By Sunnybunny
Mama Maven wasn’t exaggerating about the ice cream. It really was the best Heather had ever tasted but brushed aside all compliments with sincere modesty.
“Aw, honey. You are very kind to say that.” Maven ladled out another spoonful of chocolate sauce and ice cream slush, smiling sweeter than any frozen dessert. She ate it delicately, pinky out and napkin carefully folded in her lap, like a refined lady. On the opposite end of the spectrum were Heather and Angie who had upended their sundae trays and shoveling in the dregs from the bottom, unable to get enough. By the time Angie pushed her glass away, her mouth was ringed by a chocolate goatee. With a satisfied smack of her lips, she reclined back in her seat to nurse the swelling of a food baby.
Heather wasn’t much more careful and had to do some extensive cleaning with her napkin to the nose and chin area.
“More?” Maven asked between bites. “It’s no trouble.”
Heather and Angie exchanged a look before shaking their heads in unison. Heather said, “No thanks. Any more and I think I’ll pop!”
Despite her refusal, Heather continued to suckle the bowl of her spoon, savoring the last few drops of chocolate, daydreaming that the taste was from licking it from Angie’s mouth. She wondered if the girl’s lips would be cold from the ice cream or warm…so very warm…
Angie shifted in her seat and brazenly leaned her head into Heather’s shoulder, making the older woman tense, but Maven wasn’t bothered by the familiar gesture.
“Aww,” she cooed approvingly. “Look at that, just look. She has really taken a shine to you, Heather.”
Heather glanced down at Angie, who appeared to be dozing. Tentatively, she traced her fingers through the crown of her head, parting those sun-bleached threads of silken hair. “I guess I have too.” It was just a whisper, more for Angie’s ears than for Maven.
“The poor thing has had it so rough,” Mama shared, smiling grimly now. “Losing her mama and watching her daddy succumb to drink, so hard on the young ones, you know? It’s such a relief…”
Heather looked over, catching something strange in Maven’s tone. “What do you mean?” She could not place exactly what or why or maybe even if she imagined it but Heather could have sworn to hearing a trace of melancholy there.
Maven leaned across the table and patted her on the hand. “It’s not for a child’s ears,” she said.
Angie smiled but kept her eyes closed, caught pretending to be asleep. “Then you better not say too much more!”
Mama Maven chuckled and roused from the booth, placing both hands along the small of her back and pushing herself upright. “Join me for a smoke, Heather?” Before she could answer she addressed Angie, “Would you be a dear and clear these dishes for me, baby girl? You don’t have to wash ‘em but give a good rinse for an old woman?”
Angie blinked awake and stretched arms up high. “I don’t mind, Mama. I’ll wash them up for you!”
Maven led the way out into the back patio of the diner and twisted a lantern to life overhead that barely kept the encroaching darkness at bay.
Heather seated herself into a rickety plastic lawn chair and drew her knees up to her chest. The air was already chilly.
Maven did not waste time explaining herself. “I’m dying, Heather.”
The words seemed to careen out of the darkness and hit her like a knock-out blow to the head. No, the heart…
“No,” she murmured.
Maven bowed her head to light the cigar. “Cancer.” She waved the tobacco about now, trailing wisps of smoke. “Don’t worry about this tho. Doctor said it won’t do any good to quit now. The damn stuff is in my lungs and my guts and my brain and even my old bones. Whole system is against me, Heather.” She puffed on the cigar and eased herself back into an old leather bench that used to belong in the back seat of a Chevy Impala. There wasn’t any bitterness in her voice when she recited her symptoms, Heather noted. “I can still get around okay but it won’t be that way for much longer. Soon, I won’t even be able to come into the diner.” She reached out a withered old hand to caress the wood of the banister that surrounded the patio and pulled a few flakes of peeling paint free. Heather marveled at how similar the two looked. Old and strong but falling to pieces.
“Chemo wouldn’t do a lick of good neither,” she confessed drawing in a great lungful from the cigar. “I’ll be seeing my mama and daddy and sisters again real soon but dying wasn’t what scared me, Heather. Do you know what did? I tell ya, it is so damn foolish.”
