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Walking around Jen when she’s angry feels a little like playing with fire, sometimes.
It reminds Judy of the days when she was a teenager, lighting a joint on her lunch break down behind the gym and finding a much needed distraction in the warmth of the lighter against her face. On bad days, she let it sting a little longer than she should.
Today, Jen slams the front door behind her when she gets home from work, and Judy can’t help the way she automatically flinches a little at the sound. She’s had a day, Judy can already tell as soon she sees the tell-tale crease between her eyebrows and the way her cheeks are slightly flushed red.
“Asshole fucking men,” she mutters to herself without even really looking up to meet Judy’s eyes. These days, she tends to avoid Judy when she’s angry. It’s something she learnt from her new therapist, apparently, giving herself space to calm down. Most days, before Judy can really ask what’s wrong, she storms upstairs and doesn’t return until evening. It’s something along the lines of trying to prevent taking her anger out on other people, letting herself calm down before she blows another hole in their relationship, but Judy can’t help but feel a slight ache where the burn used to be.
(Clearly, therapy doesn’t solve everything.)
For once, though, Jen lingers in the kitchen. She seems to be waiting for something, Judy thinks, and it’s instinctual, the way she rubs her thighs together, the way she wriggles slightly when Jen finally looks up at her. Her eyes are blazing, and the sea-glass green is burning holes in Judy’s skin. She takes a deep breath before she asks, “What happened?”
“Some fucking dick, fucking asshole almost crashed his dickhead Porche right into the back of me. And then he had the fucking nerve to call me a bitch,” she yells, her arms flailing outwards, “like yeah, we get it, you’re a fucking misogynist with a microdick who can’t fucking drive!”
“But you’re okay?!” Judy is suddenly rushing to Jen’s side, her arm immediately squeezing Jen’s softly. There have been far too many car accidents in the last 2 years, and Judy knows when she feels Jen’s body shaking that she’s thinking about it too.
They haven’t talked about Ted or Steve or Ben in months, but she can see it burning behind Jen’s eyes occasionally. She can see it now, reverberating through her body with a silent rage. It’s something they conveniently avoid when they’re sharing the same bed, wrapped in the same sheets with the same racing heartbeat in their ears. It doesn’t seem worth speaking into the light of day anymore. Jen’s actions have always spoken louder than her words.
Now, Jen doesn’t respond, but she looks at Judy, and Judy thinks perhaps for a moment that Jen’s eyes flicker to her lips. She wonders if she imagines it, these little moments when Jen almost falters, when she seems one step away from leaning in and letting herself fall. But the air around them is electric, and the space in the kitchen seems far too stuffy all of a sudden. It only takes Judy’s hand pressing firmly onto Jen’s hip for her to shake herself out of her reverie. As if nothing had happened at all, Jen steps away, forcing a tight-lipped smile and saying, “Yeah, thank fuck the car is okay. I’d have fucking killed him.”
Judy instantly feels an uncomfortable heat between her legs. She only just catches a smirk on Jen’s lips before she storms away, taking the rest of the air from Judy’s lungs with her.
Judy begins to categorise Jen’s angry outbursts. Now they’re less frequent, she has more time to study them, more time to wonder which cogs are turning inside her head; she captures each flicker of emotion as it crosses over her face and she keeps it for later, building a kind of mental scrapbook to better understand her best friend.
She knows well the anger that stems from self-hatred. Judy’s sitting on the couch downstairs when Jen returns from her bath, her arms tightly wrapped around her chest as she sits down next to her. With her hair tied up, Judy can see whispers of grey at the edges of her temple. She swallows down the urge to tuck them affectionately behind her ear and leave a lingering kiss on the side of her face.
“Did you enjoy your bath?” Judy tries to ask, though she already knows the answer.
“No.”
This kind of anger is silent. It’s the heaviest, Judy thinks, as she leans back into the couch, turning on her side to observe Jen more closely. She’s staring at some spot across the room, her eyes glassy and her jaw clenched tight. Her arms haven’t moved from across her chest.
“Talk to me,” Judy whispers, barely audibly, but she can tell Jen has heard her because she shakes her head. There are tears in her eyes, building slowly, and Judy can’t help but reach out this time. She scoots across the couch until she’s practically in Jen’s lap and she gently tries to pull Jen’s arms away from her body. There is resistance, but she manages eventually, and she almost feels the sigh as Jen exhales.
This kind of anger is unpredictable. For a moment, Jen lets Judy trace patterns over the bare skin of her wrist and forearm. As Jen leans her head back against the couch, she relaxes into Judy’s touch, each muscle seemingly loosening with every motion of her finger. Just for a second, Judy feels Jen shifting to face her and she can’t help but push it.
“I can make you feel good if you let me,” she breathes, before moving to press a kiss to her knuckles. Before her lips can meet skin, Jen is turning away from her touch, her hand flinching away in a motion that feels like a slap to the face.
