In the Distance There Is Light (24 page)

When she opens the door, she smiles broadly, pulls me inside and gathers me in her arms. She only kisses me on the cheek.

“Where in Chicago can you get a better cappuccino?” she asks once we’re in the kitchen, her voice coquettish and high.

“It’s not really about the quality of the coffee, is it?”

Dolores looks at me with mock-amazement. “Is that you, Sophie? Or did someone else’s soul slip into your body?”

I have to chuckle at her playfulness. Her mood seems light as air today. She’s flirting, firing on all cylinders.

Once seated, with deliciously steaming cups of coffee in front of us, I say, “You know why I wanted to meet at a coffee shop.”

“Hm.” She fixes me with a stare. “Yes, I know it’s not about the coffee.” A sudden gloominess washes over her face.

“What’s wrong?” I always feel so silly asking that question—after Ian.

“This is my house. I’ve lived here for a very, very long time. I have a lot of memories here, but… since you left… it’s different. I can’t find my groove in my own house anymore. It’s not the same without you here. I guess I just wanted to see you sitting at my kitchen table again, drinking my coffee, even just see you walk through the front door, though it was strange to actually open the door for you.”

“Is this where you ask me to move in?” I joke, hiding how her words really make me feel. Wanted. Desired beyond belief. Loved.

She shakes her head. “I know things started strangely between us, with everything in the wrong order, and you now want to undo this by dating ‘properly’.” She bends her fingers into quotation marks. “And I get it, I really do. I understand the thought process behind it. In my head, it makes sense… in my heart, not so much.”

“What are you saying?” I hide most of my face behind my coffee cup.

“Nothing. I don’t know.” She sighs. “I’m saying that I’ve missed you and that I have no idea how to take things slowly with you because it doesn’t make any sense after all we’ve been through and all we’ve done. It feels like taking a step back. And then, well, there’s also something else.” She taps her fingers—her nails still painted red—on the tabletop. “I’m afraid. When you left, it hurt me too. And despite working long hours, I had too much time to think about us and to wonder about the difference between what you mean to me and what I can mean to you.”

“Oh, Dolores.” I fight the urge to get up and throw my arms around her.

“You left so easily, like it was nothing. One minute we were arguing in the hallway, the next you’d packed your belongings and you were out of here.” She holds up her hands. “I know
why
you left. I know that I pushed you, but the swiftness of it all hurt me. You may think I’m made of steel, that I’m so strong, but I’m not. I have feelings too.”

“I know that.” I do get up this time. “That’s why I believed this had to be a slow process for us the second time around. So that we can gauge our feelings along the way and—”

Dolores pushes her chair back. “But that’s just the thing, Sophie. I don’t need to gauge my feelings for you anymore. I know what I feel. I know it when I look at you. I know it as I sit here. I knew it all along while you were at Jeremy’s and I knew it even more after I sent you that email and you never replied.” She stands. “Ours may be a love born from the most dire circumstances, and it may be frowned upon by many, and it may be doomed, who knows? But that doesn’t make it any less. I don’t need to get to know you any more. I know you already. I know all I need to know. Except for one thing.”

I’m the one who takes the first step toward her. I’m the one who wraps my fingers around her wrists and tugs her close. “I think you know that too.”

“Maybe I do,” she mutters.

When we kiss, all the words she just spoke mingle in my head, until they scream only one sentence, loud and clear: Dolores loves me.

“I’ll date you all you want, Sophie,” Dolores whispers in my ear in between breathless lip-locks. “Just as long as you know that I don’t need to do so to know. I knew enough yesterday.”

“So did I,” I reply, before losing the power of speech again, and having the rest of my words swallowed by her eager mouth on mine.

When Dolores decides we’re not taking things slowly, we don’t.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The next Friday, when I arrive at Dolores’ house—letting myself in with the key she gave me long ago—Dolores pounces on me as soon as I make my way into the hallway. She’s wearing the same red dress she wore on our date last week, the same red lipstick, and a hell of a crooked grin on her face.

