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The first time it happened, a sad Fiona Apple song was playing softly. It wasn't sexy, the song, and it didn't lend itself to setting a mood. She was begging for love, and it struck Frances as pathetic more than sad. Bobbi splayed her hands across Frances's belly as though its where her shallow, anxious breathing could best be felt. Frances pretended not to be nervous, but Bobbi knew it was her first time. Frances smiled, and Bobbi kissed her. It was the hard press of her mouth that made Frances gasp, or maybe it was its juxtaposition to the soft, delicate touch of Bobbi's palms across her stomach.
Bobbi touched Frances's hand, brought it to her bare breast, and Frances swallowed. Bobbi's skin was warm, likely from the summer heat, and Frances felt Bobbi's nipple pebble beneath her touch. Bobbi's cheeks were flush, and she smiled back at Frances, shifting closer so they were touching more, her knee slot between Frances's. Frances suppressed the urge to shift her own knees and hold Bobbi there. Nothing about Bobbi felt containable; it would be futile to try.
They kissed again. Bobbi's lips parted for Frances's tongue, and the familiarity of her mouth was a comfort. They had kissed many times, and Bobbi seemed to like it. She let out this soft little noise that caused Frances to open her eyes. She liked looking at Bobbi. She liked imagining nobody had ever been this close to her or saw in her face what Frances could see.
The passage of time warped itself, stretching out and snapping like a rubber band.
She asked Bobbi, after: Did you... you know? Climax? It sounded clinical.
Oh, Bobbi said, laughing. No.
It felt cruel and sharp, and Frances thought about saying that she hadn't, either. But it would've been a lie, and Bobbi wouldn't have let her have it.
It had been good, better than Frances had been able to achieve with her own fingers at night, opening her mouth and pretending to moan silently to enhance the fantasy. She didn't feel sore after like she'd heard some girls talk about in school.
Sex with Bobbi didn't feel altering at all.
Frances looked at herself in the mirror. She did this often after spending time with Bobbi. She thought about how she appeared to Bobbi and what Bobbi saw in her. Even if Bobbi told her that she agreed with Frances's thoughts on paganism, or had laughed at a joke Frances had made with the explicit intent of making her laugh, Frances wondered. She felt desperate for Bobbi's approval, and she was sure everyone could smell it on her.
Bobbi told her once that Frances's real smile could blind the sun, and she had pointedly dropped her sunglasses over her eyes. Frances had been unable to pinpoint whether it was intended as a compliment.
I have a fake smile? she asked, touching the saucer beneath her tea cup. There was a small chip. She felt very aware of her facial muscles.
No, Bobbi said. You don't.
That, Frances had been sure, was a compliment.
Bobbi held her hand as they walked through the school's parking lot during lunch, palms sweaty and pressed together. Bobbi tugged Frances along when they walked through the halls, too. She never fell back to slip between a gap of girls heading to class. Frances had always done so, slowing down and finding herself a step behind whomever she was speaking with. Now everyone around them scuttled away like crabs, moving out of Bobbi's way and making space for Frances by default.
Bobbi gestured empathetically with her other hand, and Frances listened, feeling a mixture of embarrassment and pride whenever one of their classmates turned away from them.
Bobbi squeezed her hand, and Frances squeezed back.
Frances slipped a second finger into Bobbi. She was warm and wet and breathing hard through her nose. Frances felt good about that and kissed the inside of Bobbi's thigh. Bobbi toed at Frances's side and looked down at her with heavy eyes. Frances thought Bobbi had never been more beautiful. She had a glow about her. Frances considered saying it, but it felt silly, like the kind of thing people say in romance novels or pornography.
She swiped her thumb across Bobbi's clit, and she moved her fingers inside her. It felt incredible until she could hear the clock ticking, and Bobbi didn't seem any closer to orgasm than she had five minutes ago. Frances felt far away from her, then. She felt like she didn't know Bobbi at all.
I'm sorry, she murmured.
No, Bobbi said, Here.
She sat up, looking down at Frances between her spread legs. She touched Frances's wrist, and then she pressed down on Frances's thumb.
A little to the right, she said.
And then she touched the top of Frances's head like she was blessing her.
Frances inhaled, breathing wet and open-mouthed against the inner curve of Bobbi's thigh. She followed Bobbi's instructions, heard her breathing change and felt her flutter around her fingers. When Bobbi came Frances was so relieved she forgot to look at her; instead, she buried her head against Bobbi's sharp hipbone. Her cheeks grew sticky with tears. Bobbi's hand smoothed down her hair.
Bobbi didn't say anything, and Frances cried harder.
Frances learned, through trial and error, that Bobbi liked the feeling of Frances's hand cradling her breast, kisses peppered along the column of her throat, and the small, teasing licks of Frances's tongue against her cunt. Frances told her she could spend an entire afternoon with her face between her thighs. Bobbi laughed, and she promised to hold her to it, and Frances laughed, too.
