Unfinished Business

I logged into Tinder as soon as I landed at LAX. It was something I always did when I was in a city I didn’t live in, addicted to the thrill of being desired by a complete stranger. And maybe, maybe if I was lucky, it could result in a one night stand, which is really all I wanted. Or all I had capacity for, I’m not sure. 

It was summer and I was in LA for the 4th of July weekend without any plans. It had been months since the breakup and I didn’t have anything but boredom left around the situation. We were cool. Sophia had been begging me to “get back out there” for weeks, dragging me left and right to pride events—kink parties, drag bingo, L-word themed bar crawls. Frankly, I was exhausted. And yeah, maybe in the wake of our queer world tour there was some interest. An extended glance, a slow dance or two. But all I really ended up with was a handful of debilitating hangovers after going home alone. My game was off, I guess. 

I turned my brightness down and swiped mostly left until it was time for me to get off the plane. When it was my turn to get up I was still glued to my phone, desperate for something, anything to happen. And right before I put my phone back in my pocket to avoid embarrassing myself by tripping and falling because I couldn’t look up from Tinder, there she was. Her first photo showed her joyful and carefree at the beach, skin sun-dappled and smooth as an angel, mouth puckered red and sweet. My heart became molten at the sight of her smile, the warmth coursing through me like I was keeping the most delicious secret. I didn’t overthink it. I swiped right and locked my phone. 

I was getting lunch with my mom when my phone buzzed, alerting me that I had a new match. I had turned the notifications on just for her. I excused myself to the bathroom. Once I was comfortable in the privacy of a stall, I opened my phone. Not only did we match, but she messaged me. My body went hot again as I opened the message. 

“Hey stranger :)” she wrote. 

My ribcage became a beehive. I typed back immediately.

 “Hey there,” and took a deep breath. 

I wrote, “how’ve you been?” then deleted it because I thought that sounded weird and formal. We were never weird and formal. We were never really anything, but I wondered if she still thought about that afternoon in the choir room, if she still wondered why I ran when really all my 17 year old frame wanted was to make sense next to hers. If she ever told anybody what happened, if she was angry with me, if she was as scared as I was by the heat our bodies were able to create in motion, if she thought of me at all. 

I retyped the question and sent it, not wanting to lose our conversation, lose her. Seeing her again, even on my phone, made my entire body ache as if it was a hot August morning and she was a cool drink. 

“I’ll tell you over drinks. You free tonight?” She responded.

“Yes,” I wrote, breathless to my reflection in the cloudy mirror. “Absolutely,” I replied. Absolutely. 

~~~

She’s already at the bar when I get there, nervous. She looks like a fucking painting, even in the dim bar light. I think about how I should have eaten more before getting here because now, looking at her, seeing her real and alive, mouth cherry red, I feel like I’m going to pass out. 

She greets me with a hug and I drink in her warmth, lingering in her scents, cinnamon and bergamot, earthy and grounded. 

“You smell good,” I say.

“Thanks, you too,” she says, smiling. I smile back. God, is she beautiful. 

“What’re you drinking?”

“Rum and coke. You?”

“Tequila soda, splash of lime.” 

I order from the bartender and we find a table. I drink fast, happy for something to do that isn’t just looking at her. But I think she is also looking at me? I could be wrong, but I think she is also looking at me. I wonder if she’s nervous. She doesn’t seem like the type. 

“What're you doing in LA?” She asks, twirling her straw in her drink. 

“Oh I don’t know. Always good to visit, I guess.” Why am I suddenly so bad at talking? 

“How’s the girlfriend?” She asks, and I nearly choke on what’s left of my drink. She shoots me a smug grin. “I keep up with your socials.”  

“Well if you are caught up, you probably can tell that there is no girlfriend.” 

“Ugh, I’m sorry.”

My eyes flicker at her. “Are you though?” She looks at me and the beehive is back, I am tingly all over. 

“I mean, I was hoping that was the case.”

“Oh yeah?” I say, surprised. 

She moves closer to me, taking the empty glass out of my hand. “Yeah. I saw you on Tinder and just felt like, I don’t know.”

I put my hand in hers. “Like what?”

“Like maybe we have some unfinished business.” 

So she hasn’t forgotten. 

I return to that afternoon all the time, pacing in the sun drenched choir room that I made sure wasn’t occupied, confident that she’d see the note I slipped into her locker right before lunch ended, but dizzy with anxiety at the thought of her response. Sometimes I think it would have been better if she hadn’t come, hadn’t arrived with an anticipation and curiosity that matched my own. But she did, and I still don’t have a logical explanation for why I fled from her warmth when I had spent so much time thinking about her hands, her hair, her mouth. Her hand in mine rendered me nervous and weak, astounded that something so beautiful could be mine. That she wanted me too, wanted me in the same way that I wanted her, wanted me at all. 

Of course I ran. 

