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The sky is pink and purple, orange streaking through the sunset like an open wound. Tendrils of Carol’s short hair blow against her shoulders, the cool summer breeze raising momentary goosebumps before the dry desert heat settles back over her skin.
Helen stands ahead under the Putt-Putt Golf & Games sign, handing over her credit card into the booth. Chatter and laughter spills over the hedge separating them from the miniature golf course, fluorescent lights starting to spread their harsh glow over the groups dotting the area.
There’s a girl with oversized plaid sleeves pushed up around her wrists and a teenage boy trailing behind, one arm draped around her waist; two young kids posing in front of one of the animal figures spread amongst the course, their tiny clubs held high in the air as their father snaps a photo on bended knee; an older couple with their hands clasped together standing on the sidewalk a few feet back from the green, waiting their turn.
She hears Helen thank the man in the booth and turns to see her holding two clubs in one hand, two golf balls in the other. Orange and purple. She holds out the club with a purple handle to Carol and grins, orange handle twisting up into her own grip.
“Let’s golf.”
“This is barely golf,” Carol grumbles, thumb running over the grooves of her purple ball as they walk down the path towards the course.
Helen gestures for Carol to step up to the turf at the first hole and Carol sets her ball down, widening her stance and gripping the putter in both hands. She looks back at Helen, intending to demonstrate proper position, and finds her eyes trailing down Carol’s backside.
Carol snorts. “Do you wanna look at my ass, or learn how to golf?”
Helen’s gaze snaps back to Carol’s face, caught.
“Is both an option?”
Carol raises her eyebrows and turns back to the ball.
She talks through stance and grip, looking over her shoulder to make sure Helen is paying attention, and demonstrates a short practice swing before lining up her club. Pulling it back ever so slightly, she sends her ball flying down the green and straight into the hole.
Helen whistles from behind her.
“Damn. Impressive,” she says, and Carol steps back to let her approach.
Helen mimics Carol’s stance. Gripping the handle, she pulls it backwards and nearly smacks Carol in the chest with the clubhead.
“Easy!” Carol says, throwing out a hand. Her fingers tighten around the cool metal, and she pushes it down towards the ground. “You’re not trying to send it into the damn parking lot.”
Helen’s lips curl up in amusement. “Then come over here and show me, hotshot.”
She brackets Helen’s hips with her own, scooching their legs together ever so slightly. Carol’s cheek comes to rest against Helen’s shoulder, and she inhales the now-familiar scent of cigarettes mixed with Helen’s sweet, earthy perfume. Her pinkies curl under Helen’s wrists.
It’s only been a little over a month, but already the warmth of Helen pressed against her chest is an anchor, any tension in Carol’s limbs unspooling over the steady thrum of her pulse.
Carol guides their hands back then quickly forward. The ball stops just short of a hole-in-one.
“Damn!” Helen says again, disappointed this time. “I used to be really good at this.”
“Golf?” Carol asks, watching Helen stalk towards her bright orange ball. “Or this?”
Helen ignores the sarcasm in her tone.
“I went with my cousins every summer on Cape Cod,” she says. “My mom’s sister had a place there, and we would play mini golf three, maybe four times over the course of a week.” Her tongue peeks out from between her teeth as she nudges the ball into the hole. “Although looking back, I realize our parents probably just loved getting to spend nights drinking beer and watching us from afar.”
“They had the right idea,” Carol says. She looks towards the clubhouse, but Helen shakes her head.
“Nuh-uh.” She bends down to scoop up their balls. “We haven’t even gotten to the second hole yet.”
Helen only seems to hear the words after they’ve left her mouth, and Carol is tickled to see a rare blush spread across her cheeks.
“Alright,” Helen says to the grin on Carol’s face. “Come on.”
The next course has a small slope, and Carol tilts her head as she considers the best shot.
“How’d you get so good at golf, anyway?”
Helen holds out her hand that’s cradling the golf balls, and Carol hesitates before reaching for hers.
“To be clear, this isn’t even golf,” she says, knowing without turning around that Helen is rolling her eyes.
“Your point has been made, Tiger Woods.”
Carol shifts her weight, leaning backwards slightly before tapping the ball forward. It sails down the hill and circles the rim of the hole before landing inside.
“What?!” Helen says in disbelief, arms hanging by her sides. “No seriously, where did you learn how to do this?”
“My dad used to take me,” she says, her gaze straight ahead. If Helen realizes this is the first time Carol has mentioned her family, she doesn’t react, stepping forward to nudge Carol out of the way. She watches Helen’s back muscles shift under her thin grey t-shirt.
“Ah, father-daughter bonding time,” Helen says, and her ball sails forward and out of the bounds of the green, landing in the shrubbery that surrounds the course.
She curses under her breath, hustling over to root around next to a painted zebra.
