NOTE: I will most probably have dodgy internet access for some days so I am posting it now! Title from Jojo's Edibles.
On New Year's Eve the hunger drums deep in Jennifer's belly. Her jaws clench, biting on nothing but the sudden sharp acidic taste in her mouth.
But it's broad daylight, and Needy wants to go shoe shopping.
They're at a Sketchers store in a mall in Queens, half a bus ride away from a public library. In New York the streets are quite narrow, and stores, apartment blocks, and markets jostle one another in a very important sort of busyness. It's all terribly unlike Devil's Kettle, which means Jennifer can't just stroll over to a handy forest clearing to have a snack.
"What about these?" Needy's voice floats through the beginning of Jennifer's haze.
Jennifer rubs her mouth as she examines the pair Needy is holding. A pair of Sketchers, the kind which adds a bit to your height. It's also floral. Jennifer scornfully huffs at it. It's not to her taste, but she's not the one who will be wearing it. So Jennifer asks, "Do you like it?"
Although, Jennifer has to admit, the flowers are tastefully vibrant. The colors do not hideously pop. Jennifer's eyes don't find it necessary to be subjected to what looks like the inside of a toddler's brain, or someone routinely guzzling Red Bull. Besides Needy is thankfully long past her Hello Kitty print phase. Anything is better than those times when Needy wore awful statement footwear, like bunny slippers and Hello Kitty print sneakers. Oh, yes, they suited owlish little Needy. Jennifer just doesn't like looking at the footwear from hell if Needy's not wearing them.
Needy surveys the floral Sketchers again. Then she beams at Jennifer and nods excitedly.
As if she weren't a 64-year-old woman, but an unbearable fresh graduate let loose with her first proper paycheck.
Needy likes the shoes. That's what matters, anyway. It can be a print of Care Bears puking their fluffy hearts out as long as it's on Needy's feet. Anyone else and Jennifer can't be held accountable for her words and actions against criminally vile taste.
"Go for it." Jennifer shrugs. "It'll look great on you."
"I'll check for sizes," says Needy. "Do you want to look for yours now?"
What Jennifer wants to do now is to have a huge, comforting bite of a juicy morsel. It's better to eat when she's not desperately starving. Regular healthy meals, that's how Jennifer rolls these days. Quite responsible, really. Admirably grown-up. Since she's sixty-four fucking years old.
But it's the last day of the year, and she and Needy have a New Year's resolution to start running in the mornings.
"Yeah, I'll browse right now." The faster they get out of here, the better.
Somewhere in the ceiling the speakers croon out another holiday song. A family shuffles in past the doors. Jennifer fidgets.
Needy pauses in bundling up the shoes and her coat. She carefully peers up at Jennifer. "Are you hungry?"
Jennifer tries to distract herself by absently noting the light cluster of freckles high on Needy's nose. Needy continues to peer up at her in the usual intent Needy way.
"A bit," Jennifer admits. She picks up a shoe model from a garlanded rack, barely glances at it. Places it back down and picks up another one. When she puts that one down and holds up a third, a fascinatingly cheery retailer pops up by her elbow and chirps, "Hi! How can I help you?"
Jennifer says over her shoulder, "Air freshener, maybe? This store smells so shoe-like. All the leather and rubber smell reminds me of a fetish bar." The girl's hair is dashed with pink, and her eyes are getting wider. Jennifer continues, "Are there burger air fresheners? The meatier the be –"
"Ignore her," Needy interrupts, with an apologetic smile at the bewildered girl. "She gets cranky when hungry."
They watch the girl back away slowly before Needy turns to Jennifer with a long-suffering look, but the twist of her pink lips tells Jennifer that Needy's refraining from smiling.
Jennifer huffs. "Go on, go find your size."
Needy fussily digs into her purse and pulls out a Kit Kat bar. "Here. It might help." She presses it in Jennifer's hand then sails off to the salespeople.
Jennifer watches her go. Watches the store's fluorescent lights glide on Needy's plainly dressed blonde hair and glint on Needy's silver-framed glasses. Watches Needy's green jumper, how the cashmere material and the shirt underneath are no doubt pressing on Jennifer's old bite on Needy's shoulder.
Old. They're old, the both of them. Jennifer's the only one who still calls her Needy. Anita is too cringe-worthy, Annie is too schoolgirl, so people call her Anne.
"Like Anne Boleyn," Needy told Jennifer, so long ago in university, over her mess of books and index cards.
"Wasn't she, like, a brunette?" Jennifer pointed out.
"Yes, but me, this Anne is also not gonna die young." Needy smiled one of her dopey smiles and poured Jennifer more hot chocolate.
And that's true, Jennifer thinks as she surreptitiously munches on the Kit Kat. Needy might be sixty-four now but she has just started to have grey hairs around the temples. She's filled out now, no longer the lanky girl back in Devil's Kettle, with a sterner mouth and better glasses. A proper adult woman. Just last week she was mistaken for forty.
