Different Circles

“Oh really?” Suzie said, bitterness in her tone. “You’re not a lesbian? I seem to recall you sticking that pretty face of yours between my legs last night and licking my slit until I came all over it.”

“Well ... yes, but...”

“And was I hallucinating the part where you climbed up on top of me naked and rubbed your clit against mine while tongue kissing me?”

“You were not hallucinating,” Celia said with a sigh. “I did those things and I enjoyed them immensely. And I will undoubtedly do them again tonight as long as you’re not too pissed off to let me, but none of that makes me a lesbian. Bisexual, yes. I will freely admit that. I enjoy having sex with you. I enjoy being close to you. But I can never be with you in the way that you are suggesting.”

“So, I’m just someone for you to fuck?” she asked angrily. “Is that all I am to you?”

“You know better than that, Suzie,” she said sternly. “If you don’t, you’re not the person I thought you were.”

Suzie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Slowly, she let it out and opened her eyes again. “Okay,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Celia told her. “And I’m sorry if I misled you into thinking that what we have here and now is more than what it is. I needed somebody to be intimate with and you were there. I love you, Fly Girl, and I always will, and I will always be grateful to you for being here for me when I needed you most, but ... I’m primarily heterosexual. I cannot change that any more than you can change the fact that you’re a lesbian. A long-term, committed relationship between the two of us simply cannot work. Please tell me that you understand that.”

Suzie was now fighting not to cry, but she nodded her head. “Yes,” she said softly. “I understand that.”

“Again, I’m sorry,” Celia said. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I know,” she said.

Celia put her head back down on Suzie’s chest. Suzie’s arms went back around her, caressing the naked skin of her back.

“How long do we have then?” Suzie asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You just told me that what we have can’t last. How long do we have?”

“There is no expiration date on this thing,” Celia told her. “We have as long as we have. And when this phase is over, that doesn’t mean it’s over for good. There will be other tours. There will be visits when we’re not on tour. Who knows what will happen then? There are too many variables to factor in to come up with an answer to a question like that. Maybe I’ll meet the next man of my dreams tomorrow and it ends then. Maybe I never meet the next man of my dreams and you and I carry on a torrid affair with each other for the rest of our lives. We just don’t know what the future will bring, so we might as well live in the now.”

Suzie thought that over for a few moments and then nodded. “You’re a very wise woman, Band Geek,” she told her.

“You have to be wise to write songs,” she said. “It’s a requirement.”

“Will you write a song about me?” Suzie asked. “About us? About our time together?”

“Yes,” Celia said without hesitation. “I most certainly will.”

The phone on the nightstand began to ring. Both women looked at it, knowing who was likely to be on the other end. Celia sighed and rose up from the snuggle. She rolled over and picked up the handset. She put it to her ear.

“Marie Vasquez’s room,” she said softly, giving her hotel name.

“Hey, C,” came Pauline’s voice. “It’s me.”

“The New England Report has been released?” she asked.

“It has, and it’s causing quite the sensation. I just got off the phone with Darlene back in LA. She says the office phone is ringing off the hook with reporters trying to get information out of me about the tale. The proverbial shit has officially hit the proverbial fan.”

“Wonderful,” Celia said. “You’ve seen the article?”

“Got a copy of it about an hour ago,” she confirmed. “I think you need to see it. Suzie too.”

“I suppose we’ll have to,” she said. “How bad is it?”

“It’s much more detailed than I was expecting,” Pauline said. “We most definitely have a mole in your inner circle.”

“That’s what we figured from the start.”

“True, but now that we have the article to refer to, it seems our mole is not that bright. He gave himself away.”

“He did? What do you mean? Who is it?”

“I’ll fill you in after you read the article. You’ll probably come to the same conclusion without me telling you. Can I come up?”

“Uh...” she looked over at Suzie and then down at herself. They were both naked and smelled strongly of female sexual musk. Sure, everyone knew they were doing it with each other, but that did not mean they needed to have evidence thrown in their face, or up their nose. “I think maybe you’d better give us about thirty minutes or so.”

“I understand,” Pauline said. “Thirty minutes.”