“How old were you?”
“When?” Carol asks. Helen jogs back to set up her shot, looking over her shoulder like Carol is being deliberately obtuse.
“When your dad took you to play golf,” she clarifies. Carol watches Helen’s fingers grip the padded handle of the putter.
“Oh.” Carol pauses, considering. “I think I was eleven the first time we went to the driving range.”
Helen’s shot ricochets off the bricks but stays on the green. She pumps her fist and runs after it, and Carol follows.
“I used to spend summers with him and my stepmom,” she finds herself offering, even as she instinctually wants to tug the story back down her throat. “He loved to golf, and I was desperate to spend time with him, so.” Carol shrugs.
Helen looks up before sending her ball flying past the hole.
“Every summer,” she murmurs, like she’s filing it away, finally sinking her shot.
“Every summer until I was sixteen,” Carol clarifies.
They stand off to the side while the group in front of them finishes the next hole. The lamppost above glows fluorescent over Helen’s face, and Carol stares at the light pooling in the space below her bottom lip.
“Why sixteen?” Helen asks, snapping Carol’s attention back up. “Too old for it?”
Carol laughs bitterly and looks down, scuffing the toe of her sneaker against the concrete. “I went to camp that summer instead.”
Helen tilts her head in confusion.
“Were you a Girl Scout?”
“No,” Carol says. “I was gay.”
Helen laughs. “I haven’t found the two to be mutually exclusive,” she says, but her expression pinches when Carol doesn’t react.
The group in front of them cheers, and Helen’s head turns to watch them move on.
Carol steps up. This course has a bend, the hole waiting around the corner to the left. She sets down her ball slightly off-center and watches it ricochet off the far corner, rolling in the right direction. It stops just short of the hole.
“My mom was the one who sent me to camp,” she says, not looking at Helen. A firefly blinks to life in the dusk settling around them. “To fix that.”
A chorus of groans breaks out somewhere across the course, and Carol feels Helen come up behind her, a warm palm settling on her lower back. She instinctively jerks away.
“Carol.” Helen says her name softly, and the blood rushes to Carol’s cheeks. She gestures for Helen to take her place, not meeting her gaze.
Out of the corner of her eye, Helen hesitates, but she eventually steps forward and mimics Carol’s motions. She sets up her ball just left of center, sends it sailing forward, and watches it knock into the bricks before rounding the corner.
The orange blur hits Carol’s ball and knocks it squarely into the hole, then drops in right after it. Neither of them react until Helen turns around to face her.
“Hole in one,” Carol says, lifting her lips into what she knows is a weak smile.
“Told you I was good,” Helen lobbies back. But Carol can hear the hesitation in her tone now, more kind than teasing, and she turns to walk up the path.
The group ahead is still clustered around the course, two people deep in conversation next to the giraffe frozen mid-stride above the hole. Carol stands in the shadow of a rhino lumbering through the greenery. She feels Helen sidle up beside her.
“What’s with the zoo animals?”
Carol shakes her head. “Like I’ve been saying: not real golf.”
Helen doesn’t scold her this time, her free hand meandering under the hem of Carol’s loose flannel. Fingers flutter just above the waistband of her jeans, and Helen’s thumb brushes smooth circles over Carol’s hip as they watch the players ahead.
Someone balances on the bricks surrounding the green, throwing their arms out like a tightrope act. Laughter erupts from the group, and Carol feels Helen’s hand tighten on her waist.
“Good thing no one else is waiting their turn,” she grumbles, and Carol feels herself smile, amused at how quickly Helen’s impenetrable patience has worn thin.
The evening breeze gathers up the hem of her shirt, brushing it against Helen’s knuckles. She hears Helen open and then close her mouth.
“We can go, if you want,” she finally says softly. Carol turns to find Helen’s blue eyes tenderly peering around Carol’s face and she blinks, not able to look directly at Helen’s concern.
“No.” She pulls away. “I need to finish kicking your ass.”
Carol marches ahead and taps someone on the shoulder, asking in a saccharine-sweet tone if they might be done before turning to wave Helen forward.
They play through the next fifteen holes, and Carol sinks shot after shot. There’s something inscrutable in Helen’s face when Carol teases her about not being able to keep her ball in bounds, and she has to squint down at her shoes to distract herself from the warmth blooming in her chest.
The final hole has a windmill in the middle of the course, paint-flaking arms slowly rotating around the axis.
“Oh, I’m good at this one!” Helen exclaims as they step up to the green.
Carol imagines a young brunette in tiny blue overalls, her club thrust maniacally into the air—and as if on cue, Helen sends her ball flying right into one of the arms of the windmill. It flies out and around the corner of the structure with a thwack.
“Shit.” She stalks off, tossing a warning look back over her shoulder at Carol: “Don’t.”
