Red Light (33 page)

“Tori…you’re so…fuckin’…beautiful…” she gasped out between lips that I wanted to devour as she shook under me, making me come harder as she came, blasted by the intensity and the stunning sensation of the hot, wet gush against my hand.

“Stay?” I asked quietly as we shifted again, because my body still pulsed, a strong, repeated contraction that flared deliciously through my belly, and I couldn’t bear the thought of not having her in me.

“Of course.” Her lips brushed my chin before she tucked her head under it, and I reveled in the feel of her in me, her skin softer, smoother, as she rested on top of me, beloved and safe for now, in the circle of my arms.

It was this time, all sleepy and easy, that I cherished most, the traded soft kisses, caresses, the murmured endearments even more important now, after such raw proclamation, as we lay together in the warm afternoon sun that filtered in through the curtain. Dust motes glimmered like tiny diamonds in the beam.

“You’re…like an angel,” I murmured, surprising myself with that word as it came out, unbidden but perfect, that word from me, who didn’t really believe in God or any of the representations of heaven.

Yet Jean, in her humor, in her love, in the complete giving of herself with an unalloyed, honest blade-sharpness that sliced past my logic and my doubts, knifed into my very sense of self, leaving me open without hurting, without bleeding, led me to not only consider, but to
see
, really see for just those eternal moments, that this…this between us…was immortal. She brought me face-to-face with the flesh-bound divine.

“And you’re my heart,” she whispered back, her breath a scatter across my throat, down my chest.

“So…it’s not a myth,” Jean commented finally after we were resettled under the blanket and snuggled up against the headboard.

“What?”

“Female ejaculation. Not a myth.”

I stroked the line of her neck and kissed her head as she again rested on my shoulder. “What was it like?”

“Oh…my God.” Jean rolled her eyes at me. She flipped over and climbed up me, a sexy, playful smirk on her lips. “Want to find out?”

I slid beneath her as she parted my thighs. “I’m willing to try,” I said and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, drawing her down for the incendiary caress of her lips on mine.

“Your family…might…hmm…miss us,” I got out in between choking heartbeats as she tasted her way down my body, lips and hands, teeth and tongue, all conspiring to rob me of my voice. The blatant hunger on her face as her lips moved on me lifted me, thrilled me, made the hardened end of her tit playing against my hard-on an exquisite torture.

Jean stopped for one agonizing second to glance up, her gaze as heated as her touch upon me. “We’re in love,” she said gently, reverently, then kissed the spot right below my navel. “They won’t mind.”

“Then bring your hips up here, baby,” I told her in the same tone. “I want to taste you…feel you on my lips.”

We were in complete agreement as she balanced on the tip of my tongue and she took me with her mouth.

*

I learned Jean’s ring size after dinner and, with that knowledge, decided to take the good lieutenant up on his offer and use one of my comp days the next day. After I got back to Staten Island I went immediately to the Claddagh Shop on Forest Avenue. If they didn’t have what I wanted, they’d know where I could find it.

I lucked out: it would be ready in an hour, so I had time to wander about, then pick up something to eat before I went back to the house. Besides, Samantha had just left and I wanted to spend a little time with Nina, maybe talk with her about what I had in mind over lunch. I’d speak with my mother later.

“So…how are you gonna do it?” Nina asked, her eyes sparkling at me as we sat down at the table in the kitchen over a huge meatball hero that we split and Cokes—normal for me, caffeine-free for her. “This…tastes
really
awful,” Nina commented as she pushed her can away.

“Hey, your kid bounces around enough in there,” I joked. “Doesn’t need any help.”

“I know, I know,
believe
me, I know.” She smiled back. “Now spill.”

I stared down at my food, momentarily self-conscious. “I was just gonna ask, I guess, and then, you know, give it to her.”

“Simple, straightforward,” Nina answered, nodding thoughtfully. “Sounds fine.”

“You think?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically, then covered my hand with hers. “You’ll be fine.”

I blew out my breath. “I have to tell Elena…tell my mom.” That had me nervous.

Nina’s fingers squeezed sympathetically. “Just remember that she loves you, and it’ll all work out, I promise.”

I was puzzled by that statement and cocked my head. “What, my mom? I know that.”

“No, I meant Jean.”

She got up from the table and came over to give me a hug, then kissed the top of my head. “Don’t let your mom rattle your cage too much, tough guy. You’re going for the prize here, you know?”

I leaned my head against her. That’s when the baby kicked, a solid little thump against my cheek.

“I guess that’s my second opinion,” I said, and gave the bump a little rub.

Nina ruffled my hair as I stood. “Yup. Go get ’em, tiger.”

I decided there was no time like the present, as the saying goes, and as soon as I picked up my order from the shop, I went to see my mother.

“You’re kidding. The ambulance driver?” My mother stared at me with unmistakable incredulity as we faced each other across her living room.

“Paramedic, Mom. She’s a paramedic.”

“Hmph.” Her face clouded, and she gave me her inscrutable look. “When are you going to ask her?”

“I don’t know. Soon, probably in the next few days.”

“And if she agrees, where do you plan on doing this?”

“We’ll figure that out together.”

She glanced down at the floor and took a deep breath. When she fixed her attention on me again, I realized I should have known that this discussion couldn’t have happened without the usual interrogation. She folded her arms across her chest. “Where will you live?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have obligations,
family
obligations.”

“I know, Mom. I’m not forgetting them. I’ve been coming by, taking care of things. I’ll still do that.”

“You are going to
legally
bind yourself in ways that are more difficult to take apart just to get four rights, two of which are valid only in this city.”

