mid-orgasm and drew out a second one before Jennie could finish crying out the first.

By the time Jennie collapsed back onto the sheets, Lisa’s stomach was painted a sticky, glistening coat. It shines a different glow now, a soft copper of the sunscreen that Jennie had ‘helped’ to apply.

Lisa stretches again.

“You did that on purpose.”

“I did.”

Unapologetic, she wears an unmasked smugness knowing the effect all forms of her exercising has on Jennie.

“Game up,” Jennie decides, her brows set and lips thin in determination.

“On.”

“What?”

“It’s game on.”

“Up, on, whatever.”

She doesn’t care about her imprecise use of sports terminology, only concerned for surviving the next few hours without combusting.

Jennie gets up and imitates Lisa’s pose—harder than it looks—but perseveres to bend backwards a slight amount, arching her back which works to emphasise her front. If some inadvertent spill-over happens where her bra strains to retain control, so be it. Lisa’s mouth stays agape long after she returns to a normal posture.

Their weird behaviour draws the barista’s attention, whose judgment Jennie ignores to deliberate on how to up the ante while keeping things PG rated. The odds are stacked against her of things going Explicit. Putting a nipple on display for the morning crowd filtering in is likely not the shot of energy early risers expect from their local café.

“Let’s make this interesting,” she suggests, readjusting her top and needing Lisa’s eyes higher up for the rest of her deal to be taken seriously.

“Yeah ...”

“No physical intimacy.” Lisa looks like she’s been slapped or told there’s a world trade shortage of avocados. Jennie clarifies, “Until I’ve seen at least four London sights.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“First one to cave into touching has to submit to the other’s every wish.”

Lisa perks up at the stakes, which Jennie has rightly hedged appeals to her competitive side.

“Every wish and command?”

Jennie hums, biting her lip at images of role playing with Commander Lisa that has nothing to do with baseball. “Anything.”

“What are the rules? I can’t not touch you, Jennie.”

Jennie’s fingers twitch in sympathy at the despairing prospect. Lisa’s right, that’s an impossibility neither of them can endure.

“Fine, touching permissible. But no kissing. Nothing on the lips.”

After a period of consideration in which Lisa looks to be mentally consulting her playbook of wishes and commands, a hand is extended to shake agreement. “Good luck resisting.”

Jennie is too busy being suspicious of Lisa suddenly re-entering her personal space to question why precisely she’ll need luck. Lisa’s hand slides up her forearm then pulls her forward, Jennie stumbling with another oomph into her chest. Lisa takes the hem of her shirt, lifting then fanning it.

Butterflies flap in answer in Jennie’s stomach, the traitors already picking a side.

The barista is gaping at this point.

“What are you doing?”

“There are crumbs on your shirt, Jennie. I’m just helping out.”

There aren’t any. Jennie would know because her sugar-dusted pain au chocolat sits uneaten in plain view, the melted dark chocolate oozing forth from the flaky pastry that’s still intact. Lisa nonetheless shakes the bottom of Jennie’s shirt of non-existent crumbs, her fingers accidentally touching skin.

It appears Lisa has taken on the tactic of the best defence is a great offence. She’s changed her mind, seemingly deciding close-up admiration is preferable to afar. Thumbs begin making circles on Jennie’s hipbone, occasionally dipping under her waistband.

“Lisa,” Jennie warns without much bite, its force taken out by the hitch of her breath.

“What about below the belt touching? Is that against the rules?” Her hands move behind Jennie’s back towards the swell of her rear, but are prevented from going any lower by a deep scowl.

“Only publicly appropriate touching,” Jennie stipulates, eyes squinting in caution despite knowing she’s setting a thin boundary. (A personally necessary one nonetheless because the persistent urge to drag her hands and tongue all over Lisa holds little regard or patience for private quarters.)

Lisa looks just as unconvinced, a lifted eyebrow conveying that Jennie’s definition of ‘public’ and ‘appropriate’ may be vastly different from hers and rather open to creative interpretation.

A battle of will follows thereafter. This is how the rest of their morning in the café unfolds. A game of libido chicken. Mounting challenges by Lisa that steps up her physical attention. Hand on Jennie’s elbow, a lingering hold of her waist, skating fingers up her spine. Extra care is given to every exposed part of Jennie’s skin. Trailing brushes along her thigh, kisses to Jennie’s open collarbone when her shirt falls off a shoulder, and soft pecks on every available surface but Jennie’s exceedingly chapped lips.

All of it is frustratingly appropriate but it’s their cumulative effect that sustains Jennie’s internal cursing. The butterflies are rampant by now and she wishes they’d take her side instead of being team Lisa.

When Jennie does finally take a bite of her croissant, a palliative action for something to do with her lips, the sugar dust becomes an invisible enemy as Lisa takes to licking the corner of her mouth and under her bottom lip out of unsolicited charity to keep her clean.

“Delicious.”

Lisa proceeds to wipe the remainder off with her thumb then lightly sucks on it before brushing the now wet pad across Jennie’s dry, dry lips.

Jennie squirms and tries to shoo her assailant away but Lisa’s mission to force out a concession only intensifies, the touches increasing in frequency. She makes the repeat mistake of stealing a glance Lisa’s way every so often, which spurs the mischief on, the attempts becoming more brazen. The warmth pooling low in Jennie’s stomach burns hotter as the hour creeps by.

She gets her revenge when they return to Gay’s.

—

Inside, the shop is a cornucopia of books spanning fiction and non fiction, rights and activism, and texts on intersections of race, age, class and religion with queer identities of every colour and stripe under the pride rainbow.

Jennie is in awe that such a place exists. It’s easy to understand why Lisa is so attached.

Minutes after silently, separately, perusing the shelves, she finds Lisa in the back distracted by a book.

Jennie has picked out several postcards for Jisoo and Hyuna, whose juvenile minds would appreciate the gay puns, and wants Lisa’s opinion to dwindle down her selection. But on her approach, Lisa snaps shut the trade paperback that she has been intensely examining. The flush to her cheeks and the surreptitious glances over her shoulder have Jennie instantly suspicious of the item clutched to her chest. There’s an odd mix of worry and glee sitting in the corner of Lisa’s eyes.

“Lisa,” Jennie says as she advances slowly, neglecting the postcards in her basket, “whatcha got there?”

“Nothing.”

They eye each other, a silent standoff where Lisa not so discreetly moves the book behind her back while Jennie stalks forward like a predator cornering its prey until Lisa’s lower back hits the edge of the table of recommended readings. Fits of an indistinct struggle—and sounds of shuffling feet—filter from the back corner of the bookshop as their battle of will becomes an outright wrestling match garnering more attention from onlookers than Lisa’s evasion was meant to originally obfuscate.

Jennie is triumphant a minute later after a deliberately unfair push of hips into Lisa’s body halts her effort to escape. Amusement turns into confusion, however, when she finally gets a good look at the paperback whose cover appears to be an homage to Home Alone. Except, instead of Macaulay Culkin, there’s a blonde and a brunette of striking familiarity (that’s just at the edge of recognition). Reading the synopsis on the back only further compounds incomprehension and, oddly, deepens the pink on Lisa’s neck and face.

Lisa reluctantly but helpfully informs, whispering, “It’s gay erotica.”

Jennie blinks confusedly as she frets over the title, Don’t Wanna Be Your Girl, and rereads the dust jacket searching for clues to a hidden meaning she might have missed the first time. “A feminist and a porn star … Is it a memoir?” She asks, running a tentative finger over the one-name author, Faithtastic. Like Oprah. “Is the writer some kind of reformed priestess?”

It would certainly be one of the most original autobiographies she’s come across.

“No, it’s fiction. That’s just her pseudonym,” Lisa again helpfully fills in, voice fighting an odd croak. “I was looking up a reference on queer literature after watching a TED talk. And um … had accidentally typed queef instead of queer in my search. This,” she points noncommittal to the novel overturning in Jennie’s hands, “was in the top results that popped up. I’ve only skimmed the first chapter online but it was a fascinating read. Very educational.”

“Educational ?” Jennie taps the page open in hand to emphasise the word, her eyes bulging at where her finger lands on another, more salacious word. A quick scan of the rest of the sentence starts to form a truer picture of Lisa’s fascination. Jennie can’t blame her but she wants to draw out Lisa’s admittance (and embarrassment) that she’s into porn without plot. “Like a lesson book?”

“Of sorts. I found the hardcopy under Staff Picks, next to the Mentos,” Lisa continues, a noticeable stammer to her voice now as her hand begins rubbing nervously at the back of her neck, cheeks reaching a full bloom of red. She averts Jennie’s knowing gaze to say, “Some light afternoon reading for later,” then trails off, looking as dubious as she sounds before attempting to regain the upper hand, “I can teach you what I learn.”

“Light pedagogy, huh?” Jennie asks, unable to keep the mirth out of her voice now that she’s caught on, and equally as doubtful of Lisa’s knowledge-sharing altruism. She teasingly jogs her hips in such a way that slots her thigh between Lisa’s legs, applying the tiniest amount of pressure that earns a not-so tiny moan. Not the only one who’s been affected by their morning game, it seems.

“It’s a hidden gem.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Does it have a happy ending?” Jennie asks with a waggle of her eyebrows.

Lisa clears her throat, lifting her chin and straightening her posture to take up the authority of a professor standing in front of her class. “I was happy with the first chapter. The rest looks to be satisfying too,” she says with clinical detachment that’s betrayed by the involuntary squeeze of her legs.

Jennie flips to a different random page in a mistaken bid to verify, but her error is obvious when her gaze falls on a thoroughly descriptive passage about a colourful toy. She involuntarily pushes further into Lisa. A simultaneous gasp and suppressed whimper choke out between them that she can’t be certain from whose lungs they had escaped.

“Right, later.” Jennie remembers herself when the bell of the shop rings as another customer steps through. She swats the book at Lisa’s chest before putting it in her basket. “Maybe we can find out together at the park.”

They both stare distantly at the cover, possibly arriving at the same uncertainty about the wisdom of reading gay erotica in open airspace where they can’t act on their impulses.

—

Tavistock Square Gardens is a small park lined with trees at its perimeter and bordered by 19th century buildings. A statue of Gandhi holds court in the centre. Serene and peaceful. Jennie can see how it’s the perfect spot for taking a moment of respite and watching the world go by.

The grass is still somewhat damp from the morning dew so they take up a bench, Jennie lying supine with her head on Lisa’s lap. Just as she had imagined hours before, fingers card through her hair while another set idles on her stomach.

The sky is a light grey with hopeful spots of blue peeking through dispersing clouds. Summer in London is a pleasant affair, mild and mostly dry, with none of New York’s sticky humidity. The perfect weather to do nothing.

Because it’s a weekday, the flow of people weaving through the park—workers taking shortcuts, students taking some rest—varies throughout the early afternoon, which leaves Jennie and Lisa to enjoy its quietness chiefly for themselves.

They had quickly deserted a public reading of Lisa’s book after Jennie found it a challenge not to kiss her while hearing of the protagonists thirst for each other. Her sympathy for wanting someone so badly risked undoing the last couple hours’ hard work of resistance.

So she settles for narration of a different kind.

Experiencing London through Lisa’s perspective is something else entirely from when Jennie was last here. The city comes alive through her stories and in the light of beautiful green eyes sparkling with eagerness to share obscure tidbits and fortuitous finds.

She learns of things not found in the guidebooks or on travel blogs. Where the smaller markets are located with better and cheaper selection than the famous Borough, which tube line runs late at night when Lisa has to catch the last train, which station has the most promising busker who might be the next Adele in wait—all the particularities that escape the typical tourist.

On the topic of food, Jennie gets insights into Lisa’s favourite haunts: Caphe House in Bermondsey that serves the clearest, most mouthwatering beef broths of which the Pho Mile stretch of Vietnamese restaurants in Shoreditch can’t compete; the food trucks parked outside industrial estates on Wednesdays and Fridays that are worth the trek north of the city for the after-work crowds; and the best undiscovered lunch takeaway that’s tucked within a mews in one of the last newsagent on Fleet St, two tube stations south. It’s run by the Bromley father of three who formerly worked at the print shop next door before it closed down, but since makes delicious homemade cucumber sandwiches with a secret pesto sauce.

The anecdotes are spoken softly. Like kodachrome slides slotting into place of a carousel projector, they form a picture for Jennie rich and deep in colour with sharp, vivid details of their time apart. What were only rough images Lisa had shared back in New York gain greater vibrancy now screened in the very city where they originate.

Told with such saturated specificity, it almost makes Jennie forget that she wasn’t there to experience all of this with Lisa. Almost.

Lisa’s next revelation foregrounds Jennie’s absence and gives context to that glassy look Jennie noted when they first arrived in front of Gay’s. The subject comes up at the tail end of a discussion about Lisa’s adjustment to English life.

“I was angry for awhile. When I first came here, I hated—” Lisa cuts off, searching, eyes cloudy and lips thinning in thought.

Me. Jennie thinks.

Lisa must read the obvious conclusion arrived at because she shakes her head, quelling the quiet tempest of guilt before it has a chance to brew.

“No, I didn’t hate you Jennie. I hated how, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t not see you in everything. Parks were especially a no go zone because it reminded me too much of college and home and all those times we spent on campus lawns or under the willows in Prospect.”

An apology is on the tip of Jennie’s tongue but doesn’t leave it because her gaze is subsequently directed north to where Lisa points to a cluster of branches above them. They sway lightly at the sudden attention.

“Those became my strategy for coping.”

“The leaves?” Jennie frowns, not yet grasping her meaning.

Nodding, Lisa makes a vague overhead gesture before returning her hand to Jennie’s stomach to resume her scratching pattern.

“That’s where my thoughts of you have been collecting, amongst those branches. It was the one hour of day I allowed myself to think of you. To miss you. At first, it was the only way I could enter a park again and well, not break down. I’d sit here and talk to the tree out loud, tell it everything that I couldn’t say to you.”

Clearing the cobwebs from her memory triggers Lisa to squeeze Jennie’s hand, an involuntary action that Jennie reciprocates by lifting her head up to offer an intimate reminder that she’s here now. Both forget the bet completely as Lisa dips down and lets Jennie draw her in. The kiss grounds them. Soft and slow. Jennie takes fastidious care to attenuate the intensity of hurt caused by past absences. Small, soothing nips and gentle movements of tongue evidence just how present Jennie currently is in Lisa’s life.

“Did the tree talk back?” Jennie quips when the cramp in her neck from the awkward position hampers the kiss’s progress. She resettles her head in Lisa’s lap after leaving a final peck to the underside of her jaw.

Lisa exhales a breathy laugh, the airy sound a light contrast to the weight of her disclosure, which months or even weeks ago might have set them back, but thankfully they are since in a better place to bear its gravity.

“I must’ve looked like a hobo to passersby having a one-sided conversation. But yeah, it did help, and eventually, I looked forward to coming here and chatting it up with Woody.”

“You named the tree Woody?” Jennie chuckles.

“We had such treemendous chemistree that I made him an honorary member of the Manoban clan. Woody Manoban.”

Lisa looks so delighted by her own cleverness that Jennie doesn’t bother putting too much force behind her groan. Instead, she sits up and rearranges her limbs until her legs hang over Lisa’s lap and her arms hook around Lisa’s neck.

“It’s unbeleafable that I ever fell fir such a pineing mess.” Jennie joins in on the pun fun.

Lisa’s fondness for dirt and bark and all things coniferous is something Jennie will likely never grasp, but by the viridescent light of amused eyes reflecting back, a fondness for evergreen is easy to comprehend.

The answering kiss, not soft or slow, presses upon Jennie just how entirely credible the falling is.

—

It’s an indefinite falling that continues through to lunch where nature’s green is exchanged for the man-made greys of the Barbican. Lisa follows through on her in-flight promise to take Jennie to the concrete Brutalist building.

Perched on stools in the canteen at the bar of its open kitchen, Jennie listens with rapt wonder as she picks at their shared wood-fired pizza while Lisa picks up on her small talk. Nothing of their interaction feels small or unimportant though. With legs hooked at the ankle and one set of hands entangled, their bric-a-brac conversation pours forth like the IPAs steadily emptying. So entwined, their connection is not unlike the rebuilding of the vast grounds on which the art centre and estate towers sit. Although on a smaller, personal scale, it is no less staggering in impact.

(Jennie’s attention flits between the animation of Lisa’s eyes and the view out to the courtyard pond and fountains.)

There’s a material severity to the architecture that only an architect or concrete enthusiast can fully appreciate, but Jennie nonetheless gobbles up all the tidbits Lisa provides while they eat, an elaboration of the building’s history she had brought up on their tour of the various facilities. The tale of regeneration after a devastating postwar flattening of the land resonates with their own story. The possibility to start anew and create something of greater significance out of ruins.

Two pale ales and too much parmesan later, the sense of renewal reaches a magnitude that stretches well beyond the Centre’s doors. While the sun shines bright outside, the afternoon becomes something of a starry night inside when they catch a matinee of the Cielo documentary Lisa had briefed her about on the plane.

The Barbican’s cinema is mostly empty but for some stray viewers dotting its plush theatre seating. Curled together in the last row, engulfed in darkness, it feels like they are the only ones in this planetary system.

As Jennie watches Lisa watch the screen, absorbed in the narrator‘s description of how in the Atacama Desert, Chile the sky is more urgent than land, all she can feel is the urgency of holding Lisa’s hand more than breathing. The hour and a half should have been spent in cinematic reverie on the mythic beauty of the night sky, contemplating the stars that are locked in sight of the astronomical observatories and that have captured the imaginations of the desert dwellers toiling under their brilliance. Yet, Jennie’s gaze has not faltered from Lisa’s illuminated profile, her sense of wonder instead narrowed to the thumb that circles her own in soft movements and the squeeze of their hands in contagious excitement whenever a shooting star travels across the screen.

On any other day, the breathtaking sight of arid land consumed by the galaxies that roam above would prompt an existential query into the immensity of the universe, but in this moment, her thoughts aren’t with the planet hunters or the astrophysicists. In the smallness of Lisa’s touch, concentrated to tingling effect where their palms make contact, Jennie only has the capacity to ponder the infinite and unknown of the love she still holds for Lisa after all these years.

Immeasurable and cosmic.

“You are my entire universe.”

Lisa’s eyes haven’t left the screen, no indication that her gaze isn’t on the constellations before her nor that any sounds have left her mouth. Far from the sun, the astronomer informs, at three times the distance from the Earth to the sun, a comet’s nucleus is quiet and bare, nearly invisible. Jennie might have imagined hearing Lisa’s words, traveling undetected like the quiet nucleus, had she not been so keenly paying attention to the curve of her mouth.

But they are there. They exist as tangible as the motes of air held in suspension by the projector’s light.

It feels like an incredible responsibility. To gather up the dust of Lisa’s words, keep their dispersal contained. To hang onto their weightlessness, safe from gravity’s purpose.

Jennie looks down at their clasped hands, fingers entwined. She lifts them to lay a gentle kiss and quietly acknowledge the second, unasked part of Lisa’s admission.

You are my entire universe. Let me be yours.

Acceptance is given in the form of a hand to the back of Lisa’s neck and Jennie’s lips on hers. The night skies above the Andes mountains fall to the background as they spend the last minutes of the film climbing a comparable height, drifting between the unknowable expanse of slow, sublime kisses and the familiar aesthetic experience of seeing stars erupting behind closed eyelids.

—

The date closes out with a walk along Westminster Pier after a capsule ride on the London Eye. The night sky had come alive in a different way with a 360° degree view of the Thames and the cityscape flanking either side of its riverbanks.

It was so incredibly cliché they ended up doing the most touristy thing after a day of bespoke Lisa things. The ‘landmarks’ they’ve visited—the bookshop, Woody, the Gandhi statue, and the Barbican—were more than sufficient for Jennie to cross off the list as London sights for history, nature, art and culture, but Lisa wanted to conclude their evening giving her a heightened experience of the city. A summit view of its eclectic architecture.

Yet, as much of an exhilaration as it was seeing London from a privileged vantage point of a giant, moving observation wheel, that wasn’t the full circle Jennie came to appreciate once they disembarked.

As they now sit on a bench across from Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Lisa’s arm around her shoulder and a paper plate of fish and chips between them, Jennie’s thoughts turn to the sketch and letter she had produced near this spot last year.

It’s almost surreal that what she had imagined in drawing is here manifest. The reality of being pressed into Lisa’s side, wrapped in a warmth that has little to do with their laps being covered by a Jack Union-emblazoned blanket Lisa had purchased from the souvenir kiosk next to the food truck.

Unlike the summer before, she’s no longer enviously watching other couples and aching for a girl. Instead, her heart beats steady watching her girl saving the crispier potato cuts and putting aside the flakier morsels of cod for her. Jennie warms further at the thoughtfulness. It takes coordinated effort to eat one-handed, but the compromise is worth the itinerant tingles produced by Lisa’s brushing thumb and her near-dopey smiles.

Jennie can’t rein in the curl of her own lips either, not with the meaningful difference between this outing and their ‘date’ by Hudson pier at The One That Cod Away. Ineludible, inevitable. How they return to each other, time and distance notwithstanding.

Their greasy dinner done, the day finally catches up to Jennie. She lays her head on Lisa’s shoulder.

“Worst date ever,” she yawns into the curve of Lisa’s neck. Her deadpan is clear in the gentle way she squeezes Lisa’s thigh.

