One Magic Moment

"Decided by who?" Kathryn inquired.

"Sister Magdalena and Father Benedict," came Lynda's reply. "They said I'd be a better fit somewhere else."

Sister Magdalena was the principal of the school and Father Benedict the pastor of the parish. Positions both had occupied for as far back as Kathryn could remember. They stood at the holy gates as guardians of the faith with the intensity of old time segregationists.

"Why would they..." Kathryn started to say, only to have Lynda interrupt.

"They found my moral values somewhat questionable," Lynda added.

"Questionable?" Kathryn repeated.

"Moral turpitude was the phrase I remember Sister Magdalene using," Lynda continued. "I had no idea what that meant, but from the way she said it, I knew it had to be something really bad."

As a teen, Kathryn had gotten into her share of trouble in high school, as had Connie, but nothing that rose to the level of terms like that being used. There had been one girl who had gotten herself pregnant towards the end of senior year, but while she had been excluded from the graduation ceremony, she still got her diploma -- along with a hastily arranged wedding a month later.

"What did you do?" Kathryn asked without thinking, only to draw back the question once she had, saying that it was none of her business.

"No, it's okay, it's not like I'm ashamed of it or anything," Lynda said. "The night of the Spring Dance, you know, the one where they invite the boys from Saint Andrews, I got caught making out in one of the cloak rooms."

"And they expelled you for that?" Kathryn said, disbelief in her tone as she recalled a few girls in her time who'd been caught doing the same.

"Well, there was also the small matter that it wasn't a boy I was kissing," Lynda added, a naughty smile grin on her face.

"Not a boy as in....?" Kathryn inquired, considering the possibility that the other party had been someone not age appropriate.

"Not a man either," Lynda clarified.

"Oh my," Kathryn said, the surprise on her face quite evident.

"It was Sister Magdalena that found us," Lynda grinned. "I thought the old biddy was going to have a stroke."

"Who was the other girl?" Kathryn asked, even as she visualized the image of the fire breathing sexagenarian in her head.

"Midge Havemeyer," Lynda replied.

"Of the 'holier than thou' Havemeyers?" Kathryn said, her face now reflecting an even greater shock.

Lynda's response came in the form of a broad smile.

Sylvia and John Havemeyer owned Havemeyer's Department Store and, along with their children, were the parish's poster family. Aside from being one of the largest contributors during every fund drive, Sylvia sat on every important committee and John was a rector of the church. They had seven children, two of whom had taken holy orders. Midge was their youngest.

"Did they expel Midge too?" Kathryn asked.

"They didn't get the chance," Lynda explained. "By the following Monday, Midge's parents had arranged for her transfer to a religious boarding school up in New England, one that specialized in what they liked to call troubled teens. So I was the only one the ax fell on."

"That certainly wasn't fair," Kathryn noted.

"Hey, what's done is done," Lynda replied, "and I was better off for it. A month after I started at Cochrane, I met an even more like-minded friend, so I was happy."

"Do you still see her?" Kathryn asked out of curiosity, "the friend from Cochrane, I mean."

"Nah, she took off for more friendly climes as soon as we graduated," Lynda answered. "The last I heard, she was out in West Hollywood, working in a hair salon -- pretty good at it too, from what I'm told."

Kathryn let out a small breath, leaning back against the cushion as she did. That had been a lot to take in.

"Are you involved with anyone now?" she then asked.

"Not at the moment," Lynda said. "Like I said, I do go to some of the clubs in Manhattan, but I'm really not looking for anyone to settle down with."

Kathryn no longer had to ask what clubs Lynda liked.

"How about you?" Lynda asked, shifting the focus back to Kathryn.

"No boyfriend," Kathryn replied, almost too quickly, even as she took another taste of her own drink.

"Girlfriend?" Lynda then asked.

"Excuse me?" Kathryn replied, a surprised look on her face.

"Oh don't worry, Connie didn't tell me, at least not directly," Lynda added.

Lynda paused for a second, then explained that, shortly after she'd been outed, she and Connie had a semi-drunk discussion about it, during which her sister had inadvertently shared that one of her classmates had also been into girls. In fact, the unnamed girl had even confessed to having a crush on her. Yet, despite those feelings, they still remained friends.