Bobbi would go easily when Frances would push at her shoulder, grinning up at Frances with her head on the edge of her pillow. She would lift her leg when Frances tapped on her knee. She would roll over and let Frances trace her spine and her shoulder blades. Frances felt the spaces between Bobbi's ribs and remembered Aristophanes's speech at the symposium about the creatures with eight limbs and two heads being torn apart and finding each other again.
What? Bobbi asked.
Frances told her, drawing a necklace along her collar bones and a jewel in the dip between. Bobbi's skin goosepimpled, and the winter sun faded through her half-open curtains.
That's ridiculous, Frances, Bobbi said through a smile. Do you find it romantic?
Frances tapped her fingers along Bobbi's stomach. I find it sad.
You seem to think that's the same thing.
No, Frances said. She swallowed hard. She imagined if it were true, and she and Bobbi had been one entity torn apart, that Bobbi received all the good bits, and Frances received all the bad ones. It's comforting to imagine Bobbi wanting her, anyway. You're not sad, and you're romantic.
Bobbi really laughed, then. And what good is being romantic?
Frances settled on top of her like a blanket, and Bobbi hugged her close, hand rubbing against Frances's back soothingly. If it's pure with no ulterior motive, it's no good at all, as far as society is concerned. Which is kind of its appeal.
Bobbi hummed. You really think that?
Frances bit her lip and closed her eyes. She felt exhausted suddenly. I don't know, she said. I don't know.
When Frances showed Bobbi a poem for the first time, it was less than a week after they had gone to a spoken word performance together.
Bobbi read it silently, and Frances watched her eyes move beneath their lids. In her head, Frances practiced minimizing what she had done. It was a joke, nothing serious, an intentional bastardization of their messages about compulsory heterosexuality. The joke was on everyone else, and they were the only two people with the ability to understand it.
Bobbi looked up. Her mouth was flat, and her face was blank. You should perform this, she said.
Really? The word had a breathless quality to it, and she hoped Bobbi didn't notice. It was as much about the praise as Bobbi's innate understanding that the words were meant to be read aloud rather than on a page. All poetry is.
Yeah. It's really good, Frances.
Frances pressed her lips together, tamping down her smile. I'm not really a performer.
Not yet.
Would you want to do it with me? she asked.
Bobbi looked at her for a long time, and Frances wanted to tilt her chin down and stare at the green lawn beneath them. Environmentally reprehensible.
Okay, Bobbi said.
Frances ducked her head now, biting on her bottom lip. Her face felt warm, and Bobbi splayed her palm over Frances's knee.
Bobbi broke up with Frances in Frances's bedroom. She was sitting on Frances's bed when she ended it. Frances felt nothing, and, simultaneously, like she wanted to die. Bobbi left, and Frances stared at where she had been and the wrinkle in the bedsheets from her body. Frances cried silent tears as she gathered a towel for the shower. Then she stood beneath the water and cried gasping, heaving sobs she couldn't control. Her breathing was short and shallow, and she was sure that she was actually going to die. Her chest was tight, and she knew it was a panic attack even though it felt like a heart attack, and the irony of it all was too melodramatic and stupid for Frances to bear. She stopped sobbing and stood there until the water that scalded her skin turned lukewarm and then freezing. She stood there until her fingertips turned blue and she had to call about hypothermia.
She slept on the floor for a week, and she wondered what about her had changed. She wondered what she had done to be someone Bobbi had liked, and what she had done wrong to become someone Bobbi did not.
Frances had never been with anyone before Bobbi, so it hadn't occurred to her that sex with Bobbi was different from sex with anyone else. When she met Nick, she understood, slowly, that sex with Bobbi hadn't been driven by attraction or lust. Frances thinks Bobbi is beautiful, and she thinks she's sexy, and the idea of touching her or being touched by her sends a thrilling pulse of electricity through her. But sex with Bobbi hadn't felt life-altering the way sex with Nick did at times.
The revolutionary, world-upending thing about Bobbi was everything else.
Bobbi would discuss the bourgeoise and the proletariat, and Frances knew every word out of her mouth was correct. She felt as though Bobbi had taken her own thoughts, found a way to pluck them from her brain and articulate them in conversation on Frances's behalf. Bobbi would tell Frances about herself, and it felt like an analysis so precise and unequivocally true that to even question it would be delusional. Bobbi would touch Frances, and suddenly Frances's body felt good and real and worth having.
Bobbi saw her, and, in turn, Frances was able to see herself. In Bobbi, Frances found recognition. She would not be herself without Bobbi.
Frances would never say it; it is too rote a thought, that sex with Bobbi was driven by love of some kind.
