Page 19 of Unstoppable You (Sapph in the City #6)

Chapter Nineteen

Delaney

My head was pounding when I woke up. That was the first thing I realized. The second was that I wasn’t alone in my bed.

Carefully, I cracked one eye open to figure out what the hell had happened. The lights were still on, but the sky was still dark-ish outside my window.

Oh, and James St. Clair was sleeping next to me, her head cradled on one of her arms.

The night rushed back at me and I remembered going to Sapph. Drinking (that explained the headache) and dancing. James was there. I’d tried to get her to dance with me. What happened after that was kind of fuzzy, but I could put the pieces together.

Huh. I should be a lot more upset that James was in my bed than I was. It was kind of sweet that she had come in and stayed with me. She must have been tired herself.

Her face was smooth in sleep, some of her hair falling in her face. So carefully, I reached out with a few fingers and moved the strands out of her face. She scrunched up her nose in an adorable way but didn’t wake up.

One small issue: I really had to pee. Like, in a “if I don’t go soon, I’m risking kidney damage” way. And I had to get past James to get to the bathroom.

There was nothing else to do but wake her.

“James,” I said, touching her shoulder. “James?”

Her eyes fluttered open and she looked surprised before she smiled sleepily at me and my heart did a lazy little somersault. Huh.

“I’m sorry. I have to pee so bad.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice rough.

I climbed out of bed and went to relieve myself. I took a while washing my hands before going back into my bedroom. James was still in my bed, but she was sitting up and reading the back cover of one of my books.

“Is this any good?” she asked, showing me the cover.

I leaned against the door, taking in this very strange sight. “Yeah, it is. Wanna borrow it?” I was only half-kidding. James didn’t need to know that I never, ever lent my books out. I didn’t trust anyone to take care of them. Books were precious and I didn’t want anything to happen to mine.

“Are you sure?” she asked, turning the book around in her hands.

Now was my time to retract my offer. But she’d brought me home safe and tucked me into bed. “I’m sure.”

James smiled and got to her feet. “Sorry about falling asleep and everything. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Uh huh.”

My head was pounding even worse right now. I needed to take something and lay in bed for a while until it passed. I had to pace myself with drinking from now on. I was not a fan of hangovers.

“You okay?” she asked, approaching me.

“Headache.”

“Let me get you something.” She moved past me to the kitchen to get a glass of water and shake out two pills from the bottle on the counter. Guess she’d gotten acquainted with my kitchen last night.

James came back and gave me the glass of water. I took the pills from her, swallowing them along with a few gulps of water.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

James St. Clair was in my apartment. Had been in my bed.

“I should probably…go.” She pointed toward the door.

“It’s the middle of the night.” There was no need for her to run off now.

“Or the early morning. Depending on your perspective.” She yawned and that made me yawn back.

“You don’t have to go. Just stay until the sun comes up at least.” She’d have to take a car back to her apartment if she went now. “I can drive you. Just wait until the morning and I’ll take you.” That was a nice thing to do. I was good at doing nice things for people. That was my comfort zone.

James seemed like she wanted to argue, but she nodded. “Okay.”

“Glad we got that settled. I’m going back to bed.” I jerked my thumb in the direction of my bedroom.

“I’ll just…” she pointed at the couch.

I shrugged. “We were already sleeping together. I’m not going to kick you out of my bed. I mean, unless you want to sleep on the couch.” I didn’t want to presume. Maybe I wasn’t a fun person to sleep with. Connor hadn’t liked it. He’d done a lot of passing out in the living room, but that was mostly due to his constant gaming.

Her face went violently red. “I’ll just take the couch.”

“Whatever.” I needed to pass out again ASAP.

I should have changed into pajamas, but I was too lazy, so I flopped into bed again and pulled the blankets over me, closing my eyes and shutting out the world.

Well, I tried to shut out the world.

James was in my house. James had been in my bed. The second St. Clair to do so, but not in the same way, obviously. James wasn’t into me like that. She’d just brought me home and had fallen asleep by accident.

And now she was on my couch. It was a shitty couch. Connor had been angry at the price of furniture, so I’d ended up getting one he was happy with at a steep discount. It wasn’t really comfortable, and I’d had to get extra padding so I didn’t have back pain when I sat on it for too long.

My apartment was small and quiet enough that I could hear her trying to get comfortable as the couch creaked with every movement.

That was it. I was looking for a new couch starting tomorrow.

“James?” I called out, not wanting to get up again.

There was a long pause.

“Yeah?”

