Content notes: hand sex, masturbation, getting caught
It was officially cold enough that I couldn’t just throw my winter coat on over my threadbare Spice Girls tank top and short shorts to take out the trash without risking my nipples slicing holes in Baby and Posh’s respective faces. I crossed my arms in front of my tits as I walked back to my apartment building in the snow, so as not to draw the attention of the elderly gay couple who somehow always managed to start fucking the exact moment that they spotted me out their fourth-floor window.
I was ten winters deep in Chicago snow and it never got easier. My phone buzzed in my coat. It buzzed again. For a moment in the haze of the cold, I just let the phone vibrate against my pubic bone for warmth when I remembered — ‘wait, nobody ever calls me.’ I uncrossed my arms and quickly stuck my hand in my pocket.
Call from Winnie.
I got so nervous that I dropped the phone. It skidded across the ice. I dropped to my hands and knees to grab it before it stopped ringing.
I scraped my knee on the ice — ass hanging out of my shorts, my coat creating an absurd tent around me while I bent down to bark into the phone
“WHAT’S WRONG?”
“Jesus, babe, can’t a girl get a ‘Hey, Winnie. Good to hear your voice. How’s my hottest friend doing?’”
I stood up and noticed my both of my knees were bleeding. Through a grimace, I halfheartedly took the bait.
“Winnie…something, something, you’re hot.”
“Close enough. Pat, tell me you’re coming home for Thanksgiving this year.”
Winnie had this way of asking questions that didn’t leave room for answers she didn’t like. I hesitated.
I looked up to confirm that my neighbors had, in fact, witnessed my fall and were jerking each other off whilst watching me complete this phone call. I flipped them the bird. They began to yank harder. I turned my back to them.
“Winnie, you know I hate to travel during the holidays.”
“But Pat,” she pouted, “do you really want to be in Chicago in NOVEMBER?”
I laughed. “Objection, your honor, the prosecution is leading the witness”
“Yes, I am leading the witness to WATER. To the beach. To the fucking sun. To my parents’ hot tub!”
Fuck, what I would do for a little heat. I didn’t even like hot tubs — I hate to be partially submerged — but I liked being in a hot tub with Winnie. I liked to be just steam and bubbles away from Winnie and Winnie’s lips and Winnie’s nipples. I liked an excuse to be naked with Winnie. I liked an excuse to watch her ass make contact with the warm water so that I could see her shudder in relief as she let the water wash over her. I liked to see her get hot and flushed. I liked to feel her leg brush my leg under the water.
Here was the problem with Winnie’s parents’ hot tub: Winnie’s parents.
Art by Laura Lee Benjamin
Winnie and I realized embarrassingly late into our lifelong friendship that not only were we both queer — our intense, inseparable summers capped off with sleepovers every night that waged on through college and even into a bit of Winnie’s law school days before I finally moved out of Florida for good were a little more than platonic. Could you really blame us though? Growing up repressed as fuck in Stripmall, Florida. Equal parts Stepford and Bumfuck. Winnie’s parents undoubtedly smelled the gay on us long before we did and had always been suspicious of me. Two Christmas Eves ago, we finally confirmed their suspicions. We were changing out of our swimsuits after splitting a celebratory bottle of wine in her parents’ hot tub. She’d passed the bar and I’d gotten published. Neither of us could decide who was happier for whom — we drank straight out of the bottle, both our hands around its neck. I was the kind of drunk where peeling off my one-piece felt like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube.
“Can you help?” I asked not even trying to be cheeky.
