Chapter 12: Bus Ride to Pepperdine
Joanna came through the front door at 6:40 with her golf bag half out of her grip and her backpack sitting on the bed, unzipped and empty. The final had run long. Her legs felt like someone else's.
"Katie? Bus is in twenty."
"In here!" Katie emerged from the kitchen with a protein bar in her teeth and Joanna's travel toothbrush in her hand. "Packed your toiletries. You're welcome."
"I love you."
"I know."
Joanna dragged the backpack onto the bed and threw things in. Golf gloves. Range finder. The coral bikini, because Pepperdine meant a beach even if the tournament came first. Tee shirts rolled into balls because there was no time for folding.
Her phone buzzed on the comforter. It was Katie, who was standing six feet away.
I got us a seat in the back. We'll be the only ones back here... don't wear undies.
Joanna read it twice. Then she looked up, and Katie was watching her over the protein bar with a face of perfect innocence.
"Really."
"Really what?" Katie said, chewing. She swallowed. "Bus downstairs at seven. Don't make me come back for you."
The door clicked. Joanna stood over her half-packed bag for a second, heart doing something entirely disproportionate to the situation. Then she stripped off the sweats.
The biker shorts were the navy pair, snug through the hips, and she tugged them on over bare skin and immediately felt the difference, the smooth drag of fabric where cotton layers used to be. It felt obscene. It felt like the text had felt. On impulse she pulled the sleep mask out of her nightstand and stuffed it into the front pocket of the backpack, then told herself not to read anything into that either.
The charter bus idled at the curb, tinted windows catching the last copper light off the Pacific. The team loaded in a loose chattering line of golf bags and hoodies, Coach Marsh checking names off a clipboard at the underbelly hatch. Maya waved from the middle of the line, ponytail high, looking fresh as a daisy.
"Good luck this weekend."
"You too."
Joanna walked the whole length of the aisle, past sleeping freshmen with neck pillows, past the assistants arguing about pairings, all the way to the back row. Katie had claimed it like territory — blanket folded over one seat, a plastic bag of snacks wedged in the corner. She patted the window seat.
"Your carriage, madam."
The bus pulled out at 7:04. Katie pulled her knees up, spread the blanket over both their laps, and produced a sandwich bag with two gummies in it from her hoodie pocket. She bit one in half and held out the smaller piece.
"Half?"
Joanna put hers under her tongue and waited for the sour tang to dissolve. Around them the bus filled with noise — a lo-fi speaker up front, a card game starting two rows ahead, Coach's voice rising and falling by the hatch. Nobody looked back. The tint did its work.
The gummy came up warm behind her ears somewhere around Mission Bay, softening the edges the way it always did, except tonight it didn't soften so much as open. The lo-fi sounded farther away and closer at once. The window held an ocean of black stitched with shore lights, sliding past, and Joanna found she couldn't stop tracking it, couldn't stop tracking anything — the sway of the bus through her seat, the smooth seam of the shorts against bare skin, a drag of fabric she kept feeling because there was nothing between it and her and every vibration of the road arrived undiluted.
She realized she was pressing her thighs together. She made herself stop. Then she did it again.
Katie was talking about greens and yardage books and Maya's snack rotation, easy background noise, and at some point her hand slid off her own knee and landed on Joanna's thigh and stayed there, just rested, and Joanna's whole body went still around that point of contact like a compass needle finding north. The warmth behind her ears deepened. Her thoughts were doing something unhelpful — looping back through the last two weeks, Rachel's balcony, her mouth on Rachel's skin, Katie's fingers under the sleep mask, her own hand in the shower — a reel she couldn't shut off, each image arriving more vivid than the last, and the bus bumping over a seam in the pavement sent a small jolt through the seat into her hips and she had to close her eyes.
That was a mistake. Behind her lids everything got louder.
"Hey." Katie's voice, low. "Rules same as movie night?"
"Stop on my word." Her mouth had gone dry. "And nobody sees."
Katie's fingers traced the hem of the biker shorts, idle, patient, and Jo turned her face to the window and stared at the ocean like it was fascinating, because if she looked at Katie's hand she was going to come apart right there.
