Chapter 3: The Backyard Escape
The screen door sighed shut behind Zebby, cutting off the warm bubble of music and laughter. The night air was cool, damp, salt-kissed. She didn’t stop on the porch. She moved down the three wooden steps, her boots crushing lavender stalks, releasing their sweet, sharp perfume. She walked until the light from the house was a distant glow, until she was swallowed by the deep shadow of the old cedar at the back of the property. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs.
She leaned against the rough bark, closed her eyes, and let out a shuddering breath she’d been holding for two hours.
The image of Natalie, frozen in the doorway, played on a loop. The panic in her green eyes. The forced, polite smile. The glacial touch of her hand.
Three years. Three years of pixelated intimacy, of whispered plans, of fantasy. All compressed into that one excruciating handshake. It had been like touching a ghost made of lightning.
A minute passed. Maybe two. The back door opened again, a sliver of yellow light slicing the darkness, then gone.
Footsteps on the dewy grass. Soft, hesitant.
Zebby opened her eyes.
Natalie emerged from the gloom, a small, tense silhouette. She stopped a few feet away, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. The distant lantern light from the picnic table caught the sharp line of her jaw, the nervous pulse in her throat.
“Brittany’s arguing with Tash about the best Bowie album,” Natalie said, her voice barely above a whisper. It was strained, a thin veneer over a crackling wire. “They’re distracted.”
Zebby didn’t move. “Come here.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a raw, open ache.
Natalie took one step, then another, closing the distance. The space between them hummed with everything unsaid.
Then her control shattered.
She surged forward, and Zebby caught her, pulling her in so fiercely the air left them both in a simultaneous gasp. It was no polite greeting. It was a collision. Natalie’s face buried in Zebby’s neck, her fingers clawing into the back of the grey henley. Zebby’s arms locked around her, one hand splayed across her spine, the other sliding down, down, over the curve of her ass, gripping hard through the denim and pulling their hips flush.
The feeling was seismic. After a thousand nights of imagining the weight of her, the feel of her, the reality was almost unbearable. Natalie was solid, warm, trembling. She smelled of hospital soap and Tash’s lavender and home.
“God,” Zebby choked out, her voice ragged against Natalie’s hair. “God, Nat.”
Natalie made a small, broken sound. She tilted her head back, her eyes searching Zebby’s in the shadows. “This is insane.”
“I know.”
“They’re right inside.”
“I know.”
Zebby’s hand flexed on her backside, pulling her even closer. The thick, hard line of her erection, confined and urgent, pressed against Natalie’s lower abdomen through their clothes. Natalie’s breath hitched. Her eyes flew wide, not with surprise, but with a sharp, consuming recognition. A secret they’d shared in darkness was now pressed between them in the cool, open air.
“Zeb,” she whispered, a plea and a warning.
“I missed you,” Zebby murmured, the words traveling from her lips to Natalie’s. “You have no idea. I’ve missed you so much it feels like a bone out of place.”
She dipped her head and captured Natalie’s mouth.
The kiss was not soft. It was salt and desperation and three years of distance obliterated. Natalie’s lips parted under hers with a frantic hunger, her hands coming up to fist in Zebby’s short hair. It was messy, teeth clacking, a silent battle of need. Zebby could taste the wine on her tongue, feel the rapid flutter of her pulse under her thumb where it rested against her jaw.
Natalie melted into her, her body arching, every line of her yielding. For a handful of seconds, there was no family, no house, no secret. There was only the damp earth beneath them, the sigh of the ocean, and the aching, perfect alignment of their bodies. Zebby’s hand slipped under the hem of Natalie’s shirt, finding the hot, smooth skin of her back. She traced the ridge of her spine, feeling Natalie shiver.
Then Natalie stiffened. She tore her mouth away, turning her head to stare over Zebby’s shoulder, her eyes fixed on the lit windows of the house. Her chest heaved against Zebby’s.
“The kitchen light,” she panted. “Someone’s in the kitchen. They could look out.”
“Let them look,” Zebby growled, trying to recapture her lips.
Natalie pushed against her chest, creating a sliver of agonizing space. “No. You don’t understand them. Tash… she notices. Brittany may be loud, but Tash is quiet. She sees everything.” Her voice was laced with a fear that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with the world waiting in that house.
The spell fractured. The cool air rushed into the space between their bodies. Zebby rested her forehead against Natalie’s, both of them breathing hard, their breath fogging in the same air.
“So what?” Zebby whispered, her thumb stroking Natalie’s cheekbone. “So what if she sees? I’m here. I’m real. Isn’t that the point of all this?”
“The point was to keep you,” Natalie said, the vulnerability cutting through the fear. “The point was to not lose you. If they know… my mothers, the cousins… it’s a tidal wave, Zebby. I can’t control it. I don’t know what happens.”
A creak of wood echoed from the direction of the porch.
They froze.
Natalie’s eyes went wide with pure panic. In an instant, she’d stepped back, putting two full feet between them. She smoothed her shirt, ran a hand through her hair, her movements frantic.
Zebby stayed against the tree, the rough bark grounding her. The front of her jeans felt tight, aching. The loss of Natalie’s warmth was a physical wound.
“Natalie?” Brittany’s voice called from the porch. “You out here? Tash is breaking out the horrible schnapps our Nana left.”
“Yeah!” Natalie called back, her voice miraculously even, just slightly raised. “Just needed some air! Coming!”
She looked at Zebby, her expression a devastation of want and dread. She mouthed three words: I’m sorry. I love you.
Then she turned and walked back toward the light, a solitary figure retreating across the dark lawn.
Zebby stayed under the cedar, watching her go. The scent of lavender and Natalie’s shampoo clung to her. Her blood roared in her ears, a frantic counter-rhythm to the distant, steady crash of the ocean.
Patience. That’s what she’d always had. It was the bedrock of their long-distance life. But this was different. This was having the water in reach and being told not to drink.
She looked down at her own hands, still feeling the imprint of Natalie’s body. The phantom pressure of her ass in her grip, the heat of her skin.
A grim smile touched her lips. The game had changed. The secret was no longer a digital ghost. It was flesh and blood, and it was standing in her cousin’s backyard, hard and wanting and running out of patience.
She pushed off from the tree and followed the path Natalie had taken, but slower. The warm light of the house grew, the sounds of the party swelling again. She could see Natalie through the window, already on the couch, accepting a tiny glass of clear liquid from Tash, laughing at something.
The performance had resumed.
Zebby paused on the bottom step, her hand on the railing. The cool metal steadied her. She fixed the mask back on her face—the friendly, easygoing stranger from Missouri.
Then she opened the door and stepped back into the light, carrying the darkness of the garden, and the promise within it, right back inside with her.