“Music,” Heather answered, still reeling from the news.
Maven grinned. “That I wasn’t gonna get to experience what this place was like in its heyday ever again. I remember coming in here as a little girl and seating myself on one of them stools at the bar, reading funny books while my folks ran up and down the place, running that diner like a machine. Sometimes I would just sit and watch them, hoping and praying to Jesus that I’d be able to handle the crowds all by myself. The whole time that old juke was hopping.” She sighed wistfully. “You really are a Godsend, Heather. I know I tell you that every day for what you do and I have to thank you for one more thing.”
“What?”
“Angie,” she replied. “She looks up to you so, I can tell. When you’re not looking, she watches you real close, just studying everything about you! It’s like she’s trying to memorize you, Heather. The way you walk and talk and laugh and…”
“Mama,” Heather intoned. She reached across the distance and gave her friends hand a squeeze. The flesh of Maven’s hand was as soft and thin as tissue paper. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be until you’ve heard everything I have to say.” She returned Heather’s gesture, molding their fingers together. “Heather, after I pass, I want you to take over the diner.”
Heather wasn’t expecting that at all! She stammered, “I — you what?”
“It’s not much, this old place,” she confessed. “But you know the ins and outs and I still have time left in me to teach you all the recipes, and everyone in town has taken such a shine to you…” She smiled all the wider. “And I just know little Angie would always be on hand to help you out!”
That was true enough. Angie — always watching — it gave Heather a shiver that had nothing to do with the cool air. “Mama, I don’t know the first thing about running a diner and… it was never my intention to stop in Oasis. I’m still just passing through and as soon as I’m able…” She trailed off, unable to bear breaking the old woman’s heart.
Richie, the ticking clock… “When I find you, Heather –.”
Maven nodded, incapable of hiding her disappointment. “Nothing happens for no reason, Heather Freemantle. God brought you to Oasis for a reason. I don’t pretend to know His plan, but you are here to do something important and it’s just a matter of time before you have to make a very important choice.” Mama Maven puffed quietly on her cigar while Heather reflected.
She could not help but entertain the idea. Had a higher power really driven her to Oasis? Most of the town’s population began with the words ‘We were just passing through…’, the sheriff had said. Until now, Heather had been viewing Oasis as a net, ensnaring her in a trap she was powerless to escape but maybe… just maybe this was bordering on something like destiny. She tried to imagine herself rummaging in the kitchen, taking Mama’s place, but the image was too foreign. She tried again, picturing Angie waiting tables out front and serving coffee to the ranch hands in the early morning rush, ignoring their leering gaze.
Heather shook her head. “I’m not going to lie to you and make a promise I have no intention of keeping, but I will think about it. Is that okay?”
Maven nodded her head, looking relieved, as if Heather had agreed to the whole thing already. Had she?
“That will fit me just fine.”
They entered the dining area just as Angie was coming from the kitchen. Always perceptive, she regarded the two adults suspiciously. “What were the two of you talking about out there?”
Maven bowed forward at the waist and made a production out of scrutinizing Angie like a big mother hen inspecting misbehaving chicks. “Shouldn’t you be running along home, Ms. Noseypants?”
Angie looked from Maven to Heather, searching for answers and wasn’t interested in wasting time with games. Heather avoided the gaze and rocked back on her heels, studying the floor.
“Is it… bad?”
Maven knelt and reached for the girl, tucking a strand of her long hair behind her ear. “Don’t you go wasting time worrying yourself about these things. You just keep on shining, Angie.”
Heather and Angie left together, the girl walking her bike slowly across the road toward the motel. Mama Maven called to them from the diner entrance. “You be sure that Angie gets home safe, Heather, you hear?”
Heather raised an arm in farewell. Angie flashed a thumbs-up. It would be the last time they saw the old diner owner alive, and whenever Heather thought back to conjured up images of her one-time employer, it was of Mama Maven, smoking languidly outside of the diner she ran and gazing up at a sky of countless stars.
