The pool party Part 2
Sharon's viewpoint
I made sure to sit next to Brenda at lunch out on the patio. The setting was perfect for what I wanted; we were sitting on cushioned wooden benches around a patio table, with Anastasia and Natalie on one side, then Jane and Maura together, then us. I made sure I was sitting outside Brenda, so I had to reach past her for everything.
I started by sitting down a little close, so our bare legs were almost but not quite touching, close enough for Brenda to be aware I was there but not actually meet. It also meant I was sitting close enough for our shoulders to occasionally bump together.
Brenda flashed me a wonderfully happy smile as I sat down, glad to have me there and for a moment I faltered; did I really want to do this, to push my friend this way? Could I really go ahead with this, do this to my best friend; maybe destroy a friendship that was so important to me?
Then I looked around at Anastasia and Natalie; Jane and Maura, both couples happily wrapped up with each other and I realised I'd already made my decision before I'd sat down.
I wanted what they had, happiness, comfort, a confidante who I could be totally at ease with and a chance to be loved and to love in turn. I looked at Brenda out of the corner of my eye, watching her laugh happily as Maura recommended the salad and decided yes, I did want this. I wanted to try for the life they had and I wanted to try with Brenda.
I'd always found her attractive, even when we first met; under those hideous floral dresses and sweaters I'd realised there was a beautiful woman lurking. Since then, I'd got to see more of her and liked what I saw. It helped that she had made one or two comments where she'ad observed that I looked good, so she wasn't completely oblivious to me.
The thought of turning her from my friend to something more intimate was an attractive one, I wanted her, not for a night, or a week, but for a lot longer than that, I wanted a partner to love, not someone for a fling.
But I had to go slow, take my time, so that she wasn't spooked. If I realised it was never going to happen, I wanted to be able to pull back carefully enough and keep our friendship intact. If she seemed open to my ever so careful advances, well… we would have to see.
I felt a calmness settle over me as I came to my decision. No second guesses, no doubts, I'd never had as good an opportunity and I might not again, so if I was going to do it, well Carpe Diem.
I started gently; leaning in and placing my hand on her arm as I asked her to pass a plate. As she passed it across I leaned in gently to thank her, which allowed my shoulder to touch hers. Reaching for a glass of wine Jane was passing, I let my thigh brush up against hers, catching her slightly start as I did.
I felt an old tingle in my belly start, I hadn't gently flirted and teased like this for years; I'd forgotten how much fun it could be, especially on an unsuspecting target.
For the rest of the lunch, I oh so innocently inhabited Brenda's personal space, letting our skin touch at shoulder and thigh, gentle touches on her arm as I leaned in to ask for a napkin or for a plate to be passed, bumping up against her as we laughed, generally being a close presence as we enjoyed a wonderful meal.
Honestly, I loved it, the excitement of the chase, to feel her so close and to luxuriate in the contact, the naughty thrill of touching her skin, to feel the warmth of her under my touch, enjoying it as Brenda soon got used to my presence, she reacted less as we touched, as she became accustomed to our contacts and the brushes and the soft bumps and the heat of skin on skin, it all felt good, very good.
One thing I hadn't really thought through though was exactly how obvious I'd be to everyone else. I should have realised that being surrounded by four professionally observant women there was every chance they might notice, but I hadn't realised how quickly they picked up on what I was doing.
Natalie and Maura were sitting close to each other when I saw Maura lean in to whisper something to Natalie. Natalie looked across at me for a second and then turned to whisper something back in reply. Together they then looked at me, with Natalie raising an eyebrow at me, before nodding gently. Fortunately Brenda was chatting to Jane and missed the exchange, while I turned my attention to the food on my plate. When next I looked up, I noticed Maura was wearing a small, sly smile. I carefully smiled back before turning my attention back on Brenda.
