Chapter 5: Dawn Dominance
Sunlight, thick and honeyed, sliced through the blinds, landing in stripes across the tangled sheets and our interwoven limbs. The deep, post-saturation stillness of the morning after. I woke to the weight of an arm flung across my ribs, a leg hooked over my thigh. Ellie’s bare back was warm against my side, her blond hair fanning across my shoulder. Somewhere near my feet, Mary and Nancy were a single breathing entity.
For a long while, no one moved. We were a circuit, quietly humming, powered down. The scent of us—sex and sleep and skin—hung in the air, richer than lavender.
Then, a shift. Ellie’s fingers began tracing idle patterns on my stomach. “We should get up,” she murmured, her voice gravelly with sleep. “The farmer’s market. Before all the good tomatoes are gone.”
A practical reason. A thread back to the normal world. I caught her hand, lacing my fingers through hers. “Five more minutes.”
Mary stirred at the foot of the bed. “It’s already nine-thirty.” Of course she knew. The engineer, keeping time.
Reluctantly, the machine disassembled itself. Limbs untangled. Warmth retreated. We slipped from the bed, a procession of naked bodies moving toward the en suite bathroom with a casual, practiced intimacy. We showered in pairs, not for anything more than efficiency, the hot water sluicing away the night’s evidence. Nancy washed Ellie’s back. I soaped Mary’s short, prickly hair. It was functional. It was also a quiet liturgy of care.
Drying off, the mood shifted from sated to anticipatory. A different kind of energy sparked in the humid air. We moved to the walk-in closet, a shared space where our clothes mingled without hierarchy.
I found it on my side: a simple, navy blue linen dress. Sleeveless, cut straight with a slight A-line, hitting mid-thigh. No frills. It was cool, wouldn’t wrinkle too badly, and had decent pockets. I held it up.
At the same moment, Mary pulled an almost identical dress from a hanger, hers in a charcoal gray. Same cut. Same lack of adornment.
We looked at each other. A faint smirk touched her lips. My mirror. My girl.
We pulled them on over our heads. The fabric was cool and forgiving against skin still sensitive from the night. I ran my hands down the front, smoothing it.
Ellie, who was stepping into a flowing, sunflower-print skirt, saw us. She stopped. Her eyes traveled from my face, down the lines of the dress, to my bare legs, and then did the same to Mary. A slow, appreciative smile spread across her face, the kind that crinkled the corners of her eyes.
“Well, look at you two,” she said, her voice warm and thick as the sunlight.
Nancy, buttoning up a pale pink blouse, turned. Her gaze caught on Mary first, then slid to me. Her mouth opened slightly. “Oh.”
Ellie walked over, her skirt swishing. She circled me, then Mary, her artist’s eye critically, carnally assessing. “It’s the practicality,” she said, stopping in front of me. She reached out, her fingertips brushing the collar of my dress, then trailing down the center, between my breasts, over my belly. “No nonsense. Clean lines.” Her touch was feather-light but it burned through the linen. “It says, ‘I have important, sensible things to do.’” Her hand flattened against my lower stomach. “But on you… on both of you… with your bodies…” She leaned in, her lips near my ear. Her whisper was a hot, wet promise. “All it makes me think about is how easy it would be to push it up and fuck you right against the kitchen counter.”
A jolt, sharp and electric, went straight to my core. I saw Mary’s breath hitch. Her cheeks flushed.
Nancy came up beside Mary, her fingers playing with the hem of Mary’s gray dress. “It’s the way it hangs,” Nancy said softly, almost to herself. “It doesn’t cling, but it suggests everything.” She looked up at Mary, her eyes dark. “It shows off your shoulders. Your arms. I know how strong they are now.” She swallowed. “It makes you look like you could build a house, or take someone apart, and I just want to be that someone.”
Mary’s practical composure was cracking. A muscle flexed in her jaw. She looked at me, a silent plea for backup in this sudden, verbal ambush.
I cleared my throat, trying to summon my own practicality. “It’s just a dress,” I said, my voice tighter than I intended. “Linen. Breathable. Good for a warm day. Pockets.” I shoved my hands into the aforementioned pockets to demonstrate.
Ellie’s smile turned knowing. “Are they deep pockets?”
“Adequate.”
“Mmm.” She leaned in and kissed my neck, just below my ear. “I bet they are.”
Mary rallied. “Nancy’s blouse has twice the number of buttons. That’s highly impractical for rapid disassembly.”
Nancy blinked, then a slow, beautiful grin lit up her face. She took Mary’s hand and placed it on her blouse’s top button. “You’re welcome to time yourself.”
Ellie laughed, a rich, joyful sound. She stepped back, looking at the two of us in our near-matching tomboy armor. “My two beautiful, practical girls.” She shook her head, her expression one of pure, wicked ownership. “Walking around looking like that. It’s just mean.”
We finished dressing. Ellie added a wide-brimmed hat. Nancy slipped on sandals that tied around her ankles. I pulled on my worn leather boots; Mary did the same with a nearly identical pair. The mirror in the hall showed us: a quartet that was clearly two pairs, yet irrevocably one unit. Ellie and Nancy in their soft, artful fabrics. Me and Mary in our clean, functional lines.
Ellie picked up her woven market basket. “Ready?”
I looked at Mary. She gave a slight, sharp nod. Ready as we’d ever be.
But as we filed out the bedroom door, the air between us wasn’t just about tomatoes and zucchini. It was charged with the ghost of Ellie’s whisper, the memory of Nancy’s touch on fabric. Our practical dresses felt like the thinnest veneer, a charming fiction we were presenting to the world. Every glance Ellie threw over her shoulder at me, every time Nancy’s hand ‘accidentally’ brushed Mary’s arm, tore at it.
We were going shopping. But the real tension, the delicious, unsaid thing, was walking right there with us, dressed in navy blue and charcoal gray, hiding in plain sight.