The spokes of Angie’s tires clicked rhythmically as they walked. A coyote yodeled out a tune from far off, joining the chorus of crickets and adding to the evening’s harmony. Heather inhaled the air, felt it chill her lungs. She flung her arms out wide and spun in a short circle, raising her chin until her head was reclined all the way back and all she could see were thousands of twinkling lights.
“What are you thinking about?” Angie asked.
“I’m thinking that I haven’t felt this good in a long time and if you knew half of what was going on –.”
“So why don’t you tell me?” There was a level of challenge in Angie’s voice. It said that even though she asked, she knew Heather would do no such thing. What happened next surprised her.
“I will, Angie,” Heather replied. “Not all of it, but enough.” They stopped walking when they reached her Mustang. Another deep breath to help screw her courage to the sticking place… “Do you have to get back right away?”
Angie made it a point to look Heather in the eye, searching in her penetrating way, not daring to get her hopes up. “Do you mean… so that we can talk?” She was on guard and Heather could feel the tension in the girl’s body as if it were her own.
“Yes,” she agreed and reached out to touch Angie on the cheek. “But not right away…”
Was it chocolate she tasted on Angie’s lips or was that just her imagination?
Angie parked her bike against the wall inside the motel room. It wouldn’t do to have someone happen by and see it out front in the middle of the night. She used the landline phone on the night stand to call home, telling her dad that she would be sleeping over with a friend that evening and she would be home in the morning.
Meanwhile, Heather vanished into the bathroom for a pee, suddenly very aware of how sweaty she was from work, how greasy the legs of her jeans felt, and how ALL her fingernails had dirt underneath them. She cupped a hand to her mouth to check the state of her breath and came away dismayed.
She flushed and rushed to the sink and hastily ran some water, scrubbing her hands and face with soap until they were pink. An extra layer of deodorant to the underarms came next but what to do about her jeans? By the tone in the other room, Angie’s call was wrapping up. Heather was wishing like hell she had had time to shower before… before…
She emerged a few moments later, still wearing her work t-shirt and jeans but had slipped out of her shoes and socks and padded into the room barefoot.
Angie was leaning against the wall like a nervous prom date, hands folded behind her back. “Dad said it was okay. I just have to be ready to help him open up the shop tomorrow morning.”
Heather nodded and inched closer into the room. Her stomach was fluttering.
My God, I have fucking butterflies!
She reached the bed and rested her hip into the mattress, tucking her legs and getting comfortable. She held a hand out to Angie, needing her support and to show that self-assuredness again to bridge that gap. Angie took the offer and allowed herself to be drawn onto the bed. A gentle kiss was awaiting her there and she sighed contentedly when it ended.
Heather cradled the girl’s head between both hands, framing her face in fingers, and placed little butterfly kisses to her cheeks, then her nose, both eyes…. Their lips met again and Angie leaned forward, breaching Heather’s hands and voraciously returned the kiss. When Heather’s hands found bare skin, it was covered in gooseflesh.
There was an eagerness in their movements, but the desperation that was so prevalent before had vanished. They had a shared understanding that the night was theirs, and whatever awaited them tomorrow could remain waiting until then. If God did indeed exist, he was kindly stopping time for them.
Angie lifted her arms instinctively. Heather worked the t-shirt up her slender frame and it slipped over her head easily. Her chest was just as lovely as it had been in all her naughtiest fantasies. She flattened her palm out over one child-like nipple, felt the heart thundering just below the surface. It was matching pace with Heather’s own….
“Lie back,” Heather whispered and guided Angie until she was lounged on her back atop the comforter. She fought to keep her hands from trembling as she traced the elastic of Angie’s shorts. They were closed by a zipper and snapping button. Both were poor defenses and came down easily. Angie was growing fidgety, would jump and quake from the slightest touch. Their hands linked briefly before Heather took hold of the clothing around her narrow hips and tugged them down. Angie lifted her butt off the mattress to help them along. They snaked along her thighs and legs, trailing her panties and were tossed aside.
