The Coyote's Comfort Read online

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Actually, I don’t want to think too much about whether or not I would be surprised,” Diana said. “I don’t want to think about what you were doing to them that would make them too weak to look at you.” The tip of her tongue lashed over the points of her elongated canine teeth. “But if you want to tell me all about it, don’t be surprised if I suddenly remember a few stories of my own to tell you.”

  That made Lanie grin as she chewed. The sandwich had good bread. Nicely chewy. Just the right amount of crust. Might have actually been baked in-house. Her closest sub shop back home used the factory-made bread that came in giant bags. “Tell them to me,” Lanie said. “We’ve never really discussed our various exes. Why not do it now?”

  Diana’s eyes narrowed.

  “How far back do you want me to go? Should I start with my early years in the Army, or—”

  “You’re wearing a different kind of bra,” Diana blurted angrily.

  Lanie scoffed, taken aback by the random segue. “What?”

  “Don’t tell me it’s not true. You are. Your rack is higher than it should be.”

  “My rack is the same place it’s always been, sweetheart.”

  “Bullshit. I noticed the difference the moment I saw you at the estate sale. Your tits are locked and loaded and ready to take flight.”

  “Maybe my bra straps are a bit tighter than usual. That’s all. It’s a new bra. The elastic will give way in time, just like it always does.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Lanie set down her sandwich, blotted the grease from her fingertips, and pushed back from the table. Some things were easily proven. Diana always fixated on the strangest things. Lanie had learned to go with the flow.

  She started unfastening blouse buttons.

  Diana’s eyes went round as saucers.

  Cute.

  Diana had seen everything beneath Lanie’s wrapper hundreds of times.

  Once the bottom button of her shirt was unfastened, Lanie tugged the hem free of her pants and splayed the plackets aside. “See? Same as always.”

  Same size. Same brand. Same cut. Lanie didn’t see the point of variety when she’d endured so much frustration finding the right size and fit with just one bra. If that brand ever folded, she’d likely have her first-ever panic attack.

  Diana’s gaze settled on Lanie’s torso, unblinking.

  She stared for so long that Lanie looked down, too.

  She didn’t see anything interesting except that her décolletage tan had finally faded. While attending a destination wedding on a Fijian beach back in November she’d neglected to slather herself in sunblock. Afterward, she hadn’t been able to wear high-necked shirts for a week because her skin had been so tender.

  “You lied,” Diana said accusingly. “You’re…spilling.”

  Lanie shrugged. “So I gained a little weight. And maybe I adjusted the band differently.”

  “You still lied. Fabric’s different.” Diana’s teeth notched into her lower lip and eyelids lowered slightly.

  “Inconsequential. Satin instead of lace. Same cut.”

  “Scalloped edges.”

  “Same mold, then.”

  “’K.”

  Lanie snorted. “’K?”

  “What can I say? I was right.”

  “Fine. You win.”

  “Yes,” Diana murmured. “I do.” She wasn’t paying any attention at all to her sandwich anymore. Her focus was sharply aimed at Lanie’s chest and her hands tightly gripped the edge of the table.

  Lanie arched a brow, curious about the reaction, and reached for the first of her shirt buttons.

  That got Diana onto her feet in a hurry. Before Lanie could even blink, she was pulling Lanie’s chair out and bracing her hands on the arms. Leaning in. Breathing heavily.

  “You did it on purpose,” Diana whispered as her hands inched further up the arms and her stance widened around Lanie’s feet.

  “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  In fact, at that moment, Diana was far more provocative than Lanie was being—planned or unplanned. That romper she was wearing really wasn’t all that well-structured. Lanie could see every single freckle on Diana’s breasts when she bent, and if Lanie tilted her head just so, she could make out the top of her tattoo. It started low down in her cleavage and embraced the undersides of her breasts. A fancy filigree design Lanie had doodled on scrap paper while watching television one night. Diana had wanted to keep the art somewhere it couldn’t be easily disposed of. She’d surprised Lanie with the tat, eagerly pointing at it the moment Lanie had walked into their apartment from work.

