3

July 2017

Vickey, Diana

The morning after the first time, they woke up wrapped up in one another. Diana was lying on her back on the brown leather sofa, Vickey was curled up between her legs, her head on Diana’s stomach, the light prickles of her pubes on her cheek.
Vickey opened her eyes for a moment, then squeezed them shut again, thoughts whirling in her mind. “I won’t let her know I’ve woken up, I have to think. I need time – I want to understand.”
Her body ached with a sensation of happiness, but she couldn’t stop thinking that she’d done something very wrong, something terrible. She felt the tender touch of Diana’s warm, light arms on her shoulders, her thighs, her breasts, but in her mind there were only thoughts of panic. What’s going to happen to me? What does it all mean? Who am I now?
A hot flush of shame rolled across her body. Sin, a fall from grace, joy, all jumbled in her mind. Vickey could physically feel this scorching concoction that she yearned for washing over her body and through her thoughts.
She remembered how the night had started. Diana had phoned and invited her to a party at some friends’ place. At first, Vickey had tried to refuse, she didn’t want to meet any new people, and her mood, to put it mildly, was gloomy. But Diana was relentless: “How long are you going to sit there waiting for your precious Alex?” she asked, laughing. “I can’t bear to watch it. Come on, take your mind off it all for the evening. In our age of medicated progress, depressed people don’t inspire sympathy. They’re just annoying.”
Diana was so beautiful, so strong on the outside, that it never took her long to talk someone round.
And Vickey agreed.
And to be fair, three months had passed since that horrific day. Alex had probably gone off somewhere, as he always did, without saying a word about when he’d come back, or if he’d come back at all. She couldn’t let herself dip back into depression, she had to crawl out of the hole.
Then there was the beautiful house in the elite gated community of artists in Hampstead, the verandah decked in glimmering, colored lights, the light summer dresses of the girls and the fashionable print t-shirts of the boys, vodka, DJs and dancing. A real, warm, Bohemian evening in London, where everyone is chilled, they all know one another, or almost do, and where everyone is unfailingly friendly.
And Diana, magnificent, beautiful, clever, ironic Diana, dancing close by and drinking tequila, for a joke licking salt off Vickey’s naked shoulder, her neck, and higher, around her earlobe, tickling, intimate. At once yearned for and shameful. Diana laughs. Vickey sees a lock of her hair casually falling across her girlfriend’s brow, drops of sweat on her freckled nose, and a cheeky look in her eye. Diana is openly teasing her, but it’s just a joke, right?
They have another drink and Diana starts dancing again. Vickey’s head is spinning slightly from the tequila, and she follows her girlfriend, dancing to the rhythm of the music, answering the flirt of Diana’s movements. She dances so beautifully, Vickey thinks. The grace of those slender arms and legs in motion.
Alex had introduced her to Diana, of course. He’d said in his careless way: “Vickey, meet Diana, a friend of mine. Remember we were talking about ‘real Londoners’? She’s an incredible girl, a heartbreaker, but she knows how to put them back together again, as she’s a heart surgeon. Although she says that she’s not interested in men anymore, which has definitely been great for our long, sincere friendship. Because Diana’s one of those people that it’s absolutely impossible to refuse. So, kid, be careful with her.”
Vickey’s heart missed a beat. Alex had never talked about anyone with that kind of admiration, desire and regret all in one. To avoid going out of her mind with jealousy where Diana was concerned, she decided she’d do everything she could to be friends with her. She’d try and understand why her man, who she’d been in love with for so many years, was so keen on this sweet, slender girl with her dark, rich hair cut so short.
So now, when Diana had phoned and invited her to hang out, she looked at her with enchantment in her eyes. She liked Diana’s friends, she was flattered by her girlfriend’s attentions, she liked Diana, and she really wanted to be liked too. She was drunk and happy, and she didn’t notice that she’d started flirting with Diana, the distance between them as they danced getting shorter, their arms, shoulders, legs touching. The closeness of Diana’s body excited her. Swaying in the dance, she almost fell into Diana’s embrace, their faces up close, and she asked a question: “Are we going to kiss?” And Diana, without thinking for a second, said: “Of course!”
Vickey would remember that kiss forever. In the middle of the dancefloor, in front of all those friends, ashamed of nothing, ashamed before no one, Diana touched Vickey’s lips with a long, gentle kiss. She gently pushed Vickey’s teeth apart with her tongue, and entered within. Time stopped for Vickey, her heart pounded in her chest, her legs wilted at the thought that she was kissing a woman, that she liked it, and that she didn’t want it to stop.
Diana got a bottle of Olmeca tequila at the bar and they went back to Diana’s. A black piano stood in the center of the airy, spacious studio in Camden, an aspidistra in a pot standing next to it. Opposite there were two armchairs, a vast leather, slightly aged sofa, and the obligatory tall book cases to be found in the home of every member of London’s intelligentsia.
Diana poured the Olmeca tequila into cut glasses and sliced up a lime. The hushed lighting of the shaded lamp created the impression of a picture from the distant past come to life. Vickey saw visions of the Bloomsbury set, the writers Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, formal speech, the word “feminism” was just beginning to appear, and the invention of the mobile telephone was far off in the distant future.
