Cassie woke up suffused with warmth. Part of it was the summer heat, but mostly it was the radiant pleasure inside her and the heat of the soft body she was cuddled up against. She smiled to herself and wrapped the other girl's arm around her as she slipped back into sleep.
She woke up for a second time when the body pressed against her began to shift. Cassie rolled over into the space left by the retreating warmth. The sun came right into her eyes, and she blinked herself awake. She looked over to Devin's beautiful naked body, gleaming in the sunlight.
"Good morning," Cassie said, for lack of anything cleverer.
Devin seemed back to being a little nervous, but managed a smile. "Good morning to you too. That was one hell of a night.
"Yeah." Looking over the bed, Cassie could see the remnants of their tryst: dark stains, discarded underwear, and the damp pink vibrator. It was amazing that she had managed to sleep so long. It was then that she looked over at the clock. 11:15. "Shit."
"Did you sleep too late?" said Devin as she pulled on a fresh pair of panties.
"I shouldn't have slept at all," said Cassie. She remembered one time a year ago when she had crashed at Rainey's after a show, and her un-notified parents had gone on the warpath. "I mean, it was lovely. But my stepmom."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
Cassie gave Devin a quick kiss. "It wasn't your fault, unless you count fucking me so good I passed out. But I gotta get back now. See you tomorrow at work?"
The two girls quickly got dressed. Devin offered Cassie the use of her shower to freshen up, and Cassie was briefly tempted by the idea of sudsy fun. But she felt the need to get home as quick as possible, as if minutes could make the difference at this point. So Devin gave her a ride home in nervous silence. Cassie just hoped that her parents wouldn't notice her disheveled appearance and the obvious-to-her scent of pussy.
Devin pulled up in front of Cassie's house, which did not feel much like a home to her right now. "Send me a text and let me know how it goes, okay?"
"Sure thing." Cassie gave Devin another quick peck as they left. Even now, she always wanted more.
It was with trepidation that Cassie went in the front door. Maybe she could sneak past them. Sure, it was a Saturday morning, but maybe they had all gone out. But the second she slid the door shut - very quietly, she thought - her father and Charlotte appeared in front of her.
"Where have you been?" Charlotte said.
"Hello to you too," said Cassie. "I was at my friend Devin's and I accidentally fell asleep. Nothing happened."
Her father looked just as angry as Charlotte, but his voice was more conciliatory. "You should let us know when you're going to sleep over. We've been worried sick."
"Well, like I said, it was an accident."
Charlotte folded her arms. "We were talking about calling the police, get them to put out an Amber Alert or something. We had no idea what had happened to you."
"First off, Amber Alerts are for kids. I'm not a kid. And I'm sorry, I forgot to call you. Can I go now?"
But Charlotte didn't move. She was a few inches shorter than Cassie, but at this moment she seemed a mountainous ogre, blocking the staircase and the private solace of the bedroom. Cassie considered muscling her way through Charlotte, but thought that might just cause further yelling.
"No, you can't go," said Charlotte. "As long as you're under our roof, we're in charge, and you'll answer to us." Cassie was pretty sure that Charlotte meant "me" instead of "us". "You're grounded."
It felt like one of those dreams where she was back in elementary school. "Grounded? How old do you think I am, Charlotte?" She drew out the name into three long syllables, knowing that Charlotte resented not being "Mom" to her.
"Obviously not old enough to know better." Charlotte folded her arms. "No using the car, no going out except for work for two weeks. I mean it."
Cassie looked desperately to her father, but he certainly wasn't about to object. "I think you should go to your room and think about your behaviour, Cassandra." If Cassie had learned anything about drawing out every dreadful sound of a first name, she had learned it from Dad.
"Fine," said Cassie in a petulant voice. And she stormed up to her room, fourteen again.
"You got grounded?" Devin said with a laugh.
Cassie didn't find it particularly funny. They were stocking the questionably-defined "International Food" aisle before the supermarket opened for business. "It was completely ridiculous. I swear, this woman has always treated me like a child."
"Well, for most of that time you were a child," said Devin.
"I was a teenager, and she treated me like I was six," said Cassie. "Do you know she honestly bought me dolls?"
"Yeesh.
Cassie rearranged a couple of packages that Dawn had erroneously shelved. "You put the couscous in with the quinoa here."
"Oh. What's the difference?"
"Quinoa is smaller... I think."
Cassie and Devin moved onto the Hawaiian sodas, which Cassie swore she had never seen anyone buy. "At least she let you come to work," Devin said.
Cassie snorted. "Small mercies from the Fuhrer."
"You know," said Devin. "If I gave you a ride home from work, that wouldn't violate the terms of the grounding, now would it?"
"I don't think so," said Cassie, not particularly excited.