As for Jennifer herself, well.
Jennifer smirks at her reflection on a mirror, sucking chocolate from her teeth. She drags her eyes up and down her body, dusts away Kit Kat crumbs from her burgundy turtleneck. Jennifer still looks exactly the same as the girl who clawed her way from the sacrificial stone, bloody and intent on devouring morsels.
Jennifer crumples the Kit Kat wrapper and tucks it into her jeans pocket. The chocolate doesn't help her hunger, but she likes that it's from Needy. She picks up a pair of shoes, black and cherry-red, and saunters over to where Needy is sitting and admiring her floral-ensconced feet.
From the small crowd on the fitting bench, Needy's head pops up and her eyes find Jennifer even before Jennifer goes ten feet near her. Needy has told her about that, about her feeling when Jennifer's near.
Needy is smiling widely when Jennifer stops beside her. "It's perfect."
"It's flowery," Jennifer states mildly. She rubs her mouth again. "Let's have lunch."
Needy frowns. "Have you picked out yours?"
Jennifer shows her the model. "My size. Decadently looks like designer chocolates, don't you think? Or an obnoxiously fancy dessert."
"Okay, you're really hungry."
The lady beside Needy on the bench chuckles. "My kids are also like that. Teenagers are always hungry. Milkshake this, cheese burger that." She chuckles some more, smoothing out her cardigan. She's middle-aged, and Jennifer knows that she's still in her Cerelac-stained diapers that night Soft Shoulder botched their sacrifice.
Needy's polite smile is frozen. Her face looks like it can't decide whether to turn pink or to pale.
Jennifer stares at this comfortable-looking woman. "I'm not her daughter."
The woman looks flustered. "My bad –"
"Isn't it," Jennifer agrees.
"Let's go," Needy says. There's a deep crease between her brows and she's biting on a corner of her lips. She grabs Jennifer's arm and bustles them towards the cashier.
As the queue moves up and the holiday songs change in the speakers, Needy says, "I'll have lunch in that café two streets down. Sophie's. Join me for coffee? After?"
Jennifer has only one other consumable vice, aside from human flesh, and it's a good reliable dark roast. Pleased, Jennifer leans close and feels her lips brush against Needy's ear. "I want that rapist," she murmurs. "The one your court acquitted last week."
Needy gives her an easy nod, face impassive. "Brush your teeth after," is what she only says.
Regular healthy meals, with Needy's strongly worded recommendations. Jennifer has never strayed away from this diet plan for more than forty years.
The memory of her first Needy-explicity-approved morsel is still vivid. Jennifer was leaning over the kitchen sink of their shared apartment just beyond the campus, the midnight moonlight faintly streaming through the flimsy curtain as Needy paced the tiny kitchen.
"I mean, it was morally right," Needy fretted, "right? He's in prison for stalking and two counts of murder. It's okay, isn't it?"
Jennifer spat out her third mouthful of Listerine. She rinsed her cup and plopped down on the kitchen chair. Stretching luxuriously she said, "More than okay. His heart's like, clogged of cholesterol. Yummy."
In the dark glow of their lamp Needy looked pained and queasy.
Jennifer reached out, tilting her weight on a single chair leg, and caught Needy's hand. It was quivering, clammy, but Needy didn't flinch away. That was all Jennifer needed.
"Okay, I won't talk about the morsels," Jennifer said, in what she hoped was a soothing tone. "I'll buy you that frappe thing you love tomorrow, okay?"
The queue in the Sketchers store shuffles again, and Jennifer faintly smiles at the memory. She notices Needy peeking at her at the corner of Needy's eye. Jennifer fully faces her and grins. The slight frown on Needy's face gradually melts away as she turns pink-cheeked, but she smiles all pleased and tremulous at Jennifer.
Jennifer tips her body even closer. "One last fresh breath, then," she says, before kissing Needy on the mouth.
She feels Needy's lips tilt up into a smile. Jennifer will never tire of the way her crimson lipstick pecks on Needy's lipgloss. Needy's eyes flutter close, the eyelids clean of makeup. Her glasses bump on Jennifer, the thin sleek metal cool against Jennifer's skin, and she can almost see her eyes' reflection on the glasses.
Someone coughs.
Jennifer parts from Needy to find that they are now at the head of the queue. The cashier's eyebrows are raised, an amused smile on his kid face. Needy blushes and mumbles something as she hands over the shoes.
Jennifer tells the boy, "She's not a cradle-snatcher, if that's what you're thinking. I'm older than I look."
Needy puts her pink face in her palm and laughs.
"God, I'm old," Needy says as they walk out of the mall. The crease is back on her brow. Jennifer knows then that she's really worried about something.
"You look pretty banging for a senior citizen."
Needy moans dramatically. "Oh my god, don't say senior citizen."