Carol follows her, the chatter of the course closing off when she rounds the corner. Helen is already bent over at the waist, one arm rooting around in the greenery below, and Carol’s lips press into a smirk.
“Fancy finding Helen Umstead knee deep in bush.”
Helen shoots straight up, her head knocking into a low-hanging tree branch. But she’s laughing when she turns to Carol, wonder twinkling in her eyes.
“Unbelievable,” Helen says, backing her into the side of the windmill. Her fingers curl into Carol’s belt loops, ball forgotten as she crushes their lips together.
The arms of the windmill groan, swallowing the sound Carol makes when Helen pulls her hips forward, back pressed tightly against the rough wooden shingles. Her mouth falls open under Helen’s, knees weak, and she feels a thigh instinctively slot between her legs.
They both shiver when the wind blows cool in the shadow of the structure, and Carol blinks. Fireflies flicker in her vision.
Helen smiles against her lips, and it feels like salve over an old wound.
“Wanna go home?” Helen pulls back, her voice low. Carol’s heart tugs at the way the word sounds in Helen’s mouth, the way it so easily rolls off her tongue. No one has made home sound like that since Carol was sixteen.
“What about your ball?” She asks breathlessly. Helen waves her hand behind her at the dark tangle of underbrush.
“Whatever,” she says, tugging Carol back onto the path. Their shadows appear stark in the fluorescent lighting, Carol’s fingers tangled in the silhouette of Helen’s grip. “Someone told me this isn’t real golf, anyway.”
Carol blows her nose into a tissue, dropping it into the pocket of her bathrobe as she shuffles out of the bedroom. She can hear Helen’s voice from down the hall, the polite, professional lilt raising her naturally low register an octave.
Her head turns mid-sentence when Carol pads into the room, and she gives Carol a thumbs up from her perch at the kitchen island. Carol would scowl if the slightest movement of her face didn’t make her sinuses feel worse, and she settles for narrowing sleep-crusted eyes in Helen’s direction.
Carol opens the door to Helen’s fridge—their fridge, she keeps correcting herself—and stares at the shelves, scanning each row. She ate the last of the jello last night, and she idly wonders if she’d be able to rope Helen into running to the store for more.
“Okay,” Helen says behind her. “That sounds good to me.” A pause. “I can do Wednesday morning, yeah.”
Carol shifts her weight to one side, leaning on the refrigerator door as she stares into space. She knows if the fridge was any newer, like the stainless steel giant she cleans out every Friday at her temp job, it would beep at her, prompting: What do you want to eat, Carol? How is chapter 23 going to end, Carol? Just make up your mind, Carol.
She shuts the door on the thought, mentally trapping all of her unfinished work inside with the half-empty carton of milk.
Helen hangs up the phone, and Carol turns to see her jotting down notes on a legal pad. Her eyes glance up when Carol shuffles across the linoleum. “How’s the patient?”
Carol sidles up behind Helen, wrapping her arms around her neck in response. Her weight instinctively drops onto Helen’s shoulders and Carol buries her face into her neck, taking a deep breath in. Air wheezes through her clogged nose.
“Carol.” Helen wriggles underneath her. “Baby, gross. You’re gonna get me sick.”
“We already share the same germs,” Carol mumbles into her skin and Helen squirms, easing herself into a standing position.
“Seriously,” she says. “I have those meetings in Chicago next week, I cannot come down with whatever you have.” But she comes closer, peering into Carol’s face and bringing the back of her hand up to Carol’s forehead.
Helen’s touch is cool against her skin, and Carol's eyes slip closed. “I feel kinda hot.”
“You look hot,” Helen murmurs, and Carol opens her eyes to find amusement flitting across her features. She smooths down hair that must have been sticking up at the back of Carol’s head and Carol cranes her neck, following Helen’s touch.
“Hmm,” Helen murmurs. Her palm slides under Carol’s chin, cradling it in her hand. “You want some soup?”
Carol sniffles. “You’d make me soup?”
“I’ve got to be on another conference call in...” Helen pauses, flicking her wrist up to check the time. “Fifteen minutes.” Crossing to open the pantry, she pulls out a can of chicken noodle, holding it up for Carol. “But I’d heat up some soup.”
Carol nods, wincing as it turns into a cough. She pulls the tissue out of her pocket to blow her nose again, and Helen grimaces.
“Go in there.” Helen turns towards the stove, and the back of her head gestures towards the arched doorframe to their left. “I’ll bring it to you.”
Carol hobbles into the living room, grabbing the remote from the coffee table. The TV clicks on, snippets of daytime soaps and news programs flashing by as she flicks through channels. She drops the remote when she lands on a Golden Girls rerun, snuggling into the throw pillows.
The laugh track underscores the sound of Helen puttering around the kitchen: cabinet doors being opened and closed, the saucepan being placed on the stove, the soft grind of the can opener. Carol’s eyes slide closed.
