Part Two of 12 Lays of Xmas, the full novella version. Chapter Eight is flying along as I type this. Be warned, the whole thing is already 27,000? words long, though this is a short chapter.
Any similarity to any persons living, loving or otherwise - well - you know who you are.
The Twelve Lays of Xmas: Two Turtle Doves
The following day was a long one, and to be honest I got a little distracted from Jessica's present. One of my clients was being difficult about a project that was supposed to have started on December 1st, and threatened now to make me work over Xmas. Luckily, there were subcontractors involved, and I was pretty much able to tell him that wasn't going to happen.
Then he wanted to be taken out to lunch, which I did. Then I had to go to pick up the CD Rom of the pics for Jessica, which wasn't ready. The prints looked great though, and they were going to make an impressive series of posters. I imagined again them lining the entrance vestibule to Jessica's building, and wondered what visitors would make of them.
One of the most impressive pictures was of Laurie, one of the two lesbian girls who lived across the street. Jessica had the hots for Laurie, but had never made a move on her, because her partner - Katherine - wasn't really part of our little group. Work took her away all the time, and she was really a one-on-one, relationship sort of girl. There was, noticeably, no picture of Katherine in the portfolio.
The one of Laurie was quite decent too... teasing, provocative, but not really showing anything too much. She was looking back over her shoulder, one hand and arm discretely shielding the side of her breast, and a convenient plant leaf hiding most of her pert ass. Still, it showed her stunning, dark, Mediterranean good looks, and that would make my lady purr.
Jessica was on the phone when I arrived, sitting on the couch looking out over the street through the bay window. She leaned back and I kissed her mouth. Lisa strolled in from the kitchen.
'Do I get one of those?'
'Seems fair,' I asked, and we kissed deeply. I had been about to comment on how much time she was spending here, but that seemed more than churlish after the park last night. Instead I asked her - jokingly - how the 12 days project was going.
'Finishing touches to Day Two,' she said, matter-of-factly. 'We're running late.'
I laughed, and went to get a beer. Dinner was on the stove, the apartment was warm and bright with Christmas cheer. Life was good.
'Did you get the CD-Rom?' Lisa was in on my plan too, of course. The pictures we had shot of her were a lot more explicit than the ones of Laurie. I was almost ready to demand a refund from the photographer, who I was sure had been well-paid several times over.
'No, there's a delay. Two more days.'
'Might be worth the wait. Could be that we get one more set of pictures to go on.'
She turned and left before explaining, which was a typical Lisa tease. I watched TV, checked email, then the three of us ate dinner before Lisa left to open the club for the evening. Jessica kept wandering over to the window as if she was waiting for a delivery. The night moved on, closer and closer to the end of the second day.
I was researching some info on the web when Jessica padded up to me and took my hand, drawing me away from the Mac. I noticed she had moved furniture around, placing an armchair in the bay, looking out over the city. The lights were dimmed, and there was a bottle of wine in the cooler at the side of the chair.
'What's this?'
'Sit,' she insisted, and she snuggled down onto my lap as I took my place.
Our apartment sits quite high above the street, and the lamps that lit it were a soft glow below, barely lighting the night sky. Opposite, the building where Katherine and Laurie live - one floor down from our level - was a dark shadow. Brick-built, austere and slightly smaller than ours, it is not a great place to live in, by all accounts, and Jessica was on at the girls to take one of the vacant apartments on the second floor here - a much better space at a comparable rent. Their current place was lit by huge, tall north-facing windows with a view mostly of our building, and that made their apartment cold as hell in winter. I looked down their place now. And what was when I realised what we were doing here,