Love

Love

Juniper buys a Valentine's Day card for her mother.

I At the store

Juniper stared at the wall of cards, hovering in front of the Valentine's Day section, wondering which card was appropriate for her mother. Red and pink cards met her gaze, flowers and hearts, and silver or gilded words woven like lace. Some were silly, and some were cheesy. Some were romantic, while others seemed to mock the very idea of love. In the shimmering light pouring from the long, shaking fluorescent bulbs sequestered behind pale, almost opaque plastic covers, the cards seemed oddly clinical, passionless, utterly at odds with the spirit of the occasion they were meant to celebrate.

Juniper sighed.

She kicked herself for not going to Au Pastel, kicked herself for going to some dingy drugstore instead.

It was so last-minute. Her stomach lurched as a tinge of guilt ran through her.

It's just Mom, she thought. What does it even matter?

A red card, different from the others, intruded on her periphery, and when she looked more closely, she saw the card was displayed in the Gay and Lesbian section.

Juniper scoffed.

I mean. Could this store be any more ass-backward?

Nobody said Gay and Lesbian anymore.

But the card drew her gaze, and she couldn't turn away from it. Graceful silvery outlines of two lips touching each other, feminine and soft and open. Picking the card from its slot, she could see and feel the pale embossment of the faces, raised from the card surface. The embossed ridges were also silvery, but fainter than the lips, and now she could plainly see two women, kissing each other modestly, their lips just brushing in a chaste kiss.

Her thumb traced the edges of the embossment, gliding over the raised, silver lips, her chest tightened.

I mean. It's a little. Odd. Not to mention gay. Still, mothers and daughters kissed each other like that. Didn't they? Just little pecks on the lips from time to time?

She kissed her mother like that.

She used to kiss her mother like that.

When she was a little girl.

What had changed? How much had changed?

The top of the card said in ornate, gilded script, The only woman..."

Juniper opened the card.

The only woman I truly love,

The only woman who understands,

The only woman who keeps my heart

Beating madly in her hands.

Body and soul tonight and forever,

I give myself to you.

Happy Valentine's Day, My Love!"

A little, well. Overdone. But every word seemed true. But. I mean.

Without putting the card up, almost thoughtlessly holding onto it while perusing with a growing dissatisfaction the other cards on the wall.

She did love her mother. That much was true. She was the only woman Juniper loved, that much was even more true. It would be odd to give her a Valentine's card like this one, though. But it was kind of odd to get her any kind of Valentine's Day card, wasn't it? Valentine's Day was for lovers, not friends and family. Not mothers and daughters. It was something she did all her life though. Or something her mother did.

Every Valentine's Day, as far back as Juniper could remember, she'd get at least one card, if she got nothing else. A pretty pink card from her mother, with a big heart on the front and two little angels kissing each other at the top. I love you, honey, the card would say. Happy Valentine's Day. The cards didn't stop when she became a teenager, and the cards didn't stop when she became an adult.

Even now, at 26, Juniper would get a card, and even now, at 26, Juniper would get her mother a card.

Nothing like this one though.

Nothing so. Sensual. Romantic.

She didn't have a boyfriend; Juniper had dumped her last man over a month ago, and she quickly wiped her roster clean. They'd text, DM her IG, ask for a Snapchat, but she stopped doing it. It all felt so.

Unromantic.

Naturally, it was all unromantic.

But it was all so. Lifeless. Rehearsed. Uninspired.

She spent whole evenings talking to her mother over the phone, and these dimwits couldn't even text more than two chats in a week. Never mind getting an actual conversation out of them when she did go out. Going to a shoe store with her mother was more romantic than the dinner dates she'd been on. At least they'd laugh and hug and even hold hands. Her mother loved to hold Juniper's hand, walking from one shop to another, grabbing her quickly around the waist to pull her to a window to gape and stare and poke fun or fawn over whatever it was that was.

Nothing else on the wall leapt out at her, and with a sudden resolve, she plucked the accompanying envelope from its slot and walked to the front of the store.

II In the car

Juniper tossed the bag holding her card onto the passenger seat and shut the door. No sooner had the car door shut than Juniper tore open the bag holding the red Valentine card and pulled it out, staring at the cover, the two women outlined in a kiss, lips slightly parted, pressed against each other. Juniper ran her thumb over the raised outline, then she grunted a sharp, "oh," and slumped backward then sideways, half falling onto the passenger seat.