When they flutter open again, the TV is on mute, and she can hear Helen’s voice in the next room.
“If we’re working towards a fall release—” Helen says, then pauses. “Yes, likely October.”
Sophia gesticulates on screen, her lips moving without any sound as she argues with someone. Dorothy looms behind like she’s ready to jump in at any moment, concern painted across her face as she watches the two women go back and forth.
Carol pulls herself up to sit, groaning at the dull ache in her muscles.
Helen glances over when she appears in the kitchen, nodding towards the stove where the pot of soup sits, steam seeping out from the edges of the lid. She places one hand over the phone receiver and mouths: “Didn’t want to wake you.”
Carol opens the cabinet door. She had gotten rid of her cheap dish sets from Walmart when she moved into Helen’s place in favor of the colorful, mismatched assortment that they had collected from the market in Santa Fe, and she considers the sloping, stacked piles of ceramics.
Instead of reaching for one of the bowls, she pushes up on the tips of her toes to snag the only handle of a mug she can reach on the top shelf. (They keep talking about how they need to reorganize; everything is placed within arm’s reach for Helen’s height.) There’s a map of Maine stamped on the side, with a lighthouse growing from the eastern part of the state. A disproportionately-sized lobster crawls out of the water, and moose watch serenely over the whole scene.
She gingerly lifts the lid of the pot with the sleeve of her robe and picks up the ladle with her other hand, spooning noodles into the mug with a plop. Steam billows out over the stove and Carol sighs as the moisture seeps into her pores, her nose momentarily clearing as warmth diffuses over her face.
She blows on the soup as she makes her way back to the couch, taking a slow sip from the mug. It doesn’t have any flavor—she surrendered her taste buds to this cold days ago—but the broth soothes her throat, warming her from the inside out.
“How is it?”
Carol looks over to see Helen leaning on the doorframe. Taking another sip, she lifts the mug into the air, holding the handle aloft and tilting her head in Helen’s direction. She transmits a silent thanks as she swallows.
Helen smiles softly, pushing herself to stand upright. “Good. Let me know if you want more.”
Fondness spreads out from behind her ribs. Despite the stalled progress that’s been eating at her since Helen insisted she stop writing those query letters, you’re never going to convince someone to publish your novel in this state; Carol is reminded of the way getting sick used to feel when she was a kid. The unconscious, unwavering belief that she’d be cared for.
She takes one more sip before placing the mug on the table, swapping it for the remote.
The screen blares to life with all of the girls sitting in their living room. Carol closes her eyes again as she settles into the couch.
“That was rhetorical, Rose,” she hears Dorothy say. “But what a comforting thought, knowing you'll never be alone.”
Carol swirls the bourbon around her full glass, watching the amber liquid nearly slosh over the sides. She hears the tap flick on in the kitchen, silverware clattering against the basin of the sink, and she winces.
She and Helen had fought the night before—the details are fuzzy, but she remembers being yelled at, she remembers yelling, remembers the look on Helen’s face as she turned away from her.
When she woke that morning, Helen was already up. Carol had come downstairs to find her kneeling over the garden in the backyard, pulling weeds under the hot morning sun, where she remained for the bulk of the day. The most they had spoken was when Helen’s shadow had darkened the doorway of Carol’s office: “Dinner’s ready.”
Carol has found that Helen has a disposition that can withstand almost anything—and has, over the years—but when Carol manages to slide a knife between those rare cracks in her armor, Helen closes off. She’s told Carol before that she’s not mad, but sometimes she’ll need to be alone in her own head before she can continue the conversation.
Carol understands this intellectually.
In practice, however, she can’t help feeling like she’s being given the silent treatment. It’s a casualty of the eerie quiet that would settle over her house when she brought home a bad grade from school, spilled food on the sweater she had borrowed from her cousin, got caught under the gym bleachers with a senior cheerleader.
Helen is not my mother, she tells herself; yet remains aware of every sound that echoes down the halls until Helen inevitably enters the room with a soft smile, her hand brushing over Carol’s shoulders, tension she’d been holding there melting away at Helen’s touch.
It probably doesn’t help that she can barely remember the argument this time, Carol thinks as she takes a sip from the glass. She grimaces at the irony as she lets the liquor burn down her throat.
There’s another crash over the running water and Carol puts her glass down on a coaster, peers around the back of the sofa.
She can see Helen’s face in the reflection of the window behind the sink. Her eyes are turned down to the pan she’s scrubbing, her mouth set in a line against the purple-dark dusk settling over their backyard. She tentatively takes a step into the kitchen, then another, until she’s pressed into Helen’s back, arms encircling her waist.
The sink is lathered up like their dishware was in need of a bubble bath. Carol presses her face into Helen’s shoulder and feels her tense, the pan dropping with a clang.
