Crazy Bitch (Bitches and Queens) (7 page)

“You weren’t out very long,”
Willow said as she rolled on her side and mirrored Hannah’s position.

Without a bra, Willow’s tank
top dipped dangerously low. Hannah eyed her luscious cleavage for a moment
before she reached out and traced the neon hem. Growing bolder because Willow
hadn’t moved away, her painted fingertips dipped into the warm, heavy crevice
of her breasts.

“Willow, there is something I’ve
wanted to ask you. What does Zach dear think about you being a lesbian?”

Willow opened her mouth to
respond but words failed her. Since they arrived in Paris, Hannah had been very
unpredictable, and she didn’t know what to say. Or, what to make of Hannah’s
little game. Reaching for Hannah’s hand before her body started to respond, she
held it loosely against her chest.

“I’m not a lesbian.”

“I’ve seen the way you look at
women,” Hannah denied.

“How’s that, Hannah? The same
way you look at me?” Willow challenged.

Hannah gave her a quizzical
look before she answered, “I’m not gay.”

Looking doubtful, Willow
dropped their hands and rolled back over onto her stomach. “Why are you asking?”

“I was curious, I suppose,”
Hannah said blandly. “I find your relationship with Zach very odd.”

“It’s unusual,” Willow
conceded, “but it works for us.”

“How?” Hannah insisted.

Willow looked down at her sketch,
biting her lip in frustration. It wasn’t right. Something was missing. For
hours, she tried to figure out what it needed, but nothing came to mind. “We
have an open relationship, Hannah.”

“How charmingly liberal of you,”
Hannah answered with a bright smile. “So, neither of you get jealous?”

“I have needs that Zach can’t
meet, and he would never be satisfied with only one woman,” Willow muttered.

“What needs?” Hannah demanded.

Willow glanced over at Hannah.
She pulled a loose strand of her hair behind her ear and then boldly
proclaimed, “I like women, Hannah. I always have. I like the way they feel and
taste. I like their softness.”

“Hmm,” Hannah muttered, seemingly
satisfied with her answer before changing the subject with such a swift turn
Willow had a hard time keeping up, “On my way home tonight, I was thinking.
Considering this is your first time in Paris, you might want to see some of the
sights.”

“Are you offering your services
as a tour guide?” Willow teased.

“I do know my way around the
city.”

“What about those lovely
photographers that follow your every move?”

“I can dress down. I don’t do
it very often, but it can be done.”

When Willow woke the next
morning, she was so stunned by Hannah’s transformation her jaw dropped.

“I’m not that terrible without
makeup,” Hannah frowned.

“No, it’s not that. You look…”
Willow started to explain but had a hard time coming up with the right word.
She was wearing a hoodie sweatshirt and a faded pair of jeans—Willow had never
suspected either of which existed inside Hannah’s wardrobe. Her thick, platinum
hair was loosely braided and hung down her spine, suspended from the back of a
pink baseball cap. In incognito, Hannah was barely recognizable. She certainly
didn’t resemble a world-famous, fashion icon. No, instead, she looked like a
really tall, very thin tourist. What surprised Willow the most was how young
she looked. She always thought makeup was supposed to hide your age, but in
Hannah’s case, just the opposite was true. Without her paint, she barely looked
eighteen. Regardless, she was still beautiful, only a different kind of beauty.
“…you look lovely,” Willow finally finished.

They started their sightseeing
tour by taking a train to Versailles. Enthralled by the history, Willow tried
to listen to the official tour guide, but quickly gave up as Hannah clearly
knew more antidotes. Hannah reached for Willow’s hand and pulled her to the
back of the group. While the little man leading the tour recited the history of
all the lavish furniture, decorations, and courtly proceedings, Hannah spilled
the goods on the naughty historical gossips—who slept with who, where they did
it, and if they were ever caught, basically the kind of stuff that was way more
interesting than bed stands and pillowcases.

