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Jane blames Heather.
Jesse can claim a fraction of the blame for himself, but it’s Heather who does the dirty work—invites Jane over for dinner and sends Jesse out in the backyard with all three of the kids and a minor warning to keep them away from the barbecue.
Heather, who knows how to make anything sound like a good idea, who loosens Jane up by making a strong pitcher of sangria and catching her up on the newest school gossip — which kids transferred to a new private school with neon-painted walls and an entire class dedicated to being outside and learning from nature, who ended up as the new high school swim coach— and then the drama of her own work, a mess of lawyers Jane doesn’t know how Heather handles. She makes the idea of going out sound fun and not something Jane is currently too old for. She grins, this devious little thing, that makes the liquor in Jane’s stomach swoop upwards.
Somehow, Jane still says yes.
—
It’s easier than Jane thought it’d be.
Her kids are at Daniel’s and she has nothing to worry about, a neatly wrapped-up case, and two days off if nothing else comes up. She knows better than to trust it, but Heather makes her feel like she can, making her do shots in the kitchen while Heather’s kids play mini-sticks with Jesse in the basement.
The club makes Jane feel older than she is, but she sits at the bar beside Heather and listens to her appease a barely twenty-two-year-old who tries to hit on her. She barely registers the people who sit on her other side until a woman sits down, tall and blonde, shaking off the question a guy Jane’s seen walking around asks her. The woman smiles, false and held tightly at her eyes, but the guy doesn’t seem to notice how unwelcome he is.
Jane leans into his field of view and lets her smile go sharp, softening when she checks in to make sure she isn’t making things worse. The woman leans into her, eyes going wide, and Jane drops her hand onto her knee, a safe move but also a statement.
“I see,” The guy laughs. “I’m still down for a three—”
“Just fuck off,” Jane says. She can feel Heather’s eyes on her, but she turns back to the stranger, who is pinker than she was a minute ago. The guy stalks off and the woman smiles, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Jane shrugs, then feels Heather’s elbow digging into her back. She ignores her. She can be charming when she wants to be and the woman’s blush isn’t fading. Jane’s hand against her knee suddenly feels warm, even against dry denim, and she swallows. “I’m Jane.”
“Kate.”
And really, it’s easy from there.
—
Kate’s apartment is close to the water with a bike leaning against the wall right in the entryway. Jane nearly impales herself on the handlebar, but she’s steered away by Kate’s hand against her bicep. The walk from the bar to her place had been short and Jane hadn’t second-guessed her decision at all. Heather had given her a thumbs up from where she’d moved into a booth before they’d left, but if Kate had noticed, she hadn’t said anything.
“You okay?” Kate asks.
Jane blinks. She missed the path from the door to Kate’s bedroom and Kate is so close, that Jane has to tilt her head up to meet her eyes.
“Yes,” Jane nods. Kate doesn’t need the backstory of her entire life. She tugs Kate back in, leans her own body weight against the closed door, and brings her hands to Kate’s back. Kate draws her hand between them, works the button of Jane’s jeans and then pauses. “Please,” Jane says. If she thinks about how long it’s been since someone else touched her, she’s going to lose her mind even faster, so she slides her hands up higher and tries to bring Kate closer. She’s practically clinging to Kate, half-considering if they should’ve moved to the bed first, but then Kate slips her hand into her jeans and Jane gasps, louder than she means to. She’s only rubbing lightly over the damp spot on her underwear, but Jane has to think about it to confirm she’s still breathing.
Kate eases her hand down the front of Jane’s underwear, cautious, slow. She touches her so gently, her hand curving to fit the shape of her, fingertips caught over her curls.
“Kate,” Jane says, desperation cutting through. She isn’t a patient person. They have all night, probably, Jane didn’t bother asking what Kate did for a living, if she’s the kind of person who goes out once a month or if she’s a regular. “Come on—”
“Yeah, yes,” Kate breathes. She finds Jane’s clit, rubs slow, big circles. Relief seeps through Jane’s body and she pitches forward, her face tight against Kate’s neck. She’s wet, slippery around her fingers, and Kate makes little sounds like she can’t quite believe it. Kate curls her fingers lower and then inside of Jane, barely. Jane lets out a stark little oh and tries to arch her body to get Kate deeper.
