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  She whispers into my ear: hold on. Then she disappears into the bedroom, her feet leaving little puddles on the floor.

  What now? I wonder. She didn’t bring anything with her. At least, I didn’t think she did. But never underestimate Jill.

  I think back to a long conversation we had on grass under the stars freshman year. We discussed life, sex, my devout Catholicism, her not-so-devout Catholicism. I had asked her what she really wanted in life. She had smiled and said a big house in Maui and a hot car. I had asked if she would buy me a ticket when she got there. You wouldn’t like it, she had said. It was one of the best conversations of my life, the kind that you think you’ll have so many of when you arrive in college. But, really, that was the only one. I’m glad I had it with Jill.

  She returns, carefully stepping around the puddles she created on her way out so that she won’t slip. Two opened bottles of lager are in her hands. I say, minibar beer is mad expensive so I’ve been told. She grins as she steps back into the tub. Hands me a bottle, says: I’m thirsty.

  How long have we been in this tub I wonder? I take a sip and feel wonderfully cold beer slide down my throat. Jill pulls the shower curtain shut.

  We come close again, sipping our beer and kissing and touching each other. It feels perfect. I giggle and start telling a funny story, but Jill is not in that mood. She nibbles my ear and squeezes my breast hard. My conversation dies but it is a good, easy death, a happy burial. I tip my beer up once more, draining it, then set the empty bottle on the little perch in the corner of the tub.

  If all this foreplay has been Jill’s carefully constructed campaign to make me hungry for her, it’s working. Pulling her into a crushing embrace, I kiss her deeply. She responds. I break off and bend down to suck her nipple, hard. Moaning, Jill pulls my head into her chest and her breast balloons up around my cheeks.

  The water’s growing cold. I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen in hotels. We are both shivering. Jill turns off the tap. We step out and Jill hands me a towel from the wire shelf above the toilet before she grabs one for herself.

  I can’t resist drying her off. I wonder what Brad would make of this, if only he could see it. The thought makes me giggle uncontrollably. Jill asks me what’s up, and my answer’s honest. She giggles, too. It’s a good happy moment, the two of us laughing and looking into each other’s eyes. I want to add something about how Brad would probably want to join in, but I don’t. I’m skating on thin ice as it is, talking about him. Jill’s never liked Brad. I don’t want to cast any kind of a pall over this afternoon, our afternoon that she and I will remember for the rest of our lives. So in my mind I throw Brad into a safe, slam the heavy door shut, and spin the big locking wheel.

  Jill has been rubbing her towel between my legs for so long that the skin is beginning to feel just a little raw but I don’t complain. We make out.

  When we finally are pretty darn dry, Jill tosses her towel onto the floor with a flourish. I follow her example. We walk over the crumpled white terry to the bedroom.

  The jazz music coming out of the television strikes me as cheesy but perfect. Through the window curtain I can tell that the sun’s moved. How long have we been in here? I ask Jill. She walks to check the cell phone inside her abandoned jeans. When she looks up, her face is grim. Ninety minutes to graduation. I will need half an hour at least to get home, meet my parents who have probably already arrived and are waiting for me, throw on my graduation gown, grab my mortarboard hat and hurry to the quad.

  Seeing my face, Jill adds: the room is ours all night.

  Can we come back after? I ask.

  I can if you can. What about Brad?

  What about him?

  Aren’t you two spending the night?

  Were not sleeping together.

  Jill stares, thinking I’m kidding.

  We’re not, I repeat. We’re not sleeping together until we are married.

  What about Africa?

  I shrug. No sex is his idea, I say. If the Peace Corps puts us in one room, that’s his problem.

  Jill approaches, touches my hair. She says her mom will probably go back to her hotel after dinner. I nod and say that my parents probably will, too.

  We arrange a plan. After we each do our dinners and goodbyes with our folks (and Brad, in my case), I will call Jill and we will meet back here. It might not be until after midnight but neither of us mention it because neither of us care. We’re both leaving town tomorrow. This is it. We don’t mention that either.

  Jill’s face morphs into the steely expression I know so well. I can’t believe we were in the bathroom that long, she says.

  Wasted time? I tease.

  She rolls her eyes. I know what she’s thinking. We could have been having hours of sex, instead of hours of foreplay.

  I’m setting an alarm, she mutters. Frowning at her phone, she taps it. It’s hilarious. Methodical, precise Jill. Setting alarms so that if we happen to get carried away in our passion, we will not miss graduation and worry our puzzled loved ones.

  I’ve got the giggles. Probably I’m just nervous about the end of our sojourn here and the big bed with all its promise and terror, but seriously, an alarm is funny. I start tickling Jill.

  Stop, she says, turning away, still tapping at her phone. I know her weak spot: under her armpits. I grab and she shrieks, trying to writhe away.

  I love these moments. Tickling Jill is the only time when I ever see her poise crumble. She becomes helpless, laughing and sobbing, screaming obscenities at me and trying to escape. I think of all the tickle fights we’ve had over the years. She really could’ve gotten away she wanted to, but usually she didn’t. Sometimes it would go on forever, me on top of her, tickling away and her almost crying as she begged me to stop. I don’t happen to be ticklish, myself, so she had nothing to fight back with. And now, as we spin around the room naked, I realize that maybe all this time she never wanted to.

