The Safekeep(42)

“Good night,” she said, and didn’t look back.

“Good night,” he answered, incredulous.

She locked the kitchen door behind her. She was trembling. Felt oddly vulnerable with her hair plaited, in her trousers. Somewhere in the house—Eva. Somewhere in the house, alone. The doors were locked. The lights were out.

Isabel waited in the kitchen until Johan drove away. She counted nine whole minutes on the clock. He honked as he left, and the sound juddered through her.

Her lips had gone dry. She took out her plait—nervous hands, itching, wanting to shed something. She went upstairs. There, at the end of the hall, the door to her mother’s old room was left ajar, ever so slightly. A soft beam of light. Eva was sitting on the edge of the bed, in her sleeping clothes—powder-pink silk. It caught the orange of the bedside lamp like a high sun over sea.

Eva’s hands were on her knees, an unnatural position. She had been waiting for Isabel. She knew Isabel would come for her.

Eva looked up. Isabel stepped inside. The door closed behind her.





10


FOR A BEAT, THE DISTANCE to the bed stretched like an open field, a thin horizon; she looked at it and did not know how long it would take to cross it. She looked at it and thought, This will go on forever.

Then Eva said, “You let him kiss you.”

The doorjamb dug into Isabel’s back. She leaned away from it. She said, “You let him take me away.”

A flicker of an emotion. Eva tightened her jaw, said, “Did you—” She was still sitting primly. “Did you enjoy it?” She said it and then turned her face away. She meant the kiss. She meant Johan’s kiss. She looked like she didn’t want to hear the answer at all.

How do you know, Isabel had asked her, mere days ago—had asked her a little drunkenly, a little out of her mind. And Eva had said, You should just let him. Find out.

And then she had kissed Isabel herself. And kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her.

“No,” Isabel said now, an emphatic rush of sound.

“You blushed very prettily for him tonight. Could barely speak a word around him.”

The three steps from the door to the bed snapped into nothingness. She went, she fell to her knees, she said, “That wasn’t for him.” Between Eva’s legs, grabbing her knees, sliding up her touch—under the fall of the hem of Eva’s shorts. Isabel’s hands had gone cold in the evening and Eva’s skin was a heat, was a rasp against the grain of hair. A punch of air from Eva’s lungs, she opened her legs to Isabel and Isabel told her: “You know that. You know it wasn’t for him.”

They were at eye level like this: Isabel kneeling, Eva perched on the bed’s edge. They were close, and Eva had two hard hands in the flesh of Isabel’s shoulders. Their noses brushed, cheeks pressed, and Eva turned her face away. Turned it back. Isabel made a sound, tightened her grip on Eva’s thighs, and Eva panted—a hot thing on Isabel’s lips.

The carpet itched under her knees. Through fabric, through trousers. Sweat at the line of her spine. All she could see of Eva was the downcast of her eyes, the fan of her lashes. She was looking at Isabel’s mouth. She was digging her fingers into the back of her neck.

“Tell me no.” Isabel’s voice rumbled between them. “Eva. Tell me yes or no.”

“I can’t,” Eva said, and opened her mouth over Isabel’s. A rolling movement of her body, the press of her breasts to Isabel’s. There was something maddening to her kiss, wide-open the one moment, and then hesitant the next, pulling back. It made Isabel want to barrel in, want to break the hinges, push the door from its bolts; she nipped her lip, she sucked her in, she pushed her hands up Eva’s bare thighs and pulled. The movement skid Eva to the very edge of the bed, it opened her legs wider, it pressed her heat to Isabel’s stomach—Eva’s crotch, the hard bone of her mound.

Eva’s mouth slipped off hers with a breath. Isabel chased it, and the next kiss was faster, frantic. Isabel had a fanned hold at the fold of Eva’s leg, the join of her pelvis. Her thumb touching the elastic of her underwear. The thin skin had gone damp there. Isabel kissed her harder. She tugged on the elastic. She didn’t know what she wanted; she knew what she wanted. She didn’t know and knew at once, a blurry shape turning sometimes sharp, a loud Klaxon of yes; and answering the question Where? with: Anywhere. Anywhere.

Eva couldn’t close her mouth anymore, couldn’t coordinate the kiss; jaw cocked open, rolling her hips, pressing into the soft hill below Isabel’s navel. A wetness had seeped through. Isabel let her, let her grind, guided the movements with her hands. The world had gone a high-pitched silent; only Eva’s shuddering, choked-off moans. Isabel kissed her neck, her throat. Her thumb was trapped between them. She wanted to push it in. She wanted to move. She wanted—

“Touch me,” Eva said, slipped into a messy half kiss, clutched at her and ground against her and said: “God, just, please, can you—”

“Tell me.” Isabel hid behind her ear. She made up for her embarrassment with a bite to Eva’s earlobe. “What to—”

It happened quick, the one moment inseparable from the next. Eva took Isabel’s hand and sucked two fingers into her mouth, wet them, pushed the hand down the front of her shorts—the bare space she allowed between them, pressing small kisses to Isabel’s bottom lip. “Like this,” she said. “Like this.” She was hot there. Soaking against the cotton panel of her underwear. She curved Isabel’s two fingers into herself, silent, as though a syllable was caught in her throat. Isabel moaned in her stead. The sound of her fingers inside Eva—the wet ticking of it, like the rolling of a hard candy in a mouth. Eva showed her where to press her thumb. Isabel did as bid. Eva tightened around her, pushed against her—arms around Isabel’s shoulders, mouth slack to the line of her hair.