The It Girl

"Hello? Miss? Anyone in there?"

"Huh?"

She was back in the grocery store, staring down at the faded black of the conveyor belt. In front of her was a large, irate customer. She looked down to find the belt overloaded with cans. The customer was tapping his foot and pointedly staring at his watch.

"Sorry, sir," Cassie said, as she began to swipe the cans across the scanner. "I just got lost in my thoughts for a minute there."

"Well, can you get lost in your thoughts on your own time?"

Cassie made sure to stack all of the guys' cans (seriously, was he preparing for the end of the world?) on top of a loaf of bread and a bag of grapes. And then it was on to the next customer - two college aged-girls who were too busy talking to each other to take their veggies out of the cart. Cassie tried to reach her normal equilibrium of devoting exactly as much brainspace to the job as it required and no more.

That had been an easier task when the bulk of her brain was focused on last night's TV or the possibility of post-work makeouts with Dawn. But Cassie had weightier subjects haunting her right now. First, she had slept with her stepmom. Second, she had slept with her stepmom. Third, she might actually have a magic spell operating on her, and on top of all that she had slept with her stepmom.

Okay, so she didn't really believe in the magic thing, no matter how much she loved Leigha. But something weird was going on. Hell, she was getting checked out by every second woman in line, although that could just be vanity. And she really didn't want to accept responsibility for what she had done a few afternoons ago.

The weird part about it was that Charlotte, prim and proper as she was, didn't seem to be feeling any of the same guilt. Instead, she had been giggly and giddy. She never missed an opportunity to touch Cassie: resting her hand on her shoulders, pulling her into a quick hug, or giving her a kiss on the cheek that smoldered. Her father was away on one of his innumerable business trips, so there was seemingly no respite Last night she had even pulled her into the basement and started to make out with her before Cassie pulled away and muttered something about having chores to do.

"Boo!"

Cassie almost jumped up on the counter. She looked back to find Devin tapping her on the shoulder. "What's up, sleepyhead?"

She had gotten lost in her thoughts again. Well, at least she had managed to do her job this time, if the empty line was any indication. "Oh, uh, hi."

"I haven't heard anything from you lately. You alright?"

Was she supposed to be keeping in touch with Dawn now? Was this a relationship thing? "I'm fine. I've just been busy for the last couple days." She hadn't really been that busy. Unless, that was, you counted staring up at the ceiling as a pressing engagement.

"Busy getting busy?"

"No, just... busy."

Devin frowned. "Cassie, if something's wrong you can talk to me about it. I know your home life isn't that great, and—"

"You don't know shit about my life!" Cassie spat. She surprised even herself. The other cashiers and the few employees wandering the aisles looked up at her. She covered her mouth. She hadn't meant to say it that loudly, or that harshly. "I'm sorry. It's just... I don't think we're close enough to talk about stuff like that. I mean, I barely know you."

Devin bit her bottom lip. "I know you well enough."

Was she right? Had Cassie unwillingly given her the right to share her life when she had shared her bed? She didn't know anything about Devin's family either, apart from their willingness to give Devin her own space and ignore the screams of girls that came from the garage. And now she was saying Cassie had a bad "home life", as if her parents were drug addicts or something. What gave her the right?

The next wave of shoppers was hitting the checkout counters. Cassie turned her back on Devin and began working again.

"That'll teach me to give a shit," Devin muttered, just loud enough for Cassie to hear. She slinked back to her post at customer service.

Well, she had screwed that relationship up too. But it would have been worse if she had told Devin the truth. Would she have branded Cassie a pervert and refused to associate with her? Been jealous? Called the cops? She didn't want to talk to Rainey or Sara about this for the same reason. Turning all of her friendships into sexual relationships seemed like a great idea until you needed to talk with someone who wouldn't feel cheated by your latest affair. And the rest of her theatre friends were all out of town.

"You just swiped it twice."

"What?"

"The avocado. You ran it across the scanner twice."

"Oh... sorry." Cassie adjusted the total price to account for her error.

She really needed to talk about Charlotte with someone before she went crazy (if it wasn't too late, considering that she already was beginning to believe she had a magic cooch). Preferably someone disconnected from her life, who she hadn't yet slept with. But the store didn't pay enough to hire a shrink, if there even was one in this town of seemingly perfect mental health.