“What’s with the welcoming committee?” I ask, as soon as my lips are no longer occupied with kissing hers.

“I’m glad it’s the weekend, that’s all.” She keeps planting kisses on the side of my neck.

“What about the attire? Are we meant to go somewhere?” This is the first real semi-busy week I’ve had, what with starting work again, and I rack my brain for a social engagement I might have missed, which is silly, because Dolores and I don’t have a social life together. Not yet. “Or did I get my dates mixed up?” I take a step back and give Dolores an appreciative once-over.

“I wouldn’t dress like this for anyone else, Sophie.” She has a sparkle in her eyes that’s shinier than any I’ve seen before. “But I wanted to recreate some of the atmosphere of last week’s date. I think we both agreed that was a
really
good date.”

She barely gives me time to nod. She comes for me again, wrapping her arms around me, her mouth close to my ear. “A few weeks ago, I got you—well, us, I guess—a present, and let’s just say it was on my mind all throughout that date.”

“Oh really?”

“We never got a chance to… use it, and I thought tonight would be a good night for it.” The smile that appears on her lips is wicked enough to inform me that she got me—or us—a sex toy. I’m not that naive.

A pulse starts underneath my skin. The past week, we’ve taken it sort of slow—somewhere in the middle of where we both wanted things to be. But if this week confirmed one thing, it’s that what we feel for each other is strong enough to not let go of, to not make light of and write off as merely two people finding each other on the darkest side of grief. We’ve crossed over. Not just over the line of decency we demolished weeks ago when we first kissed, but from secret lovers to two women in a relationship.

A first step away from the women we were when we grew close. A first step to overcoming the despair Ian’s accident plunged us into. A first step to, together, being more than two women in pain. A first step into a brand new life. A life without Ian. My boyfriend; her son. Together, we are more than the sum of our pain. There’s endless chemistry and all this love and the roots of something more, but, for me, there’s also a confirmation that, as of now, I
can
look to the future. When I do, I see the future I tried to describe to Jeremy that day, even though I’m well aware we don’t live in an ideal world.

I might be foolish, we might both be foolish, but we haven’t lost our minds.

“I guess I could use a little decompression after my first week back at work,” I say.
 

“Let’s go straight upstairs then.” Dolores takes my hand, interweaves her fingers with mine, and we bolt up the stairs.

“Sit down. Make yourself comfortable on the bed. I’ll be right back.” Before she goes, Dolores curls her arms around my neck and kisses me, her tongue probing deep from the get-go. Then she heads into the bathroom.

I sit on the bed, my skin prickling with excitement, and wonder exactly how comfortable I should make myself. Should I start removing garments? I start with my shoes but leave it there. I want Dolores’ hands on me, want her fingers to skim along my skin when she pulls my dress over my head.

I wait, my heart full of lust and my head filled with images of Dolores. Her red-lipped smile at the restaurant last week. The inviting slope of her cleavage. Her desire for me so on display. How wanted she made me feel just by being there. Seeing her again at Starbucks before that and the shock it delivered to my system. I’ve barely even thought about Albert the truck driver anymore. Maybe because it wasn’t his fault. Or maybe because the effect Dolores has on me is too intoxicating, too all-consuming. I remember what I wrote in my last letter to Ian.
I should not be falling in love with your mother.
But who decides what should and shouldn’t happen in my life? Isn’t that up to me?

Then Dolores exits the bathroom—empty-handed. At first glimpse, everything looks exactly the same as when she entered it. Then she sets her hip a certain way, juts it forward a little, her hands on her sides, and I see something bulge underneath her dress.

Oh.

Eyes narrowed, she walks over to me, pulls me up by my hands, and presses herself against me. “What do you think, Sophie?” Her voice is a thin whisper in my ear.

