27
" Paeng leans back and rests his hand flat on the table. “Vince.”
Blushing, he snaps at his friend. “I dropped the bra on the wet tarp and I guess I must have accidentally gotten paint on it and touched it to my cheek, okay?”
Paeng is silent as Vince sighs. “I didn’t mean to take my upset out on you, sorry.”
“No big. So, you fondled it. Was it good for you?” Paeng’s eyes glitter, making Vince’s anxiety flare.
“I couldn’t help myself! The girl’s smoking hot and yet she doesn’t appear to own trashy underwear.” He feels all dreamy just thinking about it. “It’s simple and soft . . . it felt so nice. She’s not like any of the girls I’ve met before. She’s direct, feisty and artistic and I bet she’s really smart. She’s nothing like the usual MOM Girl and she’s not even my type. But her underwear is beautiful. She doesn’t wear slutty underwear because she doesn’t put on airs, and oh, God, that’s so attractive. What I wouldn’t give to see—”
Paeng face palms Vince. “Dude. You are waxing poetic about cotton underwear like my sisters wear when they get their periods. It’s just underwear. It is not the key to Dani’s psyche. You are making the kind of assumptions about her that lead to expensive rings, one point two kids, and minivans. You are in trouble. "
― Jess Molly Brown , Moms on Missions (Mommageddon, #1)
29
" Did you ever think that maybe we’re like that?” she asks me.
I smile into the dark. How many times have I thought of myself as the ocean? “You think we’re like water?”
Gemma sits up. The salty wind coming off the water snaps her hair around her shoulders. With one hand in the middle of my chest, she tries to push me into the sand. I’m strong enough to hold her off, but I don’t want to. I willingly collapse back and she crawls over me. Holding a smile on her face, she slips her legs on either side of my hips and settles her weight on me.
In a voice thin as smoke, she says, “Well, maybe that’s how we start. Maybe, in the beginning, we’re nothing but a theoretical vast and empty sea with this huge open sky above us.”
Her hands press down on my stomach and her fingers pull at the bottom of my shirt. She leans forward until her breasts are rubbing against me and her mouth is almost touching the skin of my neck.
“Then slowly,” she continues, “over time, the currents change and we build up these continents inside our bodies.” Now her fingers walk a path from my bellybutton to my sternum. “And eventually, we have canyons and deserts and trees and beaches and all sorts of places where we can go and live.”
I suck in a breath as Gemma flattens her hand on the skin just above my heart and kisses me just below my ear. Then she turns her face, fitting the crown of her head beneath my jaw and says, “Most of the time we’re safe on the land, but sometimes we get sucked out to sea. What do you think happens then?”
I think about everything we’ve shared today. I think about Gemma and me. And how it feels like the geography inside of my own body is changing, how it’s been changing from the moment I met her. Maybe even before that.
And I think about the continents we’re building between us. The bridges of land moving from her fingers to mine and the valleys and mountains formed by her lips on my skin and her words in my head.
I use both of my hands to cup her face and pull her to my mouth. I press my lips to hers, parting her mouth and drinking in her breath. “I think you’d have to start swimming.”
A minute of silence ticks by.
Over the low drone of the waves on the beach, she whispers, “And what if you can’t swim very well?”
I think for a minute. “Then you fly. "
― Autumn Doughton , This Sky