No underwear. When Katie peeled the waistband up and slipped her hand inside, the shock of skin on skin made Joanna's breath jump, and she felt Katie feel it.
Katie took her time. That was the thing about her — she approached this like a lag putt, reading everything first. Fingers walking slow along the crease of her hip. Tracing her outer lips without parting them. One feather-light circle around her clit, then gone. Joanna gripped the blanket. The gummy had turned her nerve endings up until every touch landed twice, once on her skin and once somewhere deeper, and when two fingers slid through her she was soaked — had been soaked since the kitchen, since the text — and she heard the small hum of discovery Katie made and couldn't look at her.
One finger slid in and curled slow, waiting for the give. Still tight. Good thing there was a daily practice program.
Joanna barely heard it. Her world had narrowed to seat vibration and fingertip and the dark ocean sliding past glass she couldn't focus on. Katie worked her unhurried — one finger, then two, backing off every time Joanna's breathing hitched toward the edge — and by Oceanside Joanna had lost count of how many times she'd been brought right up and set back down. Her tee shirt had sweat at the collar. Her thighs were tense from clenching. The need wasn't building in a line anymore; it was pooling, spiraling, every aborted peak leaving something behind that stacked on the next one, and somewhere around Camp Pendleton she understood dimly that Katie was doing it on purpose, that this was a shape Katie had decided on hours ago in a kitchen.
"Katie, please."
"Please what?"
"You're edging me."
Katie withdrew her hand to the hem and sipped her water bottle like a person on a normal bus ride. Her lips came near Joanna's ear, and what she whispered had a price in it — say it out loud, what you're going to let me do to you tonight — and then two fingers slid back in deep and Jo's hand found Katie's wrist without deciding to, holding on rather than pulling away, feeling every small curl.
The bus swayed through curves and Katie rode the motion, letting the road do half the work. Joanna's hips lifted off the seat a half inch. A girl three rows up showed someone photos on her phone. Nobody turned around.
The spiral got worse. Katie would speed up — palm grinding, fingers curling — until that deep swelling fullness gathered fast and familiar, thighs shaking under the blanket, and then pull almost all the way out and leave two fingertips barely inside while the whole thing collapsed. Each collapse left Joanna needier than the last. By Carlsbad she was soaked through, dripping down toward the seat, past caring. By Encinitas Katie was feeding her pretzels and making her drink water with one hand while the other stayed buried in her shorts, and Joanna sat there ruined and grateful for both. Once Katie flexed her fingers without warning and Joanna's whole spine arched, and a freshman sleepwalking to the bathroom made her freeze, blanket clutched, staring ahead with a face she hoped looked bored. Katie hadn't even stopped moving.
The miles crawled after that. San Clemente. The 5 split. PCH, the ocean huge and black on the left, Malibu mansions lit up the hillside like a scattered constellation. Ten minutes out.
Katie started for real. Two fingers curling hard and fast, thumb on her clit, her mouth at Jo's ear, and the pressure mounted fast now, no more backing off. "Last chance," she murmured. "You want to cum? Say it."
Joanna turned her head. Their faces were inches apart in the dark of the back row.
"I want you to fuck me with the strap-on," she said. Quiet, but clear. "At the hotel. Tonight."
Katie's breath left her in a rush. Then she bore down, fingers curling hard against that front wall, and Joanna came — face buried in Katie's neck, hips grinding helplessly up into her hand, shaking through long rolling waves until she sagged back into the seat like her strings had been cut.
A freshman sleepwalked up the aisle for the bathroom and Joanna froze, blanket clutched, staring straight ahead with a face she hoped looked bored. The kid stumbled past without a glance. Katie didn't even stop moving.
"Your heart is going like a hummingbird," Katie observed.
"If you tell anyone about your pulse-taking methods..."
"Program discretion." She twisted her fingers, slow and deep, and Joanna bit down on a groan.
The 5 split. They were on the Pacific Coast Highway now, the ocean huge and black on their left, the mansions of Malibu lit up on the hillside like a scattered constellation. Joanna knew this stretch. Ten minutes out, maybe fifteen with the light.