Jennifer laughs, swinging her paper bag by its strings. "We are senior citizens. Everyone else is a bumbling kid to us, which is amazing. We just don't look like it."
Jennifer catches the look Needy slants her way, the look which always accompanied teenage Needy shrinking into herself but Judge Lesnicki just handles by turning her face away quickly.
As far as Jennifer remembers, that look is especially Needy's trademark. All the other variations are a mix of acknowledgment of Jennifer's sheer gorgeousness and jealousy because of it, but Needy's is a look which Jennifer has come to understand as acknowledgement of Jennifer's sheer gorgeousness, insecurity, and awe.
"You don't look like it," Needy grumbles.
Jennifer is not one to deny her indubitable hotness to make other people feel better, so she clasps Needy's gloved hand and does what she does best: telling it like it is.
"No, I don't look like it," Jennifer agrees. "That's because of a demon living with my soul. And you, dearest, don't look like it either because I bit you."
A chilled wind rushes past them, sending Needy's bright hair streaming back. They stop walking and just stand there beside a bus stop. Jennifer tucks a lock behind Needy's ear, and smirks at her. "You just look like a 40-year-old hottie. And life starts at 40, right? Besides don't we make a super-hot couple?"
Needy tilts her head, the beginnings of a dopey smile playing around her lips. "I look like I'm on really heavy cosmetic surgery bill." She shakes her head. "But, you know, sometimes I think you're half-raving, half-genius."
They walk again in full accord, their knotted hands slightly swinging.
After a while Needy says, "It's just – I can't help but constantly think about it. Especially now." They pause by a stoplight. "However long it takes I'll still grow older and older. Always older than you are."
"So don't think too much about it," Jennifer suggests.
"We can't all be flippant like you, Jennifer."
"Hey! I'm not flippant!" Jennifer tugs them to cross the street. "I'm not flippant about this." Jennifer has not been flippant about Needy for a long time now.
Needy nods briefly, her gloved fingers squeezing Jennifer's bare ones. "You've always been larger than life," she says quietly, that Jennifer almost missed it with all the noise of cars and fellow pedestrians around them. "I don't know how you do it."
"It's just how I am, I guess," Jennifer says. Needy is still frowning, and Jennifer wishes she can rub away that crease so she adds, "And you still haven't run the other way screaming, so I guess I got lucky there, too."
They arrive outside Sophie's. The rosewood door frame is trussed up with garlands, poinsettias, and mistletoe. Needy hums appreciatively at the sight.
"I'll see you later for coffee," Jennifer tells her.
Needy grips Jennifer's hand tighter. "Remember, okay? Follow the meal plan." Her mouth tightens into a stern line as she frowns at Jennifer.
"When have I not?" Jennifer says with a cocky toss of her hair.
Then Jennifer pecks Needy on the mouth, and leans back with a wide smile for her.
Needy blinks rapidly and settles on another look, like she can't truly believe that Jennifer is with her. Then her mouth twists into that unreadable thing and she nods for Jennifer to go have lunch.
Jennifer moseys off with a last look over her shoulder at Needy. She can't wait for coffee after lunch. She's obsessed with it, and coffee always helps with digestion after a heavy meal.
The morsel was prime and delicious. Much can be said about college football players after all, Jennifer thinks as she strolls down the street, her Sketchers bag swinging by her leg.
Jennifer has checked, though: the kid did not go to her gym. She owns a sleek gym in Gotham, in a building from across The Strands, above an ice cream parlor, a laundrette, and an organic grocery. Owning a gym with great traffic is great coin besides allowing her to be low-profile enough.
She still thinks it's fucking funny, to have a gym close to food establishments, and a laundry shop where idiots can try to wash away the stain of guilty carbs.
Needy has an unholy love for carbs but she has never applied to Jennifer's gym. Jennifer is always pestering her to exercise and think about the early onset of diabetes and hypertension.
"What do you need exercise for?" Needy demanded one time, her nose wrinkled over a new edition of someone called Kamala Khan. "You're sexy already!"
"Aesthetic is only a side-effect of great blood circulation, Needy," Jennifer sighed. "But thank you."
"Would you like a snack?" Needy asked, chewing on her pen. "After your exercise? I saved some Danish from yesterday."
Jennifer put her hand on her chest. "You saved me pastry," she said. "You are parting from a fluffy carb. Is it love?"
So Needy just carried on putting away her extra weight through stress about the judicial matters and stress about the endless new editions of comics.
On a comics store window Jennifer glimpses her reflection. Light snow is caught in her bouncing black hair, and there is a cat-like languor in the sway of her walk. Jennifer smirks, holds a palm close to her mouth, breaths out. Minty and fresh. Perfect.
Those moments which are not perfect, Jennifer still has vivid memories of them. Number one is the night of the dance, when Soft Shoulder came back to play in their school and Jennifer almost ate Chip, Needy's high school boyfriend.
