“Hanna…” Lily had murmured.
“Hmm?” Hanna said, opening her eyes and knowing she was in trouble. Lily’s face was slightly more flushed, her only tell, and her gaze was still fixed on her, but her eyes seemed to darken with lust. Lily’s eyes reminded Hanna of those pictures of crystal blue oceans with a sinkhole. There was something so unnerving about the depth, but also something exciting. Hanna wanted to dive in. Maya had started making slow circles on her scalp.
The air had become electric, and while Lily wasn’t there, Hanna could feel her presence like she was in the room.
“Can you let your hair down?” Hanna had found herself saying to Lily. Lily had taken it down, moving forward to let her hair fall over her shoulders.
“That,” Lily said then, her voice turning husky, “is the last order you give tonight.”
A soft knockon the door startled Hanna out of her trip down steamy lane, her hand grazing over her underwear, her waking arousal.
Hanna grabbed her phone and was unsurprised to see that Lily and Maya had been talking in their group chat. She was surprised to find that it was much later than she thought. Another knock came from the door.
“Hanna?” Maya’s voice said from the other side of the door.
“Yeah, sorry, I’m up,” Hanna called, scrolling through their messages.
“Cool, Lily made coffee and I’m getting ready to scramble some eggs if that works for you?”
“Sounds amazing,” Hanna said, and it did. Not the egg part, but the fact that Maya and Lily were on the other side of that door. She didn’t have to live in the memories of Maya’s hot breath against her ear, Lily’s instructions on what she wanted Maya to do, what she wanted Hanna to do. She had no need to conjure the ghost of the desire she had felt that night.
She needed to get out of bed and go see her girls. She needed to have the real thing.
13
MAYA
“Okay, from here we can pretty much see everything,” Lily said. They’d finished breakfast, then Lily insisted on showing them around because she was “only giving the tour once, and I don’t want it to interrupt our fun.” Maya and Hanna had dressed quickly, Maya in her olive green super warm wool coat, dark jeans, and brown leather boots, and Hanna in her classic black all-weather insulated coat, dark jeans and duck boots. Lily provided extra scarves and gloves.
“Ugh you know me too well,” Maya said as Lily popped a sour gummy into her mouth. Maya loved to eat healthy, but she was a sucker for a sour gummy. She sucked on the rough candy as she looked over the retreat. She was glad to have this chance to hang out, given Thanksgiving hadn’t worked out–Lily had been up here with her aunt, and besides, Maggie had needed Maya for their “first holiday not as a family”.
The air was sharp, cold and refreshing. The ground was hard, but there was only a light dusting of snow on the grass that covered the property. Taking in the site, Maya relished using her tongue to melt away the rough sour powder, revealing the sweetand juicy candy. Fitting that Lily had put it in her mouth–it was very much like kissing her, a woman ready to melt under you if you show her you’re worthy.
They were currently standing in the center of the retreat, Lily, their guide, looking classic Lily in a purple long puffer, light jeans, and her own duck boots. The center was a patch of grass with a light dusting of snow between the large building that served as housing and the facility center for the retreat’s guests and a patch of trees.
Maya had been glad that Lily had insisted on doing a walk-around. She wasn’t exactly sure what she had expected. But they all hadn’t seen each other physically since fall break. And while they had continued to text and had quite a few steamy video calls, Maya was getting worried that theirthingwas growing into one that existed only virtually. Those were dangerous in that they often continued to evolve in the realm of idealism, too fragile to withstand the external stresses of reality.
Not that a posh winter retreat was reality, but they had all been in the same room for the first time in a couple of months, and nothing had felt forced or awkward. If anything, the feeling they’d left back at Lily’s house was the tension that comes fromanticipation.Maya was sure they were all feeling the same thing: wanting to touch and feel, but at a loss for how to get started. Each time they’d fooled around on video, save for one time during a movie night, they’d explicitly known why they were all there. What they needed from each other.
And Maya needed it now. Not just the sex, to feel grounded. The first round of holidays post her parents’ divorce had been tough. She didn’t think it would be worse than the emotional tiptoeing her parents had done during the last year before they finally told her they were divorcing—but she had come home to find her mother in an empty house, a shell of herself. As if something more hadhappened.Maya worried it was becauseshe had left her mother alone in Maplewood. A part of her was thankful to have the separation, but another part of her wondered if it would have been better for her mom to have stayed in Boston. She felt guilty for not applying to any Vermont schools for grad school. She would just have to wait and see how her mom did, and if she even got in.
The three of them fell into easy silence as they followed Lily towards another “recreational site.” Maya was thankful for the silence, she needed to get her head into the day, into the trip, and she wasclose—she just needed a minute to sort through what she had left back in Maplewood, her mother in the same bathrobe she’d worn the whole time, oily hair, a despondent look in her eyes. Like something or someone had died.
She was devastated for her parents, for her mother, but relieved that she no longer had to dance around the circles they drew around themselves. Maya didn’t know everything, she knew that. She couldn’t even saywhathad caused the divorce. She had asked each of them separately. No one had cheated, gambled away money, or lied. It took them only a year to legally untangle the layers and layers of over twenty years together. At the end, she wasn’t sure either of her parents had found the answer either. All of the tension, all of the avoidance, the pressure in her house for four years of high school and three years of college, and there had been nothing, no reason.
Sure, her Dad moved to Manhattan, and she and her mother moved to Maplewood, but that’s where she had found Hanna and Lily and had immediately felt settled in a way that surprised her. Not only because it had been unexpected but also because it had been something she hadn’t allowed herself to crave for most of her life.
“Through those trees is a path that leads to the lake, which is definitely frozen this time of year, hence, I am taking you skating,” Lily said, pointing.
Lily’s voice brought Maya up from her introspection and then the realization of what Lily was saying clicked.
“Uh wait, what, we are skatingonthe lake?” Maya said, a prick of anxiety warming her neck.
“Where else would we skate?” Hanna asked, her big brown eyes wide with genuine confusion.
“Like…in a rink, indoors, a rink built specifically for skating on? Something not left up to nature?”
Lily’s pink mouth quirked on one side into a sly smile. “City girl through and through, huh? Well Banana, we are going to show her how us regular folk do it.” She said the word ‘folk’ sarcastically and only teasing, Maya knew.
