Page 31 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls (Kissing At Work #2)

“ O h, Skye, sounds like you kissed the fuck outta her,” Zinnia exaggerated, eyeing the underside of a copper pan for the price. “Aren’t pennies plated with copper? Why is this so expensive?”

“Maybe we should recruit Skye’s girlfriend to talk the price down.” June jabbed Skye with an elbow in one of hundreds of aisles crammed with vintage items (and admittedly, some junk) of the four-floor consignment shop.

It was Saturday, days since Skye subjected herself to the astonishingly silken wonder that was Celene’s lips. She’d lost any bit of breath doing what little she had—parting her lips hadn’t even been a conscious decision.

Nonetheless, she’d supped from the promised land. Skye knew no reality before that anymore. Even at home that evening, she shrugged off Luce’s brittle mood because she’d kissed Celene Vale.

And Celene had bent forward for more .

“I can give you book two of Norwood’s Scientific Method ’s series. It’s nonstop wet and wild women-on-women fucking.” Zinnia blushed when a lady pushing kids in a double stroller sucked her teeth at them. Holding back a guffaw, she said, “Maybe you and Celene can recreate some scenes.”

Skye brought her smoothie to her lips, needing a cooldown, remembering Celene’s mention of foreplay before any four-finger action. “Yes to book two. Roleplay: to-be-determined.”

Though more than once or twice, her mind would drift to Celene in the raven-haired Mistress’s image. Then, she’d blink away and realize minutes had passed and she’d been staring at the same page that whole time.

June dropped the copper pan and pot into their basket, blowing dust off first. “Do your parents know about Celene?”

“They do. I’d mentioned there’s an old friend back in town that I think about all the time.

” She appreciated how she could open up to her parents and voice the sappiness she even shied away from around her best friends.

Her family thrived on love. She reminded herself that for Luce, too.

“They’re excited. If not for Luce, Larkin’s videos from the Toast Festival would’ve outed us. ”

With Larkin as social media mutuals with Skye’s parents, they inevitably saw the cuts of Skye and Celene shoulder-to-shoulder, edited between scenic shots and festival food reviews. Unambiguously an item. They’d done their duty; they looked authentic.

“You’ve kind of gone ghost.” June pointed out someone’s subpar acrylic painting, where all the people’s hands were missing. Must’ve been too hard to render. “What have you been up to?”

Complicating Celene’s fuchsia project. A fourth into her modeling the freeform, flowing sculpture, the size of the stems turned Skye’s stomach.

An indicator of her going wrong. So she scrapped everything and began anew, increasing the scale.

Deceptively more fragile, but she knew this would please her client-slash-fake girlfriend.

Skye played off a shrug, fitting her sleeves to her elbows. This part of the store needed a fan. “Mosaic life. Nothing new.”

Zinnia left fingerprints on several glass ornaments, perusing for the largest. “Do you and Celene talk? Like, if you hit her up right now, would it irk her, or would she roll with it?”

With a second shrug, she asked, “Why?”

“Long distance isn’t the end of the world, ya know. Drop this fake dating shit and stop denying your real connection.”

“I can’t do that.” Skye sipped from her cup, chewing residual apple peel.

“This dating thing’s opened my eyes. I want everything from my next partner.

A life together, some traveling. Our own home.

” She could hear one of the stroller kids beg for something breakable.

“A child, if that’s in the cards. Or a dog? I don’t know.”

June nodded, albeit slowly, suspiciously. “Years back, you wanted to escape Yielding. Now, Luce calls the shots in your life.”

“Luce needs me.”

“Sure, but what do you need?”

“I’m figuring that out.” Skye evaded June and Zinnia’s sympathetic stares, picking at a bowl of cuff links she certainly didn’t want. “Celene’s a big fish in a big, metropolitan pond. She’d dry up here.”

They wandered further, to a section comprised of nothing but old clocks. Skye lost herself in the swinging brass pendulum of a grandfather clock. Unlike the copper cookware, someone took the time to keep this area polished.

Not as nomadic and outgoing as her parents. Not in prosperous comfort like her grandmother. Not into the stable suburban lifestyle Cosmo prospered in. Skye couldn’t find her place.

This clock would count the seconds, minutes, days, and years Skye couldn’t control. Had she accomplished enough? Relaxed enough? Had she wasted her degree?

Celene came with a time limit. Sooner or later, they’d converse about their supposed breakup and be free of obligation to one another. Skye thumbed her phone, where she’d been scrolling through Celene’s socials full of trips in and out of the country.