  We crash onto the bed. My head hits her phone, hard. Your fault, she shouts in triumph. She checks the phone one more time before tossing it to the nightstand. We make out, wriggling up toward the pillows.

  Jill yanks the thin comforter, exposing white linen underneath. I move around awkwardly, balancing on knees and hands, as she pulls the cover out from under me. The cool sheets feel lovely. My body’s still damp and I see little dark patches here and there where the sheets absorb the moisture.

  After hopping off the bed to pull the covers off all the way, Jill nearly jumps on top of me. Whoa, I say, letting her wedge her knee between my thighs as she sucks my boobs. Getting a little forward there, aren’t you? She ignores me. Good. I close my eyes. The hum I felt when we were in the shower returns. The vibrations are inside of me but somehow they are going through me, like some science fiction radio signal that tunes your body higher and higher until you lose your mind.

  Jill nestles at my side and she initiates a slow, steady, tantalizing make-out. Her calf slides up and down over my warm wet bush. It feels SO GOOD. I know everybody says that, but by God, when you feel it for yourself it is a huge freakin’ deal. Part of me considers that it’s just as well Jill and I never did this freshman year, because I never would have let her out of bed.

  My thought jumps from that place over to another place, like a propeller plane island-hopping. I replay in my mind The Offer, something I have replayed many times.

  Jill and I are walking back from a movie in town. It’s early enough in our relationship that we still don’t know everything about each other. The freshman dorm is in sight.

  She stops suddenly.

  What? I say.

  You want to sleep together? she asks.

  I blink.

  She stares at me, calm. Her eyes say that this is a perfectly reasonable proposition.

  I finally beg off with stuttered words. We are roommates, uh, and besides, I’m not sure I’m into girls, and, uh…

  She nods. Well, the offer stands, she says. She begins walking again and I foll
ow. She changes the subject.

  The weirdest thing about it was that things never got weird between us. She offered, I declined. Over. I was the one who started joking about The Offer. Then over the years she would keep saying: The Offer stands. And I would look at her and roll my eyes.

  And now, finally, the starfish got her clam. Jill’s face kisses down my stomach. I squeeze her hand hard, looking away.

  Her nose buries itself in my pubic hair. All I can think is, I never used any soap in that…shower…

  She takes her time, separating my labia with her fingers and licking the folds high and low, high and low. My eyes close. I wonder if from now on ever time in my life when I hear jazz, I will think of this. I try to lift my knee and spread wider, but Jill’s crouched over my leg. She feels my movement and somehow settles gracefully between my thighs while never pausing her ministrations high and low…high and low…

  I hear a long, soft sigh. How can Jill make such a sound while she’s down there, I wonder. Then I realize the sigh came from me. I squeeze Jill’s hand; she squeezes back.

  I feel transported, in the way that someone on Star Trek might feel transported. I like sci-fi. Jill has always kidded me about my Star Trek thing. I want to tell her now about my transported feeling but my friend is occupied and seems somewhere else right now. I feel her really getting into it. She eats me the way a cat that was weaned too early sometimes sucks: eyes closed, hypnotized, not thinking or feeling anything but the sucking.

  Something shifts inside of me, ba-thump, and I feel my vibrations begin to swell up like a wave. But Jill senses it too and eases off until my ocean has passed from storm to whitecaps. Then she starts in earnest once more, sliding her lips over my mons as she eats, massaging my breast with her free hand. This happens a second, then a third time. She plays my body, a master conductor, building my nascent orgasm from the foundation, orchestrating ever-more power behind it. I have read about lovers playing each other’s body like an instrument in the trashy romances I secretly read. Up until now, I had thought it was just purple prose.

  Jill is building my vibrations again, and this time she slides two fingers in and out of my vulva as she sucks my aching clitoris. I know this time she’s going all the way. The idea excites me in a manner that transcends simple sex. It’s a sharing of something, it means something, in a way that only her and I will ever understand.

  I’ve had orgasms before, all d.i.y. of course. But this one lifts me up (TRANSPORTS me) in every way: in spirit, and mind, and flesh. I rise off the mattress. My scream hurts my own ears. I hope we don’t have neighbors.

  Now Jill is above me, kissing my trembling lips. I whisper that I can’t feel my legs. My eyes are still closed but I know she’s grinning. She snuggles in tight, caressing my shaky body.

  After I have more or less returned to planet Earth, I stare at Jill as she kisses me softly: kiss, kiss, kiss. Her eyes are open and I see little flecks of gold in her blue irises that I never have seen before. I run my fingers through her blonde hair. It curls naturally at the bottom under her ears, a little bob that makes her locks bounce jauntily whenever she trots or runs. It feels softer than I thought it would. I know my own hair is a little rough, prone to snags. If I don’t comb out my curls every morning there’s hell to pay.

