Danika shrugged and opened the door wider. 'Come on in.' She saw Fawn's reluctance. 'Don't worry, he's not here. You won't have to get caught in the middle of any nasty fights.'
Not seeing any way to politely refuse, Fawn followed her sister-in-law into the house. 'Where… is he?' she asked, trying not to betray any quiver of disappointment.
Danika pursed her sensual lips, half with scorn, half with sadness.
'Who knows? He said he was going away for a few days to think.'
They sat in the livingroom. Danika switched off the TV. Fawn saw a pitcher of martinis and one glass on the coffee table.
'Let me get you one,' Danika said nervously, seeing Fawn's eyes on the pitcher. 'I'll get you a glass.'
'Why not,' Fawn smiled sympathetically. She felt kind of sorry for Danika, who looked so sad and confused, so lonely, sitting here drinking a martini by herself and watching TV at 5:30 in the afternoon.
And Danika seemed defensive about it, too. From the kitchen she shouted, 'I hope you don't get the wrong idea. I'm not just sitting here getting soused all the time.' She returned with another martini glass and poured a cocktail for Fawn. 'In fact,' she half-giggled, 'I only had one. So far. And I waited till five o'clock. Just being a good girl. But I took a few days off from work, just because I was feeling so bad. Trying to get myself back together, you know. But around this time of day it gets a little hard. You understand, don't you?'
'Sure,' Fawn said. Seeing Danika like this, so nervous and upset, made her realize that she really didn't know much about the situation at all. She knew she had not listened very carefully to Eric, being first so involved in her sexy childish memories, then swept up by her mysterious urge to go to bed with him.
'You'll have to forgive the way I'm dressed, too,' Danika said, briefly but genuinely embarrassed. 'I mean, it just seems so silly to get dressed when you're not going anywhere all day. So I…'
Danika wore a thick yellow quilted bathrobe with tiny rosebuds all over it. She had it buttoned all the way to the throat, and it was not a sexy garment at all, but more like a little girl's fluffy robe, completely concealing her body down to the furry bedroom slippers on her feet. Fawn began to wonder if she might have been wrong. She really couldn't doubt Eric's word, or her own earlier suspicions of the girl, but Danika certainly didn't seem like any kind of sexpot right now.
Instead she was shy, and anxious, and pretty, and sad, and lonely, and Fawn found herself melting with warmth and sympathy for her, instead of the jealousy she had expected to feel.
'Do you want to talk about it?' she asked Danika, timidly.
'What's there to talk about?' Danika's eyes filled with quick tears, but she blinked them back. 'I'm sure Eric told you what a bitch I am.'
'Are you?' Fawn said calmly.
But Danika couldn't hold back the tears. She began to weep softly, her lovely face flushing with sadness. 'I don't know,' she sobbed quietly,
'I just don't know. I suppose I am.'
'Eric said you were having an affair with his best friend.'
Danika nodded, biting her full lower lip, which quivered with each deep sob. 'I was. Oh Fawn, I wish I could make somebody understand! I wish even I could understand! I love Eric, not the other guy, but somehow I just couldn't help myself. I don't know what came over me, but I was just going crazy for this other guy all the time.' She shook her head wildly, seized by a torment of weeping. 'I was just burning up for him, and nothing helped. Nothing!'
Fawn gulped her martini, and felt her face grow hot, felt herself blushing, saw her hands shaking. Across from her on the sofa, Danika was wracked with sobs, biting her fist, choking on her tears. Having someone to listen to her had brought up all her pain and confusion. And Fawn knew that she herself was not blushing for Danika, but for what she heard her sister-in-law saying, which was so close to her own predicament. Oh, I understand, Danika! she thought. I understand more than you think.
'I knew it was wrong… but there was nothing I could do!' Danika wept. 'I couldn't stop myself!'
'I know, I know,' Fawn soothed her.
'How can you know? How can anybody know what it was like?'
Fawn got up from her chair, went across the room, and sat next to Danika on the sofa. She took one of Danika's shuddering hands between her own and cradled it and soothed it. Then she poured each of them a fresh martini from the pitcher. 'I know,' she murmured to Danika. 'I just know, that's all. You have to believe me.'
Danika gazed at Fawn through her tear-glistening eyes. 'You mean something like that has happened to you?'
Fawn nodded, trying to control her shame. If you only knew, she thought, feeling very sad. If you only knew.
Danika smiled through her tears with temporary relief, sighing and bending her neck so that her head rested on Fawn's shoulder. She began crying softly again. 'Oh… I don't know why that makes me feel better. But it does… in a way.'
Fawn put her hand under the collar of the robe, on Danika's moist nape, massaging her tenderly, comforting the girl, drawing her ever closer, until Danika was nestled against her, sobbing quietly now into her shoulder. The salt smell of Danika's tears and the vulnerable warmth of her body made Fawn feel curiously sad, too, and she put her arms around Danika and embraced her, feeling strange soft unfamiliar yearnings flow through her at the touch of Danika's tear-stained cheek against her bare neck.
'It's okay, okay,' she murmured softly to the girl, stroking her back through the quilted bathrobe. 'We can't explain it, sometimes we just have to give into it…'
Danika turned her head and smiled up at Fawn her eyes strangely murky with unmasked questions through the film of hot tears. And Fawn pressed her lips to her sister-in-law's forehead, giving her a lingering, reassuring kiss there. Then, without really knowing what she was doing, she lowered her lips to Danika's eyes, kissing away the tears, then to the girl's tear-wet cheeks. And when Danika raised her mouth slightly, and Fawn's lips found it, everything seemed so warm and natural and throbbing with strong emotion that they were deep into the kiss before either of them knew it. Their lips curved together with aching tenderness, and the slow lingering beauty of their kiss went on and on until Danika's lips imperceptibly parted as Fawn's tongue slipped into her mouth. Fawn felt Danika's tongue curling around her own, felt herself sizzling with excitement and desire as their embrace grew tighter, their hands more urgent as they groped for each other's flesh through the fabric of their clothes.
When their lips finally came apart, Fawn found her own eyes filling with warm tears she didn't understand.
'You're crying,' Danika murmured, brushing Fawn's cheeks with her lips.
'I know.'
'Why are you crying?'
'I don't know,' Fawn shook her head. But this time she shut her eyes with happiness when Danika's mouth found hers again, and held the girl's body tightly, feeling Danika's hands rubbing her back through her thin blouse.
This time they kissed with more freedom, more heat, more urgency, and when the kiss broke off they were both gasping. They gazed at each other, their eyes burning, both of them thrilled and nervous. 'I…
I've never done that,' Danika said. 'I mean, never kissed a woman.' Her face was flushed, but her eyes still murky.
'Neither have I,' Fawn whispered.
'I want to do it again.'
'I… do, too. But… what if we don't stop?' We might as well face it right now, Fawn thought wildly. We know where we're heading, we shouldn't play cute about it. God, she thought, god! I never thought anything like this would happen to me!
'Do you want to stop?' Danika asked shyly.
Fawn shook her head. She closed her eyes and felt Danika's lips on her neck, dipping down to her throat, crawling up her chin to her mouth again. This time instead of simply kissing they drank each other, their mouths and tongues thirsty with passion, their bodies squirming together on the sofa.
Fawn knew that if anything had to be more wrong than her and Eric, it was her and Danika. but her sister-in- law's searching mouth and probing, snaking wet tongue drove her nearly wild with excitement. I don't care! she thought. I don't care about anything, I just want her, I want her so bad! She slipped one hand between the buttons