Soapy hands turn off the water and pry Carol’s fingers apart, and Helen twists her body in Carol’s arms. Suds drip onto the floor from the tips of her fingers, and she tilts her head to one side just as their patio lights turn on with a timer. Warm light emanates from behind Helen like a halo, and Carol might have laughed if it wasn’t so on the nose.
She steps back, and feels the absence.
“I’m not trying to punish you, Carol,” Helen says. The sound of her voice makes Carol want to cry. She juts her chin forward instead, crossing her arms as she leans back against the kitchen island.
“Yeah, well.” She scowls. “You’re doing a piss-poor job, then.”
Carol’s voice betrays itself by cracking on the last word, and she bites her lip.
Tenderness creeps into Helen’s expression, and any fight Carol had in her evaporates like the air leaving a balloon. They stare at each other for a moment, then she blurts out: “I’m sorry.”
Helen doesn’t ask her what the apology is for, and Carol herself isn’t sure: for their fight, for pushing her before she was ready, for snapping at her when she tried to let Carol down gently.
“Are you drinking?” Helen asks. Carol considers lying for only a moment before she remembers that the proof is sitting on their coffee table, sweating onto the coasters that Helen’s parents bought them as a housewarming gift.
“I was,” Carol says carefully. Helen nods and turns back to the sink. She flips the tap back on, and Carol’s chest tightens. Fucked it up again.
“Meet me outside?”
She almost misses it over the rush of running water, but when Carol’s eyes flick to the reflection over the sink, Helen is looking back at her. She inclines her head at the illuminated patio beyond the glass.
The cool evening air immediately raises goosebumps on Carol’s bare arms, and she shivers as she settles into one of the chairs around the fire pit. She considers gathering some kindling before realizing she hasn’t started a fire once since they moved in, and the thought of barging back into the kitchen to ask Helen to light it for her suddenly strikes her as hysterical. A laugh bubbles its way out of her chest, catching at the back of her throat.
Helen comes out the back door with a sweater draped over her shoulders, holding a glass in each hand. In her left, a wine glass with a generous pour of red; in her right, a glass of water. She holds out the water to Carol, who resists the urge to protest—she’s not even drunk—and accepts, holding the glass against her sternum. Goosebumps flare over her shoulders.
Helen settles into the chair across from Carol, pulling the dark green cardigan across her body. The fire pit sits empty between them, a gaping maw of burnt wood and ash, and Carol turns the metaphor over in her mind, files it away for the duneship captain and her corsair.
Her eyes drift up to Helen and Carol watches her take a sip of wine, feeling the phantom warmth slide down her own throat. She brings her glass of water to her lips.
“So,” Helen starts, her expression open across the hearth. “Wanna talk?”
The front door closes behind them, and Helen gasps as Carol shoves her against the wall. The keys in her hand drop to the floor, and Carol kicks them away as she steps closer, pressing in against her back.
Helen huffs out a laugh, attempting to turn her head, but Carol just hums into her ear, planting her heels on the tile. She feels Helen’s shoulder muscles flex against her chest.
Tonight had been the New Mexico Book Awards—which Carol had lost, again, going three for three with the Wycaro trilogy. She hadn’t even wanted to attend this year, but Helen had cajoled her into it, getting Val to agree to cover grooming and occasionally leaning over to show Carol a photo of a runway model in tailored suit on her phone, always with an offhand: “You’d look hot in this.”
She ended up not only agreeing to go, but she bought a new dress, some sparkling gold slip with chain mail straps that she had let the personal shopper working at Dillard’s pick out for her. He had gasped when she walked out of the changing room, hands flying over the mouth of his reflection. She had shifted uncomfortably in front of the mirror before gesturing for him to help with the zipper, and he stepped forward reverently, fastening the clasp at the top.
“She’s going to love it,” he had said to her quietly before stepping back.
So Carol bought the gaudy dress. And a pair of shoes.
Not that it had mattered, since she lost to some twenty-five year old with cartoon illustrations on her book cover. The nominees in her category were all seated at the same table in the back of the dimly-lit ballroom (“Who does that?!” Carol had hissed upon arrival), and she had spent the better part of the seated dinner listening to them blather on about BookTok, shoving bites of underseasoned fish through her plastered-on smile.
By the time the awards ceremony began and her category was announced, Carol was on edge, to say the least. Her leg was bouncing under the table, and Helen had glanced down before scooching her chair closer, sliding a hand under the draped tablecloth. She came to rest on Carol’s knee, fingertips pressed over the fabric of her dress, and Carol felt herself relax.
The presenter took his time expounding on the merits of each nominee, and the pressure of Helen’s hand briefly disappeared before Carol felt it dipping under the hem of her dress.