Rather than scoff or make any other noises of dissent, Lisa simply kisses the top of her head, and sounds completely genuine when she replies, “Mhm, I’ll try to do better next time.”

They sit in soothing silence for an extended length, the world shrinking and contracting until there are fewer boats on the water, less pedestrians on the bridges, and the roads become blurry streaks of red buses and black cabs.

The clock tower is under renovations, Lisa had informed her, so Big Ben temporarily doesn’t chime, though the iron dials do still function, the hour hand ticking towards twelve. The silence is fittingly symbolic.

Time crawls to a near standstill and if Jennie could make it jump backwards for a moment to a year ago, she would return to tell her former self—the lonely figure standing at the river’s edge—that everything would be okay. That she, they, would be okay.

“Because ...” Lisa draws her attention back to the present, unknowingly confirming the future.

The sky this north of the Atacama Desert has little of its overhead brilliance but Jennie’s gaze is aurora-filled nonetheless when she looks up into Lisa’s eyes.

“Hmm?”

“Quoting the great poet Swift, I want all your midnights.”

Jennie dozes off on the tube ride home, and it’s not until she wakes up contentedly dazed in Lisa’s bed the next morning, bracketed by protective arms, does she kiss a belated reply into Lisa’s skin, “and sunrises too.”

—

“Your hair!” They both exclaim. Then take turns drinking in the view.

“You cut it?!” “You coloured it?!”

Jennie opens the door wider, taking the flowers from Lisa’s hands and letting her inside her own apartment.

It had been Lisa’s idea they spend the afternoon apart and reunite later in the evening for Minnie’s party. In a reversal of role of when Jennie was wooing her in New York, Lisa had insisted on “picking” Jennie up like a proper date.

The flowers are quickly deposited into a vase so Jennie can return to gawking at the gorgeous set of legs making their way deeper into the living room.

“You look amazing.”

Jennie doesn’t register Lisa’s compliment because she’s too busy with her own admiration. Lisa is wearing a rose-tinted, off-white dress. The loose and light fabric flows from a high waistline with a halter neck finish displaying bare shoulders and the hint of collarbones. The wide armholes expose Lisa’s ribs and dip low enough for a peripheral view of her abs. They are also the best case Jennie has come across for making a glimpse of sideboob a mandatory feature of all dresses.

But it’s her hair that is keeping Jennie’s mouth agape. Long fingers self-consciously weave through the gorgeous mane. The new highlights turn loose curls into a lighter brown, closer to a blonde colour, giving Lisa a youthful, summer glow that’s accentuated by a blush deepening from Jennie’s sustained attention. Her tan skin stands out against the pale palette.

Jennie can’t help it. She simply looks stunning.

“Wow.”

“You like?”

Lisa twirls in show, the dress billowing out like dreamy clouds floating across the sky of Jennie’s dress. Jennie had opted for the stalwart colour knowing how much Lisa enjoys the way it complements her eyes. Any thoughts of cerulean or azure are whited out, however, when the short hem length lifts to reveal a touch of lace against creamy skin.

Jennie has half a mind to abandon their evening plans and spend it relearning colour theory by shades of blue and purple she would stain into the surfaces of those thighs.

“I love,” she answers and steps forward, one hand combing through Lisa’s hair and the other looping through the dress’s opening to wrap around her waist, “both.” Then, as it’s become increasing habit to openly express since their talk, she casually and contentedly appends, “I love you.”

Eyes sparkled in response, Lisa properly greets her by locking their lips. Jennie’s returned, “Hello,” faintly falls out of her mouth and into the breathy sigh after the kiss ends.

In turn, Lisa takes the opportunity afforded by their new closeness to play with Jennie’s hair, which now sits just above shoulder length.

“It’s short,” Lisa concludes the obvious.

“It is.” Given the changes of late, Jennie thought a physical one would be an apt marker, which perhaps similar to Lisa’s reasoning, something lighter to reflect the new lightness of hearts. “You like?” She parrots.

Lisa studies her, eyes falling from the fringe ends towards Jennie’s chest where the shorter length no longer covers. “I love,” Lisa stresses by trailing her fingers down the V opening of Jennie’s top. She isn’t looking at Jennie’s face, her gaze intently downwards, when the sentence finishes, “how it really brings out your best features.”

Jennie’s half scold, half laugh is lost to the fingers slipping under the cup of her bra, grazing her nipple. Her eyes close and tongue pokes out at the feathery sensation. The pressure is too light for how her breasts begin to ache in need.

After their event-filled date, too exhausted to do much with the spare day in between than lounging on the sofa, their sexual activities had also taken a backseat. Set aside in favour of stillness. The recovery time was spent in various states of recline, with noses in books and sketchpads, Jennie lining the latter with figural impressions of Lisa reviewing the former.

Outside of taking breaks for naps and Lisa’s failed attempt to introduce Jennie to beans on toast, they had stayed sentinel in their posts on either ends of the sofa, bodies curved around the other, movements slow and largely unshifting.

It was a day of quiet leisure, spent in contented silence of one another’s presence reassured through occasional hums and frequent tactile communication. A brush of leg, the run of fingers along skin or through hair, kisses to a knee or shoulder.

The hours passed with as much purpose as Jennie’s strokes intended. She outlined the shape of lips and the curve of jaw, divided attention between the minor swell of cheeks and the high arch of brows. Dedicated pages to the length of legs.

Jennie’s scratches of pencil and Lisa’s intermittent reactions to the texts (porn) she was reading were all the noises made in the room. The quietness of the day carved out a pocket of domestic intimacy, putting a moratorium on the lustful one that had gripped them since landing.

But one summer dress and a change of hair colour are all that’s needed for Jennie’s desire to come roaring back. It never actually left, only temporarily laid dormant. Now more vocal, her body moans in complaint that Lisa is too gentle in attention.

The next sound Jennie makes occurs when Lisa falls to her knees, and her head ducks under the skirt of Jennie’s dress. Jennie staggers backwards in surprise but Lisa holds her in place by the back of her thighs.

“Do we have time?” She weakly questions even as she widens her stance, opening up more.

Instead of a direct answer, Lisa says, “This is for the London Eye.”

It takes a second for her words to click and for the images to come rushing back.

In the semi-private capsule, Jennie had slipped a hand into her shorts. Lisa had no time to protest before she was being stroked towards a sneaky orgasm that the other two couple occupants were too busy with their respective makeout sessions to notice. The way Lisa was angled, with her back leaned against the glass and front covered by Jennie, had concealed their activity and facilitated Jennie’s boldness. It hadn’t taken long before Lisa took flight only some metres above the Thames.

Jennie’s paying now for her impulsivity then, welcoming Lisa’s form of sweet, torturous revenge. It causes Jennie’s knees to buckle. Her underwear gets rolled down her thighs agonisingly slow, a lack of speed for which Lisa makes up seconds later by the enthusiasm of her mouth.

It takes core muscles Jennie doesn’t have to stay upright when Lisa’s tongue parts her lower lips and draws a line up the full sweep of her to her clit.

Lisa repeats a few times before she finger-fucks Jennie into a fugue state. They slide through the slickness with little effort while her mouth sucks on the throbbing clit, occasionally circling then flicking it with the tip of her tongue.

Jennie gets a chance to really admire Lisa’s new highlights from this top view, showing her appreciation with desperate tugging of the tresses.

The soft slurping sounds rising up are incongruent to the vision of white and pink beneath, the skirt of Lisa’s dress spread out prettily in cascading ruffles. The visual and aural dissonance turns Jennie on even more. She might be on track to beating Lisa’s record on the ferris wheel.

“God, baby, I’m so close.”

Lisa seems to know it intuitively, increasing her attention to each over-stimulated area. A third finger is added, as is a twisting motion when the new fullness slams against Jennie’s inner walls. Lisa pumps and curls her fingers as much as her tongue drags out the cries their actions incite.

“Fuck, Lisa!” Jennie’s grip of her head tightens. She’s practically riding Lisa’s face at this point. “Holy, fuck. I’m gonna ...”

But just as her orgasm nears, Jennie finally gets a delayed answer for her already-forgotten timetable inquiry.

“No, we don’t have time.”

Jennie stands speechless—and in all kinds of denial—of everything that happens next. In reverse order, Lisa brusquely withdraws, pulls up her underwear, just as slowly as earlier, kisses it lightly once back in place and rights her skirt. She leaves Jennie shell-shocked for short minutes before returning with a plucked flower that she tucks behind Jennie’s ear, mirroring the one she has also put into her own hair.

Jennie tastes herself as Lisa kisses her into a further stupor, a hand returning to meanly and mercilessly thumb Jennie’s nipple until it burns like a forest fire screaming for release.

“We’re going to be late,” Lisa says once she pulls back and makes sure to have Jennie’s eye contact as she sucks on her fingers, “and I’m hungry.”

Jennie’s jaw is already on the floor so it can’t drop any farther. A pat on her chest is the only consoling she receives, along with the trailing words, “Manoban 1, Kim 0,” before she watches the back of Lisa in all her prettiness exit the door.

The room goes silent except for the roaring in Jennie’s ears and the pounding between her legs.

Too worked up to let a good orgasm go, and even while a plan for payback is formulating, Jennie begrudgingly finishes Lisa’s abandoned job for her. Some purposeful thrusts and a thumb press later, she’s crying loud enough to almost miss the laughter flitting in the hallway. It’s nowhere near as satisfying as Lisa’s fingers or tongue but sufficiently effective to momentarily quell the burning.

“I wouldn’t look so smug.”

Jennie forewarns her date downstairs, who’s holding the door open to the awaiting black cab.

Before getting in, she trails a hand down the length of Lisa’s dress, drawing both their attention to the short hem. “You might regret certain choices later.”

Her remark is met with blown pupils and the curve of lips which interpret the veiled threat as more reward than retribution.

Once they both settle into the backseat, Lisa leans into her ear. A puff of warm breath causes Jennie to shudder as she waits for the anticipated response to her challenge.

Instead, Lisa wins handily before the driver has even started the ignition. “I could never regret you.”

—

“It’s gorgeous in here,” Jennie exhales. “You didn’t tell me Minnie was royalty.”

Making their way inside of Kew Gardens, her artist’s gaze hasn’t stopped moving. Her vision spoiled with choice. She and Lisa are among the first ones to arrive, not at all late, giving Jennie time to slow down and smell the literal roses. The sun is still out, waning but persistent in cover, washing the botanical garden in hues of soft light belonging to a woodland reverie of a fairytale kingdom. They’ve walked into an Alice in Wonderland painting.

Lisa chuckles beside her, squeezing their held hands. “Not quite. Minnie did the interiors of the Orangery’s renovation. The client group was so pleased with how it turned out they happily offered to host her event here.”

When they reach the venue, an elegant 18th century building with high ceilings and grand, arched windows, Jennie is impoverished for words. The richness of colours she’s tried to commit to memory since the gate entrance has bled to the inside of the restaurant where white linens and gold-dusted chairs play second to the variety of petals and blooms. She lamely repeats, “It’s gorgeous.”

She can see why Lisa and Minnie are friends. Flowers. Everywhere.

On table tops, hanging from above, in guests’ hair and pinned to suit lapels. Lisa’s earlier gesture now makes sense. Jennie brings a hand up to her hair to ensure her white lily is still in place.

“You’d think it’s a wedding and not just an engagement,” Jennie observes as Lisa helps her to secure the flower more firmly. She returns the favour and primps Lisa’s hair. Distracted by the general enchantment of the atmosphere and the specific plumpness of Lisa’s lips this close, Jennie is voicing another thought aloud without the benefit of filtering, “I’ve got to sell more paintings if ours ever stands a chance of competing.”

Before Jennie can panic at her slip Lisa tugs her towards the direction of the reception area where a queue has already formed. “Come on,” she urges, thankfully preoccupied with her own distraction, “Minnie says it’s open seating. I don’t want to be stuck at a table with Aunt Layla.”

Jennie is given little time to ponder who or why when they find themselves in front of a beaming Minnie beside who Jennie assumes can only be Rian by the intimacy of their tight hold. A copy of her and Lisa.

“Save it for the wedding.” Lisa’s greeting is met with dismissal by Minnie who ungently pushes her aside to excitedly draw Jennie into a hug.

“Forgot to comb your hair?” Minnie looks at Lisa suspiciously, and Jennie wants to dig a hole when the follow up question is directed at her, “or did the couch fight back this time?”

“Why do I need to look good? Something special tonight?” Lisa’s quip draws attention away from both their blushes.

“Bloody rude. Really dodged a bullet with that one, didn’t I?”

Jennie chuckles then smiles warmly at the second pair of brown eyes giving them an amused but curious look at the exchange.

“Speaking of actual manners, Jennie, I’d like to introduce you to my fiancée, Rian.” Minnie then turns with an adoring glint to her betrothed, “Honey, this is Lisa’s better three quarters, Jennie.”

Lisa’s ‘Hey!’ is ignored by the trio as Jennie reaches her hand out. Rian is also a hugger apparently, bypassing the outstretched arm to wrap hers around Jennie’s shoulders.

“I’m at least a third,” Jennie hears Lisa grumble under her breath before she too folds the brides-to-be into a double hug.

“I haven’t known Lisa that long but I’m glad there’s someone else now to help me balance these two.”

Rian’s lilt is lighter than Minnie’s, her patter and gestures generally more subdued, but Jennie finds the whole package equally as charming. She can understand their mutual attraction.

“Congratulations to you both,” Jennie offers on her girlfriend’s behalf. After placing their gift bag on the table, Lisa has since busied herself engaging with the adorable little helpers in charge of organising the rising stack.

Dressed in identical burnt-pink shirts and cinnamon brown short trousers with white knee-high socks, the pair complement the colour scheme of Minnie’s dress and Rian’s suit.

Going by height, they seem to be about two years older than Tyro. Lisa lets go of her hand to bend down and give each of the two boys some coins she pulls out of seemingly nowhere.

“You’ve gotten so tall, and you look very smart,” Lisa combs back errant hairs of one twin while her other hand fixes a crooked bowtie of the second. Their faces light up at the praise but then take on a competitive edge when she questions who’s the smarter one. They jostle for her attention with stories of school yard feats.

“My nephews are in love with her,” Minnie shares as Jennie watches on.

With the way Jennie’s heart hasn’t stopped its rate of beating since the apartment incident and their impromptu makeout session on the ride over, her agreement is instant, “Can’t really blame them.”

“Min, I don’t think you have enough flowers,” Lisa decides when she rejoins Jennie’s side, turning her head and leading all their gazes around the room’s extravagance.

“Mum’s insistence,” Minnie explains with a wave of her hand. “She vetoed Dad’s choice of ‘reasonably priced houseplants and be done with’.”

Rian chimes in with an amused shake of her head, though a genuine flash of fear behind her eyes. “I’m scared for what the actual wedding will look like.” She raises an eyebrow at Minnie, “Eloping to the islands not such a bad idea now, is it?”

“Only if you’d want to live with mother-in-law disappointment for eternity. Not the type of forever to be invested in, darling.”

“That is actually terrifying. Your mother and eternity should never be in the same sentence.” Rian’s fake shudder is met with a fake scowl but no attempt at denial by Minnie.

“Anyways, it’s beautiful,” Lisa interrupts the private argument. Jennie concurs with a nod, adding, “You both look beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Rian accepts with a warm smile. “You too.”

On noticing the increasing number of well-wishers patiently waiting behind them, Minnie directs Jennie and Lisa to grab their seats. “We’ll come say a proper hello later,” she promises after another hug, and reminds over her shoulder as they walk away arm in arm, “And that dance, Jennie.”

The night turns out as luminous as the lantern decorations and the candle-lit paper art at the centre of each table. Jennie eats merrily, enjoying the company of their fellow guests with the privilege of Lisa’s hand never leaving her. On the small of her back when she’s being proudly introduced to friends and family; on her thigh during dinner when Lisa’s excitement brims over salt-crusted sea bream on a bed of smoked almonds and char-grilled bok choy greens; at the back of her neck as fingers play with her baby hairs while they listen to stories of Minnie and Rian.

But it’s Jennie’s new haircut that motivates Lisa’s sustained attentiveness, and the reason for the constant presence of butterflies in Jennie’s stomach throughout the five course meal. Light kisses to her head and finger strokes of the strands cause a fluttering warmth that has little to do with her steady alcohol consumption.

Between dessert and the changeover of the tables to make room for a dance floor, they sneak a walk outside around the garden paths. Lisa takes her towards the Conservatory, promising to return some other time when Jennie can have greater, longer, appreciation of the succulents, then onto the Rose Garden and the field of lilacs before looping back to the restaurant.

They spend long minutes absorbed in each other’s lips under the plumes of white and pink clouds—a perfect match of Lisa’s aesthetic—while hands quietly roam that want to do more than their public setting would allow.

They don’t have to wait long before opportunity and happenstance present itself and Jennie gets her chance to even the score.

Less cruel than her paramour, Jennie allows Lisa to come when she fucks her behind an off-trail garden shed they stumble across where their incorrigible kissing led them astray.

“You have to be quiet, ok?”

Jennie instructs and then slips her hand under Lisa’s dress.

“Jennie,” Lisa warns, eyes widening in alarm but also arousal as her hand wraps around Jennie’s wrist, indecisive whether to push forward or away. “Someone will see.”

Jennie dismisses her concern, having already weighed the risk of public sex. The bush in front of them and the shed behind provide enough visual obstruction that she thinks they’ll be able to get away with some handsy fun.

Jennie’s darkening eyes must make her intention explicit she will proceed undeterred regardless of audience, because the follow-up protest dies on Lisa’s tongue while the hold on her hand relaxes.

“How long do we have?” Jennie asks in a teasing whisper, fingers lowering just enough to skate over Lisa’s underwear before slowly dragging through to test the give of fabric. She strokes a couple of times, earning throaty hums of approval. “You have a speech to make, right?”

“Who cares,” Lisa dismisses in response, newly accepting her fate. Going by the crack in her voice, she is fully on board, and when Jennie palms her sex more forcefully, it croaks, “Minnie and I aren’t really that close. But I wish her all the best.”

Jennie laughs and begins rubbing with greater purpose. By the wetness that greets her, she thinks she can get Lisa off in less time than it’ll take for Lisa to raise her glass in toast.

“Quiet, ok,” Jennie reiterates.

Lisa practically knocks their heads together when Jennie pushes her underwear aside and slides through her folds directly.

She angles for a desperate kiss, which Jennie gladly swallows to muffle her moans. Long minutes are lost to a kind of inebriation that lends more to liquid heat than distilled liquor. The taste of Lisa’s wine and the scent of her arousal  is as intoxicating as the florals under Jennie’s nose. But when the speed picks up, Lisa opts to suck on Jennie’s neck instead of her tongue, mouthing the corresponding whine into her skin and leaving a bruise that will definitely require creative hair placement later to hide.

Given the awkward position, Jennie is only able to slip in one finger but it nonetheless is more than enough stimulation because Lisa bites down hard on her shoulder. Jennie ignores the sting to persevere with pushing and curling.

Wetness follows her every move.

With their bodies pressed together as such rattling against the metal shed and Jennie’s finger reaching deep, their heady sidetrack has all the momentum and grace of a freight train derailment.

“Jennie,” is bruised deeper into her shoulder when she manages to slide in a second finger. The desperation breaking across her name has Jennie involuntarily pushing hard against Lisa’s thigh, spreading herself over the tight muscle in search of friction. For a moment, she forgets the larger objective and is shortly grinding in frantic rhythm with her hand’s movements. When her brain clues in to her body’s sidetracked activity, with only mild reluctance she refocuses on the main mission.

There’s a point Jennie needs to make and the sooner she does the sooner she can level the playing field of smugness, regaining some of the power that’s so easily lost to the curve of Lisa’s pout.

It doesn’t take more than an increase of speed and a slight change of angle to earn a pre-flight warning of Lisa’s impending orgasm. Her walls tighten as does her grip on Jennie’s waist. Jennie’s breath hitches at how her fingers are pulled in to the knuckle.

The telltale signs give way. Jennie lifts Lisa’s chin, the wretched look confirms it for her. She connects their mouths again. Her timing is impeccable as the kiss serves to mute Lisa’s cry.

Under the cover of a darkening sky and with some distance from other passersby, Jennie is able to turn Lisa into a mewling, begging mess by the time she’s rubbing her clit with intense abandon. So much so that it’s easy afterwards for her to walk away with Lisa’s panties.

“Jennie, you can’t,” Lisa hisses once she finally catches up to where Jennie has rejoined the garden path, “my dress is really short.”

“Sounds like your problem.” Jennie laughs at Lisa’s new funny walk, something between a stuttered jog and hopping. Since Lisa had stolen her orgasm in the apartment, open air larceny seems only fair. Being robbed of coming is the bigger crime, anyways. She does kindly save her ‘I told you so’ about Lisa making poor choices, finding an adequate amount of amusement instead watching desperate hands pulling the bottom hem taut. Though, she can’t help taunting, “You better hope there’s not a strong breeze tonight.”

As if timed perfectly, a small gust of wind rushed between them that Lisa shrieked to keep the fabric and her dignity from fluttering away.

Lisa’s huffing and cursing accompanies them back to the Orangery, which glows a candescent orange from the interior lighting now that the sun has finally let go of its copper hold of the sky.

—

Minnie does keep her word on their return after a quick wash up in the public stalls,  immediately snatching Jennie from Lisa for a dance. Her girlfriend stays back at their table, sitting with legs firmly crossed and looking on with equally a glare and a smitten smile across bruise-kissed lips.

