Becca looked at her. "You seem jealous."
"I know I do. I know it looks like that. But that's not..." Ellie stopped walking and Becca stopped with her. They were stood under a streetlight outside a new apartment building, moths circling above them, the light making Becca's face half bright and half shadow. She looked beautiful, patient, and a little worried, roughly in that order, which made Ellie feel worse because she wasn't giving Becca anything to work with.
"That's not what?" Becca asked softly.
Ellie opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "I don't know how to say what I'm trying to say."
"Try anyway. I'll catch up."
That was such a Becca thing to say… the professional therapist in her, making space, but also the woman who had known Ellie since they were teenagers and had heard every clumsy, half-formed thought Ellie had ever had and loved her through all of them. Ellie felt a wave of gratitude and then, beneath it, that same heat from the bar, because even now, even standing on a sidewalk having an awkward semi-argument, Becca was the most gorgeous woman she'd ever seen and she wanted her in a way that felt heightened tonight, elevated even more than usual.
"When I saw her talking to you," Ellie started slowly, picking each word like she was crossing a minefield… not too far from the truth, she realised. “When I came back from the restroom and you were there with her and she was… she was into you, obviously into you, touching your arm, and you were…” She swallowed. “You were responding to it. My first reaction was jealousy. I felt it, I definitely did. But then I kept watching, and the jealousy was definitely there but there was something else too, something beneath it.”
Becca was very still. Listening in the way she listened, with her whole body, her eyes on Ellie's face.
"And the something else was..." Ellie felt her cheeks going red. "I don't know what the word is. I watched her want you and it made me want you. Not in a claiming way, not like I needed to go and take you back from her. More like... seeing you through her eyes. Seeing what she saw. This incredible, beautiful woman, and she wanted you so badly, and I could see you enjoying being wanted, and it..." She trailed off.
"It turned you on," Becca said quietly.
Ellie's face was on fire. "Yeah." She couldn’t believe she’d admitted to it.
The silence that followed was long enough for a car to pass them, headlights sweeping across Becca's face and revealing an expression that Ellie couldn't read. That was rare. Ellie could almost always read Becca, but right now her wife's face was doing something complicated, several things at once layered on top of each other.
"Say something," Ellie whispered.
Becca took a breath. "I'm not sure what you want me to say."
"Anything. Tell me I'm being weird. Tell me it's fine. Tell me you think I need therapy." A weak attempt at humour that didn't land because Ellie's voice was shaking slightly.
"You don't need therapy," Becca said, and a smile broke through. "Or if you do, not for this." She stepped closer and took both of Ellie's hands. "Can I be honest with you?"
"Please."
"When she was talking to me... when she was flirting with me... I liked it." Becca held Ellie's gaze. "I feel terrible saying that but I liked it. Not because I wanted her, or not only because of that. It was more like... I haven't had that in so long. Someone new finding me attractive, that tension of not knowing what's going to happen next. We got together so young, El. I've never experienced that as an adult. And tonight, for just a few minutes, I did, and it felt..." She searched for the word. "Electric."
Ellie nodded because her throat was too tight to speak.
"But here's the thing," Becca continued. "The whole time she was talking to me, the whole time I was enjoying it, part of me was thinking about you watching. I didn't know you were, but I was imagining that you were. I kept thinking, where’s Ellie? I want her to see this, to be part of this. What would Ellie think if she could see me right now? And that thought, you seeing me like that, that was what made it electric. Not her. When I saw you watching, when I smiled at you, I loved that.”
They stood there under the streetlight, hands held between them, looking at each other.
"That's fucked up, isn't it?" Becca said with something that was half a laugh and half something else.
"Maybe," Ellie replied. "But I was watching. And I couldn't stop."
Becca stepped closer still and kissed her. It started soft, reassuring, but within a few seconds it changed… Ellie felt it when Becca’s grip on her hand tightened, when Becca pressed her body closer, in the way that the kiss deepened and thendeepened even more until Ellie’s back was against the glass window of a closed store and Becca was kissing her like they were nineteen again and had just discovered that their mouths could do some very fun things indeed.
They broke apart, breathing hard.
“Home,” Ellie said. “Now.”
***
Their apartment was on the sixth floor of a building just south of Lady Bird Lake, modern, floor-to-ceiling windows, two bedrooms and a large living area, too nice for a couple their age but which Ellie’s tech salary made possible.
They barely made it through the door. Becca's mouth was on Ellie's before the lock clicked, her hands pulling at Ellie's shirt, and Ellie responded in kind, pushing Becca back against the hallway wall with a force that surprised them both. This wasn't their normal way of doing this. Their normal way was good, it was loving and considerate, and they knew exactly how to make each other feel incredible, but it was rarely this desperate, this immediate, this fuelled by something other than simple desire.
Ellie kissed down Becca's neck while Becca's head fell back against the wall, her breath already coming in short gasps. Ellie's hands went to the hem of Becca's top and pushed it up, feeling the warm skin of her stomach, her ribs, the underside of her bra.
