The Secret of You and Me - Melissa Lenhardt Page 0,47
face and pulled me to her in a tender kiss. Soon we were clawing at each other’s clothes, blindly trying to find bare skin to touch. I pulled at Nora’s shirt, the pearl button snaps easily breaking apart, and my hand moved automatically to the front bra closure which had always been there before. The next moment her bra opened, and my breath caught at the feel of her in my hand at last, foreign and familiar, her hardened nipple searing a path along my palm. I broke the kiss, and let my lips travel down her cheek, her neck, saying “NoNo, NoNo,” desperate for my lips to touch the breast I cupped in my hand. Her hand on the back of my head, she guided me to her, saying my name—has anything sounded sweeter?—her fingers sliding beneath my dress and up my bare thigh to...
The car phone trilled, and we jerked apart. I caught a glimpse of Nora, hair out of her ponytail, lips and chin marked with my red lipstick, her eyes hooded and perplexed. We looked at the dashboard screen and saw the caller’s name at the same time.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Nora said.
“I’m supposed to have lunch with her. And I’m late.”
“Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
Nora raised her eyebrows and pushed the Accept button. She opened her mouth to say something to my mother, but I clamped my hand over it. “Hi, Mother. I’m on my way.”
“You’re late.”
“Yes, I know. I had to stop by the house.” Instead of trying to move my hand, Nora kissed the palm, before moving her lips up my wrist and arm to my shoulder. I shivered.
“Sheila said you left twenty minutes ago.”
I closed my eyes and tilted my head away to give Nora’s traveling lips plenty of access to my neck. She placed my hand that she’d kissed over her breast. Sweet Jesus. “Did I? I must have gotten distracted.”
“Is that what you call this?” Nora whispered in my ear, her hand moving deftly along my inner thigh.
I inhaled sharply. “Five minutes, Mom. Maybe ten.” I leaned forward, ended the call and was returning to Nora when she removed her hand and mine, sat back, and started setting her clothes to rights. “What are you doing?”
“You have a meeting in five minutes.”
“Ten.”
Nora buttoned her shirt and looked at me with a pitying expression. She shook her head and got out of the car.
I reached out. “NoNo, wait.”
“Tell Brenda I said hi,” she said and closed the door in my face.
* * *
I pulled up to my mother’s house thirty minutes late. What was a few more?
I put my forehead on my steering wheel and breathed deeply.
Good Lord, that kiss. Had we ever kissed like that before? I didn’t think so. There had been plenty of passion, or what, in our inexperience, we thought of as passion. Today it was hunger and fear and a sense of urgency. I could still feel Nora’s steady and sure hands on my thigh, her soft lips. I could smell the scent of coffee that lingered on her clothes, hear the sound of the pearl snaps breaking free. The thrill and joy that came with the discovery that Nora wanted me as much as I needed her.
We had gone from leaving well enough alone to bygones to moaning each other’s names to fighting again. What a fucking roller coaster. If I made it through the next few days without drinking a bottle of Maker’s Mark in one sitting it would be a miracle akin to the virgin birth.
I would go to a meeting tonight, not only because I promised Logan, but because the urge to drink wasn’t diminishing the more I saw Nora but increasing. I’d always thought news about Nora triggered my drinking because she wasn’t here, with me, where she was supposed to be. But, Nora was here, in Lynchfield, and when I wasn’t fantasizing about her, I was plotting how to sneak a drink.
Obviously, Nora wasn’t my trigger.
The last thing I wanted to do was talk to my mother. But, considering there was never a good time to talk to my mother, I might as well get it over with.
“You look flushed,” my mom said when she opened the door.
“It’s a fucking oven out there.”
“Sophie, I won’t have that language in my house.”
I stepped outside onto the small square of concrete that was generously called the front porch and repeated, “It’s a fucking oven out here,” and walked inside.