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Jess was sweating buckets and clutching the sheets, shivering.
Beverly stood over her, a crowd of girls at her back. Greta, who’d called Bev when she found Jess like this, stood at the foot of the bed worrying her lip. Lupe and Esti crouched down beside Jess trying to get her to talk.
“¿Está bien? ¿Se recuperará?” Esti tugged on Lupe’s arm. Is she okay? Will she be okay?
Lupe was worried too and didn’t have the energy to get mean or defensive, “Sí, sí,” she answered, gingerly patting her hand. “Se va a poner bien. Solo es un resfriado. Probablemente.” She'll be fine. It's just a cold. Probably.
“Alright, girls,” Bev clapped her hands. “Everyone out! She needs rest. And space,” she emphasized.
They trudged out of the room, calling words of encouragement to Jess as they went. It didn’t matter much, since Jess seemed to be pretty out of it and hadn’t woken up to say a word to anybody.
“She’s burning up,” Lupe said harshly, once everyone besides Greta had gone. “Can’t we do something?”
Bev gave her a look. “Yes. And you will. She needs a bath.”
Lupe stared back at her. “Huh?”
“A bath,” she intoned. “I presume you have drawn a bath before, Ms. García?”
Lupe clenched her jaw. “Yeah. It’s just,” she gestured down at Jess, suddenly feeling like a schoolgirl blushing about nudity. So she deflected, “Shouldn’t she be seen by a real doctor?”
Jess turned in her sheets, face grimacing.
Beverly looked down at her and sighed. “Yes, in an ideal world. But I assume you’re well aware of Mr. Baker’s image of the team at present.” She arched an eyebrow in that eerie way she did. “I doubt a trip to the hospital would help your image.”
Lupe didn’t say anything.
“If she doesn’t improve by tomorrow morning, I’ll find a doctor to come see her. Alright?” Bev said, then, evenly, “You’re the closest person she has. I trust you’ll see after her?”
Lupe looked down at Jess, surprised by Bev’s words and at the realization it was true. “Yeah.”
Once Bev left, Greta leaned back through the doorway and whispered, eyes twinkling, “Just keep a towel wrapped around her in the water. It’ll be fine.” And shut the door behind her.
Lupe just stood there for a minute, gathering her bearings. Right. It was just a friend helping out another friend. She turned to go start the bath.
✵✵✵✵✵✵✵
“Jess,” Lupe said quietly, crouched by the bed.
She’d run the bath and it was filled with tepid water on the side of cold. She remembered from somewhere that a freezing bath could give a person with a fever shock, so she erred on the side of caution. The last thing she wanted was to make things more complicated.
She touched Jess’ shoulder, muttered a swear to herself at just how hot she felt.
She said her name louder, then louder still, when Jess just kept sleeping. She sighed and stood cursing at the ceiling. Then she peeled the sweat-drenched covers off Jess and started pushing her to sitting.
“Jess, come on, you gotta get up. Time for a bath,” she said, sing-songy and joking. Jess didn’t respond and Lupe rolled her eyes.
“Jess,” she yelled.
Jess’ eyes cracked open and she leaned backwards into Lupe’s hand. “Fuckin– huh? Whas’it?” Her words slurred, her expression still blank.
“Finally,” Lupe said, her heart pulling when Jess tried to pull the covers back up and her face furrowed when Lupe wouldn’t let her. “You’re sick,” she told Jess. “You’re so sick it’s gross. Come on, you need a bath.”
After a moment Jess blinked down at the bed and said, like a five year old, “You’re sick.” Then she hacked out her lungs for thirty seconds straight and wiped at her wet, sweaty face.
Lupe made her take some medicine, then looped an arm around her back and helped her up. She didn’t listen when Jess complained, then didn’t comment when Jess stumbled into the wall and turned into the wrong doorway twice. Jess stuck a tongue out when they made it to the bathroom and Lupe plopped her onto the closed toilet seat.
