Falling for Jillian Ashley: A Carlsbad Village Lesbian Romance Page 21

  “Good morning,” Sally whispered.

  “Good morning,” Amy replied and then yawned.

  “Sorry to wake you.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Amy said.

  “And I’m sorry for everything else too.”

  “Me too, baby.”

  Amy scootched over to make room for Sally on the couch and Sally happily laid down next to her, tucking some stray locks of Amy’s brown hair behind her ear.

  “I shouldn’t have attacked you like I did,” Sally said, and then grinned impishly. “I promise I won’t complain the next time you wake me up by going down on me.”

  Amy giggled. But then she sucked her lips between her teeth and shyly met Sally’s eyes.

  “I have a confession to make,” she began. “I kind of did go down on you as a sort of insurance policy. I wanted to!” she hurriedly added. “And I totally loved it. But I was also thinking it would—”

  “—get me off your back?” Sally finished for her.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s just that I have trouble shutting my mind off sometimes.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Sally said.

  “And when that happens, I just can’t stay in bed doing nothing.”

  Sally nodded. She could see Amy’s point. It wasn’t ideal, admittedly. Sally always was the type who enjoyed waking up next to girlfriends, feeling the weight of another body next to her on the mattress, feeling the heat radiating off them onto her…Even if the woman was zonked out cold and snoring like a chainsaw, oblivious to the world around her, it was still companionship.

  But wasn’t it still companionship if when she woke up, she found her girlfriend in another room, ready to say “good morning” to her and blow her a kiss? What’s more, Sally didn’t want Amy to feel constrained around her. Amy was bright, ambitious, creative and motivated, all of which Sally found super attractive. And, Amy had this really cool activist streak in her, which Sally found hot as fuck for some reason.

  “It’s all good,” Sally said, running her thumb along Amy’s bottom lip.

  “But I totally see your point too,” Amy said right away. “I’m, like, this weirdo girlfriend who hops out of bed at strange hours, like I can’t stand being next to you anymore.”

  Sally laughed.

  “So, that’s not how I see it,” she stated. “At least not anymore.”

  “Wait, you saw it that way?” Amy asked, panic in her eyes.

  “Well, maybe not quite that way,” Sally amended. “But I was kind of bothered by the fact that you can’t seem to switch off sometimes, even while on vacation.”

  Amy nodded.

  “I know,” she said ruefully.

  “But you know what? You’re just being you and I could get used to it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Because it’s not like I don’t want to stay in bed with you! It’s just that you’re sleeping and I’m wide awake and…” Amy sighed deeply. “There’s just so much I want to do!”

  “Is this one of things you’d like to do?” Sally asked, sliding her hand into Amy’s shorts, over her shaved mound, until her fingers found those silky lips.

  Amy gasped and her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Sally bit her lip.

  “Erotic dreams?” she asked when her fingers discovered just how incredibly wet Amy was.

  Slack-jawed, Amy nodded and started rocking her pelvis against Sally’s hand.

  “I was horny when I came out here after eating you out—Oh, fuck!”

  Sally had just slipped two fingers inside and now Amy’s swollen clit was also being swiped gently with her thumb.

  “Oh, fuck, Sally…”

  Amy buried her face against Sally’s chest, whimpering until the whimpers became rapid puffs of breath and the rapid puffs of breath became cute little mewling sounds which kept increasing in pitch until…

  “I’m coming!” Amy told Sally’s breasts.

  And then Amy was shuddering next to her and Sally was feeling her fingers inundated with more arousal and squeezed by Amy’s inner walls.

  “Back to bed?” Sally whispered when Amy came down from the high.

  “Yes, please.”

  Chapter 33

  Saturday morning arrived and it was time to go back home.

  “Ready, baby?” Amy asked, standing by the door to their suite with her luggage. “Lyft will be here in ten.”

  “I’m coming!” was Sally’s reply, called out from the bedroom.