But Needy came charging into the park, that awful dress of hers wobbling and her feet bare on the grass, snatching Chip away where Jennifer had him cornered against a street lamp.
There was lots of yelling. And scuffling and fighting. At one point when Needy tried to spike Jennifer with her discarded heels, Jennifer also bit Needy.
"Why Chip?" Needy wailed at her. Needy's prolapsed intestine of a dress was grass-stained and bloody at the shoulder. "Why do have to take away the only guy who ever liked me? You can have anyone, Jennifer!"
Jennifer remembers trying to blink through her hungry daze. She only wanted to eat. Just like she wanted to eat Emo Colin. Needy told her Emo Colin was cool, and Jennifer knew that Needy feels what she feels. Jennifer thought she might share the morsel through their weird link.
Besides, Jennifer never liked the boys Needy liked.
Another thing Jennifer does not like is hurting Needy.
She remembers wobbling and slumping against the street lamp, scowling against the blurry spotty yellow glow of the lamp, not at all perfect and poised. She remembers Needy's tear-streaked face. She remembers noting the tears on Needy's face because Needy lurched towards her, as if to help her keep upright, but stopping a few feet from her. She remembers saying, "I'm hungry."
And Needy said, in a trembling voice, "Soft Shoulder are in the school. They're – they're staying the night. Lemon Tree Inn."
The goo Jennifer spits out before she eats leaves no traces of her DNA. It left none in the cheap hostel the band stayed at. That whole heavy buffet left Jennifer buzzing for six months straight, as if she chugged a revolutionary concoction of Red Bull and kale smoothie.
And it left her and Needy's friendship intact, after they had a really serious talk on Needy's front door.
"Chip told me some things you told him," Needy said, eyes hard behind her glasses and arms crossed. "About me. Some lies you told him. About me. Your best friend."
"I was hungry," Jennifer said. "I had to do something to make him come with me."
"I can't believe you. I just can't."
"Look, you weren't supposed to know," Jennifer gritted out, advancing. Small owlish Needy stood her ground and didn't let Jennifer enter the house. "The end justifies the means and all that shit."
Needy started to cry, but Jennifer remembers feeling her vibrate with fury through the tears. "Best friends are supposed to respect and trust each other! Have you ever respected and trusted me? Because, God, that's all I ever do to you!"
"I trusted you!" Jennifer shouted. "I told you, about that first night after I was sacrificed. I told you I was so hungry but didn't eat you when I could have! I told you," she choked, then plowed on with her shouting, "that I couldn't bear to hurt you!"
Needy looked nonplussed. "But – but have you ever respected me? Pathetic, dorky Needy. Needy with the limp hair and obvious surface flaws."
"Have you ever respected me?" Jennifer shot back. "Jennifer who can't properly quote fancy Shakespeare shit? Jennifer who must be an empty-brained bitch?"
They stared at each other, bewildered and speechless and irritated.
Finally Needy said, "I never think of you as stupid."
"No?" Jennifer said, clearing her throat. "That's good, then."
They stared at each other some more. Jennifer remembers thinking how they looked like two balloons sagging sadly to the ground.
"I promise not to eat Chip," Jennifer offered. She twirled at the strap of her bag. "I'm sorry. About what I told him." Jennifer adjusted her bag on her shoulder. "And I – I always think of you as my best friend. I'm just a bit shit at, you know, manifesting it."
"Because you're a bitch," Needy said, baldly.
"Yeah, I am," Jennifer agreed.
They were startled when they both gigged at that.
"You're my best friend, though," Needy said in a smaller voice.
After some more staring, considering each other wordlessly, maybe even taking in that they had grown up since they first played in sandboxes, Needy stepped aside from the door and let Jennifer in. Needy's mom was in swing shift again. They made cheese sandwiches in the kitchen and did their homework, like they always did.
Jennifer was deeply thankful that she was let in. She had been let into Needy's house all her life, and if she was refused it would be like part of the world crumbling.
The pedestrian light turns green, and Jennifer crosses the street. Her Sketchers bag hit someone in the leg, and the guy turned to snarl at her. Jennifer coolly raises her eyebrow and does not bother mouthing an apology.
She has always been a phenomenal bitch. She hopes the demon is cowering in a corner of her soul, cowering out of the way of Jennifer's non-eating business as much as Jennifer endures the hunger cycles.
Jennifer has always wondered if she's immortal or what. If she kept feeding the demon's craving for flesh, always regenerating strength and vibrancy, what happens?
A light snowy wind sweeps past Jennifer as she arrives in front of Sophie's. She sails past the door, into the stuffy rich smell of hot drinks and cake, and finds Needy bent over a magazine.
Jennifer orders a cup of roast coffee for herself and asks for a small foam cup of milk. She burps a little, mouth closed. The morsel's tastes skitter across her tongue again and she finds herself smiling.
Needy looks up at her approach, putting down a purple pen. Needy has this habit of writing her comments in everything she reads, even take out menus.