Katie started for real. Two fingers curling hard and fast, thumb rolling over her clit, her mouth at Joanna's ear narrating in a low dirty whisper: how wet she was, how good she felt squeezing around her, how the whole bus had no idea. Joanna's hand was still on Katie's wrist, no longer steering, just holding on. The pressure mounted fast now, that deep swelling fullness, and Katie didn't back off. She didn't back off at all.
"Last chance," Katie murmured. "You want to cum? Say the thing."
Joanna turned her head. Their faces were inches apart in the dark of the back row, and Katie's eyes were dark and patient and completely certain.
"I want you to fuck me with the strap-on," Joanna said, quietly. "At the hotel. Tonight. I want you to put it in me and fuck me."
Katie's breath left her in a rush. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," she whimpered, cheeks red.
Then she bore down, fingers curling hard against that front wall, thumb pinned to her clit, and Joanna came. She buried her face in Katie's neck and shook, the orgasm rolling through her in long waves, her hips grinding helplessly up into Katie's hand, her hand crushing Katie's wrist against her body. Katie worked her through all of it, steady, relentless, until Joanna's thighs stopped trembling and she sagged back into the seat like her strings had been cut.
The bus hummed north through the dark. Ahead, the glowing sign of the Ritz hovered somewhere in the future, getting closer with every mile.
"You okay?" Katie slid her hand out at last, holding it to Jo's lips.
Joanna nodded.
Katie slid her middle finger into her mouth.
Joanna tasted herself, salt and something darker, and closed her lips around it without thinking. Katie's finger rested on her tongue, patient, and the heat that had just drained out of her legs pooled back low in her stomach.
"Good girl," Katie murmured.
Joanna sucked, slow, her eyes closing. The bus swayed. A girl two rows up laughed at something, and neither of them moved. Katie pressed the finger down once, lightly, against her tongue, then added her ring finger beside it, and Joanna took both, her cheeks hollowing, her breath through her nose going shallow.
"You like that," Katie said. It wasn't a question.
Joanna opened her eyes and looked at her, mouth still full, and nodded again. Her face was burning. She didn't stop.
After a minute Katie drew her fingers out, slow, dragging across Joanna's lower lip, and wiped them dry on the blanket. "Okay. Sit there and be ruined for a minute. I'm going to get the blanket situation sorted."
The hotel sign was visible now, up the hillside, gold letters against the black. Joanna pulled her head together in pieces. She straightened her tee shirt. She checked the biker shorts, dry to any outside eye, the faintest damp smell under the blanket if you knew. Nobody would know.
The bus swung through the porte-cochère of the Ritz, headlights washing over the valets, the fountain, the palm trunks lit from below. Doors hissed open. Coach Marsh's voice carried from the front, room assignments, breakfast time, luggage claim tickets.
"Room assignments," Katie whispered. "Please tell me we're together."
The clipboard made it up the aisle. Coach Marsh leaned in, reading by the dome light. "Watson, Swanson. Two oh seven, ocean view."
Katie turned to Joanna and mouthed something that was definitely profane.
Luggage came off the hatch in a river of golf bags. Joanna carried hers under one arm like it weighed nothing, which it didn't, and felt her legs wobble on the first step down anyway. The night air off the Pacific was cool and clean and did very little to help.
The lobby was marble and low gold light, and the team clattered through it in flip flops and hoodies, drawing a look from a couple in matching cashmere. The elevator swallowed eleven golfers and half a dozen staff, and Joanna rode it to the second floor pressed against the mirrored wall, watching Katie in the reflection watch her.
Room 207 smelled like eucalyptus. Katie shut the door, dropped her luggage, and did not pick it back up.
"So," she said.
"So." Joanna set her golf bag against the wall and stood there in her socks, arms suddenly uncertain of where to go. "You said you packed something."
"I did." Katie unzipped the side pocket of her bag and pulled out a black harness and a silicone dildo, medium, wrapped in a cloth bag like it was a putter. She held it up. "Noticed it on the bus. In case you forgot."
