For Good (16 page)

The party drew to a close around midnight. The first guests left with hugs and prolonged goodbyes. Aldean caught Marydale's eye from across the table, a question in his cocked eyebrow. Marydale didn't know what to answer, but Kristen leaned close to her.

“Come home with me,” she whispered.

Marydale couldn't contain the smile that spread across her face. She nodded to Aldean and then to the door. Aldean rose, tipping an invisible hat to Marydale and Kristen. A half hour later, Marydale was sitting in the leather seat of Kristen's car as they glided down the wooded hills toward the city. Soon Kristen pulled up in front of the Sentinel Building. The massive apartment complex rose like a monument to 1920, its windows reflecting the city, much closer now than when they stood on the deck of Laura's house.

“I love this building,” Marydale said.

“You've been in?” Kristen asked.

“No. I've just seen it from outside.”

“Come on.” Kristen took her hand. “It's beautiful inside, too.”

Kristen held Marydale's hand as they rode the bronze-plated elevator in silence. When they neared the top of the building, the elevator chimed. Kristen led Marydale down a carpeted hall warmed by the light of vintage chandeliers. She unlocked the last door, and Marydale looked around the condo. The city lights greeted them again, but Marydale wasn't looking at the high-rises. A huge photo mural dominated the back wall of the living area, lit by a discreet row of track lights. The photo was the Firesteed Summit at dawn.

Marydale walked over to the mural and touched the surface.

“It's like a giant sticker,” Kristen said. “You send the photograph to the company, and they print it.”

Up close, the pixilation turned the scene into a pointillist painting.

“The Firesteed Summit,” Marydale said. “Why?”

She looked around at the distressed leather sofa, the red, green, and orange Pendleton throw, and the wooden end table resting on a base of antlers. She touched the blanket and frowned.

“For you.” Kristen's voice was raw. “I fucked up, Marydale. I left Tristess, and I wanted to die. I missed you so much. And I don't know why I didn't do anything.” Kristen stood in the center of the room, like a single player on a stage. She looked around as though the room was as new to her as it was to Marydale. “I should have told Sierra. She would have told me to follow my heart chakra or something ridiculous like that, but she would have told me to go back for you. I just stayed and missed you, and I looked you up a hundred times, and I didn't go, and it doesn't make sense. I hate all those Portland hipsters with their fake glasses and their lumberjack beards, and look at all this.” She waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the antler table. “I got all this stuff because it made me think of you. Even the dog.”

Marydale noticed the dog from the Deerfield Hotel sleeping on a cushion beneath the table, wrapped in a blue and yellow sweater, its round chest rising and falling peacefully.

“I don't have time for pets,” Kristen said, as though the thought had just occurred to her. “I don't know what to do with a dog. I had to pawn Meatball off on Sierra for six months to housebreak him.”

“You got a dog because of me?”

“You had Lilith.”

As if sensing his role in the conversation, Meatball raised his head and smacked his wide mouth.

“I had a
ninety-
pound pit bull,” Marydale said. “You got a French bulldog named Meatball. It's wearing a sweater.”

She meant it as a joke, but Kristen's next breath was a tremulous sob. She turned away, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“Is it too late?” Kristen asked.

Marydale hurried to her side and put her arms around Kristen, surprised by how small Kristen felt.

Kristen pressed her face to Marydale's chest. “How can you trust me?” she asked, her voice muffled. “Why would you take me back after the way I left? I can't ask that. I don't have the right to ask that. It doesn't make sense. I knew. I knew! And I didn't do anything. What kind of person does that?”

“Knew what?” Marydale asked.

Kristen drew back a little and looked up at her. “That I love you.”

Kristen's face was all angles and shadows cast by her glasses. And they were strangers, more so now than the day Marydale had offered Kristen a room, yet as she watched Kristen, she thought,
I've always known you.

“When I saw you at New Year's Eve…” Marydale couldn't finish the sentence. The sentiment was too huge. Instead she leaned down and kissed Kristen. Her lips were cool, and Marydale's whole body ached to warm her.

“Please be with me,” Kristen said, and took Marydale's hand and led her to the bedroom.