“I’ve got you,” Kate promises. She follows through, fills her up, sinks her fingers inside of her. Jane is dizzy with it, unbothered by how quickly Kate’s going to make her come. She reaches between them and holds onto Kate’s forearm, her head heavy against the door, Kate pressed as close as she can be. “Is this what you like?” Kate asks.
Kate is doing all the work, holding her up with an arm locked around Jane’s waist and fucking her on two fingers, grinding her palm against her clit. Jane nods, “Yes—like that,” and then goes quiet when she comes, muscles trembling with a split focus. Kate eases her fingers out of Jane’s cunt and Jane shudders, recenters her weight so she can stand on her own. Kate is pink and her mouth is held open and her fingers are wet when they press gently at the hinge of Jane’s jaw and Jane doesn’t even mind.
An orgasm is apparently what she needed to clear her mind and she walks Kate back to her bed, nudging her down until she’s sitting and blinking up at her. Jane can’t help but kiss her, fingers finding the bottom of her shirt and tugging up to get it over her head, mouths connecting again once the fabric is out of the way. Her bra is next, pretty in lavender, and Jane grins, murmurs, “Good planning.” Just to see Kate’s face darken. She gets her spread out on the dark blue sheets that make her flush stand out even more against the pale of her skin. She makes quick work of Kate’s pants and then settles between her legs. She wants to take her time and Kate isn’t looking like she’s going to complain, slumped and patient and waiting, one arm bent at the elbow to push her hair out of her face and the other hand tapping against her stomach.
Jane presses her mouth experimentally against the angle of her knee. The muscles in Kate’s thigh twitch and Jane smiles, working her way up her leg. Eventually, she runs out of thigh and runs her thumb along the edge of Kate’s underwear, circling back to where she’s soaked through. She traces the outline and then leans it, gets the flat of her tongue against the dark spot, and groans at the taste.
Kate echoes her, one hand covering her face and the other dropping off her stomach to grip the sheets.
“Jane.” It comes out like a whine and Jane groans. She hooks her fingers under the fabric that covers her, pulls it out of the way so she can get her mouth where she wants it. Kate is—pretty. Everything about her is and Jane stares at her cunt, framed by lilac fabric on the side, wet and swollen and waiting for her to do something about it. Jane feels dizzy with it, trying not to get overwhelmed by the moment, by the facts she has on hand. She was easy, breaking apart on Kate’s fingers like it was nothing, and it’s been—a long time since she’s had sex, even longer since she’s eaten someone out.
“Jane,” Kate repeats. “Just—stop thinking.”
Jane leans in, slides her tongue up from Kate’s hole to her clit, loops around it. Kate gasps, loudly, tucking her face against her arm to quiet herself. Jane wants to tell her not to, that she wants to hear her, that she tastes so good and Jane can’t get enough of her already, but she stays quiet, pushes her tongue inside of her and runs her thumb in steady circles around her clit. Kate is louder than she expected, with tiny pitched-off sounds that build into something more. Jane replaces her thumb with her mouth and sinks her fingers inside of Kate, pauses when she’s three knuckles deep and the room suddenly feels so quiet she can hear Kate breathing.
“Please,” Kate whines. One leg hooks around Jane’s back and she’s bracketed on all sides by Kate, overwhelmed and caught and she doesn’t want to be anywhere else. She crooks her fingers and Kate groans, all yielding muscle and soft skin. Jane seals her mouth around her clit and sucks gently until she feels Kate clench around her fingers, her leg tight against her back, Kate’s hand twisted into the sheets.
Kate unfurls slowly, a refractory period before she can think again. Her leg slips away until she’s splayed open, her cunt eases and Jane slides her fingers out, goes lax. Jane watches her carefully, unsure why she’s categorizing every moment when it’s meant to be one night only, but as soon as Kate’s breathing evens out and she’s smiling sweetly down at her, she tips forward to get her mouth back on Kate’s cunt, lapping up the wetness slipping out of her and mouthing over her folds, Kate oversensitive and nearly mewling, until she tips over into another orgasm, shaky and drawn out.
Later, Jane debates if she should stay over, sitting on Kate’s bed in a borrowed shirt with her hair pulled back off her face. Kate is braiding hers, quick movements until her hair is wound together and the braid is being pushed behind her head.
“I should go,” Jane says, cautiously.
