The Fling (6 page)

“You tell that sweet Bettino I say hello,” Mrs. Barstone yelled from across the parking lot. Oksana jumped back, separating herself from Annie, and was instantly relieved that Annie seemed to understand what was happening. They were breathing heavy, smoothing their clothes, Annie fixing her hair. Mrs. Barstone climbed in her Volvo without a glance in their direction.

“I should probably get going,” Annie said as she exhaled.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll see you later.” Before things got really awkward, Oksana hugged her and left her to dig for her keys, but instead of walking calmly back into the gym, Oksana ran. She didn’t want to be left outside alone.

*

Hours later, Oksana was still lost in the fog of that kiss. She wondered how it happened, how she could be so careless to kiss Annie back, right out in the open like that. Mostly, though, she was unnerved by the kiss itself.

The kiss was loaded. The whole situation had been filled with danger, but the kiss changed the name of the game. This was no longer innocent fun. They had both achieved their initial purpose. Annie knew what it was like to be with a woman and Oksana had banished an embarrassingly long sexual drought. But that kiss—Oksana could feel it the moment Annie pressed against her—it was a kiss that was asking for more.

Oksana did the one thing she knew she shouldn’t; she thought about the possibility of more. But what could they have? Nothing. Annie was capitalizing on her free pass. She was taking advantage of that freedom, and Oksana was playing right into that selfishness. Not that it was wrong for Annie to explore herself before she settled down for good, but it was wrong for Oksana to be a part of it.

Annie’s whole existence was dangerous, and the more aggressive she became the more Oksana saw Vivian in her. Vivian had pursued her the same way.

Things with Annie wouldn’t end the same way they had with Vivian, mostly because Oksana and Annie weren’t really together, but Oksana saw herself getting hurt if she wasn’t careful.

“Sana.”

“Hmm?” Oksana blinked, looking away from their mastiff, Vasily, who had been the focus of her blank stare.

“Baba’s talking to you.” Her grandmother, Inna, was a great caretaker and guardian, but she was slightly terrifying. She was exactly five feet tall and she was almost as wide. Like Kat, she liked coloring her hair. Tonight her pumpkin-shaped head was adorned with fruit punch red waves, cropped short. She rarely stopped smoking, and she only spoke English if she absolutely had to. And she didn’t like being ignored.

“Oh.” She switched to Russian as she addressed her grandmother. She glanced at Oksana over the laundry basket between them. “
I’m sorry. What did you say?
”

“
You have a girlfriend now.
”

“
What?
”

“
Give me that shirt. You’ll never fold it.
”

Oksana handed the shirt over and grabbed for a towel out of the basket. “
Who says I have a girlfriend and how come I don’t know about it?
”

“
Ekaterina tells me there’s a girl, and I believe her because all night you’ve been out in space.
”

Oksana turned to her sister, who was half hanging off the recliner and shot the brat her own look. A look that said Kat had violated the sister code.

Kat shrugged and spoke in Russian, the little suck up. “
What do you want me to say?
You’ve been out in space all night. You daydream. You ignore your baba when she is speaking to you.
”

Oksana narrowed her eyes and switched to English. “I’m going to kill you.” She turned to Baba Inna. “
I’m not seeing anyone.
”

“
You are thinking of someone.
”

Oksana didn’t answer or lie. She knew her grandmother could interpret her every expression.

“
Give me your phone.
”

“
It’s…I left it in the little house.
” Oksana shifted, covering her phone with her leg.

“It’s right there,” Kat said before she could stop herself. She was just crapping all over the sister code tonight. Oksana was going to find some reason to ground her very soon.

“Seriously?”

“Sorry.”

Oksana pulled out her phone and handed it over. She’d never regretted teaching her grandmother how to use anything more in her life. As if he felt her pain, Vasily left his spot by the TV and wiggled his giant body between her feet and the couch.

Momentarily comforted by the only mammal in the room who hadn’t turned on her, Oksana watched, absolutely sick to her stomach as Baba went through her text messages. Baba didn’t say a word or make a face, but Oksana knew exactly what see was seeing. Finally, Baba handed the phone back. She picked up a pair of Kat’s jeans

“
You help no one by lying.
” She’d said those words before.

Choked up but tearless, Oksana helped her grandmother take care of the rest of the laundry, ignoring Kat’s apologetic looks from across the room.

Once they were finished, she kissed them both good night and headed back to the little house.

Her cottage behind Baba’s enormous Craftsman had been rented out to random relatives of the local Russian community until Oksana turned eighteen and claimed it as her own baby sister-free zone. Baba didn’t rent it out while she was living at Vivian’s.

Kat followed.

“Sana, wait!” Kat called after her. Oksana stopped and waited.

“What’s up?”

“I’m sorry. Really. Are you mad at me?”

“No, but…” Fuck, this is what she hated. If she and Kat were closer in age and if Oksana wasn’t damn near her mom she could say something like “keep my secrets and I’ll keep yours,” but she couldn’t do that.

She pulled Kat into a tight hug. “No, but let that be a lesson to you. Our grandmother
can
read.”

“I promise I won’t rat you out again.”

“Good. Go to bed.”

Oksana waited until Kat was back inside before she turned and unlocked the door to her place.

The little house was quiet and empty. Oksana changed for bed, checked her e-mail, and before she finally made up her mind to go to sleep, Oksana sent Annie one last text. One last long text.

Hey, are you there?
She typed. Annie responded not even ten seconds later.

Yeah. Just lying in bed. My hands are above the covers. I swear.

I don’t think we should do this. It’s been more than one night.