She considers, only briefly, that it is also a radical thought.
Frances smiles when she kisses Bobbi again. And she laughs when Bobbi kisses her, fingers brushing gently against the ticklish patch of skin by Frances's left armpit beneath her bra. Bobbi laughs into her mouth, and it's intoxicating. She struggles with Frances's bra, and she asks if it's new, and Frances tells her it isn't. It's from last year.
I haven't seen it before, Bobbi says.
Frances runs her thumb down the smooth, delicate column of Bobbi's throat. You've seen it now.
I'm going to toss it away.
Cool, Frances says around her blooming grin.
Bobbi ducks her head, kissing the sensitive underside of Frances's breast, and Frances shivers. Bobbi knows her body. If Frances thought they would need to relearn each other, she knows now that they never forgot. Bobbi never forgot. It turns something, pretentiously and metaphorically, molten inside Frances.
Bobbi kisses around her nipple before tugging gently, and Frances feels it pulsing between her thighs. Reaching for Bobbi, she slides her hands over her shoulders and down her back. Her skin is so soft, and her mouth is so warm, and Frances feels Bobbi's arm looping around her back, pressing her forward and into her. It's steadying.
Frances closes her eyes and exhales, losing herself to the feeling of Bobbi's mouth on her skin and Bobbi helping hold her up, less like a load-bearing wall and more like a support beam. It tingles pleasant and hot, not everywhere Bobbi touches, but everywhere.
Bobbi, Frances breathes. She's lying down now, and Bobbi kisses across her hips. I want to... I want...
Bobbi stops. What do you want?
Frances forces herself to focus. She meets Bobbi's eyes, open and imploring.
I want to go down on you, she says.
Bobbi smiles softly. Of course you do.
Frances giggles and covers her mouth with her hand. She feels her face flush with heat.
She slides from the sofa and tugs Bobbi forward, stroking the tender backside of her knee as if to tell Bobbi it's Frances's turn to hold her up. She kisses up Bobbi's thigh before lightly stroking through her folds. She's wet, and Frances licks at her bottom lip, spreading Bobbi open between her fingers. Her first lick is tentative. Bobbi's heady, a little salty and secretly sweet, and Frances wants her so badly. She always has.
Frances swirls her tongue around Bobbi's clit, and Bobbi finds Frances's head, hand resting gently on the crown. Frances licks at one side of Bobbi's labia and then the other, small and light like she used to do when she wanted to drag it out. Bobbi breathes a high-pitched, girly sigh that has Frances glancing up at her. Bobbi looks at Frances, eyes glassy and bright, mouth parted, and Frances looks back.
She wants to see her come.
She has seen it before, after missing it the first time: Bobbi's eyes screw shut, her mouth falls agape, and she looks tense and loose all at once. Her toes curl against Frances, and her grip tightens on Frances's hair. It makes Frances feel powerful and powerless. She can make Bobbi feel good, have Bobbi gasping and shaking beneath her hands and mouth. Frances knows she would do anything to make Bobbi feel like this, and the force of that desire could turn her raw and knock her out. Her heart thumps away, a lump in her throat like she could cry
Frances noses at Bobbi's clit before licking into her. She reaches up and finds Bobbi's free hand, and Bobbi has the presence of mind to interlock their fingers. The taste of Bobbi makes Frances's insides clench, and her fingers dig into the flesh of Bobbi's thigh, holding her open. She squeezes Bobbi's hand in hers and resists the urge to touch herself.
Bobbi's breathing quickens, and she whispers Frances's name reverently. Frances works a finger inside her, along with her tongue, and feels Bobbi fluttering, close. Bobbi grinds her hips down, and Frances moans. She looks up at Bobbi, eyes closed now. Bobbi always says what she thinks and feels, but it overwhelms Frances how different Bobbi's openness and vulnerability is like this. There is no pretense or performance; there is simply pleasure and feeling. Watching Bobbi come around Frances's finger and tongue, Frances rubbing tenderly and insistently at her clit, Frances feels that same thing is possible within herself.
She used to like that she could make Bobbi feel like this, but she now realizes the specialness of Bobbi allowing it. Frances cannot do it alone. She never could.
Frances cannot recall if she ever told Bobbi she loved her while they were dating.
She had, of course, loved her. Loving Bobbi has weaved itself so thoroughly into Frances's being that it feels ludicrous to believe there was ever a time she had not, although she knows that to be true.
She would not know how to stop, or she would rather not want to stop.
I love you, she tells Bobbi. And it's comforting. It's good. I love you, she thinks, I will love you and find goodness in loving you whether you love me or not. It is not a wholly selfless love, but it is not wholly selfish, either.
I love you, too, Bobbi says.
Bobbi grins, wide and ebullient, and Frances smiles back, a mirror image.