Kate falters but returns to neutral fast enough that Jane isn’t sure she’s imagining it. “Okay.” She tucks a misplaced section of hair behind her ear and Jane wants to kiss her again. She stands up instead and lets Kate walk her out.
“This was fun,” Kate says. “Maybe I’ll see you again.” Nearly a line but not quite. She looks hopeful, but mostly teasing, hands tucked into the pockets of her sweatpants.
“It was,” Jane smiles. “We’ll see.”
—
There’s a pre-season football game in Maui and Alex throws a fit about not being able to go, complaining on and off from the moment he walks into the kitchen for breakfast, right down to dinner. Jane nearly caves, part of her sure Daniel would say yes, but the other wary that he’d want to bring a nine-year-old on what’s technically a work trip.
Julie has no interest in football and seemed to be listening too attentively all day, quieter than she normally is. She breaks after dinner, muttering, “Football is stupid.” which sends Alex into a fit of protest.
Jane’s head hurts. The night at Kate’s seems so long ago. The morning after she woke up early when Kai called her, apologetic and sounding like he was on the verge of throwing up or had just taken a hit; a new case. A big one that took them weeks to untangle and tuck away. Details that got stuck in Jane’s head and kept her up at night, the feeling taking ages to go away even after they closed it.
Then the kids were back and they were grumpy, the last week of summer vacation before they ended up back in a classroom. Daniel was gone and Alex would look towards Jane and Julie in the stands at his baseball game and look disappointed, too aware of the third person who should’ve been sitting beside them. Jane didn’t know what to do with the hurt and anger that it brought on, not being enough or not being the right one, how stupid it all felt when she thought about it clearly. She’d rather be the one taking the brunt of Alex’s feelings than the one gone so often he wasn’t aware of them. But still, the guilt swims together with exhaustion, blunted by resentment, and she’s relieved that they’ll both be back in school soon.
Jane divides them, tells Alex to go make sure he has everything ready for practice in the morning and gets Julie to help her with the dishes. Listens to Julie ramble about volcanos while she dries plates with a towel printed with tiny pink flowers and ignores the rough sounds of Alex packing, creating a mess in his room like it’s proof of something. Gets them both in bed and fights to hide her smile when Alex crankily says love you too before she closes his door, kisses Julie’s forehead and promises she’ll see her in the morning.
Finally gets a moment to herself and calls Heather once she’s settled on the couch with a glass of wine, watching SportsCentre on mute.
“You should find that woman again,” Heather offers. “The blonde one.”
“There was only one,” Jane points out. She’d thought about it, but it felt like a closed-book situation, one night only. It would’ve been smarter to ask for her number, just in case. But texting her now, exhausted and lonely and only vaguely horny would’ve made her feel worse.
“Kate, right?” Heather ignores her. “You couldn’t stop smiling the day after.”
Jane rolls her eyes, “You didn’t see me then.”
“But I knew,” Heather says.
Heather isn’t wrong. She rarely is, but Jane can’t afford to waste time thinking about Kate when there is no chance it’s going to lead to an actual relationship. She could’ve tested the waters, seeing if Kate would’ve let her stay over, but she’s out of practice and unsure of what she wants.
“Maybe,” Jane allows.
“Or we could go out again,” Heather suggests.
“No,” Jane shakes her head. “Absolutely not.”
—
“This isn’t something we take turns on,” Jane hisses. She knows Daniel is rolling his eyes on the other end of the phone and she forces herself to take deep breaths. It annoys her that the school always calls her first, even if Daniel’s the one who is more likely to be available quicker. The secretary didn’t listen when she told them that, and the pitying looks on their face made her feel like an awful mother.
“We could go together,” Daniel offers, but she also knows that he doesn’t mean it. He’s away at a tournament and Jane trusts Jesse and Kai enough to leave them alone for an hour. Really, she feels like she has no reason to be mad, except for that she is. Alex acting out isn’t new, but it’s unsettling. The therapist said it was normal, that a divorce isn’t easy for anyone to be a part of, and Jane gets it, except that his ire seems directed at her, and not Daniel.
“No, it’s fine,” Jane says. “I’ll call you after.” She hangs up before Daniel can say anything else. She signs in at the front office and is led to Alex’s classroom. It’s the middle of the day, but it’s empty, and Jane frowns when she opens the door.
