“Maybe you should then. Step out of your comfort zone,” I said.
Our eyes met again.
“But I really like being comfortable.”
I laughed.
“Fair enough.”
Piper stopped walking. “Your hair is so curly right now.”
She reached up and touched my hair.
I couldn’t speak as she ran her fingers through the strands, and they bounced back into their natural curls.
I tried to tell her that my hair got curlier with the humidity, but the words wouldn’t come.
Piper leaned closer to me, and I was absolutely frozen, my feet digging into the sand. Everything was so surreal I was worried about floating away.
Piper moved her fingers down, where my undercut was fresh.
“This style suits you,” she said, stroking the side of my head.
“Thanks,” I whispered. Finally. I was able to form at least one word.
“McKenna?” she asked.
“Yes?”
Her eyes flicked down to my mouth and back up to my eyes.
This couldn’t be happening. I must be imagining this. Had I been struck by lightning and this was all just in my head? It seemed like the only plausible explanation.
Piper was taller than me, by about six inches. Her lips were close. So close. My heart pounded once, twice.
“What am I doing?” Piper whispered just a moment before she reached for me, putting both hands on my face to bring it closer to hers before pressing her lips to mine. It wasn’t a timid kiss. In spite of her spoken uncertainty, her body told a different story.
I gasped in surprise, but she didn’t pull back.
Piper Patrick was actually kissing me.
I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I clenched them at my sides, wanting to touch her, but not wanting to spook her.
Piper sighed into my mouth, as if in relief. I kissed her back, tasting the fullness of her lips. Piper kissed with confidence, and I let her take the lead, following where she took me.
Her tongue caressed the seam of my lips and I opened for her, ready for the brush of her tongue and then her mouth was gone, and I almost fell over at the loss of contact.
My eyes flew open and I stared at her. Her eyes were bright, even in the darkness.
“I’ve never kissed another woman before,” she whispered. “I wanted to see what it was like.”
I wasn’t exactly a kissing expert myself. My kisses were limited to five people. I hadn’t even seriously dated anyone, and she had been married, so she beat me in the commitment department.
“What did you think?” I asked. The taste of her was still on my lips and I licked them to get more of it. Piper tasted just as expensive as I thought she would. Piper was champagne and diamonds and thousand-count sheets.
Piper closed her eyes for a second and then opened them.
“I-I think I’d definitely like to try it again,” she said, her voice stuttering just a bit.
“I’m open to that,” I said. All of the reasons we shouldn’t be kissing were drowned out by the simple fact that I really, really wanted to kiss her again. Nothing else was more important than that.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, and I finally let myself touch her. I gripped the sides of her shirt in my hands, pulling her back toward me. Her yoga top was still a little damp from the rain.
She seemed hesitant, her hands resting lightly on my shoulders.
“Kiss me,” I whispered. Her fingers dug into me, just a little, before our lips met again.
I held onto her shirt and then did the one thing I’d wanted to do since I met her that first day. I moved one hand to the back of her neck, letting those little curls brush against my fingers.
She made a little sound that was halfway between a sigh and a moan. It was my new favorite sound in the entire world.
Piper was bolder with the second kiss, and this time her tongue explored me without hesitation. She might not have kissed a woman before, but she knew what she was doing. The kiss swept me away on a sea of tastes and intensity and I was completely and utterly lost. There was no beginning and end to the kiss, there was only this moment, right now.
The sound of a phone ringing made us both startle apart.
“I’m sorry,” Piper said, fumbling to answer her phone.
“Hello? Oh, of course. I’m so sorry. I’ll be there in just a few minutes. Okay, bye.” She hung up and looked at the time on her phone.
“Shit, that was the babysitter. I was supposed to be back a half hour ago. I completely lost track of time.”
She put her phone back in her pocket and looked at me.
“We should probably go.”
“Yeah,” I said, still dazzled from the kiss. I hadn’t quite come back down to earth yet. I wiggled my toes in the sand.
Piper and I walked back across the sand and to the parking lot. We picked up our shoes and brushed off our feet before putting them back on.
I didn’t know what to say and she didn’t seem to, either. Reality was setting in now that we had kissed, and I had crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.
We reached my car and Piper faced me.
“I know we need to talk about things, and I hate to leave like this, but I have to get back. Can we talk on Tuesday?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
“Okay. Um, goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” I said, and she unlocked her car with her keys.
Piper bit her bottom lip as if she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t.
“Okay,” she said again, and walked toward her car.
“Thanks for the snacks,” I called out, and she turned toward me.
“You’re welcome.” She smiled and got in her car, and I got in mine.
“Holy shit,” I said to myself before starting the engine and driving behind Piper out of the lot.
“Where have you been?” Julia asked as I walked into the farmhouse. I was still dazed by kissing Piper. Had that even really happened? I pressed my fingers to my lips.
“What?” I asked, looking into the living room where Julia and Hollis were snuggled up on the couch. Amanda and Ellie must already be in bed.
“You’ve been gone a long time,” Julia said, her eyes narrowing as she looked at me.
“Oh, I waited for the rain to stop and then walked on the beach a little bit,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about what had happened with Piper.
“Nice,” Julia said, but I could tell she knew there was more to it.
“I’m really tired, so I’m going to bed. Goodnight.” I waved to both of them.
“Goodnight,” Julia said, a question still in her voice. I was going to have to answer some questions, but tonight, I wanted to keep things to myself.
I took a shower to wash the rain out of my hair, and as I ran my fingers through it, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way that Piper had touched me. Every moment of before the kiss played in my mind like a movie. When had she decided to kiss me? Why had she kissed me? Did this mean she was attracted to me?
I guess I’d just assumed that Piper was heterosexual, since she’d never given me any indication that she wasn’t. I mean, I still didn’t really know. That kiss could have just been an experiment.