Winnie had just stepped out of her bathing suit bottom. She was also no longer quite steady on her feet, so just the motion of stepping out of the leg hole and moving towards me was enough to send her face-first into my chest. I caught her by the shoulders. I was just tall enough that when she looked up at me, her nose touched my nose. I could smell the wine on her lips. We both laughed. The absurdity of being piss-drunk off half a bottle of wine in her childhood home. Her half naked, me pretending to be modest when we’d seen each other’s bodies nude more than we’d ever even seen our own. She steadied herself and kissed me — quickly, just a peck. We laughed again. She began to slide my swimsuit down my shoulders. I giggled and gave her another peck, as if to thank her for her help. She returned mine with another. This was the first time I tasted the wine on her lips. I returned her peck with a long, lingering kiss this time, intent on tasting the wine not just on her lips, but in her mouth. We went back and forth with deeper and deeper kisses, breaking to laugh, our wine-stained grins growing. She slid my swimsuit all the way off and attempted to take off her top. Her bikini was a high fashion, complicated tangle of straps and cords that I could not decipher. She helped me help her. I felt like the virgin underdog in a movie trying to undress the most popular girl in school.
And maybe I was. To say that she was out of my league was an understatement. She was a work of art. If I was drawn crudely and staccato by a 1990’s mouse in Microsoft Paint, she was an oil painting blended stroke by stroke, caked-on canvas and wet to the touch. I wanted my hands to be covered with her. I wanted her under my fingernails. I wanted her in the creases of my palm. If you tried to retrieve even a fleck of her out of my lifeline, you’d have to unravel my skin all over, exposing every nerve ending, making it so that even the slightest breeze set me ablaze.
She threw me onto her twin-sized bed flat on my back. She straddled me, and I could feel that her cunt against my stomach was as slick as my own. This foreplay had gone on for years. Her hands were in my hair she kissed my forehead, my forehead, my mouth, my mouth, my mouth, my mouth, my neck, my mouth, my neck, my sternum. She slid her pussy down my body to make a little more room. My sternum, my neck, my neck, my stomach, my pussy. My clit. Just a kiss. A soft kiss, a flick of the tongue. I moaned. She continued to caress my clit as she slid down further. Her knees were now on the ground. Her left hand grabbed my ass. Her right made its way to her own clit. I felt her own pleasure as she moaned into me. My heart was racing. She stopped touching herself and plunged her index finger inside of me whilst continuing to tend to my clit. My eyes rolled back in pleasure. I slammed my fist against her nightstand table.
“What was that?” she hissed.
I was sex dumb by that point. “Oh sorry, your nightstand.”
“No, fuck, my parents are back from Christmas Eve mass” she shout-whispered.
“No the fuck, they’re not!” I shout-whispered back.
“Quick, get under the covers, pretend we just fell asleep!”
“Pretend we just fell asleep naked?!”
“Pull the covers all the way up!”
We made a little cocoon for ourselves under the blankets, both of us still panting from sex and trying to remain as quiet and still as possible. I could just barely make out her face as her father opened the door letting some light in. A droplet of sweat collected on her brow. Fuck, she was so beautiful.
Winnie’s father, I’m sure, saw two bodies under the covers, saw two swimsuits strewn on the ground, saw the empty wine bottle, heard silence where there had just been commotion.
“Winnie,” her father sighed, “please make sure your friend is home safe before breakfast with your mother tomorrow.”
Winnie winced at me and mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
I mouthed, “I should go!”
We heard the door shut behind us.
Winnie peeled the blankets off of us. “Pat, stay. I’ll set an alarm. We get up early enough neither of our parents will even notice.”
There’s really no disagreeing with Winnie. Even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, she’d already curled up into me for the night. In just a few moments, Winnie had confirmed two suspicions I’d had for years: Winnie was a top and Winnie was little spoon.
We were much closer to thirty than we were to sixteen, but the fear of getting caught by parents still made my heart flutter. I spent the night but I didn’t sleep, too excited to be lying naked next to someone so fucking beautiful. I couldn’t stand to miss a moment of holding her naked body in mine. I left the wee hours of Christmas morning and I hadn’t seen Winnie in person since.
“Hellooo, Pat, are you there?” Winnie piped through the phone.
“Um, yeah,” I said.
“Thanksgiving?”
“I’m coming.”