In the famed Hall of Mirrors,
Hannah grew silent and let the guide tell her favorite part of the story.
Standing behind Willow, she wrapped her arms her waist, pulled her close, and
leaned her head on Willow’s shoulder. By most accounts, the architect had
designed this room so that when Louis XIV entered, the sun’s rays would reflect
through the windows and cast a halo around his head. Hannah started to laugh
and then whispered, “Now that’s a way to make a goddamn entrance.”

Outside the palace, they spent
a few hours touring the grounds. With cold drizzle and gloomy skies overhead,
Willow should have been miserable, yet she couldn’t remember a time she enjoyed
herself more. Hannah’s appearance wasn’t the only thing that changed—it was as
if her entire personality had been altered as well. Always before, Willow
detected varying degrees of anger hovering just below Hannah’s surface. Even when
she seemed happy, it was there hiding in the shadows. Today, it was gone,
evaporated, leaving behind someone with an almost childlike enthusiasm and a
wicked sense of humor. Willow wished Hannah would let the rest of the world see
this side instead of the angel face with a volcanic temper that people liked to
bait to see the eruption.

After they took the train back
to Paris, they toured the rest of the city on foot and via the metro. Given
Willow’s artistic temperament, Hannah thought no trip to Paris would be
complete without a visit to the Louvre. Willow could have spent days wondering
through the galleries, but unfortunately, they only had a few hours and the
rest of this magnificent city to see. Halfway between Sacre Coeur and the
Eiffel Tower, Willow finally commented on the changes in Hannah.

“I don’t know,” Hannah shrugged.
“I guess I just love this place. When I’m not busy working, I love Europe. I
suppose it has something to do with being closer to home.”

“Home?” Willow questioned. “I
thought you were from Austin.”

“Oh no,” Hannah denied. “I was
born in a tiny little town in Siberia of all places.”

“Russian?” Willow asked
doubtfully. “You don’t sound very Russian to me.”

“That’s because you’ve never
heard me speak it,” Hannah said. “останься
со мной
навсегда. When I was seven
years old, I was adopted and moved to Austin with my new mommy and daddy.”

“What happened to your birth
parents?”

Hannah gave her a sad smile.
Reaching out, she captured a piece of Willow’s hair and rubbed it like a fine
piece of silk between her fingers. “We’re not so different, you and I. I have
no idea what happened to my parents because I was raised in an orphanage.”

“I never knew that.”

“It’s not a secret,” Hannah
said.

“Have you ever thought about
looking for them?”

“My birth parents?” Hannah
questioned. “God no. I can’t imagine either of them are still alive, or if they
were, that they would want me showing up at their doors. Besides, the records
are sealed tight.”

Willow nodded silently, although
she did not entirely understand. She knew why Hannah might not wish to contact
the people who had turned her over to state custody as a baby. That sort of
reaction was reasonable. What she didn’t get was that Hannah believed her
biological parents would not want her around. Perhaps it was different in
Russia? Sad but true, in America, there were many people who would look at a long-lost
child turned multi-millionaire celebrity as some sort of lottery ticket.

“If you hadn’t told me, I never
would have guessed. You don’t have a trace of an accent,” Willow said.

“That’s because my new mommy
and daddy insisted I speak only English. They thought it would help me assimilate
better.”

“Did it?”

“Not really. But enough about
that, we still have tons to see and I want to get to Champ-Elysees by sunset.”

For dinner, they ate at the
Hard Rock Café. Hannah teased Willow incessantly about her choice of authentic
French cuisine. Willow told her she didn’t care about the food; she wanted to
see the memorabilia. Besides, she had to get some pictures for Zachary. He
probably wouldn’t care about any of the other amazing sights she saw today, but
if she came home without pictures of a famous rock god’s guitars, he would be
pissed. As luck would have it, they were seated in front of one very famous
guitar player’s cased instrument. Several other diners came up to take a
picture. Willow wondered how long it would take them to figure out they also
captured the face of one of the most famous supermodels as well.

Much later that night, they
rode the metro back to Hannah’s apartment. It was so crowded there was standing
room only. Squeezed together, Hannah and Willow held on to the pole in front of
them. Because she was so much taller than Willow, Hannah held her hand at a
higher reach.