"I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out she was talking about you," Lynda went on. "I'd seen you looking at her the same way boys did too often not to notice, especially after I began to find myself doing the same with some of my friends. Not that I can blame you, of course -- Connie was hot. If she wasn't my sister, I'd have wanted to jump her too."

A small smile formed at the corner of Kathryn's mouth. Lynda's conclusion would've been easy to deny, especially given the slim evidence she'd based it on. Still, she was tired of hiding who she was to most of the people around her, and by her own admission, the younger woman wasn't someone that she should feel she had to.

"No, no girlfriend either, not for a while." Kathryn replied, clarifying that she'd broken up with her girlfriend of almost five years the previous Fall.

Lynda's face brightened with those words, her expression seeming to proclaim, 'I knew it.'

"Well, now that we've opened the closet door, so to speak, do you mind if I ask something I've always been curious about?" the younger redhead said.

"Sure, why not?" Kathryn replied, taking another sip of wine.

"I know you had a crush on Connie, but did you ever hook up with any of the other girls at Blessed Virgin?" Lynda asked.

Kathryn hesitated for a long breath, then admitted that, yes, there had been one girl. She wasn't going to say her name because she was married and still lived in the neighborhood, and it was pretty much a given that her husband had no idea.

"That's okay, I probably wouldn't recognize it anyway," Lynda said, pointing out that, aside from Kathryn, she really didn't know most of her sister's classmates.

Even though she wouldn't say the name, the face of Jenny Masterson flashed through Kathryn's mind. Along with memories of the curves of her breasts and the softness of her lips -- both of which she had once been intimately familiar with. While they'd never really gone beyond what now was considered just heavy petting, it was more than she'd ever done with a boy.

"I was asking if you think we should open another bottle of wine," Kathryn heard Lynda repeat, suddenly conscious that she had allowed her mind to drift.

Glancing at the wall clock, Kathryn was reminded that it was getting late, especially with the prospect of the subway ride to the railroad terminal downtown and the even longer trip out to Suffolk County ahead of her.

"As much as I'm enjoying myself, I probably should think about heading home soon," Kathryn replied. "As it is, I probably won't get there until almost midnight."

"You're welcome to stay here for the night if you like," Lynda offered, an expectant look on her face. "You could take an early train home. I just got a new TV we could watch; it's only nineteen inches but it's color."

Color televisions were still new enough that people who'd only had black and white before still sometimes got excited about having one. Kathryn had bought a twenty one inch color console a few years before, so being able to watch a show in color really wasn't much of an incentive. Still, all that was waiting for her at the end of a long ride home was an empty house.

"You know, on second thought, opening another bottle sounds like an excellent idea," Kathryn finally replied.

-=-=-=-

"I don't know if I should tell you this, but you might find it funny," Lynda said as she refilled their glasses a second time. "I had a major crush on you back in my early teens."

"Really?" Kathryn replied as she held out her glass.

"Yeah, even though I didn't know that I preferred girls yet. I just thought you were so cool and everything."

"I never thought of myself as cool, especially back then," Kathryn smiled as she took a sip of wine. "But I guess I should feel honored."

"I'm curious, what did you think of me?" Lynda asked as she put down the bottle and picked up her glass.

"If we're being honest, I'm afraid I never did, at least not in that way. I mean, back then, I just saw you as Connie's kid sister."

"Well, kid sister has grown up," Lynda smiled.

Kathryn replied with a smile, thinking that was certainly true.

"I was, as you might have guessed, a bit of a late bloomer," Lynda stated. "It wasn't until my last year at Holy Cross that I suddenly dropped that baby fat I never seemed to be able to get rid of and grew a few inches. And of course these came in, and that made all the difference."

"They usually do," Kathryn remarked as her eyes focused on the breasts that Lynda was referring to, having cupped an open hand under each for emphasis.

"Boys finally became interested in me," Lynda added, "but by that time I'd already realized that I had no interest in them."

"Was Midge your first girlfriend?" Kathryn asked out of curiosity.

"Midge wasn't really a girlfriend," Lynda answered. "She was just a girl who really liked to kiss, and there weren't a whole lot of boys who were interested in kissing her back. So she kissed girls. Unfortunately, her parents didn't see the difference and reacted as if she'd been going down on me and not just trading tongues."