"And if we happened to take a bit of a scenic route, maybe go up to Makeout Point... well, who's to know the difference, really? There can be a lot of traffic these days."
Cassie was getting more intrigued. "Now, I'm only a small-time grounding lawyer, but I do think you've hit onto an exciting loophole."
Devin smacked her lips. "Well, I guess I'd better give you a ride home tonight. It's dangerous out on these streets, you know."
And so the plan was put into motion. Before dropping her off at home, Devin took Cassie up to the mountain ridge where all the straight kids necked (or so she said) and they made out for fifteen minutes before heading home. It was distinctly adolescent compared to what they had been up to a few nights before, all French kissing and above-the-clothes heavy petting, but it was a lot better than sitting alone in her room and had its own peculiar charm.
Home was terrible, of course. Mindy took every bit of delight she could in seeing Cassie brought low, loudly talking about her evening plans at the dinner table and putting even greater emphasis when she told Charlotte that she would be sure to be home by eleven. And naturally, when she came home forty-five minutes after that, or even past midnight, there were no fights. Charlotte hadn't directly addressed Cassie for days. Her father looked nervously at the two women he had brought into their house, but said nothing. In her room, Cassie did a quick sketch of Charlotte carrying around her dad's balls in her purse, then decided it was a bit weird to draw her father's genitals and threw the drawing in the trash.
The long rides home with Devin became a kind of routine. They would stop off at the mall and wander around aimlessly, or stop by Devin's house and watch YouTube videos or make out or do more. More than just the physical attractions of her body, Cassie began to appreciate Devin's companionship. She was cool and sophisticated, equally ready to talk about nail polish and confusing foreign films (that of course Devin understood perfectly). It wasn't quite love, but Cassie felt that Devin was the type of girl she wanted to know in college: smart, funny, and with a nice bubble butt and a tongue like an angel.
The two of them pressed the limits of plausibility and kept going. Cassie wondered if Charlotte would notice that her step-daughter was gone for ten hours a day, all of which could not have been spent at her part-time job, but maybe she just wasn't paying attention.
But there was another problem. Cassie was seeing a lot of Devin, but her other friends missed her. In particular, Rainey was going out of her mind without her favourite partner in crime. She had even stopped sending dick pics, which was always a sign of despondency for her. So Cassie asked Devin one day if Rainey could come by her place.
"Does she know you're..." Devin said, trailing off.
"Of course," said Cassie. "She knows all about you."
Devin blushed. "Really? I mean, I haven't talked to any of my friends from uni about this. Shit, do I have to come out to everybody now?"
"Not if you don't want to," said Cassie. "I just started making out with my friend Leah on the couch one morning in front of my dad. Saved me the awkward conversation. Mind you, he never let me have sleepovers again."
The suggestion obviously kept rattling around in Devin's mind for the rest of their shift. As they were hanging up their aprons, she turned to Cassie. "So tell me about this Rainey. How long have you guys known each other?"
"Since I moved here - so, the start of high school. I was sure I wasn't going to make any friends in this town, but Rainey and I hit it off right away. Of course, I think just about anyone could hit it off with Rainey. She just says whatever she wants, and she says a lot of it, so all she needs is a pair of ears to talk to. Wait, that makes her sound kind of annoying."
Devin laughed. "No, I have friends like that. It's nice to feel no pressure to hold up your end of a conversation."
"Anyway, I guess we were both sort of outsiders," said Cassie. "So we bonded. You know how it is in high school - you spend six hours a day with someone, and you get close quickly Later we both ended up getting involved with drama."
"Ooh, you were in theatre?" said Devin. "Did you do any Shakespeare?"
"No, it was pretty much just musicals," said Cassie. "We had to sell tickets to support the program, after all."
Devin made a square with her thumbs and index fingers, as if looking at Cassie through a movie camera. It wasn't exactly an appropriate gesture for the situation, but easily understandable. "I see you as a Beatrice."
"Really? I've always seen myself as more of a Lady Macbeth." Cassie made a stabbing motion that got some strange stares from the other employees in the changing room.
"Cassie, I have a hard time imagining you scheming much of anything."
Cassie wasn't sure whether or not to be offended by that.
The two girls had been up in Devin's garage apartment chatting and playing with each others' hair for about half an hour when Rainey got there. She had never liked to wear much clothing in the summer, and today was sporting a purple crop-top that was short enough to be mistaken for underwear and shorts that disappeared from sight when she crossed her legs. Cassie would be lying if she had never ogled Rainey and her wonderful dusky legs during these hot summer months, but it was just looking with no intention of doing more, and if Rainey ever noticed she didn't let on. Devin, on the other hand, gave her exposed cleavage a very conspicuous stare. She had a lot to learn.
"So this is your spooky girlfriend," said Rainey as she sat down on the floor.