Jennie tries to be present for her dance partner as they spin to the sounds of the slow jazz band. Her mind, however, stubbornly remains on the silent scream she swallowed when Lisa gushed into her hand, thoughts staying on the lace garment in her dress pocket and how soaked it was when she retrieved it off the ground. Her feet move automatically to the music, while her imagination builds anticipation for hearing Lisa’s uncensored cries later out of earshot of Minnie and her guests.

“That hair of hers is never going to be the same again, is it?”

Minnie’s question pulls Jennie back into their easy movements.

“Sorry?”

“You and Lisa,” Minnie smiles, amusement residing in the corner of her eyes.

Jennie has the decency not to deny, especially when both their gazes land on Lisa’s partially dishevelled look. Dress sporting wrinkles plainly additional to its original design, hair decidedly having more volume on one side than the other.

(Lisa had spent the five minutes while Jennie rinsed her hands prioritising finding a solution to her panty problem—and coming up empty-handed—than tending to her just-fucked appearance.)

Internally, Jennie’s pride swells at being the cause of that wrecking. Externally, she tampers her reaction to something more subdued.

“Um, yeah,” Jennie admits sheepishly at first but then embraces the obviousness of their activities with a gamely shrug, “Making up for lost time.”

Minnie smiles again. Easy and warm. They chat amicably about the party’s success and the good time everyone seems to be enjoying. On noticing the constant drift of Jennie’s eyes across the room, Minnie’s gaze turns thoughtful a moment later.

“I must admit, it was fairly evident from the start that I never had a chance,” Minnie confides, diving right in and sounding the most serious since they’ve met. Jennie has an inkling where this conversation is heading. “Lisa and I initially bonded because of our shared broken hearts. Mine was difficult but in some ways easier to get over and it led me to Rian. But something told me that Lisa’s pieces weren’t meant to be put back together by someone other than the person who did the breaking in the first place.”

Jennie nods, a small lump forming in her throat. She stays quiet to let Minnie continue. This is more than she’s heard from Lisa, who had left out details of their relationship that verged on anything remotely romantic between them. Jennie knew only as a generalisation that they worked better as friends.

“We became good mates so I wasn’t torn over something not meant to be. It was plainly obvious she was holding out, even if the utter sap was unwilling to admit it. Lisa held onto hope, however thin the thread was. A part of her couldn’t truly move on until she found closure with you.”

“I know the feeling.”

“She was already thinking it but I urged her to take the New York stint.”

“Thank you,” Jennie whispers, eyes glistening that she hadn’t expected from this revisit of the past. Her gaze darts to Lisa who has since been distracted by a three-tier stand of egg tarts, mini cakes and ice cream sandwiches. She’s engaged in an apparent contest with the twins to overstuff their mouths with sugary goodness.

“It was all very routine for her the first month there. Settling in, diving into the project. She’d ring me with insignificant updates about work and American bagels. But then, the call I got after she visited your gallery in January,” Minnie pauses, slowing their dance to a near stop to regain Jennie’s full attention. She looks deeply into Jennie’s eyes once they tear away from the subject of their chat. “I just knew.”

A shallow swallow aside, Jennie does her best to keep her emotion in check as Minnie finishes her thought. “The way she talked of your one painting and of being in the same room with you again, I just knew that she wasn’t going to come back to London. Not permanently anyways. I don’t think she was even aware of it, not yet.”

“I never expected to see her again and not like that,” Jennie shares, contributing more actively now to their heart-to-heart. “She looked so guarded that night but god, also, just incredible too. It took about a week before my heart started to slow down.”

Jennie divulges new details about that first meeting while Minnie gives an account of Lisa’s side of things and how not put-together she’d been despite appearances otherwise. They trade anecdotes of Lisa’s typical stoicism and its occasional failings.

“It’s been a long road but I’m really glad she gave me a chance.”

“I’m glad she did too. The moping was getting honestly excessive. There’s only so much Enya a person can handle,” Minnie quips. “Who can say how much longer I would’ve survived the yearning before I buried Lisa in her own gaping void.”

Jennie laughs again, charmed by Minnie’s affability. Then, on a quieter note, “Thank you for being there for her,” she expresses her gratitude again, genuinely grateful for Minnie in Lisa’s life. She keeps the tail end of her thought, when I couldn’t be, to herself. Far from seeing Minnie as a placeholder, Jennie still harbours lingering guilt for her absence. She is indebted to Minnie for being a source of comfort when Lisa was hurting, when Jennie was the one responsible for her pain and that void. It led the way for the three of them to be together in the same room on this summer’s night, something that had seemed so outside of the realm of possibility last winter. “Thanks for having me here.”

“No, thank you for coming tonight,” Minnie offers, congenial, though not without poking fun. “You did me a favour. I doubt I could get Lisa to come without you.”

“I swear we’re not usually like this.”

Minnie laughs heartily, clearly not believing Jennie’s hopeless denial of their sexual proclivity, which only works to increase the heat of Jennie’s blush. Not entirely unsympathetic to their plight, Minnie allows, “I get it, though. Make up sex definitely has its appeal. I can understand it’d be hard to resist those eyes.”

Before Jennie’s face can flame to a startling colour, Minnie goes on a tangent, “I love Rian. Very much. And I know she feels the same about me too. At least I hope so because tonight would’ve been really awkward if not,” she laughs at her own joke. Her continued light tone, however, belies the weight of her next observation, “But watching you and Lisa this evening, I’m extraordinarily lucky if Rian looks at me the way Lisa looks at you.”

Jennie shakes her head, not believing it to be the case having caught Rian’s plainly adoring gaze on several occasions.

“In her own way, she does, certainly,” Minnie qualifies before Jennie can refute, and then contends, “It’s different with Lisa. Those damn eyes. If you don’t mind me saying, they really knocked me off my feet when we met.”

“Same here,” Jennie confirms the shared effect, though in her experience, it was a literal collision meeting Lisa and encountering her most striking feature for the first time. “Still do,” she tacks on, more a mumble to herself than anything.

“I’ve only known Lisa a fraction of the time you have, but all these years, tonight is the the most brilliant I’ve ever seen them.”

Jennie recalls the dullness of green from their gallery interactions, how it struck her in a different, visceral way then. It pulls a sharp pang of her heart to think, of their entire friendship, Minnie hadn’t once come across the brilliance that Jennie was accustomed to seeing daily.

“She lights up around you. It’s awful and sickening.” Jennie’s eyes must brim with something similar, a mutual love, because Minnie squeezes her waist empathetically, a smile breaking her deadpan expression. Catching Lisa’s eye on the next turn, she shakes her head as if finding corroborating evidence that only reinforces her point, “Yup, that look.”

When Jennie gets a glimpse over Minnie’s shoulder, the hearteyes are in full, incriminating force. Whatever defence she had planned gets subsumed within their shine.

They fall into a companionable silence then, dancing quietly until Jennie reflects aloud, “This conversation is not what I was expecting.”

“You thought I’d threaten you with bodily harm?” Minnie asks, good-humoured. “You hurt her, I hurt you, sort of deal?”

“Given our history, I’d understand. I would have.”

It would make sense for someone close to Lisa to be protective. Jennie and Rosé’s entire relationship is centred on this premise, though she’d never actually gotten ‘the talk’, it’s always been heavily implied. (After their breakup, it turned out Rosé’s form of protection—the silent treatment—hurt Jennie more than any sucker punch would have.)

“God, no. I value my life,” Minnie overdramatises, elaborating, “If I touched a bloody hair on you, Lisa would decimate me,” and flinches exaggeratedly at the imaginary beating. “While these knobby knees are quite advantageous in close-quarter combat, your girlfriend likes to exercise for fun .” She emphasises her clear distaste with air quotes. “Have you seen her abs?”

Jennie certainly has and the bite of her lip tells Minnie as much of how intimately acquainted she is with Lisa’s lower body strength.

“She could take me down while doing a sit-up. No, thank you. I’m an unapologetic coward,” Minnie admits without shame. Then on further thought, adds, “But I guess I wouldn’t be doing my best mate duty if I’d failed to inform you, as a Brit, I particularly excel at passive aggression. Don’t underestimate how deadly lethal subtext and sarcasm can be.”

Jennie laughs at the prospect of being incapacitated by polite insult. “Duly noted.”

“May we cut in?”

They both turn to find their significant others waiting, each with a respective look of patent adoration.

The quartet happily swaps partners.

Once Jennie switches to Lisa’s arms, they sway away from the engaged couple, content to find a small intimate space far from the crowd.

“I’ve missed you,” Lisa says softly into her hair, completely genuine.

“Me too.”

As lovely as it was to have one on one time with Minnie, Jennie effectively swoons into Lisa’s hold, all tension leaking out once her body feels the solidness of her again. It’s ridiculous how disproportionately clingy she is relative to their short time apart—three whole songs—but Jennie doesn’t care as she grips Lisa’s shoulders tightly and sags into her chest.

“Everything ok?” Lisa asks, shifting to bear Jennie’s weight without hesitation.

“It is. All good.” Jennie smiles and gives her a kiss to reassure when Lisa doesn’t look fully convinced. But then, as they spin under the dreamy lighting and her conversation with Minnie sinks in, she turns her worry to Lisa’s emotional health. “Is this weird for you?”

Lisa cocks her head, amused. “I’ve done this before, you know. Move my feet rhythmically to music. Or do you mean dancing underwear-less with a beautiful girl? Because that’s somewhat but not entirely new.”

“No, being at an engagement party,” Jennie clarifies, hoping the hanging clause, that’s not ours, transmits.

“Ah,” Lisa’s face softens in understanding. “Well,” she replies after a short deliberation, “Minnie shouldn’t have cheapened out on the tiger prawns, they were more like kitten prawns. But otherwise, it’s been great.” She looks pensive for a moment then expands, “Except Aunt Layla. She winked at me and I don’t know why.”

Rather than fight the deflection, Jennie gives into Lisa’s lighthearted joking which works to calm her nerves over bringing up a difficult topic. “She’s been nothing but a lovely woman to me and gave some excellent pointers for a bhindi masala recipe.”

Lisa smiles, pleased, the okra curry something of a favourite of hers that she’d promised to treat Jennie to the best takeout in Banglatown, which is owned by Minnie’s paternal side of the family. But she must read the undertones nonetheless of Jennie’s question they are skirting around, because her expression sobers. Lisa fixes her a significant gaze, first on Jennie’s lips and beauty mark then searchingly into her eyes, giving the subject its due gravity.

Anyone else would shrink under the scrutiny, but Jennie is drawn into the depth of green.

“Besides feeling exposed, I’m good, babe,” Lisa says with absolute surety, the crinkle in her eyes supporting the sentiment. She kisses the top of Jennie’s head and hooks arms around the small of Jennie’s back, securing their connection. “So good.”

That’s all Jennie needs to hear to lay her head on Lisa’s shoulder. They move slowly together in comforting silence for awhile, an undefined foot pattern to a well-defined tune of gentle hums and protracted touches.

At one point, the band covers an Otis Reading classic. Their favourite. As the familiar notes hit, Jennie melts further into Lisa’s arms. Like her father’s old vinyl records, theirs is a grainy, scratched-in love, needle and groove making well-worn contact, moving as one to etch out a soulful, euphonious melody.

The casual observer might be forgiven for mistaking them as the couple of the night.

“I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” Lisa whispers in her ear as they sway. Her soft timbre picks up on the lyrics. “These arms of mine, they are burning, burning from wanting you ... ”

Jennie shivers as Lisa coos the verses, sending vibrations skating along the surface of her skin. Her desire to join in duet is overtaken by Lisa’s banter.

“I’m very hot for you, Jennie.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Mhmm-hmm.”

“Lis?”

“Hmm...”

“I love you.”

“You better,” Lisa replies once the song ends. Jennie can feel her smile without seeing it. “This dress cost a pretty pound at John Lewis.”

“It could be from the dollar store and I’d still love you.”

“That’s excellent news for someone who’ll soon become unemployed.” Lisa releases a put-upon sigh of relief. “Though your standards might change once I start smelling exactly like £1 shampoo.”

Jennie takes a sniff of the fragrant, probably expensive, haircare product. “You’re right. I’ll miss vanilla extract with a hint of coconu—”

She cuts herself off when her eyes zero in on the shimmer she hadn’t noticed before in their preoccupation with other things. This close to Lisa’s skin, it’s no longer missable.

“You’re so extra!”

Jennie laughs into her neck, the sound doubling in volume when Lisa justifies, without a hint of irony, “I wanted to shine for you.”

“Glitter, Lisa?”

Now that she sees it, Jennie can’t unsee it. It’s everywhere. Lisa sparkles. Like she’s the star of one of those teen vampire movies.

Just as an answering pout forms in defence, they catch Minnie and Rian’s inquisitive looks. Jennie’s laughter must have carried across the room.

“Hey, want me to beat her up?” Lisa stage whispers while waving innocently to the pair.

“Who?”

“Minnie.” She gives a tight-lipped smile to her friend, eyes narrowing. Her thumb brushes off the wetness of Jennie’s lashes, leftover from earlier unshed tears Jennie hadn’t realised were still there. “Did she cause this?”

Jennie shakes her head and downplays, “Just something in my eye.” You.

“You sure? Because if it’s anything like Luke Onew and dodgeball again...”

“Then what?”

“No one makes Jennie Kim cry and live to see another fist-less day from Lisa Manoban.”

Lisa looks to be seizing Minnie up, muttering something about sharp elbows, that only causes Jennie to laugh more.

“She did threaten me with some odd form of colonial violence. But no, not necessary. I can fight my own battles,” Jennie asserts and then instructs, “Please keep your hands to yourself.”

“Or,” Lisa teases, the corner of her lips curling in nothing but terrible intentions, “I can keep them to you,” and promptly palms the soft swell of Jennie’s bottom. A mischievous squeeze results in a light slap on her shoulder.

The innuendo however is unhelpful to the lingering arousal between Jennie’s legs, which hasn’t abated between the free flow of wine and the looks Lisa has been giving her all night (that Minnie had rightly identified and are exacerbated by what they’d been doing in the bushes). She opts for a kiss instead, tilting her chin up. Lisa happily joins their lips together.

The hands respectfully return to Jennie’s waist but their grip is nothing short of filthy for how hard they press Jennie into her front. The movements of Lisa’s tongue are anything but respectful.

Jennie gains first hand knowledge of the dessert menu without having yet tried the raspberry and passionfruit macarons herself.

“What’s the count now?” Lisa pants once the kiss ends, her forehead resting on Jennie’s.

“Huh?” Jennie is confused and distracted by licking the transferred sugar powder off her lips, until Lisa pushes their pelvises a little too closely together.

“The score.”

“ Oh .” She feigns doing calculus, “Yeah, you definitely owe me one for that stunt before we left. But if we count the shed, up that to twenty.”

Lisa doesn’t question her orgasm math. Nor does she mention the tip in scale caused by Jennie’s thieving antics. A breathy suggestion leaves her parted lips instead. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What about your speech?”

“Shit.”

Jennie struggles to fight a laugh at Lisa’s sudden look of alarm, obvious that she totally forgot. Torn in realisation, her girlfriend’s expression wavers comically at the conflict of interest between duty and doing Jennie. The motion of Jennie’s mirth, as she throws her head back in laughter, tousles Jennie’s hair and blooms her cheeks in a way that seems to make Lisa’s decision for her.

“I’ll email it to her.”

It’s apparent in the drawl of Lisa’s words as she stares at Jennie’s lips that there are other declarations with her mouth she’d rather be making.

“Lisa,” Jennie chastises with fond exasperation, stopping the hand that’s wandered below again cupping her bum. “She’s your best friend.”

“You are my best friend,” Lisa throws back, refuting like a preschooler parroting an insult. “Minnie is not even a gal pal. Only an acquaintance. Really, a stranger.”

It’s impossible not to indulge her with a smile like that, followed by another raspberry-flavoured incentive. Emboldened by Jennie’s lack of resistance to the kiss, Lisa dips her hand lower.

“Lis...”

“Ugh.” Lisa drops her head on Jennie’s shoulder, relenting.

After a minute of gathering herself, she reluctantly disengages from Jennie, then, with a hand on the small of Jennie’s back, leads them to approach the band together. Jennie stands hesitant, awkwardly to the side next to the drummer, as Lisa exchanges a couple of hushed words with the singer before taking to the mic to interrupt the festivities.

“Hello, everyone.” Lisa’s confident voice coming through the speaker system garners the crowd’s attention and all eyes on her. “This will be real quick because there’s a pretty girl waiting for me.”

Jennie blushes and gives a small wave when several guests follow Lisa’s enamoured line of sight. She receives a meaningful look from Minnie who stands happily wrapped in Rian’s arms. Gaze turned back to Lisa, warmth bubbles as Lisa reaches for her hand and brings Jennie closer, winding an arm around her shoulder. They stand a mirror of the pair they are celebrating.

“I’m not sure how the wedding will outdo all this,” Lisa starts, making a sweeping gesture at the decor. Minnie’s mother puffs her chest out proudly, accompanied by a glint in her eye like she’s taking Lisa’s disbelief on as a challenge. “Tonight has been absolutely beautiful.” Several hoots and whistles support the statement.

Jennie’s lips curl up in response to the wide smiles reflecting back at them.

“When I met Minnie,” Lisa continues, “admittedly the outlook wasn’t so great then. We were both a little worse for wear. Our hearts anyways. Our hair was perfectly fabulous, as always,” earning a few predictable laughs before she addresses the rest of her speech to Minnie. “Three years later and I’m grateful for your friendship which went beyond comparing notes on the best conditioner. French philosopher Alain Badiou says that love is a construction, a life that is being made, no longer from the perspective of One but from the perspective of Two.”

Lisa takes a moment to look down at Jennie, giving her a subtle squeeze and a private smile, before she resettles her gaze on Minnie.

“I am glad that we each found our Two. Mine, an old love. Yours, a new one. As we continue to construct, to build with our loves, I want to thank you for sharing the weight and wait with me. Seeing you and Rian tonight, in this ridiculously romantic setting, and with this stunner by my side,” she bends down to surprise Jennie with an open kiss, this declaration more public and enthusiastically received by their audience, “I couldn’t ask for a better perspective. Except maybe the next view from down the aisle.”

The crowd cheers. Jennie and Minnie catch each other’s eyes again, more watery this time.

“This song’s for you.” On Lisa’s signal the band begins to play a cover of Usher’s You Got It Bad which causes Minnie to burst into laughter at their inside joke.

The dance floor comes alive again.

“That was lovely,” Jennie says when she and Lisa move away to a quiet corner, an entanglement of arms and smiles again. “Short and sweet.”

“You know,” Lisa traces the neckline of her dress where it dips into Jennie’s cleavage, fingers grazing warm skin, “Minnie and Usher are not the only ones who’s got it bad. Aunt Layla—”

Jennie tips on her toes and preempts the rest of the sentence with a heated kiss, her tongue impressing just how badly it is for her too. When Lisa’s hands start migrating south again and the light suckling of Jennie’s bottom lip turns into a near swallow, she has to push back against Lisa’s chest. Heaving, Jennie calls, voice reedy, “Baby...”

Eyes still closed, “Yeah,” Lisa answers as she tries to chase Jennie’s lips now that hers are met with empty air. The equal thinness of Lisa’s voice pulls something low in Jennie’s gut.

Jennie skims her lips against Lisa’s jawbone and whispers into her ear, picking right up where they had left off before her speech.

“Wanna get out of here?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

That’s all the prompt Lisa needs before she takes a hold of Jennie’s hand and hastens them off the dance floor after a blithe shout of “Congrats, later!” to Minnie and Rian.

With the waning glow of a cinnamon summer night behind them and breathless want filling their lungs, within minutes they’re in the underground heading back into the city, doubtlessly towards Lisa’s apartment and bed.

—

“Where are we going?”

Though easily disoriented, it occurs to Jennie once they emerge above ground again that this isn’t actually Lisa’s neighbourhood in the East end.

“There’s something I want to show you first,” Lisa tells her nervously.

Apparently, the something is located in a hideaway studio in Brixton in South London. After she unlatches the gate, Lisa retakes Jennie’s hand and guides them deeper into the one-storey building.

The industrial lighting and the high ceiling points to the place being a converted warehouse that might have been recently renovated. They walk past several rooms of sculpture and mix media—Jennie takes mental note of the art and wonders who’s showing—before Lisa leads them to a smaller room at the far end.

It takes some adjusting for their eyes under the lighting that’s a bit dimmer here than in the other spaces. Three walls are empty in the typical white cube aesthetic. But then, what appears to be wallpaper at first, covering the length of the final surface, turns out to be extremely familiar brushstrokes.

Jennie’s jaw drops open.

Her heart slams against her chest.

Verte.

Undeniably in front of her is the missing half of the life-size painting that she had exhibited at her last group showing in Soho, the venue of their first re-encounter.

As if scared that the scenery would come to life, Jennie doesn’t dare move closer, or move at all. She stands still, absolutely stunned to be staring at what is a birchwood forest to the casual viewer, but had been a consuming labour of love when the pain of missing Lisa had threatened to swallow her whole. Nights spent hunched over in her studio, mixing paint, obsessing over the right blue, losing sleep to get the exact light of the fireflies. Each cut of white acrylic made into the dark base layer was meant to heal the cuts on her heart.

It had been emotional to part with the painting, not knowing of its fate other than an upstate New York destination, but accepting she needed to let go as part of her healing process. Never would Jennie have thought she’d see it again, let alone be staring at it on another continent standing next to Lisa, after attending an engagement party.