This woman lived . Did Skye?

Frustratingly, June made good points. The love of her life wouldn’t just pop into her town, woo her into shambles, and declare her undying adoration. That was a dream that should’ve died in childhood.

“This grandfather clock is two thousand bucks.” Zinnia rested her chin on Skye’s shoulder, misunderstanding why it captivated her. “You gonna buy it for Luce?”

The untouchable room held one already, owned by her granddad—accurate for the clock’s name.

It used to supply a rhythmic tick to any blues, Motown, and soft rock from his record player.

He’d mastered a wildly efficient way of sitting three bowls of tiles on his lap, sorting through them at speeds Skye hadn’t matched to this day.

In Skye’s teens and adulthood, she’d lay a blanket out on the floor and help him swap out bowls Luce needed. Their little assembly line.

An occasionally in-the-clouds type himself, he never nagged her if she missed a snippet of a comment, if he had to nudge her a third time to grab a bowl of vermilion squares. He taught her the string technique of not getting lost, since not everyone was as understanding.

“Skye?”

She smiled at Zinnia, knowing it looked weak. By some miracle, she recalled the question. “No. We don’t need it.”

“Alright.” Zinnia swiped her hand in a circle over Skye’s back, her nails scraping against the loose fabric. “Let’s go look on another floor.”

“After you.” Though Skye opened her phone’s messaging app and expressed what she hadn’t with her friends. To Celene.

Skye – 3:57 pm

I miss my granddad.

Don’t know why I told you that.

She wouldn’t expect an immediate answer, and she didn’t want one, either. Her and Celene’s lips have touched; they’ve gazed into each other’s eyes. That couldn’t be too intimate to confess.

Tired of the clocks, Skye followed Zinnia and June upstairs.

Nadine Hayes had an underplaying habit. A “low-key dinner” could mean a reservation at Nobu.

“Running to grab shoes” may devolve into an hours-long hunt through Soho for a specific pair of heels in its half size.

“Should I break up with her?” meant sneaking into a girlfriend’s condo to take her stuff back.

The “hangout” Nadine mentioned led Celene to a boutique flower shop after operating hours.

Sitting at a metal table for a twelve-person class, creating botanical resin art.

Nadine and Dante split the costs for the three of them to attend, as they agreed their parents would value an anniversary gift made by their adult twins’ (and expert instructors’) hands.

This left Celene a little shellshocked, grasping for what she’d do.

Celene wasn’t a creative, she reminded them.

“Let’s make them a picture frame.” Nadine pointed a manicured nail at the yellow printouts, nudging her brother in the ribs.

Swiping on his phone, Dante managed to no-look whack her, and Celene couldn’t help picturing this as their configuration in utero. Havoc on a pregnant Maxine Hayes’s insides.

Maxine once told Celene that for ultrasound checkups, fetus Nadine and Dante constantly socked each other in the face. The doctor assured her and their father Leonard that they:

1. had a low possibility of actual harm and 2. wouldn’t end up despising each other.

The doctor had been right on both counts. Never mind Nadine’s annoyed comments or Dante contributing zilch to the idea table—these two were bonded for eternity. They shared similar piercing dark brown eyes and borderline contemptuous smiles, an interesting contrast to the considerate gift.

At both ends of their table, the instructors distributed clear bins of dried and pressed flowers, fern fronds, gold and silver leaf, pigments, seeds, and other embellishments. Ever since Celene embarked on the Vale home improvement path, she’d been into nature more than ever before. More so after?—

“Skye.” Nadine spoke the name alone, like a specimen to examine. Celene’s pulse picked up at the very mention; she flipped her page absently. “Does she do this kind of stuff? The crafty, DIY sticks and twigs thing?”

This and much more. Skye excelled at exquisite fine arts, which could make someone like Celene weep. “She does. Her grandmother had me over for lunch twice, and there’s art in every corner. I haven’t gotten a chance to search Skye’s room.”

“Y’all have been in each other’s faces, and you haven’t seen her room.” Dante lifted his phone to capture a burst of selfies, then brought it to the table to post. He’d gone to the barber, and the online world needed to know. “Playing the long game. I see you.”

Celene spun a flattened dandelion between her thumb and middle finger.

Into adulthood, she’d licked and moaned and bitten through innumerable kisses.

Yet, that single kiss from Skye still frustrated her.

Replying to Skye’s message about missing her grandfather didn’t deter Celene; it enhanced the intrigue.

It further blurred their flimsy lines. “It’s not a long game. ”