“My bed is much more comfortable than the couch,” I called.

“Okay?”

Come on, did I have to spell it out? “Get your ass in here.”

More creaking until I heard feet padding across the floor and she appeared in my doorway. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, come on. I’m tired.”

She approached the bed cautiously, as if I was going to change my mind.

“Just get in.” I glared at her and then turned onto my side, my back facing her.

James got onto the bed and for a moment she paused before she slid under the blankets with me. My bed wasn’t that big, and she was pretty close. I could smell her scent, which was dark and almost masculine? More like cologne than perfume and it was really nice. Connor had always worn that awful body spray stuff that had made me gag when I’d accidentally walk through a cloud of it.

James settled in beside me and I let out a sigh, doing my best to relax and fall into sleep again.

It took a long time.

* * *

The sun was up the next time my eyes opened and James was still in bed with me. But this time my back was pressed right up against her and she’d thrown an arm over me. We were cuddling .

Oh. Maybe I should be more shocked, but she was warm, and she smelled good, and I hadn’t been held by someone like this for a long fucking time and it was nice. Really, really nice.

James exhaled and her breath puffed against the back of my neck, but she slept on quietly. No snoring. That was nice too.

My god, I was touch deprived. All I wanted to do was wiggle backwards a little bit and press my body even closer to hers. Her arm on top of me was just the right pressure.

The only reason Connor ever cuddled with me was to press his dick into my back as a prelude to sex. James and I were cuddling for entirely different reasons and I was loving this.

Before I could stop myself, I let out a little contented sound and felt James slide into wakefulness beside me.

She inhaled sharply, freezing with her arm still around me.

“Sorry.” James retracted the limb and moved away from me and all I wanted to do was grab her and tell her to come back. To resume holding me for the rest of the day. We could stop for food breaks. Maybe she could throw in some hair touching.

Ugh. I was a mess. Begging James to hold me was a new low.

“It’s okay,” I said, rolling onto my back and looking up at the ceiling.

“It’s morning. Late morning,” she said, and I could feel her gaze on my face.

“Yeah. Give me a few minutes and I’ll drive you home.”

She sat up. “You don’t have to. I can call for a ride.”

I finally looked at her. Hair all haphazard, a crease on her cheek. She looked beautiful for someone who had passed out in my bed twice.

“I’ll drive you. Maybe… I can make you breakfast first? To thank you for bringing me home. It’s the least I can do.” That seemed like a fair trade. A meal and a ride.

Her mouth popped open as if she wanted to argue, but I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t make a big thing out of it.” I got out of bed and cringed at my outfit. I needed a shower and to brush my teeth, but I needed to get James home first.

“Can I use your bathroom?” she asked.

“Of course. You don’t have to ask.” I ran my hand through my hair and winced. Definitely needed to do a deep condition soon.

James hit the bathroom while I puttered around the kitchen, assembling some breakfast items. I could go really easy and just toss some frozen waffles on a plate, but I wanted to do something more, so I pulled out eggs, sausage, sourdough, an avocado, and started making some coffee. My headache was gone, but I was absolutely starving.

“I’m going to throw some eggs on avocado toast with some sausage. Is that okay?” I asked when she came out of the bathroom.

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’m good with whatever.” She stood there with her shoulders up near her ears as if she didn’t know what to do with herself.

“You can grab some cups out of the cabinet.” I pointed to where my coffee cups lived.

She took two out, laughing at the funny pictures and sayings on them.

Once the coffee had brewed, she poured two cups and then grabbed creamer from the fridge, adding it to her cup.

“Me too, please.” She dumped just enough in and handed me the cup as I babysat the eggs and sausage.

I had her cut the avocado and mash it with a little bit of lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper before toasting the bread.

It was nice to cook with someone. Connor never had. I’d had to be responsible for nearly all of his meals if I wanted to eat real food. He would have lived on pizza rolls and beer and microwaved chicken nuggets if I’d let him.

James added a dash of hot sauce to her toast and I did the same.

Since I didn’t have a dining table, we both sat on the couch. James winced.

“You would have wrecked your back. That’s the side that Connor sat on.” She shifted in her seat, making a face.

“It’s…very worn in.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna get a new couch.” We were mostly silent as we ate. The food revived me, and I was feeling pretty great even after my wild night. I hadn’t gotten to cross anything off my list though, which was a bummer.

“What’s that face?” James asked and I must have been frowning.

“Nothing. I was just determined to cross off one of the things from my list last night and I didn’t. It’s fine.”