“Wait here,” she said. Jess didn’t respond, head drooping. “Don’t move,” she raised her voice. Jess looked vaguely in her direction, loopy with glazed over eyes. She held up a weak thumbs up and closed her eyes again.
She went back to Jess’ room for the change of clothes she forgot to grab and hurried back, hoping Jess hadn’t fallen over.
She cursed when she got back, her eyes snapping up to the ceiling as her face warmed.
Jess was already in the bath, a pile of her sweaty, sick clothes on the floor.
“Fucking hell, McCready,” she shoved the door closed behind her and grabbed blindly at one of the towels she laid out, throwing it at Jess.
It landed in the water and floated around unhelpfully. Lupe peeked through her squinting eyes and saw the shape of Jess pulling the towel up to her face, the rest of it draping down over her chest. The curtains pulled halfway concealed her legs anyway, thank god.
“I’m hot,” Jess called out petulantly, still sounding like a five year old.
“Yeah, well,” Lupe shot back, sounding like a responsible adult. “You have a fever.”
She wet a washcloth under the tap with cold water. It wasn't like it was anything she hadn’t seen before. Obviously she’d seen girls. Hell, she’d seen Jess before, too, out of the corner of her eye when they were all changing in the dressing room. Not that she was looking.
She knelt by the tub and pulled the towel down to her neck. She held up the cool, wrung out washcloth, “Here.”
Jess looked almost asleep again, eyes lidded and her chin tucked half under the water. “Here what?” she asked, exhaustion evident, not opening her eyes.
Lupe huffed out a sigh, kind of awed at how kiddish Jess was when ill. She’d always assumed she would be stoic in everything she did, even something like this. She was surprised, and surprisingly endeared. A wave of fondness swept over her.
“Never mind,” Lupe said quietly. “Hold still.”
Jess didn’t answer, but tilted her chin up when Lupe touched her hand there. She wiped at her nose, her cheeks, her forehead. The sound of the bathwater lapping against the ceramic tile echoed. Lupe took a corner of the cloth between her fingers and smoothed down the cuffs of both her ears, then under her jaw. Jess hummed, pushed slightly into Lupe’s touch.
“Feels nice,” Jess sent absently. The way she said it was calm and unguarded in a way Lupe had never heard her before.
The totality of what she felt for Jess grew insurmountably in that moment, and Lupe went still when she realized that everything she felt for her might be more than brotherly love.
She stood abruptly, going to the sink to run the washcloth under cold water again. It had warmed up against Jess’ skin, after all.
After a minute or two, far longer than it took to rinse out a washcloth, Jess spoke again.
“Lupe,” she said, not a question or a beckon, just her name, spoken plain.
“Yeah?” Lupe couldn’t help but respond, not moving back to her yet. She felt unsure how to face her now, in all her sick vulnerability, at the same time she was trying to parse out feelings.
But Jess didn’t seem to hear her. She didn’t open her eyes or turn toward her. If Lupe hadn’t heard her, she’d have guessed Jess was asleep.
But she spoke again, and the words froze Lupe in her movements. “I like her. I really like her,” Jess whispered.
She’d pulled the towel back up to her face and her knees were bent up now. Her head rested in the corner of the tub. Her braid had come undone and her dirty blonde hair gone dark in the water floated on the surface of the bath.
Lupe forced herself back to the tub, helped Jess pull the towel down, and picked up where she’d left off wiping down her face.
“Who?” Lupe asked, once it was quiet again. “Who’re you talking about?”
It hurt her to ask, but it hurt her even more not to know. Maybe if she knew who it was, then she’d be able to bottle these feelings up again. They’d come unstopped only a few moments ago. Maybe it wasn’t too late for her to tamp down on them.
“We were out the other night,” Jess said, tilting her head so Lupe could get behind her ear. “I was talking to someone at the bar.”