Her eyes well. The ground becomes not so solid. She reaches out blindly for stability. Lisa is there in milliseconds to take her hand and wrap it and herself around Jennie’s stomach.

“You bought it,” Jennie states, not asks, and not yet ready to turn around. She might just break down if she looks into the green that inspired the painting’s title.

They keep silent for an extended period until she feels Lisa’s chin on her shoulder followed by a slight head shake.

“Josh did.”

Jennie jerks her head up at that, narrowly avoiding bumping Lisa’s head.

“My dad?” She asks, shocked.

“It was your first show and he was bursting with pride. He had let it slip that you were exhibiting. I couldn’t,” she looks down, and Jennie can tell by the change in her voice that Lisa’s eyes must be misting calling up the difficult memory, “I couldn’t be there so I asked him to pick out his favourite painting, the one that reminds him the most of you. I asked for a pic.”

“Lis,” Jennie whispers.

“He flooded my phone with several dozen images. I couldn’t get through them all. Too painful then.” Jennie rubs the arm holding tightly across her stomach, a gentle stroking as belated apology. Lisa recounts, “But of what I saw, I was so proud of you too, and wanted a memento. I didn’t know it’d be this large.”

Jennie puts the pieces together. “It was the first painting I sold.”

“I had enough saved for a deposit, and Josh helped to cover the rest. He made the arrangements to purchase it anonymously. I tried paying him back when I earned enough but he wouldn’t let me. So, really, this belongs to him.”

They both know that’s not true. Jennie turns in her arms.

“He’s never mentioned it,” she says, then with some effort to minimise the scratch in her own voice, “I can’t believe you have it.”

“I can’t believe I have a Kim original,” Lisa says with awe. “It’s amazing, Jennie.”

Jennie musters a small smile, still too shocked to accept the praise properly.

“You had it all this time?” She asks, dumbfounded.

Lisa looks away over Jennie’s shoulder, a distant gaze focused on one section of the painting, before locking eyes with her again. “I couldn’t bring myself to open it at first. It stayed in the apartment for about three months, rolled up and unopened. Then when I finally did, I was too floored to know what to do with it and had to put it in storage until it didn’t hurt to look at.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok.” Lisa seems to truly mean it when hands anchor on Jennie’s hips, which she reciprocates with hands around Lisa’s neck. Lisa gives a soft smile, as genuine as all the others tonight even if it doesn’t fully reach her eyes. “It no longer hurts as much as before.”

“But it still hurts?”

“I think there’ll always be some pain associated with it. I was going to tell you about all this another time. But with the hanging lights tonight at Kew, it reminded me of this scene and how far I—we—have come. I wanted to show you, as the last unknown thing between us. That I have it. And maybe if you tell me more about it, it’d fill in some gaps.”

And patch up some wounds, Jennie thinks of what Lisa doesn’t say.

“What would you like to know?”

“Anything. Everything.”

They sit side by side with their backs against the far wall, legs stretched out and hands entwined. Jennie talks of certain parts of the painting that gave her trouble, others that flowed out of her like a feverish dream. Her motivation and inspiration, process and technique, but also where her mind and heart were at different moments, are also covered. Lisa absorbs details of the painting’s backstory with quiet regard.

“Jennie, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s fine, wasn’t too expensive.” Jennie waves off,  misunderstanding Lisa’s apology as commiseration for the cost of supplies when she describes depleting three borough’s worth of inventory of blue paint. “I got a good deal with the volume I purchased.”

“No, not that,” Lisa clarifies, expression rueful as she looks at the artwork. “I’m sorry you were hurting so much. That I didn’t see it sooner.”

There’s a question on the tip of Jennie’s tongue but it doesn’t come out because the pensive look on Lisa’s face alludes to some type of realisation, which Jennie gives space to formulate. Counting her chat with Minnie, tonight is turning out to be an unexpected though not unpleasant trip down memory lane. She doesn’t mind treading old ground if it means carving a new path forward. If a form of catharsis means the tending of old wounds to break new skin in their healing process.

Lisa starts rubbing small circles on the back of Jennie’s hand, an unconscious habit while collecting her thoughts. Her voice goes quiet.

“Up until a few months ago, I thought it was just my pain I was reading from the painting. It’s a gorgeous piece. I felt like the forest understood what I had lost. Sometimes when I looked deeply enough, I could almost breathe its air. Feel you with me. As real as that morning waking up together, the fog of your breath on my skin. Our bodies were still warm with sweat from the night before, and the only thing I wanted was to kiss you and taste you and press into you again. The way you capture the light is a near duplicate of the softness of the next hour we spent curved around and inside of each other. It is so surreal. Like I can reach out and feel the wings of the fireflies flapping.”

An answering flutter erupts in Jennie’s stomach at Lisa’s description, which isn’t far from what had inspired her.

“The piece is titled Verte, French for green,” she interrupts, “because that was the only colour I saw while painting.”

Both laugh when Lisa suggests, “You might want to get your eyes checked.”

There isn’t a spot of green. All manners of blue, but not one stroke of its neighbour on the colour wheel. At acute times, Jennie could scarcely look at the hue without succumbing to emotional paralysis.

“Ver te in Spanish means, to see you,” Jennie reveals, voice gone vulnerable and only above a whisper. “I couldn’t paint green but all I saw was you.”

Lisa lifts her arm up and Jennie bows her head for it to come around her shoulder, instinctually leaning into Lisa’s chest. A kiss arrives at her temple and Jennie responds with a softer one to the base of Lisa’s throat before settling into the crook of her neck.

“I figured it was something like that,” Lisa says, “similar to your other painting I saw in person, Midnight Blue , but everything was yellow. I thought you had gone colour blind on me but when I connected the dots of that piece with this one, how together, the pair makes green, I just ...”

Lisa’s bottom lip trembles and she struggles to finish her thought.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Jennie gently cups her jaw and kisses it steady.

“I was so sure of us. I didn’t think we’d break. And when we did, I was too focused on my own suffering to realise sooner that you were too, that you were less sure. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have left. At the time, it was what I needed to do, but—”

“No, it’s on me.” Jennie shakes her head, vehemently objecting, “You were incredibly patient. I shouldn’t have let things get to where they did in the first place.”

“Maybe not. But I can’t help wondering what if I had stayed. Maybe then, we would’ve stood a better chance. I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder for us.”

They could go in circles like this with all the shoulds and should nots but even with hindsight, there’s no telling whether things would have turned out for the better if different decisions had been made.

Jennie shakes her head again, adamant. “You fought all you could, all on your own. There was nothing left, you had to leave.”

In some ways, despite the tremendous pain, Jennie now believes their breakup was a necessary experience they had to go through to come to terms with who they are as a couple and as individuals. They had to sacrifice the former to grow as the latter. Her deepest regret is the lack of choice she gave to Lisa for the heart-wrenching route she led them on.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Jennie continues. “But I think what I’m most sorry for is that you had to fight by yourself, that you were left alone by a decision I made for the both of us.”

Lisa nods, solemn but not entirely sad, despite her eyes welling up. She tips her chin to the painting. “But I wasn’t alone. You were lonely too.”

Jennie thumbs away the solitary tear trickling down Lisa’s cheek.

“Not anymore.”

“No, not anymore.”

Jennie closes the gap between them. Her hand moves to brush Lisa’s jaw and rounds to the back of her head, pulling her in. Lisa sighs into the kiss, opening up fully for Jennie. Their mouths bind them in an oath of togetherness that neither will be alone again.

“I love you.”

The same sentiment reflects in Lisa’s eyes. But rather than reciprocate the words, Lisa confesses an adapted version.

“I’m scared of how much I love you.”

The frankness takes Jennie back for a second, not expecting yet unsurprised by this turn in conversation. It prompts her to be honest as well.

“I’m scared to screw up again.”

“I’m afraid I won’t survive this time if you do.”

“I won’t either.”

“I’m terrified of hurting like that again,” Lisa murmurs. “You terrify me.”

The confessions are pillowed by the softness of Jennie’s hands running through Lisa’s hair and the lingering sweetness of Riesling of Lisa’s breath. Jennie angles her head for another taste of the wine in a slow kiss that aerates its aromatic florals.

Acknowledging their fears out loud is progress that buoys her as much as the night’s bubbles. Today has been a glimpse of what they had, then lost, and can have again, though not quite the same. There is promise in the new promises exchanged through kisses and whispers, and in the tightness of their holds that neither will let the other slip right out of their grip again.

Their youth took the blame for the worn out and torn out of a love that matured too quickly, stealing the breath from lungs still too small to fill. One chased after a certainty that was not yet ripe for the taking, the other pursued a ghost of what ifs that never came. They loved each other to the exclusion of all else, narrow and consuming. Untenable and unsustainable against the vagaries of time.

But their adult years, Jennie makes a silent vow here on the bow of Lisa’s lips, will take responsibility for the burrowing and stowing of a love that expands rather than contracts. It will be a meeting in the middle. An unfading, unfolding love that breathes—instead of steals—and makes space for uncertainty and precarity. Vulnerable and bending. Thrumming rather than thieving.

“How about this?” She proposes, spring-boarding off of Lisa’s suggestion made back in her Brooklyn apartment, after Jennie had finally shared the fears motivating her decisions. “Let’s be scared together.”

Lisa’s eyes crinkle at the callback. The widening of her smile spreads warmth in Jennie’s chest. Already nodding, but all the same Lisa pretends to think it over.

“On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You give me back my underwear,” Lisa says, the lightness of her tone swells into Jennie’s own smile. Just like that, they’re back to the night’s playfulness. The tension further breaks when Lisa’s face scrunches in disgust, “Jennie, it’s gross riding the tube like this.”

“No.” Jennie holds firm, turning her body slightly away to subtly shield her dress pocket out of Lisa’s reach. “Actions have consequences, babe.”

Lisa doesn’t bother arguing. The crease in Jennie’s forehead is the epicentre of stubbornness she must recognise she can not fight.

“I can’t believe you painted our first time.” Lisa muses, moving on but circling back to the art before them. “You’re so extra.”

Jennie scoffs at the pot-kettle situation of Lisa using her earlier words against her. She pats Lisa’s chest, “I’m not the one literally sparkling, love,” then traces the halter line of her dress with the pads of fingers, staring incredulous at the small, reflective particles they collect. “The glitterati called and want their gold dust back.”

She observes the goosebumps that form under her feather touch, eyeing them with a measure of artistic appreciation for how the glitter shines differently on the raised surface.

“Call them back and tell’em I’ve got shares in all things iridescent,” Lisa says and kisses the tip of Jennie’s nose, her tongue slipping out to pay attention to the freckles which must have also caught the light. “No refund policy.”

“I think if you could, you’d reincarnate as a candle.”

Lisa narrows her eyes but offers no comeback for Jennie’s supposition, quickly giving up all pretence. “I feel strongly that you are right.”

“I feel strongly about always being right.”

Lisa sends her another reproachful look that dissipates when a thought flickers across her gaze, pulling the corner of her lips up again.

“Look at us, openly communicating and not flailing over feelings. Not useless gays anymore.”

In response, Jennie extends a hand out in front of her, letting the palm rest face up. “Do you know what that’s called?” At Lisa’s anticipated head shake, she pinches the tips of her fingers together with her thumb and then, like the flowers they saw today, opens them in a blooming motion. “Growth.”

Lisa pushes Jennie’s head off her shoulder which was already tipping back in laughter. “Get out,” she says with a feigned seriousness that’s contradicted by a refusal to break contact—with the new hold she's taken of Jennie’s wrist, Lisa smoothes out her finger-petals.

Once her amusement subsides, Jennie takes the time to take in the artwork more critically. The overhead lighting dims then, Lisa had reached up and played with the switches on the wall. After some buzzing, hidden micro LED bulbs flicker on, making the fireflies stand out more brightly. The painting transforms into something luminous, ethereal.

The effect sets their faces in a phosphorescent glow. Pride tugs at her chest hearing Lisa’s tiny gasp of awe, as if it’s her first time seeing it. Jennie wonders how many times it’s actually been.

She pulls out her phone and snaps a photo. At Lisa’s questioning nudge of elbow, Jennie offers a simple, “Chu,” while tapping out a text.

Understanding, Lisa confirms the impressiveness of Jisoo’s handiwork, “The technician here was excited when he noticed the circuits and strips on the back of the canvas.”

“She did really well and he did a great job installing.” Jennie examines the edges of the frame and can’t locate any signs of wiring, the electrical connections well concealed and invisible. The painting, illuminated like this, appears to float off the wall.

“It’s lit,” Lisa jokes.

Jennie makes a humming noise absently in acknowledgment of the wordplay. Distracted, her eyes roam the length of the wall, up to the ceiling and across the track hanging system, then follows the run of beams and open-web joists before coming back down the tree-like structural columns to the polished concrete floor. The lofty feel of the room transports her into the wood scenery. South London traded in for an Appalachian forest. “This is an amazing space.”

“Yeah, the gallery also functions as a learning and community centre for local residents. It belongs to the son of a former client, who’s now a good friend. He let me have this room in exchange for design work for the renovation.”

Lisa goes on to tell her about David and his million dollar trust fund, unaware of the million fireflies that have ignited inside of Jennie’s chest.

She lets the lumens of Lisa’s words and quiet storytelling take away all the shadows Jennie’s art couldn’t cover, the lens of their past to bend into a softer hue. With her head settled back on Lisa’s shoulder, their present is a brighter light.

—

They haven’t stopped kissing since the station, the seven minute walk to Lisa’s place doubling in time for their frequent make-out stops.

As soon as they enter through, a restless kind of energy spills into the apartment. What follows is a frenetic sequence of limbs and bodies and clothes in motion, restraint on the street forsaken by crushing need to expose and taste skin.

As soon as the door closes behind them, shoes kick off. Purses and keys are tossed aside. Lisa’s mouth is on hers. Hands in her hair, on her waist, bum, breasts. Everywhere.

She’s led towards the bedroom but the urgency of their want shortens the trip, stalling in the hallway to let lips and tongue do their work.

The kissing is obscene. Dirty and suggestive in all the right ways. Jennie’s pent up desire is finally let out and Lisa’s determined lips only encourage its release. She is painfully turned on.

Somewhere along the serpentine ride from Brixton, Jennie’s arousal returned full force, receiving a second wind from the way Lisa had been squirming in her seat trying to hide her underwear-less predicament. Her insistence on sitting away from the train doors to avoid unwanted gusts of air when they open and close, was initially funny until the visual wouldn’t leave Jennie’s mind; a bare Lisa winded for a different reason.

The intermittent glares Jennie received intimated how Lisa had alternately spent the forty-five minute journey plotting her revenge. They did nothing but make Jennie look forward to retribution more eagerly.

Here, with Lisa hotly pressed against her front pushing her back against the wall, whatever energy spent from a long day has renewed itself in throbbing anticipation of a long night. Jennie moans at the hand that’s found its way under her dress and squeezing her ass. She pushes her tongue deeper into Lisa’s mouth feeling fingers of the other hand trailing up her side, teasing against the curve of her breast.

Fabric is in the way of skin to skin contact so Lisa persists to blindly pull a shoulder strap down, pushing aside black lace to finger Jennie’s nipple. There’s no discernible pattern to her movements, indecisive between rolling and circling. A mouth joins next, less confused in its campaign to greedily take in as much as possible.

The air Jennie regains from the kiss ending is swiftly lost to the sucking starting.

“S’nice.”

She meant for something more articulate and seductive to come out than a single word generic platitude. This feels beyond nice. Thankfully the breathy sound of her voice works in her favour, spurring Lisa on to lick and suck and flick. The tip of her tongue is used to ruinous effect that has Jennie’s head spinning and her heart thundering.

“You are so ... unfairly ...” Lisa mumbles against her breast, the last syllables skipping off like pebbles along the glistening surface, then she looks up concluding her thought irradiated by the steady glow of rosy cheeks, “beautiful,” before returning to pay attention to the other nipple.

Jennie cradles the back of her head, a gentle hold despite the overwhelming sensation. Her other hand rucks up Lisa’s dress and cups her ass in turn, sliding a thigh in between Lisa’s legs that is immediately ground down on. She mentally high-fives delinquent, rosebush Jennie with the foresight to make this easier on horny, afterparty Jennie. Without underwear, the direct contact has immediate effect. Lisa mewls into the grinding.

A second calling of Lisa’s name returns her to Jennie’s mouth. This kiss is messier. Lost in lust, need and speed crush in a heady collision.

Lisa’s keening devotion to Jennie’s undoing climaxes into a surprising cry followed by a body shudder. Except, the name being called this time is distinctly Jennie’s.

Did Lisa just ...

“Did you just ...?”

Lisa hides her embarrassment in the crook of Jennie’s neck.

“Your fingers slipped,” she informs, the remains of a whimper taking the force out of her defence.

Jennie tilts forward to look down over Lisa’s shoulder. Sure enough her hand had indeed slipped, the tips of her fingers managing to dip into Lisa from the back. She withdraws, and the evidence of Lisa’s spent arousal is plain for two sets of bewildered eyes to see.

Without a second thought, Jennie sucks them into her mouth.

“Best mistake I’ve ever made.”

“Jennie,” Lisa grumbles, no energy behind this complaint either, breathing heavily and still coming down from her accidental orgasm. “That’s a terrible line.”

The mess Jennie made of Lisa’s hair is now tickling her neck and shifting her focus.

“Jesus.”

“What?”

“Your hair.”

“What about it?”

“There’s just so much of it.”

“Mhmmm.” Lisa hums approval when Jennie tangles her hand in it, fingers massaging into her scalp.

“I thought you came from kissing alone,” Jennie ventures when Lisa’s mouth restarts grazing along her jawline. “At this rate, you’ll be proposing to me by the time we make it to the bed.”

Lisa’s head jerks up. Her face suddenly twists into a serious expression that has Jennie worrying she said the absolute wrong thing, that maybe their new relationship is still too tenuous and fragile to be joking about that.

An apology is at the ready but Lisa quiets her doubt with a long, deep kiss.

“I’m going to make love to you so hard and fuck you so gently,” she says, the promise clear that Jennie is going to come from more than just kissing.

Jennie laughs. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

“Nuh-uh,” Lisa says as she lifts Jennie’s hands over her head, pinning them to the wall. On pressing a kiss to the dimple in her chin, Lisa purrs, “I’ve got the right rigour to vigour ratio.”

She holds Jennie’s gaze, challenging her to come up with a better mix.

“How about vigorous rubbing while holding hands?” Jennie negotiates.

Lisa quirks an attractive eyebrow, a significant smile in her eyes while weighing the counteroffer. “That’ll do.”

The hallway shakes with helpless giggling when Lisa proceeds to over-enthusiastically push herself against Jennie’s thigh, exaggeratedly uncoordinated. The laughter soon gives way to moaning when Lisa slows down to move more deliberately, angling her hips to deliver precise force.

The kisses heat up, as does the grinding, which distributes Lisa’s wetness across Jennie’s thigh, contending with the stickiness already there. Her underwear is soaked by the time she wiggles out of Lisa’s grasp, wrapping a hand around her wrist, urging it lower. An unspoken plea.

The message reads loud but not entirely clear. Lisa cups her sex yet doesn’t move, fingers curved in wait, taking in the damp heat and the distant heartbeat. The inaction makes Jennie wetter.

Lisa squeezes in warning when the shifting of hips tries to encourage her on. The tight control only makes the coil in Jennie’s stomach tighten further.

“Don’t you want to fuck me?” Jennie asks, too innocent to be anything but provoking. Without shame, she humps against Lisa’s hand.

Her indelicate question lands as intended, Lisa’s eyes darkening and resolve faltering. Jennie takes advantage of the slippage to stroke herself further against the finger edging the lace. Lisa lets her ride it for a moment to coat it generously.

Then it’s gone.

“Stay there.”

It’s said so softly that Jennie doesn’t realise the implication until her hands empty of Lisa.

Lisa leaves her heaving against the wall to stare speechless at the back of her retreating figure. Jennie looks down to find one breast half hanging out of her dress, the material bunched and twisted in various other places.

The marks littering the top of her chest and the sting to her swollen lips signal the type of night that’s in store and worth the wait, but her clit objects impatiently anyway to the sudden cold air. She tips her head back, landing a soft thud against the wall, and tries to take calming breaths at Lisa’s terrible timing.

“Fuck me.” Jennie expels quietly to the empty hallway. Really, she wishes Lisa would.

When Lisa comes back with a tall glass of water, the heat between Jennie’s legs temporarily turns into a warmth in her chest. The thoughtfulness reminds her that no matter how carried away they might get, her well-being is Lisa’s main priority.

“You looked thirsty,” Lisa says, smiling all too pleased with herself. She takes a long sip then leans forward to share it with Jennie mouth to mouth, a tender intimate exchange that quickly turns into a sultry, wet kiss. Jennie melts into the softness and coolness of Lisa’s lips. Lisa hands the drink over when they part, indicating for Jennie to take a proper turn. “I don’t want you fainting on me.”

Maybe Jennie shouldn’t have guzzled so quickly because she is not prepared for what Lisa does next when the glass of water reaches half empty too soon.

Lisa dips her fingers into the glass, wetting the tips. Then, locking eyes on her, in a light flicking motion she sprinkles the gathered liquid onto Jennie’s chest and watches with interest as the drops trail down.

“I also don’t want you overheating.”

