kissing in the d-a-r-k
Kissing Jessica Stein. Jessica/Helen, Helen/New Girlfriend, Jessica/OC.
2008 words. PG. Set post-film.
Summary: So what if she couldn't say cunnilingus without blushing?
Note: Written for this prompt. Where did this even come from, I don't know. Desperate need to fix the end of that movie, I guess? Also Maya Rudolph plays the role of OC Leslie in my head, because of reasons.
Jessica is standing at the MAC counter looking down at lipsticks, thinking - that one is too orange, but that one is too pink, this one is matte but she wants glossy, this one is too glossy - and normally she would get overwhelmed and not get anything, continue to use the same slightly-too-mauve lipstick she's worn since college. But today, this unspectacular day, she decides, "I'll take them all."
Helen raises an eyebrow at the bag, weighty with tiny cardboard boxes knocking against each other, and says, "Gee, Jess, you leave anything behind?"
Jessica sort of laughs and ducks her head, shrugs. "There were too many things I liked," she says in that apologetic way of hers, like she always has to be sorry for thinking of herself.
She and Josh have two coffee dates, exactly, and they are unaccountably weird. Josh stares at her the whole time like she's got a halo or something, with a little smile on his face that just makes Jessica uncomfortable. He's not the Josh she liked him college, challenging and sharp, or the Josh she hated at work, bull-headed and aggressive. He waits for her to talk and then interrupts her with compliments. He says his book is about her. Jessica always wanted Josh to be a little more understanding but this is ridiculous, and if she's honest, kind of skin-crawly.
When she collapses onto Helen's couch later in relief, she says, "I definitely don't have to go out with him again, right?"
Helen gives her a look. "Honey, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do."
Helen's new girlfriend is named Ilana and she is absolutely gorgeous, charming, funny, thoughtful, dreamt up and spat out by some kind of God of Lesbian Girlfriends. Jessica likes her - love her! she’ll say, with a pained smile. If she's honest, Ilana just makes her feel inadequate. Ilana's hair always perfectly tousled. Her makeup is always flawless. She is a successful artist who Helen met at work. She was featured in a Vanity Fair spread, once.
Okay, okay. Jessica hates her.
Sometimes, while painting or walking to work or while she's on the train, Jessica thinks about the breakup and gets mad all over again. It's an impotent, pointless kind of anger that doesn't have anywhere to go and she ends up snapping at her co-workers all morning.
It's just that Helen was so wrong and now Jessica can never say anything about it, she can never bring it up again because they're good now and it took them so long to be good. She'd rather die than lose Helen as a friend but she's so mad still, so mad that Helen would say those things to her and not let Jessica explain herself.
Like, the reason she drank so much is because she was so nervous about being bad at sex, because even though Helen seemed to like it she always had little nitpicky things to say – things like, you know you're so quiet in bed? you know you don't have to be so tentative? you know you can touch me wherever you want? you know we've done this before, Jess, no need to act the blushing virgin.
Jessica hadn't been acting the blushing virgin; with women that's what she was, and a lot of the time with men too. It isn't her fault. It's scary to get involved with someone new, every time, and every single person is different, every time there are new things to learn, and every time Jessica is paralyzed with fear of getting it wrong.
And if she drank then she could relax a little. She wanted to be relaxed because she liked Helen so much and she wanted to make Helen happy.
So what if she couldn't say cunnilingus without blushing?
Helen and Ilana throw a glamorous party when they move into their new, spacious apartment. Jessica reluctantly attends. All those artist people are too overwhelming for her, even though they're supposed to be her kinds of people. They all have crazy haircuts or wear black lipstick and pull it off or they just spent a year in Paris sleeping on the streets. Jessica feels ridiculous, because she still dresses like Jewish Sandra Dee (says Helen) and the only time she went to Europe was with Granny Stein.
She takes a million years getting ready, borrows a dress from Helen and stays on the phone while Helen walks her through the art of mixing lipstick. But when she gets there she still hangs out in the corner with her glass of wine, trying not to watch Helen and Ilana giggle and kiss.
"It's a lot, right?"