You win some, you lose some.

“Sorry about the bar. We can probably find you a place to dance on it.” That made me think of the grungy bar that I’d gotten wasted at the night that Connor had sent me the dick pic. They’d probably let me. Should have gone there last night, but then I wouldn’t have ended up at Sapph with James.

“It was a cool place. Sapph. Do you go there a lot?” I asked.

“Not a lot, but it’s one of my favorite places in the city. It’s nice to have somewhere to go where I feel comfortable.” That made sense.

I was silent for a moment while I tried to decide how to ask my next question, and if it was a question I was even allowed to ask.

“When did you…” I trailed off, hoping that she got the gist.

“When did I become a lesbian?” She raised one eyebrow and set her empty plate on the coffee table, taking her coffee with both hands.

“I wasn’t going to ask it like that!”

She grinned at me to show she was teasing.

“I’m messing with you. Um, it was in college. Remember how I told you the girl I had a crush on that picked my roommate? It was her. She was my lesbian awakening.” James wiggled her fingers.

“Is that how it works?”

She snorted. “I don’t know how it works for other people. I feel like…there was always this voice in the back of my head, but it was so quiet. It was speaking, but I couldn’t translate. Does that make sense? And then I was finally away from my shitty family, saw this girl at orientation and my entire world changed. I’ve never been hit by lightning, but that’s what it felt like. One minute I was absolutely straight and the next minute I wondered what the hell I’d been thinking all those years. It was like something shattered.”

I guess I’d been through something similar, with the whole Connor thing. The life I had planned for myself had vanished the second I caught him fucking someone else. All the dreams of a wedding and kids someday and buying a house and holidays. Just like that.

But would I even have had those things with Connor? Whenever I’d asked him about marriage, he told me that it was “just a piece of paper” and we could just be together without “all that.”

“Wow,” I said to James. “That sounds like a lot. Did you have anyone to talk to about it?”

She shook her head. “Not really. I ended up panicking and searching online until I found the campus queer organization and showed up at their door the next morning. I guess I wasn’t the first person to freak out and end up there.” She told me how nice and welcoming they’d been, and how she’d broke down crying because suddenly her entire life made sense.

“I understood myself for what felt like the first time. There had been this…this terrible feeling in my chest for so long and it was just gone. And I knew what it was like to be free.”

Her words were so beautiful I almost wanted to cry.

She laughed. “And then I had to make up for lost time, so I was a giant slut for a while. It was awesome.”

A startled laugh burst out of me.

“And then I calmed down a little bit and had a girlfriend for about a year.”

I didn’t know why she was telling me everything, but I found that I wanted to know. Wanted to hear about this James that I hadn’t met. So different from the girl I’d gone to school with.

“What happened?”

James blew out a breath. “She got into grad school and I couldn’t do the long-distance thing and I wasn’t going to go with her. We just weren’t right for each other. It was a very mutual breakup, if you can believe that. And then I graduated and did the slutty thing again, but I got sick of it pretty fast. And then I moved back here.”

She’d lived a lot of life since I’d seen her last. I’d had no idea.

“Does your family know?” Connor had never said anything, but he was shockingly self-centered so that wasn’t a surprise.

“I mean, they know in the sense that I came out to them, but it didn’t really take. Like they didn’t want it to be true, so they just pretend that it isn’t.” Ugh. That was horrible. I had no doubt if I ever came out to my parents (not that I would), they would probably throw me a party with a rainbow cake.

James really deserved better parents. And definitely a better sibling.

“I’m sorry.”

She finished her coffee and stood up. “Not your fault.” James picked up all the dishes and set them next to the sink.

“I should probably get out of your hair. You’re visiting your parents today, right?” Shit, I was. I’d completely forgotten. They were expecting me in a few hours for lunch, and I still needed to pick up the food and some flowers.

For some reason I didn’t want to drive her home. It was nice having her here. Having another human in my apartment again. She’d done her duty by getting me home and she probably had other things to do today that didn’t involve saving me from my loneliness, so I couldn’t keep her here.

“Yeah, just let me change and we can go.” I still had my bar outfit on from last night.

“Sure.”

I threw on a pair of joggers and one of the T-shirts I’d designed before shoving my feet into my sneakers and grabbing my keys.

“I like your shirt,” James said, pointing at it.

“Oh, thanks.”

“I have the same one.” She grinned at me as we left my apartment and I locked the door behind me.

“Wait, you do?”

The stairs were wide enough that we could walk down side-by-side.