Lupe nodded despite knowing Jess couldn’t see her. She thought of the girls Jess had talked to recently: the cocky brunette who’d asked Jess to arm wrestle, the soft femme in pants and a low-cut top, the woman in a short, bright green dress that had challenged Jess to a game of darts. It could be any of them, or none of them. Lupe realized that lately she hadn’t actually seen Jess leave with anyone. She realized she hadn’t left with anyone lately either.
“We were talking about baseball,” her face scrunched up and Lupe’s mouth twitched up. She smoothed out the wrinkle in Jess’ forehead. “Or the movies. Dunno.”
She paused, stretched out her legs. Lupe didn’t look. Jess’ eyes stayed closed, her face drifting and sleepy.
“I looked back to our table and saw her. And she was flirting with this other girl. But then she looked over at me. It felt like we kind of had this moment.”
Jess turned her head the other way, angling for Lupe to wipe down her jaw and neck where the bathwater licked up at her skin.
Lupe did, wiped away her feverish sweat, and sat with the realization she knew exactly what moment Jess was talking about.
It was just last week. Jess had been at the bar, ordering them drinks. They’d both had these girls hanging off their arms the entire night. And she remembered that moment Jess was talking about. When they looked at each other, Lupe couldn’t place it exactly, but there was this shared connection- of joy, of emotion, she couldn’t say. But she realized now- Jess was talking about her.
Lupe swallowed, an anxious understanding dawning on her. Jess was so delirious from the fever she didn’t realize she was talking to her about her.
“I really like her,” Jess said again, hushed, hazy. “I wonder what it’s like to be hers.”
Lupe’s skin burned. She jolted upright and went back to the sink, clearing her throat. The washcloth dripped onto the floor as it hung from Lupe’s hands.
“How’s your temperature?” she asked loudly, flipping the tap on again. She ran the washcloth under freezing water, the chill of it seeping into her hands. Her face felt flushed and she knew it wasn’t because she was sick.
“Jess?” she prompted when met with silence.
“She always calls them “baby.” The girls we talk to. I wonder if she’d ever call me that.”
“Jess,” Lupe said heavily, resolving to ignore her and resolutely keep to the issue at hand. “Are you feeling any cooler? How’s your head? You still feel feverish?” Maybe if she asked enough questions she’d get through to her.
Jess hummed and submerged her head under the water, blowing bubbles out through her nose.
She resurfaced and made a face, then announced she was, in fact, cold. Lupe spun away at lightning speed when she heard a cascade of water when Jess started to rise from the tub.
“Towel! Towel, there’s a towel for you,” she pointed backwards.
She heard her towel off and dress herself, turning back only when Jess mumbled something about her hair.
She was sitting on the toilet seat lid again, head bent, scrubbing at her hair with the towel. She was hunched over and Lupe could see her skin was covered in goosebumps. She really was freezing.
“Hey, here,” Lupe took the towel from her and nudged her to turn to the side. Jess hugged her knees to her chest. Lupe huffed, surprised at how small she could make herself when her limbs were normally all over the place. She brushed out Jess’ hair and made sure not to tug on any tangles. She worked fast, though, willing Jess to hold her tongue for just a few minutes. She wasn’t sure if Jess still didn’t realize what she’d said or to whom, and she didn’t want to give her another chance to say something she’d never wanted to share in the first place.
Thankfully she stayed quiet, only flinching slightly when Lupe powered up the hair dryer.
Without much incident she got Jess back into bed, grateful when she registered that someone had changed the sheets while they were gone. Jess seemed just about ready to drop by the time Lupe pulled the covers up to her chin.
“Holler if you need anything,” Lupe said, touching the back of her hand to Jess’ forehead. She did feel cooler, at least.
She was almost out the door when Jess said, drowsily, “You won’t say anything, right?”
Lupe’s chest clenched. “No,” she promised. “I won’t say anything.”
✵✵✵✵✵✵✵✵
Jess seemed to have no memory of that morning. She bounced back the next day as if she’d never been sick, bounding out the front door and stealing Lupe’s lit cigarette from between her fingers.