And Judy’s face is burning up; she can feel the embarrassment coursing through her veins and prickling her skin with goosebumps. But Jen is still looking at her, this ferocity that’s ever present in her eyes: all equal parts ice and fire. She sits up a little so she’s closer to Judy, their breath suddenly mingling into one, and Judy doesn’t know whose heartbeat she can hear now but it’s racing like it always is.
“I don’t deserve it,” Jen finally says, before she leans back.
It’s only a matter of seconds before she gets up and leaves, sending a half-hearted, “Goodnight, Jude,” over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner. Judy listens intently to the sound of her footsteps as she walks up the stairs.
When she goes to bed in the guest house that night, she’s humiliated to find just how ruined her underwear is. Tonight, she lets the coldness sit uncomfortably against her body. Maybe she doesn’t deserve it, either.
She finds Jen with a half empty bottle of whiskey sitting by the hot tub one night after the boys have gone to bed. Judy had been late getting home because she had a date – some sweet redhead named Carly she’d met at work who was a little younger than Judy and had insisted on taking her for drinks after her shift. It had been easy, really, talking and flirting and leaning into the feeling of being wanted, but it hadn’t felt like home. Jen had insisted she go, and for some reason that thought had played on repeat all evening.
She’d left after an hour.
“How was your date?” Jen drunkenly slurs. She isn’t looking at Judy, her eyes instead focusing intently on the water rippling beneath her feet.
“It was okay,” she shrugs, coming to sit beside Jen. After shoving off her wedges and lifting her dress up above her knees, she dips her feet into the water.
“Just okay?” Jen looks up at her this time, and Judy can tell she’s been crying.
“Yeah, it was okay,” she says again, watching Jen’s face as she digests the words. She thinks she sees a look of understanding somewhere beneath the taint of alcohol.
“What’d she do?” She hiccups before continuing, “Not woo-woo enough for you? Is it her fucking Gemini moon shit or whatever fucking bullshit?”
Judy can’t help but smile. Of course Jen knows the terminology, even when she’s drunk and angry and making fun.
“No, she’s an Aries moon like you,” she says proudly.
“I don’t know what the fuck that means, or how you know that.”
“You think I’d move into someone’s house after 2 weeks without knowing their birth chart? Please,” Judy giggles.
“My birth what?”
Judy just laughs harder, lightly kicking Jen’s foot under the water.
A quietness seems to settle over them after that, and before Judy can speak up again, before she can say something like, I really like her but she isn’t you, Jen takes a long swig out of the bottle and slams it back down beside her.
“I found a bunch of old pictures of Ted today,” she says, her voice dark and angry.
“Oh, shit, Jen.” Judy can’t help but feel a pang of guilt deep in her stomach; she suddenly wishes she hadn’t gone on the date at all. She looks so crushed, so hurt, and this anger is one she still can’t pinpoint. She doesn’t know which direction it’s facing; she doesn’t know who is on the receiving end.
“Where were they?”
“Buried at the back of my closet, stuffed in a box somewhere. I hadn’t seen them in years. I forgot they were even in there,” she says as the tears begin to fall down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Judy whispers as she reaches over to squeeze Jen’s hand. She feels the coldness seep into her own skin, and she presses her eyes closed tight. The sound of tyres against the tarmac has faded over the last few months, but she can still hear it now, quietly taunting her. She doesn’t know if it will ever go away.
“I don’t miss him anymore.”
That makes her eyes shoot open again.
“What?”
“I felt nothing, Jude. I was looking at all of these pictures of us, and I was fucking draped all over him. And I felt nothing.”
“Okay. That’s okay, Jen.”
“Is it?” Jen’s eyes are clear and luminous in the glow of the moonlight and the neon blue of the pool, but there’s something else too. It seems like an honest question, like she’s begging Judy for something. Judy swallows hard.
“I don’t miss Steve anymore, either.”
That seems to shock Jen because suddenly her eyes widen and she leans back slightly, almost as if checking to see if this Judy is really her Judy sitting right in front of her.
“You don’t?”
Judy shakes her head. She doesn’t know what to make of it when Jen smiles, because her lips curl upwards and her eyes soften, but then she’s chuckling darkly and it sends a shiver down Judy’s spine. Her gentleness is never untinged with ferocity. She feels that unmistakable heat burning between her legs again and she has to shift her position, dropping her hand from Jen’s.
“Maybe we’re both fucked up,” Jen laughs and shakes her head.
“I don’t think I care anymore.” Her own voice comes out quieter than she had intended it, but with just as much honesty.
Jen’s anger is somewhere unidentifiable tonight, but it’s still there. It’s there when she turns and pulls Judy in closer, her hands rough against her arm as she whispers into her ear, “Did you fuck her?”
It takes a second or two for Judy to realise she’s referring to her date.
