"I don’t know, Babe," Mia muttered, rubbing the red handprint on her thigh, "you pack a wallop, and I think you enjoy it!"
"Only with you," Jamie replied, with an overly sweet smile affixed to her face.
"So how does Ryan react to your little torture sessions?" Mia asked, her brown eyes glinting playfully.
Jamie paused for a moment, recalling all of the times she had pushed the obviously turned-on woman further than she should have. "She’s been the soul of restraint. She never--not once--tried to go further than I wanted to. As a matter of fact, she tried to talk me out of doing stuff a couple of times."
"God, if I don’t want to do it two minutes after getting to L.A., Jason has a fit! Come to think of it," she mused reflectively. "I don’t think a guy has ever tried to talk me out of doing anything!"
Jamie shook her head briskly, reflecting on how proud she was that Ryan was so gentle with her. "She never gets mad about it, Mia. As a matter of fact, she’s downright adorable about it. There’s this hungry look she gets that just about breaks my heart. I know it’s hard for her, but she controls herself because she knows that I want her to."
"Jeez, maybe we’re both wrong about her," Mia mumbled. "Maybe she’s not really hot in bed. It could just be an act."
"No. Trust me," Jamie said slowly. "Just the way she kisses is enough to melt you into a puddle. Plus, I’ve…seen her in action."
"I don’t doubt it!" Mia cried. "I’m surprised she doesn’t run down the street grabbing the first woman she sees, after what you do to her!"
"It was before we…started dating," Jamie informed her with another smack to her thigh. "I saw her practically making love to a woman in a lesbian coffeehouse. She didn’t know I was there, and I assume she didn’t think anyone was watching her, but I got so turned on...whew! She’s not all talk, Mia. Trust me."
"God, that sounds hot!" Mia squealed. "What else 'ya got?"
Mia was getting so much pleasure out of this interchange that Jamie didn’t have the heart to tell her these topics were too private. Besides, if she was really honest with herself, she got a good deal of enjoyment from talking about Ryan in this frank manner. "Well, she took me to a women’s sex toy store, and they made a big deal about her not breaking any more of the toys in the try-on room."
"Yikes! How do you break a sex toy? Was she alone when she did that?"
"Nope. She apparently used to take dates there to have a quickie."
"Dates--sex toys, dates--sex toys," Mia mused, deep in thought. "That’s a match made in heaven! She’s a genius! What else?"
"Well," Jamie began, blushing mightily, "even though we haven’t made love…we’ve um…you know…"
"Touched each other," Mia supplied helpfully, batting her big brown eyes at Jamie.
"Yes, of course we touch each other," Jamie scoffed. "I’m not
that
hung up!"
"So…if you’re already touching each other, why do you keep insisting that you haven’t had sex? That’s all there is with a girl, Jamie."
"Oh…well…we haven’t touched each other…that way," the blushing blonde admitted. "I meant that we touched each other when we kissed."
"Oooh, you mean you don’t stand two feet apart, put your hands behind your backs and lean over to kiss," Mia drawled, obviously enjoying her friend’s embarrassment.
"God! Must you harass me like this?"
"Well, yeah," Mia laughed. "It’s what I’m best at, Jamie."
"I guess you have me there," Jamie agreed. "What I was getting at earlier is that even though we haven’t gone very far, I can just tell how passionate she’ll be by the way she responds to my kisses. She’s just so…I don’t even know the word for it," she admitted. "She’s…" A heavy sigh followed her comment, and she looked towards her partner with a wistful smile, "wonderful."
"Do you have any idea how many women she’s been ‘wonderful’ with?" Mia asked, shattering Jamie’s romantic reverie.
Jamie tilted her head back, dramatically rolling her eyes at her friend. "Does everything have to be about sex?!" she chided.
"Come on, do the numbers," Mia begged.
"Well, she’s been sexually active since she was 17--that’s six years. She’s basically never had a girlfriend, and until this year her able-bodied record for going without sex is two weeks--and that didn’t happen very often from what I can gather." As Jamie did the math, her eyes grew wider. She gulped noticeably when she considered the tally.
"Are you sure you don’t want me to break her in for you, Jamie?" Mia inquired solicitously. "I don’t want you to get hurt, you know."
