Luisa laughed. “Shut up.”
And then she was on her knees, Amy’s yoga leggings and underwear tugged down just enough.
They were quick, but not quiet. As she got close, Luisa took hold of Amy's hand and held it against Amy's mouth, Amy moaning hard into it as her climax rolled through her, Amy's other hand in Luisa's hair, pulling her closer.
After a few moments, Amy helped her up and wiped Luisa's mouth clean of her arousal. She kissed her slowly and passionately. “You're amazing,” Amy whispered.
Luisa shrugged and grinned. “I know.” She kissed Luisa again before she could say anything more.
When they finally left the bathroom they surprised one of the flight attendants who was passing. She flashed them a knowing grin before going back to her work.
The two women settled back in their seats, half reclined, cuddled up to each other as far as the seatbelts would allow, but after a few minutes got a surprise… the same flight attendant leaning over them.
Worried they were in trouble, Luisa relaxed when the flight attendant set down two glasses of champagne.
“Oh, we didn’t order these,” Amy said.
“You didn’t need to.” The flight attendant winked. “But I figured you’d want them.”
Luisa felt herself blushing, and she saw Amy going bright red too before they both dissolved into a fit of the giggles.
***
Several hours later Luisa lay awake, the lights still dimmed, everyone else in the cabin asleep. Looking to her side she could see Amy deep asleep herself, her chest rising and falling slowly.
As she so often did when she couldn’t sleep, she let her mind wander… and right then the only thing she could think about was Amy, and what their future held.
She loved Amy, without a doubt, and she could tell that when Amy told her she loved her too that she meant it. But… there were so many obstacles, so many things that could get in the way.
Distance, first of all. They lived five thousand miles apart and while so far they'd made it work to see each other, thanks to Amy and her two business trips, Luisa knew it could start to take its toll. This photoshoot she was on her way to in Italy helped, giving Luisa the excuse to stop off in London going there and coming back, and she would gladly do more work in Europe, but Luisa was enough of a realist to know that at some point they’d hit a period where travel wasn’t possible and one or both of them would have to make a hard, even life changing, decision. That was a way off yet, of course, but it was there.
Beyond distance, there were the other people and what they had and hadn’t defined their relationship to be. When they’d started out Amy had been with her boyfriend and so, in desperation for it not to end, when they parted at the airport Luisa had suggested an open relationship and Amy had jumped at it.
That was good, necessary, but it worried Luisa regardless… because if she was being brutal when she’d first slept with Amy, Amy was already having a lesbian affair with her colleague, this woman Sarah, behind her boyfriend’s back. Not exactly a recipe for a long and healthy relationship built on an easy foundation of trust when put like that, particularly at long distance.
For her part Luisa had her whatever-it-was with Julian to consider, and openness worked well there because her and Julian wasn’t something that she wanted to end unless it got to a point where she could really see that her and Amy were truly committing their futures to each other.
And then, of course, there was Bel… she could cut out the casual flings with other models, no problem. But Bel, she was different. What there was between them was different. Hard to define, maybe even impossible, but it was there.
Bel was Luisa’s kryptonite, the one person she could never say no to.
It was always the same with Bel… inevitable, electric, beyond her power to resist. They never planned their encounters, they simply occurred whenever their paths crossed on shoots, an unspoken certainty as reliable and inevitable as gravity. It could be next week or next year before they found themselves in the same location again, but Luisa knew with absolute certainty that when they did, she would end up in Bel's bed.
How could Luisa even start to explain it to Amy when Luisa couldn’t define it to herself? That Bel wasn't simply an ex or an occasional lover, not really a friend either, but a constant… a colleague even who simply understood Luisa and who Luisa understood in return. That their encounters weren't planned but inevitable, a gravitational pull Luisa had never been able to resist and, honestly, had never wanted to. That between encounters there was nothing, it was as if Bel disappeared, only to reappear whenever they were next booked together for work.
Luisa was, if she was honest, terrified of telling Amy about Bel and about her love life in general… terrified of what Amy would think if she knew that Luisa hadn’t had a serious relationship since she was eighteen. How could she explain the cold-eyed pragmatism that had occasionally led her to powerful industry figures, usually men, whose favour could accelerate her career? Or the casual hook-ups where she never had any intention of anything coming from them?
The self-admission felt humiliating that she, at twenty-six, had no idea how to be in a relationship that didn’t bring some sort of professional advantage, and that she was terrified of herinadequacy in something where most people had been gaining experience since adolescence.
Telling Amy that she loved her should have been a moment of pure joy… the first person in her life that she could honestly say, hand on heart, that she was truly in love with. There’d been joy, yes, but also it had triggered a cascade of anxiety in Luisa. Amy was choosing her, had finished with her boyfriend James, was creating space in her life where Luisa would be central rather than peripheral. She wanted it so badly that the fear of it not working out left her terrified.
Just at that moment, Amy’s fingers curled around Luisa's under the blanket as she turned in her sleep, warm and sure, and Luisa squeezed back. Luisa was acutely aware of the emotion that she felt at Amy’s touch, and how vulnerable it left her feeling.
She was, she knew, deeply confused. Not about her love for Amy, no, but everything else… whether an open relationship was a good idea, how to love Amy, when and if to tell her about the complexities of Bel and Julian, not to mention whether to ask about her thing with Sarah.
Luisa had to wrestle with it all, and she would, but for now she pushed it down because they were on their way to London, and Luisa was about to experience Amy’s life for the first time, and that was more than enough without adding everything else on top.
Amy