Like the living room, the bedroom offered a view of the skyline. In the back of her mind, it occurred to Marydale that the bedroom was probably bigger than her entire boat. Then she lost track of everything but Kristen's kiss.

Soon they were tumbled together, their feet hanging off the edge of the bed. Kristen's movements were gentle but certain as she divested Marydale of her shirt and bra. And Marydale briefly thought of how many times she had unhooked a woman's bra like this and how, suddenly, now, beneath Kristen's hands, she felt the magnitude of the act.

Then Kristen straddled her, so light, yet the pressure of her hips sent a hot surge of longing through Marydale's body. It was more than sex, more than just the swelling of her clit or the moisture between her legs. Her hips moved of their own accord. Marydale tried to kick off her boots, but they remained stubbornly in place.

Kristen caressed Marydale's chest. She could barely cup Marydale's large breasts in her hands.

“You're perfect,” she said, her face serious. “You didn't want me to touch you in the hotel or in your boat.” It was a question.

“I've been with other women,” Marydale said. “A lot, I guess. But with you…”
I'm scared.
She couldn't say it.

Kristen rolled off Marydale and lay beside her, gently stroking Marydale's naked chest, trailing her fingers along her collarbones, down her sternum, and along the sides of her breasts.

“I don't want to pressure you,” Kristen said. “We don't have to hurry.”

Marydale's body said otherwise.

“Aldean says I learned how to pick up women from him, which is bullshit, because I was picking up straight girls at church camp when we were fifteen. And Portland's a good place to meet women. But those girls haven't meant anything to me. It was just physical, and I probably should have thought about that. I just didn't really think there was going to be…more. I'm a felon. What can I expect? Damaged goods, you know?”

“Oh, Marydale.” Kristen pulled her closer.

“At Deerfield and at my place…” Sheltered in Kristen's embrace, Marydale could say it. “…I was afraid. I wanted it too much. I don't know where this is going, where we're going, but I want to know it means something to you.”

“It does. It means everything.”

“I guess it's karma.” Marydale tried to laugh. “These past few years, I couldn't get out of a girl's room fast enough. As soon as we were done, as soon as I came…I was thinking about how to leave.”

“Are you going to leave if I make you come?” Kristen asked, her voice both serious and flirtatious.

“No,” Marydale said.

Kristen leaned down and drew Marydale's nipple into her mouth and sucked gently for a long time. Marydale felt an answering pull deep inside. She pushed her breast up toward Kristen's kiss, and Kristen grazed the engorged flesh with her teeth, sending a shiver down Marydale's spine.

“Mmm.” Kristen sighed. When she finally released Marydale, she asked, “So how did these girls…these other girls you loved and left…how did they make you come?”

“The usual ways.”

Kristen nodded with mock solemnity. “Ah, the
usual
ways.”

Marydale smiled. Kristen touched her cheek.

Very quietly Kristen asked, “May I kiss you in the usual ways?”

 Marydale laughed and nodded, and Kristen slipped her fingers under the waistband of Marydale's jeans. She felt Kristen's fingers drifting over her cotton underwear, not touching any particular spot or repeating any particular motion, just stroking like one might stroke a cat or finger a piece of velvet.

“I missed you,” Marydale said, closing her eyes to focus on the sensation.

Kristen continued to touch her, and Marydale squirmed.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Kristen asked. “If something happened to you and you're not ready, I can wait.”

“No,” Marydale said. And part of her knew that a week earlier, a day earlier, the moment before she walked into the party, she would have said,
You happened to me.
Now Marydale whispered, “I want you.”

Kristen rose and pulled Marydale's boots off and then her pants and then her underwear. Then she stripped her own clothes, and they were both naked. Kristen kissed Marydale on the lips, then moved her kisses down Marydale's body until she lay between Marydale's legs. Kristen parted the soft skin of Marydale's labia and pressed her tongue into Marydale's body. The heat of Kristen's tongue startled her, and the sensation stole all her words away. Kristen massaged Marydale's thighs while she moved her kiss from the opening of Marydale's body to her clit and back again. Marydale felt like she was rushing toward orgasm and then falling away. She clutched the sheets as her body arched.