Not long afterwards I looked over at Ana who threw a quick glance at Brenda to be sure she was looking elsewhere, before flashing me a quick smile and wink. As we continued eating I could see Jane had also worked out what I was doing, as she was sitting closest to Brenda and her eyes could pick up almost everything I was doing. At one stage, as Brenda chatted with Ana across the table, Jane looked past Brenda to me and flashed me the tiniest of nods and a small smile.
I had to look down to cover my smile. Not only had everyone else noticed, but it seemed they were at least supportive of what I was attempting. I looked up and smiled as I looked at each of them in turn, catching their eyes, before giving them the gentlest of nods.
As we chatted, my eyes caught a slow movement from the back of the yard. Intrigued, I watched as a slowly moving shape emerged from the shadows, revealing it to be a tortoise.
"That's an unusual pet Jane, not too many people keep a large tortoise as a pet" Maura flashed me a lovely smile as everyone else turned to watch it make slow, stately progress across the lawn. Jane smiled.
"He's not my pet, well he wasn't originally" Maura filled me in.
"That's Bass; he's named after William M Bass…" Brenda laughed.
"The man who set up the first body farm, Maura that's so appropriate" Natalie looked perplexed.
"Body farm?" Maura explained.
"A place where bodies are exposed to different environments to examine the speed and natures of how they decompose, to assist in further refining the study of forensic anthropology" Natalie looked down at her plate.
"Thank you Maura, I was enjoying my lunch…" Maura smiled and looked over at me.
"I'm impressed Sharon, most people who see him think Bass is a turtle"
"Well, he seems better adapted for land dwelling than for living in the water, which makes him a tortoise"
As we watched Bass made his almost painfully slow way towards a clump of bushes closer to the house, although his movement wasn't enough to convince Jo to move from where she sat under the table, her eyes alert for any dropped morsel of food.
As I leaned back to look at her, I saw a tiny piece of meat passed from a set of fingers to where she eagerly rose on her hind legs, neatly taking the snack from the hand across the table.
My eyes flicked up to see Anastasia's eyes on mine; she smiled slightly as her hand reappeared above the table, before she looked away. I smiled to myself, 'spoiled little dog'. I smiled even wider as I surreptitiously snagged a piece of meat and moved it under the table for her.
Once dinner was over, we retired to the living area and took up residence on the lounges, with each couple sharing a lounge and Brenda and I sitting together on the third. We chatted about various subjects for a while, including a couple of hilarious anecdotes about going undercover. Jane was recalling one where to catch a murderer; they had to infiltrate a sex party to get DNA.
"Maura here was all hot to trot, she couldn't wait. Of course, being Maura the first question she had wasn't would it be dangerous or what would we be doing. The most important thing was what she was going to wear" Maura blushed.
"Well, as I said, I had no idea what would be appropriate for the role" She looked around at us and gave a small shrug. "I'd never been a high class hooker before" Jane snorted.
"And she still hasn't. We went as waiting staff, which disappointed Maura no end, as she thought the hooker's costumes were 'cute', gah!" She put air quotes around cute. "That is until I reminded her that the hookers had to take them off"
I smiled at the gorgeous pout on Maura's face as she lightly punched Janes arm, I'm sure she got away with no end of trouble using it. With that look in her arsenal, Jane didn't stand a chance.
Anastasia and Natalie were laughing at the image, before Natalie calmed enough to look up at Ana and smile.
"Tell them about your little stint as a potential porn star" Rolling her eyes Ana demurred but at calls from us she smiled and held up her hand in a surrender gesture.
"We were investigating a possible interstate money trafficking ring, but couldn't get anything on the main guy. He seemed to be working out of a building in Seattle, lots of people coming and going. Including a lot of single women" She shrugged. "We couldn't get a search warrant on what were pretty flimsy grounds, so the brass decided to set me up with a wire and send me in, dressed like the rest of the girls, to see what I could find" Natalie smiled.
"She looked hot too!"