Twenty painful minutes went by before Annie replied. Oksana knew she had done the right thing. She didn’t like lying to her family and she didn’t like lying to herself even more.

You’re right. I’ll talk to you later.

Good night.

After that, Annie didn’t text back.

Part of Oksana regretted not handling this in person, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to say exactly what needed to be said. Now the guilt didn’t matter. Their fun was over.

The Need for Clarity

There were no tears, but Annie’s throat and her eyes burned so badly she was surprised she wasn’t crying all over herself.

She read the text again and again, reread Oksana’s “fuck off” and her own stupid response, and all she wanted to do was cry. The entire situation was backward. A single text message should not hurt this bad. Oksana shouldn’t mean so much, but as Annie stared at the very final message from her and her own acceptance of what Oksana was really saying, she realized that Oksana meant something to her. She considered why crying seemed like the only sensible reaction and she wanted to cry even more. Her body gave out and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. Two more immediately followed. She wiped her face and blew out a deep breath.

Why was this happening? She was supposed to be the happiest girl this side of the valley. She had a great job, friends, and an amazing fiancé she was about to make hers forever. And the fantasy—it was fulfilled. She got exactly what she wanted. She got her one night and it was perfect. Oksana was perfect. And it ended exactly as it should have, maybe just not when. Annie realized it was the kiss. The texts were one thing. Flirting never hurt anyone, but the kiss must have suggested to Oksana that Annie wanted to continue some sort of relationship between them, outside of their workouts. Annie had asked for one night and Oksana had delivered. She played along, but Oksana wasn’t attached. She wasn’t making cases for why one more time together wouldn’t hurt. Annie’s whole plan had gone exactly as planned with extras thrown in. So why the hell was she crying?

Two years ago, Jeff forgot her birthday completely. He usually forgot until the day of, never asking what Annie wanted or what she’d like to do, but still he managed to pull something together that always made her smile. For her twenty-seventh birthday, he’d forgotten altogether. Megan and Feather saved the day, taking her out for dinner and a movie.

When she got back to her place, Jeff was sound asleep in her bed. He never said a word about it, and Annie never cried about that particular birthday.

Oksana, in an epic feat of responsibility, politely closed the door to any more flirting and innuendo, any more public make-out sessions, and Annie was pushed to a desperate breathing episode in the parking lot of her office, complete with those thick orphanage tears. Luckily, her early crew had already arrived. She had another hour of insanity before her executive producer strolled through the parking lot and witnessed her wiping her face like her cat had just died. She didn’t need that.

She had crossed a line with Oksana at some point, and Oksana had tried to put it right.

Why was this making me so upset,
she wondered as she pathetically scrubbed her face.

Annie knew why, but she couldn’t conceptualize what her heart was telling her. She really did have some sort of feelings for Oksana, but in the sobering sun of this Hollywood morning, Annie couldn’t nail down exactly what those feelings were or where they had come from. But she had to. Annie hated uncertainty. The black-and-white nature of her relationship with Jeff was one of the main reasons she loved him so much. He loved her with no theatrics and she loved him with no demands.

Maybe Annie needed a friend who wasn’t involved with the wedding, wasn’t part of the hometown group of friends, someone who had no stake in Jeff. Or maybe it was something more. She knew plenty of people who weren’t involved in the wedding and plenty more people who absolutely couldn’t care less if she was attracted to women and still engaged to a guy. But Oksana had been the one she’d come clean to and the one she’d slept with. Annie had never been honest with anyone the way she had been honest with Oksana. That had to count for something.

Or maybe Annie really was gay. God, what did that even mean? She wasn’t gay. Jeff or not, she loved guys. Penis was a good thing, but Oksana…

Their time together had been unusually comforting. There were a few moments where Annie was nervous, but all her nerves revolved around making Oksana happy, getting Oksana off, not maximizing every minute of her freebie for the sake of walking faithfully back to Jeff. And the kiss they’d shared? She’d never kissed Jeff like that. There’d never been that sort of heat. Did she really have romantic feelings for Oksana, or did the experience of being with another woman awaken something in Annie that she’d honestly been ignoring?

What did that mean for her and Jeff?

He’d been her one and only adult relationship, and maybe sixty years ago when suffering in silence or suicide—okay, now she was getting bleak—were more suitable options than divorce, she would have pushed all these emotions down with a stiff upper lip, but…

Annie refused to give the next thought more steam. She couldn’t.

She shook her head and closed her eyes. She should have dated more men, and for fuck sure, more women. She’d had seven years to reason with that tiny voice in the back of her mind that told her she was craving more than what any guy had yet to give her, but Jeff was sweet and easy. And she’d agreed to spend the rest of her life with him.

Oh God.
Fat tears rushed faster down her face. She’d become that idiot girl, the one who waits till the last possible moment to try to get to know herself. Talk about selfish.

Annie needed to sort through these feelings. She ached for Oksana’s touch, shivered still every time she thought of the caresses they shared or the way Oksana’s fingers felt inside her pussy, but would she react to another woman the same way?

There was only one way to find out.

Jeff had taken his month, and now she would use the remaining time she had to herself. She’d have to test all theories. Hurting Jeff was the last thing she wanted to do, but she wanted to strap on her garter and walk into a false marriage even less.

No. She loved Jeff and she was going to marry him, but she had to know exactly what she felt and why so she could be honest in her marriage, not some confused mess. She had to be sure—

“Holy shit!” Annie gasped. A knock on her window scared the rest of the thought from her mind. It was Esther, her production coordinator. She frowned at Annie with blatant concern and motioned for her to roll her window down. Annie pressed the button and used that whole second to wipe her face again even though it was pointless. Esther had already seen the tears.