I don’t need to see to know exactly what she’s hiding underneath that dress. I’m so aroused, and a little surprised, I can’t make any words come out of my mouth.

Dolores kisses her way from my ear to my lips, then pushes herself back for a second to look at me. There’s no more smile on her face. “Sophie?”

I don’t say anything, just pull her close again, lose myself in the most intoxicating kiss. I can’t wait for her to take off that dress. I can’t wait to see it. I can’t wait for her to slip it inside of me.

“Show me,” I say, and sit back down.

“Take off your dress first.” Dolores’ voice is low and hoarse.

I quickly pull it over my head, throw it on the floor.

Then, Dolores, ever so slowly, starts pulling up her dress. The red fabric slides over her thigh. She fixes her gaze on me. Then she pulls the garment over her head in one go, revealing a pretty sizable dildo fastened in a pair of bright red boy shorts—almost the same color as the dress she just removed. The dildo is violet and has an immediate effect on my level of excitement.

As though in a trance, I slither off the bed, and kneel in front of Dolores. In front of her present for me—for us. What is this doing to her? We have so many more dates to go on to process all of this, but why should we even attempt to put this into words, when we can just show each other what this, all of this, is doing to us. I’ll show her now.

I plant my lips on the toy. It smells rubbery, not-human, strange, but I’m overcome by an unstoppable urge to take it into my mouth. This is me reduced to my most base desires. This is me in front of Dolores, about to give her everything I have left in me, again. Or no, it’s not that, I think when I open my lips over the head of the dildo. I’m not giving her anything. I’m restoring myself. I’m putting myself back together, tiny piece by tiny piece, with her, by acknowledging this lust, this fire between us, this inevitableness, this bond. And how I move my mouth along this dildo Dolores bought for us to play with, is all part of it. Everything is. From that night she asked me if I wanted to stay here, and us meeting in the darkness of the night in Ian’s old bedroom, and me ending up in her bed, my mind on nothing like this at all. My soul so shattered all I could see and think was blackness. And how, night after night, we crept closer inch by inch until there was no space left between us.

This is us now. This is my desire unbuckled, my lust unleashed. Because I’m alive and I want to live. These are our truest moments. This is what I’ve missed the most. Dolores so close to me there’s no room for my grief to spill over into self-pity. I love her. I love this toy she got for us. I love how it says that she, too, believed we weren’t done yet.

My lips skate over the dildo and I take it deep into my mouth, as deep as I can, and while the tip goes as far as it can go, I do have a flimsy second during which I come to and wonder how I came to be kneeling in Dolores’ bedroom with my lips clasped around a dildo.

Then Dolores’ hands are in my hair and the moment of clarity is eclipsed by her touch and by the intensity of what I’m doing. This is just like that first kiss, I think, only more. A moment during which I let go of inhibitions completely and follow my gut. This time, I have no regrets.

I let the toy slip from my lips, and look at it. It’s all slick and wet. How did Dolores know this would turn me on so much? It was probably a gamble. Or experience. I push myself up and sit on the bed, immediately scooting backwards. I’m still wearing my panties, but I want
her
to take them off.

Dolores hops onto the bed with me, the toy dangling deliciously between her legs. She comes to lie half on top of me and the dildo presses against my thigh. The saliva I covered it in leaves a wet patch on my skin while Dolores kisses me and I kiss her back with more zest than I knew I had in me.

Her hands roam across my skin, fumble with my bra cups, set my breasts free. Her fingers pinch my nipples, her teeth bite my skin.

“God, I’ve missed you,” she whispers in my ear when her mouth hovers there. “I’ve missed you so much.”

I’m the least me and the most me I can possibly be. With Dolores, I come home every time, whether she prepares me a meal, puts a gentle hand on my shoulder, or is about to fuck me with a strap-on dildo. With her, everything always feels way beyond any sensation of feeling good I should be allowed to have only four months after losing my life partner. She has turned everything upside down for me.