"Shush you. Anyway, I got in easily enough; although the guys on the door were a bit surprised my name wasn't on the list. In the end they were too busy staring down my cleavage to care very much, so I got in. Turns out what we thought was a money laundering joint was actually being used to film amateur porn, getting girls in to perform for the camera with a couple of guys" Jane whooped as we laughed.
"But did you look good on camera?" Staring at Jane, Ana refused to dignify the question with an answer, shooting Jane the bird before continuing, as Jane smirked at her.
"Once I worked out what was happening, at the earliest chance I snuck out the back while most of the crew were busy filming with an orgy scene; I had to tell the tactical team to stand down before they came in to bust the place up. Mind you, the worst part was listening to the audio tape later" Maura frowned.
"Oh, why?"
"The bit where I had to answer yes or no to a long list of exactly what I would and wouldn't do on camera was a little confronting. I was the butt of a few comments afterwards" Nat smiled.
"I've heard it and the noises in the background on it are pretty…suggestive"
We happily had a laugh at her enthusiastic tone, before we settled back down, relaxing in the companionable silence.
Thinking the opportunity was there to steer the conversation in a direction that might be to my advantage, I turned to address Anastasia and Natalie.
"How did you two meet?" They shared a look and Ana nodded and spoke.
"Well, we were both living in Seattle, I was with the local bureau office and Nat was with a local television station" Natalie grinned.
"I was looking for a break from chasing ambulances to a more senior role"
"Shush, anyway, we met over a case and started hanging out together and now we're been together for almost four years"
"That simple?" Jane asked; obviously sure there was more to it than that.
"Well no, not really, that's the reader's digest condensed version, if you want the long version you should ask Natalie, she's the story teller"
"I'm sure there's a story worth telling there" Brenda grinned and I smiled, as her asking saved me from having to. Natalia smiled happily.
"Well, OK. This might take a little while so can you get everyone another drink please Ana?"
"OK" Anastasia got up and gave her a quick kiss before heading over to the kitchen.
"Anyway, Ana and I had met a couple of times on the scenes of cases, but I hadn't really done much more than the usual, 'hi, how you doing', that sort of thing. We once bumped in to each other in a nightclub but we were with different groups, so we just nodded and moved on" Ana interrupted from the fridge.
"Tell me about it, you were with that jerk from the Seahawks, the one who kept trying to slide his hands up your dress" Natalie smiled at the interruption.
"Hush you, whose telling this story? Anyway, we met again on a case involving the kidnapping of a 12 year old girl. Turned out that the perp was a pedophile who had been released a couple of weeks before. Apparently the shrink assessed him as unlikely to reoffend" Natalie shook her head; obviously the memories still got to her.
"I swear the prison shrinks don't have a goddamned clue, when they interviewed the perp's cellmate afterwards he told them that he was already planning what he was going to do when he got out. Idiots, I swear, all of them!" Jane looked at us, then back at Natalie.
"She sounds just like a cop. You sure you're a journalist?"
"I was, then. Now I'm not so sure the journalist's association would agree with me. My attitudes might be seen to lack objectivity, just because I think most criminals are dirtbags" Jane nodded again, with a satisfied expression on her face.
"Definitely sounds like a cop" Maura placed her hand on Jane's to quiet her and looked over to Natalie.
"So what happened?" Anastasia returned and topped up our glasses, with beers for Jane and herself. I took the opportunity to move over closer to Brenda to hold my wine glass out for refilling. When Ana handed it back I curled my legs under me, which also meant that I got to stay sitting much closer to Brenda.
"Thanks Ana. Well by the time everyone had connected the dots he had grabbed another girl, aged 10. He was eventually tracked to a derelict apartment complex. As the local police entered, they found he'd booby trapped the place, as they discovered the hard way. The FBI and local SWAT teams surrounded the place and it turned into a siege which lasted for almost 24 hours" I vaguely remembered the incident, obviously Brenda did as well.
"I remember seeing that, it was going out live"
"Oh yeah, a real media circus; anyway Ana and I ended up standing around a lot waiting for stuff to happen, mostly just talking to fill in time. We kinda learned a lot about each other over takeaway coffee at three in the morning" Anastasia snorted.
