No Strings Attached (The Pink Bean Series Book 1) (11 page)

“I had to bribe the barista to find out what you liked,” she said, a big smile on her face.

“It’s not a wet capp, is it?” Micky smiled back.

“You should have seen your face when I placed that order. I think I decided to ask you out there and then.”

Micky shook her head. “Oh, please.”

“Hi, Micky.” Robin slanted in her direction and placed a kiss on her cheek.

Micky inhaled Robin’s scent and, for an instant, contemplated asking if they could skip the beach and go straight up to her flat. They could even go back to her house. It was all empty and inviting and ready for all the sex Micky wanted to have. Oh my. She was feeling rather frisky today.

Instead, she took a sip from the coffee and placed the cup in the holder. “All set?”

“You bet.” Robin’s voice was dripping with excitement. “The last beach I was at was an overly busy one in Hong Kong, chock-full of unruly mainland China tourists, and the water wasn’t exactly crystal clear. I’ve been googling pictures of Bondi beach, and it looks so stunning.”

Micky could hardly take Robin to Balmoral, the beach she knew so well in Mosman. They were bound to run into someone familiar there. Bondi was much bigger, more anonymous, and very gay friendly. They could easily disappear into the crowd—just be two friends enjoying the sun, sand, and surf. There was another s-word Micky kept thinking about. She should really get a grip. What was she? Twenty-four instead of forty-four?

“Thank you so much for taking me,” Robin said in between sipping from her coffee.

It was at the same time exciting and excruciating to sit in a car with her. She was so close, when Micky changed gears, her elbow could easily bump into Robin’s thigh. But they had to work on the friends part of their relationship first. And the word relationship wasn’t even accurate, because Robin had clearly stated that she didn’t do relationships.

While Micky drove, Robin told her about her impromptu trip to Seoul and how she’d had to deal with a bunch of bigoted men—once again.

“Sometimes I think my job could be done better by a man,” Robin said. “Just to get past that initial barrier of contempt. Awful as that may sound.”

But Micky had never been very concerned with things like feminism and equality in the workplace. She sure thought them important, but they didn’t really apply to her life as, first, a stay-at-home mother and, now, a glorified waitress—she guessed she could get away with calling herself a barista, if pressed—at a very gay-friendly coffee shop.

“Are you out at work?” Micky asked when Robin had gone silent, probably contemplating a work issue she hadn’t figured out yet. She recognized the look on her face from Darren. How on Friday night he was there in person but not yet in spirit. He always needed a few hours to shake the workweek off him.

“Of course I am.” Robin looked at her. “I’m the Diversity Manager. What signal would it send to the people I’m trying to influence if I was in the closet?”

Wrong question
. Though she enjoyed finding out about Robin’s day-to-day life at Goodwin Stark, she was eager to change the topic of conversation to something lighter. Micky just nodded. At least she wasn’t
only
thinking about ways to get Robin between the sheets as quickly as possible again.

“Funny thing,” she said. “Darren, my ex-husband, told me yesterday that he’s seeing someone who works for Goodwin Stark as well. Her name is Lisa. That’s all I know.”

To Micky’s relief, Robin didn’t instantly show signs of recognizing the name. “We have so many employees, and I tend to spend my time either with the top brass or people militant enough to join special task forces.” Robin looked at Micky again. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.” She put a hand on Micky’s leg, causing Micky to almost lose control of the steering wheel for an instant.

✶ ✶ ✶

It was still early—Micky had insisted on picking up Robin before traffic to Bondi got too congested—and the beach wasn’t busy yet. Micky had skipped breakfast, her stomach too up in arms about seeing Robin again, but was now experiencing insistent pangs of hunger.

“They have the best croissants over there.” She pointed at a bakery she vaguely remembered going to years ago. Micky was not a Bondi beach kind of woman. Already, she saw two men who were so obviously—so ostentatiously—gay skipping along the boardwalk.

“Sure.” Robin followed Micky to the small cluster of tables outside the bakery café.

After ordering and finding a spot overlooking the beach and ocean, Micky said, “God, I haven’t been here in ages.” She cast her glance over the vista in front of her and had to admit it was beautiful. “We lived close to the beach in Mosman. It was great for the kids,” she mused, letting her guard down.