  “What do you think?” Diana had asked, knowing full well Lanie would love it. How could she not? It was an honor for Diana to have put some part of Lanie on her skin.

  But that was another thing that hadn’t made sense later. Diana had wanted to cling to Lanie’s throwaway sketches, but not Lanie.

  Lanie’s hands tightened around the arms of her chair, too. She didn’t know why Diana thought she could stand so close, putting her body on display as she was, and not expect Lanie to want to touch her. Taste her.

  “Maybe you should button up,” Diana said hoarsely.

  “Fine.” She planned to do it as soon as Diana moved.

  Diana didn’t move.

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten,” Lanie told her. “But I’m just human. I don’t have any neat magic tricks that could put a shirt back together without using my hands. I’m being a good girl and trying to keep them to myself.”

  Diana backed away in a hurry then. Cheeks blazing red, brows knit in consternation, fingers threaded through the back of her thick hair.

  She must have stopped dyeing, Lanie mused. For as long as Lanie had known her, Diana’s hair had been darker, with subtle blue and purple highlights. There were about six months worth of new growth showing now, and it was the sort of brown hue generally seen on children who spent hours every day in the sun. A youthful brown.

  A sweet, approachable brown.

  Apparently, that hadn’t suited her image.

  Lanie wanted to touch those tattling roots—wanted to feel the honesty of them and will all the darker bits away—all the lying parts.

  “No, you don’t have any magic.” Diana was pacing away her agitation near the table, not meeting Lanie’s gaze.

  “Is that where we are again?” Lanie asked, voice quiet. “You want to talk about what I am and what I’m not?”

  “Isn’t that part of the reason we broke up?”

  “As far as I knew,” Lanie said flatly, “it was the only reason. Were there others?”

  Diana stopped pacing. She still wouldn’t look at Lanie.

  Lanie gave a head a clearing shake and stood. “Of course there were others, hmm? Be a good sport and be honest. Tell me what they were.”

  Diana didn’t respond.

  She turned on her heel and stormed toward the bed area. Flinging her damp hair over her shoulder, she stalked to the front of her open dresser drawers and peered in.

  Lanie folded her arms over her chest and waited beside the dresser. She wanted her answer. She wanted Diana’s truth.

  Diana ignored her. She found a bra. Panties. Then she went to the closet, unclipped black leather pants from their hanger, and found a crisp white shirt. She tossed the clothes onto her tightly made bed and yanked off the romper.

  If Diana wasn’t going to bother being discreet, Lanie figured she wouldn’t bother looking away. “You’re being purposefully inciting,” Lanie said.

  “’K.”

  “Why?”

  “Think what you want, Elaine. I’m just trying to get dressed.”

  But she didn’t get dressed. She sat on the edge of the bed in only her panties and whipped a wide-toothed comb through her hair. She grimaced at each dry snag, making her body tense, but her detangling didn’t get any gentler. She swiped
at her hair as though it’d done something to her—as though it had harmed her in some unforgivable way.

  Lanie stepped in and pried the comb out of her fingers. “Stop.”

  “I—”

  “Just stop.”

  Diana was rocking a bit then and staring at her lap, or maybe at her watch.

  Lanie sighed and stood behind her. She gathered up Diana’s hair at the scalp and started to gently detangle it. An old routine for them. Diana liked her hair long, but she didn’t like the work. She got bored, but Lanie always found the time to make it pretty.

  “You think this is funny, I bet,” Diana said so softly that Lanie almost couldn’t make out the words over the sound of the detangling. “That I can’t get myself together. That I’m so disorganized and out of sorts.”

  “Have I laughed, Diana?” Diana didn’t respond, so Lanie repeated the question. “Have I laughed?”

  Diana gave her head as large of a shake as she could with the majority of her hair being clamped in Lanie’s fist. She’d never really been into hair pulling, even if Lanie was.

  Lanie resumed her work.

  Diana kept looking at her watch.