Jessica blinks, turning to meet the eyes of a woman exactly her height, even in heels, with a sweep of straight cinnamon-brown hair and freckles all over her face.
"Yes," Jessica says gratefully, "Yes, it's so much."
The woman's name is Leslie and they spend the whole rest of the night talking. They walk out of the party talking and down into the corner coffee shop and then up the street until Jessica finally gets into a cab.
Shyly, she says, "It was nice meeting you."
She'd been so caught up she didn't realize Helen even noticed them.
"So, what, you're a lesbian now?" Helen says.
Jessica gives her a faintly unimpressed look, smiling. She interprets it as a joke, and so responds in kind: "I thought you didn't believe in labels?"
It's not the right thing to say. Helen frowns at her. "So you're dating this Leslie woman."
"She's not 'this Leslie woman,'" Jessica says. "Her name is Leslie Cole. She's a curator at a gallery. We're just hanging out, nothing's happened." But even she hears how implicit the yet is at the end of her sentence. She thinks of Leslie's glossy red mouth, the constellations of her freckles, her quick and sardonic grin.
"I just don’t get you," Helen says, annoyed, and storms off.
"Okay, here's the thing," Helen says, "Here's the thing I'm really curious about – here's the thing I just can't shake from my mind, okay –"
Helen is drunk on red wine in Jessica's living room, formerly their living room, formerly Helen's living room. Inheriting this apartment was the best and worst part of their breakup, because it's beautiful but there are shades of Helen everywhere.
"I'm really curious what she has that I don't," Helen says, "Am I not pretty enough? That's bullshit, I'm gorgeous. I'm just as gorgeous as she is, okay, and anyway she has a weird mouth. And there's no way she has more in common with you than I do, because we like all the same things, exactly, it's almost freaky considering I am a free-spirited bohemian and you are Gidget complete with sweater set."
"Well for one thing she doesn't say things like that to me!" Jessica exclaims. She's trying to sound strong and powerful but that little wavery, shrill note is entering her voice that she knows Helen hates.
"What, true things?" Helen snaps. "Honestly: Are you fucking her?"
"I –" Red with anger and embarrassment, Jessica doesn't know what to say. They aren't fucking, they aren't doing anything as crass as that. It was only once anyway. Once after a lunch date they'd started kissing on Leslie's couch, then they'd been lying on Leslie's couch, then they'd tumbled off onto the rug laughing and it went from there. Leslie didn't have Helen's passion but it was really, really nice and Jessica hadn't been nervous, mostly.
Helen stares at her. "Oh my god, you are. I didn't think you were, you never fuck anybody – but I guess you just don’t fuck me."
"Stop saying that," Jessica begs, starting to get upset. "Stop it, you know that has nothing to do with anything – and you're with Ilana now, you're happy –"
"Did you do it here?" Helen demands. "Did you do it here in my apartment?"
Jessica blinks, tears stopping as disbelief takes hold. "This isn't your apartment anymore," she says, even though she still thinks of it as such herself. "You have a place with your girlfriend now."
"Is this revenge because I broke up with you?" Helen says.
"You're drunk, and you're being absurd," Jessica says. Growing bolder, "Not everything is about you, you know, some things are about me and I just like her, I just want to get to know her and you keep making it dirty when it isn't and –"
But Jessica never gets to finish her sentences around Helen, because Helen is usually the one who finishes them for her. Right now she finishes it with a kiss. Jessica kind of hates her for it, even as her fingers automatically entwine themselves in short dark hair, even as she presses into Helen's familiar closeness.
Jessica was always shy about reveling in the afterglow whoever she was with, uncomfortable with just lying there naked waiting for…what? It seemed so pointless, and then she felt bad about it because Helen was more comfortable naked than anyone on earth. Honestly, she used to just sit on the couch flipping channels naked, she would make herself a midnight snack naked, once she even answered the door for pizza naked. Jessica couldn't possibly understand it.
Maybe it's the wine or the suddenness of the sex, or the fact that they're no longer technically involved so the pressure is off, but Jessica is content to tuck the pink sheet around herself and be still. Helen is sitting up, sheet around her waist, smoking a cigarette.