I knew that. I swallowed the anger that rose in my throat. “I’m aware.”

She nodded. “Good. School?”

“What about it?”

“When are you going back?”

I glanced at the ground before I faced her again. “I don’t know. I want to become a paramedic. We’ll see where it goes from there.”

Her breath huffed out harshly. “What are you
doing
? You’re destroying your life—for what? A pretty face? I can understand that she might please you, I’m sure the sex—”

“Don’t even say it.” My voice felt thick as I waved my hand and cut her off. I loved my mother and respected her, but I wasn’t going to let her speak about Jean like that. “I love you, I won’t argue with you, but I will not listen to you talk about her like that.”

“My apologies,” she said, coldly, “but Victoria, you’re still a
child.
You don’t know what you’re
doing
. At least Kerry had a very bright future, wanted more out of life and you—”

“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “Kerry would have never—”

“You’re talking about sex,
hija
. Why can’t you just wait and see? Why do you have to do this…this drastic thing?”

I’d reached the limits of my temper. “Would you just
listen
to me? I love her, Mami. I love her. I don’t want to spend another extra minute that I don’t have to without her.”

Her eyes were almost ice light, and I realized they had tears in them. I gentled my voice and took her hand, then sat on the sofa and she followed.

“Mami, she loves me. She put herself in harm’s way for me. Kerry would
never
have done that.”

“Ah,
querida
,” she said, and this time, her tears fell. She brushed the hair away from my face with her free hand. “You put yourself in harm’s way every day. I don’t want you to get hurt. Don’t you understand?”

“Look.” I took my hand from hers and reached into my pocket for a tissue. Beneath it was the little box I had safely tucked there. “This city…it trusts me,
me,
Mami, with the life of its citizens. Don’t you think you can trust me with mine?”

I wiped her eyes and she took the tissue from my hand. “This,” I said, and took the box out of my pocket, “this is what I’m giving her.”

She sniffed and took it from my hand, staring at the black leather cover. Finally, she opened it, then nodded.

“It
is
beautiful,” she said quietly after considering it from different angles. “You respect her and her heritage—I’ve managed to teach you that much, at least. Does her family know?”

“You taught me a lot more than that, Mami. And yes, they know we love each other.” I smiled, because the memory was so very fresh. “They don’t know about this. I…I did speak with Nina, though.”

My mom closed the box, gently placed it in my hand, and gave me a surprised glance.

“Oh? What does she say?”

I grinned as I carefully tucked it back into my pocket. “Nina said to go for it.”

My mother accepted that statement with another small nod. That Nina approved…it carried weight with her. It always had. For once, though, Nina’s importance didn’t bother me.

“I just wish…you would take a little more time,” she said, as she brushed her fingers through my hair once more.

I nodded. I understood what she meant, but as I thought of how to answer her, all I could see in my mind’s eye were the dead, killed by accident, the innocent maimed by circumstance, and Lukaski, looking at a year of rehab and needing to re-create his life at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, and lucky,
lucky
, to be able to do it.

“Mom?” I said softly, “time’s the one thing no one has. I’m not wasting any more of it.”

It took four weeks, that was all, to set a date and get it all arranged—Jean and I were on the same page: love may be immortal and the spirit divine, but the body is neither. Why wait? We just wanted to be together.

After Samantha came back from her business trip, Jean and I went to city hall and waited in a room that had been around since President Madison for a bored clerk to charge us a dollar more than a marriage license cost so we could receive approximately one thousand nine hundred some-odd
fewer
rights than one of those would grant. But the four rights we did get, two of which were, as my mother had reminded me, only good in a city jail or a city-run hospital, enabled us to do things I’d never really thought about before, like have insurance.

We had additional benefits, though: working as city employees meant we could do quite a few things, things my cousin and Samantha couldn’t without jumping through a lot of hoops, then hoping someone might overlook something or make an exception. It pissed me off, but I had to let it go—who could live with that kind of anger all the time?

Because I still gave my mom about forty percent of my paycheck, Jean had no issues with us staying on Staten Island as opposed to living in Brooklyn, and I really did want to be around Nina and Samantha, especially with everything going on.

Besides, Nina was thrilled about the dog, Dusty, who instantly parked at her feet and followed her everywhere. I also strongly suspected that Samantha liked the idea of having a literal watchdog around her wife.

In no time at all, I was in an anteroom of the Unitarian church, with Mr. Scanlon waving Mrs. Scanlon inside so he could speak with me.

“Scotty, I know…” He stared down at his shoes a moment, the shiny dress black ones with the fringe over them that matched his tartan. “I know your father’s not here, and I’m not asking you to—” He placed a warm hand on my shoulder, and took a deep breath. “Tori, I’d be honored if the young woman who loves my daughter so well would let me be her da too.”

I stared at him, into the warm eyes his daughter had inherited, this man with his barrel chest from breathing in too much smoke from all the fires he’d run into over the years, his voice low and slightly gravelly for the same reason, this man who loved his family so much that he had room in his heart to add to their number.

“I think…I think the honor’s mine,” I told him as he pulled me into a bear hug. I returned his hold until we both got embarrassed.

“Good, then,” he said as we separated. He clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, young Scotty, I’ll see you inside.” He smiled, then walked through the door.

My throat was so tight and my lips so dry I couldn’t imagine breathing, never mind speaking the words I knew I had to as we walked up to the minister and then…seconds later we stood before him, exchanging promises that duplicated word for word what her parents had promised each other and rings that went with them.