  Amy smirked to herself.

  “But I haven’t even touched you!” she called back.

  Sally emerged from the direction of the bedroom.

  “Very funny,” she said. “Anyway, that’s everything.”

  “Yay! One last kiss before we depart our magnificent palace?”

  “Most definitely.”

  Amy looped her arms around the taller Sally’s neck and brought their lips together, tasting Sally’s lip gloss as she slid her tongue into her girlfriend’s mouth and the kiss deepened.

  Breaking for air after a few moments, Amy turned to the room and said, “Bye, room! Thanks for everything!”

  As the Lyft driver maneuvered through the city on the way to the airport, Amy watched the passing urban scenery, ruminating on things while Sally took a phone call from her mother.

  They had survived their first trip together, which Amy took to be a good sign. And the trip had been fabulous! Amy was so relieved that in Sally, she had found a girlfriend who loved exploring and wandering around a city like San Francisco as much as she did. Every day they had been out, visiting, seeing and doing all manner of things in all parts of the city. Even Thursday, when it rained all day, they had bought umbrellas in the hotel’s gift shop and spent the day visiting another art museum and then riding the BART to different parts of town to enjoy shopping or eating seafood or just walking in the rain.

  And the sex…

  In the back seat of the Honda Passport they were riding in, Amy had to cross her legs at the memory of all the sex they’d had. Their carnal fun had certainly been kicked up a notch during this trip. Eating Sally out in the elevator bank on the eleventh floor had been but one example of their daring public or quasi-public sexual exploits. Well past midnight one night, Sally had pulled a completely nude Amy out onto their suite’s balcony and fucked her mercilessly with the strap-on, Amy covering her mouth with her hand so as not to scream out in ecstasy with each thrust. And on that rainy Thursday, because the city had been remarkably devoid of people who were out and about, they had ended up in Golden Gate Park fingering each other under an enormous tree.

  The only black mark during their trip had been that slight blip of an argument on Wednesday morning. Amy had to admit to herself that it had not only scared her at the time but it was still scaring her now.

  Annabeth.

  Three years ago, Amy had been in a serious relationship with a woman from Oceanside named Annabeth. They had even lived together in Oceanside in a cute little apartment within walking distance of the pier. But then Annabeth had started getting annoyed with how much work Amy would bring home from the office and then when that was done, how much work Amy would put in writing her then nascent Lesbeing blog.

  They started fighting a lot, with Annabeth accusing Amy of only being half-invested in their relationship; asking her why they had even bothered moving in together.

  Naturally, Amy had defended herself. In those days, she had been relatively new at the North County Women’s Rights Group and so had felt a need to work extra in order to prove herself. And her new blog was her way of decompressing.

  Both of those explanations were true. But even back then, Amy had known that they were true…to a point. Yes, she had been new at her job but she hadn’t been expected to work beyond office hours as much as she did. And, yes, the blog was a great decompression activity but spending more time with Annabeth doing almost anything else would have also been
a great way to decompress too.

  No, the real truth was, that Amy liked working as much as she did—it was almost like a drug for her—and in the end, her relationship with Annabeth had become a casualty of that.

  Was history going to repeat itself with Sally, she wondered? Okay, Sally had ended up being cool about the whole getting-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-work-on-the-blog thing. But Amy was worried. She was worried because over the past couple of days, as their vacation was getting closer and closer to ending, she had recognized the familiar stirrings in herself, the familiar need to get stuff done. She had even spent quite a bit of brainpower on considering what she was going to get working on as soon as Monday came around and she returned to the office.

  Shit…

  “Is everything okay?” Amy asked when she heard Sally tell her mother goodbye.

  “Yeah, fine. She was just calling to invite me out to dinner tonight but I told her that we’re flying back from San Francisco and that I most likely will just want to relax the rest of the day. Then I got an earful because I hadn’t told her I was even going to San Francisco.”

  Amy was surprised.