"You know, it was the whole thing," Helen is saying. "Your whole family – and I mean, they're great, I liked them a lot, but it was just…man. So fucking intense, you know? Like we had to be the poster girls for All Of The Lesbians, and they kept asking me about commitment ceremonies and adoptions and sperm donors and I was like – who even said I wanted any of that? Who said I wanted to be just like all of you?"
"My mom really liked you a lot," Jessica says very quietly, which has little to do with anything.
"I know, I know," Helen sighs. "It just felt like there was zero middle ground. Either we were just like straight people or we were just the best of friends, like there was no room to breathe."
Room to breathe is very important to Helen. She uses the phrase a lot.
Jessica doesn't really understand, anyway. She wants ceremonies and babies and to be normal, like everyone else. "So what did you want?"
"You," Helen says. "To be with you."
Leslie is the exact kind of women who wouldn't be freaked out by Jessica bringing her home. She's Jewish too, on one side, and she and Jessica can trade familial horror stories. Leslie dresses appropriately for every situation, with a particular feminine flair that is all her own. She isn't freaked out by commitment or lack of commitment, or much of anything; Jessica could very easily be a stone skipping across Leslie's calm surface.
So she's very understanding when Jessica breaks it off.
Ilana is less so, showing her first flaw in the wild immediacy of her temper. She throws Helen's clothes out of their sixth floor window and destroys the canvas of Jessica's hanging in the apartment and changes the locks. Helen is sort of faintly amused by it, and she likes having the story to tell at get-togethers.
She shows up at Jessica's – hers – their apartment with a pile of street-dirty dresses stuffed into a garbage bag and one antique chair hooked over her shoulder.
"What do you say, pal?" Helen asks. "Roomies?"
Jessica isn't sure what she's getting herself into, or what she should say, if she ought to correct Helen – correction is very important to Jessica, she likes things to be neat and factual.
"I suppose, since I can't seem to get rid of you," Jessica says, and smiles.
It's true enough.
Kissing Jessica Stein. Jessica/Helen, Helen/New Girlfriend, Jessica/OC.
2008 words. PG. Set post-film.
Summary: So what if she couldn't say cunnilingus without blushing?
Note: Written for this prompt. Where did this even come from, I don't know. Desperate need to fix the end of that movie, I guess? Also Maya Rudolph plays the role of OC Leslie in my head, because of reasons.
Jessica is standing at the MAC counter looking down at lipsticks, thinking - that one is too orange, but that one is too pink, this one is matte but she wants glossy, this one is too glossy - and normally she would get overwhelmed and not get anything, continue to use the same slightly-too-mauve lipstick she's worn since college. But today, this unspectacular day, she decides, "I'll take them all."
Helen raises an eyebrow at the bag, weighty with tiny cardboard boxes knocking against each other, and says, "Gee, Jess, you leave anything behind?"
Jessica sort of laughs and ducks her head, shrugs. "There were too many things I liked," she says in that apologetic way of hers, like she always has to be sorry for thinking of herself.
She and Josh have two coffee dates, exactly, and they are unaccountably weird. Josh stares at her the whole time like she's got a halo or something, with a little smile on his face that just makes Jessica uncomfortable. He's not the Josh she liked him college, challenging and sharp, or the Josh she hated at work, bull-headed and aggressive. He waits for her to talk and then interrupts her with compliments. He says his book is about her. Jessica always wanted Josh to be a little more understanding but this is ridiculous, and if she's honest, kind of skin-crawly.
When she collapses onto Helen's couch later in relief, she says, "I definitely don't have to go out with him again, right?"
Helen gives her a look. "Honey, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do."
Helen's new girlfriend is named Ilana and she is absolutely gorgeous, charming, funny, thoughtful, dreamt up and spat out by some kind of God of Lesbian Girlfriends. Jessica likes her - love her! she’ll say, with a pained smile. If she's honest, Ilana just makes her feel inadequate. Ilana's hair always perfectly tousled. Her makeup is always flawless. She is a successful artist who Helen met at work. She was featured in a Vanity Fair spread, once.