Equal parts shocked and intrigued Jennie stands unresponsive as cold fluid meets heated skin. The contact is refreshing.

But then, Lisa’s mouth is promptly on her breasts, lapping up the trickling flow, counterproductively raising the mercury. Her tongue, flat and silky, traces the water’s paths and do more to hotly dampen Jennie’s skin than cool it. When lips seal over Jennie’s nipple and suck where there are no artificial oases but the natural rivulets of sweat, the false pretext is as obvious as Lisa’s enjoyment of the self-produced water crisis.

Once satisfied with Jennie’s reddened and flustered state, Lisa makes a slow showing of lifting the skirt of her dress and, with re-soaked fingers, running the remaining water up the inside of her legs along lazy, aimless routes. Lisa’s sustained eye contact while doing so is what tips the scale for Jennie from thinking she might not survive this night to knowing she definitely won’t.

Before another thought can form, Lisa lowers to her knees, ducks her head under and then drinks the mess she’s made beneath Jennie’s dress. Mouth all over Jennie’s inner thighs, she takes to the task as if racing against time before evaporation occurs.

Shortly, the attention turns to Jennie’s panties and her soaked centre. Lips suckle on the wet fabric, tongue pressing and insistent until Lisa is practically French kissing with lace, not bothering to push it aside for unmediated contact with her engorged lower lips. Jennie nearly drops the glass in hand. Underwear irreparably ruined.

Some deep, guttural moans later Lisa rises again, looking smug while wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “I’m hot and thirsty too.”

Overly aroused, Jennie has no rebuttal for her stupid puns, wordlessly following instruction to finish the rest of the water when Lisa presses the rim of the glass back to her lips. Eager for what’s next.

As she downs it, they re-establish eye contact. A swirl of love and lust. Lisa licks the bottom of her lip to catch the run-off when she finishes. Jennie’s tongue chases the heat of her kiss. The next long minutes—with the added pressure of Lisa’s hand returning below but fingers actually stroking inside her underwear this time—are spent reversing Jennie’s hard work of hydrating.

The fingers shallowly enter her just as another pair asks for entrance into Jennie’s mouth. As soon as two answering sets of lips pull Lisa in further, a twin slow pumping begins.

“I would like to penetrate you really hard tonight. Be deep inside you. Make you desperate to come for me.”

They have had a number of drinks toasting Minnie and Rian earlier, but nothing excessive, riding a natural high instead. Whatever the effects of their alcoholic consumption have, in any case, tapered off into a nice buzz since their Brixton detour. Therefore, Jennie is confused how her auditory system could be failing her.

She doesn’t think she’s heard right. Lisa, who rarely asks for anything, who voluntarily lost all feeling in her right side during their seven hour flight because she had prioritised Jennie’s rest over her own comfort, is asking for something. Something very, very explicit.

An imbalance of their relationship history has centred on what Jennie wants. Though the ask might be small—and the outcome to Jennie’s clear benefit—it is a major signal to their shifting dynamic and their development as a couple to have Lisa be this forthcoming and open about her desire.

With a mouth too full to verbally seek clarification, she relies on a beseeching stare and a pawing hand at Lisa’s hip to inquire into her mishearing.

“Penetrate,” Lisa repeats a shortened version, pushing gently between Jennie’s lips and deeper into her mouth, and then less gently thrusts her fingers below, “hard.” She drives all the way in and continues her abridged summary, “deep”, rubbing a thumb over Jennie’s clit, “and desperate.”

Jennie whimpers at the direct action of Lisa’s words, which are said deceptively softly despite their import and rough promise. She mewls around the fingers in her mouth, assenting. Legs wide and ready, her clenching walls echo their support.

Only, Lisa completely withdraws.

“Hold that thought.”

Jennie is left flabbergasted again, mouth hanging open and a bit of drool coming down. Lisa takes the glass from her that Jennie had completely forgotten about and walks away presumably to set it back down in the kitchen. Stupefied by yet another interruption, she fails to note that Lisa actually heads in the opposite direction.

“Safety first,” singsongs distantly from the bedroom.

Jennie wants to scream her frustration, too worked up to care about caution (or catch the odd sounds of plastic unwrapping and the faucet running). Lisa has abandoned her multiple times today right before things peaked. She considers resorting to self-help again and wishes for something stiffer than water to relieve the aching, unmet need.

“Lisa, what the fu—” she asks but the last word gets mangled on the way out.

Ultimately, it is a good thing Jennie is not drinking upon Lisa’s return. She might have drown with the vision that approaches now.

Lisa is naked. Completely. Hair a sweaty mess, cheeks and chest flushed, skin glistening. She is no longer wearing a dress. Soft, flowy fabric has been swapped for nude leather. Lisa is in nothing but a harness. The ‘o’ ring is presently empty and would otherwise draw Jennie’s focus to the damp curls poking through if her attention isn’t drawn northwards.

Lisa’s gaze hypnotises her in place, locking them in entrancing stares. The moment is charged as blown pupils track down her body. Lisa’s motives behind the teasing gain new clarity. All their foreplay has built up to this.

There is a certain thrill to the way Lisa’s eyes devour her, intent paid well in advance of action. How her gaze roams, taking in soft flesh, tracing lines, appreciating curves and lingering over the raise and red of skin where her lips had previously been. How she looks at Jennie with the same intensity as the moon hungers for the ocean.

Lisa moves in closer. Purpose and wafting desire behind each step. Heat grows between Jennie’s legs, a bright, pressing need for hand and mouth to be on her, fingers and tongue in her. Eagerness builds for a coming together until exhaustion breaks bodies and light breaks the day.

She doesn’t have to wait long and is soon being kissed like they may never see tomorrow’s sunrise. If this is where the world ends, on the slope of Lisa’s lips and in the tide of her want, then Jennie will happily be swept away by the undertow of such wreckage.

The torment of her kisses, the heat of Lisa, everywhere, all at once, unquenchable, has Jennie keening for more.

When Lisa reluctantly parts, it is only to give herself manoeuvring room. Something is in her hands behind her back. Even if Jennie had some sort of expectation of what it might be, her throat still goes completely dry when the item Lisa is holding comes into view.

A flesh-coloured, double ended dildo.

It looks larger than ones they’ve used in the past. Already shining, Jennie assumes Lisa had pre-lubed it while in the other room. (Where the lube comes from, she’s too busy trying to rein back her drool to take into account that Lisa’s had a very productive afternoon, a trip to both the salon and sex shop.)

She swallows thickly, the new dryness making all forms of circulation difficult. Her feet subconsciously kick farther apart eyeing the toy’s ginger handling.

Lisa inserts the smaller head into herself, hissing at the contact and adjusting until it fits snuggly within the harness and inside of her. Jennie watches, spellbound. The life-like silicone shaft hangs from her almost too realistically. The sculpted, bulbous head bobs when Lisa gives an experimental wiggle. Her hand takes a hold to steady it and then distribute the leftover lube on her palm more evenly.

She moves forward again, the aim clear in darkened eyes of what she would like to do with it. The glitter on her chest, sparkling needlessly more than ever, should have Jennie reacting if her attention is not newly captive much lower.

“Breathe, Jennie.”

It doesn’t register she has not been doing that until Lisa’s soft laugh breaks through the expectant air.

Warn a girl. Jennie thinks she says aloud but it might have only come out as graceless squawking. The opposite happens. What she thinks is said in her head gets vocalised, “It’s not tiny.”

The laughter brightens before it turns into shyness. “The Tango Real,” Lisa supplies and then explains without prompt, cheeks flaming, “Aunt Layla. It was a gag gift when she thought Minnie and I were dating.”

Oh, maybe not a sex shop.

Jennie simply nods, still too focused on the extra appendage to comment. No room for any thoughts of Minnie or sapphically-supportive relatives, not much else but Lisa pushing inside, as soon as possible.

“Does it look ok?” is asked with some measure of insecurity when her silence lengthens. “The harness is new. It could be used strapless but since I’m a bit rusty thought we could do with the extra help.”

Her brain has likely short circuited at the sight of a strapped Lisa. It would probably be the same outcome without straps too. Jennie’s fairly certain. Irrespective, nothing is currently firing in the right synapses because all the heat has gone southward along with her torpefied gaze.

So, more nodding.

“I’m going to put it in you.”

Nod.

“Are you okay with that?”

Double nod.

“Then I’m going to make you regret the stunt you pulled in the rose bushes.”

Triple.

Lisa chuckles at her lack of verbal responsiveness. She steps in closer, narrowing the last distance.

With free hands, Lisa hikes the hem of Jennie’s dress above her waist, letting her take over removing it while Lisa then rolls her panties down her legs, but only far enough that they sit below her ass, around her thighs. Each action is painstakingly slow.

“You can keep it on,” Lisa says, magnanimous, voice teasing as she snaps the elastic of the waistband where Jennie’s underwear now sits on her upper thigh. “I’m nice like that.”

With bra barely holding on and panties hanging halfway down, Jennie is hoping for not nice things. She should feel exposed, a reprisal for how she had left Lisa in the gardens after their tryst. But by the way Lisa continues to look at her, completely engulfed in lust, she wants nothing more than to be thoroughly taken. To hand her vulnerability over and let it be shattered in whichever way Lisa fancies.

Because sex for them centres on emotional as much as physical trust, Jennie never worries about feeling unprotected, even as Lisa’s hands vibrate with promises of wreckage.

Lisa finds her wet and waiting. Parting her folds, she runs the dildo through to lubricate some more. Given Lisa’s current thoroughness and the degree of Jennie’s overworked readiness, the earlier lube doesn’t seem necessary but the extra care is appreciated nonetheless for the pleasurable way Lisa easily slides back and forth. They whimper together observing her motions. With applied pressure, the rubbing intensifies Jennie’s arousal, heightens her anticipation.

After several stimulating strokes, Lisa positions the head at her entrance. “Ready?” Lisa asks, gentle. On Jennie’s “please,” finally verbalising, she pushes in gently—and with a slowness that gives Jennie time to voice any discomfort—until it’s covered halfway.

The sight of their connection prompts dual hitches of breath. Jennie’s walls clench, demanding more, but a hammering heart and an overtaxed pair of lungs petition for a moment to adjust.

Jennie places hands around her shoulders, hooking them at the back of her neck, needing the physical contact. She drops her head against Lisa’s forehead, breathing through the minor burn.

“Okay?” is asked in a tone so soft Jennie wouldn’t have heard it were Lisa’s lips not parted against hers.

“Yeah.”

Lisa inches in the rest until she bottoms out, their lower halves meeting completely. Two breaths rush out at once. Gasping together.

Jennie closes her eyes as they both acclimate to the shared stretch. Each give small, testing pushes. Jennie bites her lip, affected by the short, intense sensations.

Lisa twines their hands and rests them back above Jennie’s head against the wall. Her head bends to mouth over one lace-covered breast. Works her way up to Jennie’s lips, getting sidetracked with kissing.

Once air becomes necessary, as if remembering what’s between them, Lisa jogs her hips.

“Love, open your eyes.”

Despite their gentleness, there is something quietly commanding behind her words that Jennie reads as the final thread of restraint before things escalate.

When she does obey, Lisa steadies her gaze, observing for last-minute signs of objection, but on reading none pulls back to the tip. The air is thick. Lisa’s hands come down her sides to hold her hips. Jennie is given only a moment of calm before she slams forward. At her pelvis snapping, a loud cry ricochets off the hallway that Jennie is certain can be heard all the way across the Atlantic in Central Park.

“Fuck!”

The next few thrusts are just as hard and just as buckling in how they rip moans from Jennie that, were it not for Lisa’s grip, she’d be a pile of loose limbs on the floor.

Lisa drives forward a few more times before letting up for Jennie to find her breath. During the small break, Lisa takes time to wordlessly check in, eyes scanning Jennie’s face for tells of pain or discomfort. Happy with the results, her hands return to clasp Jennie’s set and pin them back up against the wall.

To yield and surrender fully to Lisa is a fate Jennie readily accepts as Lisa seeks permission to continue. A long kiss doing the asking.

“Good?” flutters softly against her lips when the kiss breaks.

“Good.”

On Jennie’s further nod and squeeze of fingers, Lisa widens her stance and hooks Jennie’s leg around her back. She pushes forward. Jennie’s instinct is to grab Lisa’s ass but with her hands’ current restraint she has to settle on using the heel of her foot as encouragement.

The cheerleading immediately proves to be unnecessary and redundant because Lisa’s hips take off as soon as Jennie’s walls pull her in.

For the next while it is only the sounds of Lisa, the noises she makes, the noises they make together, rushing in Jennie’s ears. She is unable to give much consideration to how her body is even absorbing the impact of their banging with how the clamour of it is drowning out all rational thoughts.

When Lisa releases her hands to get better leverage when their position slips because of her enthusiasm, Jennie pushes off the wall with her palms. She gains enough momentum to reverse their fortunes and slams Lisa back against the opposite wall, taking over the driving. Her girlfriend is surprised by the show of strength but falls into it willingly, hands flying to Jennie’s waist and helping her set the new rhythm.

A moment later, they’re back on the other side again.

Jennie’s head thumps against the wall. More sound than actual impact but a hand quickly comes up to soothe the dull pain. Lisa massages the spot, her eyes eke out an apology that her hand further delivers through soft carding of Jennie’s hair—all with a gentleness incongruent to her still bucking hips. A kiss to Jennie’s forehead completes her seeking of pardon.

Drawing a line from between Jennie’s eyebrows down the slope of her nose towards her beauty mark, Lisa’s mouth finds hers again. The slow tempo of how their mouths slide against each other remains at odds with Lisa’s battering, quickened movements below.

The contrast amazes. The bruising softness of Lisa’s lips is the only violence Jennie willingly subjects herself to again and again.

A minute later, there’s another head bump as the intensity of their kissing and the rocking of sweaty bodies overwhelm spatial awareness once more.

“Are you ok?” Lisa asks between pants, then worries her lip, slowing down her thrusts. “Too rough?”

The concern is endearing. Jennie answers by pulling her bottom lip into a softer kiss that predictably escalates to dirty, all tongue and teeth.

“Not,” she pushes harder into the dildo, “rough,” moves her lips to lick the length of Lisa’s jaw from chin to hinge, “enough,” and punctuates her point with a bite to Lisa’s earlobe.

Lisa delights at the challenge. A thrill passes across her features that Jennie should but most definitely does not regret provoking. She holds Jennie firmly by the hips against the wall then brutally slams back in, stealing the breath from Jennie’s chest.

Before another can be drawn, Lisa repeats the action, setting a savage pace. By now, both of Jennie’s legs are tightly wrapped around Lisa’s lower back. The merciless slamming provides a thudding soundtrack against her heart's accelerated beating.

“Fuck, Lis!”

Not to be outdone, Jennie takes a subtler tact, equally effective, angling her hips whenever their bodies connect for the smaller head inside Lisa to hit her g-spot. The profanities falling clumsily from Lisa’s mouth tell her she’s succeeding.

Their push and pull happens for a few rounds, the walls taking the brunt of their competition to get the other crying louder. The thickness in her is unlike Lisa’s fingers, what’s lost in dexterity is gained in girth. Although the model of this dildo provides greater flexibility than their older toys, she feels full in a way that’s more volume than intensity, which Lisa makes up for in speed.

Her unyielding penetrations has them both careening to the edge. Lips searching for a solid foothold against the imminent descent.

The orgasms hit at once, as do the broken screams of pleasure travel up towards the cathedral of their joined mouths, leaving their kiss hanging in suspended ecstasy.

She comes shattering in Lisa’s arms. Even with feet off the ground, it’s a standing tremble, Lisa the only one who can make her sway like this.

She comes again as Lisa takes Jennie’s breast into her mouth and continues to work the dildo in concentrated, matching circles of her tongue until Jennie’s body is a pliant and supple, weightless mass.

It should have been evident by Lisa’s heavy breathing and continued grinding that this has only been a prelude. Because, just as Jennie envies the thought of slumping down the wall to rest, they are moving away from the hallway. Lisa carries her towards a nameless destination—kissing thoroughly as she goes—until Jennie’s back hits a solid surface and she’s lying horizontal while Lisa persists in rutting into her. The squeaking of wooden legs lets her know it’s the kitchen table but all Jennie can feel and see and smell is Lisa.

“God, baby,” she rewards with a wanton kiss, the heels of her feet digging in appreciatively when she slips in a tongue and Lisa slips somehow deeper inside, “so good.”

Her second orgasm’s barely out when Lisa jogs her hips—the tip connecting just right—and it rolls into a third. A sharp, exquisite cry wrenches from Jennie as her clit is pinched, a firm squeeze between thumb and forefinger. She claws at Lisa’s back, shuddering from the successive force. Lisa does not relent, only further propelled by Jennie’s hoarse wails.

A fourth orgasm is soon at the door but then Lisa withdraws the dildo with heavy-lidded intention behind her gaze. They’re not done.

Despite the permission being sought in Lisa’s eyes, the look on her face tells Jennie that a ‘no’ would lead to both their ruin.

As soon as she consents, ruin becomes inevitable anyways.

“Turn around.”

Jennie isn’t sure she can survive another round, but with that tone, steely and stern, she scrambles to comply and bends over the kitchen table. Her top half rests on the weight of her forearms. Solid and anchored. Her bottom half is another story. Panties long gone, ripped off sometime during the wall banging. She stands bare. Legs shaking. Wet with expectation.

The dildo drags through her folds, Lisa taking care to coat it well though insufficient lubrication shouldn’t really be a problem at this point. In hindsight, Jennie should have savoured the oddly sweet slowness of the act longer because it’s the last gentleness she’s afforded for a while. The head of the dildo returns to her entrance. Thumbs spread her open and in one brisk, rough movement, it sinks all the way in.

“This is for the bushes.”

Before her walls have time to clench or her brain to catch up to Lisa’s motivation, Lisa pulls out. Drives back deeper. Harder.

“Oh god,” falls from Jennie’s mouth that drools with thick want. Guttural sounds trip out with no clear authorship as the pace picks up. “Lisa!”

Lisa takes her from behind. It is not gentle and far from soft. With the force of Lisa’s ardour, Jennie’s knees buckle on every stroke. The table and the hand holding her firmly at the hip are all that’s keeping her from crumbling to all fours.

A wild possessiveness overtakes Lisa who seems keen on making her claim—retaliating—through punishing thrusts. The dildo pumps in and out of Jennie at a rate and speed that her addled mind can not quantify. It is a devouring, consuming intensity that burns brighter by proportionate degrees to the stretching of her walls.

Jennie had an inkling about the endgame of this position but still cries out in surprise when the slap arrives. The follow up massage of her cheek proffers a conciliatory apology.

“I’m ok,” she reassures when the sting lessens, voice gravelly and grainy from overuse, “More,” she licks her arid lips, “please.”

The slaps rain down while Lisa hits her inner wall with devastating precision. Pain and pleasure course through in unrelenting, overlapping waves.

Lisa grunts. Jennie trembles under the force of her palm hitting. Though the strikes are louder than the actual contact made, coupled with the unsparing driving of her hips, the collision of their bodies has the strength of the sea crashing against the shore.

By far the sweetest agony she has ever endured, Jennie submits fully to the fucking. Unrestrained and untethered. Bent over like this, she knows the visual alone turns Lisa on. Encourages it through demands for more. More of Lisa’s gasping draws of air, more of her fingers digging roughly into Jennie’s skin, more of her wetness seeping through and mixing with Jennie’s. More desperate plowing of hips and stuttering of Jennie’s name. Just more of her. All over.

Jennie needs more. Wants more. Wants to taste Lisa. But, “Taste. You,” is all she manages to communicate, and can’t fathom how it’s even possible without stopping what they’re doing.

Fortunately, Lisa seems to intuit the dilemma and comes up with a welcomed meanwhile solution. Several seconds later, glistening fingertips appear at Jennie’s lips, which open instantly at the familiarity of Lisa’s scent filling her nose. Its musk stronger and an incredible turn-on this close. Jennie immediately draws the two fingers in, sucking to her heart’s content until Lisa takes over the work, matching on a smaller scale her movements below.

The dual penetration is arousing and erotic, especially paired with the timed blows. Jennie sinks into the heat—the electric, haptic feeling of Lisa ravishing her like this.

It’s blistering for the next while.

The dildo pumps. Lisa’s fingers pump. Her hand slaps.

Lisa is a mess of growls. Jennie, a general mess. Overwhelmed in the best of ways by the uninhibited behaviour of her usually stoic girlfriend.

She pushes back to meet Lisa’s hips, at the same time turning her head in want of a kiss. Lisa retracts her fingers to make room. The soft lips that meet Jennie’s parched ones are a balm for the pounding pace.

The kiss is as tender as Lisa’s thrusts are hard. Jennie sucks on her tongue in gratitude, Lisa mewling into the roof of her mouth tasting herself.

The contrasting sensations above and below reaches parity when the movements behind her falter. Lisa must be close, her thrusts languishing along with her diminished concentration. Things transition into something softer and more intimate, a grinding of small circles. The slaps peter out.

Things slow until Lisa is draped like fabric over her back. The now free hand lays on top of Jennie’s that has since deathly gripped the table’s edge.

“Jennie ...” the helpless whine, drenched in need, pushes Jennie closer to coming. Although the double ender must be working wonders inside Lisa, it’s clear she is desperate for Jennie’s personal attention.

Jennie reaches down between her legs, trying in vain to find Lisa’s clit, so they can come together once more. The design of this strap is such that Lisa’s clit should be accessible. The angle and lack of visibility, however, makes Jennie’s search difficult.