"I didn't forget."
"You said it out loud on a team bus. Full sentences." Katie set it on the bed with strange gentleness. "I've been thinking about it since you said the words put it in me."
Joanna sat on the edge of the mattress, still in the biker shorts, and looked at it. "Have you done this before?"
"Once. Junior year, with a girl from the lacrosse team. It was fine. Uninspired." Katie came over and stood between her knees. "This won't be. Because it's you, and because you've been wound tight since freshman year and I've been watching, and because Rachel taught me exactly how to stretch you open first."
Joanna's breath caught at the last part. "She talked to you about that?"
"Movie night was my attempt. Homework, remember." Katie pushed Joanna's hair back off her face, both hands, thumbs at her temples. "We go slow. Fingers first, however long it takes. If it's too much, you say your word and we stop. Same rules, every time."
"Okay."
"And if you want to shower first, shower first. You've been on a bus."
Joanna laughed, and something in her chest came down a notch. "I'll be quick."
"Borrow my shampoo. Mine's better." Katie swatted her hip. "I'm going to get the harness sorted and order us waters. Hydrate or die, athlete."
The shower was quick and hot and didn't fully calm her down, because her mind kept supplying the shape of what was waiting through the door. She came out with damp hair in a towel and found the room dimmed to two lamps, the harness laid out on the bed, two bottles of water on the nightstand, and Katie in a tee shirt and nothing else, hair up, adjusting buckles with the focus of someone tuning clubs.
"Hey," Katie said. Her voice had gone softer than bus-voice. "Nervous?"
"A little." Joanna dropped the towel and pulled on the clean tee she'd laid out, and nothing else. "Good nervous. Like the first tee."
"Then we treat it like the first tee." Katie sat on the bed and pulled Joanna down beside her. "Routine. Breathe. And you know I've got you."
Joanna kissed her. Katie tasted like water and the last of the gummy, and the kiss started soft and stayed that way, unhurried, Katie's hand cupping her jaw. When it broke, Katie pressed her forehead to Joanna's.
"Lie back. Legs up a little. I want to see how ready you are."
Joanna lay back on the cool sheets, knees up, and Katie's hand slid down her stomach, over the tee, between her thighs. Two fingers pressed in and slid easy, all the way, and Katie's eyebrows went up.
"Oh, you're ready."
"An hour of prep will do that."
"Smartass." Katie curled them once, and Joanna's hips twitched. "Still going slow. Three fingers first. Then we see."
She worked a third finger in with the same patience she'd used on the bus, slow and deep, her thumb resting against Joanna's clit, watching her face the whole time. Joanna's head tipped back. The stretch burned a little, and then didn't, and then was just fullness, just Katie, three fingers moving inside her with the deliberateness of someone who'd been planning this for two years.
"Look at me," Katie said, and Joanna opened her eyes, and Katie was already reaching for the harness with her free hand.
"Wait." Katie pulled her fingers out slow and wiped them on her own thigh. "Say it again first. What's about to happen to you?"
Joanna's face went hot. Three fingers deep and this was the part that made her blush.
"You're going to put on the harness," she said. "And you're going to fuck me with the strap-on."
"All of me?" Katie reached for the hem of Joanna's tee. "Or just the cock?"
Joanna lifted her arms and let her pull it off over her head. The lamps caught her, bare from the waist up for the first time in front of Katie, goosebumps rising across her ribs despite the warm room.
"All of you."
Katie looked at her chest the way she looked at a green she was about to attack. Then she leaned down and took Joanna's nipple into her mouth.
Joanna's back arched off the mattress before she knew she was moving. Katie's mouth was hot and wet and unhurried, tongue circling the peak, and the sensation shot straight down through her stomach into everything Katie's fingers had spent the last hour opening up. She hadn't expected this to feel like that.
"Oh," she said, uselessly.
Katie hummed against her, pleased, and sealed her lips tighter. Her free hand came up and covered the other breast, thumb dragging slow across the neglected peak until Joanna squirmed. She sucked harder, dragging her teeth feather-light, and Joanna's hand found the back of her head and held on.