“Do you play?” asked Vickey, touching the keys on the piano.
“No,” answered Diana. Then she looked at Vickey and added, “Barely. I saved this old instrument when its owners were trying to throw it out. I’ve always dreamed of learning, and even took some lessons. But I don’t have that lightness I find when I’m dancing, so I lost interest.” She carried on looking at Vickey. “Do you play?”
“Seven years of music school.”
“You’ll play?” To Vickey, Diana’s question sounded entirely appropriate.
“All right,” Vickey answered, somehow relaxed.
As she went over to the piano, she thought she could see herself and everything that was happening to her from the outside. It was like some kind of film she might have watched after a good meal with a sophisticated drink.
Vickey was a master of the instrument, she could play it in any state. It was as if she spoke through the keys.
She wanted to play for Diana, something light and misty, like the evening had been for her. She played Liszt’s “Dreams of Love.”
Immersing herself in the sounds that she gently caressed out of the piano, she only thought of Diana, of badly wanting to taste her lips again. It was strange and unexpected. She’d always thought of herself as being such a grownup, so experienced, having seen and done so much, she’d kissed her girlfriends at school in order to scare her parents and teachers with more than a pierced nose and the sounds of Janis Joplin, her favorite rock diva, blaring from her stereo. But no girl had ever inspired this kind of curiosity, this burning, shameful desire in her quite like Diana.
The idea that Alex was to blame kept spinning round in her head. If it wasn’t for his terrible behavior, if he hadn’t wanted Diana so badly, and so obviously, none of this would have happened. Vickey, trembling from fear, was drawn to her new desire.
Diana came up to her from behind and put her arms around her shoulders. Vickey turned to her and they began to kiss again, the music breaking off. Again, that feeling that all this wasn’t happening to her. Her fingers touching Diana’s fingers, reaching for one another, she got up from the piano. They moved to the center of the room. Diana, releasing her fingers, went over to the bottle and glasses, looking Vickey in the eye every step of the way. Vickey felt shame and a sense of lightness at the same time.
Another shot of tequila, and Diana began to undo the buttons on Vickey’s dress, pulling it down to her waist, laying bare her large, milky-toned breasts and nipples. Diana slowly lowered her face into the rift between Vickey’s breasts, running her tongue down the skin and placing her delicate fingers, the nails neatly cut short, on Vickey’s nipples.
Vickey shuddered at the waves of arousal washing over her entire body. Diana’s touch was precise, tender, confident. She kissed Vickey’s breasts, her tongue lowering down her stomach, her hands freeing up Vickey’s waist and thighs from the dress.
She stopped suddenly, raised her head and looked at Vickey, a question in her eye, just as she gently passed a finger over a small scar on her belly.
Vickey understood Diana’s question without words. Her heart started beating faster, she sensed how her entire body had become heavier, the lower part of her stomach pulsing in expectation of joy. A thought overcame her – this is the last chance to stop it. But the answer to this question that came from nowhere was obvious.
For a moment it seemed that all her unthinkable desires had built up in the tip of Diana’s finger, and the scar had become her erogenous zone. Vickey breathed in deeply, filling her lungs with air, closed her eyes, and almost imperceptibly nodded.
Diana helped Vickey to pull her panties off and moved her tensed-up knees apart. Vickey’s body instinctively unfurled to meet her, her thighs opened, and her shoulders and head fell back, limp. With her index fingers, Diana opened her pussy, revealing the tender head of the clit, blood swelling the genital lips of her new lover. Vickey groaned in impatience. But Diana was in no hurry. First, just the tip of the tongue, barely touching; then, the tongue pressing harder and harder, she slipped up and down and into Vickey’s naturalness. Again and again, circling, faster and faster, narrowing the perimeter of her movements around the clit, already crimson from tension.
It was sweet torture. She didn’t know why, but she was afraid of crying out at the ecstasy. Another magical touch from Diana. Vickey bit her lower lip to fight back a treacherous moan. But she couldn’t resist when Diana slipped three fingers into her, wet from arousal, found the small groove on the upper wall and began to actively move her hand, whilst her tongue and lips focused on Vickey’s clit.
Vickey’s orgasm came in just a few minutes, she didn’t even have time to realize what had happened. Her entire body sparked up in an uncontrolled flare of satisfaction and joy. For an instant she thought that she had wet herself – yes, it was a similar sensation, but totally different at the same time. She looked at the transparent liquid on the inside surfaces of her thighs and on the chair, she felt terribly ashamed and embarrassed, and she clamped her thighs back together in confusion.
“Sorry,” she said, forcing the words out.
“Silly,” Diana whispered tenderly. “What, you’ve never come like that?”
Vickey looked at Diana, totally lost.
“Don’t worry, it’s not wee,” said Diana, conspiratorially. “It doesn’t have any color or smell.” Diana glanced a fiery look at Vickey. “Do you want to do it again?”
The second time wasn’t so unexpected, but it seemed longer, more intense. And then again, and again. They moved onto the sofa and, caressing one another, fell asleep towards morning.
And now it was time to wake up.