“Lexi, oh my god! What are you doing here?” A sultry voice echoes behind me and I look up into the vanity mirror. This Hollywood Hills bathroom is everything you would expect from an almost-B-lister’s house. One gigantic marble sink sitting on the center of an equally marbled counter large enough to hold two, a mirror that takes up the entire wall and is both backlit AND somehow front lit since I can see my pores better than anyone would ever want to. My eyes widen as I gaze upon the who behind the voice. Well, if it isn’t Warren’s lucky night. We were about to go home after the Emily-Disick episode, but this might be motivation enough for us to stay.
“Nicole, oh my god - what are YOU doing here?” I turn around and wrap my arms around her.
“I was only doing a half shift at the bar tonight! Heard about this party from… someone and thought I’d check it out,” she says with a mischievous smile.
“Someone, huh?” Maybe this isn’t Warren’s lucky night after all.
“Someone, yes, but someone decided to leave before I even got here, so someone can go fuck herself for the foreseeable future.” Her smile is nothing but confidence.
“I didn’t know you were seeing a her, since when?”
“I’m seeing a couple of hers and hims. Nothing serious. I do hate to be stood up though, so there might be one less hers.”
She looks at me in the intense demeanor she always holds. Like there’s a whole world behind each of the few words she chooses to use. Like she’s testing our creativity and how much we can read between her lines, while she deciphers us like 72-point black text on white paper.
“Well stood up you are no longer!”
“I see that.” The way she utters these words halts my heart.
There’s a silence she seems to revel in. An energy shift that only took the few seconds of her walking into this well lit bathroom, making the buzz of the downstairs party feel further and further away. Oh, to have such power. My stomach is on hold. Do I feel uncomfortable? Impossible to tell. I swallow hard while I think about what to say. I wonder if she can see my throat bob. Oh god. I’m not like this. I’m not doesn’t-know-what-to-say-girl. What the hell?
“Should we go grab a drink?” I say, in the most chipper voice I can muster. “Warren is here!”
“Do you smoke?” She replies, not waiting for my answer to pull out a colorful beaded pouch from her purse. She opens it and pulls out rolling papers, holding one of it between two fingers, while the others maintain a tobacco packet. She starts feeding leaves into the creased paper. “Can you make a crutch?” She asks, breaking me from my gaze.
“A what?” I fumble with my words. Gosh, Lexi, get a grip. What the fuck is happening?
“A crutch, a cardboard filter,” she adds, handing me a rectangle of brown paper. I take it, unsure what to do next. My palms feel clammy. She must see the shake in my composure, because she keeps going. “It’s simple, just fold it like an accordion a couple of times, then roll the rest of the carton around the folded part.” She smiles at me while rolling her cigarette between two fingers, pressing the tobacco in place as she does. I can’t keep my eyes off her motion and my mouth feels watery. “Lexi?” She once again pulls me back to her eyes.
“Hum, yes, yes, yes, I can do that!” I say with a southern accent. Where on earth did that come from? I redden immediately and I turn away, facing the mirror once more, trying to focus on bending the cardboard. Once part of it is folded, I try and roll the rest as instructed, but the paper drops from my shaky hands and into the wet sink. “Shit, I’m sorry!” I exclaim.
She lets out a small laugh and I can feel her breath on my neck. When did she walk over? “Here,” she sets her tip-less cigarette to the side and starts folding her own filter, intently showing me each step. I don’t smoke, yet I am fascinated by what’s happening in front of me. She finishes rolling her tip and adds it to the cigarette. She holds it in front of her face, facing me, still staring straight into my eyes as her rosy pierced tongue slips out of her mouth and licks the length of the paper.
I’ve never kissed a girl.
That’s what I’m thinking right now. Why am I thinking this. This is Nicole. This is Warren’s crush. But she smells… she smells… something different.
“What now?” I ask in guttural sounds, as she’s holding the finished product in front of my eyes, in between our two mouths. Did she get this close, or did I inch towards her?
“Now we smoke.”
“HERE?”
She walks to the door and closes it, turning the lock until it clicks. She steps to the walk-in shower - one of those big enough for two rain shower heads at opposite ends - and turns one of them on, sitting on the bench under the turned off one. Steam wisps from the ground and I feel my legs moving, too entranced to do anything else than follow her to the end of the world. I sit down on the bench, and she adjusts her legs next to mine, handing me the cigarette. I take it, inhaling.
Immediately, my lungs are on fire. I cough uncontrollably, raking my throat. “FUCK that hurts,” I scream, immediately covering my mouth. THAT was loud. I’m thankful for the sound of dripping water. She laughs, taking the cigarette back.
“Wait,” she says. She inhales, and places her hands around my face. “Come here,” she adds in a restrained voice, holding the smoke in.
I’ve never wanted to follow an order more. Everything in my body is pulsating, and I have a hard time reconciling with the fact that just a few minutes ago, I was peeing and on my way out. I let myself be pulled in, and she creates a tunnel around our mouths, approaching her lips slowly. My heart skips beats left and right. Are we about to…? There’s tightness between my legs. And a buzzing. I want it. I want it and maybe it’s the five drinks I had tonight convincing me to forget about the fake blondes with fake boobs and bros of all kinds downstairs and the one very very very good friend, or maybe I’m just a bad person but I do, I forget it all.
She stops, her lips are just a fraction of an inch away from mine, enough that there’s no way she can’t feel the way they are trembling right now.