“I’m going to be honest with you.” Robin painted a look on her face Micky couldn’t quite figure out. “You’re the first mother I’ve slept with. Not that I’m in any way discriminatory against mothers, but you know, they’re just not a kind of lesbian I come across often.”

Micky’s brain was already going into overdrive. Robin had just called her a lesbian. How politically incorrect was that? Surely, after having told her about being married to Darren for eighteen years, someone like Robin, someone who had to deal with insensitivity and prejudice in her job all the time, would at least assume Micky was bisexual.

“I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?” Robin asked.

Micky tried to rearrange her features and look less vexed, but she figured it wasn’t really working. “That’s the first time I’ve been referred to as a lesbian. A bit of a leap seeing as I’ve only slept with a woman once.” Thankfully, Micky kept her voice from wavering.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. I was more speaking in general. I wouldn’t want to presume anything about you. Though I am curious as to how you see yourself?”

The question was bound to come at Micky—hard and fast—at some point. If she’d allowed herself more time to think this through, instead of being carried away by images of Robin’s hand on her breast and her face disappearing between her legs, perhaps Micky would have an answer. But who was she kidding? Micky had had an entire lifetime to think this through. More time was not what she needed. She just needed to stop being so afraid.

Micky shook her head. Amber had, in many different ways, tried to coax an answer to this question from her, but this was not Amber sitting across from her. This was Robin.

“I don’t consider myself a lesbian.” Micky remembered the word
latebian
she had picked up in that magazine. “I guess I’m… questioning.”

Robin made a guttural sound in the back of her throat and just nodded. Perhaps she was expecting more of an actual answer. Micky felt compelled to fill the silence caused by Robin’s lack of reply.

“Sleeping with a woman once at the age of forty-four hardly makes me a lesbian.” There was the defensiveness again. Amber had called her out on it many a time. Micky didn’t know why she just couldn’t have a relaxed conversation about this. This was her life, after all. One of the most important aspects of it. It was, whether she openly admitted to it or not, one of the reasons she had left Darren.

“I’m not asking you to label yourself,” Robin said. “I’m just curious, just trying to find out what makes you tick.”

You
, Micky wanted to shout.
Your lips on mine, your hands on my skin
. How could she be overflowing with this kind of lust, yet, at the same time, unable to admit what was so obvious. Because it was complicated. That had always been Micky’s go-to answer when questioned by Amber.

“I’m gay, Micky,” Amber used to say. “Nothing you tell me will even remotely shock me.”

It was the word
shock
that got to Micky the most. Because she had shocked herself. And if she did at some point come out, tell someone using actual words and her voice, say it out loud, what would that make her and the life she had lived so far? Micky remembered the spectrum Amber had talked about. How things can change over time. She might have been besotted with Darren when they married, but there was one thing she could state with clear certainty: not even at the height of their happiness, had sex with Darren come close to that one night with Robin.

Though, of course, Micky could come up with all sorts of logical explanations for that as well. When she and Darren first got together, she was in her early twenties and nowhere near the peak of her sexuality. Robin had just caught her at the right time: sex-deprived and at an age when, if women’s magazines were to be believed, her sexuality was blossoming like never before.

“All I can tell you at this point is that I sure wouldn’t mind repeating what happened last Tuesday.”
Wow
. Had Micky actually just said that? She guessed it was a case of her lips overflowing with what her heart was full of—or at least a slew of other body parts.

“This is exactly what makes you so intriguing to me.” Robin pinned her gaze on Micky, stared at her for a long while without so much as blinking. “To me, it’s so clear that you do know what you want, but you have all this inner turmoil going on, which I understand.” She leaned over the table. “I was in bed with you, Micky. I know. You didn’t lie when we were between the sheets, when you were kissing me, when you slipped your hand… there.”

Micky was terrified and aroused at the same time. But Robin wasn’t finished analyzing Micky just yet.

“When I say I usually don’t come across women like you, I mean in my personal life. Having worked in severely repressed regions in Asia, I have, of course, met many women and men so deep in the closet, just meeting me, an openly gay woman, made them break out into a cold sweat. It’s confrontational. It made them face the one thing about themselves they couldn’t come to grips with. I think I have the same effect on you. And of course there’s the tiny matter of us sleeping together.”