"How are you?" Needy says.
Jennifer pours in milk in her black coffee and stirs. "Fantastic. How's my hair?"
"Disgustingly perfect."
They sip their drinks together. Needy has a smile in her eyes.
"What's that you're having?"
"They told me it's – a berry mocha coffee," Needy chuckles. She nudges the rest of her milk towards Jennifer.
Jennifer wishes she could take off her boots and stretch her feet. She's feeling very luxurious right now. Those people who bang on about cake being better than sex are right about something – if it's a morsel cake. Jennifer stops herself from laughing. Needy will ask what's so funny, and when Jennifer explains, Needy's mouth will do that unreadable twist again.
So Jennifer just goes on with her plan.
She asks Needy, "What do you want to do? Until midnight?"
Needy huddles into her jumper. "I don't know. Not much to do, is there? Oh wait, aren't you going to one of those New Year's Eve bashes?"
"Not this year." Jennifer refrains herself from joking about feeling her age, for Needy. "So nothing?"
"Nothing," Needy says, squinting at her a bit suspiciously. "We already have a cake and some fruits and wine."
Jennifer drinks off half her cup, and smiles. "How do you feel about shopping for lingerie?"
Needy's eyes widen. She glances around, then presses her palms on top of the table to lean forward. "What?"
"Lingerie shopping. You." Jennifer tosses her hair. She reaches across the table to one of Needy's hands. "You've never had lingerie. I'll take you shopping."
"That's because I don't need them," Needy says. "And how do you try on underwear, anyway? Won't that be unsanitary? Since other people have tried them out as well?"
Jennifer rolls her eyes. "You can use panty-liner."
"Jennifer, really. I don't – it's not necessary." Needy laughs a bit. "Why are you ridiculous? How do I love you?"
Jennifer's stomach does something flippy. She gives it a brief pat and silently commands the morsel to stay good and digest properly.
"Come on," Jennifer coaxes. "Aren't you curious to see how sexy you'll look?"
Needy shakes her head. "I've never been. Sexy." She sounds awkward saying the word. "And now I'm old."
Jennifer squeezes her hand and roughly leans all the way across the table to kiss her lips. Over the tinkling of Jennifer's wobbling cup and saucer, she says, "Never too old for me."
Needy is biting on a smile, her eyes bright. She glances at the cluster of poinsettias by the window, then turns back to Jennifer's gaze.
"Come on," Jennifer says again. "It'll be no worse than the time we bought dental dams together."
Needy gasps out and swats at Jennifer's arm, hiccupping out a laugh. "You just have to bring that up!"
That happened when they first got together, when they were twenty-six. It was the middle of a summer desperately full of iced drinks and homemade avocado ice cream. Needy was not seeing anyone, and Jennifer grew bored of the club scene. They fucked on Needy's bed which was pushed up to her window, the lazy afternoon sun streaming in from the open curtains. It was fun so they did it again that same day after stumbling into a drugstore for dental dams for mouth action. It was so fun that they had been doing it ever since.
Jennifer grins, unrepentant. "It'll be just you and me in the fitting room. You don't even have to buy anything."
Needy bites her lip. She looks down at their joined hands. "You're just burning to get to do it in a fitting room."
"We can't, I know." Fitting rooms may not have cameras. But the halls of the fitting rooms may have cameras, and Needy is a respectable member of the bar. "But I'm burning to see you in a scrap of lace."
"You can be sweetly filthy," Needy says with this soft smile.
"Not like you can talk," Jennifer scoffs. "You're literally the definition of it's always the quiet ones."
"Oh, all right," Needy laughs. She smiles at Jennifer again, this smile dipped in softness which always makes Jennifer's stomach act up. "All right."
Needy buys Jennifer another cup of coffee. This second cup warms Jennifer's full stomach all the way to the lingerie store.
It's fun watching Needy. She's very efficient about lingerie shopping, from browsing the racks, to humming out subdued approval for what she likes, to asking about sizes and colors.
"I think I'll rip it," Needy calls out.
"Want me to come in?"
"Please."
Jennifer pushes past the black curtain. Needy is gingerly dealing with the plum red unwrap-me satin bow teddy. She's only managed to slip in place the wide swath of the bow that's supposed to go on her crotch.
Needy looks up, flushed and sheepish. Her rose gold BFF pendant glints in the glare of the fluorescent.
At the sight of all that fetching skin, Jennifer feels her skin warming against the similar pendant tucked underneath her turtleneck.
"I got really focused on the panty-liner," Needy explains.
Jennifer laughs. She helps Needy slip on the rest of the teddy before stepping back a bit to admire her.
The bow's centre is notched on the cleavage of the bra, with three wide tails trailing from it. The left and right tails, Needy holds tentatively, while the middle stretches down for her crotch and loops to the back in a g-string.
They both examine Needy in the mirror.