Her eyes were closed, and she trembled in the rapids spasms of a seizure, but she still clutched the card between her thumb and forefinger. With her eyes closed, she couldn't see how the lips of the women moved, how the outline of the women pulsated and slid across the surface of the red card, showing their nude figures in their entirety as the gyrated and swirled over paper card in a tight, moving embrace.

Juniper groaned, and a hand slipped between her legs as she rubbed her vagina through denim crotch of her jeans.

She yelped or chirped in quick successions of pleasure, and then she came.

It happened so fast, so suddenly, that when she came to, she could almost tell herself it didn't happen. Almost.

She'd never cum so fast before.

She'd never been able to climax simply by rubbing her mound a few strokes over her jeans.

It's not like she was always perpetually horny, perpetually aroused, endlessly turned on.

She turned her car on and drove home, trying hard not to think about all those images that flew through her mind as she convulsed in her orgasm, all those images of her mother, nude. With Juniper on top of her, driving a long black cock deep into her grinding hips, deep into her lewd and swollen cunt.

She saw the sign on the right before she had a chance to register the words, and she turned into the parking lot before she had a chance to make the decision. It just seemed so natural to do so.

So ordinary.

Like she did it every day.

Like she'd always known about the place, and maybe she did, secretly, knowing it was there but not really thinking about it. On the other hand, she didn't usually take this route to get home. She liked to take smaller streets through neighborhoods, a little longer, but less traffic, and more enjoyable. She liked to look at all the trees and yards and kids playing and wonder when she'd get a family of her own, a husband and 2.3 kids.

At 26, she needed to hurry.

She took a major thoroughfare, replete with endless lines of retail shops, convenient stores, gas stations, and banks. Stop and go traffic. Which she hated. But there it was. On the right, like it had been waiting for her, and like she knew it was there, waiting for her.

Stephanie's Secret

Adult toys and clothing.

A space was open in front of the glass store front, and Juniper stared at the outline of a woman wearing a skimpy negligée.

Juniper wondered whether the woman was meant to be Stephanie.

If so, she had fantastic body.

A sexy body.

So sexy.

Juniper tried to clear her mind from that sudden and intrusive thought, but the realization of why she had stopped there hit her.

I'm just looking, she told herself.

I mean. It's just a joke, isn't it?

I mean. No way in hell does any of this happen.

I mean. It's fucking sick.

But even as she thought about how sick the idea was, her pussy clinched, her clit throbbed, and she grew warm and moist between her legs. Her hand drifted to touch herself again, and a weird humming seemed to fill the car all of a sudden. She looked at the red card.

She kind of looks like Mom, Juniper realized. The outlined profile of one of the women looked like her mother's profile, and when Juniper looked more closely she could see more than just their heads showing on the card.

Weird, she thought. I didn't notice that at the store.

The head and torsos of both women were completely exposed in outline, and the one woman's hands were cupping the breasts of the woman who resembled Juniper's mother as they kissed.

The kiss itself.

Surely it hadn't looked like that at the store?

Surely she wouldn't have bought such a blatantly sexual card for her mother on Valentine's Day?

Her mother's head tilted to the viewer, the daughter's head tilted away, as mother and daughter clung to each other in a hot, open-mouthed kiss.

Mother?

Daughter?

What made her think that?

The hum deepened, grew louder, and Juniper's body vibrated with the thrill of it.

She felt a spasm between her legs and squeezed her thighs together, so turned on. So aroused.

Looking at the image of Stephanie on the glass window -- so sexy -- Juniper took a deep breath and opened her car door.

I'm going in, she decided. There must be something I can get.

III

About 30 minutes later, Juniper's car door opened, and a bag was tossed onto the seat.

Mom's been so lonely, Juniper thought as she sat behind the wheel of her car and closed the door. Ever since she kicked out Dad.

Not that he didn't deserve it.

Juniper threw the car into reverse, backed out of the parking space, and headed home.

She needs a man.

A good man.

Someone to take Dad's place.

