Ship It(53)

And this time she opens her mouth, and my tongue slides in, and she tastes like maple syrup and waffles and girl.

She brings her hands up my back, and it gives me goose bumps. I press into her, and she tips back onto the bed and our foreheads bonk as we land, but we don’t stop, we just keep kissing like that, and there’s this feeling building inside, and I definitely know what it means because I’ve gotten it during a good fic many times.

Tess’s hands find the gap between my shirt and my pants, and she dips her fingers into the space, warm against my back, and the feeling in my stomach travels south and I need her to touch me more, so I do the only thing I can think to do, which is roll my hips down, and I feel her breath hitch, and I’m thinking, Don’tstopdon’tstop, and she doesn’t. She grabs me by the waist and pulls me somehow closer to her, pressing up into my jeans, breathing into my mouth.

I remember she’s wearing a dress…. How easy would it be to just slip my hand underneath? She has her hand balled up in my hoodie, and our bodies are pulsing slightly together. I reach down—her thighs are so soft where I graze my fingers against them. I dip my hand beneath the hem of her skirt….

What do I do now? I don’t know!

I need to read more femslash, I think wildly.

And then my breathing gets tight as I realize what I’m doing. Thirty minutes ago I was walking along the river and now suddenly I’m lying on top of a girl with my hand up her skirt?

I take my hand back and pull away from her just a bit.

“Claire?” she says.

This is all happening too fast. What am I even doing?

“Is everything okay?” she says, her arms still wrapped around me, holding me tight against her.

“Yeah, yeah, I just, um…” My voice trails off as I look at her. She looks so beautiful, her hair splayed out behind her on the bed, her lips pink, her cheeks flushed. I did that. I did that.

I want to kiss her again, so badly. What does that mean? What does that make me? Is this it? Is this the confirmation I was looking for? I’m definitely gay, no turning back, forever and ever, amen? I feel the sudden urge to leave.

She pulls one hand out of the back of my shirt and brings it to the side of my face, rubbing my cheek with her thumb.

“You are so frigging hot right now,” she says.

What do I say to that?

So are you, so are you, so are you runs like a refrain in my head. I’m just getting my lips to form the words when…

BEEP.

The door opens.

Oh shit.

I leap off Tess and straighten my shirt, wipe my lips on my sleeve. She pulls her dress down and sits up, and we both look toward the door just in time to see…

Mom walk in.

“Claire, I just went to the most divine cupcake shop, I brought you a—”

She stops short when she sees Tess.

“Who’s this?” she asks with a look of wide-eyed wonder. God, Mom, be cool. Don’t act like I’ve never had a friend over before.

Friend. I’m burning on the inside. I’m sure my cheeks are neon red right now.

“Tess,” she says, putting her hand out. That hand was just up my shirt not ten seconds ago. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs….”

“Good lord, child, please call me Trudi.” Mom shakes Tess’s hand, then looks at me in complete delight. “You made a friend!” she exclaims—I swear to god, exclaims. I’m dying. I’m dead. Tess and I glance at each other, and her face is tight from holding back a smile and her eyes are bulging and I can tell she’s laughing hysterically on the inside.

I look back at my mom. “Um, would it be okay if Tess slept here tonight?” I ask. “She doesn’t have a place to stay so I thought she could take one of our beds.”

Mom looks back at Tess, then at me, and I have no idea what she’s thinking, but I’m mortified.

She just says, “Good thing I got extra cupcakes, then, huh?”


Two hours and two and a half cupcakes later, I’m in bed next to my mom, who is snoring. I look across the gap to the other bed, where Tess is sleeping on her back, her hair up in a silk scarf.

I look at her profile, admiring the way her forehead curves into her nose, the way her lips part a bit as she sleeps.

I want to kiss her again. And I don’t know what that means.

Because here’s the thing, right? I have a couple options. I could wake up tomorrow and tell my mom I’m gay and I like Tess, and then she’d cry and be so happy for me and probably give me a sex talk, which I do not want to hear (but also I probably need to hear from someone because if today proved anything it’s that I seriously have no clue how sex works when it’s not between Smokey and Heart—more research is clearly needed), and then I could announce it on Facebook and come out to my school and everyone would either accept me or not accept me and then I would have to become friends with those other two lesbian girls, even though I don’t know nearly enough about basketball to hang out with them, and I would need to buy some rainbow suspenders for the Pride parade in Boise, which I don’t even want to go to because parades are just too many people and Tess and I could, what, be girlfriends? Would I meet her family? Her friends? Would I cut my hair into something edgy and short? Would this be my coming-out story forever when people asked me about it? Would Joanie Engstrom still want to be bus buddies with me? Would I have to decide if I also still like boys? Would I have to start calling myself lesbian? Bisexual? Pansexual, like Tess? The words blur and block out the rest of my brain.