it comes out weak from the back of her throat. Her knuckles are white in Jane’s hair, so she makes herself relax them, drags her fingers down to Jane’s sharp cheekbone. “Jane.”
“Hm?”
“Fuck, I—come back,” she grinds out. “Up here. Please.”
When August pulls her into another kiss, she can taste herself on Jane’s tongue, and that, more than anything, the fierce wave of possessiveness it pulls over her, is what has her fumbling at the fastenings of Jane’s jeans.
It’s a blur—August doesn’t know how she senses what to do. There’s supposed to be an awkward learning curve with someone you’ve never fucked before, but there’s not. There’s this flow between them that’s never made any goddamn sense since that static shock the day they met, and it’s like she’s found her way into this girl’s jeans a thousand times, like Jane’s had her figured out for years. She thinks dazedly that maybe it’s time to start believing in something. The fucking divine construction of Jane’s fingers when they press into her, maybe—that’s a higher power for sure.
It’s over in a gasp, a trip over some edge August doesn’t see until they’re suddenly there, an open-mouthed kiss that’s more a hot exchange of breath than anything else, teeth and skin, a low swear. Jane slumps forward, her shoulder digging into August’s chest, one hand still tucked neatly beneath the lace of August’s bra, and August feels alive. She feels present, somehow, here. Exactly, really here. She smears a messy kiss across the top of Jane’s cheek and feels like Jane is the first thing she’s ever touched in her life.
“You were right,” August says.
“About what?”
“I can’t feel my legs.”
Jane laughs, and the lights come back on.
Jane moves first, picking her head up to glare at the lights. And it’s so ridiculous, so funny and unbelievable and Jane, perturbed at the world for daring to defy her instead of the other way around, that August has to laugh.
“Get your hand off my boob. We’re in public,” she says as the train eases back into motion.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jane snorts, and she stumbles back half a step to let August button her shirt. She watches August shimmy her underwear back up her thighs with devilish interest, looking pleased with herself, and August would blush if she weren’t already pink from everything else.
Jane buttons her jeans and tucks her shirt in and disentangles August’s glasses from her jacket, and then she’s crowding back into August’s space, gently sliding her glasses on.
“I can’t believe you threw them,” August says. “They could have fallen on the floor and picked up a bacterial infection. You could have given me conjunctivitis.”
“Mmm, yeah, say more big words.”
“It’s not sexy!” August says, even as her smile gets so big it hurts, even as she lets Jane press her into the door. “I could have lost an eye!”
“I was in a hurry,” Jane says. “I haven’t gotten laid in forty-five years.”
“Technicality,” August says.
“Let me have this,” Jane says, trailing her smiling mouth over August’s pulse.
“Okay.” August laughs, and she does.
They kiss again, and again, melting kisses that barely hold the weight of what just happened, and August keeps waiting. August keeps waiting for one of them to say something that will change everything, but they don’t. They just kiss until they pull into a station in Brooklyn, and a bleary commuter climbs on with a coffee and an unamused expression, and Jane muffles a laugh in her neck.
It’s good, August thinks, that they don’t say anything. Jane loves like summer for a reason—she doesn’t stick around. August knows it. Jane knows it. There’s nothing either of them can do about it.
It’s enough, August decides. To have her like this, here, for now. Time, place, person.
10
New Restaurant Lucille’s Burgers Opens in French Quarter
PUBLISHED AUGUST 17, 1972
[Photo: An older woman in an apron stands in front of a bar, arms crossed, while a young woman in the background carries a tray of burgers]
Lucille Clement remembers growing up in her mother’s kitchen while waitress Biyu Su delivers orders to customers.
Robert Gautreaux for The Times-Picayune
“So you’re sleeping with Jane?”
August turns, toothbrush in mouth. Niko’s looking at her from the end of the hallway, holding a golden barrel cactus the size of a basketball between two tattooed hands.
She managed to dodge him when she stumbled back into the apartment at five in the morning with her shirt buttoned wrong and the shape of Jane’s mouth bruised onto the side of her neck. But she should have