Page 16 of Saving Graces
Kinsey’s smile faded. She rocked back slightly on her heels, her hands pushing deep into her pockets.
“I mean, I was hardly about to text them and say guess what I just fingerbanged Rosalie.”
“Oh god…I hope not.” Rosalie’s skin began to itch as she imagined it. Kinsey got a little furrow between her smooth brows.
“Rosalie,” she said softly. “What I was hoping was that sometime next week I’d get to text them, I just took Rosalie to dinner, I think she’s fucking gorgeous, and then leave out the part where we had all kinds of incredible sex afterward.”
Rosalie looked down at her feet. An awkward montage raced through her head. Kinsey making her come desperately hard up against a wall in a bar. Kinsey with her annoyingly sexy, smug grin telling her friends about the older woman she’d picked up. Lane and Cassidy on a double date with Kinsey and Rosalie?
“Kinsey,” she shook her head, a slow dawning realization moving through her. “This… this can’t happen.”
“What can’t happen?” Kinsey tilted her face. “Because something has already happened.”
“I…” Rosalie looked at her in the low light of the street, barely getting the words out. “I can’t date you. It wouldn’t work. You’re too… we’re in different places in our lives.” She almost stuttered the words. Kinsey wasn’t too young for Rosalie to have sex with, after all. Oh god, she was not a good person.
Kinsey’s face went very still. For a second, there were no sounds but the quiet of the sleeping street.
“Listen,” Kinsey said. “I like casual sex as much as anyone else. And I’m down for a one night stand. Usually.” Her teeth sunk into her lower lip, considering her words. “But I like you,” she said simply. “And I want the chance to get to know you. You’re telling me that can’t happen?”
“We’ve barely had a conversation. You literally don’t know me enough to like me,” Rosalie pointed out, her chest a little tight.
“Oh, I know enough,” Kinsey’s stance was firm. “I know you’re strong and deeply caring, that you’re kind and a little fiery. I know you’re not remotely boring, and that you’re hungry, Rosalie, I can see it.” She stepped closer on the quiet street, her fingers tucking into the front of Rosalie’s skirt, her body close, her eyes dark. “And I know you’re the hottest fuck I’ve ever had.”
“Kinsey-” she whispered, her head spinning. Kinsey stopped her.
“We could go back to my house right now and I could do things to you that you wouldn’t believe.” Her lips were so close that Rosalie’s breath grew short. “All night. And then, on Sunday, I’d fuck you so long and so hard you’d feel my touch all week.”
For once Kinsey didn’t look smug as Rosalie struggled to hold back a whimper of want. Instead her eyes were a little cool.
“But I want the version where I make you breakfast in the morning.” She let her fingers dip just lightly under Rosalie’s shirt, grazing her abdomen. “The version where I take you to dinner some night soon. The version where if that goes well, I eventually get to tell people about the woman that I’m seeing. That’s the only thing I’m going to want here.”
“I’m sorry,” Rosalie whispered. And god, was she ever sorry. “I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Kinsey asked. She drew back and gazed at her, searching her eyes. “Believe me,” she said a few seconds later, her voice wry, “I’m not the type to beg.” She hesitated. “But god you make it hard not to.”
She leaned in and kissed Rosalie, kissed her until she was breathless, kissed her until every part of Rosalie longed to follow her and make damn sure she carried out every one of her threats. Then she drew back.
“Goodbye Rosalie,” she said, trailing one finger all the way down between her breasts, down her abdomen, over her skirt, ghosting over the juncture of her thighs. “You were fucking amazing.”
She walked away.
Rosalie watched. Kinsey didn’t turn back once. Rosalie took a step after her. Then she stepped back. She turned all the way in a half circle, trying to leave, wanting to follow. She sank back on a low stone wall in front of someone’s house, staring up at the sky, trying to understand what had just happened, what she’d just done. Then slowly, she turned and walked all the way home.
She let herself in through her front door, kicked off her shoes, tossed the keys on the side table, and listened to the silence. For once, it didn’t sound like peace. It sounded like nothing.
Sunday was long. Rosalie did all her usual Sunday things. She cooked a great breakfast. She went for a walk. She read a book, curled up on the couch with Lemonade purring on her lap. She did yoga in the afternoon sunbeam that streamed through her living room window. She did laundry and got ready for another week.
And yet at every stage of her day, she thought about what could have been. Waking up in Kinsey’s bed, sore and sated, yet hungry for more. The breakfast eaten in a borrowed shirt, their bare legs brushing underneath the table. Kisses that tasted of maple syrup, up against the kitchen counter until the inevitable return to bed, Kinsey’s fingers, Kinsey’s mouth, Kinsey naked.
It made her scrambled eggs taste like ashes and her walk aimless. She kept reading the same page over and over and her yoga session turned into one long savasana, lying on her back, staring blankly up at the ceiling and wondering exactly where she’d gone wrong in her life, or at least in the last twenty-four hours because god dammit she loved her quiet life. She loved it. One momentary slip-up with an inappropriately young woman should not be making her unravel.
On Monday she went to work. Another conservative button-up, another plain skirt. Her hair in a bun, because Mondays were about being a damn professional.
“How was your weekend?” asked Shelby as she entered the office, dropping her handbag on her chair. “Read a nice book? Your cat doing well?”
Rosalie looked at her.
“I had a wild one night stand with a hot twenty-six year old,” she said. “We had sex at Howler up against a wall while the band played on stage.”