“Can’t believe I was out for a whole day! I’m dying to get back on the field. You comin’ García?” she’d grinned, running all the way to the field.
Halfway through the day she’d sprung up next to Lupe in the dugout and laughed in her ear, incredulous, “Gill told me you gave me a fuckin’ bath, that true?”
She’d laughed again, almost giggling, when Lupe said it was. “Hey, thanks. I don’t remember anything from yesterday. It’s basically all a blur.”
Lupe felt a bit queasy herself.
“I hadn’t been that sick since I was twelve and stayed out in the barn with one of my favorite horses in the middle of winter. My mom always said I was a real handful when I was sick,” she smiled at Lupe, “I wasn’t too bad, was I?”
“Not anymore than usual,” she joked flimsily.
It should’ve been fine. In theory it was all sorted- Jess didn’t remember, and Lupe had promised not to bring it up. Easy as pie.
The problem was, she couldn’t stop fucking thinking about it. She couldn’t un-realize the things she felt for Jess. And she couldn’t stop the echo of Jess’ words rattling around in her head.
I wonder what it’s like to be hers.
Lupe had a home advantage. She knew how Jess felt while Jess was still in the dark about everything she’d said. But Lupe also knew that Jess didn’t want her to know. Even in fever-addled delirium, she’d asked her to keep quiet about it.
So she chose to let sleeping dogs lie.
✵✵✵✵✵✵✵✵
Except, of course, she was never any good at leaving well enough alone. Every night since Jess had gotten sick, Lupe had thought about her more and more. It was all consuming, almost in a way she’d never felt with another girl before.
A week had passed. They were at Vi’s. They hadn’t tried to talk anyone up, and no one had tried to talk them up. It was kind of nice to just people-watch and shoot the shit.
“Hey,” Lupe said in a lull in conversation, before she could talk herself out of it.
“Hey yourself,” Jess looked at her, raised an eyebrow.
“You ever,” Lupe tried to make an insinuating face, “y’know… with another butch?”
Jess kept looking at Lupe, her face not betraying a single emotion.
“Why?” Jess asked steadily.
Lupe inclined her head, considering. “I don’t know. Just, never really thought about it before.”
“And what’s got you thinking about it now?”
“Nothing in particular,” Lupe lied, Jess’ words ringing in her ears.
She always calls them “baby.” I wonder if she’d ever call me that.
Jess watched Lupe as she said slowly, “Some queers think it’s not right. Two butches, together like that.”
Lupe was surprised to hear that from Jess of all people, considering, and let it show on her face. “You one of those people?” she asked, unable to keep her tone even.
Jess finally smiled, as if Lupe had passed a test. “Nah,” Jess said. “Just checking.”
Lupe clicked her mouth shut, feeling a little stupid she let Jess goad her like that.
When neither of them said anything else, Lupe followed up with, “So?”
“So what?”
“So, have you?”
Jess sipped her beer. “There was this girl,” she said, and Lupe’s heart was in her throat.
She kept quiet, knowing Jess would dole out the story on her own time.
“I met her at this bar in Calgary, when I was spending a bit of time away from some bullshit in Moose Jaw.” She paused. “Calgary is another city in Canada,” she said dryly.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it, fuckin’ Moose Jaw McCready,” Lupe grinned.
“So this place in Calgary, called The Element, right? I’d been in the city a little while, so I was kind of a regular. After a few months this girl shows up. Jean.”
Jess sighed.
“Soft butch type, y’know? A few years older than me, maybe. And there’s just something about her. The first few times she’s there, we don’t talk. She’s new, I’m with my friends or asking a girl to dance, whatever. Then a week or two later, I can’t remember why, but I’m sitting alone at a table. And she sits down next to me. She asked me my name, I asked for hers. You know how it goes. But we just really got along. Made each other laugh and all that. Plus, even though we were both butch, it was obvious we really wanted to get in each other’s pants. Literally,” Jess made herself laugh. “And we just started going steady after that.
