Carina placed her key card against the door, even as she pressed her wife against its wooden frame. As soon as the green light flashed on the handle she reached for it, opening the door causing Maya to stumble backwards slightly into the darkened hotel room.
The door closed and the keycard now in the light holder the room was bathed in low light from a pair of corner lamps. Carina pressing Maya against the door, kissing her as if her life depended on it. Her thigh pressing hard between Maya’s legs, a hand at Maya’s neck, the other shoved under Maya’s shirt, caressing a bra clad breast.
The only audible sounds in the room was the heavy breathing of the two women between kisses, Maya’s soft moan as Carina sucked at a pulse point, a whispered call of ‘Carina’ as her wife dragged her across the hotel room
It had been months since they’d been this intimate. A night of rose petals and candles and lingerie in a desperate salvage attempt. It had worked too till Carina reiterated her demand that Maya get help. In a moment Maya had felt she’d lost her wife all over again.
She knew different now. She’d been losing Carina for months, for just as long as she herself had been retreating from their marriage. Not consciously, never that, but retreating none the less. But she hadn’t left, not fully. And neither had Carina. In their own very different ways they’d been clinging on to their marriage. Carina resolutely, Maya instinctively..
Until that night when Maya ruined everything. And she lost everything because she lost Carina.
But in recent weeks they’d laid new foundations,foundations they were about to build a new level on. It had been their third date, an incredible one. With no bodily fluids spilt. No blood like their second disastrous date in Joe’s . No amniotic fluid like their second first date.
This was a stand alone date. No attempt to recreate the past. They’d gone to a newly opened Restaurant on the opposite side of the City. Maybe it was a desire to leave the past behind but they’d never been in this part of the City together. It was suburbia and that was supposed to be the attraction of the Restaurant, fine dining in the suburbs. Surburban chic.
It was pretentious as all hell and they’d both hated it and laughed their way through the meal. Carina had driven and Maya as always never drank when her wife could not. Back at Carina’s hotel they’d d each had a glass of wine, then two in the Hotel bar. The sexual tension between them building with every sip.
When Maya had offered to walk Carina to her hotel room door it wasn’t an offer borne out of simple chivalry. It was borne out of desire and hope. Hope fuelled by Carina’s flirting not just tonight but in all their interactions of late.
And it was all Maya wanted, all she craved, this intimacy with her wife. Her wife she’d missed so much.
And it was the third date after all. That thought came unbidden even as Carina started to open the buttons on her shirt with one hand, her other attempting to unbutton her black pants.
“Wait, wait, Carina, just wait!” She exclaimed as she pulled away from Carina. Her heart beating so fast she thought it would burst forth from her chest. A heart that was betraying her body right now, her body that craved Carina’s touch more than anything.
“Bambina? Cosa?” Carina tried to catch her breath, all she wanted right now was Maya in her arms, in her bed, naked, writhing underneath her. It was all she thought of lately. The feel of her skin, the sound of their lips and tongues battling against each other, those blue eyes darkened with desire as she held her face in place. The peculiar combination of residual smoke in hair and her natural scent before she’d showered after a call out.
The memory of her taste.
They’d been to a critically acclaimed Restaurant tonight, the food had been passable, the service less so and they’d laughed and smiled at the pomposity of the Maître D’. And she knew that tonight she’d no longer be able to resist the pull of gravity. Maya was what she wanted, all she wanted.
“Are you sure?” Maya whispered, “Is this what you want? Are you sure?”
Carina just smiled as she stepped forward into Maya’s personal space reaching for her, “Si, I want you, Maya. I want you, ho bisogno di, cazzo…”
Maya shook her head, her brain and her body silently screaming at her not to do this. Not to be stupid. This is what she wanted, dreamed off, needed, fucking needed.
But she couldn’t, not like this.
“ I don’t want to have sex with you.”
“Maya?” Carina was incredulous. She wanted Maya and she knew Maya wanted her too, just as badly, she knew Maya’s body and it’s reactions almost as well as her own.
“I don’t want to have third date sex with my girlfriend or my… whatever we are right now. I don’t.” She shook her head, then inhaling deeply, “I’m sorry. I do, I want, I do want.. but I can’t…not like this. I can’t… I…” Maya’s breathing became shallower, more rapid even as she tried to calm herself. Tried the techniques she knew,the ones Diane had talked through with her, to ward off a full blown panic attack.
“ Maya, Maya, it’s ok…” Carina recognised the beginnings of a panic attack. There hadn’t been that many, in all their time together, maybe Four or five at most. Either work related or Lane Bishop related. Never about them.
Maya shook her head again, her breathing regularising even as she felt her eyes fill with water, with tears she did not want to shed. Here she was making their third date, a date that had been going perfectly, as much of a shit show as the first two. Or maybe worse. Those two at least ended with what seemed like progress, this felt like a giant leap backwards.
