Authors: Peggy Barnett

Dear Abby (5 page)

BOOK: Dear Abby

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"Thank you,"
Ixazaluoh
says and kisses Abby until her eyes roll back into her head and Abby's sure
she's going to come again without either of them touching her below the waist.

And then the cupboard door is open, and Abby
is alone.

Grinning, giggling softly to herself like a
twitterpated
schoolgirl, Abby makes her way quickly back to
her patio chair. She feels good. God, she feels
great.
The glasses and
bowl have been cleared away, but her towel, her bag, her laptop are right where
she left them. She decides they'll be fine for a few minutes more and heads
towards the pool. She can't stroll through the compound reeking of satisfaction
and sex. Her pussy is still slick and she relishes the soft slide between her
thighs while she walks.

It only occurs to her after she's had a bit
of a paddle and returned to fetch her bag, to wonder how
Ixazaluoh
knew her name.

☼

Abby's been on the keen edge of uncomfortable
arousal since she got back from the pool. She showers, changes, and then
squirms her way through the very standard dry and boring buffet dinner. It's no
use. She was going to go to the disco to review the DJ but, no, god, not like
this. Not with every inch of her skin over sensitized and begging for touch,
not with her pussy leaking and greedy, not with all those stupid young
douchebags around—because all it would take is one look under his eyelashes and
Abby would have one of them hauled into the bathroom like
that
. She
wouldn't even let him speak, just shove him into the cubicle and impale herself
on his cock, and no, no, a cock is not at
all
what she wants right now.

She rushes back to her room as soon as she's
done eating. She's got grand, desperate plans to finger herself in order to
just get
rid
of the shivering itch at the back of her cunt. She wishes
she had packed a vibrator, one of the long slim ones that reach inside so
prettily. But she never checks her luggage and the last thing she needs is for
some overzealous security guard to open her bag in search of the strange, blunt
object he saw on the scanner.

She uses the handle of her electric
toothbrush instead. Abby throws herself onto the bed, skims off her panties—
uhg
, soaked, could everyone smell it over dinner?—and
chucks them into a corner. She tucks a pillow under her ass and crooks her
knees right up to her chin and dives in. She strokes the cold plastic of the
handle over the roof of her gash over and over again, getting the
chittering
little thing right up against her g-spot,
rubbing her clit in rough, tight circles with the fingers in order to just get
it over with. She has to come and she has to come
now.
She can't wait
any more, she can't
stand
it.

She thinks of
Ixazaluoh
,
bites her own bottom lip and tries to recall the taste of
Ixazaluoh's
lip gloss, and that sends her crashing over the cusp so quickly that it steals
all the breath from her.

She falls back panting, legs splayed
unashamedly, black dress rucked up around her waist. And she's
grinning,
fuck
is she grinning, because this is
crazy. This is just mad. Thirty-two years of being straight as a goddamn arrow
and suddenly, after one grope in a closet, Abby's a lesbo?

No, no, it's not as simple as that. She can't
cheapen
Ixazaluoh
that way.

Can't cheapen
herself
that way, if she's honest.
Which she rarely is when it comes
to herself and sex.
She never thought she was very good at it, the sex
stuff, the relationship stuff, the finding-a-husband stuff; but maybe it was
because she was doing it wrong. Maybe it was because she was doing it because
she was doing it the way people said she
should
, instead of doing the
stuff that she
wanted
to do. Maybe it was because she was dating the
boys her mother set her up with instead of the men that her best friend Vanessa
kept shoving at her. Maybe it was because she was treating each date like a job
interview for a husband instead of just a night out where she can indulge in
another person—in their laugh, in their quirks, in their body.

And, huh, that's new and interesting:
thinking in non-gender-specific pronouns.
Phwoar
.

So, filled to the brim with afterglow and
bravery, Abby lets herself go to the one place she never can when she's being
introspective: work.

She's had sex with a woman and she wants more
and she feels
great
. She can think about work, and not shy away. She can
think about how she writes travel articles about five-star luxury resorts
instead of saying no, and quitting her job, and writing a book about hiking
through
Kyuushuu
.
Instead of
writing articles about first world entitlement and social attitudes.
About how paying the resort
workers well is
a very
good and that, but it's the way the country and the culture and the people are
exotified
and turned into commodities that is the
next hurdle. About all the things Abby wants to say when someone writes
Dear
Abby
, and doesn't.
When she really, really
should.

Abby rolls onto her side and sets the wet
hairbrush on her other pillow and giggles some more. There's a delightful
burn in the inside of her hips, in the quivering of her quads, and she loves
it.

Okay, two spectacular orgasms in one day and
suddenly she's grown the
cajones
to admit to herself
that the one common factor in all the things that make her miserable is her
inability to ask for what she
wants
instead of just
doing
it.

Like
Ixazaluoh
just
does it
.

Like how
Ixazaluoh
just did
her.

Abby thinks she might just be falling in love
with
Ixazaluoh
, or she would if it wasn't absolutely
ridiculous to be falling in love with a woman whose name she didn't even know
yesterday. And what good would
being
in love with
Ixazaluoh
do, anyway? Abby's only here for another three
days, and she's no John Smith, to be arrogant enough to think that she could
offer Pocahontas a 'better life' in her first world city, to be entitled enough
to think that
Ixazaluoh
would want to come home with
her like a living souvenir. Abby knows that she'd love
Ixazaluoh
regardless, but what would the people around them say?

