Losing Everything

Chapter 9.1: Then

The first time Lucy and Erica kissed, right as they kissed, Lucy had known it meant something. It had been too intense, too overwhelming, for it not to be important.

Because it was just a kiss, a wonderful, tender, heartfelt kiss.

It was just a kiss, but it was also everything more.

It was them whispering something unspoken with their mouths. It was words neither had ever said, or thought to say. It was need and wanting and promises, too. It was a year of pushed-down, squashed-down, deeply-suppressed feelings, which Lucy had hidden away inside herself so completely that she had actually, honestly believed she and Erica were simply friends, right up until that moment when she tasted Erica’s mouth. It was desire. It was lust. It was breathlessness, and shaking hands, and her pulse actually being audible in her ears. It was wanting someone she knew and liked, which somehow made her wanting more, and it was finding out that person liked her back, which was indescribably, oddly, exciting. It was kissing. It was delightful, surprising, exciting kissing. It was pleasure, too. It was losing her breath and feeling nothing but her mouth and it was her insides suddenly becoming hot and achy, and wet, most of all wet, like sex hadn’t made her feel wet in years.

All because of Erica.

It was kissing Erica, while Erica kissed her back, and suddenly realizing how much everything had just changed without either of them meaning it to. It was realizing how much Erica meant to her, and knowing it was a lot, because it must be, or she wouldn’t be becoming as worried and upset and frantic as she was becoming right then, even as they still kissed. It was kissing Erica, and being lost in it, being so utterly overwhelmed by the taste and feel and presence of Erica that the tiny incidental detail that Erica was a woman was something barely worth thinking about. Because it seemed like it ought to matter, somehow, but actually it just didn’t. Not beside the taste of Erica’s mouth in hers, and the soft warm silky feel of Erica’s hair under her hand.

It was Erica. And they were kissing. And Lucy hadn’t ever imagined that she felt about Erica the way it turned out that she did. But it made sense to her that she didn’t know, and could never have known, because she’d never kissed Erica before. She was finding out something she’d never really suspected, that she and Erica liked each other, and she was also finding out something else she’d never suspected, that it didn’t matter the person she was kissing was Erica, and not a man. She’d never realized that about herself before, and she was a little curious about that. But she supposed she’d never really stopped to think about it before. Or perhaps she just hadn’t yet met the person who made it worth considering, not until right then.

Right then, as she kissed Erica.

So she kissed. And was lost in Erica’s mouth. And nothing else mattered. She was kissing Erica, and she cared about nothing else. Kissing Erica was all that mattered.

Kissing Erica was all that mattered, and that was completely the problem.

It was Erica. Not Jake.

And Lucy needed to stop.