There was one person who fit the criteria, if only on a series of technicalities. She hadn't really slept with Ms. Bright - they had never touched! - but it was enough of a weird sexual encounter that she might not be shocked at Cassie sleeping with another older woman with entirely too close a relationship. At the very least, she was more likely to be discrete, having her own embarassing secret. And who knew? Maybe in all her years she might actually have some insight about this fucked-up situation.

--

Cassie drove to Ms. Bright's after class and knocked on her door. After a minute's wait, she realized that Claudia might not be home - after all, didn't teachers spend all summer on vacation, roaming the globe? Or maybe she was trapped teaching summer school. She should have called. Then again, she didn't actually have Ms. Bright's number.

But then the door creaked open. It was Ms. Bright, but it took Cassie a moment to recognize her. She had never seen her teacher like this. Her hair was a brown mess of tangles and frizz, her glasses missing, and she was wearing a khaki college T-shirt with multiple small holes and a skimpy pair of boxer shorts. She scratched her leg and stared blearily at the sun. "Cassie?"

"Uh, yeah. I came to ask you... but if now isn't a good time..."

"No, no, come in." Ms. Bright motioned her inside. "Just shut the damn door." The sun seemed to be causing her physical pain.

Cassie cautiously stepped inside and shut the door behind her. Ms. Bright's living room looked a bit like it had after the night of the party with Sara - cluttered with glasses and wine bottles. She thought she saw a bong somewhere in the mess, but she couldn't be sure. Claudia went to the kitchen and returned with a pot of coffee and two mugs.

"If you came to my house so early, it must be something important."

"Early? It's two o'clock."

"Really?" Ms. Bright looked at the clock on her cell phone. "Shit, you're right. I'm sorry about this. Some friends came over last night, and, well, by the time they left I was sloshed."

Cassie was still a little unnerved about seeing the woman she had dealt with daily for four years, and who had seemed an above-it-all professional even during the worst of those days, so out of sorts. It was like it wasn't Ms. Bright at all. Maybe it was Claudia, that strange lyrical name she had asked her to call her after that last session of voyeuristic masturbation.

"It's okay," said Cassie. "These six AM shifts have me off my usual cycle as well." The only chairs in the room were covered with stuff, so she sat down next to Claudia on the couch. Well, it wasn't really wide enough to be a couch. More of a divan. A loveseat, really, although that word had connotations she was trying to put off. She had been hoping for more of a therapy session than a booty call.

Claudia tried to compose herself, pulling a stray bang out of her face. The coffee had restored her to at least something resembling her usual state. "So what did you come here for? I mean, my door is always open, but..."

"I..." Cassie hadn't figured out how much of the truth to tell her former teacher. She settled on about half of it. "I had sex with an older woman. A married woman. And now I don't know how to feel about it."

There was a warm smile tugging at the corners of Claudia's tired lips. "Oh, Cassie. Listen - you're so young. I know you like to think that you're invincible, but sometimes people can take advantage of you. There are people out there, even queer people, who are only interested in their own pleasure."

She wasn't understanding it. "No, it wasn't like that. I mean, I wanted it. I initiated it... I think. And this woman, she isn't some kind of predator or anything. It was, you know, consensual."

"But you still feel bad about it."

"Well... yeah."

"And every time you think about it you want to throw up?"

"A little bit."

Claudia wrapped her arm around Cassie. "Do you want to know something? That woman in my story you read... she was about twelve years older than me. I was older than you are now, but I was so much less confident or assertive. After she fucked me, I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And some of that time I felt like I had been exploited. A lot of that time I felt disgusted by what I had done. I still can't say that what she did was right, but it obviously set me down a road that made me a better and more authentic person."

Cassie burrowed her head into Claudia's arm. "So you're saying it was okay."

"I'm saying you shouldn't feel guilty about it. Do you really feel like you were taken advantage of?"

When she got right down to it, she didn't. Cassie didn't blame Charlotte at all for what had happened, even if she felt guilty as hell for her own part in it. But that guilt had become an amorphous fog not tied to any rationale in particular.

"No."

"Are you sure? You can tell me who it was."

"It was my stepmom." Cassie blurted the words out before she knew what she was doing. She clamped her hand over her mouth, as if that would take it back.

Claudia's face furrowed. "Oh. Well that... how did it happen?"