~~~

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she announces after our third drink. “Wanna come?” 

Blood rushes to my ears. I grab her wrist, tequila confident, and meet her gaze. Her eyes are pools of amber, bright and intentional, as if they already know what I want. 

There is a line at the bathroom. Suddenly, I can’t help myself and spin her into me so that I can kiss her deeply, my hands around her neck, my tongue in her mouth, her other hand in my belt loop. She pulls away and looks at me.

“Oh, yes,” I say, and I pull her into me again, whispering it into her mouth over and over. She puts her hands in my back pocket and kisses my neck before I hear her voice, hot and rum coke sweet, heavy in my ear. 

“Don’t start anything you aren’t going to finish,” she growls. I move my hand to her neck and meet her gaze. 

“Not this time,” I promise. She grins at me. 

I want her fiercely, the prize the claw machine gets close to grabbing but drops before you can win. No, I am determined. I will get it this time. 

~~~

By the time we reach her bedroom, we are breathless and hungry for each other, reaching in hurried handfuls, trying not to rip each other’s clothes off with our white hot urgency. I lay her down on the bed and luxuriate in the image of her body, the scars, the soft places I was too afraid to touch, as if what I felt for her was hot enough to burn or break. I marvel at the roundness of her breasts, the soft mound of hair above her pussy. My mouth waters in anticipation of her taste. 

She looks just as hungry for me and brings my face to hers, her tongue in my mouth, searching. I trace my hand from her collarbones down and my mouth follows until my tongue is moving in circles over her nipple. She holds my other hand and gasps. I look at her. 

“Good?” I ask, breathless. She kisses me. 

“Don’t ask that stupid shit again,” she instructs.

I put my fingers in her mouth before I trail them down her abdomen, absorbing her softness as I work one, then two, slowly inside of her. She quivers under my hand, and says, “more, please.”

She rests more of her weight on my palm as I go deeper still. She starts to moan softly and all I want is to keep hearing that sound, make it louder. “Turn around.” I tell her. “Bend over, and let me fuck you for real.” 

She gasps, grins, then obliges. 

I start at the nape of her neck, kissing and licking slowly, enjoying feeling her shiver under my touch. I use one hand to gather her hair in my fist, trailing the other down her back. I tighten my grip, trace my finger lightly around her clit, teasing. Her breath shallows as I continue, sliding my fingers back into her, feeling her tense in pleasure. “Harder…” I hear her groan into the pillow. 

I release her hair from my grasp so I can hold her waist closer to mine as I continue to enter her, slippery and electric, until I am using my whole hand. I move with leisure, enjoying feeling the pressure build in her abdomen, feeling her body growing taught in anticipation. She is biting the pillow, begging. I increase my pace at her pleas. She exclaims something else into the pillow, but I can’t make it out. As she comes, I realize it was my name. 

I keep my hand inside her still, drinking in her ecstasy, high on the feeling of her body writhing from my grasp, my hand. As I begin to ease my fingers out of her, she reaches backward for my arm, turning her body around to face mine. “Kiss me,” she says. I’ve never had to think about an action less. 

We spend the night like this, intertwined, interconnected, giving and receiving pleasure until the sun creeps its way across the horizon, the sheets are ruined, and there is no difference between her sweat and mine. 

I have to go back to New York the next day, but we don’t talk about it. We stay locked in our fantasy, the years-long unanswered will they or won't they finally answered with the best possible outcome. When we can no longer ignore the sunlight, the fact that the night has passed and it is a new day, a day in which we cannot be sandwiched together between a thin cotton sheet for hours, I announce that I have to go. It is one of the ugliest sentences to ever be released from my throat. 

When she kisses me goodbye, I think about those two teenagers terrified of being caught in the choir room. I kiss her back and can taste that neither of us are scared anymore. 

Photo by Inga Seliverstova