“Okay,” Celia said, and then tried again. She sucked the pipe more slowly, without as much force. This time she was able to fill her lungs with the aromatic smoke and hold it in for the better part of twenty seconds. She then repeated the procedure a second time, taking a little larger of a hit this time. By the time she blew that one out, she was starting to feel a little swimmy in the head. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. She found she could hear the individual crash of each wave on the beach below and then could hear that echoing off the cliffside.
“Oh ... wow,” she said softly. “I think I’m feeling something here.”
“Yeah?” Laura asked with a grin. “I told you it was the good stuff.”
“Nice,” she said, nodding her head. “I guess the shit I smoked before was the bad stuff?”
“Jake says that South American and Mexican pot can’t hold a candle to the northern Cali stuff,” Laura said seriously.
For some reason, Celia found this extremely funny. She started giggling and then laughing. The humor was contagious because Laura started laughing as well, even though neither of them had any idea what they were actually laughing at.
“Madres de Dios,” Celia said when the two of them finally got themselves under control. “I really needed that. Thanks, Teach.”
“Anytime,” Laura said, putting the pipe down and picking up her wine glass. “To the giggles.”
“Oh ... wait, I haven’t poured any yet,” Celia said. She quickly rectified the situation and then picked up her glass. “The giggles.” They clinked their glasses together and then drank. Celia found the wine to be exceptionally good. She could taste the oak and the hint of chocolate that was reputed to be there but that she had never actually been able to appreciate before. Maybe there was something to be said for the whole marijuana thing after all?
“So,” Laura said as Celia sank further into the water, submerging to her chin, “you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“About why you’re out here drinking a bottle of wine in the middle of the night and hitting on my pipe?”
“I guess I just felt like it tonight,” Celia replied noncommittally.
“How about why you’ve been so mopey the last few days?” Laura then asked. “Why you’ve been talking to everyone in that monotone voice. About why you’ve been speaking in words of two syllables or less if you can get away with it? And then tonight, why you seemed like someone had told you your dog had died or something.”
“I don’t have a dog,” Celia said.
“Exactly,” Laura said. “So something else must be bothering you.”
She sighed, trying to hang onto the blissful feeling of THC intoxication that was still rising in her brain. “There is something bothering me, Teach,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk about it just yet. I came out here to try to forget about it. This wonderful pot you just gave me is helping with that quite nicely.”
“Fair enough,” Laura said with a shrug. “Glad I could help.”
“Me too,” Celia said with a nod and a smile. She then turned to Laura. “What about you though?”
“What about me?”
“I can’t help but notice that you’re out here in the middle of the night with a bottle of wine and a bag of really impressive pot as well. I’ve also noticed that there’s been ... well ... kind of a strain between you and Jake of late.”
“You noticed that, huh?” Laura asked, sipping from her glass.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m pretty sure everyone has noticed. You and Jake have always been a very happy couple. Ever since you came back from Gordon’s wedding, however, there’s been something ... oh ... off about the two of you. You don’t seem to smile as much. You’re not quite as affectionate with each other as you used to be.”
Laura frowned a little. “Very observant of you,” she said.
“Did something happen at the wedding?”
Laura sat in silence for a few moments, staring out at the stars and the moon. “Yes and no,” she finally said.
“What does that mean?”
Laura sighed. “It means ... that something did happen, but that what happened is not really the cause of what’s been going on between Jake and me. I mean, I thought it was at first—who wouldn’t think that after what I did?—but tonight, we had a little fight and he told me what was really bothering him about what happened and now I realize that I’ve backed myself into a corner to some degree and I don’t know how to get out of it and that every move I might try to make here is a bad move. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No,” Celia said simply. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Teach.”
Laura looked at her again and then shook her head. “Yeah,” she said. “I suppose you really don’t, do you?”
“I’m willing to listen though,” Celia offered.
“This is a very personal story,” Laura said softly.
“More personal than that story you told me about what happened in South America out on tour?”
The saxophonist nibbled her lips a little—a nervous gesture she had that was adorably cute—and then nodded slowly.
“Wow,” Celia whispered, her imagination going wild at what could be more personal than that.
“I can tell you part of it, I suppose,” Laura said. “The part that Jake knows about.”
“The part he knows about?”
“Right,” she said. “The part that happened at G and Neesh’s wedding.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “What happened there?”
Laura took another drink of wine, swallowed it down, hesitated for a moment, and then swallowed another drink. She set her glass down and then poured it full again out of her bottle. Only then did she turn to Celia and say: “I let the maid of honor eat my pussy out right before the ceremony.”
Celia was not exactly sure what she’d been expecting Laura to say, but it hadn’t been that. Her eyes widened almost comically. “You ... let the maid of honor ... eat your pussy out?”
Laura nodded. “That’s right,” she said.
“And ... uh ... you’re not talking in the symbolic or philosophical sense here, right?”
“Right,” Laura said. “She quite literally engaged in oral-genital copulation with me. We were in our ceremony dresses when she did it.”
“Madres de Dios,” Celia whispered, feeling a flush of sexual excitement at the thought. “And ... and ... Jake knows about this?”
“Of course,” she said. “He gave me his permission to do it before it happened.”
“He did?”
“That was our agreement,” Laura said.
“Guau,” Celia said, shaking her head in wonder. She quickly took a large drink of her own wine and then looked back at Laura. “You two agreed in advance that if the maid of honor wanted to eat your pussy out, it was okay?”
“Well ... we had a broader agreement at first,” she qualified. “Nothing as specific as that. We agreed that if I wanted to do something with another girl ... you know ... something sexual ... that we would talk about it first.”
“Maybe we should backtrack a bit,” Celia suggested. “Did this agreement come about because of you telling him what happened while you were out on tour? You know ... the bartender, the groupies?”
“Kind of,” she said.
“Kind of?”
“That’s what let him know that I was into girls to some degree,” she said. “But after a few months went by ... well ... he noticed that when I was around certain women ... well ... it would put me in a certain mood and ... and one night he asked me about it.”
“I see,” she said slowly. She had a pretty good idea of what the ‘certain mood’ was, but she couldn’t help wondering what ‘certain women’ she was referring to. Am I one of them?