Chapter 9

It was as if nine months hadn't separated them. As soon as Sarah entered the room of the Holiday Inn in Manhattan, they embraced. The embrace turned into kisses. The kisses moved to the revealed parts of the body as they stripped each other. Mostly Melissa stripped Sarah because Melissa had worn only the hotel robe. Soon they were naked on the bed, pressing swollen and leaking pussies together, fiercely kissing. The pressure of clit on clit squishing brought them both to climax.

Panting abated, they finally talked. "You look so beautiful, Sarah."

"You look as beautiful as ever."

"I like the look. So butch and yet so pretty." Melissa said, stroking across the breasts that had grown a size and softened. Not so much jutting, they hung high like juicy pears.

A dark gray summer weight suit with tie had been removed when Sarah entered. "I dressed up for you," she explained. "But it's kind of my uniform now."

"Like slacks and a button down shirt?"

"Unh-hunh. The tie and the suit jacket's for you."

"I love your hair," said Melissa, combing fingers through it.

Sarah cut it even shorter than before and kept it loosely brushed the way a man might. It made her look cute.

"And the make up," Melissa said, kissing the rosy lips that had lost the dark red lipstick. "So subtle and so enhancing. The contrast between masculine and feminine. It's sexy."

"Thanks. And you, as usual, define sexy." She kissed down to Melissa's soft, round, perfect breasts, sucking on the taut pink nipples. She worked on them for awhile, awaiting the heavy breathing and sighs which soon came. Her mouth moved down, loving the sweet give of the soft yet strong belly and the little crater of the button. Hands reached down to her lover's ankles and using skilled pressure slowly stroked upward. Hands and mouth met at the wide open pussy and spent a long time rediscovering the structure and texture and taste while thrilling at the moans and heavy sighs her exploration created.

At last she attacked full bore, aggressively rubbing Melissa's g-spot while suctioning up her clit or lapping at it like a vibrator. Panting became high pitched "ah's" before being silenced as Melissa writhed and sprung a wash of fluid into Sarah's delighted mouth.

"Yum," Sarah smacked her lips.

"So fucking good!" murmured Melissa. "No one gives me pleasure like you do."

"You said fuck, my love."

"It seems a good hyperbole. Not that it's overstating. Not at all. Let me taste me. Then I get to taste you."

The gentle, hot kiss lingered.

Melissa followed Sarah's pattern of kisses down her body. At the pussy, she performed her patented tease, lengthening it cruelly, producing curse words and "bitch" quite often. "You fucking bitch," the most frequent phrase. When Melissa relented and brought Sarah to orgasm, Sarah rocked and writhed and shivered and wailed for over a minute.

"You nearly killed me, you fucking beautiful angel," Sarah mumbled.

"I love you," said Melissa, smiling up from between Sarah's thighs.

Sarah grinned at the beautiful face gleaming with her nectar and replied, "I love you."

Moments later, Melissa sat cross legged, beautifully naked, a beatific smile beaming from her face, a sexy female Buddha, and said, "Mom wants us to meet her at the Carnegie Deli."

"When?"

"In a couple hours."

"Good. I want to show you some things."

Crawling off the bed, Sarah went to the door where she had dropped her stuff immediately upon entering the room and her lover's arms. First she grabbed a joint from a Sucrets box in her purse, lit it, and handed it and the box using the empty side of it for an ashtray to Melissa. Grabbing the large black portfolio, she placed it in Melissa's lap. Her arms and legs enwrapped her lover. She opened the portfolio, revealing a stack of drawings. Her words whispered directly into her lover's ear.

"This is how I remembered you all these months."

Melissa giggled. The drawing mimicked the present: Melissa mid giggle sitting cross legged, her pussy open, a drip of nectar exiting it, her nipples taut. Even Sarah's arms, hands resting at her belly, and legs hooked within legs and Sarah's head, just the top, the short black hair and a tiny bit of nose and a tongue licking her neck, appeared in the drawing.