That Abby got played for her green card. Or
that
Ixazaluoh
got tricked by a
gringo.

Either way, nothing
generous.

So no, Abby is not allowed to fall in love
with
Ixazaluoh
.

The revelations are coming fast and loose
today
,
Abby thinks.
Maybe Vanessa was right and I just need to get laid and stop
thinking myself into knots all the time. She'll be pleased to hear it
when I get home, the lovely tart.

And then the fear strikes her, hard and
honest, and terribly, depressingly familiar.
Oh, god, how am I going to feed
my cat? Pay my rent? I can't just quit.

Suddenly filled with chill realism, her
bravery shattered like ice, Abby quietly goes to the
ensuite
.
She washes her hands and her hairbrush, cleans herself up, and climbs into her
serviceable cotton nightie. She makes sure she hasn't left any stains on her
dress and hangs it up on the railing on the balcony so the smell of sex will be
cleared from the fabric by the morning dew.

Cowed by her own fear, Abby sits at her
laptop and diligently taps out two thousand words worth of praise for the
Riviera
Luxuria
and emails it off to her editor. She
answers three
Dear
Abby
s
,
and sends the column to the magazine, and then shuts her computer down and goes
to bed.

It takes counting backwards from one hundred
three times for Abby to fall asleep.

☼

There's a knock on the door just before dawn.
When Abby looks through the peephole, it's
Ixazaluoh
,
holding a stack of towels that Abby didn't call the front desk for.

For a moment, Abby is torn.
Ixazaluoh
makes her think things she shouldn't. And then
she thinks,
fuck. Why the fuck not? Why can't I have this if I want it? It's
clear that she does! And it's only for a few more days.

She flicks open the locks and wrenches open
the door.
Ixazaluoh
parts the stack of towels with
one hand and shows off a glass bottle of what Abby can only guess is
a liquor
. It is whitish and cloudy. Silently,
Ixazaluoh
takes a step over the threshold, and sets the
towels down on the credenza just inside the hallway.

She doesn't ask if she can come in, she just
pushes Abby against the door frame and bites her mouth. Abby
squeals.
Ixazaluoh's
teeth actually draw blood and she licks it off
Abby's lip. "What a lovely offering," she says.

The cut stings, but Abby mashes her lips back
against her lover's and draws her into the room, locking the door behind her.
Determined to show
Ixazaluoh
how much she wants
her in return, Abby herds her towards the bed.
Ixazaluoh's
knees hit the edge and she sits hard, drawing Abby down with her. Abby devours
her mouth, wet and warm and wonderful, until both of them are panting like
racehorses, chests crushed together and riding each other's thighs.

"Off, off," Abby demands, pulling
at the buttons that are keeping her hands from
Ixazaluoh's
beautiful,
hot
skin.

"Patience,"
Ixazaluoh
says, and before Abby can get her bearings, has rolled them over so she is
straddling Abby's pelvis. "A drink, first."

Ixazaluoh
rolls off Abby and
fetches two water glasses from the
ensuite
. She
somehow manages to lose her shirt and shorts between the bathroom and the bed,
but Abby isn't complaining.
Ixazaluoh
is wearing dark
blue lace and it makes her dusky skin shine gold in the soft light of the
sunrise that is splashing in through the windows. She also fetches the small
glass bottle from the credenza.

Abby wiggles out of her nightdress and props
a pillow behind her head. When
Ixazaluoh
comes back
to the bed and finds her totally nude, she smiles. It is the
more
smile,
the smile with something else underneath it, and it makes Abby's toes curl.

"So eager,"
Ixazaluoh
says. "Here."

There is maybe two fingers worth of liquor in
the glass she offers, and Abby raises herself on one elbow and opens her mouth
instead of taking it.
Ixazaluoh
sets down the second
glass and the bottle and swings herself back across Abby's waist. The lace
between her legs scratches lightly against Abby's bellybutton and she resists
the urge to giggle, ticklish.
Ixazaluoh
presses the
rim of the glass to Abby's lower lip and tilts it up.

It smells like honey. It tastes like burning.

Abby chokes on her first mouthful, and
Ixazaluoh
throws her head back and laughs. When they've
both caught their breath,
Ixazaluoh
drains off the
whole glass and holds the second out to Abby. She takes it but doesn't sip,
peering at the cloudy contents dubiously.

"What the heck is it?"

"
Balché
,"
Ixazaluoh
says.

"It's—" Abby coughs, the sting
crashing against her sinuses. "Smooth?"

Ixazaluoh
laughs more.
"It's old fashioned," she admits. "But necessary. The
conquistadores
added anise and rum to try to
make it more palatable, after the Maya priests tricked them into thinking the
people were dying when they banned it. But that's not proper. This is the way
it's meant to be done. This is the recipe the gods provided."

"What's in it?"

"Honey, water,
the roots and bark of the
Balché
tree.
Lonchocarpis
voilaceus
, in the Latin.
It ferments, like the
Norse god's mead." She grins, and licks her lips, slow and luscious. They
both sip again, back and forth until the second cup is empty. Then
Ixazaluoh
rolls them onto their sides, tucking Abby's head
against her breasts like a child. "Gods like honey."