"There wasn't a whole hell of a lot else to do, we could at least share your umbrella, it beat standing out in the rain"
"Yep, anyway, the negotiator wasn't getting anywhere and the profiler was telling everyone who would listen that the perp was going to go off the rails. Eventually, the brass agreed that the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team would go in at dawn. There were a couple of shots fired, turned out the perp had tried to kill both girls before the HRT guys could get in" A sad look crossed her face and Anastasia leaned in to kiss her on the forehead, making her smile. I cast a quick eye at Brenda, but she seemed unfazed, too engrossed in the story.
"Thank you Tsarina. Anyway, he shot one girl before they got him. I was broadcasting live from the scene when the team leader walked out carrying the 12 year old. I started tearing up and I wasn't the only one, but when I saw another team member carry out the body of the 10 year old, well I lost it completely, bawled my eyes out, live on air"
"Most of the guys in the HRT were crying, the FBI and Seattle PD were crying, I was crying, hell, my camera guy was crying and he'd worked half a dozen war zones in his time. I turned round to see Ana here standing next to me, bawling like a baby. I just reached over, grabbed her and we just held each onto other tight until we finally stopped" Anastasia reached out and pulled her into a hug and I could easily see them standing there, just holding each other and crying in the rain. Natalie swallowed and smiled, before looking over at us.
"Sorry, that still gets to me. Anyway, we eventually wrapped up and went back to the studio, where the news boss tore strips off me for my lack of 'objectivity and professionalism' as he put it. They sent me home for a few days to get my head straight, which just left me time to think" She shrugged.
"I kept thinking that I had cried on Ana's shoulder and I needed that right then and wondering how she was coping, so I pulled out her card and rang her. We agreed to meet up and talk about what had happened. It was funny; we sat down in a coffee shop and looked at each other. She asked me how I was and I said fine, I asked her and she said fine, then we looked at each other and you could tell, each of us wondering what to say next" She smiled quietly at Ana as they linked their fingers.
"Finally she looked up and said that she really wasn't fine, which made me admit I wasn't fine either and we started talking. We were in there for hours, really talking about what we were, who we wanted to be and why"
"After that, well a day didn't go by where we wouldn't talk in person or on the phone. Over the next few months we found ourselves spending more and more time together, and it sort of moved from friendship to a relationship" Anastasia laughed loudly at that.
"Now who's leaving things out?"
"Well, it's true; that's what happened" Ana laughed even harder before quieting enough to turn to us.
"What Blondie here isn't telling you is how we went from friends to something more serious. We were out at a nightclub with a group of her girlfriends and I was tagging along, when a bunch of footballers, including her by now ex-boyfriend, decided to move in. I saw him back her into a corner and his hands start to wander. It was obvious Nat wasn't interested but he'd had too much to drink and wasn't taking no for an answer. So I persuaded him to leave her alone"
"What Ana isn't telling you is that she told him if he didn't get his hands off me she would kick his balls up past his teeth. He didn't believe her and he had partly ripped my dress, so she did" Jane whooped with laughter.
"Way to go Ana!" Amused by Jane's reaction, I smiled, easily imagining Jane doing something similar to protect Maura. Anastasia smiled and shrugged.
"I didn't like the fact that my friend was being pawed by a drunk pig twice her size. So I stopped it. Fortunately for me, he decided to stay on the ground as I escorted Natalie out of there" Natalie smiled at Ana before snuggling into her.
Once again I cast a quick glance at Brenda, but she was clearly unfazed by their easy intimacy
"I was very grateful that Nat stepped in as I was actually quite scared. He was drunk and angry at me dumping him, for what he called a 'dyke slut'. I didn't realise at the time that he meant Anastasia, but he apparently thought I'd dumped him for her. In fact I'd woken up to the fact that he was a pig and told him to get out of my life"
"It wasn't till after we left that I realised two things. The first was that Anastasia had taken down a guy twice her size to protect me, which amazed me; I thought she'd been very brave. The second was that he thought I was in a relationship with her" She shrugged.