“I’d never been with another butch before. Never really thought about it. Never even seen two butches together. I probably never would’ve walked up to her the way she walked up to me, but I’m damn glad she did. I guess I didn’t think about it until after it was over, but we never actually talked about it.
“Anyway, we started leaving together, showing up together, but there was this unspoken agreement we wouldn’t kiss or hold hands or nothing while we were out. A couple months went by. It was strange to still be hiding that way, at the fucking lesbian bar of all places. But I really liked her, so I went along with it.
“Then one night we were tipsy off a couple beers, and this song came on. It was kind of an Element tradition for everyone to get up with their partners and dance, when this song played.” Jess smiled to herself, lost in the memory. “I don’t know what the hell we were thinking. It was funny, ‘cause neither one of us knew who should lead. All the femmes were being held up by their butches, and there we were, two stupid dykes who didn’t know where to put their feet.”
Her voice was light, but Lupe could see the tender truth of what Jess was saying. She wondered if Jess truly had felt stupid, standing out there with her butch lover.
“But then,” Jess laughed, something really soft and hidden coming loose, “she took my hand and brought it up to her shoulder. Guided my head to rest on her chest. Put her hand on my waist. And we stood there leaning on each other, swaying to the music. The bar kind of melted away. I heard her humming along to the song, quiet, but really loud right up against my ear.”
Jess took another drink and stayed silent for a moment. She said, almost whispering to herself, “It felt real special, being held like that.”
A shiver ran through Lupe. She couldn’t help but imagine dancing with Jess, leading her gently to a slow dance she might’ve danced a million times before with a femme. She imagined how different it might feel. She fought back the surge of desire that threatened to overtake her.
“That sounds really nice,” Lupe said, her voice a bit hoarse.
Jess laughed again, seeming to come back to herself. “Yeah, well,” she shook her head, “after that all our so-called friends started giving us the cold shoulder. Wouldn’t really talk to us. Served us without a single friendly hello.”
Lupe’s heart twisted. She couldn’t imagine what that must’ve been like. To be turned away by the only people in the world you had a chance of being yourself with.
“Eventually it got to be too much for Jean. She left. Took me a couple weeks of nursing my pride to get back to Element. The night I did, I danced with a beautiful high femme that’d caught my eye. She didn’t know me, was just passing through, and she was really sweet. And it felt good to dance with her. When we left together my old friends clapped me on the back and everything went back to normal.”
“Que cabróns.” Lupe hissed. “That’s so fucked up.”
Jess shrugged, “Yeah, well, I learned my lesson.”
Lupe’s stomach went ice cold. “Learned your lesson?” she managed.
But Jess just smiled and tilted her beer towards Lupe, “What about you? You’re the one that got all tongue tied bringing this up.”
Lupe coughed and kicked Jess’ chair, “No, I was just wondering.”
“Oh, why’s that then?” Jess had a twinkle of humor in her eye.
“No reason,” Lupe said, knowing how weak it sounded.
Jess nodded and pursed her lips, looking around the room. “Is it her you’ve got your eye on?” She nodded at a biker done up in leather, nursing a scotch and chatting up a woman in a short red dress and bold red lip.
Lupe rolled her eyes, playing it off and praying Jess would cut the shit.
“Okay, okay, not her, got it,” Jess said, eyes scanning.
“Jess,” Lupe said after a few seconds, when it was clear she wasn’t letting up. “I was seriously just–”
“Oh, I know! Her,” she pointed at another woman in a clean suit. Pressed pants with a matching suit vest over a crisp white button down. “Bet she’d just love to lead you around the room.”
It was so far from what Lupe wanted that she couldn’t take a second more of it. She felt all sorts of twisted up - hearing Jess talk about Jean with that unreserved sweetness, knowing she was lying to her about what’d happened in the bath, stumbling over the sudden yearning for her that had bloomed in the past week.
Her voice came out harsher than she intended. “Jess, c’mon, fuck off. Stop,” she said, draining her beer. “I just overheard some girls talking about it and was curious, that’s all.”
