She was an independent woman. Didn’t need a lot of help with her content. It was… a shame. I looked forward to every time she asked my help with something.
I still had my hangups, but somehow I wound up friends with some of her friends, too, and Nikki especially was insightful about it.
“Your formative memories were all baking in a culture of shame around these things,” she said at one point over the phone while I was sitting on the couch, the shower running in the bathroom—a chat with Nikki had turned into a quickie with Bridget on the couch, and when I’d clearly pulled embarrassed into myself after Bridget had kissed me sweetly and told meI’m cleaning myself up, you and your gorgeous self can hang out with Nikki and catch your breath,Nikki had picked up on my embarrassment and weighed in. I scowled.
“If you mean my family environment, thank god, my grandmother wasn’t telling me not to fuck.” I faltered. “At least… not then she wasn’t.”
“I don’t just mean sex,” Nikki said. “I mean pleasure. Things that are nice for you. Sex, food, falling in love, accepting help, having somebody give you a place to call home when you need it and looking after you with no questions asked.”
I stared at the phone. “I… don’t know how to handle having a heart-to-heart while I’m sprawled out messy on the sofa. And not even a heart-to-heart with my… with… with the person who got me, er, like this.”
She laughed. “You really like her, huh?”
“I’m not dating Bridget.” My face was hot. “Just… we just have sex. I mean, she’s fantastic, but, er…” I slumped back on the couch, staring up at the painting over the end table—Rothko No. 61, Rust and Blue. Bridget had made fun of me endlessly for the paintings that werejust squares,but she’d still bought me that one. It wasn’t as though a gesture like thatdidn’tmean something. And it wasn’t as though I missed that.
“Yeah, yeah. This is what I was saying. Girl is right there and desperately into you, and you won’t let yourself be part of it.”
“It’s not—she’s not interested in me like that. She was just sexually repressed with me here and is happy to let go of that.”
“Girl, you don’t believe that.”
I swallowed. Thinking about the past weeks since we’d started doing this… mornings with Bridget, where seeing her in a shirt and slim panties had just been sexy at first but had morphed into something more tender and comforting the way it felt looking at her, and the way she looked at me. Seeing how passionate she was about all her work, when I’d never really thought of it as a job that somebody would approach with so much passion, dedication, enthusiasm. Trips out onto the town together, weekend mornings at a coffee shop in the city, shopping Christmas gifts for family and friends. Including a trip to the sex shop where I stood rigidly and blushing and I’d withered in embarrassment when the clerk knew Bridget and they chatted about what Bridget was, uh, after.
But at the end of every day, it was always the lingering smile, loaded as she looked me in the eye, hovering in her doorway, and agoodnight, Victoriathat hung in my head.
“Do you kiss?” Nikki said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Outside of sex.”
“Well—no.”
“I mean, sheisa huge slut, but I wonder how much of her wanting to fuck you all the time is because that’s when she gets to kiss you.”
“I don’t do dating. And I’m not dating a…”
“Not dating a whore?”
“No, it’s. I mean. It’s a bit rude to call her that.”
She laughed. “Only if you think being a whore is a bad thing.”
“Well.” I slumped onto my back on the couch, sighing, staring out the window, a rare crisp clear day with a steely blue sky. A winter for me and her, and then come February, we’d part ways. “I just don’t think I’d be… enough for her.”
“Oh, so you do want her.” She lit up, and I withered.
“No—I mean, she’s lovely, but I just told you, I don’t do dating. It’s just that even if Iwere,then I wouldn’t… I don’t think I’m really what Bridget wants, in the long run.”
“You remember what I said? Guilt about having good things?”
The shower shut off, and I sat up. “Ugh—you can go talk to Erica about it. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to know she has allies in her cause.”
“Oh, I’ve been talking to her. And I don’t agree with her very often, just so you know. Anyway, I’m gonna roll out, I’ve got stuff to do. Go enjoy your date.”
“It’s just a regular outing,” I said, but I didn’t know who I was trying to convince. She hung up anyway, and I was left to think about it myself over the next few days, where Bridget and I kept revolving around each other. Wondering how she actually felt about me. Wondering how often she kissed me with a hand on my ass just for the sake of kissing me. Wondering how often I wanted to kiss her.
I’d done a good job of dismissing it whenever I felt the urge to kiss her as that I was horny, but Nikki’s words hung in myhead. When I asked Gina one day how she’d gotten together with her girlfriends, she zeroed in right away.
“Is this because you’re falling for Bridget?”
“Erica’s been talking to everyone,” I sighed. “No, I just want to hear about you and your girlfriends.”