“I ordered a bunch of things from Between the Sheets.”

She had? “When?”

She told me it was a few weeks ago.

“Larison must have packed the order and didn’t even notice.”

James nodded. “I was kind of hoping you might have gotten it and seen my name. That was when I was still trying to apologize to you.”

I made a face. “Please don’t start that again. I’d like to move past it if we can.”

She smiled and my chest did this little disconcerting fluttering thing that confused me.

We were quiet as we reached my car and I unlocked the passenger side for her. Good thing my car was clean and there wasn’t a pile of books sitting in the passenger seat like there usually was. There were some in the trunk, but she couldn’t see those. I also had a few boxes of shirts in the backseat.

James slid into the passenger seat and her scent overwhelmed me. How did she still smell so good? I really wanted to know what it was.

“Now I get to see where you live,” I told her.

She exhaled shakily and then gave me her address. It was on the edge of the city in one of the more historical areas. Just knowing that part of the city I was already jealous. Sure, she wasn’t as close to the downtown, but she had lots of cool places and art galleries and other interesting places nearby.

James was quiet for the ride, so I turned on the radio, searching until I found a good station. The ride wasn’t going to be that far, but with normal traffic it was going to take longer.

The GPS directed me to park in front of a lovely Victorian. No fair.

“What a gorgeous building,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying.

“Would you, I mean, do you want to see it?” Hell yeah I did. I loved getting a chance to look in other people’s homes. It gave me ideas for my own and I definitely needed ideas. Connor had always held me back from doing any major decorating. He’d even tried to force me to get rid of some of my books. His idea of decorating was…nothing. Literally nothing. Blank walls, no rugs on the floor. Frat house chic.

“Yeah, I’d like to see it.” Maybe I could also sneak into her bathroom and find out what her perfume or cologne was.

“Okay,” James said, getting out of the car and waiting for me to join her.

We looked silly, with her still in her outfit from last night and me in my joggers and T-shirt. Her building had a shiny elevator that we rode up to the second floor. James let me into an apartment toward the front of the building and I almost gasped at all the natural light that spilled in through the massive windows.

I was officially jealous.

Everything inside was a mix of old and new. Stone counters, stainless appliances, but the floors looked like they might be restored originals.

“Damn,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying.

James had decorated with lots of neutrals and soft colors. It was much more feminine than I expected.

“I’m just going to, um, change. You can look around if you want.” She edged toward a door which I assumed held her bedroom.

Of course I made a beeline for her bookshelves that took up space on either side of the windows.

She also had a gorgeous white desk facing the window with her laptop, printer, and a number of files on it. James’s workstation was more organized than I would have expected too.

Her bookshelves were arranged by color in a rainbow and I couldn’t get over the visual. I wondered how she found anything.

I was so lost in the books that I didn’t hear her come out of the bedroom.

“See anything you like?” she asked, and I jumped about a mile into the air.

“Fuck, you scared me. How do you walk so silently?” I asked, turning around to face her, my heart still trying to recover.

James nodded down at the fuzzy socks on her feet. She’d changed into a pair of baggy flannel shorts and a faded T-shirt. She looked slouchy and cozy and I remembered that only a few hours ago, she’d been wrapped around me.

“How do you find anything with them organized by color?” I asked.

“These are all the books that I’ve read. My Tbr is in my bedroom and organized in order of how I’m going to read them, but I’m also a mood reader too.” Interesting. I was pretty strict about how I did my reading, but sometimes there was a new release that you just had to put everything else aside for.

“Do you want anything?” she asked.

“Um, water maybe?” We’d just had breakfast, but I was feeling a little dehydrated for some reason.

James brought me a glass of water and it reminded me of her bringing me one early this morning.

“Thanks for taking care of me last night. Again.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. It seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe next time you go out, you should go with someone. Just to be safe.”

I hadn’t felt like I was in danger or anything at Sapph, but I guess she did kind of have a point about not going out alone.

“Ugh, fine,” I said, rolling my eyes. It was a mistake to come up here. Why was I here? I didn’t need to see her apartment that bad.

“Delaney?” James asked as I tried to come up with an excuse to leave.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“There was…there was something on your list that I think I can help with.” Oh shit. I’d shown her my list last night. I’d told myself I wasn’t going to show it to anyone, and I’d had a few drinks and handed my phone over to James.

“Yeah, what was that?” I quickly ran through the options. Gambling? Dancing on the bar? Sneaking into the movies?