The whine gets louder when Jennie can’t seem to locate her target. She meets more silicone than skin. The jostling movements from Lisa’s refusal to stop hammering—even as blunted as the hits have become—doesn’t help with accuracy. Jennie melts at the sound of a pitiful Lisa whimpering like a lost puppy.

“Baby, I can’t reach,” Jennie admits defeat after coming up empty handed for all her perseverance. “I want to touch you.”

Lisa nods into her neck, mouthing agreement into sweat-slick skin but having only enough air to push out a faintly audible, “I want that too,” that makes Jennie laugh.

She thinks of asking Lisa to pull out so she can turn around to face her and facilitate easier access. Happy to sacrifice her impending orgasm to tend to Lisa’s. Before she can propose the change of position, Lisa’s stomach grumbles.

“Wanna order pizza?”

“What?”

“Pizza.”

If Jennie had freer use of her hands she would be making an emphatic sweeping gesture to indicate, what of this. Instead, humoured by the short attention span and by now accustomed to the disruptive flow of their activities, she asks, “Pepperoni or prosciutto?”

“Ugh, yes.” Unseen, Lisa is probably licking her lips because her hips inadvertently push closer in excitement. “Fig and arugula too. Starving. We should’ve packed the sea bream to go.”

Jennie doesn’t bother voicing the obvious that she is presently rather full, which has nothing to do with her metabolism being nowhere near the former athlete’s. Despite her incredulity at how Lisa can possibly be thinking about food in this exact instance, she goes along with the non-sequitur, temporarily parking other, more appetising, base needs.

“The other four courses didn’t do it for you?”

“I’ve spent a lot of energy since then.”

Lisa gently brushes hair away from Jennie’s face, where it sticks from her own over-exertion, unsubtly pointing out precisely where the expenditure has occurred. She kisses Jennie’s temple, lips catching the bead of sweat running down the side. The small talk and soft action is so domestic and out of place with Jennie spread out as such on their eating surface, but it spreads warmth inside her that they can oscillate between these two extremes. Lisa is likely buying time to contemplate her next move, an interlude Jennie doesn’t mind in the least for the reprieve to enjoy this quiet, intimate moment together.

They could finish what they started, bringing it to a stunning conclusion, or spend the rest of the night curled around each other in pyjamas in the company of thin crust and a movie, Jennie has no preference so long as Lisa is part of the picture.

“Pizza or porn.” Lisa on the other hand is more ambivalent about the seemingly difficult choice.

Jennie laughs at the exaggerated torn in her voice. Fondness swelling. “We can add plot in there too, catch up on your queue.” Lisa hums consideration. “Whatever you want to do, Lis.”

A kiss to her head and a squeeze of her hand signals Lisa’s decision a minute later. The follow up twitch of her hips indicate which side of the fence she decidedly fell on.

“How about I finish doing you first? Then I’ll call Franco Manca.”

Jennie has no idea who Franco Manca is but she’s happy with the priority order of Lisa’s to-do list. There's little need for further persuasion but Jennie does appreciate the explanation when Lisa adds, “They do a great sourdough. I think they’re open late.”

“Okay. Both sounds good.”

“Okay.”

Lisa lifts off of Jennie’s back which she lowly keens at the loss of warmth. Her discontent about the minor separation is short-lived however as Lisa, while staying in, strategically manoeuvres them towards the couch, then gently reclines Jennie back against her front once seated.

Knees drawn up and spread wide and over Lisa’s lap, the new arrangement does much to press the resume button on their paused foreplay.

“Can you reach now?” Lisa husks into her ear, picking right up where they had left off and sounding just as affected by the renewed closeness.

Arousal fully returns when Jennie sees the base of the dildo liberally lathered with her slickness. Lisa hadn’t thought their relocation through because it’s Jennie’s clit that’s in better sight and reach—flaring red and throbbing in demand—and not Lisa’s. She swallows hard, rasping, “No.” But you can .

In this open position, Lisa has equal access to Jennie’s breasts and clit, which promises unequal wreckage in Jennie’s favour. Or so the disadvantage would seem until Lisa cups her breasts from behind and lets out deep-throated appreciation. Lets the weight overspill in eager hands. Not exactly a handicap for her either.

Although Jennie would have been equally happy had Lisa chosen to go ahead with the platonic version of Netflix and chill, all thoughts of cinema and carbs go out the metaphorical window when Lisa speaks again.

“Fuck yourself.” The command is spoken with more softness than anything they’ve done between the wall and the kitchen table. Jennie’s throat tightens at Lisa’s gentle, whispered entreaty, “Ride me.”

While waiting for Jennie to heed her directive, Lisa continues her kneading motion. Jennie’s back arches, pushing her chest forward, chasing the pressure. As Lisa palms her, Jennie lifts up and sinks back down, testing the angle and her precision until she is able to mirror Lisa’s rhythm. They work out a coordinated timing that on every squeeze of her breasts or roll and pinch of her nipples, Jennie feels the full strength of the dildo hitting her.

The expletive rising and dropping of Jennie’s hips should be unlawful but, in the prurient interest of mutual self destruction, she commits to the illicit act with verve. Any remaining consideration for decency is left behind by Lisa’s profane mutterings and the uncensored way her hips lift to meet Jennie’s centre.

With whatever reserve of energy she has left, Jennie pours into the well of their resurgent desire. She is close to fainting from their set pace, impaling herself on the length that feels like an extension of both of them when Lisa clicks on the hidden vibe. Coupled with the shaft’s venous structure and its velvet surface texture, seated like this, every sensation is shared and doubly pleasurable.

Where Lisa cants up, Jennie clamps down. Through collaborative, frenzied effort they push tired bodies and bone-weary muscles to climb the final peak.

Going by the strength of their combined scent and crescendo volume, there isn’t much longer left to wait until the inevitable crash from such vertiginous height.

At Lisa’s nosing of her neck to get her attention, Jennie shifts her head back so she can receive Lisa’s expectant mouth and tongue. Waiting, wanting. Their generous give dismantles her further.

The kissing intensifies. The room tilts. Their bodies tipping with the haze of quivering sounds traded back and forth. Moans transmute into unintelligible noises when Lisa reaches around and finds Jennie’s swollen bud.

She strokes long and hard.

On the third stroke, it’s Lisa who goes rigid, crying out. Jennie’s delirious movements must have surreptitiously pushed the dildo into Lisa at the right angle and pressure.

Before she can mourn her purloined orgasm, Jennie is flipped onto her stomach on the couch cushions, Lisa thrashing into her before the next catch of breath. The toy’s vibrations send incessant pulses through them both. Jennie’s clit throbs against the fibres of the sofa, making frictionless contact because of how wet she is. The lack of friction, however, doesn’t last long. “Baby,” the low, feeble call coincides with the reappearance of Lisa’s fingers on the bud, stroking madly in concert with Lisa’s hips. The intensity so acute, the sounds in her ear so feral, she risks blacking out.

“Jennie.” The euphoriant drug of Lisa’s needy voice, however, keeps her from pitching towards total darkness. “I’m gonna …”

“Oh god, Lisa,” these answering words dry in Jennie’s throat as fluids pour out of her. The pummelling force of Lisa’s fucking atomises Jennie into a collection of pulsating particles, desperate to cling together in danger of dispersal.

She claws to hang on. Arches into the taking.

The sound of Lisa’s hips slapping into her ass cuts off as the body behind her stiffens once more. Then it’s a flurry of activity that Jennie can’t decipher, the scramble of leather straps, dildo and fingers withdrawing, her bottom being lifted and one knee repositioned, before she feels the wet, hot press of Lisa’s cunt on hers. Her arousal spills into Jennie and in seconds, Lisa’s hips take off again in fast, tight circles.

The new rhythm and torrid sensation distract from the painfully sudden emptiness. Jennie screams her pleasure at being fucked so intimately, their pussies rubbing hard. She spasms under Lisa, who is still wracked by small tremors from previously coming, until their ripples converge, building to one last crashing tidal wave. Lisa’s hand slips under again, finds her clit and fingers it roughly, sending them towards shared oblivion.

Lisa rends the orgasm out of Jennie that had been impatiently lying in wait since the kitchen table, renders the shape of her into a liquid form.

Spilling and spilling and spilling.

Until there is nothing left. Only Lisa’s name seeping from her veins.

Until they are submerged in liquid love.

They lie in a ragged, limp pile of ecstasy and exhaustion for a long time.

“Wow.”

The astonishment is uttered after they come down, though without intelligible attribution. Possibly both of them authored it at once.

“I love you,” are words Jennie can lay claim. But they’re only acknowledged by a muffled sound something approximate to, “me too,” because Lisa hasn’t moved from her flopped state with her face buried into Jennie’s back.

Lisa eventually turns them over, once she gathers enough energy, aligning their bodies from head to chest, hip to toe. The small curve of Jennie’s belly fits against Lisa’s taut stomach.

“Hello.” Lisa smiles, dopey.

“Hi.” Jennie greets, breathy and happy.

Lisa’s weight on top is heavy and solid and warm. Jennie feels light and steady and whole, her insides vibrating from the resonance of their joining.

She could live forever in this infrathin space.

“I love you, too,” Lisa says, more pronounced, pressing her words into the space above Jennie’s chest.

Jennie kisses her in answer. It stays soft and slow even when they change angle. Just a skimming of the surface of deep contentment mutually felt post-coital.

Hazy and lightheaded after moving away from Lisa’s lips, Jennie’s gaze lands on the toy lying haphazardly, innocently on the floor. An unbidden smile breaks across her face.

“I love Aunt Layla,” she extols.

Lisa laughs and brushes a kiss to the top of her shoulder, conceding, “I’m starting to come around too.”

Jennie’s body instinctively jolts at the word, “come.” Her hips embarrassingly jog in search of friction again. She snuffs out the idea immediately. As greedy as the heat between her legs is to chase one closing high to punctuate an already blissful day, there’s nothing left in her tank. Lest not without more fuel.

“How about that pizza?”

—

“Lisa!”

The startled yelp comes when Jennie catches a glimpse of her back in Lisa’s bathroom mirror when she goes to clean up.

Lisa rushes in at her alarmed call,  phone in hand mid-dial, but her worry quickly turns into a fit of laughter clueing into Jennie’s dismay. Jennie fights the pull of her own lips so she can keep the heat behind her glare.

“Not funny.”

“A little bit.”

Peering over her shoulder, Jennie is horrified by the shimmering reflection of Lisa’s transferred glitter.

“I’m sparkling.”

Really, by the glowing warmth that presently radiates through her body, the tingles that still pervade, she has no room for grievance about wearing the gold dust of Lisa’s love.

Lisa approaches from behind and wraps arms around her middle, pressing Jennie back against Lisa’s front and effectively staining her skin with more glitter.

“You know what they say, the couple that shines together …” she quips, earning an even less impressed look. At the tail end of another laugh, Lisa charitably offers, “I can help you scrub it off.”

—

It’s bliss of a familiar, everyday kind for the next while. They live the life that Jennie had imagined while sitting on a bench alone in Regent Park last summer. Lisa puts in hours at her old office, wrapping up on her work here and relaying the progress in New York. Jennie sits with her at breakfast and they meet for lunch when schedules line up. The in-between hours are busied remotely coordinating her upcoming shows and checking in on the Whitehapel for the London one. Evenings are spent in the company of a variety of beverages and meal types as they make their way through Lisa’s hit list of London’s best cuisines.

One night it’s meze platters and Turkish raki at Yasar’s Kitchen; two nights at Kiln in Soho because Jennie couldn’t get enough of the clay pot glass noodles of the Michelin-star Thai restaurant and had to return for seconds; another night it’s takeaway lamb samosas and okra fries from Kings Cross paired with a pint of lager locally crafted in Camden, as they sit on the canal watching the slow moving houseboats float by.

On nights where they’re both too tired to step out, Jennie takes over in the kitchen and whips up creative meals from the random groceries Lisa picks up on her way back to the apartment after work. Some things don’t change when she’s left wondering what to do with only one red cabbage and an excessive amount of British leeks.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Jennie asks aloud, unable to keep the smile or fondness out of her exasperation.

“Sorry, love,” Lisa pecks her cheek and lightly slaps her bottom as she retreats to the bedroom after depositing the vegetables on the counter. “Wish I could surprise you with new things I learned but I’m still about as good with food stuff as I was with getting over you,” Jennie hears through the muffled sounds of Lisa changing clothes.

“The fact that you call it food stuff,” Jennie mumbles to herself as a recipe forms in mind of a leek and cabbage salad with the apples they already have on hand.

When Lisa returns, hair up in a loose bun, donning a cotton tee and workout shorts, she props up lazily on the kitchen counter. The picture of home and softness while stealing apple slices. Resigned, Jennie is compelled to abandon chopping and step between her legs, kiss her soundly and allow Lisa’s hands to do the apologising for their compromised dinner. Food is soon forgotten about when Lisa reverses their positions to immaturely show Jennie what constitutes her idea of fine dining.

Terrible puns aside, with their sex drive as mutually high as Lisa’s appetite and metabolism, becoming horizontal takes as little as an eyebrow lift or a hand to stray. Lisa reaches for her easily, kisses her thoroughly, makes love to her almost nightly.

Towards the end of their stay, they settle into a pattern, which in addition to ungodly amounts of sex includes a mix of tourist and non-tourist activities around the city on weekends and cloudless weeknights.

They indulge in wanderings to secret gardens and hidden mews, creative neighbourhoods and vibrant multicultural markets, interesting shops and quirky cafés, from bustling high streets to quiet, green spaces, on canal side or by the river. Lisa’s love of her adopted city reverberates against stone buildings and pebbled walkways, in the infectious laughs they share while seeking out unexplored landscapes. Tugged along, Jennie follows happily to the shutter sounds of Henry’s old camera that doesn’t stop clicking.

Though her feet sore from walking the many narrow streets and the unknown footpaths, the end of day massages entirely make up for the pain that then turns into a pleasant and familiar ache when kneading transmutes to pure need. When the lights turn off for the night, it’s usually with Jennie, languid and loose, against Lisa’s chest or pressed firm and solid into her side.

But then something autumnal arrives in the air. Even if the clinging heat ostensibly marks that they are still in the height of summer, things do change, in a way that Jennie hadn’t expected.

She had only known Cassie for a brief period of two hours but the loss hits her as forcefully as if it’d been a lifetime acquaintance.

As she sips her coffee one morning, watching the light drizzle outside, Lisa sleeps head cradled on her lap. It’s the sort of perfect hour for ruminating and sudoku. Her puzzle has long been set aside in favour of observing the fluttering of eyelashes subconsciously matching the tempo of fingers brushing through sleep-mused curls. The cadence of Lisa’s light snores grounds her while the raindrops against the glass occasionally draw her attention. She traces the water paths that slide down then disappear.

Jennie’s heart constricts at the transient and impermanent nature of things, of the briefness of time compared to the endless want for more of it with the girl under her fingertips.

A portion of Kath’s eulogy rings loudly.

“My grandmother was an English teacher and former librarian. She was ever-present at the kitchen table during homework making sure all my articles and prepositions were in the right order and nothing was left hanging. Clauses are excellent friends, she’d often tell me. Sixth form was only bearable because of her, I don’t think I’d have survived otherwise.

One of her favourite pastimes was writing strongly-worded letters to the Booker Prize jury about what they got so wrong every year with the authors they’d omitted on the shortlists. Gran knew a thing or two of words and never shied away from letting others know.

But I had never seen her made speechless by any combination of letters as the ones spoken by my grandfather. That is, when he did speak. A man of very few words but he had her full ear whenever he did say something. He was a sodden romantic, an amateur poet, and whatever he vocalised always made her blush.

Grandad believed in love. And I know that might sound like a trifle and obvious thing to say because my grandparents were married for over fifty years, together for close to sixty before he passed away. It took him a decade to make the commitment but we’ve forgiven him for the hesitancy because he didn’t think he deserved her. Was certain another better-suited fella would come along.

Gran had held steady and waited, because, as she’d told me on numerous occasions, he had the kindest eyes. When I was trying to sort through my own numerous failings at finding their type of love, her advice always centred on one question, ‘does he have kind eyes?’ I did eventually stumble into the one, and only then did I finally understand what she meant. Love is the way someone’s gaze softens and gentles for you, when they look at you.

Her gaze was never the same after Grandad passed. And in recent years, her memory hasn’t been doing well either. I suspect her mind was making room for holding onto all the words he saved for her.

The morning I found her in the shop, where we are today, she was in her rocking chair. She’d passed quietly in her sleep surrounded by her first love, books. Here’s the thing. I was devastated to lose my gran but I didn’t cry. Not yet. It gave me some comfort that she left us whilst amongst her beloved words. It wasn’t until they’d taken her away that I noticed her feet. Then, I had a proper meltdown.

I think she knew her time was coming, and she was preparing to meet her greatest love again. Because that day, she wore mismatched socks, his socks. It was the most god awful sight, high footballer socks and sandals. I was a sobbing mess, but only because I was relieved that they’d be reunited and a pair again. There is solace in knowing his words—and gaze—will find hers once more.”

Jennie lets out a shaky breath, and looks down to find a pair of kind though sleepy eyes gazing upon her. Soft and settled. A stilling warmth to them.

“I love you,” Jennie says as she gently kisses Lisa awake. She strokes her face then lets a hand rest on Lisa’s neck where a strong and steady pulse eases the weight building in Jennie’s chest.

“Me too,” Lisa yawns. “What time is it?”

“A little past nine.”

“Shit.” Lisa looks mildly panicked on learning the time. There’s a one-sided battle with the blanket—that the blanket handily wins—before she gives up and buries her head back onto Jennie’s lap. She grumbles words into the seam of Jennie’s thighs, groaning.

“Come again?” Jennie’s smile widens into a laugh at the display.

Lisa says more clearly, “I’m so late for work.”

“Honey,” Jennie draws out the beat before she reveals, chuckling, “it’s Sunday.”

Her legs tickle with the force of Lisa’s exhale of relief, and what sounds like, “Thank god.” Lisa turns her head so that she now faces Jennie’s stomach.

“Want to check out the V&A later then? I think they have a ceramic exhibition on,” she lets out another yawn, looks up and wiggles her brows, “see how they hold up to my masterpieces.”

“Sure,” Jennie laughs. She closes her eyes and lays her head back against the top of the couch, trying to shake off her earlier mood. “That sounds great.” Her stomach growls, a reminder that they had skipped breakfast because Lisa had fallen asleep again not less than three sips into her coffee. “Maybe we can get brunch there too?”

She feels movement on her lap that must signal Lisa’s agreement before a soft kiss to her stomach confirms it. “Okay.”

With their afternoon plans set, quiet returns that has Jennie thinking Lisa has drifted back to sleep. Jennie nearly does too, the steady pattering sound against the window works like a lulling metonym. Lessening the disquiet from before.

“Jennie?”

Lisa’s calling of her name disrupts the peace just as Jennie is about to succumb to the heaviness pressing on her eyelids.

“Yes, love,” she answers, idly playing with Lisa’s hair again.

“Everything ok?” Lisa asks.

Jennie gives a sad smile that Lisa doesn’t see. “Just thinking of Cassie,” she says and Lisa returns a baleful hum.

“She made really good tea,” Lisa reflects with a tinge of melancholy, “and gave excellent book recs.”

“Yeah. She gave me some great advice too.”

“Same.”

Introspective minutes later Jennie remarks, “I’m glad I’m here,” then notes their co-presence with deep gratitude, “that you’re here.”

“Same.”

It’s quiet again after Lisa’s final agreement. When minutes pass in silence, Jennie thinks nothing further will come. Drowsiness returns and she relaxes into it.

“They asked me to stay.”

Jennie freezes, suddenly alert. The sound of the rain washes away as the pulsing in her ear gets louder. The rise in volume happens in opposite degrees to the drop of her stomach.

Even without context yet, she immediately knows what those words mean.

Jennie takes long, needed seconds to compose her erratic thoughts before opening her eyes. When she does, they soften instantly seeing the scared look on Lisa’s face, like she’s petrified of Jennie’s reaction. Her mouth is set in a way that Jennie wants to soothe with a kiss but holds off for the important conversation that, signposted by the deepness of Lisa’s sigh, they are about to have.

“On the Friday morning before we found out about Cassie, they told me about a project,” Lisa recounts in a soft voice. Jennie doesn’t miss the conflicted tone.

Since the wake, Lisa has been quiet and solemn, somewhat withdrawn, though she braves a smile whenever Jennie catches her looking pensive. At first, Jennie assumed it was lingering sadness for the librarian’s unexpected parting. Then, possibly work-related stress. Though she’d intuited it’s more than either case, Jennie hasn’t prodded, trusting Lisa to come to her when she’s ready. New open communication policy and all.

Lisa lifts herself up to face Jennie fully, sitting crossed leg.

“They made me an offer.”

Oh.

Jennie can feel her heart ready to plummet, joining where her stomach is, but wills it to stay in place, and gives Lisa the room to explain, squashing her instinct to immediately react and jump to conclusions. But something of her twisted insides must look visibly crestfallen because Lisa is quick to follow up, rushing out, “I didn’t take it.”

Lisa adjusts herself to sit with her back against the couch and then pulls Jennie over. She arranges their bodies and makes minor adjustments until Jennie is settled onto her lap. Lisa holds her by the hips, thumbs making ring-shaped patterns on her hipbone.