Helen’s palm dragged up, electricity sparking against Carol’s bare thigh, and she turned her head sharply. Helen’s eyes were on the presenter. The only indication that she had noticed Carol’s attention was a slight inclination of her head, a shift of weight as she crossed her legs and leaned closer. Her fingernails scratched lightly at Carol’s skin.
The moment arrived: The presenter opened the envelope, pumped their fist in the air, and announced someone else’s name.
Everyone applauded, and Helen’s fingernails dug into the top of Carol’s thigh before giving it a squeeze. Carol remembered to clap.
Her cheeks had turned pink, irritation at both the New Mexico Book Awards committee and Helen—whose hand disappeared during the acceptance speech, leaving Carol unsatisfied in more ways than one. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as the winning author had thanked their fellow nominees, lingering on Carol’s impact on their writing. She forced herself to smile as the tingling ache between her thighs settled into righteous indignation.
Now she has Helen pinned against the cool stucco in their foyer, hands splayed out on either side of their bodies. Carol spreads her left palm overtop Helen’s, curling her fingers between her knuckles.
Her other hand snakes around Helen’s side, roughly cupping her breast through her dress. Helen’s head tries to turn again, her breathing coming rough, but Carol pushes in closer, leaving just enough space for her hand to slide across Helen’s torso. Carol’s fingers ghost featherlight over her belly, her other hand squeezing Helen’s where it’s pinned to the wall.
Helen grunts, pushing her ass back into Carol, and Carol grins. She retracts her roaming fingers to undo the clasp of Helen’s halter dress and watches the chiffon fall to her waist, pulling back just enough to watch goosebumps break out over her freckled skin. She kisses a cluster at the top of Helen’s shoulder, her teeth scraping at the patterns there.
“Carol.” Her name trembles out of Helen’s mouth on a shaky breath, and Carol’s hand curls its way around to her breast again, tweaking a nipple. Helen’s head lolls back, and Carol lets her open mouth trail wetly over to the juncture of her neck, nipping at the skin.
Helen’s hand flexes under Carol’s against the wall.
Carol’s fingers drop lower again, plucking at the top of Helen’s dress where it hangs down towards the floor. Dipping inside the fabric, two of her fingertips brush the waistband of Helen’s underwear, and she shivers.
“Can you...” Helen trails off, her cheek pressed into the wall, eyes squeezed shut.
Carol isn’t good at this part, the resisting. Helen can tease her until she’s near tears, pushing her to the very brink before giving her exactly what she wants. But Carol is the impatient one, too eager to watch Helen’s composure crumble, starving for the sounds she makes when Carol touches her just there.
When she dips her hand lower, her knuckles straining against the fabric of Helen’s underwear, she hears Helen hiss.
Carol laughs softly. “I haven’t even touched you yet.”
“Cold,” Helen says, her voice close to a whine, and Carol’s smile widens. She’s sure Helen can feel it against her skin and as if on cue, Helen shimmies impatiently, hips twisting for more.
Carol gives in. Her fingers drag through Helen’s wetness easily, insistently; and Carol’s body presses in further as she touches her. They both stumble, Helen nearly writhing out of her grip, and Carol’s heels clack against the tile floor as she fights for leverage.
Carol works her with her fingers, dipping inside, and Helen’s free hand smacks against the wall. “Fuck.”
Her legs begin to shake, and Carol finally disentangles their fingers to encircle Helen’s waist, holding her up as she fucks her against the wall. The sounds Helen is making vibrate through Carol’s chest, guttural noises trapped at the back of her throat as she strains in Carol’s arms. She recognizes the signs and tightens her grip, curling her fingers just so.
And Helen keens, her whole body spasming.
Carol works her through her orgasm until Helen’s hips twitch, her body limply pitching forward to trap Carol’s hand. She feels Helen take a deep breath as Carol presses her lips to the base of her skull, her hands grasping uselessly at Carol’s arm, fighting to pull it out of her underwear.
“Okay,” Helen says breathlessly, and Carol backs up, unsteady on her feet. She toes her heels off as Helen turns around, and Carol takes her in: out of breath, dress askew, sleek ponytail mussed at her temple. A few strands of hair fall over her ears. One of her cheeks is red, and Carol winces—but Helen doesn’t seem to notice, reaching both hands out to grab Carol’s face between her palms.
She presses a kiss to Carol’s mouth and Carol melts into her, butter in a hot pan.
“What the fuck.” Helen laughs when they separate, her forehead resting against Carol’s hairline. Carol’s hands drift up to Helen’s elbows as they breathe together, thumbs rubbing circles on her skin.
“I need some water,” she says after a moment, pressing a kiss to Carol’s temple. Bending down, she rids herself of her own heels, and Carol watches her toss them haphazardly towards the stairs before staggering into the kitchen.