"It got me thinking. I thought back to all the times I'd passed on doing things with other people to do something else with Ana, how many times we'd dragged each other along to events that we had to go to just to make it bearable. How often we had gone to something that wasn't our thing, just because the other had asked and how often we had just hung around together, not doing much"
Natalie lifted Ana's hand up to her lips and kissed each her fingers, which I thought was a remarkably intimate thing to do in front of others. I noticed the tiniest of shivers run through Brenda, and smiled inwardly; Brenda wasn't as immune to the situation as I'd first thought.
"It was at that point that I realised I'd rather be in a relationship with Ana than anyone else, we just meshed so much and she really is my other half. I didn't want anyone else, I wanted to be hers and for her to be mine"
She stretched up and kissed Anastasia long and deeply on the lips, to the point that I started to squirm slightly, as did Brenda. Finally coming up for air, she smiled a warm happy smile at us all, completely unfazed.
"Anyway, by the time the cab dropped us at my place, I'd worked out what I wanted, but wasn't sure about whether Ana was interested in the same thing or if she was just sticking up for a friend" I nodded slowly as I thought it over, noticing that Jane was sharing a look with Maura, before she turned back to Natalie.
"This sounds awfully familiar actually. So what happened?"
"Well, I decided that I was going to try and seduce Ana, to see if I got a positive response"
"I take it your overtures were well received?" I said. At that point Anastasia snickered as Natalie rolled her eyes.
"Actually no, Ana was more amused than anything. I recall her standing there with her hands on her hips asking me if I was drunk. When I denied it she accused me of being drunk as I was trying to seduce her" Natalie spread her hands in a helpless gesture.
"It ended up in a flaming row, as I didn't dare tell her that I was interested, I was afraid I would really damage our friendship" I felt my mouth snap shut as her words hit a little too close to home, given what I was doing. Fortunately no one noticed as Anastasia took up the story.
"I was pissed with Natalie, because I thought she was just playing with me, when I had been interested in her for months, but thought she was straight and therefore unattainable" Jane and Maura looked at each other, exchanging so many thoughts with just a look, before Maura spoke.
"Jane and I went through a similar situation; we each wanted the other but were afraid to say anything for fear or wrecking our friendship" I couldn't help the butterflies in my stomach at her words, although I consoled myself that they had moved past that to be together.
Natalie smiled sadly at us, while Anastasia nodded.
"We were at the screaming stage when I accused Nat of playing with my feelings for her, which was the moment when the light bulbs went on for both of us" Natalie reached up to caress the side of Anastasia's face, as Ana turned to kiss the palm of her hand. I smiled at the open affection they showed to each other. Natalie took up the story.
"We went from screaming at each other to basically bawling our eyes out clinging to each other as we realised that we both wanted the same thing. Well, that was almost four years ago and I haven't been this happy ever. Anastasia is the best thing to ever happen to me, and I want her to be there for the rest of my life"
"You're stuck with me Blondie; I'm not going anywhere, not without you"
I looked at the two of them, looking so at ease with one another, so happy and content.
Then I looked over at Jane and Maura, who were curled up close together, Jane's arm around Maura's shoulder as she leaned into Jane, equally at ease and comfortable with each other, they were happy too.
I turned carefully to look at Brenda, who was reclining next to me, giving me the chance to examine her out of the corner of my eye. She looked relaxed and happy, not at all fazed by the intimacy of our hosts and their friends, I took that as a good sign, backing up what I had seen before, she wasn't upset by it, more intrigued and a little aroused.
Looking at her I asked myself again, did I want this, to take the risk to pursue Brenda?
I looked across at her, as she looked back at me and a warm smile appeared and I realised, yes I did want this, with her.
As we shared a smile, I knew I was making the right decision.