A Stringed Instrument Ch. 13

"That may be the most adorable thing I've ever heard." I hugged her impulsively, and she stopped and hugged me back, leaving her suitcase to fend for itself. Then I kissed her on the cheek, blinking away sudden tears. "I'm glad to have you back."

"I'm glad to have you back." And she kissed me on the lips, not deep, but lingering. "Come on, let's get home. I have no idea what we're going to have for dinner."

In the end we sat on the couch, eating Reheated Leftover Surprise and watching the news. By the time they got to the sport I'd finished my meal, and I turned to Phoebe:

"I haven't told you why Susan was off work, have I? Her daughter was having bullying problems, so she took some time out."

"That bad?"

"Yeah." I filled her in on the detail.

"Huh. Poor kid, I hope she'll be all right. By the way, you know Susan and Dad used to have a thing going?"

"What? No. Really?"

"Just for a year or so, not long after Mum left. I saw her around, didn't think anything of it at the time 'cause I was only eight. Years later I started to put two and two together, and I got her alone one Christmas party and asked her about it. They'd both just come out of messy breakups and they ended up in... well, sort of 'friends with benefits', I suppose. Then Dad got promoted so he was managing Susan, and they decided that would be a sensible time to break things off. She met her husband..."

"Danny, I think?"

"Yeah, Danny. She met Danny not long after, so that was that. But she and Dad still exchange Christmas cards. She sent us a really sweet letter and flowers after Mum died."

"Well, well. I had no idea it was anything more than a business relationship."

Then I paused as I remembered RJ's words. Somebody he respected had spoken to him — "rather forcefully" — about his decision to fire me. And I remembered Susan's rage: "I want to kill those girls. They have no right to do that to my daughter. No right."

Then I considered what Susan's reaction might have been, supposing that she'd made a few enquiries and found out the real reason why I'd been fired... and I almost felt sorry for RJ. Almost.

"Whatcha smiling about, love?" asked Phoebe.

"Oh... just figuring something out." I carried our plates over to the sink.

Phoebe switched off the TV and came up behind me, slipping her arms around my waist. "So... what did you have in mind for tonight?"

"You know... it's been a while since I heard you play. Maybe the Bach?"

Her lips quirked into a smile. "As you like." She pulled out her stool, tidied her hair back out of the way, and tuned her cello. Then she sat, closed her eyes, and began.

I watched more than heard it, her eyes half-closed, the smile still lingering, as her bow danced over the strings. There was a tightness in my chest, but it was welcome; it was the joy of finding my way back to something I'd thought lost forever.

As she played I moved around her, standing behind so I could better see the flex of her shoulders, her whole body absorbed by what she was doing. I knew I'd never have the ear to appreciate her talent (or the cello she played, for that matter), but through her I could share the delight her passion brought.

She came to the end of the Prelude and spoke softly: "Shall I continue?"

I kissed her head lightly. "Please." And as she started the Allemande I rested a fingertip at the base of her neck, and I could feel as well as see the music of her body, the shift and play of her muscles. She didn't flinch, and her posture was such that I barely had to move to maintain that contact as the melody wandered and circled and came to a rest.

Then as she shifted into the Courante, lively and quick, I began to stroke her neck. A touch here, a pause there... and I realised I could hear my fingertips in the music she played, the frisson of my touch translated to a subtle emphasis in volume here, a tiny quickening in pace there.

"You're trouble," she whispered, and even as she slowed again for the Sarabande my hands drifted down to wander her shoulders, rising and falling with her movements... I was following her, and yet I felt I was leading too, my intent mirrored in her actions.

The Sarabande was over too soon, but the Minuets came next, disciplined and regular... or so they should have been. For now I brought my hands back to Phoebe's neck, drifting around under her hair and exploring the bare skin at either side just under her jaw, and I could tell she was struggling to maintain composure. "Bad!" she whispered, and I parted her hair and brushed the back of her neck with my lips; I felt her on the verge of stuttering, and I eased off, and waited, and then started again.

At last, up-tempo again for the Gigue, and I ran my hands down her back, lingering on her waist, planted at last on her hips. The way Bach wrote it, it races to the finish — well, the way Phoebe played it that night, it outran Bach and Casals, Rostropovich and du Pré, notes tumbling over one another until she ended it with a fierce chord.

Phoebe stood, set the cello safely in its case... then suddenly she wheeled on me, and before I knew it I was in her arms and in her mouth. She broke from the kiss just long enough to get out "You're incorrigible, you really are!" and then with another kiss she cut off any reply I might have made.

We tumbled onto her bed, inextricably twined around one another as we kicked off our shoes. For a while we just lay there and embraced, content to hold and be held; then our hands began to wander, caressing and fondling. On a whim I nudged her over onto her belly and rolled onto her, fingers stroking her sides, legs straddling hers, as I nuzzled the hair aside and began to kiss the nape of her neck.

I growled very softly in the back of my throat — or was it a purr? — and she stiffened under me, taut but motionless, as I nipped at her skin and my fingers hardened, catching at her T-shirt, dragging it away from her waistband and then burrowing beneath it to claw stripes across her ribs.

"Mmm. Nice." She had her arms stretched out in front of her; I reached up with my right hand to hold her wrists together, and my left scratched down her side, wriggled underneath her so she could feel my fingernails in her exposed belly. She said nothing, but I felt her exhale, long and slow, and her legs pressed tighter against mine.

I twisted sideways a little to get better purchase on her neck, and gripped her between my teeth, growling again. She said a quiet little "oh..." as my hand moved up her front again, halting at the elastic of her bra, pushing under it and sideways, my index finger raking a curve along the underside of her breast.