The intimacy works to quiet any monsters. Jennie cups the back of Lisa’s neck, fingers massaging into her baby hairs.

“I said no,” Lisa reiterates. Eyes a deep, earnest green.

Jennie nods slowly and doesn’t realise she has been nervously gnawing her teeth until Lisa’s thumb comes up to redraw the same circles on her lower lip that have since been pressed into her ribs. Lisa’s mouth then seals over it and gently sucks.

They don’t quite kiss, merely feeling each other, even if the tingles spreading through Jennie’s body has her wanting to deepen it. Before pulling back, Lisa slightly parts her lips and they share a breath. Long and grounding. Her exhale becomes Jennie’s inhale.

Although Jennie’s heart hasn’t slowed yet, at least her lost breath is regained.

By the certainty of Lisa’s answer, they can leave it at that—move on without further thought of how no and yes has come to be the defining markers of their relationship—but something pricks in Jennie’s brain to ask anyways.

“What did you say no to?”

Lisa looks at her curious, not expecting the question. She considers Jennie for a moment, a thoughtfulness to her gaze like she’s weighing how to phrase her reply, how much to share.

“A salary bonus large enough to eat only at Michelin-star restaurants every meal for a year. And cover rent.”

“Wow.”

“Before I left for New York, the London office was trying to court a major new client. Turns out, they’ve managed to finally secure a meeting with the developer.”

Lisa gets her up to speed on all the details, about how this development office is a progressive company keen on working with communities to build sustainably. They’ve completed several award-winning projects in the East End, near the Olympic site, and are looking to do innovative, mixed-use housing on an adjacent former industrial land. Similar to what Lisa was doing in Manhattan by the docks.

Jennie nods and absently hums at the right intervals, all the while, her thoughts have started running a mile a minute again.

“My boss was hoping I could help out the Senior Project Architect on the design proposal until late December, which is when the meeting is scheduled. The team’s been working hard on something but apparently it hasn’t quite clicked yet with the client in the pre-meetings with the junior execs. So, they’re concerned about senior management’s approval.”

“They need your magic touch, don’t they?”

Lisa bites her lip, fingers drumming against the small of Jennie’s back where her hands now rest. Jennie thinks Lisa will be her usual demure self and dismiss her importance as only being an intermediate designer.

“But not as much as I need you,” is what she hears instead, spoken with conviction and soft affection.

Lisa tugs Jennie forward some more despite the lack of room to make progress. Their lower halves are already pressed together as tightly as possible. “I meant it, Jennie. It’s not a choice for me. I’ve waited a long time for this.”

Though it’s needless to qualify what this is, Lisa leans forward to kiss her and elucidate the point. She slides their lips together in a heartbreaking show of what exactly she is unwilling to give up on. There’s residual fear in how her tongue desperately wraps around Jennie’s like she can’t possibly do without this taste again.

“Me too.” Jennie aches to comfort and returns a slower, steadying kiss, changing the angle. No less needy or firm in its reassurance. Foreheads gently touching afterwards, she places her hand on Lisa’s chest to dampen the last of the panic. A quiet moment later, she comments, not yet ready to leave the conversation, “Sounds like a good deal though.”

“Late December,” Lisa starts to babble, “honestly, it’s an unrealistic deadline. Do you know how busy the holiday season is here?” and doesn’t wait for Jennie’s answer as she down talks the working conditions. It’s unclear whether she’s trying to convince Jennie or herself of her sound decision by debunking the reality of the seemingly incredible offer. “Everyone is rushing everywhere. People go on annual leave. It’s impossible to get any feedback in time.”

As Lisa rambles on, Jennie’s mind is still taking in the timeframe. Christmas. Four months from now.

Her thoughts return to Cassie, to Kath’s words about the parting and return of love. To Jennie’s list. To everything that’s brought her and Lisa to this point.

An idea percolates.

“Lisa.” Jennie’s calling goes unheard.

“Then there was that one time we needed a set of drawings delivered across the city and the bike courier wouldn’t do it.”

“Lisa.”

“Not unless we paid him £400 for a delivery that usually only costs twenty quid. Unbelievable. But he knew we were desperate because it was the eve of Christmas Eve—”

She cuts Lisa off with a kiss that is then appended by, “Stay.”

Lisa looks up breathless and confused, both from the surprise of their kiss and Jennie’s soft command. “What?”

“Stay.” Jennie fixes her gaze, letting the word sink in.

When Lisa finally grasps Jennie’s meaning, she shakes her head vehemently, apprehension returning. “No, Jennie. I’m not leaving you again. My life is in New York with you.”

Her tone is almost pleading, tightening her hold around Jennie like she can’t fathom even four seconds of separation.

Jennie cups her cheeks, stilling Lisa’s head in place. She brushes dislodged hair behind Lisa’s ears before connecting their mouths again, a short, sweet kiss this time.

“It could also be in London with me.” That gets Lisa’s full attention now. Eyes wide and open. “Neither of us has to leave. Let’s stay,” Jennie says, soft but sure. “Both of us. I meant what I said too, at the airport. I will go wherever you are, and if for the next four months that means London, then London it is.”

Temporary or permanent, she will follow Lisa anywhere. Jennie is done with being apart. She smoothes the contemplative crease between Lisa’s eyebrows as she continues, “It sounds like an amazing opportunity and they really want you.”

Lisa leans into her touch and at the same time looks bewildered like she hadn’t even considered this option as a possibility. Jennie patiently waits for her reply, gaze unwavering while Lisa’s mouth opens and closes a few times. At last, she seems to settle on the strongest rebuttal, which is framed less as an argument and simply stated as fact. “But I really want you.”

“You have me. If this job is also what you want, it doesn’t have to be either or.”

Lisa asks, still hesitant but Jennie can hear the hope that’s rising. “Are you sure?”

“New York will always be there. But I want to always be there for you. Lisa, I’m not making a choice between London and New York here. I’m choosing you. Us.”

“What about your art?”

“I brought my brushes, remember? They’re still in my backpack.” Jennie shrugs, her joke pulls a smile from Lisa. “It’s fine. I can rent a studio space. Plus, several of my shows are in Europe this fall, it actually works out for me to coordinate from here. Four months will fly by anyways.”

“You would do that? Delay New York? What about the LA show, you’ll miss it.”

“I can fly out for the weekend.” Jennie waves off, determined to weaken Lisa’s resolve to be noble. “But yes, I would give it all up, in a heartbeat. Everything, except you, love.”

Lisa nods, her face visibly warming and eyes softening with unmetered affection at Jennie’s meaningful words. The blush is so pretty, Jennie tips forward to kiss either cheek, and then can’t help herself but seek out Lisa’s mouth after. Lisa sinks into Jennie’s lips easily, hands fisting into her sleep shorts.

“I can art anywhere,” Jennie stresses when the kiss ends, “as long as I’m with you.”

At Jennie’s persistence, Lisa’s expression slowly changes into acceptance. She offers sheepishly, “I’ll ask David if there are any openings in Brixton for you to set up. Maybe even that room with your painting,” her voice raising in question at the end.

“That’d be great. And I can also look around this area. There seems to be a few independent galleries.”

“Yeah, the East End’s known for its indie art scene,” Lisa confirms, her tone more confident, head bobbing and eyes getting brighter. “Bethnal Green would be good to check out, just down the road.”

“We can look together.”

“Together.”

Lisa breathes the word, exhales it in reverence as if overturning it in her mouth and trying it out. Her eyes glaze like her imagination is at work visualising what that togetherness looks like if they close out the year here in London. Something must have sparked to cause a tug of her lips upwards.

Jennie’s heart trebles in size at the sight of Lisa’s smile, at the sight of Lisa, happy and hopeful. Its rapid overgrowth, accelerating when Lisa accepts, threatens to burst her chest wide open.

“Ok. Let’s stay.”

—

So, they stay.

They stay long enough for Jennie to start feeling like a Londoner. For the TFL map to make sense and the habit of carrying an umbrella everywhere to become second-nature.

Long enough for the grocer to learn her name and the local baker to know her favourite sourdough bread.

Long enough to become a foursome with Minnie and Rian and share frequent laughter during Sunday roasts together, in either of their apartments, over horror stories of in-laws and timeshare family vacations.

Long enough to have Lisa on her arm at her London opening beaming with pride and then sport another form of smugness while having lust- and laughter-filled drunken sex afterwards in the alley two streets down.

Long enough to take extended weekend trips to the cities she’s exhibiting and trade notes about the differences in hipsters and hops in Berlin versus Amsterdam.

Autumn lives up to its symbolism of being the harbinger of change. Jennie basks in the newness of her routes and their routines. Falling ineffably more in love than she already is. Falling into Lisa’s arms at night is like borrowing clothes from an old life and keeping the one piece that will always fit.

Four months turn into six and then eight.

The December meeting goes better than planned and Lisa’s office secures a contract at first for the Concept Design stage, which extends into Technical Design, so Lisa tells her, whatever that means. Lisa stays on until they achieve preliminary Planning Permission. Jennie still doesn’t understand the significance but happily celebrates the milestone with Lisa and her colleagues at the local pub.

They spend Christmas Day in London—overstuffed on sweets from Carnaby Street—but then the following week and New Year in New York, trading in the former’s winter mildness for the latter’s frigid temperatures. Jennie feels nothing but warmth when they reunite with their friends and parents for dinner, even if some of the heat pinking her cheeks is from their loved ones drunkenly betting when she and Lisa would make it official official. She receives a wink from Henry that she swallows its too-knowingness into her eggnog before distracting herself with Tyro’s belly giggles. Lisa protects her from their teasing and bats off their inquiries for the rest of the night with glares and dismissals of heteronormativity. (Rosé becomes a surprising ally when she mutters, “marriage is overrated,” gracefully dodging a slap to the shoulder from her unamused wife.)

On New Year’s day, they sneak into the gallery where Jennie first encountered Lisa a year ago. They mark the occasion by drinking leftover wine and kiss and kiss until lips are as bruised red as the merlot in their veins. Nothing much is said. Their presence, together, is enough meaning.

Jennie writhes and moans under Lisa that night on their rooftop as the moon hangs high. She comes on Lisa’s fingers and tongue and to the sound of her voice breathing and averring words of love.

They fly back to London two days later. Full and satiated on good food and good company and the good kind of sore and aching. Lisa immediately returns to work on her project and Jennie starts thinking about her next pieces.

Before Jennie knows it, Spring arrives and they are packing up again. This time to return home, permanently.

—

Jennie brings a shovel.

Completely jet lagged, with nothing unpacked yet, she had asked Lisa to take them to the park two days after they land. But instead of Prospect or Central or any number of green destinations in-town across Brooklyn and Manhattan, they drive to Bear Mountain. Lisa humours the spontaneous plan, possibly too tired to question, though she does cast a curious eye to the shovel when it’s placed in the trunk, along with a few bags, including an overnight duffle and a sleeping bag.

As the rental car winds around the tree-lined roads, the Hudson Valley meandering in and out of view, as spring fully blooms all around them this first week of May, Jennie’s artistic eyes do their best to shutter and capture the passing scenery. A quiet thrumming permeates the air. Lisa hums to the radio emitting low, indistinct sounds, while her hand that’s not on the wheel traces the tune on Jennie’s knee and thigh, fingers tapping and trailing.

The window is cracked open. The breeze is light, bringing with it nature’s fragrance. Jennie takes deep breaths and soaks up the smell of renewal, the promise of sunshine after a heavy rain.

“Actually, this is a good idea,” Lisa breaks the quiet as they approach the park’s entrance.

“What is?” Jennie asks, hiding her smile at what Lisa might be thinking of their itinerary.

A bear-size yawn serves as answer first, followed by, “To hibernate in the cabin.”

“We’re not going there.”

“We’re not?”

“No. Well, yes. To park the car and drop off our bags. But that’s not exactly what I have in mind.”

Lisa turns her head to study Jennie with a look part curious, part faux fear before narrowing her eyes. “Should I be worried about the potential weapon in the trunk?”

Instead of answering, Jennie leans over the gear shift and kisses her on the cheek. She interlocks their hands, giving a reassuring squeeze. “No.”

The soft touch placates. Lisa accepts without further inquiry.

That’s how they find themselves in a secluded area in the Manoban, some distance from the cabin but within view and walking reach of the water. The sleeping bag is unzipped and spread open on the ground. The pair of them enjoying avocado sandwiches that Jennie had assembled on arrival, along with the latest craft from Atticus Brewery that they picked up on the way.

“Picnic in the Manoban, by the lake, at sunset?” Lisa asks, amusement laced in her voice, dusting her hands of crumbs after the last bite. She takes a swig of her artisanal ale. “I’m not sure how I feel about you infringing on my territory.”

“What territory is that?”

“Overly, excessively romantic gestures.”

“Just playing catch-up.”

Lisa beams with a smile that’s a Jennie exclusive, small at the edge but unrestrained in its affection. She leans back on their makeshift blanket, propped up on elbows and head dipped back with her chin raised to the sinking sun. Her eyes close and she mutters what sounds like disbelief that Jennie could ever match her extra-ness.

Jennie’s heart seizes at the familiar sight, having difficulty containing her own disbelief of how far they’ve come. Butterflies flap in support.

“Remember when we were kids?” She asks, head on her raised knees, turned towards Lisa. “God, the bleachers and these sandwiches and your aviators, those were the only things of high school that’s stayed with me. How cool you looked and how nervous I felt.”

The nerves Jennie presently feels is different from then but she smiles fondly at how wrecking it was to walk towards the baseball field and see teenage Lisa in her tanned glory, hurt and vulnerable but pretending like she didn’t have a care in the world.

“Why were you nervous?”

“Because I was falling for you.”

Lisa hums understanding. But when her conceited, “Don’t blame you, I was hot,” provokes a light shove to the shoulder, she reveals, “I wasn’t trying to be cool. The aviators were necessary subterfuge because I couldn’t stop looking at you. I was falling too.”

The look she gives Jennie now shows the complete transparency of her eyes and their inability to hide any emotion tethered to Jennie.

It’s one of those moments that Jennie will later remember with startling clarity. The sudden, intense swelling of love. The impulse to act.

Without warning, Jennie grabs the shovel within reach and crawls a few paces away, leaving Lisa staring dumbfounded at the abrupt change in direction as she searches for the right spot of dirt and starts digging.

It isn’t until Jennie lets out a triumphant whoop when she hits something solid, next to a hole in the ground after an empty-handed first attempt, that Lisa finally joins her. The shovel is cast aside to prevent damage to the glass as two pairs of hands complete the excavation.

“What is it?” Lisa asks, watching Jennie handle the object with care. “One of those treasure hunts the Park puts on?”

Jennie’s heart rate speeds up. She can’t believe it’s still here—had hoped it’d be and not already discovered and tossed away—a memento of the past that had been deposited in haste in the early hours while Lisa had been asleep in the tent. Many moons ago than the one that is now starting to make an appearance.

“Sort of but not quite,” Jennie replies, voice quieting as her pulse ticks up, eyes now firmly on the piece of paper stuffed inside of the mason jar. “You know the morning after ...” she gulps, steeling her nerves, “after our first time?”

Lisa sits back, bum resting on the back of her calves. Her eyebrows knit in thought. Confused but accommodating, she says, “Yeah, it was kinda unforgettable.” She follows Jennie’s gaze which has started to survey their surroundings. “It wasn’t here though.”

“No, two campsites over,” Jennie confirms. “I had taken a walk with my sketchpad and brought one of your tealights with me in this jar. I couldn’t sleep and needed to draw out my thoughts. I sat over there,” she points to where a large log used to be, “drawing for a bit to calm my heart which hadn’t stopped racing since we were intimate.”

Lisa smiles and blushes at the memory, likely recalling the same erratic beating during that hallowed night.

“On my way back,” Jennie continues, “I noticed a small burrow in the ground, probably dug out by some animal or maybe it was a leftover hole from a treasure hunt.”

“So you decided to leave an impromptu time capsule?” Lisa asks, the furrows in her brow deepening trying to make sense of Jennie’s story.

Jennie shrugs a shy shoulder. It was more that she needed to cache the overwhelming feelings of that morning, waking up in Lisa’s arms, a new soreness between her legs, young and aching in love.

That ache, as strong as ever now, bolsters her for her next ask. “Could you stand for a sec?”

Since complying to Jennie’s hidden agenda seems to be the day’s program, Lisa does as told with little resistance as she’s handed the jar. She stands, knees and shins covered in dirt and hands browned from her short foray into archaeology.

“Open it,” Jennie instructs softly from her still seated position, needing the firmness of the ground.

Long, nervous fingers wrap around the glass, holding it for a moment in curious examination, before she unscrews the tin-metal lid. It unthreads along the grooves of the jar’s mouth, and produces a pop sound once removed, like releasing sealed-in air of the past.

Jennie lets out a breath at the same time. Watches Lisa closely.

Lisa pulls out the paper that Jennie can visualise with vivid account her written note, a timestamp of when she first came to grapple with the concept of a future and Lisa’s lasting place in it. When she wondered about the fallible encounter between youth and the boundless weight of a cosmic love.

An initial laugh then a shuddering gasp lets her know Lisa has read through.

This might be the sex talking, and I might be too young to know with certainty, but I want to marry you. One day I’m going to ask. Until then I will love you the best I can.

While Lisa is preoccupied with mulling over the words, her lower lip losing the battle against the start of a quiver, Jennie takes additional fortifying breaths. She waits, holding out her hand.

“Lisa ...”

At the dripping tenderness in Jennie’s voice, the smallest of break over the last vowel, Lisa looks up. Or rather down.

She gasps again and loses grip on the jar. It falls with a soft thud onto the ground. No heed for where it rolls inches away, her eyes travel to where Jennie has risen to bend on one knee.

“That’s, where did you, how—” she stutters incomplete sentences, clearly flustered from recognising the subway wrapper sitting in Jennie’s open palm. Moisture clings to long lashes as Lisa fights the emotion.

“Today is that someday.”

Jennie pauses to wipe a tear from her own pooling eyes.

She continues as Lisa stands speechless, “It was my first time in a tent. Our first time together, and I remembered wondering then, as you were sleeping on my chest afterwards, if I was too young to think of forever. I mean, it was probably a sex-driven impulse.”

A light chuckle causes Lisa’s eyes to crinkle and water some more. One arm is holding onto her stomach while the other perceptibly shakes with the piece of paper still in hand.

“It’s been years since I wrote that letter. Enough time has passed to now know that my younger self was much wiser than I ever gave her credit for. She loved you with an intensity and a fearlessness. As it turns out, my best could have been better, but I’m going to tap into her bravery again.”

“Jennie ...”

She unwraps the box, setting the wax paper aside, and opens the lid.

“It’s a beautiful ring. I never got to see it the first time. My fault for being an idiot. In some twisted way I’m glad I didn’t because I think it suits you better.”

“Jennie.”

“I know we haven’t talked about it. I know there are all these attachments to the notion and the institution. I know that a moment like this is a painful one in our history and that there’s still years ahead of us to work through. But, I am incredibly, desperately in love with you—with us and our life. My heart has been so full since we met. And if this is one way that it would let you know, every day , just how immensely it continues to overflow—how deep and profound love runs in me for you—then I’d like to ask.”

“Jennie,” Lisa rasps. Each call of her name comes out impossibly more tender than the last.

Since starting her monologue, Jennie hasn’t been able to keep the tremor from her hand. She takes another deep breath, drawing strength from the idyllic quiet around them and the halcyon sight of the breathtaking girl in front of her. The golden haze of a fading spring afternoon—and the sepia photograph it elicits of a young Lisa haloed against its light—steadies her hand and heart.

With a soft smile and on the smallest nod of self-encouragement, Jennie reaches behind to pull out from her back pocket another piece of paper. One less aged, which she has been holding onto for eight months.

“I’ve written some things down.”

“Jennie,” comes out more watery than the others. Lisa’s hand gestures to reach out, in apparent need for them to touch, which Jennie holds her off with a shake of the head. She needs to finish the words she’s been rehearsing with Tyro over the phone. (His limited grasp of language makes for a great non-judgmental audience, not to mention excellent secret-keeper.)

“Hey, there’s no crying in baseball,” Jennie jokes, pulling a wet chuckle from Lisa. “So, keep it together, Manoban. I won’t be able to get through this if you get emo on me now.” Lisa retracts her hand and blinks the tears back, smiling permission for Jennie to continue. “First, a couple of promises. Whatever your answer, this is what I vow.”

Jennie’s voice carries softly across the forest floor as she begins to recite.

Lisa,

I will always draw my line towards you,

mark my days by the light of your eyes,

hours by the nearness of your touch,

minutes by your breath upon my skin

I will always give of myself,

in paint or ink, by words or shared quiet,

to keep you safe and hold you close

to carry you in love and enfold you in joy

I will always reach for you

for your hands and eyes and lips

in a crowd or across the room,

whatever side of the ocean

I will always blanket you

in softness and warmth,

between mornings and nights,

across the seasons and years

For as deeply and as truly

as I can and all that I may be,

for as long and as much

as you need and want me

With every heartbeat

and singular breath

until my very last

I will always

always

be yours

In the promises of other sworn but unspoken words, like stay and steadfast, together and tomorrow, Jennie vows to love Lisa. She chances a glance up after the last line to find Lisa wholly stunned, wetness spilt over and running down her cheeks.

“For the privilege of being yours,” she continues, “if you’ll have me, I would very much like for you to be mine too,” and ends quietly, vision blurred but heart in crystal focus.