“Inhale”, she whispers as she exhales. So, I do. The smoke is wet this time, tinted with the taste of raspberry gum, and it goes down without so much as an itch. “It’s easier this way,” she whispers again, letting her hands fall and land on my bare upper leg, moving her head ever so slightly back. There’s heat radiating from her hand, her fingers moving so slowly that I can’t tell if I’m fantasizing about them doing so, or if it’s really happening.
“You have… the most gorgeous energy I’ve ever felt, Lexi.” Her voice is still low. As if the steam of the shower is creating a hole in the space time continuum and suddenly we’re not in a Hollywood mansion anymore, but in a tiny cabin somewhere on a hill in the middle of nowhere. I can’t hear the music or chatter anymore. I can only hear the dripping water and the slowly burning paper and the wetness of her lips as she rolls them together slowly. “I know we’d end up here, one day,” she continues. “I was wondering when and how, but I knew we would.”
“What do you mean, here?” I ask. “In a steam cloud with me coughing my lungs out?” My heart holds still as I attempt a joke, hoping I’m not changing what this moment could be. What somehow, god knows why, I’m hoping it to be.
She laughs and her hand moves slightly into my inner thigh, sending tickles up my spine. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
“Here,” she repeats, her other hand reaching my neck. She lets her delicate fingers graze the back of it, while her thumb stays slightly firmly on my throat. “Is, here ok?” She asks. HERE IS OK. My inner voice screams. HERE IS WHAT THE FUCK BUT HERE IS OK. My body adds. All I can do is nod and stare at her mouth.
We join lips and a jolt runs through my whole body. My hands awakened by the electricity grab her hips and a second later she’s pulling me up, her movements still so very slow and intent, each one of them. She walks me backwards until my back hits the shower wall, drops reaching my right arm now. She looks me straight in the eyes as she plunges for my mouth again. I close mine and let her tongue in, feeling its raspiness, tasting the raspberry smoke once more. I pull her body to mine, her hand kneading my boob gently, mine pulling at her shirt until both of our shirts are no more. She kisses my neck and I tilt my head back, feeling my hair frizz, feeling the falling apart of my insides as she bites my nipple. She comes back up to my neck and my lips while her hand slides between my legs and then she stops. I look at her in panic.
“What are you doing?” My voice is in a rush. My body seems to know what is happening faster than my brain can process it. And my body is screaming KEEP GOING.
“Making sure here is ok too,” she says, still as composed as she was behind the bar a few hours ago, the only difference being the way her eyes are now alight. I grab her hand in response, following the curve of my leg until it strokes above my panties, and a small moan comes out of my mouth, which she covers with hers once again, bitting my lower lip as her forefingers rub ever so slowly deeper into me.
“For fuck’s sake is someone in there? I have to pee!” A voice shouts from the hall, waking me from my haze. No. Please no. Not now.
“OCCUPIED!” Nicole shouts back, her voice unequivocally the truth, and silence falls behind the door.
I feel the rush this reminder of passing time ignited, and I grab Nicole’s hand, pulling it under the fabric this time so she can feel how wet she’s making me. Her eyes spark and she pulls them down, leaving me absolutely naked. She pulls her bottoms off too, and she stands in front of me, looking me up and down as slowly as she moved, a smile growing on her lips. She grabs my hand, and takes me under the flow of water, pushing me once again until I hit the wet bench opposite of the dry one we were occupying what now feels like eons ago. I sit and her breasts are in my face, her brown nipple in my mouth, my nose in her navel, my fingers finding my way inside of her the way I’ve only done inside of myself. I think of all the dicks they’ve been wrapped around and I think of how much better this feels, the warmth, the fit, the feeling of every movement creating pulsations on the soft surface. I follow the beats of her body and I find the spots that seem to raise the hairs on her skin. She adds her hand to the outside, rubbing slowly and I model her rhythm. Her nipples raise, drops trickling down her chest, and small sounds come out of her in the same sultry tone that she has when she speaks. These sounds, I can read. There is no guessing what universe she’s hiding in between the lines anymore. She’s there, in front of me, no parts hiding, nothing holding her back, pure desire emanating from every breath. Her moans quicken and she comes on my hand, her insides rapidly clenching in waves, each creating a new tingle that envelops my whole body.
She falls to her knees in front of me, her beam dripping with the same confidence she had when she walked in this bathroom, about to turn my world upside down in ways I never even considered. She grabs my hand and kisses her way up my arm until her tongue finds a home in my mouth. I’d let it stay there rent free for as long as it wants, but it only holds residence for a few seconds until moving down my neck, down my stomach, down, down, down. I let my head fall against the warmed wall and I feel it all. What probably takes just a few minutes seems to last a year. Her mouth sucking in my clit. Her nose rubbing the edge of it. Her fingers coming in and out in a consistent movement. The feeling that starts in my toes and creeps up behind my knees. The wave that hits the joints of my thighs and the small spot behind my armpits. The concentrated energy at the nape of my neck and the tickles across my whole face. The feeling of it all, all of this mess, all of this life, everyone I’ve ever met, every wrong I’ve ever righted, everything I’ve never done falling into place in one smooth motion of her fingers inside and out of me.
I come loudly, and she looks up with brilliant eyes, standing up to sit next to me on the bench as I let my eyes land on the rain falling upon us, as she kisses my shoulder softly. I look at our hands clasped together and the way our chests heave in the same rhythm, and as I stare at the cigarette on the ground, wet and decomposing into the shower drain slowly, I feel a new addiction deepening in my bones.