Kiss Her Once for Me (79)

The axe is heavier than I expect, and it feels unwieldy in my hands. I’m that much more impressed by the way Jack mastered this in one try. I lift the axe over my head the way she did, or attempt to, but the weight is too much for me, and I teeter off-balance. Jack’s steady hand appears on my waist, securing me in place.

“Widen your stance,” she orders, but she says it gently, carefully, the way she did when she was teaching me to ski. Her hand is still resting just above my hip bone. I move one foot forward and redistribute my body weight as I lean over the chopping block. “Now raise the axe again.”

Her hand is still on my waist, like she’s forgotten the part where I kissed her in a bathroom and plan to marry her brother. She’s close enough that I can smell the sharp tang of her sweat and beneath that, always, always, the warmth of freshly baked bread on her skin. “You should move back,” I say. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” Jack says, her voice confident and calm, like we’re trading off who gets to be the neurotic mess and who gets to be the stabilizing force.

“I might. I’ve never swung an axe before. I’ll probably fuck it up.”

“You won’t,” she says again. Her hand is there, grounding me, and when I lift the axe, it almost feels like we’re lifting it together. I close my eyes, terrified I’m going kill us both.

“Open your eyes, Elle,” Jack whispers. Her voice is warm on my cheek. I open my eyes, and she keeps one strong hand on my waist as I let the momentum of the axe carry me through. It collides with the wood and splits it, but not in half. My aim wasn’t great, and it catches the side, splintering off a small piece. Still, it’s wildly satisfying to know I did that. My right shoulder does hurt, but it’s the good kind of hurt. The straining of a muscle I haven’t used in a while.

“This will make perfect kindling,” she says, like I chopped the wood all wonky on purpose. She kicks aside the small piece and leaves the rest on the block, and she does all of this without ever letting go of me.

“Ready to try again?”





A Webcomic

By Oliverartssometimes

Episode 9: The Airstream

(Christmas Day, 1:12 a.m.)

Uploaded: February 18, 2022

Her hands never leave my body somehow. Not when she drives us both back into the cabinets in the Airstream kitchen, and they rattle discordantly at my back. Not when she hoists me up on to the countertop, my leggings sweeping up that small trail of flour. Not when her mouth makes a mess of me, as she smiles crookedly into sloppy kisses. Not when my hands make a mess of her.

I run my fingers through her hair, up the back of her shirt, down along the seams of her jeans, searching for skin and sweetness and maybe the source of that freshly baked bread smell.

But her hands never leave my waist, holding me in place. Holding me here with her.

I untwist my knotted scarf and let it fall onto the kitchen counter beside me, because I want nothing more than this woman’s lips on my neck, her mouth on my earlobe, her tongue on every inch of my skin. Jack understands the secret code of my blue scarf removal, and she dips her head to kiss the hinge of my jaw, the curve of my ear. Hot breath and careful touches and her hands, never once leaving my body.

I’ve never felt this way before. Cared for. Cherished. Her kisses are some magic combination of tender and feral, making me feel both deliciously heedless and, somehow, impossibly secure.

Like she might push me off a cliff, but she’s going to hold my hand the entire time. Like I can trust her, no matter what. It’s safe to feel this way, my brain tells my body. So my body feels.

“We don’t have to do this,” she says as she traces the tip of her nose down the length of my throat, causing a cascade of shivers to waterfall through my body.

“I know,” I say, shivering, shivering.

“We don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“That’s… um, nice,” I manage as her kisses turn wet, as her mouth finds new places to land—my clavicle, where she wanted to put a tattoo; the top of my rib cage; the peekaboo of my breasts in my oversize T-shirt.

“Seriously,” Jack insists. Hands never leaving my waist. An anchor. A life vest. “The waiting is hot.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And—” Her fingers squeeze into the soft flesh of my waist, and for some reason, I don’t feel self-conscious about it the way I have with other people, having them hold onto a part of my body I’m still learning to love. Trust, my brain says. Trust, my body echoes. Let go.

“And”—Jack tries again, mouth and tongue and teeth—“I want you to want it like I want it, and if you’re not there yet, or if you need more time, or if you just want to—”

“Jack.” She looks up, and I press my forehead to her forehead, my nose to her nose. “I want it.”

She swallows. “But… it’s only been a day.”

My fingers find the sides of her beautiful neck. “I thought we’d decided it’s been forever.”

She finally drops her hands from my waist. Jack turns her body, and I watch the twist of muscles in her stomach, in her neck, as she reaches across the counter and traces a finger along the trackpad of a laptop. She cues up her Spotify playlist and presses play and comically shatters the magic of this moment with—“?‘Call me Maybe’? Really? This song isn’t sexy at all.”