"Katie."
"Mm." She didn't let go. She pulled off with a soft sound and switched sides, mouth closing over the other nipple, and now the first one was wet and cooling in the lamplight and aching, and the second one was being rolled against her palate with slow, deliberate pressure. Katie's fingers slid back inside her at the same time, two of them, easy, and Joanna made a sound that embarrassed her on arrival.
"You're so responsive." Katie spoke against her skin, lips moving on the swell of her breast. "I've wondered about this for two years. If you'd make noise. You make noise."
"I'm going to kill you."
"After." She curled her fingers and Joanna's hips lifted clear off the sheet.
Katie raised her head, kissed the valley between her breasts, and looked up her body at her. Her mouth was glossy. Her eyes were steady.
"So tell me the whole thing. While I get dressed."
Joanna lay there, chest heaving, watching Katie stand and step into the harness. She tightened the straps with quick tug of her teeth on one, and the dildo rose off her hips, flushed dark and absurd and suddenly very real.
"It's going to stretch me," Joanna said, watching it. "You worked three fingers in me, and now you're going to fuck me with that."
"Say the rest."
"And I want it." Her voice came out lower than she meant. "I've wanted it since the bus."
Katie crawled back onto the bed between her knees and knelt there, the length of the toy resting against Joanna's stomach, showing her exactly how deep it would go. Joanna looked down at it and then up at Katie, her eyes glassy.
Katie reached for the lube on the nightstand and warmed a line of it between her palms, then stroked it down the length of the dildo with slow, unhurried passes. Joanna watched every stroke.
"You ready?"
"Yeah." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Go slow."
Katie leaned over her, braced on one forearm, and used her free hand to guide the tip down between Joanna's thighs. She pressed it against her entrance and stopped there, just held it, letting the blunt pressure sit against everything three fingers had opened up.
"Breathe out."
Joanna exhaled, and Katie pushed.
The head slid in and stopped her breath anyway. It was wider than Katie's fingers, wider than anything she'd taken, and her body clamped around it in surprise before remembering itself. Katie felt it and went still.
"Still okay?"
"Give me a second."
Katie gave her a second. She kissed the corner of Joanna's jaw, her cheekbone, the damp hairline at her temple, and waited until the grip around her eased. Then she pushed again, another slow inch, watching Joanna's face instead of the place where they joined. Her jaw was loose, her mouth open, her eyes fixed somewhere past the ceiling.
The stretch burned and then bloomed. Joanna could feel herself being shaped around the toy, every slow millimeter a decision her body made without consulting her. Rachel's homework. Two weeks of practice. It all came down to this, lying bare under her best friend in a hotel in Malibu while she fed a strap-on into her inch by inch.
Katie bottomed out, hips flush against her, and held there.
"Oh my god." Joanna's hands were gripping the sheets somewhere below her. She hadn't noticed moving them.
"Full?"
"So full."
"That's all of it. Take a minute." Katie's voice was wrecked too, breathless, and that surprised Joanna almost as much as the depth. Her friend was on her knees between her legs, buried inside her, and shaking slightly.
"You okay?"
"No. You feel insane. I've been thinking about this for two years, so give me a minute before I embarrass us both."
Joanna laughed, and the laugh moved her hips, and the toy shifted inside her, and the laugh turned into a moan. Katie's head dropped to her shoulder.
"Okay, that's my cue." She pulled out an inch and slid back, slow, testing. The drag along her front wall made Joanna's toes curl against the sheet. Another inch out, another inch in. Katie set a pace like a warm-up swing, smooth and metronomic, her eyes flicking down to watch herself move in Joanna's body and back up to her face.
"How does it feel?"
"Different." Joanna gasped as the angle shifted. "Deeper."
Katie laughed and bent to kiss her, and the angle changed again, and the kiss dissolved into open-mouthed breathing while the slow thrusts kept coming. Joanna's body had stopped resisting somewhere along the way. Now it was just receiving, hips starting to tip up to meet each stroke, finding the rhythm on her own.