Midge Havemeyer, Kathryn recalled, was a bit on the plain side, as were her two older sisters who had been Kathryn's classmates. Gwendolyn, who eventually became a nun, had never cared what boys thought of her, as opposed to her sister Mary, who wanted nothing more than to have a boyfriend. Eventually she discovered that some boys were more interested in what you were willing to do than what you looked like, and even small breasts were desirable if you were willing to have them fondled.

"Did you have crushes on a lot of girls?" Kathryn asked as she continued to sip her wine.

"A new one every week," Lynda laughed, "but until Midge, I was too scared to do anything about it. In fact, she was the one who made the first move between us, asking if she could kiss me."

"Did she know you liked girls?" Kathryn asked.

"I think she saw the way I looked at some of the girls in the locker rooms and suspected," Lynda replied. "That was before I figured out how to do that without being too obvious."

"Yeah, that was an important thing to learn," Kathryn agreed.

"What about you, who was your first crush?" Lynda asked after taking a drink of her own.

"I'm not sure I should say," Kathryn answered after a small hesitation. "It's a bit awkward."

"That makes it even more interesting," Lynda insisted. "Come on, share."

"Okay," Kathryn responded, taking a deep breath before proceeding. "When you were at Blessed Virgin, did you have Mrs. Remington for biology?"

Although most of the teachers were from the religious order, the school did have a few secular instructors who taught subjects the Nuns were unqualified for or uncomfortable with. Following the inclusion of a state-mandated sex education element, biology had become one of them. There were two teachers hired to cover the class, Rachel Warrington, and Sharon Remington. The latter had only lasted a few years before leaving for a better opportunity, hence Kathryn's uncertainty if Lynda had been in her class.

"Oh, I remember Mrs. Remington," Lynda said, her voice rising a few octaves.

"I almost failed biology because I couldn't concentrate on the course material," Kathryn admitted. "It got to the point where I sometimes had to change my panties after class. Luckily I always carried a spare pair in my knapsack."

"She was definitely hot," Lynda noted, visualizing the shapely thirty-five year old in her mind. "She had a set of boobs that those conservative tops she wore just couldn't hide. I'd have given almost anything to have seen her naked, just once."

"I actually did, well, almost naked," Kathryn unexpectedly confessed.

"No fucking way!" Lynda exclaimed.

"She was one of the chaperones for the Catholic Youth Festival down in Washington during senior year," Kathryn said, referencing a trip that Lynda remembered her sister also going on. "The diocese had arranged for the attendees to stay in the old dorms at Saint Bernadette's in Maryland. Not exactly five star accommodations, but it was better than paying for a hotel."

Lynda nodded her head as she listened, recalling Connie having described the place as only slightly better than the hourly motels she and her then boyfriend used to sneak off to on weekends.

"Anyway, on our second night there," Kathryn continued, "I'd gotten up during the night to use the bathroom, which was communal, and as I sat there taking care of business, I heard someone using the adjacent showers."

Kathryn had Lynda's full attention as she tried to picture the scene.

"Just about everyone had been wiped out by the day's events and we'd all crashed by ten, so I couldn't imagine who it might be," Kathryn said. "Still, I figured it really wasn't any of my business, so I cleaned myself up and was about to head back to my room when through the doorway leading to the showers comes Mrs. Remington -- totally starkers and dripping wet. Well, maybe not totally since she was carrying a bath towel in her hands that obscured some of the view. What I did see of her, however, was as impressive as hell. So much so that I just stood there dumbfounded."

"What did she say when she saw you?" Lynda asked, the thought of what the naked teacher must've looked like causing an excitement in her voice.

"Believe it or not, she apologized for not having covered up more before coming out of the shower," Kathryn smiled, "as if I might've been offended by having seen her naked."

"And what did you say to her?" Lynda inquired.

"What could I?" Kathryn replied. "I lied and said it was no big deal, then made my way back to bed, hoping that my face didn't show my disappointment that she'd covered up the rest of her so quickly."

"I bet you had a hard time getting to sleep that night," Lynda laughed.

"You don't know the half of it," Kathryn laughed as well. "I eventually had to sneak back to the bathroom and take care of myself because I couldn't get the image of her out of my head."