There’s aching affection in Lisa’s shaky breath formed around quivering, parted lips—a fluttering pre-flight to agreement. It bolsters her to finally articulate a long held-in question. So, on a deep exhale, voice louder and clearer, Jennie asks.

“Lisa, will you marry me?”

A beat.

Two.

But no response.

The world stills. Everything reduced to the shine in Lisa’s eyes and the treble of Jennie’s heart.

The moment thickens with significance as Lisa’s gaze flits from Jennie’s hand to her own then shifting back again. Each of them is holding a piece of paper. One steeped in the past, the other a scripted future. Between them, an emending, bridging present.

A tethered hush fills up the space created by Jennie’s kneeling words; it disperses amongst the trees, suspending the movements of water and wind and all woodland creatures alike. Bated in wait.

When the seconds lengthen, Jennie shifts on her knee, feeling the gravel underneath more coarse than it was seconds ago.

Lisa shakes her head, the start of a reply, but her eyes communicate something else altogether than denial. Her adoring gaze, glistened as it is, reassures Jennie it’s not a rejection.

“You literally buried your feelings for me?” Lisa asks, teasing but undeniably fond, tinged with an aura of disbelieving awe.

Jennie stares blankly, having not expected anything more than one word. When the joke registers, her features and shoulders relax that she hadn’t realised were tensed in expectation. Her nerves ease and her heart slows to something more manageable.

She rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Answer the question, Lisa,” Jennie prompts, squinting in warning but with no real threat. At Lisa’s continued unresponsiveness but unfalteringly tender look, her gaze softens, entreating. “Grow old with me.”

Another fleeting head shake, but the weight of Lisa’s corresponding smile is something Jennie knows she will carry for years (many decades).

Lisa pulls her up to standing height in one swift motion, flustering Jennie to find them suddenly at eye level. The forest colours are much closer than before despite how deep they are into the Manoban. Jennie’s surprised yelp gets instantly swallowed by a resounding kiss.

The tenderness from Lisa’s eyes pours out through her lips. The angle changes, the kiss deepens. Lisa breaks only to ask, a soft plea, “Can I show you, rather than tell you, my answer?” before she kisses her again.

Jennie falls into the familiar warmth of it, of her, getting lost for minutes when Lisa’s hands press and tug as much as her lips do to draw Jennie deeper into her mouth.

So thoroughly distracted by the intense feeling of Lisa’s tongue licking into the roof of it, Jennie doesn’t notice she’s being carried and led back to the sleeping bag until she finds herself horizontal. Her back hits the ground cover with a small thump, head gently cradled for a softer landing. When she opens her eyes to look up, Jennie is engulfed entirely in forest now, Lisa above her, the canopy of trees swaying beyond. The sight makes her more breathless than she already is.

The world would spin were it not for Lisa’s steady, purposeful gaze. Whatever is willing the green to dilate, Jennie has no desire to question.

Lisa begins removing their tops and bras, first hers and then Jennie’s, after receiving assent that comes out a nervous garble, “I mean, yeah, sure. Show don’t tell.”

“Are you cold?” Lisa worries observing the slight shiver run through her body that has nothing to do with the brisk spring air and everything to do with the girl on top of her.

Reassured by a head shake, jeans come off next. Lisa more deliberate and careful with pulling Jennie’s down after gracelessly chucking hers off. Jennie sucks in a breath when Lisa’s thumbs hook into her panties. On Jennie’s nod of consent, they peel off to be replaced immediately by kisses to the inside of her thighs before Lisa’s mouth is on her.

No preamble. She noses at the hair and then drinks in Jennie’s arousal.

“Lisa,” Jennie rasps when a tongue swipes—long and flat—through her folds.

Lisa settles in between Jennie’s legs, planting them over her shoulders.

Their coupling as of late, the European trysts anyways, has been lust driven. Frantic and fraught with the need for quick release, yet bodies still ache with unabated desire after each chase of high. This feels different. Lisa feels different.

The unraveling happens in increments. Lisa takes her time to earn every moan and tug of hair and buck of hips. She licks the length of Jennie in slow passes, intensifies Jennie’s need for more by lapping at the pool at her entrance but not pushing in. Teeth occasionally graze her clit and gently pull it from its hood where the tips of tongue and bud meet in the faintest of touches.

No amount of Jennie’s heels digging harder into the toned muscles of Lisa’s back—or tight gripping of her hair—gets her to speed up. Instead, without once penetrating, Lisa works Jennie up until her orgasm rolls through and shakes the ground beneath with the tremors of her body.

Lisa withdraws and runs a trail of Jennie’s wetness up her stomach to her chest, and swirls it around her breasts, laving her nipples to stiffening points. Lips seal around them in alternating turns.

The shift in attention results in a blind grinding search for a second undoing, seeking friction against Lisa’s stomach while arching her back to push more of herself into Lisa’s mouth and hand; the latter squeezing softly, the former sucking gently.

Clawing scratches to Lisa’s back, again, do little to encourage a change of pace. But again, the unhurriedness of action nonetheless accelerates the ascent towards breaking. Lisa maintains her rate of dismantling until Jennie is somehow hoarse from silent begging and comes once more, then journeys up and kisses the last breaths out of her lungs. Jennie’s only recourse is to let her mouth move to the persuasion of Lisa’s wet, swollen lips.

Their bodies now lined completely, Lisa begins small, grinding circles of her pelvis. A hard thigh slips in between Jennie’s legs, increasing the tautness in her belly and the pooling heat that is greedy for another relief.

Lisa presses into her for awhile before she lifts her upper half off of Jennie to sit astride on her stomach. A pause, a breather.

“Can I?” Lisa asks, shy but full of wanton intent as her gaze shifts to Jennie’s breasts while she idly continues her grinding.

Jennie swallows hard reading Lisa’s intention. Her nipples ache at the thought. It’s already a risk with what they’re doing so publicly but feeling Lisa’s throbbing wet heat on her skin, she has no regard for caution with what she thinks Lisa has in mind. (Given the lateness of the evening and the low season, there’s little chance of passersby stumbling upon their private campsite, she reasons. Hopes.)

“You’re such a boob girl,” Jennie teases but nearly regrets it seeing Lisa flush pink, eyes lowering in embarrassment. It’s not full regret because the bloom makes Lisa even more striking and radiant. “It’s ok,” she softens, reassuring, before paraphrasing part of her vows, “However you want me, I am yours to have.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jennie chokes out, feeling more evidence of Lisa’s excitement on her stomach.

Lisa shuffles forward until one of Jennie’s breasts is lined with her opening, and when she’s in position, softly asks while reaching a hand back, “Spread your legs.”

The dual stimulation hits Jennie at once, punching a breath out, when Lisa lowers her bottom and then strokes Jennie’s folds before entering with two fingers.

“Can you handle this?” Lisa asks, experimentally rubbing herself over Jennie’s nipple while beginning a slow thrusting motion of her hand. The question is not teasing or rhetorical but genuine and timid.

Jennie feels a different warmth flood her than the continual stream of fluid between her legs. Lisa’s concern for her safety and comfort despite the very compromising position they’re in, is so endearing and very Lisa. Jennie nods and reaches up to palm Lisa’s breasts in turn, indicating her keenness.

Lisa lowers some more and rubs with greater intent on Jennie’s breasts but keeps the earlier tempo. It’s a gentle rhythm for some time. Jennie’s nipple is enfolded in wet warmth that glides back and forth. Pebbled and erect, whenever it catches on Lisa’s clit, paired whines tumble forth from increasingly dry lips. Jennie’s hand compensates for the other breast that’s left out. All the while Lisa’s fingers slide in and out of her in gentle motion, a comparable softness with her eyes that have misted into a verdant tenderness.

Wildly aroused, Jennie soon abandons her work unable to concentrate when Lisa’s double effort is doubly effective at making her writhe to the point of incoherence. Lisa’s panting sounds above—a pattern of deep moans, short bursting cries and Jennie’s name—is gorgeously melodious against the pumping and slicking sounds below.

When she’s close, Lisa switches to Jennie’s other breast. A thick string of her arousal trails across Jennie’s chest in the changeover that if Jennie’s vocals weren’t already broken by whimpers would have shattered at the sight.

On instinct, as the crescendo rises, they both press a thumb to each other’s clit, massaging in equal fervour to mounting warnings of impending release.

Just as Jennie’s orgasm builds towards a crushing height, Lisa stills.

Hair in disarray, lips pouty and eyes a dew-rich summer green, Lisa looks so devastatingly beautiful it causes a heart-stopping rattle of Jennie’s chest, followed by a swooping lurch in her stomach. She regards Jennie with open affection for a moment before her mouth prettily parts.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Jennie agrees, though it’s obvious in the haste and croak of her reply that she’s motivated by a burning sensation, something more hot and pressing than sentiment. With the impatience of her lust, she urges, “Baby, please move. You can stare longingly into my eyes after I come.”

Lisa laughs but does obey, finally moving with post-haste urgency. Jennie strains to keep up, heart straining against her chest at how good Lisa feels on top and at once inside of her like this, hips rotating in sync with fingers insistently pumping. They rock together.

Their orgasms spill seconds of one another. The forest floor absorbs their cries.

Jennie’s breasts and thighs are a sticky reservoir. It matters little. She has no mind of anything but the honeysuckle sweetness that takes over her senses when Lisa lifts off her chest and bends forward to kiss her. Long and deep and indescribably soft. It’s as intimate as the enveloping tightness of Lisa’s fingers still inside. Jennie’s walls clench anew even as her body comes down.

Lisa inscribes her answer to the proposal into the kiss. When she draws back to look at Jennie, it’s with such deep-welled tenderness and teary-eyed fondness that it threads through to the sinews of her.

“Jennie,” Lisa breathes out.

“I know,” Jennie soothes, empathising with Lisa’s overwhelmed expression. “I know. Me too.”

“Jennie.”

It is spoken so softly. Acceptance is so clear. Lisa’s agreement explicit in the hallowed way she utters Jennie’s name, in the invulnerable way she looks at Jennie.

The emotional labour it’s taken to get here, the lost years, the empty spaces—all of it is worth the universe expanding within those eyes. Hemmed in by Lisa’s gaze, Jennie can do nothing but lie in wonderstruck witness to the supernova of its encompassing warmth.

The heat of Lisa’s wetness burns hot against her stomach and the throb of Lisa’s clit beats as insistently as Jennie’s heart. Placing hands on her hips, she lets Lisa pursue her tremors towards another release.

“I love you,” Jennie initiates this time.

She sits up, Lisa immediately wrapping legs around her back, adjusting position. Her bum fitted into the cradle of Jennie’s curve. Jennie’s hand joins Lisa’s below and picks up on the rhythm Lisa has started again. Bare and bound in love, their bodies come together over and over as the sun and moon trade places.

The birds, the breeze, the loon calls skittering off the water, everything becomes peripheral, fading away, as Jennie opens up for Lisa and falls repeatedly into the give of her. They fold and bend, bodies making room for gasps and sighs—for trembling kisses. She feels sixteen again, chasing sunsets into starry skies.

More kissing. More non-verbal acceptance. More expansion.

“I am yours too, Jennie.”

With those infinite words, they finally collapse back onto the sleeping bag sweaty, worn hours later.

Lisa then turns her attention to cleaning up the shine across Jennie’s chest shortly before resettling on the ground.

Some nudging thereafter, they lie with Jennie’s head on Lisa’s chest, Jennie pressed tightly into her side. Lisa smoothes her matted hair while Jennie draws circles on a still tensing stomach. The scent of evergreens and mountain laurels mix with the musk of their spent desire.

“Was that a yes?”

Without pausing her movements, Lisa states as if informing Jennie of the obviousness of something like her eyes are blue. “It has always been yes, Jennie.”

Lisa reaches for the ring box that Jennie hadn’t realised she had safely put down before commencing their activity. A sapphire brilliance stares back at them after Jennie places the ring on Lisa’s third finger.

“So, you’ll marry me?”

“Sure, why not,” Lisa answers dryly. Despite her casualness, she smiles as bright as the light the ring catches when her hand twists and turns admiring. “Give this thing a home that’s not a sandwich shop wrapper.” A second later, she muses with an airy chuckle, “I understand the whole starving artist thing but it’s a bit extreme penny pinching to re-use my ring you rejected to propose to me, don’t you think?”

Jennie laughs but defends her frugality with forethought. “I wanted to get ahead of the curve early. Something old and something blue,” she reasons and then expands, more quietly, “It’s a piece of our history.”

Lisa acknowledges with a hum. It’s unspoken what it means to reclaim something that had broken them, its symbolism of love’s return and hearts mended.

“And it’s your mom’s ring. I think she’d want you to have it.”

“Thank you. We’ll get you one too,” Lisa promises, kissing the back of Jennie’s empty finger. “Something new.”

“I’m glad you said yes,” Jennie comments quiet moments later, nuzzling closer into Lisa’s chest. “I didn’t have a backup plan for how I’d get home if you’d said no. You’re kinda my ride. It would’ve been really awkward.” She places a grateful kiss on Lisa’s sternum. “Very convenient of you to accept, thank you.”

“I’m glad it worked out transportation-wise. According to Rosé, marriage is about convenience—she calls it romantic laziness—so we’re off to a great start.”

Jennie chuckles. She thinks of Hyuna and Dawn, how out of their friend group, it’s ironic that as the token straights, they’re the only couple who’s bucked marital conventions. The luxury of choice.

“You’ve gotten so much better at this,” Jennie says after some time, trailing her hand down to below Lisa’s stomach but going no further beyond playing with the curls to make her point, “than our first time here.”

“What? No, I was super smooth.”

“You weren’t, babe.” Jennie can’t see it but she knows Lisa looks affronted to be considered anything less than suave. Following the indignant puff of air, Jennie concedes, “Neither of us were.”

“We were sixteen.”

“And now almost double that age,” Jennie notes with a degree of nostalgia. She tilts her head back, making room to kiss the underside of Lisa’s jaw, and wishes, “Happy birthday.”

The actual date was two months ago but Lisa had been too busy and tired then with work to humour anything other than a home-cooked dinner, giving Jennie the opening to discreetly plan something more special down the line.

“Happy indeed.” Lisa laughs, resounding and infectious. “I could really get used to the specific way you celebrate my birthdays. I like this new tradition.”

Jennie curls further into her, not bothering to argue that the sex was Lisa’s initiative both times, thinking instead of other traditions to come. She whispers, “We’re engaged.”

“Ask me again in the morning,” Lisa suggests, rolling them over to one side and halving the sleeping bag to cover their naked torsos, “when my decision isn’t influenced by this.” The hand rubbing Jennie’s back snakes round to cup her breast and give it a gentle, playful squeeze.

Lisa was right. Jennie could never out-extra her. Where she had declined Lisa’s proposal with a no and taken a massive detour to arrive at a yes , Lisa’s affirmative response involved ardently making love to her.

“Okay.” Jennie hums, committed to asking the question again and again, for as long it takes until forever is imprinted upon their hearts.

“It’ll likely still be yes,” they fall asleep to Lisa’s repeat of words from the other night, “because I do want all your midnights, love.”

As Jennie shutters her eyes, the last image she sees is a yawning red sky taking its final bow before a wash of dark blue stretches overhead in its place. Later, under a ceiling of stars, they make love once more, then again, pushing and pushing and aching in a soft focus kind of love.

For the rest of the night, they repeatedly come together in a prelude and preview of more evenings spent entangled in need and desire; in repose of soft and wet and warm; in which Jennie whines against her mouth and Lisa answers gently but no less demanding to have effusions of yes and always and yours be the sole words spoken breathless between lips and bodies.

Until they reach the edge of exhaustion and existence, through intense attention and scattered rumination of hands, they consummate the future.

Hearts overfull.

In the morning, when Jennie opens her eyes first, catching the rays of emerging daylight dancing across the water’s edge, with Lisa pressed tightly into her front, she echoes her earlier answer, reaffirming.

“And sunrises, too.”

*****

Some years ago ...

Sometime after she quietly returned to the tent with her sketchpad but not the now-buried mason jar, Jennie woke from a nap—and a vividly evocative dream—to find Lisa staring adoringly.

Jennie was in love and—by all appearances—Lisa too. It will be a little while yet before those words are shared out loud, and some while still before they mean them with a ferocity that will break hearts but also put them back together. Before they become something immense and immeasurable.

On this dew-heavy, soft light morning, however, they were only at the start. The earth opened. The seeds planted. The sowing of love a joint project for later collection.

They chat the quiet hour away as Lisa gently strokes her hair, the murmur of the future tracing a sinuous trail between their entangled hands.

“Lis, if we were to ever be separated,” Jennie looked deeply into her eyes as she asked, “would you come find me?”

Not a single lost beat. “Yes.”

Lisa answered with the surety of someone decades beyond their age, speaking from a time that still has yet to come.

“I will always come back to you. In this lifetime. And in every lifetime.”

The I love yous will come too someday, as will other words and other promises. For now, in this afterglow, these suffice.

“I’d wait for you.”

*****

*****

Some years later ...

“You find me? If I lost you like my lego?”

The voice is small and timid but his green eyes—so impossibly, strikingly similar to her own—are big and bright. It catches her breath at the way he looks at her like she holds the whole world in her hands. With a head full of very familiar, unruly blonde hair, and his rosy, pouty cheeks held between her palms, Lisa thinks it’s true.

“Yes, love. Always,” she reassures with a kiss to his forehead, hiding a smile at his phrasing equating her to one of his favoured toys, which he frequently misplaces.

The questions are reminiscent of similar ones posed what feels like a lifetime ago now but had led to this moment—Lisa crouched down on one knee to tie the pre-schooler’s shoelaces that had come undone in his excited flight, followed by a mild scolding about running ahead and getting lost. Her lecturing tone has softened considerably after his bottom lip jutted out, tears threatening to fall but heroically willed not to. Another striking similarity. She reminds, “But you’re not going to lose me. Because you’re not going to let go of my hand again, right?”

He nods, his eagerness to confirm causing fringes to tumble into his eyes. A haircut is long overdue but they can’t bring themselves yet to trim the baby hair that’s outgrown.

Lisa brushes the strands aside, combing it somewhat presentable though knowing it’s the first of many futile attempts. Lately, it’s been a summer wheat, straw bale colour, sandy and sun-kissed, but like his mother, it changes shade under different lighting. Here beneath the hospital corridor’s harsh fluorescents, the yellow is muted by clumps of brown—a caked-on dirt from the baseball diamond where he’d been rolling around just half an hour before she got the unexpected call from Minzy and scooped up her second baseman mid-play to rush over.

It must be a sight for the doctors and nurses and other visitors flowing in and around them to see two Brooklyn Warriors, one tall and one tiny, in full uniform with matching charcoal markings under their eyes and the same menacing bear claw on their chests. For a different reason earlier, Lisa had caused several heads to turn when she shouted out a Spanish colour to halt his movements.

“Kyle, I need to hear you say it.” When he takes too long to respond, stammering through a half-hearted apology while scuffing his toe on the floor, Lisa full-names him, crossing her arms to get the message across. “Kyler Brigands Kim-Manoban.”

Her feigned sternness works. Albeit with some dependable resistance. He fixes her gaze with wilful determination, looking a mix of contrite and defiant, an exact copy of expression that isn’t hard to pinpoint where the original is located two floors up.

“Yes, Mommy. No let go,” he parrots, then furrows in concentration after some thought, “I’m not terrible two no more like Aunt-Ya says,” and adds, “I’m three ’n haff,” holding up four fingers. “I listen gud.”

Lisa fails to temper her smile at the contraction of her sister’s title and name, and feeling generous and endeared by his poor math skills, lets the grammatical errors slide. His enunciation has relatively improved, the th sound no longer a source of grief or Jisoo’s delight, but grammar remains an uphill climb.

“Alright, bud.” Lisa places the t-ball hat that had fallen off his head back on. “Ready?”

“Weddy!” Rs are still a struggle. He shoots his arms up in clear want and, like all things blonde in her life, she can’t deny him. “See Mama?”

Lisa picks their son up, and settles him on her hip but little legs voluntarily wrap around her waist instead, wiggling until he’s in place on her front and tucked under her chin. He buries his face in Lisa’s neck and fists her hair, a favoured spot and an unbroken habit since infancy that pulls another smile from her. Tugs at her heart.

She holds him closer and rubs his back. He noses in further. Her heartrate kicks thinking of who he had instinctually learned the gesture from.

“Mama?” Kyle asks again, his legs kicking out in impatient excitement.

“Mhm, she’s waiting for us.”

“I help push,” he offers.

Lisa laughs bright. If the experience will be anything like the first go with the little guy in her arms, it is doubtful Jennie will take kindly to additional cheerleading of pushing. Her wife had never looked more beautiful—cheeks flushed a deep pink straining from effort but eyebrows tightly knitted together in scowl—than when she threatened to push Lisa back into the womb.

A soft kiss to his head serves as her response to which he returns a popsicle-sticky, clumsier one to the base of her throat. She tickles his side and whispers in his ear, an unrestrained happiness colouring her words.

“Let’s go meet your new sister.”

With his small frame pressed against her chest that’s been expanding to make room for a fourth heart, there’s a fullness, an immensity, to the world that Lisa’s hands can’t possibly hold.

She will try.

*****

—

The end (of the beginning).

Everything is imprinted forever with what it once was.

You have finally reached the end. Thank you for reading!

©️This is a work of adaption. Credits goes to the original author.