"There you go," Katie murmured. "Fuck yourself back on it. Don't be shy."
"I hate you."
"You're soaked, you love me."
Joanna couldn't argue. The room was filled with the soft wet sound of it, each thrust louder as her body gave up every pretense of tightness. She wrapped her legs around Katie's back, heels crossing like Rachel's had behind her on the bed at the Wellness Center, and used them to pull her deeper on the next stroke.
Katie broke. A sound tore out of her, low and involuntary, and her rhythm stuttered. She ground her hips down instead of pulling back, the base of the harness pressed hard against her, and Joanna felt her tremble.
"Did you just..."
"Shut up." Katie's forehead dropped against her collarbone. "Shut up, oh my god."
"Katie. Are you getting off on this?"
"Yes. Obviously. You asked me to fuck you, this is the single best night of my life, keep moving your hips."
Joanna did. She rolled up into her, slow and deliberate, and Katie made the sound again, muffled against her neck. Something loosened in Joanna's chest, warm and slightly wicked. She had spent two weeks being taken apart by professionals. This was the first time she had ever done the taking apart.
"Harder," she said.
Katie lifted her head. "You sure?"
"Fuck me harder."
Katie hooked one arm under Joanna's knee and pushed it up and back, opening her, and drove in deeper than before. The breath left Joanna in a rush. The new angle found the front wall dead on, that swollen spot that had wrecked her on Rachel's floor, and Katie started a rhythm against it, longer strokes now, still controlled but building.
"Yes. There, right there."
"Right here?" Katie drove in again, exactly the same.
Joanna's answer was lost. She was past words, past the bus and the denial and the hour of being wound up on the highway. The pressure gathered fast, the same deep pooling fullness, and she chased it, hips rising to meet every stroke.
"Katie, I'm close."
"Don't stop talking."
"I'm going to cum on your cock." The words came out of her without permission, dirty and easy in the dark hotel room. "I'm going to cum all over it."
"Jesus Christ, Jo."
Katie's thrusts broke rhythm, and her hand came down between them, thumb finding Joanna's clit, pressing in tight circles while she kept driving. The two sensations collided somewhere deep in Joanna's stomach and detonated.
She came loud. There was no blanket to bury her face in this time, no team ten feet away, just the empty ocean-view room and her own voice, breaking and rising, and Katie's name in it more than once. The orgasm went on and on, rolling through her in long dragging pulses, the toy moving inside her through every one of them until she pushed weakly at Katie's hip.
"Okay. Okay, stop, too much."
Katie stopped. She held still, buried, her own breath ragged, and waited for the last tremors to fade out of Joanna's legs before she drew out, slow, inch by careful inch. Joanna felt the emptiness after, strange and raw, and felt the slick mess of it on the sheets beneath her.
Katie stripped the harness down her hips and dropped it over the edge of the bed, then collapsed beside her. For a while there was nothing but breathing and the muffled sound of the Pacific beyond the balcony.
"So," Katie said finally, staring at the ceiling, out of breath.
"That thing was sturdy," Joanna said. "I expected it to, I don't know, buckle or flop around. It didn't move once."
"Sildenafil-core silicone. I did research." Katie rolled her head along the pillow to look at her. "You want the harness holding position no matter what, or the whole thing turns into a coin-operated ride."
Joanna laughed, still catching her breath, one hand draped over her own stomach. The ceiling fan turned slowly above them, and the ocean kept up its low static beyond the balcony door.
"It's just, I've seen stuff. Lesbian stuff. And half the time the angle's all wrong and nobody can find a rhythm. They're sliding around the bed like it's a slip and slide and the girl on the bottom looks like she's doing math."
Katie snorted. "Oh, porn. Yeah. Two cameras, three takes, and a director yelling for the moans to be louder. Nobody in that bed is actually coming, Jo."
"Some of them looked like they were."
"Some of them are great actresses. Which we now know, because you are not." Katie propped herself up on one elbow, hair sticking out sideways, grinning down at her. "You sound like a foghorn with a name attached."
