It happened so quickly that she woke up inside it, came alive to the press of her mouth against Sadie’s soft lips, her hands over Sadie’s temples, her breath ragged on Sadie’s skin. Her heart was all bell, all blood, ringing sticky in her chest and throat.
She didn’t stop to think. Couldn’t. On instinct, her hands slipped to Sadie’s jawline, pulling her in closer, and at the sametime, Sadie made a shocked noise and pushed forward for more, lifting her own hands to cup either side of Anne’s head.
It was Sadie’s lower lip against Anne’s tongue, Sadie who wanted her, Sadie who tasted like her coconut lip oil. And as Sadie’s mouth opened slightly, Anne, unhesitating, deepened the kiss.
A small sound came out of Sadie. A whimper.
Arousal, sudden and undeniable, filled Anne up and ripped her apart. She gasped against Sadie’s mouth.
Sadie pulled back. Her eyes flared in a blaze of heat. “Anne,” she managed.
Just her name, that was all, just the single breathless syllable of Anne’s name through her best friend’s lips, the unmistakable sound of desire forming it, and a dull, faint ache began to beat in response between Anne’s thighs.
“Anne, oh myGod—”
And now there was nowhere to go to look away, the staggering truth of it all around her, in Sadie’s words and droning through Anne’s body, too, parts of her awake that hadn’t come alive for so long. Since high school and Missy Campbell’s toe streaking wet polish across Anne’s foot. Since the late nineties, when she’d left that feminist group clutching a piece of paper with a number on it, discarded quickly into the trash. Since that female talent agent who’d caught Anne’s eye during a Christmas party and held it, Anne looking back at her too long for it to be anything but what it was. Since that sleepless night she’d spent with Sadie in her bed, not moving, not thinking about the full length of Sadie pressed hot against her back and ass and thighs. She’d pressed her lips together and shut down entirely, refusing to hear herself.
She heard herself now.
A brand-new thought began to stand up on shaky colt legs.This is it. This, right here. I’ve run to the thing I ran from.
It was the end of Anne’s world, or the beginning of it.
“You meant that,” Sadie said shakily. She looked like she’d reached the borders of her own world. “You reallymeantit, didn’t you?”
It wasn’t a question, but Anne nodded slowly, unable to speak.
“This—” Sadie stood up abruptly, her hands shaking. Her red lipstick was smeared and faded. “Didyouknow too?”
Dazed, Anne shook her head.
“Then where the hell did that—”
“I don’t know!” Anne exclaimed, finally finding her voice again. “I just, I just—”
Had to.She’d had to do it, the same way one breath had to be followed by the next. Just that simple. Just that complicated.
Slowly, she pressed her shaking fingers against her mouth.This is where Sadie’s lipstick went. I have it now.
Sadie stood up abruptly. She pressed her hands against the top of her head, hard enough to make the lace-front edges of her wig strain. “I—I can’t stay here. I need to leave. I need to figure this out. I need to think. I have to—dear God, Anne, you, you—” A muscle twitched in one cheek. “I don’t remember how tothink. I need to go someplace where I can think.”
Anne stared up at her, unable to process what she’d just heard. Sadie wanted to go home? Sadie wanted to leave her?
And then Sadie asked, “So will you help me figure out where we’re going?”
We.
“I need to hear you tell me” —Sadie was breathing hard—“everything you know about this. Everything you don’t. And I need to do it someplace that isn’t where I’ve looked at you for—for months now, and tried so, sohardto stop myself from feeling—” She broke off. “Let’s go. Please. Somewhere. Anywhere.”
Anne leaned back and let out a long, shaky exhale. Not alone, then. Not ananywherethat didn’t have Anne in it. Ananywherethat did.
“Anne?”
“Yes.” Her voice cracked. It was the only word that mattered, the only word she knew. “Yes. Yes.”
Chapter 7
Joshua Tree National Park was Sadie’s idea.