James paused and gazed at my face so intensely that I almost wanted to take a step back from her, but instead I stepped closer. She took the empty glass and set it on her desk.

What was happening?

“This,” she said, stroking my cheek and leaning down so slowly that I had a lot of time to understand where this was going. Had a lot of time to stop her.

Why wasn’t I stopping her? My list didn’t say “kiss James”! It said “kiss a girl.” Any girl. Anyone other than her. I could go outside and find one right now. I could. I was going to.

Right now.

But I wasn’t moving. Well, I was. I was pressing up on my toes just the tiniest bit to move closer to her mouth. To her. It wasn’t a conscious thought, a decision that I’d made. Hey, I’m going to kiss James St. Clair right now. What?!

I hadn’t thought it, but I sure did it. One minute I was flipping out and the next I was kissing James.

I hadn’t kissed a whole lot of people, but I would have told you before this moment that kissing was fine. Pleasant, even. It was nice in the way that ice cream on a hot day was nice. In a way that sliding into fresh sheets was nice. Very normal, average nice.

Kissing James wasn’t nice at all.

It was terrible and wonderful and awful and incredible. It was so many things at once that my brain overloaded and shut down until all I could do was feel .

The heat of her skin. Her touch, gentle but insistent on my cheek. The way she smelled, intensified by our close contact. The shape of her plush, warm lips on mine. The pressure of them against mine. Firm, but not too firm.

Just right. The Goldilocks of kisses, you could say.

And then it was over before I could even realize it was happening and James was pushing away from me. My back hit the bookshelves.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” Her hand flew to her mouth, as if to hide it from me.

“Uhhhhh,” I let out. Words. Form some words. Any words. “What the fuck was that?”

Not the best words. Find better ones.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her face draining of color. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why?” I swallowed, my throat unbearably dry. “Why did you do that?”

She shook her head, still looking as horrified as if she’d killed someone.

“You wanted to cross it off your list and I took advantage. I’m sorry.” She kept saying it and I was starting to get annoyed. I’d had enough apologies from this woman for a lifetime already.

“Stop,” I said, putting my hand up. “Just…give me a second.”

I touched my lips, which were the same. Huh. I guess kissing someone the same gender as you didn’t result in any immediate physiological changes.

Still. My skin was hot and tight and tingling with energy.

“Can you—” I started to say and then stopped. No. That was a bad idea.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Guess the apologizing was contagious.

“What are you sorry for?” she asked, finally uncovering her mouth. Hers looked the same as well. No changes for either of us.

“I don’t know.”

The two of us just stood there in her apartment in bewildered silence until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Can I ask you something?” The words came out before I was ready.

“What is it?” Her tone was soft, and I had to close my eyes for a minute. I opened them again and said the words that could change everything.

“The list said ‘kiss a girl’ so I have to be the one doing the kiss. And you just kissed me, so it doesn’t count. Because of the rules.”

Her eyebrows rose. “There are rules? I didn’t see those.”

I nodded like a bobble head. “Yeah, there are rules. Like with the skinny-dipping. I had to actually swim for it to count.”

“Oh. Okay.” She licked her lips and I watched the path of her tongue.

Was I really doing this? I mean, I’d already done it once. What was one more kiss? I could delete it from my list since I hadn’t gotten a chance to dance on a bar last night.

“Sooooo, can I kiss you?” I asked. Words that I never thought I would say, least of all to James St. Clair.

My world had turned upside down in the past few weeks. Why not go with it?

“Yes,” she said, taking a shaking step toward me again. This time I was the one who reached for her. Tilting her face down. I’d never put so much time and concentration into a kiss before. Not even my first one, which had happened in sixth grade at a birthday party and was over so fast it was like it hadn’t even happened.

I was putting so much care into it because of the Fuckit List. It had to be documented. Like you have to get verified for the World Records book.

“Okay, this is for the list,” I said, only a whisper away from her mouth.

She was shaking just a little bit. Tremors went through her and I almost asked if she was okay, but I wanted to get this kiss over with so I could be done with it.

I gave her a second to say no, but she didn’t, so I gently pressed my lips to hers. My plan had been to count to five and stop.

Instead, I kissed her. And kept kissing her. I couldn’t help it! Her lips were really fucking soft and she tasted so damn good and I could smell her so much better and I think I might have lost my mind. It wasn’t until she made a little whimpering sound at the same time as I’d run my tongue along her lower lip that a tiny bit of sanity returned to me and I yanked myself away from her.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry!” More apologies. Endless apologies between us.

“What the hell was that ?”