Helen fills up a cup from the tap, the top half of her dress still hanging open around her waist. Carol’s eyes track up from her breasts to the line of her throat, watching her muscles contract as she swallows. When her gaze finally flicks up to Helen’s face, she finds her eyes watching hungrily over the rim of the glass. Heat coils low in Carol’s belly.
She makes a satisfied sound as she steps forward to place the empty glass on the island between them, then raises an eyebrow at Carol. And in that moment, Carol is confident that she would suffer through a dozen intolerable award ceremonies just for the pleasure of watching Helen drink a glass of water in their kitchen.
Carol rounds the island, pressing up on her tiptoes for a kiss. Their teeth clash as they both try to crush themselves closer, and Helen’s laugh buzzes through her, tripping into Carol’s open mouth.
Helen presses her backwards, the wooden edge of the island pinning Carol against her body. Carol’s leg comes up in an attempt to wrap around her, needing more, a whimper already bubbling up from her chest. Helen smiles against her lips, nipples pressing insistently into Carol’s chest as she bends her backwards.
Carol pushes back at her waist.
“Bedroom,” she pants, and Helen’s gaze flits towards the front door. Carol can see the retort about how she can dish it out but can’t take it forming on Helen’s lips, and she tugs her down the hall before she can protest.
The journey is a blur: Helen crowding at Carol’s back, pulling down the zipper of her dress, murmuring in Carol’s ear about how good she looked tonight. The feeling drops straight between her legs.
They both pause in the doorway, helping the other shimmy out of their formalwear. Helen’s normally bright eyes are dark when she plucks Carol’s earrings out of her ears, her pupils blown wide as she leans down to capture Carol’s lips.
She backs them up into the mattress and Carol sprawls down onto the bed, her legs falling open. Helen’s eyes flick between Carol’s face and flushed chest, crawling up over her body to plant kisses on her nose, her chin, her jaw.
Carol attempts to chase her for a kiss, but Helen’s lips open against her neck, tongue drawing patterns, sucking at the spot that sends sparks licking up the base of Carol’s spine. A gravelly hum works its out way of her throat, and her fingers tangle in Helen’s hair.
Lower still, her mouth against Carol’s stomach, Helen snaps the waistband of Carol’s underwear. She flinches.
She feels Helen’s smile curve up as it slides down to the inside of her thigh, her breath hot over the lace of her underwear. She mouths over the fabric and Carol gasps, hips jerking up of their own accord.
“Get… these,” Carol huffs, shoving at her hips. “Take these off me.”
But Helen just laces her fingers through Carol’s and lowers her head again, her tongue pressing into a sharp point. Carol’s back arches off the bed and she cries out, squeezing Helen’s hands. Her thighs quiver against their joined thumbs.
Helen gently squeezes back, soothing, before she opens her mouth and flattens her tongue in a way that makes Carol’s eyes roll back in her head.
She’s panting, cursing, her head nearly hanging off the side of the mattress when Helen finally slips her thumbs into Carol’s underwear, pulling them down her legs. Her hands slide under Carol’s hips, fingertips kneading against her ass.
When her tongue finally connects with Carol’s bare skin, there’s a jolt through her hips, pleasure shuddering and snapping like a whip. Carol gasps, her toes curling into the sheets, jaw open as her whole body rolls to the side.
She feels Helen pull her head free from between her clenched knees, sees a flash of messy hair around her confused expression before Carol buries her face in her hands.
“Carol?” Helen’s tone is amused. “I haven’t even touched you yet,” she taunts, mimicking her voice from before.
Carol glares from between her fingers.
Helen’s warm palms spread Carol’s legs back open against the mattress, her index finger drawing patterns on her hip. Her hands flit up and around, fingernails scratching just below Carol’s belly button.
“Ngh.” Carol makes an incomprehensible sound as Helen moves lower, her hips stuttering against the overwhelming feeling. “Don’t...” she trails off. “Don’t stop.”
The sensation builds fast. Helen replaces her fingers with her mouth, her thumbs grazing the searing skin of Carol’s thighs and her eyes pinch closed, all of her brain power focused on grinding into Helen’s chin.
“Marry me,” she gasps as Helen’s tongue slips lower.
The pressure disappears completely, and she opens her eyes in confusion to see Helen hovering between her legs, wet lips hanging open.
“What?”
Carol’s fingers grasp at Helen’s hair, an attempt to push her back down.
“Please,” she whines, flustered.
“No, wait.” Helen swats her away and moves her hand and to the crease of Carol’s thigh, thumb gently pressing into the sensitive skin there. “Are you proposing to me?”
But Carol is distracted by the ache between her legs, the pressure with no release valve. “I don’t…” she starts, her eyes glazing over. “I want...”
Helen’s gaze gentles, thumb pressing harder. “Use your words, baby.”