The whole thing makes Needy hot and dorkily adorable.
"Very festive," Needy says in dubious tones.
Jennifer chuckles. "That, too."
"What?" Needy meets her eyes in the mirror, and frowns. "Is it ridiculous?"
Jennifer puts her hands on Needy's bare waist, glancing down on the g-string and then on the crotch bow-tail. She flicks her eyes up and sees Needy slightly tilting back towards her. "I was going to say adorkable." She noses the skin behind Needy's ear. "And weirdly it's working for me."
They stand there for a couple of heartbeats, taking in the shine of the satin and how hilariously cheesy calendar-porn the whole outfit is. Jennifer's finger curls around the g-string at the base of Needy's spine, and lightly pulls. Needy arches back and reaches an arm behind her to grasp at Jennifer's turtleneck.
"Okay, Jen, that's enough," Needy says, with a rough gasp. "Don't get me wet in this. Think of what the store people will say."
Jennifer pouts in the mirror. "Spoilsport."
"I'll be getting this," Needy assures her. "You can sit here."
Jennifer folds herself on the fake leather bench and watches Needy go through various teddies: black and red and blue and white, lace and satin and mesh, crotch-less and cups-less, made dainty by dashes of fuchsia ribbons or made domme-y by Agent 69 get-up of unrelenting mesh.
If Jennifer gets cranky when hungry, Needy gets cranky when she goes clothes shopping for longer than thirty minutes. Even if it's lingerie shopping.
"Can't we just get the bow thing?" Needy grumbles at one point.
"That, and just one more," urges Jennifer. "Just one more. Then we're done. You can't have just one lingerie set."
That's some sort of rule, Jennifer is sure. One set is for when you feel like being sensually and virtuously filthy, and the other for when you feel like being extraterrestrially filthy that the filth goes beyond human words.
And then, from the pile of increasingly unpromising underthings, Needy plucks out a mauve crisscross mesh and lace teddy.
Her eyes widen and when she lets out a soft gasp of delight and jiggles the teddy for Jennifer to see, Jennifer feels slight relief slide in with appreciation.
Jennifer does not like thinking that she may be forcing Needy into anything.
She crosses her legs on the fake leather bench, helplessly remembering the night they found out Needy passed the bar exams. They took a walk under a park canopy strung up with lanterns glowing gold, and afterwards hit up the bar. Needy got terrifically sozzled. Thirty drinks in but Jennifer wouldn't get drunk, so she was unfortunately sober when Needy started to plunge into an existential crisis.
"No, don't," Needy wetly slurred, and made a grab for Jennifer's glass before nearly toppling off her chair. "What about your liver. Have to take care. Liver."
"Since when were you health conscious?" Jennifer asked, amused.
"You're the one who is." Needy swayed again. "So. Gotta remind you."
Jennifer laughed at her and plucked out her shot glass. "Let's have you some good old lemon water."
But Needy only put her head in her arms and mumbled, "Have to be good. Take care'f you and stuff. Remind you, too. I think I'm worse. But you're not bad. I am. I let you so I'm bad."
"Right," Jennifer scoffed, even though she felt like lemons were acidly trickling to her gut. "You don't let me do anything. I do what I want."
Jennifer let Needy bask in the glow of the exam results for about two weeks. They didn't fuck during those weeks, and Needy even tentatively asked Jennifer if Jennifer had found someone else. They had promised to tell each other if they found boyfriends or girlfriends, they had promised, during that summer evening when they were twenty-six, the little bedroom spruced up with weepy glasses of iced drinks and crumpled dental dam wrappers.
And after Jennifer deemed it sufficient time for basking in exams glow, she confronted Needy about that little drunken existential crisis. Jennifer always tells it like it is.
Needy looked stricken.
"I didn't -" sputtered Needy.
"Didn't what?" Jennifer dispassionately picked up a hand mirror to reapply her matte red lipstick, but there was an unpleasant coil in her stomach. "Didn't get plastered? You did, I held up your hair in the toilet."
"No, I – Jennifer." Needy pushed her glasses up her nose and sat beside Jennifer. "It's my thing. It's just – and I know, I know this will sound inappropriate, but it's my thing, not yours."
Jennifer made a careful swipe on her lower lip and stayed silent.
"Sometimes," Needy continued, "well, often. I think if – if I'm the bad one. I'm not saying you're bad, I don't know what to make of that, but I think – if I'm the one enabling you and – you know."
"Oh, stop being diplomatic," Jennifer snapped, turning to look at her. "You think you're more of a monster than the actual monster."
Needy looked even more stricken, her eyes bugging out and her lips white. "I can never think of you as – that," she whispered.
Jennifer snorted. Needy couldn't even say the word monster.
"I'm not being diplomatic," Needy insisted. "Can't you see? I can never think of you as a monster, so that comparison fell apart. That's why I'm having a hard time articulating it."
