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“I know before you had Paul, it was hard. Then, youhadPaul, so you needed to heal. People also wouldn’t leave you alone, but I thought that tonight, we could…”

“I want to,” she replied when Harriet faded.

“But?”

“No but. I want to.” Deb turned in Harriet’s arms and began unbuttoning her own dress. “I’m just a little nervous.”

“Why?” Harriet asked, reaching for and helping Deb with her buttons.

“I don’t know. What if you don’t like my body now that I’ve had a baby? You know it doesn’t look the same.”

In response, Harriet just silently pulled Deb’s dress apart in the middle, revealing the breasts she’d only seen recently with Paul attached to them. Then, she let the dress fall to Deb’s knees, leaving her only in her underwear, the kind that wasn’t exactly flattering, the kind her mother called knickers. Harrietlicked her lips, though, and leaned in, kissing Deb between her breasts.

“Let me make love to you to show you how much I still love your body, how much I still loveyou,wantyou all the time,needyou all the time. Let me, please.”

“I’ve missed you so much,” Deb said, cupping Harriet’s cheeks and raising her face so she could connect their eyes. “I hate that we can’t just be together, raise Paul together as his parents, and be married in the eyes of God and everyone else instead of just to you and me.”

“I know. I hate it, too. But we have this. My pa passed last year. Mama has barely moved since. And my brothers say it’s fine that I live in the house because none of them care if I ever get married or want to find me a husband. We’re lucky, aren’t we, in a way? I get to be Paul’s mama in my own way. Jacob gets to be his other papa, even though he has a whole mess of kids at home, too. And JD lets us have tonight and doesn’t expect anything from you other than to pretend to be his wife, which you can do because it means we get to have this.” Harriet lowered her face again, kissing between Deb’s breasts once more. “So, will you lie down now? I want to touch you everywhere.”

And she did. Harriet spent hours kissing, licking, and stroking Deb’s skin, making her feel whole again, wanted, and needed in a way Deb hadn’t felt since the last time they’d done this, which seemed like so long ago. When Harriet lowered her mouth between Deb’s legs, Deb thought back to the first time they’d done that after months of hesitant stroking and pushing gently inside to try to find the spots that would bring one another pleasure.

“You know Willie Mae at the tavern?” Harriet had asked her that night in pretty much the same spot they were in now.

“Yeah. Why were you at that tavern, Harriet Louise?”

“Pa asked me to drop something off for him. Anyway, the other night, when I was there, she was telling some boys about a man she met in the city. I overheard her talking about how that man did something to her. The boys all thought itwas nasty or something, but I didn’t.”

“What did he do?” she’d asked, concerned as to what it might be.

“He used his mouth down there,” Harriet had replied.

“Oh,” Deb had said.

The way her mother had talked to her about sex had been very specific and also very brief. Deb was supposed to just lie there and let her future husband do what he wanted whenever he wanted. That was it. They’d never talked about what he would do besides that. Maybe a few other things had been mentioned to her in passing, but certainly, nothing that had her wanting to experience any of it. What Harriet had said as she’d kissed down Deb’s stomach, though, had her wet between her thighs in a way she hadn’t been before.

“Would you like that?” Harriet had asked.

“I don’t know,” she’d said honestly. “You mean, you’d kiss me there?”

“I mean, we could figure it out together, but I’d like to try it.” Harriet had lowered her body down farther and kissed Deb’s thigh.

“Okay,” she’d replied then.

Tonight, though, Harriet didn’t ask because she didn’t need to ask anymore. She knew exactly what Deb liked, what she didn’t like, how to bring her pleasure quickly when they needed to rush, and how to bring her pleasure slowly when they had time.

After they were both sated for a while, Deb held Harriet against her body for warmth as the night air had chilled, and she looked up at the stars in the sky.

“Sometimes, I wonder,” she said softly into the night.

“About what?” Harriet asked.

“If maybe we’re two people out of time and place.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe we weren’t meant to be here at all. We don’t fit in, do we? Maybe in another time, we would have somewhere else.”

“But what if we weren’t together there?” Harriet asked.