IV At home

Roslynn's eyebrows arched as she studied the image on the card her daughter had just handed her. When Juniper had given her the card in its envelope, she had smiled broadly, thanking her, before carefully opening the envelope and sliding the card from its shelter. She stared at the front.

"Good grief," she said.

"Just open it, Mom," Juniper protested. "It's the words that count."

Roslynn shook her head at the cover.

"They'd better be good words."

Juniper huffed quietly to herself as her mother read.

She watched her mother put the card on the table, lying it down with cover showing. From time to time her eyes dropped to the image of the two women kissing, and she'd quickly lift them to glance at Juniper. Roslynn was flushed, almost red.

She pushed the moment.

"You're not doing anything tonight, are you?"

"Rub it in, why don't you?"

"It's just that. I mean. We could always. You and I. We should go out tonight. Why let a perfectly good holiday go to waste?"

Juniper stood up abruptly to fetch her phone from her purse.

"What's your favorite restaurant? Is it still Gail's?"

"You'll never get a table this late. We should have, you should have made a reservation a long time ago."

But fate smiled on Juniper's call.

"We have a two-top at 8 that just canceled," the woman's voice said on the other end of the call.

Juniper turned to her mother in triumph.

"See?" she said. "It's meant to happen."

Juniper went back to the table, removed the soft velvet top to the pink heart-shaped box. She pulled a piece of dark chocolate from its paper container and walked over to Roslynn.

"Open your mouth," she ordered.

Her mother opened her mouth and bit off half the semi-spherical chocolate.

Juniper plopped the other half in her mouth.

They both groaned in delight.

"It's so good," Roslynn said when she finished swallowing.

Juniper nodded.

It was.

It was so good.

Roslynn looked at the red card on the table. One of the women bore a strong resemblance to Juniper. The card seemed to hum, and when Roslynn turned away, she could have sworn the woman, the daughter, winked at her.

But when she looked back, all she saw was the same image: the outlines of two women passionately kissing, the daughter caressing the mother's boobs.

Mother's boobs?

Roslynn shook her head and looked again.

Just two women modestly touching lips in a chaste kiss.

***

Roslynn tilted her head to stick the short needle of the hoop into her left ear, pushing the butterfly into the post. She looked at herself in the mirror. A 52-year-old divorcée, she could have let herself go a long time ago, even before she had kicked her husband, her ex-husband to the curb, almost literally had kicked him to the curb. A heavy drinker before the wedding, he had spent decades honing his alcoholism to a fine art. When Roslynn reached the end of her limit, she did so with an astonished pride that she still had a limit.

Her long hair, falling straight and full, ran dark with gray streaks. Gray with dark streaks, she had to admit. But she refused to dye her hair, refused to color it. Her face was flat, and the way her cheeks sat high on her face made her face seem long, cat-like, but not altogether remarkable, at least in her eyes.

She had brushed on a little makeup, just enough to give her face a sheen.

She now applied a final layer of red lipstick, pressed her lips together, and wondered for the umpteenth time whether her dress showed too much cleavage.

But that was the whole point of the push-up bra she also wore.

She wore dark smokey hose, and her dress fell past her knees to the middle of her calves, a long, elegant dress with a high slit, enticing but not scandalous. She playfully stuck her right thigh out, showing the gartered top of her hose just above her thigh. Then she slipped on her red heels and walked out to face her daughter.

How on earth Juniper had talked her into going on a "date" entirely escaped her.

Still. This could be fun, she told herself. You haven't been out in ages.

Then she saw Juniper standing in the middle of the living room, and her jaw dropped.

***

"Oh my god, honey. Where on earth did you find that?"

What Juniper had found was now covering her body. She wore a tweed suit, complete with a vest, and a red tie. On top of her head rested a gray trilby with a pink band. She had managed to tuck her hair, just as long as her mother's but still dark, into her hat, which sat far too large for her head. The suit had belonged to her father. Roslynn hadn't known that anything of his had remained in the house.

"I stole it from his closet a long time ago. Back in high school. He didn't even know it was gone."

Roslynn's gaze dropped to Juniper's feet.

Black and white gull wings.

"Thriftshopping," Juniper winked. "You can find all kinds of stuff."