“I don’t want to have sex with you and then tomorrow you tell me it doesn’t mean anything.” Maya couldn’t meet her wife’s eyes. She knew she wasn’t being entirely fair. They’d moved on so much in the last two weeks since that first night she’d spent in the Hotel.
“Maya , I, that’s not…”
“ I love you, Carina and I miss you. I miss you so much… and as much as I want you, I want my wife more. I don’t want to just have great sex with you, I want to make love to my wife. I want my wife to want me the same way as I want her.”
“Maya, I…”
“No. I, I know it’s my fault, my fault that you stopped loving me, I was, was…well you know. And I promise you I’m not going to stop trying to win you back, ok? I just can’t do this. I can’t have sex with you when I know what loving you and being loved by you and sharing our bodies that way feels like.”
“Maya, I haven’t st…it’s just.. I’m scared of being hurt again, I’m scared of you leaving me again..”
“I never left, Carina… “
“Yeah, you did, Maya, you didn’t mean to, you didn’t even know you left, but you weren’t there.”
“I’m sorry, Carina…” now she really couldn’t look at Carina, she was so ashamed, of her behaviour, “..I really ruined everything Didn’t I? Is it too late? I don’t care how long it takes, or what I have to do to win you back, I just miss you, I’ve never stopped loving you, missing you…”
“You haven’t, you haven’t ruined everything. I love you Maya, that hasn’t changed..”
“But you said that I need to win you back. You don’t wear our ring, you’ve gone on dates, you’ve..”
“Maya, I’m scared. I’m scared that we’ll mess this up again. And it’s hurt so much… and It’s not all your fault, I should have been more supportive, I said stuff too, that I wish I hadn’t , but Maya. I have not stopped loving you.”
“But…”
“No, Maya, no, ti amo, non posso vivere la mia vita senza di te.”
“You can’t live…?” She’d lived with Carina long enough to get the basics but this was too important to leave to misinterpretation.
“ …without you.” Carina answered.
“Will you come home? Please.” Maya almost begged
Carina shook her head, “…I’m not ready, not yet but soon…I will be, I promise. I’ll be home soon.”
“Yeah?” Maya didn’t give a damn that tears were mingling neither snot down her face. She’d cried more snotty tears in the last two months than she’d done since she left her childhood behind.
“ Do you still…I know we’re not in the right place right now but do you still want to have a baby with me? Because I still,want that, Carina, if, if you do.” If Carina no longer wanted that with her it would be like a knife through her gut.
Carina stepped closer still. Reaching to take Maya’s face in her hands, leaning forward till their foreheads and noses almost touched.
“When I went for drinks with…” Carina hesitated only briefly but long enough for Maya to say, “With Pam, with your new friend, Pam.”
“ Si, Pam. So she and her ex had talked about kids for years, it was unspoken but agreed that they would try someday. But then her ex changed her mind, moved away. So Pam decided to do it alone.She asked me if I would consider that.”
Maya hated that this woman could have that discussion with her wife at a time when they were not even exchanging mundane pleasantries.
“ I said maybe..” Carina shrugged as she wiped away a lone tear from Maya’s cheek that somehow, amongst the deluge, had not fallen till now. “…but, oh amore mio, I want that so much more with you. Always with you.”
“I want everything with you, Carina. you’re my North Star, my compass, I don’t want to just survive, I want to live, and love…I want to experience it all with you… babies and diapers and, and tantrums and teenage angst and empty nests and the better and the worse and all of it.
Somehow they ended up standing in that hotel room, arms wrapped around each other as both sobbed and cried till no more tears could fall.
It was Carinas turn to have tears wiped away as they finally pulled away from each other.
“ It’s getting late, I should go…”
Carina nodded, “… will you call me as soon as you get home? Not a text, a phonecall so that I know you’re safe?”
Maya nodded, smiling now. For the first time she knew they would be ok. However long it took they would be ok, no, not ok, not even better but magnifico.
After she left Carina pottered about for awhile, unable to rest easy. She’d hurt Maya and Maya had hurt her. All of the hurting came in the presence of love not the absence of it. Love wasn’t enough, if it was they’d never have had any troubles. They’d both been damaged in different ways by their own upbringings and that damage had caused their inabilities to communicate when times got tough.
She could place the lions share on Maya this time but not all of it. And neither could Maya bear the burden of all the work to repair them either. But they were going to be okay. For the first time in months she knew that as a certainty.
As she was about to climb into bed to wait for Maya’s call she knew there was one thing she had to do. She opened the hotel safe and took out the small black box that contained a simple gold band and she placed it on the third finger of her left hand.
It already felt like she was nearly home.