Cassie let loose the whole story. The way she told it was jagged and rough and didn't make much sense, skipping from part to part in haphazard order. Claudia hugged her tighter throughout. When the story was done, she pursed her lips and spoke again.

"Have you talked to her about it since?"

"No... not really."

"It sounds like you were both very emotional, and things might have gone farther than either of you intended. Even if it's something you both regret, nobody has to be the victim or perpetrator. And if you figure out it's not something you regret... well, it's not really incest, as you aren't related by blood. I guess that's all I can say."

Cassie had come to be comforted, but it felt like there was something wrong about Ms. Bright letting her off the hook. "But it is cheating."

"That's between her and your father, really."

She wasn't sure if she accepted that rationale. But she realized that she had worked her way into a very compromised position with Claudia Bright. Every time she had felt on the verge of crying, she had grabbed onto Ms. Bright's shoulders like an anchor and pulled herself inwards. And now they were breast to breast, ear to lip, and a tender embrace was now seeming intimate. Had Claudia lured her into something sexual again? But no, Cassie was the one who had come here.

She pulled her head back, attempting to disengage. But then she was eye-to-eye with Claudia (they were too physically close to possibly think of her as Ms. Bright). Her eyes were green and faintly feline. Cassie had never noticed the weathered beauty of her former teacher's face. And her lips, so pink and plump... what could she do but seize them?

Their kiss was calm and quiet, but not dispassionate. There was just the slightest hint of tongue. The hands that had clamped onto Claudia's shoulders began wandering down her body, seemingly of their own accord. Cassie could find herself slipping down into the well of lust. Just like...

She jerked herself away, so quickly she almost bit Claudia's lips. Cassie sprung to her feet and then stumbled backwards. Her legs seemed to have left her. Was she really doing this again? Really trying to turn an older woman's attempt to comfort her into cheap sex? What was the matter with her, that she couldn't accept affection without immediately wanting to suck on a tit?

"I'm sorry," she said as she stared a hole in the carpet.

"Sorry for what?"

"You were just trying to be nice to me, and I had to go and put the moves on you," said Cassie.

Claudia got up and walked over to the teenager. She gently held Cassie's wrist. "I was. But kissing, or even sex can be a way to make someone else feel nice. Sex can be a way to comfort someone. Or it can be something totally different. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's no wall between sex and all the other ways we relate to each other.

This was all seeming very abstract to Cassie. Claudia made it simple by kissing her hungrily. "And when you kissed me," Claudia whispered. "I thought 'finally'. Finally I'm tasting this beautiful girl who I watched become a woman. I've been dreaming about you for a while, you know."

It was not exactly a shock that Claudia was sexually interested in her after the little show she had put on. But the way she said it blew Cassie's mind, because she herself had dreamed awkward adolescent fantasies of her cool, openly gay drama teacher. To imagine that Ms. Bright had been thinking of her the same way... well, that was almost too good to be true.

"Would you like to go to bed?" said Claudia.

Cassie wasn't sure if sleeping with Claudia would help resolve her issues. But she was willing to give it a shot.

With a gentle tug of her arms, Claudia guided Cassie up the stairs. She remembered throwing up in the bathroom here, and then seeing Ms. Bright in the doorway as Sara fucked her. Maybe that hadn't been a figment of her imagination.

Claudia's bedroom was plainer than Cassie would have expected - the walls were plain white and undecorated save for a photo of a twenty-something Claudia posing with two other women on a stage. The furniture on the other hand, was beautiful and ornately crafted stuff, all made of dark wood. She must have spent either a lot of money or a lot of time at antique stores. The centrepiece, which Cassie's nervous attention was naturally drawn to, was the luxurious king-sized bed with a lion carved into the headboard.

Cassie lay down on the bed. It felt impossibly soft, and she couldn't resist lying down. Claudia crawled in next to her. Even with her hair messed up and greasy, she had a kind of mature and majestic beauty. Her old clothes did nothing to disguise the appeal of her svelte figure. She kissed Cassie slowly, tasting of old wine.

For the first time in a while, Cassie allowed herself to be lead by a more experienced lover. Claudia was gentle and patient with her caresses. But somehow, almost without noting it, Cassie's clothes disappeared one by one until she was lying nude and nubile, legs open to accept her teacher's touch. She felt a little as if she was sinking into a warm bath.