Smirk firmly in place, Jamie patted her friend on the leg. "You’re a real pal, Mia. As much as I appreciate the offer, I think I can handle her. Besides, what makes you such an expert?"
"I’m not as naive as I seem," Mia scoffed, assuming a haughty look.
"You haven’t been naive since you were in diapers, Mia. Now what are you hinting at?"
"I have had a few bites of the lesbian apple," she replied smugly.
"You have not!" Jamie shrieked as she slapped her friend’s arm.
"Have too," she insisted, rubbing at the reddening skin and scooting back in her chair to avoid a repeat.
"When? With whom?"
"It’s a long story, Babe. I’m sure you don’t want me to bore you with it now."
"BORE ME?" Jamie cried, causing every one of their neighbors to turn in her direction. "Bore me?" she repeated at a more moderate level. "You’ve got to be on drugs, Mia! Now tell me the whole story—and don’t you dare leave anything out!"
The curly-haired woman sighed dramatically, but couldn’t keep the smile off her face for long. "Oh, all right," she said. "I should have told you before now, but I promised I wouldn’t."
"Promised? Who did you…"
"That’s part of the story," Mia chuckled. "Okay, here’s the whole deal. As you may recall, I started hanging out with Melissa Johnston during senior year."
"Yeah," Jamie agreed, a small frown settling on her brow. "What’s Miss Homecoming Queen got to do with it?"
"Well…" Mia drawled. "We started to hang out because our boyfriends were buddies. Remember?"
"Oh yeah, I forgot how close Mark and Trey were. You know, I was pretty jealous when you started spending all of your time with her. I felt like she was taking you away from me," Jamie admitted.
"You had nothing to worry about, Honey, but Mark should have been shaking in his boots!"
"What does your old boyfriend have to do with the story?" Jamie asked. "This is confusing the heck out of me, Mia."
"Patience, girlfriend. All will be revealed." Mia took another deep breath and continued her tale. "Melissa and I got to be really good friends. We were together a lot because of Mark and Trey, and over time we started to hang out when the guys weren’t with us."
"I recall," Jamie pouted. "I could hardly get a minute of your time."
"I know, and I’m sorry you felt shut out. Things were…complicated for me during that time. I really liked Melissa, and before I knew it we were inseparable."
"I’ve never understood why you stopped hanging out with her so abruptly," Jamie protested.
"Can I finish?" Mia chuckled.
"Sorry." Jamie shook her head. "It’s your story—run with it."
"Okay, we were getting to be really close. One night we had been out with the guys, and I decided to stay overnight at her house. We were just hanging out in her room, talking and smoking a little weed. My leg was bothering me—I forget what I had done to it, but it was stiff. Melissa offered to massage it for me. I thought that was nice, if a little odd, so I took her up on it. She gave me a short robe, and we got onto her bed… hey, don’t pass out on me here." Mia laughed when she caught sight of Jamie’s shocked expression.
"I…I…did you…?"
"Patience is a virtue, Sweetie. Just hold on a sec," she urged, patting her friend’s leg reassuringly. "Okay, I was on the bed, and she started rubbing my legs. She kept going higher and higher, well past the painful area, and as she kept going, something else started to throb."
Jamie’s mouth was open so wide that Mia was afraid her jaw was going to pop out of joint. "You…you slept with Melissa Johnston?"
"No…we didn’t sleep," Mia corrected smugly. "She slid her hand up between my legs, and within seconds we were rolling around on that bed like a couple of rabid chipmunks!"
"Mia! How can that be?" Jamie cried. "You’re both straight!"
The curly-haired woman tossed her head back and laughed heartily. "That’s so cute!" she cried. "You sound like my grandmother!"
"What?!"
"That’s so old school, Hon! Nobody’s into those silly labels anymore! She was attracted to me, and I was attracted to her. We were both in the mood, and had the opportunity—so why not?" She shrugged as if it were an every day occurrence.
"But…but…" Jamie sputtered. "She’s a girl!"
"I know," Mia agreed with a leer. "A very hot girl, who knew how to make me come better than any guy I’ve been with, before or since! She was a cheerleader you know. She was practically double jointed!!"