The split second of hurt that flashed across Jess’ face made her stomach sink, and so did Jess’ deliberately calm response.
“Okay, man, I was just messing around. No need to get your panties in a twist.”
“No, I’m not– It’s not a big deal, McCready,” she fumbled to get back to their usual easy rapport and fell short. “Sorry,” she said, after a moment.
Jess quirked an eyebrow, “You got nothing to say sorry for. Want another round?” she asked, finishing her drink and not waiting for an answer. She cleared their beers and headed to the bar.
Lupe watched her back as she walked away and felt worry crawl up her throat.
✵✵✵✵✵✵✵✵
Another week passed and Lupe knew something had to give.
An hour ago she’d woken from a dream where she and Jess had been standing in the middle of an open grass field in their uniforms, completely sweat-drenched. There’d been a little table with a record player next to them and a slow dance tune sang from the speaker. Jess was turned away from her, swaying by herself, but no matter how many times Lupe said her name she gave no indication of having heard.
She woke up with Jess’ name on her lips, eternally grateful when she saw Esti still passed out.
Now she was out on the back steps nursing a cigarette.
She jumped when the porch door banged open behind her.
“¡Carajo! Holy shit,” she said, relaxing when she saw it was Jess.
Jess winced apologetically. “Shit, sorry, didn’t think anyone else was up.”
Lupe waved her off, shook a smoke out of her pack and held it out to her.
“Thanks,” Jess sat, lit up, then exhaled slowly, savoring the taste of the first drag. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Lupe’s smile went sideways. “No. Weird dreams,” she admitted.
“Me too,” Jess said.
“Of what?”
Jess ashed her cigarette. “Can’t remember. You?”
Lupe lied, “Same.”
They smoked into the night. The silence ate at Lupe.
“Hey,” she said. She seemed unable to let sleeping dogs lie, after all.
Jess laughed loudly, “Uh oh. What is it this time?”
Lupe chuckled, shoving at her gently, realizing that, okay yeah, she wasn’t that smooth.
They both got quiet and Lupe asked, “Remember last week, when you told me about Jean?”
Jess’ face flickered. “Yeah, what about it?”
She steeled herself, knowing she didn’t end the conversation on a great note. “You were right. There was a reason I asked.”
Jess cracked a grin, “I fucking knew it, hermano. I can read you like a goddamn book.”
“Yeah, you got me,” she said, but let the conversation trail off when she couldn’t find the right words.
A muscle in Jess’ throat jumped. “So?”
“So what?”
“So, who is it?”
Lupe was starting to lose her nerve and chose to dance around it even though there was no point in being coy. “You know her,” she said, sliding a few inches closer to her on the step.
Jess thought for a moment. “Annie?” she asked. “We’ve hung out with her a couple times.”
Lupe shook her head. “There’s something else you should know, too.”
Jess gestured with her cigarette for her to go on.
“You know how you got sick the other night? And Gill told you I ran you a bath. What else did she say?”
Jess looked at her, confusion creeping into her expression. “Uh, basically just that. You gave me a bath like I was three, I got better, the end?”
Lupe laughed then bit the inside of her cheek. “Well, yeah. And no. I mean, yeah, I gave you a bath. But you were so fuckin’ out of it, man. I was worried about you. And you needed to cool off, because of the fever, right, so I got a washcloth and was wiping down your face. And you started saying this stuff. Nothing, like, crazy or weird or anything,” she quickly added, when Jess’ face got worried.
“But you didn’t realize it was me,” she admitted. “And you started talking about me.”
A bright red flush overtook Jess’ face and she snubbed her cigarette out on the banister, ignoring the ashtray by Lupe’s foot. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she whispered to herself, and Lupe saw her start to understand Lupe’s meaning.
“Lu” Jess tried, then floundered. “Lu, shit, Jesus, whatever I said–”
“No, wait, hold on,” Lupe told her, touching her arm, not wanting to tarnish the vulnerability on Jess’ face. “Let me finish.”