Joanna swatted at her without lifting her arm. It landed somewhere around her ribs and stayed there. "My point is it actually worked. The angle thing. When you pushed my leg up, it hit that spot every single time, like you'd practiced."
"I did practice. On the bus. Mentally." Katie's grin softened into something less smug. "Also, porn has it backwards. The angle isn't something you find, it's something you adjust. Her body tells you where it wants you. Your hips tipped up about an inch and a half after the first two minutes, so I changed my height. That's it. That's the whole secret."
"You changed your knees. I felt it."
"See? You were coaching too. Without knowing." Katie reached over and tucked a damp strand of hair off Joanna's forehead. "Mostly it's just paying attention. Which is a skill they can't film, so they fake it with positions nobody's spine survives."
Joanna thought about Rachel's floor, the waterproof pad, the way everything had been deliberate and exact. Then the bus, the blanket, the hour of being held right at the edge. It was all the same skill, apparently. Attention.
"So the porn I've been watching since freshman year was just bad coaching."
"The porn you've been watching since freshman year was mostly vibes." Katie stretched, and her shoulder popped audibly. "Although, for the record, the noise you made when I went deeper? Better than anything I've watched. I'm going to be replaying it on the driving range for a month. Terrible for my short game."
"You're terrible for my short game. I have a tournament in the morning."
"You're going to play loose and relaxed and terrifying. Coach is going to think it's the ocean air." Katie swung her legs off the bed and stood, naked in the lamp light, completely unbothered. She collected the harness from the floor and started packing it back into its cloth wrap with the same care she'd used taking it out. "It's the mild, breezy evening and a good night's sleep. Sure."
Joanna watched her across the room. Something in her chest felt rearranged, spacious, like a room with the furniture moved. Two years of her best friend wanting her, and it had arrived on a Tuesday movie night and a team bus, and now Katie was folding a strap-on like a rain jacket while Jo watched from the wrecked sheets.
"How long," Joanna said. "Really. Two years is a long time to say nothing."
Katie sat on the edge of the bed with the wrapped harness in her lap. She was quiet a second, thumb running along the seam of the cloth.
"Sophomore year. You came back from winter break with that haircut, and you were doing pull ups in the gym, and I watched you fail the last rep and drop and swear and get back on the bar. And I thought, oh no." She looked at her. "Oh no, this is a crush, this is a real one, and she's straight, and she's my roommate. So I said nothing and I was normal about it. Or I tried."
"You were normal about it. I had no idea."
"You were the only one. Maya figured it out in about three weeks."
Joanna sat up against the headboard, sheet pooling at her waist. "Maya knew?"
"Maya knows everything. She knows the snack rotation, the pairings, and apparently my entire emotional life." Katie laughed, short. "She never said a word. Just started scheduling us as practice partners every chance she got. I owe that girl a lot of snacks."
Joanna thought of Thursday afternoons, Maya chipper with the clipboard, putting them together over and over. She'd assumed it was efficiency.
"I heard your session, you know," Joanna said. "Wednesday. I was in Rachel's suite, through the shared door."
Katie's eyebrows went up. "You eavesdropped on Maya?"
"I was eavesdropped on too. It's symmetrical."
"Program discretion," Katie said solemnly, and they both cracked up, the laughter loose and silly in the warm dark, two athletes in a ruined hotel bed at midnight.
When it settled, Katie leaned over and kissed her. Brief, soft, unhurried, nothing to prove anymore.
"Okay. Hydrate, teeth, sleep. You've got a seven forty wake-up and eighteen holes." She smacked the mattress twice. "And Sunday, when we're back? Movie night. I'm bringing the harness and a new gummy flavor, and you're doing the picking."
"You're assuming I liked it."
Katie looked at her, at the sheet, at the damp shape of it, and just waited.
"Fine," Joanna said. "I liked it. Get me a water."
"Yes, ma'am." Katie padded toward the mini fridge, then stopped at the bathroom light switch and glanced back. "And Jo? For the record. That was better than two years of imagining it."
"Good. Because I'm not doing porn angles with anyone else."
Katie flipped the light off and grinned in the dark. "That's what I thought."