V

Roslynn felt awkward walking from the car to the entrance of the restaurant; Juniper felt triumphant. The valet drove the Oldsmobile off with a sort of indifferent disdain. Juniper held her mother close to her, wrapping her arm around her waist, then pushing her slight forward by pressing her hand into the shallow of her back as the doorman held the door open for them.

Gail's was humming with customers, but the hostess led Juniper to their table, and Juniper pulled out Roslynn's chair.

"Thank you, darling," her mother said as she sat down.

"Of course," Juniper said simply, but her heart raced.

Beating madly.

She sat across from her mother, hooking her hat on the edge of the chair, which fortunately had knobs at each end of the back rather than a back that was rounded. Roslynn was already studying the menu their hostess had placed in front of her, giving the daughter a chance to collect her thoughts.

From the moment she bought the card, something in her changed. She had never even been with a woman before, and now the image of her mother and herself kissing came inexorably, unavoidably to her mind. She didn't even try to fight it. It all seemed so obvious, so suddenly, that she didn't even think about the ramifications.

It all felt so deliciously wicked and right.

And when she passed the other shop, a plan had already taken seed, hatching the moment she left the other shop, a specialty shop, and taking full shape the very second her mother saw her in the living room, wearing her ex-husband's outfit, and concealing. Well. Concealing.

Wine was poured, and wine was drunk, and soon both women fell into an easy conversation filled with laughter, good humor, and a good deal of flirting from Juniper's side.

Roslynn caught the flirting, wondered once again what had gotten into her daughter, caught herself flirting back, and then wondered what had gotten into her.

Somehow Roslynn's hand lay on the table, not too far from Juniper, and somehow Juniper's fingers moved closer and closer to Roslynn's hand. When her fingers touched her mother, her mother kept her hand flat on the table, and when Juniper's fingers started caressing the tops of her mother's fingers, the older woman flinched, but she did not retract her hand.

Roslynn's mind whirled.

How could she pull her hand back? How could she pull her hand back from her daughter without embarrassing her, without embarrassing herself? The evening flowed joyful and exuberant; why ruin it? It was just Juniper; they were just Juniper's fingers softly stroking her hand. It's not like she didn't enjoy it, didn't love being so affectionate.

They'd always held hands in the past.

What's the big deal?

So Roslynn left her hand where it was, and Juniper continued to fondle her fingers, twirling her fingers inside her mother's fingers, until her mother began twirling her fingers back. Then a shadow flitted behind Roslynn, a vague shape appeared quickly, intruding on the moment, and Roslynn pulled her hand away as the waiter began setting their order on the table.

The giddy exaltation lifted, dispersed by the quotidian reality of eating in a public restaurant, surrounded by diners and staff. Roslynn watched her daughter chew and relaxed, gratified that the small things could continue to happen despite the threat of outraged.

Outraged what, Roslynn?

Juniper didn't look utterly ridiculous in her father's outfit.

Not any more than did Ben when she'd first met him so many years ago, when the man loved to go looking dapper, dressed in a style gone out of fashion decades before his own, to drink to excess and passing out. Ben had not been a large man, and the suit, despite Juniper rolling up the cuffs of the trousers, and constantly pulling up the sleeves past her fine wrists, fit the girl (woman, Roslynn) as well as could be expected for a suit meant for the male body.

She had pulled her long dark hair above her in a neat bun, tight enough to draw her hair up from her neck and ears, lending her a severe, no-nonsense aura. Her cheeks were high and wide like her mother's, but her eyes were a pale brown, like her father's eyes, and her face, although showing that peculiar maternal flatness, was rounded at the chin. Her father's chin, giving her a boyish look the suit she wore did nothing to suppress.

"Penny for your thought, old girl," Ben said, and Roslynn yelped.

VI

Roslynn lifted her eyes from her plate, shocked to hear Ben's voice so clearly from the other side of the small round table. But she only saw her daughter, smiling at her, her face, her mouth, her lips, her eyes completely natural, free of makeup. She possessed the curious lips of her father, never keeping the same shape. Sometimes they closed tight and narrow, other times they were full and heavy, as if swollen. Her lips acted the bellwether of her moods, but it was an unfaithful bellwether, and Roslynn could never guess just what went on in that head of hers.

They were meant for kissing, those lips, meant for the touch and taste of a lover's mouth, just like the embossed image on the cover of the red card.