  “You didn’t tell your mother?”

  Sally rolled her eyes.

  “Trust me, if I had, all she would have done was tell me which doctor friends of hers have lesbian daughters living in the Bay Area and how I should give one of them a call.”

  Amy smirked.

  “Oh my goodness. Your mother and I definitely need to have a talk. Because you are soooooo taken!”

  ***

  While waiting in the line to show their IDs and boarding passes to the TSA agent, Sally leaned over and whispered to Amy, “Oh, by the way, you had left your blue vibe on the nightstand back at the hotel and so I just popped it into my carry-on bag.” And here, Sally patted the handle of the Coach roll-away suitcase by her side. “When we get home, remind me to give it back to you.”

  Amy swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

  “Wait…what?” she asked.

  Sally took a moment to look around to make sure no one else was listening and repeated what she had just told Amy.

  Amy blinked.

  “It’s in there?” she asked, using her eyes to indicate the bag.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Next!” the TSA agent called out in a Southern drawl.

  Sally stepped forward, presented her I’m-not-a-terrorist documents and was waved forward, Amy keeping her eyes on the Coach bag as Sally wheeled it towards the X-ray line.

  “Next!” the same TSA agent repeated.

  Still keeping her eyes on Sally’s bag, Amy stepped forward and wordlessly handed over her driver’s license.

  “Ma’am?” the TSA agent prodded. When Amy didn’t respond, he repeated the one word, more forcefully this time. “Ma’am!”

  Amy looked at him.

  “Ma’am, I need you to look at me, please, and lower your mask,” Holding up Amy’s license, the man compared the photo on it to Amy’s actual face. He then instructed her to hold her phone face-down on the scanner so her boarding pass could be read and then waved her on.

  Catching up to Sally on the X-ray line, she whispered, “Don’t you remember what happened in The L Word?”

  Above her face mask, Sally cocked an eyebrow in puzzlement.

  “Um…the old L Word or the new L Word?” she asked.

  “The old one.”

  “Okaaaay…can you be more specific?” Sally asked.

  “Season two, episode ten,” Amy stated.

  “Wow, that is specific,” Sally said. Together, they took a few steps forward as the line advanced. “Unfortunately, I’m apparently not as up on L Word lore as you are.”

  Amy sighed.

  “Dana and Alice packed…” Amy looked around, but no one else on line was paying them the slightest attention “…sex toys in their carry-on luggage and then the TSA agent at the X-ray machine was all like, ‘What the hell are these?’ Remember? And then the TSA opened their bag and was displaying all their toys to everyone.”

  Sally scoffed.

  “Sweetie, that was a TV show! Besides, I seem to remember that Dana and Alice had things in that bag which could actually be used to commandeer an airplane. Like, nipple clamps.”

  “How do you take over an airplane with nipple clamps?” Amy asked, certain that Sally wasn’t taking this seriously.

  “I don’t know, Amy! How do you take over an airplane with a vibrator?”

  “I don’t know!” Amy whisper-hissed. “Maybe it could be used as a club. Anyway, in an X-ray machine it probably looks like a pipe bomb or something.”

  They moved forward a few more steps again.

  “Babe,” Sally began, “I hate to throw your genetic privilege in your face but we’re two cute white girls from Carlsbad. The vibrator-slash-pipe bomb is in a Coach bag that cost more than some people’s car payment and you’re wearing Balenciaga jeans. The way our fucked-up country’s system works, we could actually have a pipe bomb in the bag and the TSA would just wave us on through.”

  They had reached the checkpoint and had to remove their shoes and place those and their other items in those hideous gray plastic bins. Amy watched Sally lift her Coach bag onto the conveyor for the trip through the X-ray machine.

  “I just don’t want everyone in this airport knowing I happen to like vibrators with attached clit stimulators.”

  “So, we’ll tell them it’s mine,” Sally whispered back. “Besides, everybody ought to know that women like vibes with clit stims. The world would be a better place.”

