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She was in her bed, it was late, and Barb looked so good today. Those pants that illuminated every curve that the older teacher loved to keep so hidden. She knew how desperate she must have looked watching her. How anyone with eyes should have noticed years ago. But she couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help but look. Every thirty-six seconds, the need to look came like a bad itch. Those deep brown eyes, wide like hers when they met, Melissa had to take a deep breath and press her thighs together on particularly tempting days.
Melissa knew what she felt was wrong. She knew there was no hope to be had in loving a married woman. Knew that it was sin on so many levels, that she bit the apple of temptation. Melissa condemned herself for it, really, she did. She hated herself for it, but her hand didn’t stop. She kept going like she always did when the hunger became too much to bear.
But still. That light chased her. The world became dark and cold in comparison to the light she found in Barbara Howard. Lifeless. So, she couldn’t live without her. Could not possibly breathe without her. Not a function would be possible. Not without her sunshine. So, she kept going. Another feeling made possible only through her sunshine as the beams of the moon streamed through her curtains. The pale rays landed on equally pale exposed skin.
She ached for her in a way Melissa Schemmenti never thought was something people actually felt. Up until meeting her sunshine, week in the knees was an expression, and so was the ability to take your breath away. It was all a figure of speech until she felt it all for herself. God, did she feel it. Each stroke and pump made her feel it, deeper, harder. More.
And felt it she did. She felt every eye that crossed her body, and every half-glance thrown her direction, for she was already looking. She replayed the gentleness that was shown to her every night; Melissa lived in sin. Longing for a married woman. Searching her eyes when she should turn elsewhere. But right now, her eyes are glazed and fluttering over a perfectly innocent photo of her sunshine. A simple pic she snapped one day that her light was wearing so unashamedly a smile that Melissa proudly placed there.
She clutched the cross around her neck like the leash it was as guilt surged through her. Her devotion, when it came right down to it, wasn’t to God. If asked who she would wish to worship for eternity, she wouldn’t say God. She wouldn’t lie when it came to her.
“Fuck Barbara-” The words are breathless and honest. The raw pieces of her pouring out in gasps. The flames envelope her, waves crashing over her body. Heat rises, and her chest falls. This is the dirty part for her: the guilt. But she’s alone and Barb doesn’t know.
Barb has no idea the pedestal that Melissa keeps her on. Polishes her on. Praises her on. Has no inkling that when she says “bye sunshine” with a gentle smile at the end of the day, she says that she’s the light of her life. That Barbara is the sun, and everything else is the moon. Reflecting what Mel sees in her. All the warmth and light in the world are all qualities she found in Barbara and as such are owned by her in Melissa’s heart.
She might have come, the orgasm might be one she experiences repeatedly with the same imaging in her mind. But to her it isn’t sexual. To her, it is warmth in the cold bed she sleeps in. In her view, it is safety. An emotional moment solidified by her physical endeavors.
As she comes down from her high, the cold comes back. Retreating to the ring on Barbara’s fourth finger. To the bed she shares with her husband, to the life she shares with him. It is suffocating.
She cleans up, puts everything back as it was. Melissa walks to her dresser and pulls out her smokes before lighting one and sitting back on her bed. She takes a nice, slow, all-consuming drag and pictures the smoke infiltrating her lungs is actually, somehow Barbara. Thinks about her filling her lungs, killing her slowly. It does some poetic justice. Mel wants Barb, her reason for living, to be the very thing that kills her.
Perhaps it’s a form of masochism, or maybe some twisted view of devotion her religion gave her. All she knows is that her sunshine holds the key to her heart, and she wants her to exercise all the rights that are granted to her. Needs her to.
Another drag. The open window in the bedroom is billowing the cold right back into her. The lonely pillow calls her, and her skin craves the softness of her blankets. She finishes her cigarette, crushes it out, and crawls into the blankets that come to envelop her. She succumbs to sleep quickly, but not before resting her hands purposefully around herself and pretending it is Barbara holding her in the compromised state. And it feels real. The exhaustion convinces her in that moment, she is in the arms of the woman she loves, and Barbara Howard is not married.
“I love you” she repeats into the quiet for another of the countless times. She says the words both as a confession and as though they are the plain truth. Because it is. It’s the most honest thing she can say, most loaded, and the thing that simultaneously gives her, her greatest love and her most damning pain.
Barbara was the bag balm for her soul but also the salt in her barred and filleted soul. Gutted and sewn back together with a simple smile. That twinkle in her eye, that upturn of one side of her mouth when her smile is slightly suppressed but oh so genuine. So she floats down into the peace Barbara gives her as a tear falls on her pillow.