“Oh, yes!” Marydale gasped, as she lifted her body to Kristen's kiss. She tensed. She couldn't breathe, and she couldn't bear the pleasure, and she couldn't bear for Kristen to stop. She felt like a trapeze artist flung to the farthest reach of her swing and then frozen, motionless, at that utmost height.

As if sensing her distress, Kristen slowed her movements and pulled away.

“No!” Marydale cried.

“No, stop?” Kristen murmured, her breath touching Marydale's sex. “Or no, don't stop.”

Marydale's hips strained upward.

“Don't stop. Just…go gently.”

Kristen chuckled softly, and her laugh was full of love. She blew on Marydale's sex, then opened her mouth and exhaled a warm breath against Marydale's skin.

“Yes,” Kristen whispered.

She circled Marydale's clit with a light touch. Then she slipped a finger inside Marydale's body, still teasing Marydale's clit with her tongue while she moved her finger in and out. She stayed like this for a long time, and Marydale relaxed. Then Kristen touched the inside of Marydale's body, right behind her clitoris, and she drew Marydale into her mouth—her clit, her labia, her hair, her salt, her center—and sucked very gently, all the while moving her tongue slowly and pulling with her lips and pressing on Marydale from inside. Marydale felt a bright, wild joy mount inside her. Then suddenly she was tumbling over the edge of a waterfall, exploding into stardust.

“I'm coming!” Marydale cried.

Kristen held Marydale in her mouth until the last spasms of orgasm subsided. Then she draped her arm over Marydale's hip and pressed her cheek against Marydale's belly. Marydale stroked her hair, staring up at the enormous window and the city lights.

“Don't leave,” Kristen whispered.

Marydale wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “No,” she said. “I won't leave.”

A moment later, Kristen stirred. “May I?” she asked.

She straddled Marydale's thigh, rubbing her sex into Marydale's leg with hard, confident determination. Part of Marydale felt she should do something. She should make Kristen come. But watching Kristen move against her, her eyes closed, her head thrown back, was so beautiful and so arousing, she simply held Kristen's hip bones, awed by her lean strength.

“That day on the
Tristess
,” Kristen said, her voice strained with pleasure, “I'm sorry. I was so embarrassed.”

“Why?” Marydale said quietly, not wanting to interrupt Kristen's rhythm.

“I…” Kristen drew in a fast breath. “I…came like some teenage boy. I wanted to seduce you.”

She looked like she was close to coming now.

“You're lovely,” Marydale said.

“I've wanted you so much.” Kristen gasped. “You're the only one…the only one…”

Marydale urged her on, rocking her hips to meet Kristen's.

“Yes,” Kristen cried out. “Nobody…It's never been like this…Oh God! Now! Yes. Yes. Yes!”

Kristen arched her back, her mouth open in a silent cry. Then she collapsed against Marydale's chest.

As they lay together, Marydale wanted to tell Kristen how vividly she remembered Kristen's first shy touch and how much she enjoyed the confident pressure of her body now, and that whatever time or distance stretched between those two points, it didn't matter because they were here now. But it was too much to explain, and a few minutes later Kristen rolled over and said apologetically, “I have to walk Meatball. Will you come with me? I don't want to leave you even for a minute.”

They dressed, and Kristen wrapped an extra scarf around Marydale's neck. They rode the elevator down in tender silence. Outside, the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. On Twenty-Third Street, the bars were still open. Christmas lights were still hung from every lamppost. The smell of chocolate wafted out of the late-night coffee shops. Meatball moved down the street like a heavy canister vacuum cleaner, snuffling up the city's crumbs. Somewhere Aldean was probably flirting with a woman whose heart he would invariably break, all the while checking his phone to make sure Marydale was okay. She pulled out her phone and texted him,
I won't be home tonight.

“I'm so happy,” Kristen said, putting her arm through Marydale's and leaning against her.

Marydale leaned down and kissed her, in the bright light of a streetlamp, in front of the wide window of a wine bar, full on the lips for everyone to see.