Heather gulped back a trembling breath and indulged a moment to take in the sight of the naked child before her. Angie’s hair was the sun itself, fanning out on the pillow, encircling an elfin face. Her neck was swan-like and delicate looking as it eased into the quiet curve of her shoulders. Her skin was bronzed all over with no trance of a tan line about her body anywhere (She decided to ponder the implications of that later.) Her nipples were wound into tight points, as large and dark as raisins. A shadow played over Angie’s navel, elongating it and drawing the eye lower. The slit was nothing like Heather would have imagined. A mound of tender flesh which parted around a gentle cleft, reminding Heather of a ripe peach with its light fuzz around the entrance. It was rosy and slightly parted with arousal, glistening with moisture just above the dark pucker of her anus.
Heather settled down onto her belly, bringing Angie’s sex into view until it dominated her vision. She reached out but not with a hand but the tip of her tongue. It was a teasing gesture that set Angie squirming again. The older woman wrapped her arms around her thighs and held her by the hips to keep Angie still.
The smell was intoxicating and Heather inhaled deeply through her nose, savoring every sensation she could. If they never enjoyed another evening together, if fate could ever be so cruel, they would make tonight last a lifetime. Angie’s fragrance was light and sweet but nothing compared to the taste.
Heather was no stranger to lesbian lovemaking. She had enjoyed the company of girlfriends in college before she met and married Richard Valentine and each bore a different aroma, a unique flavor. Angie was the most enthralling. Her body crackled with youthful energy and with one stroke of her tongue, Heather knew she never would want to be with anybody else in such an intimate way.
She kissed Angie deeply, treating her treasure like a second mouth. Angie opened to her easily, eagerly, drawing in a sharp gasp and would have wiggled away if Heather had not been holding her in place.
“Oh, Heather,” she chanted, tossing her head against the pillow. “What are you doing to me?”
“I’m making love to you, Angie,” Heather whispered, flashing bedroom eyes over the slope of the girl’s mound, locking her gaze before returning to caress those immature lips again. She tickled at Angie’s entrance with the tip of her finger while moving her tongue up higher to search for the button of the girl’s clit.
Angie’s walls constricted around the invading digit, relaxed, clenched again. Heather was slow, patient as she teased the child, taking great pains not to rush her or push too hard too fast. It may have started out that way, but lust had little to do with this now. Their first time together demanded the utmost care.
When Heather found the hard nub of the clit, her finger was drenched down to the knuckles in Angie’s arousal.
“Heather, oh Heather, I’m getting so close!”
It was hardly necessary to announce the encroaching orgasm. Heather could feel how excited she was as if her tongue and fingers were connected to a lightning rod. Angie was moaning lewdly, bucking her hips in time with the strokes of Heather’s mouth and hand. Her movements were getting more urgent now and much faster until she was practically grinding her crotch against Heather’s lips and tongue and fingers.
The climax was the most erotic thing she had ever been witness to.
Angie tucked her chin, eyes shut tight, breathing labored. When it hit, she rocketed back, eyes and mouth flying open in a silent scream. Her hands grasped blindly at her own tiny nipples, giving them a hard pinch to prolong the orgasm. She twisted away and Heather let her go, watching as she rolled onto her side and shivered from head to toe. This went on for a long moment while the older woman waited patiently for Angie to come down from the high. When their eyes met again, Angie’s were unfocused and drowsy, and a sheen of perspiration had broken out along her forehead.
“Oh wow,” she breathed. “That was…that was…” Her mind wasn’t working well enough to come up with a proper adjective. “Oh my God, Heather, I’ve made myself come so many times but it’s never been like that!”
The compliment made Heather’s tummy and things much lower tighten up into a hard knot. She smiled down at Angie, lightly brushing the sweaty hair away from her face. “I’m so glad you enjoyed that.”
“Can we do that again?”
Heather collected herself and stood up on her knees. “What makes you think we’re done?” She tucked her elbow into the bottom of her shirt and peeled it slowly away over her head…
Continue on to Chapter 11