“Where’s Alex?” Jane asks.
“Oh,” the teacher says. “Gym class. I thought it’d be better if we talked alone—” She cuts herself off and Jane wants to laugh, because of course, Alex’s teacher is Kate.
“Hi Kate,” Jane says.
“Jane,” Kate says. “I—sorry, I didn’t know you were…Alex’s mom.”
“Well,” Jane shrugs. She sits across from Kate and taps her fingers against her leg. She can’t decide if this makes it better or worse. “What’d he do this time?”
“He used AI to write an essay,” Kate says.
Jane relaxes and feels bad for it. Part of her thought Alex wasn’t going to be able to control herself, that the vague message she got about his teacher wanting to talk to her was about a physical fight or bullying. Plagiarism, she can deal with.
“He wasn’t the only one,” Kate continues. “It’s—well, a problem. It happened a lot last year too.”
“And what did you do about it?” Jane asks.
“We change to handwritten essays only,” Kate sighs. “But it’s still easy for them to cheat. So, we’ll have him write a couple of essays to make-up for it, and he’ll have to show his work for each step. There’s a planning sheet and everything.”
“Okay,” Jane agrees. “At home?”
“For one of them, at least,” Kate nods. “It’s a structural problem, obviously.” She closes her eyes and Jane wonders if she’s this obvious with every parent she talks to.
“Obviously,” Jane echoes. “Anything else?”
Kate hesitates. She looks too tall for her chair, somehow, it’s almost charming, and Jane’s brain is too slow to separate the woman she spent a night with from Alex’s teacher.
“No,” Kate says, eventually. “He’s a smart kid.”
“Too smart,” Jane says, smiling wryly.
“Yeah,” Kate agrees. “Exactly.”
—
Jane can’t stop thinking about Kate.
It doesn’t reach catastrophic levels, but it’s close. Alex rewrites his essay. He asks her to edit it, bringing her a printed out copy, and sliding it across the kitchen table. He watches her read it, eyes careful, and she takes her time going through it. He joins the volleyball team.
Jane misses his first two games because of work and feels awful about it. Alex doesn’t seem to hold it against her, taking advantage of her absence to brag about how well he played after, making Julie roll her eyes over dinner.
“You weren’t that good,” Julie mutters.
“We swept them!” Alex protests. “I saw you cheering.”
“Because I’m a great sister,” Julie says.
When Jane finally gets to a game, she realizes that Kate is the coach. It makes sense—Kate seems like someone who plays volleyball, even if it’s reductive. She stands up the entire game, the sleeves of her ¾ zip up rolled up, and her hair pulled back. Jane finds herself watching Kate if she isn’t watching Alex. The team is good, aggressive, and quick to react, and it’s over quicker than Jane was expecting. Alex is old enough now that watching sports can be fun, grown out of the age where it’s adorable to watch them stumble around a court or a field, and past the in-between stage where nobody is good, but they can stay on two feet.
Alex hugs her afterwards, gross and sweaty and delighted. She holds him for as long as she’ll let him. He pulls away, still smiling, and pushes his hand through his hair.
“We’re going out for dinner,” Alex says. “If that’s okay?”
“Sure, honey,” Jane agrees. He rolls his eyes when she reminds him of his curfew but promises he’ll be back in time, even though she knows he’s going to Daniel’s. She watches him go join the rest of his team and sighs. Julie is with Daniel at a gymnastics practice and Jane suddenly has nothing to do.
“Good game, hey?” Kate asks.
Jane startles, “Shit.”
“Sorry,” Kate laughs, her hand on Jane’s arm. “I thought you saw me.”
“It was a good game,” Jane shakes her head. “You played?”
“At college, yeah,” Kate nods. “Did you ever?”
“I don’t think I’m tall enough.”
Kate laughs, even if it isn’t really funny, and Jane swallows. “Do you have plans?”
“Me?” Kate clarifies.
“Yes,” Jane says. “It’s not—obviously, you can say no, but I thought—”
“I don’t,” Kate says, slowly. “But to confirm, you’re asking me out?”
“Well,” Jane frowns. “Yes?”
“You sure?” Kate grins.
“Not anymore,” Jane huffs.
“Come on,” Kate says, sliding her hand down Jane’s arm until they’re holding hands. “I know a place.”