  “Conditioner would help,” Lanie told her, ignoring her impatience.

  “I can’t find it here.”

  “You can’t find a single bottle of conditioner in this town? I find that hard to believe.”

  “No, the…the one you bought.”

  It took Lanie a minute to figure out what Diana was talking about. When they lived together, they’d shared toiletries. The pooling of products wasn’t something Lanie paid much attention to. Diana tended to get busy and forget to replenish the stock. If things ran out, Lanie bought whatever she used, and Diana didn’t complain. She hadn’t thought that Diana had a particular attachment to any of that stuff.

  “I can’t find it here,” Diana said quietly. “The lady at the salon had never heard of it.”

  “Oh.” Lanie went into the bathroom and found a spritz bottle inside the cabinet. She wet down Diana’s hair and set her attention on a particularly malicious knot. “Yes, I imagine she wouldn’t have. It was a brand I started using when I was stationed overseas. I have to buy it in bulk from the company that distributes it in the U.S.” She tossed a freshly unknotted swath of hair over Diana’s shoulder and parted off the next section. “You know, you could have used literally anything else.”

  “I tried to. Didn’t work the same.”

  “So why didn’t you ask me?”

  Diana’s shrug was jerky.

  Okay. I see.

  Lanie carefully picked through the rest of the hair and combed it out until it hung in somewhat frizzy waves. She had a travel bottle of that conditioner in her suitcase. If she’d known Diana had been having some kind of dysfunction regarding her hair, she would have carried it in. With as much hair as Diana had, the bottle wouldn’t last very long, but she’d be able to make due until Lanie could get her a larger size.

  Lanie narrowed her eyes and gathered up Diana’s hair again to put a braid in it. There was no use doing all that work if her hair was just going to mat again from Diana’s negligence. “What else have you been doing without?”

  Diana shrugged again.

  “I see. Am I going to have to squeeze the words out of you? Should I make a list of every consumable item in my apartment and ask if each thing is something you require?”

  Saying nothing, Diana fidgeted with the end of the braid. She seemed to be in a daze and was starting at the window. From where she sat, she couldn’t be seeing much more than sky.

  Water from her hair was tracking down her shoulders to her chest, beading on her breasts.

  She had to be cold and uncomfortable, but she didn’t move. Instead, she stared while idly gripping the comb Lanie had handed back to her.

  Lanie grabbed the wadded-up romper and used a section of the terrycloth to dab at the water.

  Diana finally looked down, likely noticing the gentle assault to her breasts.

  Lanie had finished the chore. She was going to carry the garment to the bathroom and store it where she assumed Diana would have a hook, but Diana grabbed her wrist before she could back away and pulled Lanie’s hand back to her chest.

  “You’re dry now,” Lanie told her.

  Diana kept moving Lanie’s hand with the towel over her body, drying the same spots over and over again, gaze somehow both calculating and shy.

  “You could just ask me,” Lanie said. “If you want me to touch you, say so. When have I ever told you no?” She couldn’t remember refusing Diana much of anything. She’d always enjoyed treating her, taking care of her. Usually, Diana had let her.

  “I shouldn’t ask,” Diana said. “I don’t have the right.”

  “Oh?”

  Diana lay back and let her head fall to one side. Her eyelids drifted down. Her throat convulsed with what seemed to be a labored swallow.

  In another time and place, Lanie might have taken Diana’s behavior as a brazen invitation. Her lounging so bare the way she was would have been a less than subtle way of telling Lanie how she wanted to be worshiped.

  But it’d been a year since Diana had packed up all her shit and left without a word while Lanie was working out of the country.

  It’d been a year since Diana had sent her that rambling fucking email talking about Coyote bullshit and how she had to worry about Lanie’s safety enough for the both of them.

  Lanie hadn’t bought the excuse then, and she still didn’t.

  “What do you want from me, Diana?” Lanie whispered.

  Diana swallowed again, eyes still closed.

  “What do you want from me besides hair conditioner and whatever other silly, replaceable thing you can easily get? What do you want from me that only I can give you?”