She moved even closer to Jennifer on the lumpy sofa. When they were teenagers Needy never came near Jennifer when they argued. "I can never think of you as that," Needy repeated. "I know you."
Jennifer held her gaze for a moment then snapped up the hand mirror again. "Glad to know that's one warped perspective in my favor," she said, finishing up her retouch. But the corner of her lips were slightly curled up. After all, it was the perspective that mattered.
Well, one of the two perspectives that has mattered. The other one is Jennifer herself, of course. She isn't a monster. She had a degree in philosophy and all that shit.
And so the day after that little clarification, they found themselves enthusiastically fucking in the kitchen. It was great that Jennifer had the foresight to gather her then increasing collection of coffee mugs from Needy, because they knocked over a tube of mustard and almost ruined the mood trying to wipe away mustard from Needy's eye and Jennifer's ear.
God, Jennifer really is showing her age with all these reminiscing. She makes a face and leans back on the dressing room's white wall. She doesn't have a problem with growing old, but she has a problem with growing sentimental. What if eventually her mind does grow old? It will be a disaster: a senile apparent sixteen-year-old lovingly waxing tender nonsense on her cute coffee mugs from Needy.
Needy finishes slipping on the mauve teddy. Jennifer is sufficiently distracted.
"I love it," Needy declares to the mirror.
Jennifer hums in agreement. She rests her chin on Needy's waist and feels the rasp of the lace, loops an arm around Needy's hips. In the mirror Jennifer follows the diamond of bare skin surrounded by the mesh for Needy's breasts and the V of lace tapering from the mesh to the crotch.
"I love it, too." Jennifer grins, and ducks down to languidly suck on the skin just below Needy's waist. She feels Needy shudder before Needy's fingers slip into Jennifer's hair.
Jennifer tightens her hold around Needy's hips, her fingers brushing the top of Needy's thigh, and runs the tip of her tongue on the flesh she has been sucking. She glances in the mirror, sees Needy's slightly open mouth and arched back, her hand still buried in Jennifer's hair.
"Later," Needy says hoarsely. "Later. Pay first then we can make a mess of this."
Later finds them in their apartment, Jennifer sitting astride Needy's mouth and gripping the headboard.
Jennifer moans approvingly at every wet dip of Needy's tongue in her, at every suck on her clit, at every inquiring slide in of a finger. She rolls her hips, gently, almost teasing herself. She never lets herself come riding Needy's face. They have yet to find out how much stronger Needy has become since the bite, if she can creak together her spinal bones like Jennifer can, but they don't fancy risking it.
"Okay," Jennifer gasps out. "That'll do."
Jennifer licks her lips. Fondles her own breast, feeling herself a bit. She lets the pleasure crackle through her from the warm pool low in her pubic area. She rather likes being revved up for hours, and then coming explosively much later.
"I love the curve of your belly," Needy murmurs. "And, like, the swell of your womb. It's amazing from down here." Her damp fingers caress the skin below Jennifer's navel.
Jennifer peers down at her and smirks. Needy has told her that a million times, it seems like. Jennifer has never liked each time any less.
"You sitting down on my face will never get old," Needy continues, in her usual earnestly passionate way. "It's just, you know. Different from approaching the crotch when you eat out someone laying down." Needy's hands come up to grip Jennifer's hips, then glide down to her bum and then to the back of her thighs. "But when you sit down on my face, it's like, wow, your pussy looming over me and then bearing down and greeting my face, just," she tapers, laughing, "wow."
Jennifer laughs as well. "Okay, Rossetti. I'm swooning."
She moves down Needy's body, pauses for a quick kiss on Needy's lips which are slick with Jennifer and quite sweet. They're still grinning when Jennifer licks in to Needy's mouth and briefly rubs and pinches Needy's nipples through the satin, making Needy drag her fingers across Jennifer's bare shoulder blades.
When she's face level with Needy's thighs, Jennifer tilts her head admiringly. In the glow of their lamps the satin unwrap-me bow looks positively mouth-watering on Needy.
"New Year's present," Jennifer purrs.
Needy laughs, cants her hips up, and places a pillow underneath her bum. "Don't wreck the wrapper," she says, and wipes at the glistening on her chin and mouth.
Grinning, Jennifer makes herself comfortable before kissing Needy high on the inside of her thigh. She hears Needy's breathe catch. Jennifer grips Needy's spread thighs – and, oh yeah, Needy has such thick lovely thighs – and noses her way to where Needy's musk spills the strongest. Jennifer plants her palms on the edges of Needy's vulva and spreads some more. Then, carefully and almost coyly, she drags her tongue flat on the satin over what must be Needy's swollen folds.
Needy's sharp exhale turns into a moan.
Jennifer smiles, pushes aside the bow tail. And dives in.
And, oh, she'll never get tired of this. Even in the forty-odd years they have been doing this.