  First Sally went through the body scanner machine and then Amy followed. When it was determined she didn’t have explosives hidden in her bra and had been cleared to proceed through, the Coach bag was already in the X-ray machine. Amy watched the face of the TSA agent on X-ray duty. It was a middle-aged woman with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and at first she seemed bored at what she was looking at on her screen. But then suddenly, her brows knitted and her eyes squinted as she peered more closely at the monitor. She pressed a button and the conveyor belt moved backward, then forward, then backward again. Just like in season two, episode ten! Finally, she glanced over at Amy.

  Amy could think of nothing better to do than shrug and smile.

  With an amused look on her face, the TSA agent pressed the button to start the conveyor moving forward again.

  “I think I have the same one,” she said, her eyes scanning the next object in the machine.

  ***

  “That is so totally a podcast episode!” Amy said, slipping her ballet flats back on and gathering up the items she had sent through the X-ray machine. She and Sally started walking towards the gate. “Lesbian travel tips and what kind of toys are allowed in carry-on luggage. We already know—thanks to the L Word—that nipple clamps aren’t allowed; but, like, how big a vibrator can you bring on board? What about one with a rechargeable battery? What about dildos or anal beads?”

  Sally laughed.

  “That is a really good idea, babe,” she said.

  “Thank you. Ooh! Do you think I can get a representative from the TSA to be a guest?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Sally said after a moment. “I would think the TSA would welcome any chance they get to inform the public about their policies, especially in a gay-friendly forum.”

  “Totally doing it,” Amy decided, feeling excited.

  They were on the plane in forty minutes, comfortably ensconced in their first class seats, waiting for takeoff.

  “Soooooo,” Amy began after the flight attendant finished his safety demonstration. “What happens when we get home? Do you want to hang out later?”

  “Well, the first thing I have to do,” Sally answered, as the engines revved and the plane started backing away from the gate, “is go pick up Lena from Lisa’s. After that, I’ll just be relaxing. I love to travel but I hate the traveling part, you know? So, once I get home I usually just like to chill and veg out. Why don
’t you come over later and we’ll order in and watch Netflix?”

  “Love to! Provided you’re not sick of me yet?”

  Sally pulled her mask down just quick enough to blow her a kiss.

  “Sick of you?” she asked. “If anything, I want more of you.”

  Amy gasped and felt her heart flutter. The truth was, she felt exactly the same way. Spending a week in San Francisco with Sally had done nothing to diminish her desire for wanting to keep spending time with Sally. It was really crazy. Even things with Annabeth hadn’t started like this. In the beginning of that relationship, her and Annabeth would often go a few days without seeing each other or spending nights together. But with Sally…Amy was already at the point of feeling that there was no such thing as too much time together with her.

  Chapter 34

  Sally was reading on her Kindle, Amy sitting next to her typing on her laptop. She had no idea how long they’d been in the air but it felt like it could only have been about forty-five minutes or so, which meant there was still close to an hour before they landed in San Diego.

  Despite trying to concentrate on her book, thoughts of this recent change in her life kept creeping in, making her smile slightly to herself.

  She was on a plane after spending a week away with her girlfriend! And it had been so long since she’d felt this happy with another woman. Who was the last one, she wondered? Not just girlfriend, per se, but girlfriend she’d felt happy and content with. It had to have been Emily, she figured. That had been her last “serious” relationship, a little more than two years ago. Unfortunately, that feeling of happiness and contentment with Emily didn’t last.

  Sally could never understand exactly what went wrong with her and Emily. There wasn’t that one thing which drove them apart like cheating or mistreatment of some form. It was just…one day they were happy and nuts for each other and then suddenly they weren’t. It was as if both of them, simultaneously, had lost all motivation to keep their romance alive and fresh and exciting. Towards the end, she and Emily were both just going through the motions until finally, they tearfully said goodbye to one another.