"Jesus, Mia! You can’t just sleep with every person who asks you to!"
"And that would be because…?" the chestnut haired woman asked, holding up her hands in a questioning gesture.
"Because…because…I don’t know why. I just know that you can’t!" Jamie finally decreed.
"Well, I beg to differ, Sweetie, but I can, and I do!" Mia stated defiantly. "No harm has befallen me, I might add."
Deciding to table her discomfort for the moment, Jamie let her curiosity take over. "So, what happened with Melissa? Did you stop seeing each other because it was uncomfortable?"
"No," Mia laughed. "We stopped seeing each other because she wanted me to be exclusive with her! Jeez! I certainly wasn’t exclusive with Mark, why would she think I would be with her?!"
"She fell in love with you?" Jamie was stunned at this revelation.
"She said she was," Mia mused, the smile vanishing. "It was really kinda tough for me, to tell you the truth, James. I liked her a lot, and I loved having sex with her. I still don’t see why we couldn’t have just kept on doing what we were doing."
"She wasn’t able to, huh?" Jamie knew that she wouldn’t be able to share someone she loved with another.
"No, she wasn’t," Mia said. "It just got to be too hard, so we finally had to stop seeing each other completely. The guys were kinda pissed off, because we had all gotten along so well. I honestly think that’s one of the reasons Mark broke up with me. I think he liked hanging out with Trey as much as he did with me."
"Maybe Mark and Trey…" Jamie began to suggest with a little eyebrow wiggle.
Mia tossed her head back and laughed. "Now that, I would pay to see!"
"I just bet you would," Jamie muttered as the server came by to ask if they wanted anything to drink. Mia was flirting outrageously with the twenty something man and Jamie sat back to watch a master at work. She decided that her friend possessed the perfect blend of openness and playfulness needed to flirt successfully. Mia didn’t seem overly aggressive, and her cherubic face made her appear more innocent than she was. She gave the accurate impression that she was funny, witty, open-minded and very interested.
By the time the server, Chad, left, Mia had received an invitation to attend a jazz concert on the Santa Monica pier on Thursday night. "You are really good at that," Jamie mused, as she watched her friend put Chad’s phone number into her bag.
"It’s a gift," Mia agreed, tossing her curls in the breeze.
"I take it you and Jason aren’t exclusive any longer?"
"Mmm, we’re taking it a lot more casually now," Mia admitted. "I’ve seen him about three times since I got here. I think he’s trying to make me miss him by playing hard to get."
"Oh yeah, that’ll work!" Jamie laughed.
"He obviously doesn’t know who he’s dealing with," Mia agreed with a sympathetic smile. "I invented hard to get."
Getting back to their earlier discussion, Jamie asked, "You said earlier that you had promised you wouldn’t tell. Did you promise Melissa?"
"Yeah, but I figure it’s safe to tell you now since you’re a member of the same club. I mean, I always knew I could trust you, James, but now I think you have a better sense of why she wouldn’t want this to get out."
"Yeah," she laughed wryly. "I’m certainly not ready to shout it from the rooftops. Just a stage in front of thousands of people," she added, shivering with the memory. "So…back to your story. Once you got it out of your system, you’ve stayed with men exclusively, right?"
"Nope. Not exactly," Mia said with a smirk.
"Give!" Jamie ordered.
"Okay, okay, jeez, you’re so pushy!" Mia laughed. "I had sex with a woman at Cal."
"When…with who?" Jamie persisted, unwilling to forego any of the details.
"Freshman year," she said quickly. "Remember Dave, that guy from Oregon that I dated for a while?"
"Yeah, vaguely. You didn’t see him for very long did you?"
"No, thanks to him, I didn’t," she admitted. "He wanted to do a three way with another girl. I didn’t really object, so he sets it up with this woman he knew. We all get together and have a pretty hot time. Problem is, he thinks I like it too much, which I did, as a matter of fact. The woman and I really went at it, and he got all pissed. He thought we would just both do him and be happy, but we spent most of our time on each other. He actually had the nerve to call me a lesbian, and say he didn’t want to see me anymore because he didn’t want to date a dyke! The nerve!"