During those years they figured out that something in Jennifer's body digests the morsels in such a way that their diseases are effectively acid-flushed. Besides that, they both never found anyone else and got into the routine of regular medical tests. So Jennifer and Needy stopped using dental dams.
And during those years – and has it been really forty-odd – Jennifer has learned a lot of Needy's tells during sex, just like Needy has learned a lot of Jennifer's. The both of them never settle down for fake orgasms, so they communicate a lot: what's working and what could work better. How Jennifer likes to be fisted, how Needy likes to have her nipples played with. How they both think that shower sex isn't a good idea.
Right now Needy is so very wet. Drippingly so.
Jennifer hooks one of Needy's legs over her shoulder, and eats her out even more earnestly than Jennifer feasts on a morsel. Needy confessed that nothing turns her on more than Jennifer eating her out.
"It's so good," Needy said, one Valentine's Day after she gave Jennifer another cute coffee mug and Jennifer ate her out in thanks.
Jennifer loves coffee so she loves Needy's custom made coffee mugs for her. Jennifer always gets one: during her birthdays, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's, normal days, like one would get carefully crafted bouquets from their incredibly sweet person.
"When you eat me out," Needy said, "everything gets so tight, you know? And so good, like I nearly cry cause I can't do anything else. And – and it's so good I feel like eating you through my cunt as you eat me out. Just, like, suck you in. Oh my god."
Jennifer cackled and brought Needy's face close to kiss her.
Needy is letting out choked out moans now. Outside their window a smattering of fireworks are starting to go off. Jennifer slides in two fingers and pumps through the burbling wetness, purring with satisfaction as Needy's fingers helplessly scrabbled around Jennifer's hair. Jennifer grins and puts back her mouth on Needy's cunt.
"Good," Needy breathes out, "yes, fuck. Oh – my – fuck."
Jennifer chuckles against Needy's wet folds. Needy dribbles out more slick at Jennifer's chuckle.
They're like soulmates, or something equally sentimental. Needy says she feels what Jennifer feels. Well, then. Jennifer wants to have everything Needy has. Jennifer wanted to eat Needy's high school boyfriend, wanted Needy's uni flat, wanted Needy's bed. Wants Needy. This want is so disconcerting. If she can eat Needy she will. She can, she just won't. Jennifer does not want to hurt Needy.
When Needy's thighs start to clamp around Jennifer's head, enclosing her in nothing but pressure and the smell of Needy's cunt and sweat, not for the first time Jennifer is grateful that she can survive for a few minutes without breath. She briefly congratulates herself on her audacity to pull her mouth away a little and tightly curl her two fingers inside – curling and curling and nudging at the front wall of Needy's cunt – and rubbing her other thumb on the skin just outside the sopping folds, while Needy's leg drags along her back and Needy's hips tilt up for Jennifer's face and Needy moans brokenly.
Needy comes with a few seconds of silence followed by more choked out moans and sobs. Outside a chorus of fireworks burst in shimmering thunders, and here inside the clock rings twelve. Needy's ankle digs on Jennifer's back. Her finger catches on Jennifer's ear. Jennifer keeps Needy's clit between her lips as Needy's hips grind against Jennifer.
After several moments of heavy breathing, Needy says, "God. Jennifer, that was amazing."
Jennifer looks up from sucking on the skin beside Needy's navel.
"It's, like, you sucked out my soul," Needy rambles, "from my vagina."
"Lovely," Jennifer laughs.
"The most lovely," Needy agrees. She pushes aside the damp hair on Jennifer's forehead and smiles dopily. "Give me a minute then it's my turn."
Jennifer slithers her way up, her perked nipples sliding against the satin and the damp inner curves of her breasts pressing against Needy's bow. "Tell you what. I'm in the mood for teasing myself. We can have a snack first."
"You just ate," Needy says, still with that dopey smile, and sniggers at her own joke.
Anyone else, and Jennifer will roll her eyes. But she just snorts and swipes the back of her hand across the bottom half of her face.
"Quick shower then I'll cut the cake," Jennifer says. "Think it's chilled enough now."
"I'll prepare the cheeseboard," Needy says. "I also got cucumber and bacon to go with it. Balanced diet and all."
More fireworks burst from outside, throwing flashing oranges and greens on the champagne light from their lamps.
At the same time they say, "Happy New Year," and grin at each other. Another year. Jennifer has a good feeling that their forty-odd years will reach fifty-odd.
Needy stretches with a pleased smile on her face and wraps her arms around Jennifer. "You grin when you come," she notes, blinking owlishly at Jennifer. "I love seeing you come." After a pause, during which Needy also wraps her legs around Jennifer, she adds, "Also you're amazing."
"I know," Jennifer says, smirking. "Partly because you always tell me."
Needy is her nutritionist and her cheerleader. It must be love, Jennifer thinks to herself as she lets herself bask in the cheers faintly ringing outside and in the flushed embrace of Needy – and Jennifer always tells it like it is.
fin