"It's like a circle," said Melissa.

"More a wave returning to full height," said Sarah.

"Because we've moved on. Time changed us. We're not the same. But still together."

"Yes my love."

"You're even better at drawing. More expressive I think."

"Expressing love and happiness is a lot harder than expressing darker emotions. It's this drawing that improved me. I did like a dozen versions."

"You did good. I envy you. You're so talented what with dancing and the drawing. I don't have a direction either creatively or professionally."

"You do though. You bring light to the darkest corners. You brought me light my love."

"But what... ?" Melissa giggled. "I could be a sex therapist."

"More than that my love. An illuminator, casting joie de vivre into dour shadows."

"Still, I miss painting."

"No more therapy needed."

"Yeah. I took over for you painting clown faces."

"You still have your nightmare paintings?"

"Yeah. They're at home hiding. I ... don't need to remember those nightmares. I'm so glad they stopped."

"I am too. But the memory's still there."

"Of course. It stopped haunting me."

"And your mother?"

"Yes. I really didn't want her to see the paintings you know."

"Yes. I remember the argument we had. But it worked, didn't it."

"That was a weird night," Melissa said contemplatively. "Like some sort of crazy psychodrama. Mom and me weeping like babies and cussing like sailors and slapping each other silly. That night, like the nights that caused our pain, it's like if my life's an ocean with land being events that contain vital emotions and thus memories, like you in my life would be like a continent with huge mountains and tropical forests, those terrible memories would be like Skull Islands, you know, like in King Kong, terrible places filled with fear and horror but small and floating distantly beyond the sight of the inner mind like they hid beyond the curve of the earth. I know they're there of course, but have no reason to explore anymore."

"Being floating islands, they may just pop up."

"Probably. Not too often I hope. And I'll steer widely around them."

"Turn the page, my love."

Melissa moved the drawing to the side, revealing a drawing of a disheveled, handsome man in his early forties with a tie loose and a shirt unbuttoned at the neck. He had a loose smile on his face. "Who's that?"

"My dad coming home late and drunk, amusing himself with office gossip."

"He's handsome. He's lonely."

"He pours booze into that hole. He misses Mom, but even when they lived together, he looked lonely."

"Maybe Mom could cheer him up."

Sarah shook her head. "No. I'm sure he'd enjoy it. They both would. I hear the bed rocking and the moans of some woman and see her contentment in the morning after good sex. But it's another way to fill the hole. Unless he found someone like I found you ... But I think he might be too selfish."

"What would she be like?"

"I don't know. Somebody strong maybe. Somebody willing to call him on his ... drinking and womanizing."

"You wanted to say 'shit'."

They chuckled. Sarah nodded. "You were right about that."

"About what?"

"Using expletives weakens vocabulary."

Melissa thought for a moment and smiled. "I hope even if we can see each other now, that we continue being study buddies. Our discussions really challenged me. They exercised my mind like the exercise machines exercise my body. I did much better in school. But really the discussions and the challenges to find new topics and new ideas and new books to read and discuss and learn new words taught me more than any class."

"I agree. You amaze me."

"How so?"

"I mean I never expected such a thoroughly cheerful soul could accompany a bright and searching mind. I have to admit I thought you'd be an idiot." Melissa giggled at that and Sarah joined her, relieved at her lover taking it as she always did, positively. Sarah continued. "I think that's what toppled my resistance to you, what made me start falling in love with you."

"It's simple really," Melissa explained. "There are times to absorb and learn and broaden your mind, and then there are times to be contented. If you embrace Buddhism, contentment is the ultimate goal in life. Letting the world be the world and you be you, not fighting against it, but accepting it as the way of the universe and accepting yourself in it ... Otherwise it's like trying to walk against a hurricane. You get nowhere or it gets you. Just embrace it and let it take you where it goes."

"And enjoy the ride," Sarah completed.

"Definitely."

"So you're a Buddhist?"

"I don't know. I just like being happy."