Carol’s chest tightens, and she blurts out: “I want you to keep doing that forever.”
Helen hums in response, rubbing circles inches away from where Carol needs.
“Are you sure we’re not rushing into things?” Carol can hear the teasing in her voice, and the ache in her gut expands, tries to fight its way out of her ribcage. “It’s only been fifteen years.”
“Helen.” Carol thinks the next thing out of her mouth might be a sob, and she would be embarrassed if she hadn’t just somewhat-accidentally proposed marriage to her live-in partner while she was going down on her. After she made Carol nearly come in her underwear like a teenage boy.
Jesus Christ.
As if she can hear Carol’s thoughts, Helen takes pity on her and picks up where she left off.
Carol sighs, her eyes slipping closed, letting Helen work her up until she’s gasping again. Her legs grip around Helen’s neck, thighs squeezing even tighter when Helen dips two fingers inside. Carol’s body curls up, up, up; hands scrambling for purchase on Helen’s shoulders.
Helen’s body contorts out of Carol’s grip, her lips wrapping around slick skin, sucking hard, and the evening’s tension finally rips out of the back of Carol’s throat with a scream.
When she comes back to herself, Helen is draped around her body, pressing kisses to the knobs of her spine. She turns to pull her up and Helen is already there, rising to meet her over Carol’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry I made you go tonight,” Helen whispers. “You deserved to win.”
Carol laughs shakily, rolling over to bury her face in Helen’s shoulder.
“I don’t give a shit,” she mumbles.
And with one of Helen’s legs draped over hers, her fingers beginning to card through Carol’s tangled hair, she’s almost surprised to find that she means it.
Moonlight throws shadows through the bay window as Carol gingerly tiptoes through the dark bedroom, so focused on Helen’s sleeping figure that she doesn’t notice the suitcases laid out on the floor. She trips right over a wheel, clapping a palm over her mouth as she yelps.
Helen stirs under the covers.
She freezes, but her wife only mumbles in her sleep and rolls over towards her nightstand.
Carol exhales, releasing the spike of adrenaline. Wincing at the pulsing in her big toe, she squints down at the floor, limping around the shapes of their suitcases to her side of the bed.
The stealthiness is a habit more than anything else at this point, like the motion of washing her used rocks glass and placing it back on the shelf before creeping up the stairs. But tonight she’s sober, her mind racing—Helen had said goodnight hours ago as Carol was thumbing through the first act of Twelfth Night as research for the fifth Wycaro, and she had promised her she’d be up shortly.
Before she knew it, she had re-read the entire play in one sitting. The house was dark around her when she finally looked up, her desk lamp a spotlight on Carol’s hands around the paperback. Ideas were practically spooling out of her ears, so much that she had rumbled the doors of her whiteboard open, notes flying across the empty canvas.
They leave for the Bloodsong tour the next morning, and Carol knows she needs to force herself into a headspace where Raban is alive and well, rather than the one where his character as readers know it is being murdered (again) in Carol’s mind.
She stretches her limbs before turning to curl her body around Helen’s, slotting into a familiar position at her back. Reaching an arm over her waist, Carol’s fingers collapse around her left hand, and she feels Helen’s pulse jump in her sleep.
The cool sting of metal brushes Carol’s pinky, and she runs her palm over the grooves of the silver band on Helen’s ring finger.
Carol has one too, the plain gold loop sitting in a tiny dish next to her toothbrush. She’s prickly about any jewelry, but Helen almost never takes hers off, and tracing her finger around the band has become a grounding ritual for Carol over the last few years. Tangible proof that she hasn’t fucked up everything yet.
They got them before the last tour, after a trip to the Bernalillo County Courthouse, where their witness was a veritable stranger and even that didn’t stop Carol from being on the verge of tears.
(Helen teased a sob out of her throat later that night, and when Carol cried out, she thought about her wife’s soft eyes as she had said I do.)
They never had a conversation about what to do with the rings when they left for tour, although Carol had instinctively left hers behind. And in the pitch-black darkness of a Hyatt Regency in Phoenix, she had reached for Helen’s hand and found her ring finger empty, too.
That idle, vacant feeling had followed her through the doors of every Barnes and Noble, every purple sharpie Helen had handed her across the table. It wasn’t until they landed back in Albuquerque that Carol felt like she could release the breath she had been holding for weeks, a jailbreak from the prison of her own making.
She forces herself to not think about purple lapel pins and fan-made art, eager eyes wanting something Carol can’t give them. Her thumb slides around the bottom of Helen’s ring, and she drifts to thoughts of new ideas scribbled across her whiteboard, her wife humming to herself in their kitchen, sunset over the Sandias.
When she finally sleeps, Carol dreams of Mandovian spice fruit and a pirate with long, dark hair; slender fingers outstretched, beckoning her home.