  “Why won’t you touch me?”

  “You haven’t given me permission to. I’m not going to take anything I haven’t been offered.”

  In fact, that was the entire basis of Lanie’s post-Army career—the opposite of taking. Her job was putting things back where they were supposed to be by returning artifacts to their rightful places. She gave things back to the people they belonged to.

  Diana didn’t belong to Lanie anymore, and Lanie didn’t belong to her. That was what Lanie was trying to change, but Diana hadn’t yet agreed to take back possession of what she owned.

  “Why does everything have to be so difficult?” Diana asked in a petulant murmur. “Why can’t some things just be—”

  “Taken for granted?” Lanie leaned over Diana and put a hand at either side of her face, waiting for her to open her eyes.

  She didn’t.

  “Look at me, Diana.”

  “No.”

  “Why won’t you look at me?”

  “Because it’s easier for me to feel like I know what the fuck I’m doing if I don’t look at you.”

  The statement was so patently preposterous that Lanie had to sit back for a moment to pick the words apart.

  In her memories, Diana had always seemed to know what she was doing, or at least was shameless enough to fake it when she didn’t. Her sudden inability to push back against Lanie’s ribbing was unusual for her.

  “Well, unfortunately, you can’t get one thing without doing the other,” Lanie said finally. “If you want me to touch you, pay me for the favor by looking at me while I do it. I’m not going to be merely tolerated by someone who once claimed to love me.”

  Diana breathed out a vicious-sounding growl as her long legs twined around Lanie’s waist. Her eyes snapped open and she rolled her head forward as she yanked Lanie onto her. “Tolerate? You think that’s what I do?”

  She was planting Lanie’s hand onto her body, making Lanie squeeze her, making her take from her.

  Lanie couldn’t resist that sort of beckoning—couldn’t believe that noise Diana made when she couldn’t endure the teasing and wanted satisfaction.

  She wanted Lanie to satisfy her.

 
“You’ve been pushing me away for going on a year, Diana. What am I supposed to think?” Lanie bent and pulled one plum nipple between her lips, letting her tongue’s memory of the tantalizing point do its thing. She pulled more of the breast into her mouth as Diana’s breathing sped.

  But Diana didn’t respond, so Lanie let go.

  “No!” Diana whined.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Touch me! You don’t know how badly I’ve needed it.”

  “My phone number hasn’t changed.” Lanie leaned away from Diana’s hands. Diana was trying to search inside Lanie’s bra. Too easily, they could get carried away—their naked torsos aligning, skin gliding, points tickling each other’s most tender expanses of flesh.

  They could lose their minds in a minute and not come up for air until their bodies were pink with exertion, hands cramping, lips numb.

  “My phone number hasn’t changed,” Lanie repeated. She was on her feet, fixing her bra and buttoning up her shirt. “Neither has my email address. You could have reached out to me at any time. You could have come home at any time, but you decided to sever things so cleanly between us that I honestly believed there was someone else. I was going to leave you the fuck alone and let whoever it was just have you.”

  Lanie took a few steps back as she tucked her shirt into her snug-fitting pants so keeping her hands to herself wouldn’t be such a grueling feat. Diana looked like some kind of wild goddess sprawled atop crisp white sheets with that dark hair and those long, tan limbs.

  The sight incited desires for Lanie to hook her thumbs beneath the panty elastic and yank the flimsy fabric down, exposing her in full, because obviously that was what she wanted. Diana wanted the situation to be out of her hands and all the blame of what would happen to be placed squarely on Lanie’s shoulders.

  Lanie wasn’t letting Diana phone in intimacy. If Diana wanted to be wanted, she’d have to sit up and ask for attention the frank way.

  “You know there wasn’t anyone else,” Diana said through clenched teeth, white fangs peeking through her tightened lips.

  “Of course I know that.” Lanie adjusted her belt and took brisk strides to the table. “Your brother told me. If it weren’t for Blue, I would have moved on, Diana.”