Claudia rubbed her thumb up and down the delta of Cassie's sex. She quickly found the little nub of pleasure and rolled it between her fingers. The calm sensation that had settled over Cassie was broken up by a spike of pleasure. She pressed her lips to Cassie's shoulders and lapped around her chest with a soft tongue. She touched on Cassie's breasts once with a light flick of her tongue, just enough to make her ache as Claudia's lips moved up to her neck instead of further ravishing her bosom.

Cassie tugged at the hem of Claudia's shirt. "You're wearing too much." She had fantasized so much about her drama teacher nude over the years, and had finally caught a glimpse of it in her "audition" a few weeks ago. But when Claudia pulled that shirt over her head, revealing two perfect small breasts topped with dark-coffee nipples, it was a thrill a thousand times stronger than imagination.

She was suddenly filled with a strong desire to show her appreciation for Claudia in the most physical way she could. Cassie reached down to cup her teacher's sex through her boxer shorts. Claudia giggled. "Oh, now you're getting frisky."

"I'm always frisky," said Cassie. She was feeling less and less overawed by the prospect of intimacy with her beloved Ms. Bright. Now she just saw a sexy woman lying before her who she wanted to see come.

Cassie kissed her way down Claudia's long and elegant leg. She got to the moist fabric of her teacher's panties and paused. Staring her right in the face was a long black scar that arched across Claudia's midsection. Cassie ran a finger across it. It didn't seem to hurt Claudia. "What's this?"

Claudia looked down. "Oh, just an old battle mark. It's a long story for another time."

This was something new for Cassie. Now and with Charlotte, she had realized the marks and scars that women's' bodies accumulated with age. Even if it was just stretch marks, touching this skin was like reading an autobiography. Curiously, she explored more by pulling Claudia's damp boxer shorts off, leaving her fully exposed.

She had the hairiest bush that Cassie had ever seen, a thick patch of brown hair that looked almost comical on Claudia's otherwise thin and elegant body. It was an intimidating patch of grass, but Cassie eagerly lowered her lips into the thicket. Claudia's pussy hair tickled her face before providing a moist carpet for her to rest on as she began to tongue her teacher's slit.

Claudia's juices had a heavy, musky flavour, an intriguing taste that Cassie wanted more of. She slid her tongue into the older woman's cunt and curled it to lick the roof of her channel. Claudia groaned and arched her back, desperate for more. Cassie was more than happy to oblige, reaching up with her hand and digging through the forest of hair until she found her teacher's clitoris. She rubbed, and Claudia squealed, her voice higher than Cassie had ever heard it before.

"Oh, that's it... more, more... deeper!" It was less elegant than when she had been teaching the principles of improv, but Ms. Bright proved to be an enthusiastic instructor in the art of cunnilingus. "Just go in a circle like that... oh! Rub my clit. Stick a finger in my ass."

Cassie followed instructions. She rubbed her index finger in Claudia's dripping juices and slid it into her anal opening. It went right in, as her teacher's sphincter opened with practice ease. That was evidently enough to set Claudia off. She yelled to high heaven as she thrust her hips into the air, practically smothering Cassie. The student continued to pleasure her teacher, lapping at Claudia's pussy until her orgasm subsided and she pushed her off.

"Phew." Claudia lay back down on her bed. "It's been too long that someone did that to me."

"Like you don't have girls coming over here every night," said Cassie.

"I really don't," said Claudia. "Strangely, none of my lesbian fuck-buddies wanted to move out to the sticks with me. And somehow I never ended up with a wifey. So things can get a little lonely in the summer, and I go out trolling for teenage girls."

It was said in jest, but it seemed to have serious import for Cassie and her own feelings about being tied down. But she pushed that to the back of her mind for now. Right now she was horny. She straddled Claudia. "Well, this high school student wants to get fucked."

Claudia licked her lips. "If you let me up, I might have just the thing for that."

Cassie ground her pussy against her teacher's stomach impatiently, but did get off of her. She wanted to see just what exactly an experienced dyke like her had in her treasure chest. Claudia got up off the bed and rummaged around in the bottom drawer of her antique dresser. Cassie crawled across the sheets and enjoyed the opportunity to gawk at her teacher's tight ass and red, just-licked pussy. And then Ms. Bright came up, having sprouted a dick.