Jess held herself tight and kept her gaze on the trees ahead, fingers curled around the porch step, but nodded.
“After the bath, before you fell back asleep, you asked me not to say anything about it. So I didn’t. And I was just gonna play it off.”
She heard Jess’ jaw click.
“But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Jess looked at her, finally, eyes questioning.
“And you told me about Jean when I asked you. And the way you talked about her, mierda, Jess, it just made it worse. And I realized I wanted that. So bad, it’s been killing me to pretend like everything’s the same. But,” she breathed out. “I want that so bad, Jess.”
“Want what, exactly? What are you saying, García?” Jess asked, still guarding her tenderness.
“I want you, Jess. Want you to be mine, if you’ll have me.”
Emotion flickered across Jess’ face and she crossed her arms, uncrossed them. “You serious?” she asked finally.
Lupe smiled. “As serious as anything, baby.”
Jess closed her eyes and shivered, her mouth opening.
The word, one she’d called other girls dozens of times, felt different coming out of her mouth now. Sentimental and tenderhearted in a way that felt new.
“You talked about that, too,” Lupe confessed.
“About what?” Jess opened her eyes and pressed her knee into Lupe’s.
“Being called that. Baby,” she said lowly, watching Jess watch her. “You said you wondered if I’d ever call you that.”
Jess blurted out, accusatory, “Two goddamn weeks?”
“What?” Lupe’s eyebrows dipped.
“I can’t believe you made me wait two fucking weeks to hear you call me that,” she said, then kissed Lupe.
The ashtray at their feet got knocked down the steps. Neither of them noticed.
Lupe held Jess’ face in her hands, brushing against her brow bone and tugging at her ear. She sucked on Jess’ bottom lip, licking her teeth when Jess opened her mouth to breath.
“Again, please,” Jess panted against Lupe’s mouth.
“Hmm?” Lupe feigned ignorance and kept kissing her, pushed her back against the banister, brought a hand to stroke down her throat.
Jess broke off, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Pecked a kiss onto Lupe’s cheek, then forehead, then each of her ears, before sucking at a spot under her jaw.
“It’s not fair,” Jess’ breath was hot on Lupe’s skin. “You knew this whole time what a fucking sap I am. That’s so embarrassing. Please,” she asked again. “Please, Lu.”
Lupe cupped Jess’ jaw, bringing her face back up to hers. “Okay, since you asked so nicely, baby.”
She smiled when Jess closed her eyes and nudged into Lupe’s hand, just like she had in the bath.
“You’re so good like this, baby,” she said again, wholly meaning it, reveling in the little whimper it pulled from Jess.
Lupe kissed her again deeply, wondering in the taste of Jess’ tongue against hers.
They pulled back and looked at each other, breaking into sudden, delighted laughter. Lupe pressed a kiss to Jess’ forehead and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, leaning both of them against the banister. Her heart went molten when Jess kissed her neck softly and tucked her head into Lupe’s chest.
They marveled in just holding each other for a few minutes.
“You don’t find it weird?” Jess asked. Lupe could feel her voice through her ribs.
“Find what weird?”
Jess half-shrugged against Lupe’s arm. “Me, I guess. Us. Being butch, and still…”
Lupe held her closer. “No. Everyone wants to feel wanted, don’t they? You said before it’s embarrassing to be a sap. But you're not embarrassing, baby. You’re sweet.”
Jess angled up to kiss her neck again. “Thanks, Lu,” she whispered.
“Just ‘cause we’re butch doesn’t mean we can’t be soft. At least that’s what I think.”
Jess hummed in agreement, then pulled back to look Lupe in the eye. “Lu?”
“Yeah?”
“If I’m yours, that means you’re mine too, right?”
The way she said it was so ardently earnest that Lupe felt her eyes shine.
“Yeah,” she touched Jess’ cheek and kissed her again, soft and serene. “Yeah, I’m yours, too.”