"You jilled yourself in the bathroom?" Lynda asked, incredulity now in her tone.

"Well, I certainly wasn't going to do it in my bed, not with two other girls sleeping only a few feet away," Kathryn concluded. "I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly quiet at times like that."

Lynda was tempted to again laugh, but instead raised her glass and offered a toast. "To Mrs. Remington and her magnificent tits, wherever she and they might be now."

"To Mrs. Remington," Kathryn concurred as she also raised her glass.

"I can't imagine what I'd have done in that situation," Lynda said as, the toast done, she laid her now empty glass on the side table. "I remember watching girls in my class in the locker room and showers and being thankful I wasn't a guy. Otherwise I'd have walked around with a perpetual hard-on."

"If you were a guy it was unlikely you'd find yourself in the girls' locker room," Kathryn pointed out, "but I understand what you're saying. Still, women can be easily aroused too; we're just lucky that it happens in ways not always as noticeable."

"I guess you're right," Lynda agreed, the names of a few girls who caused her nipples to rise flashing through her head, with the beauty sitting beside her now added to the list.

In fact, only a few minutes before, she'd tried to glance unobtrusively at Kathryn's breasts, only to be disappointed because the thickness of her dress and the brassiere beneath it made it impossible to gauge any response to her proximity.

With more experience in such matters, Kathryn had caught the movement of Lynda's eyes and smiled, because she'd done the same minutes before, with more success. The redhead's nipples were quite prominent as they pressed against the thin material of her top, displaying a thickness almost as wide as her thumb.

Both women were similar in build, with only a few differences setting them apart. Kathryn was a bit taller and a half dozen pounds heavier, and Lynda had slightly smaller breasts, a trait she shared with her older sibling.

When she had gotten up to open the second bottle of wine, Lynda had also turned on the small transistor radio on the side table. Set on WCBS-FM, which had begun playing oldies a few years before, it provided some background music to their conversation. They'd only been half listening, but that changed as a favorite of Lynda's came on. She reached over and cranked up the volume.

"I love this song," she exclaimed as she extended her hand to Kathryn. "Doesn't it just make you want to dance?"

The song, "This Magic Moment," by The Drifters, had first been a hit back when Kathryn had been a teen and it surprised her that the younger woman would know it, especially given that disco was more prominent in clubs nowadays. Then again, she'd grown up listening to the records her older siblings played, so they had to have made some impression. Draining the last of her glass, Kathryn laid it next to Lynda's and, rising from the couch, accepted the offered hand.

They melted into each other's arms and were soon swaying to the music, an embrace that Kathryn had to admit felt pretty nice. As they moved, each reached out to the other, sharing gentle touches and soft caresses, some of them daring enough to have earned stern rebukes at the rigidly chaperoned dances at Blessed Virgin.

Kathryn felt her heart racing at the feel of Lynda's flesh against her own, a reminder that it had been months since she'd been this close to another woman -- and how she had missed it. Their embrace grew stronger as the gap between their bodies grew smaller, then faded completely as breast pressed against breast, with no further doubt as to their level of arousal. Breaths grew quick as their eyes interlocked, just as the song came to an end.

It was then that their lips first came together.

It was an innocent kiss at first, the sort that might be shared with a sister or a favorite cousin. But as a second, then third one followed, the exchange grew more intense, more intimate, and soon enough each had their tongue in the other's mouth. Yet even that didn't give them pause, at least not until Lynda took hold of Kathryn's hand and laid it against one of her breasts, inviting her to feel the hardness of her nipple through the thin material of her sundress.

"Wait, hold on a second," Kathryn unexpectedly said, taking a full step back from Lynda.

"Is something wrong?" Lynda asked, confusion in her voice.

"I ... I don't think we should be doing this," Kathryn said. "I mean, you're Connie's little sister. What would she say if she could see me here with you?"

"That sometimes you get lucky?" Lynda quipped, then adding in a more serious tone, "And as I pointed out before, I haven't been her 'little sister' for quite some time."

"Still..." Kathryn started to say.

"Also, unless I'm mistaken, I was the one who kissed you," Lynda went on, "although you certainly kissed me back quick enough, and quite well, I might add. You're a really good kisser."

Kathryn had to admit that was true, at least the part of her kissing Lynda back. As for the other, she merely smiled.