  What are you thinking about, she asks. I realize I have been running my fingers through her hair and staring in her eyes forever. I want to tell her I love her, that I fell for her the moment we met. That she is the only person I will ever feel this way about. That I would consign my soul to eternal damnation happily if she would only love me back, love me and only me for the rest of her life.

  But I know now what I have always known: Jill will never take anyone into her heart.

  One night long ago, when we were both very drunk and I had not yet met Brad, I asked her what kind of girl she saw herself ending up with. She hemmed and hawed. Maybe this kind, maybe that kind. Ha ha, I slurred, trick question: you’re never going to be with anybody because you love your freedom more than love itself. She had stared at me for a long time and then shook her head. You know me too well, she had said.

  I know her too well.

  Maybe if I gave her the speech, the speech that I have been preparing for so long, she would say yes.

  I love you, Jill. I don’t want to be with Brad, or anybody else. I want to be with you. And I know by telling you this I’m risking our friendship, and the thought of our friendship changing or God forbid you not wanting to talk to me anymore, that thought scares me more than I can describe. But if you will just let me love you, and stop your one-night stands, and give me all the love that I know is locked deep inside you—Jill, then ask me for anything because I will give you everything and I will never leave you.

  I don’t give her the speech. I smile and make a wisecrack. She laughs.

  My body turns. I push Jill down onto her back. My, aren’t we presumptuous, she says. I don’t answer. I kiss and lick her boobs, loving their clean taste. Jill squirms; she had mentioned once that her nipples were extremely sensitive, and now I know it’s true.

  Sighing, I shift my body down, lifting her knee so that I can get in. You don’t have to, I hear her whisper. Feigning deafness, I settle in and wrap my arms around her upper legs. Such beautiful skin. Creamy and perfectly soft on the inside of her thighs, just like I knew it would be. I can’t resist sucking big mouthfuls of it. No hickeys, she says shakily. I’m wearing a short skirt to work on Monday. I ignore her and suck especially hard, ripping my lips from the inside of her thigh with a violent slurp. Her head falls back and she moans.

  Time is drawing short. I want this to be long and beautiful but the alarm is in the back of my mind and who knows if a post-graduation recap tonight will even happen. Closing my eyes, I lower my face to her Venus and feel her stubbly mound slide over my lips.

  Wowweeee, she murmurs.

  My mouth opens and my tongue snakes down, over, and then inside like a curious animal. I find her clitoris immediately, swollen and thrusting up like an angry pea. It’s so good, better even than I imagined it would be.

  Ellie, she gasps. Her hand touches my head tenderly. She almost asks if I’ve ever done this before; I can feel the words on her lips. But she doesn’t. Because this means something and she doesn’t want to make jokes. Neither do I.

  I begin moaning as I eat her. I have nothing left to hide. I let it all out, the hunger, the ecstasy, everything. I can’t play Jill’s body like she played mine, I don’t have the skill. But what I lack in technique I make up in enthusiasm.

  Ellie, she whispers again. Her voice trembles. Ellie, I can’t believe we waited this long.

  Then she moans, a long, drawn-out sound of a dying girl. A tremor shakes her. I break off and nuzzle her thighs to brush off my tears so she won’t see.

  Tug, tug: she’s pulling me up. I rise, still between her legs in the missionary position. Over her, my eyes stare into hers. After a long moment, she opens her mouth…

  Braaaaak-braaaaak-braaaaak. The alarm.

  The moment passes. Jill gives me her old grin. Showtime, she says. A playful hand slaps my butt. Let’s go!

  I try not to fall down as my shaky legs step into my jeans. Later tonight when we return, if we return, I will give her the speech. I will risk everything. Though I’m already pretty sure how it will end, I am willing to gamble. Because I cannot spend the rest of my life wondering what if.

  But I will know the moment I see it in her eyes. If I lose my friend, my oxygen, at least I have a private hotel room here away from my family and my fiancée and my friends where I can cry. I will wait after Jill has gone. My tears will belong only to me.

  The End

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  The 420 Uh-Oh

  By Anne Eton

  Description:

  1972. Charlotte Hammarskjold, an innocent and voluptuous graduate student in San Diego, finds herself in deep trouble when her new boyfriend turns out to be a 420 (marijuana) smuggling kingpin. But Regina, a sheriff’s deputy, has fallen for Charlotte. Hard.

  Can an awkward F/F romance survive the FBI, personal boundary issues, and 15 overdue interlibrary loan books?

  The 420 Uh-Oh is a funny and sweet story with some explicit scenes.

  Excerpt follows!

  The 420 Uh-Oh

  Excerpt:

  Can you scoot forward a bit?”

  Charlotte obeyed. Regina slid down to sit on the floor where Charlotte had been, splaying her legs wider to fit her facing-away guest between them.

  “How much do you charge?” Charlotte asked. She sighed as Regina massaged her back. “Whatever it is, I can afford it.”

  “My rates are very reasonable.”

  Charlotte said nothing. She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  After a few minutes, Regina’s hands slid under Charlotte’s arms. Regina cupped her breasts gently.

  “Oh, my,” Charlotte murmured.

  “Too forward?”

  “Extremely.”

  “You’ll have to call the police.”

  “I haven’t had good luck with them lately.”