The Bellamy Harris Affair {Lesbian Short Story}✔

Red

Red. That’s all I wanted to wear. After Harris showed me her studio, I wanted to feel vibrant and beautiful, the way I looked in her photos. No other hue seemed to accomplish that goal better than red did. I washed myself in the lush color. God, I felt . . . I felt as if I were seeing the world for the first time and vice versa. And I wanted to dress for the occasion.

In my more philosophical moments, I find it ironic that I fell in love with red. The color of love, lust, war. The chosen hue of the infamous scarlet letter. No matter the day of the week, I woke up in the morning and painted my lips a deep crimson, content to be a Jezebel. That’s who I was in the simplest of terms, an unfaithful woman.

Harris and I might not have been intimate in a physical sense. But we bared ourselves to each other in every other way that mattered. She was the first, only and last person on my mind most days.

My usual aloof behavior with Walker became more severe. I skirted around him as I did before meeting her, only giving him the slightest morsels of my attention. Robbing him of affection gave me an odd sense of exhilaration. Back then, I was foolish enough to blame him for my prior unhappiness. It felt right to steal his.

I lied to him. So much so that the untruths just rolled off my tongue like a native language. If he knew something was up, he never showed it. But then again, I was too intoxicated by my own discovery of self to notice any signs of his suspicion.

It shouldn’t have come as a shock to him. He and I had been coasting for years by then. The engagement six months before, had been a last-ditch effort on both our parts to breathe some life into our fledgling relationship.

I kept telling myself that I was selfish for not being appreciative of his feeble attempts at date night, or by insisting upon sleeping in separate bedrooms. I claimed that I liked to have my own space to think. Truth was, I needed that separation so I could convince myself he was who I wanted.

We were trying to love each other. Harris made me realize loving someone shouldn’t be that hard, not in that way. I wasn’t young enough anymore to expect a relationship to be all roses. That haze had worn off in my college years.

I knew love wasn’t easy. By nature, it’s an unstable emotion with even more inconsistent rewards. But as Bob Marley said, you have to find the person who will make the suffering worth it. To love, you had to be willing to skydive without a chute.

Walker didn’t like heights. It was hard to get off the ground with someone who wasn’t willing to make the climb.

“You’re going out again?” Walker ambled into my room and took a seat on the bed. He picked up a tube of scented body lotion and sniffed at it. His face recoiled from the scent.

That one was called “love spell.” He had never liked it. Said it smelled too sweet, like rotting flowers. It was my favorite. That night was the first time in over a year that I’d bothered to bring the banned moisturizer out of exile.

“Harris’ gallery opening is tonight.” I held my eyelid steady, as I traced a liquid liner brush along my lashes.

“So she’s an artist now, too.” The sarcasm dripped from his tone.

I looked up to catch his sour expression in the mirror. Almost thirty years old, and he was pouting. If his intent was to dissuade me from leaving the house, he accomplished the complete opposite. Whining like a toddler got you nowhere with me.

My face was on, and my hair had been nice to me. Through a lot of manipulation and a bit of prayer, my natural kinky curls now framed my face in sandy brown ringlets. After giving myself a fine mist of perfume, I pulled off my robe and slipped into my dress.

It was a deep red, a-line frock. A delicate embroidery of roses cascaded down one side of the bodice in a flourish of reds, and deep purples with a hint of iridescent thread woven into the needlework garden. The fabric felt lofty, expensive. I tucked my feet into a pair of nude heels, and gave myself a quick check. The entire ensemble felt special.

The perfect outfit for a first date.

I gathered up the few essentials that would fit into my clutch, and headed for the door without uttering another word to Walker. His footsteps behind me hastened my own feet. When I reached for the front door, his hand caught the handle instead.

He stared at me in silence for a full sixty seconds. The intense scrutiny began to unnerve me. His eyes looked dark, tortured. Finally, he asked the question that rested on his tongue.

“Do you love her?”

I couldn’t answer that. Instead, I leaned up and kissed his cheek. When I moved to leave, he allowed me to do so without further impediment.

The car Harris had sent for me was waiting at the end of the drive. A gentleman got out of the driver’s seat to open the door for me.

Before I got into the car, I pulled an envelope from my clutch and placed it into the mailbox. Walker would find it in the morning. I took a deep breath, and settled into the vehicle that would carry me toward the next chapter of my life.

Harris was standing outside the gallery when I arrived. Before the car could come to a complete stop, she was opening my door. She took my hands, and smiled at me. Neither of us said a word. Somehow, words would have gotten in the way, cheapened what was developing between us.

As our lips drifted as close to each other as our hearts already were, I considered Walker’s question. And then I jumped . . . without a chute.