Okay, okay. Jessica hates her.
Sometimes, while painting or walking to work or while she's on the train, Jessica thinks about the breakup and gets mad all over again. It's an impotent, pointless kind of anger that doesn't have anywhere to go and she ends up snapping at her co-workers all morning.
It's just that Helen was so wrong and now Jessica can never say anything about it, she can never bring it up again because they're good now and it took them so long to be good. She'd rather die than lose Helen as a friend but she's so mad still, so mad that Helen would say those things to her and not let Jessica explain herself.
Like, the reason she drank so much is because she was so nervous about being bad at sex, because even though Helen seemed to like it she always had little nitpicky things to say – things like, you know you're so quiet in bed? you know you don't have to be so tentative? you know you can touch me wherever you want? you know we've done this before, Jess, no need to act the blushing virgin.
Jessica hadn't been acting the blushing virgin; with women that's what she was, and a lot of the time with men too. It isn't her fault. It's scary to get involved with someone new, every time, and every single person is different, every time there are new things to learn, and every time Jessica is paralyzed with fear of getting it wrong.
And if she drank then she could relax a little. She wanted to be relaxed because she liked Helen so much and she wanted to make Helen happy.
So what if she couldn't say cunnilingus without blushing?
Helen and Ilana throw a glamorous party when they move into their new, spacious apartment. Jessica reluctantly attends. All those artist people are too overwhelming for her, even though they're supposed to be her kinds of people. They all have crazy haircuts or wear black lipstick and pull it off or they just spent a year in Paris sleeping on the streets. Jessica feels ridiculous, because she still dresses like Jewish Sandra Dee (says Helen) and the only time she went to Europe was with Granny Stein.
She takes a million years getting ready, borrows a dress from Helen and stays on the phone while Helen walks her through the art of mixing lipstick. But when she gets there she still hangs out in the corner with her glass of wine, trying not to watch Helen and Ilana giggle and kiss.
"It's a lot, right?"
Jessica blinks, turning to meet the eyes of a woman exactly her height, even in heels, with a sweep of straight cinnamon-brown hair and freckles all over her face.
"Yes," Jessica says gratefully, "Yes, it's so much."
The woman's name is Leslie and they spend the whole rest of the night talking. They walk out of the party talking and down into the corner coffee shop and then up the street until Jessica finally gets into a cab.
Shyly, she says, "It was nice meeting you."
She'd been so caught up she didn't realize Helen even noticed them.
"So, what, you're a lesbian now?" Helen says.
Jessica gives her a faintly unimpressed look, smiling. She interprets it as a joke, and so responds in kind: "I thought you didn't believe in labels?"
It's not the right thing to say. Helen frowns at her. "So you're dating this Leslie woman."
"She's not 'this Leslie woman,'" Jessica says. "Her name is Leslie Cole. She's a curator at a gallery. We're just hanging out, nothing's happened." But even she hears how implicit the yet is at the end of her sentence. She thinks of Leslie's glossy red mouth, the constellations of her freckles, her quick and sardonic grin.
"I just don’t get you," Helen says, annoyed, and storms off.
"Okay, here's the thing," Helen says, "Here's the thing I'm really curious about – here's the thing I just can't shake from my mind, okay –"
Helen is drunk on red wine in Jessica's living room, formerly their living room, formerly Helen's living room. Inheriting this apartment was the best and worst part of their breakup, because it's beautiful but there are shades of Helen everywhere.
"I'm really curious what she has that I don't," Helen says, "Am I not pretty enough? That's bullshit, I'm gorgeous. I'm just as gorgeous as she is, okay, and anyway she has a weird mouth. And there's no way she has more in common with you than I do, because we like all the same things, exactly, it's almost freaky considering I am a free-spirited bohemian and you are Gidget complete with sweater set."
"Well for one thing she doesn't say things like that to me!" Jessica exclaims. She's trying to sound strong and powerful but that little wavery, shrill note is entering her voice that she knows Helen hates.