Micky sat up a bit straighter. She felt put on the spot but also, strangely, understood on a level Amber never did. “Why did you ask me out and sleep with me?”

“Because I was attracted to you and I’m used to following my instincts.” Robin said it as though it were the most obvious statement ever made.

Micky wanted to ask,
Me? You were attracted to me?
Not that she considered herself unattractive in general, but compared to Robin and, she imagined, compared to the kind of women Robin usually slept with, she considered herself dowdier, more homely than attractive. Though, of course, Micky had no idea of the kind of woman Robin usually courted. She was getting curious about Michelle, Robin’s Hong Kong non-girlfriend.

When Micky didn’t say anything, Robin continued. “I don’t have relationships out of necessity, or at least, that’s how I’ve always seen it. It could of course also be because I never met
that
woman, but this arrangement I have with myself suits me just fine. Knowing that you’re experimenting and trying to find yourself, so to speak, doesn’t faze me for that very reason, Micky. I think we can have some good fun together.”

“No strings attached.” Micky repeated the phrase Robin had used the previous week.

“And no rules.” Robin stared straight ahead of her. “What do you say we go and have some fun on the beach?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As far as beach days went, this one was a rather uncomfortable one for Micky. Not because of the growing crowds as time crept more toward midday or the sand that invariably got stuck in places she didn’t want it to, but because every time she looked at Robin, in her glorious, flawless bikini body—outlined abs, muscled thighs, toned shoulder-line—she felt something twinge in the pit of her stomach. Something she didn’t recognize because she really didn’t want to. She didn’t want to acknowledge that spending time with Robin made her feel more alive than she had in a decade. That lying next to her, uncomfortably, on a beach towel while staring into the surf, made her feel things she had never felt before. Things that were taking her whole being by storm.

Was she experimenting? She pondered that question in the moments when Robin had her eyes closed and their conversation stalled. Hell yeah, she was. But there was more to it than that. No strings attached and no rules was all well and good, but it also implied that no feelings other than being friends could blossom here, and how on earth was Micky supposed to stop that?

“Penny for your thoughts,” Robin said, glancing at Micky with one eye open and the other squeezed shut.

By then, they’d gone into the water twice—its temperature a little too chilly for Micky’s taste, though it didn’t seem to bother Robin—and Robin had, with deft but oh, so sensuous strokes, smeared sunscreen on Micky’s back.

“The crowd’s getting a bit too thick for my taste.” Micky grabbed her chance. “How about we get out of here?”

Robin didn’t say anything, not with words anyway, just plastered a big grin on her face and nodded. Instantly, deep inside of Micky, that fire started up again. The one that had been stoked the moment Robin had approached her at The Pink Bean and, so very unexpectedly, made a move on her.

In the car, Micky’s entire body seemed to turn into one ultrasensitive synapse. It felt as though Robin was already stroking her—she could still feel the press of Robin’s thumb under her shoulder blade where she’d applied sunscreen to her back earlier. Micky was getting ready for that big plunge into headiness and sexiness and that other world she’d discovered, that existed parallel to the one she’d been inhabiting for forty-four years but had been too afraid to visit—or even acknowledge its existence.

It was a long drive back to Darlinghurst, though most traffic was going in the opposite direction. They passed cars with surfboards strapped to the roof, with people chatting and laughing behind the wheel. When they crossed a car with a husband and wife in the front and two children in the back, and Micky glanced at it for a while longer in the rearview mirror, her foot firmly on the gas pedal, it felt as though she was, rapidly and unstoppably, driving away from her past.

Micky wanted so very much to listen attentively to what Robin was saying about the vast differences between Sydney and Hong Kong. She caught fragments of sentences like “less frenetic,” “more humane,” and “a million fucking times more friendly,” but Micky couldn’t possibly focus her attention on Robin’s words. She was in a state of expectation, of wanting what was going to happen next so badly—of needing it as though her life depended on it—that she was afraid that if she let her eye off the ball, if she didn’t keep driving the way she was, propelling them in the direction of her house, where she would finally be able to take off her clothes and meet Robin skin-to-skin and become that woman again that Robin had made her, that the moment would pass. That it wouldn’t happen. That Robin, and all the things she stood for, would slip through her fingers.