“Thank you, Hannah. I really
enjoyed today.”

“Good. That makes me happy,”
Hannah answered as she stared down deeply into Willow’s eyes.

Even though they were crammed
like sardines in a steel box zooming under the streets of Paris, Willow
suddenly felt that it was just the two of them standing in the middle of
nowhere. Hannah was watching her so intently that her heart began to pound and
her breathe caught in her throat. With a slight jerk of the car, their bodies
crashed together. Willow expected Hannah to step back, but she didn’t. Instead,
she held her ground, staring down with her electric eyes. It was impossible not
to lose herself in the moment, and for a second, Willow thought that Hannah was
going to lean down and kiss her.

There was no kiss—only a small
smile. “There’s no reason we have to leave tomorrow. We could stay for a few
more days, and I could show you more,” Hannah whispered as her hand crept down
the pole.

The movement caught Willow’s
eye. Looking up, she silently watched as Hannah’s hand moved south until their
fingers were entwined. Hannah had touched her all day long. Sometimes it was
her hair, sometimes her hand, but none of those touches felt like this. This
was different. Palm to palm, Willow felt Hannah’s naked energy flow through her
just as she felt her essence being absorbed into Hannah’s skin. This was by far
their most intimate encounter to date. And if Willow was utterly honest, it was
perhaps her most intimate encounter with anyone. Making love to either a man or
a woman had never felt like this. She knew she could deny the attraction no
longer. It was there, pulling at them both with a magnetic force. Hannah was
north to her south, and with a sense of inevitable certainty, Willow realized she
probably always would be.

“Or, if you want, I have a
villa in Tuscany, a beach house in Malibu, an apartment in New York, or we
could rent a yacht on the Mediterranean, or the Caribbean is lovely this time
of year,” Hannah continued.  

Willow nervously licked her
lips. “Hannah, I can’t,” she said quietly.

“Why not? You can work anywhere,
right?”

Willow didn’t think Hannah
understood what she was asking of her. Or, if she did, she didn’t think about
the consequences of such a choice. Although she was open-minded and wasn’t one
to shy away from a sudden impulse, this wasn’t just a whim. Willow had already
invested too much of herself in Hannah to see it ruined once the relationship
soured. Besides her career aspirations, not to mention her boyfriend waiting
back home, Willow really liked Hannah as a person. As in really, really liked,
although she didn’t quite understand it at times when Hannah was being a
horrible bitch. Yet still, she was drawn to her in way that was
incomprehensible.

“I’m afraid if I said yes, I
would never want to come home,” Willow answered as honestly as she could.

“Who says we have to?”

“For starters, Zachary,” Willow
said.

At the mention of his name, the
magical spell became only a distant memory and so did today’s Hannah. She
released Willow’s hand, stepped back, and turned away.

Hannah stayed distant and cool
for the rest of their stay in Paris, but once they landed in the great state of
Texas, she became absolutely unbearable. Nothing Willow said or did was right.
The constant barrage of nit-picking bitchiness wore on Willow, but she
discovered that she must have had a hidden masochistic side because no matter
how badly Hannah treated her—she still wanted more. There were no more flowers,
no more after-hour calls, no more assurances that everything she drew was
wonderful, but every morning, Willow still woke hours before the alarm clock
sounded because she was so eager to get back to work, back to Hannah.

The first few days after they
came back were tumultuous and confusing. On one hand, she was grateful for her
relationship with Zachary. He was so easy and uncomplicated. She knew exactly
who she was when she was with him.

 Almost as soon as she stepped
in the door, he had slammed her with his ardor. They had made love so many
times, it should have felt like slipping on an old pair of her most comfortable
shoes, but it wasn’t. It was awkward, and Willow felt disconnected. Zachary
must have sensed it too. Later, he tried to bring it up, but she said it was
just jetlag, even though she knew it wasn’t. Lying naked, skin-to-skin, with
him fully embedded inside her, paled in comparison to the moment she shared
with Hannah on the subway. While it lasted only a few seconds, nothing had ever
felt so real in her life.