"What, true things?" Helen snaps. "Honestly: Are you fucking her?"
"I –" Red with anger and embarrassment, Jessica doesn't know what to say. They aren't fucking, they aren't doing anything as crass as that. It was only once anyway. Once after a lunch date they'd started kissing on Leslie's couch, then they'd been lying on Leslie's couch, then they'd tumbled off onto the rug laughing and it went from there. Leslie didn't have Helen's passion but it was really, really nice and Jessica hadn't been nervous, mostly.
Helen stares at her. "Oh my god, you are. I didn't think you were, you never fuck anybody – but I guess you just don’t fuck me."
"Stop saying that," Jessica begs, starting to get upset. "Stop it, you know that has nothing to do with anything – and you're with Ilana now, you're happy –"
"Did you do it here?" Helen demands. "Did you do it here in my apartment?"
Jessica blinks, tears stopping as disbelief takes hold. "This isn't your apartment anymore," she says, even though she still thinks of it as such herself. "You have a place with your girlfriend now."
"Is this revenge because I broke up with you?" Helen says.
"You're drunk, and you're being absurd," Jessica says. Growing bolder, "Not everything is about you, you know, some things are about me and I just like her, I just want to get to know her and you keep making it dirty when it isn't and –"
But Jessica never gets to finish her sentences around Helen, because Helen is usually the one who finishes them for her. Right now she finishes it with a kiss. Jessica kind of hates her for it, even as her fingers automatically entwine themselves in short dark hair, even as she presses into Helen's familiar closeness.
Jessica was always shy about reveling in the afterglow whoever she was with, uncomfortable with just lying there naked waiting for…what? It seemed so pointless, and then she felt bad about it because Helen was more comfortable naked than anyone on earth. Honestly, she used to just sit on the couch flipping channels naked, she would make herself a midnight snack naked, once she even answered the door for pizza naked. Jessica couldn't possibly understand it.
Maybe it's the wine or the suddenness of the sex, or the fact that they're no longer technically involved so the pressure is off, but Jessica is content to tuck the pink sheet around herself and be still. Helen is sitting up, sheet around her waist, smoking a cigarette.
"You know, it was the whole thing," Helen is saying. "Your whole family – and I mean, they're great, I liked them a lot, but it was just…man. So fucking intense, you know? Like we had to be the poster girls for All Of The Lesbians, and they kept asking me about commitment ceremonies and adoptions and sperm donors and I was like – who even said I wanted any of that? Who said I wanted to be just like all of you?"
"My mom really liked you a lot," Jessica says very quietly, which has little to do with anything.
"I know, I know," Helen sighs. "It just felt like there was zero middle ground. Either we were just like straight people or we were just the best of friends, like there was no room to breathe."
Room to breathe is very important to Helen. She uses the phrase a lot.
Jessica doesn't really understand, anyway. She wants ceremonies and babies and to be normal, like everyone else. "So what did you want?"
"You," Helen says. "To be with you."
Leslie is the exact kind of women who wouldn't be freaked out by Jessica bringing her home. She's Jewish too, on one side, and she and Jessica can trade familial horror stories. Leslie dresses appropriately for every situation, with a particular feminine flair that is all her own. She isn't freaked out by commitment or lack of commitment, or much of anything; Jessica could very easily be a stone skipping across Leslie's calm surface.
So she's very understanding when Jessica breaks it off.
Ilana is less so, showing her first flaw in the wild immediacy of her temper. She throws Helen's clothes out of their sixth floor window and destroys the canvas of Jessica's hanging in the apartment and changes the locks. Helen is sort of faintly amused by it, and she likes having the story to tell at get-togethers.
She shows up at Jessica's – hers – their apartment with a pile of street-dirty dresses stuffed into a garbage bag and one antique chair hooked over her shoulder.
"What do you say, pal?" Helen asks. "Roomies?"
Jessica isn't sure what she's getting herself into, or what she should say, if she ought to correct Helen – correction is very important to Jessica, she likes things to be neat and factual.
"I suppose, since I can't seem to get rid of you," Jessica says, and smiles.
It's true enough.