"I want you. I want you."

"Want you too." She pushed back against me as I rocked my hips against her arse, she grunted softly as I thrust my hand up under the bra-cup, displacing and supplanting it, five fingernails digging into her breast, her nipple rubbing against my palm.

I let go her wrists, jammed my thumb into her waistband. "These need to come off now." I shifted my weight back, letting her lift her hips a little, and she wriggled to assist as I fumbled with the buttons, tugged the zip open, shoved them down to her knees along with her briefs. As I did that I pushed her T-shirt up and popped the catch of her bra open. Then I settled my weight on top of her again, pressing her against the mattress and into my hands: one back at her breasts, the other between her legs.

"I could lie here all night." I pressed my hips against her. "Whispering how much I love you." With my knees I coaxed hers open. My fingers pushed through her curls and found her labia, began to work between them, as my other hand enveloped her breast. "But I can say it better this way."

"I like that language." She reached back behind her, one hand on my hip, the other at the back of my neck, both holding us together. I began stroking in earnest and she responded, grinding against my hand.

We were doing well for a while, and then I noticed Phoebe was tensing up; not the aroused kind of tense, but the uncomfortable kind that gets in the way. It took me a moment to realise the problem: Phoebe was wearing less than me — or rather, it was covering less, thanks to my previous efforts — and the night air was cooling around us.

"Let's get under the covers."

"I was going to say."

We shed the remainder of our clothes and crawled in together, spooning side by side. At first we just cuddled, and I squeezed Phoebe as tight as I could; after a little while, when our body heat had warmed the bedclothes, I felt her softening again.

"Now, where were we before?" she asked.

"I think I was doing something like this." Once again my fingertips drifted down her side, circling on her hip before slipping down between her thighs. She angled her leg to give me better access, and as I established a soft but insistent rhythm — rub, rub, circle, rub — she placed her hand on top of mine, as if to say: more pressure.

I took the hint, and although here and there she flinched at the roughness of my touch, her hand stayed firmly on top of mine. She was breathing faster now, and with her other hand she was holding (pinching?) her own breast. She gasped when I slipped down and into her, renewing the lubrication on my fingers, and then again when I came back up to flick her clit, toggling it from side to side, up and down.

"Don't stop..."

I would've liked to keep her on the edge, slowing down and drawing it out, but it had been so long; I was ravenous for her, and impatient to feel her come, to consummate our reunion. So I did what she asked, faster, bolder, and as I kissed her back and shoulders she yelped, and her head snapped back, and her thighs squeezed me tight as she came.

"Oh, darling... oh." She held my hand against her, motionless now and snug, surrounded by the heat of her body and the pressure of her thighs and the fading spasms of her muscles. "Mmm, that's what I needed." She twisted around enough to face me and we kissed; then she took my wrist, drew my hand up to her mouth, kissed my fingers and tongued in between them. "Give me a few minutes, and I'll do something for you."

"No rush." Sometimes a vicarious orgasm, experienced through the senses of somebody you love, is as good as the real thing... but that doesn't mean you can't try for both.

"Hey, I heard a carpentry joke." She rolled over again, pressed her back against my chest, pulled my arm around her and hugged it against her chest. "Want to hear it?"

"A carpentry joke?"

"How many screws does it take to assemble a lesbian's bed?"

"Um... as many as she wants it to?"

"None. It's all tongue-in-groove."

I groaned. And a few minutes later I was groaning again, and gasping, but not because of her jokes.

Afterwards, somewhere in the hazy land between afterglow and slumber:

"Yvonne, are you still awake?"

"Maybe. A bit."

"Something I need to say to you."

"Yes?"

"I don't know... if we'll be together forever." She squeezed me tight. "I mean, I love you a lot. I want it to last. But I can't see the future... if some day we decide we've drifted apart and it doesn't make sense to stay together, sometimes that happens."

"Okay?" I wasn't sure where this was going.

"But this is the important bit. I don't want to break up for stupid reasons. Sweetie, I love you, but I'm human. I guarantee that if we stay together long enough, some day I'm going to screw up and hurt you again. I won't mean to, but those things happen. And if that happens... I'll need you to help me with mending things."

"Hmm?"

"I don't mean you can't be angry. I expect I'll be angry at you sometimes. But even if you're angry, can you remember that I love you, and I'm trying to fix things even if I'm not sure how to do it? Because I can't fix things if I'm the only one working on it. Even when it's me that broke them."

I thought about how I'd reacted, back when I'd first found out about the lie. I could have gone to her and asked: what's going on? Instead I'd chosen to test her, and punish her, without even knowing quite what she'd done or why. And, yeah, if she'd told the truth in the first place I wouldn't have needed to work out how to deal with that situation.

But what's done is done; if you love one another, the question is what you're going to do next. And I could see myself screwing up some day — perhaps I'd forget a birthday, or miss a concert, or some other stupid thing — and I thought: when that happens, do I want to be carrying it forever?

No. I want to be able to leave that behind, without leaving Phoebe behind.

"Yeah. That makes sense." I wanted to say: sorry I didn't ask, as soon as I found out from Leon. Sorry I got so caught up in my fears that I drove you away when you were trying to apologise and explain. But it's hard to admit such things, and instead I just said: "Sorry about how I handled stuff before. You know, if your dad hadn't fired me, or if I'd realised it was Susan that changed his mind, I probably wouldn't ever have..."

She patted me. "But you did. And here we are."

After some thought I said "Sweetie, can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Still straight?"

She chuckled, then paused before answering. "I love you. I want to be with you. If people need a label they can decide for themselves what that makes me."

And not long afterwards, I fell asleep in my lover's arms.