“What? No!” She briefly wonders if that was the answer she wanted, or if she likes the idea of Judy with another woman. She almost changes her answer, teases her for her jealousy, but then Jen’s mouth is on her neck, teasing and sucking, and Judy thinks she might actually black out. Jen doesn’t move back until Judy knows there will be a dark purple mark there for days.
“Good,” she says.
They share a bed that night and hold each other like nothing happened.
The anger that comes hand in hand with Jen’s jealousy is the kind of anger Judy daydreams about when she has her hand tucked under the waistband of her underwear. She thinks about the hickey Jen gave her more often than she’d ever admit; she thinks about it before the shower when she catches the sight of her naked body in the mirror and she wishes Jen would mark her again, this physical evidence of her lustful violence, and she has to put her hand over her mouth to muffle the moans that echo around the bathroom as she relieves the ache for it with her fingers against her clit.
If Jen hears, she doesn’t show it.
But it creeps up again, when they’re out for dinner one evening because it’s Lorna’s birthday and she’d insisted. Jen spends the majority of the night rolling her eyes at every insult Lorna sends her way but she doesn’t say anything, and Judy thinks she needs to tell Jen just how proud she is of her growth much more often. She reaches under the table and squeezes her thigh with a comforting smile, and if Lorna notices, she doesn’t let herself worry about it.
It’s only on the way out that the hot waiter who had served their table reaches for Judy and slips her his number. He’s tall and dark-haired and Judy can’t deny that he’s attractive, so she smiles her megawatt smile and tilts her head, reaching out automatically to touch his arm as she thanks him, and if she tells him she’ll call, it’s not that she necessarily means it. Not that Jen knows that. And sure enough, as she turns around to catch up, Jen is staring at her with a mixture between hurt and fury in her eyes, and every nerve-ending in Judy’s body seems to set alight.
Lorna takes the boys to her house for the night, and Jen and Judy sit silently in the otherwise empty car as Jen’s hands wrap so tightly around the steering wheel that they almost turn white. Judy is twitching in her seat, trying to find the best position to hide the wetness that she can feel seeping through her underwear. Jen hasn’t looked at her since they left the restaurant but she knows what she’s doing, Judy can tell, because somewhere beneath the jealousy there’s a cockiness, too; she’s always been a contradiction, and Judy doesn’t know which part of her she loves the most.
As soon as they get through the front door, Jen’s hands are on her waist, and it’s different this time. Her nails dig deeper, her body presses closer, and she can’t help the moans that already leave her mouth, shameless and uncensored. It seems to only encourage Jen, who soon grabs Judy’s hand and leads them both to the kitchen where she turns her in her arms and presses her roughly against the island. Judy’s hands press firmly against the counter to steady herself, but she only presses her hips further into Jen’s body behind her.
“Who do you want, Jude?”
“What?”
“Who do you want?” She says again, and her voice is huskier this time; it almost makes Judy dizzy. When Judy’s answer doesn’t come immediately, Jen reaches to pull slightly at her hair.
“You!” Judy shouts, louder than she had intended, and Jen chuckles behind her. She sounds unaffected, but Judy knows better; even though she can’t see Jen’s face, she can envision the look in her eyes, the way her pupils are dilated, the way her chest is slightly flushed. They’ve never crossed this line before, not since the night in the hot tub, but Judy almost feels like she’s done this a thousand times before. She feels Jen’s hands exploring her body, dragging red lines down her skin through the material of her dress, and she thinks she’s never been more turned on in her life.
“I thought so,” Jen laughs again, and Judy whimpers. “You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?”
“Yes, fuck, Jen. I think about it all the time.”
“Mhm, and how do you want it?”
“I want you to be rough with me,” Judy cries, “please.”
“Oh, you’d like that wouldn’t you?” Jen leans in and whispers in her ear. She moves one hand from over her hips to between her legs, and she gently drags one finger along the wet material of Judy’s underwear. It’s not enough and it’s too much at the same time, and Judy can’t stop her hips from jerking towards Jen again.
“Yes! Yes, please, Jen,” she manages between moans as Jen focuses her attention on her clit. Before she can slip her hand underneath the fabric, she pulls away.
“Too bad.”
Judy feels the loss of stimulation with a jolt and a whine, but Jen only steps further away from her body. She doesn’t speak, she doesn’t beg, but she simply turns around, her lip caught between her teeth, and she watches as Jen looks her up and down. Judy was right, her pupils are blown wide, her face and chest are flushed a light pink, and she’s out of breath. Jen leans in, all of a sudden, and Judy’s heart is in her mouth, her whole body thrumming with anticipation, but then Jen kisses her, slow and meticulous, before she pulls back again and promptly leaves the room. She hears the sound of her bedroom door slam and she knows it’s on purpose.
Judy can’t help the way she presses her vibrator between her legs and comes with Jen’s name on her lips that night.
For a while, Jen’s anger seems to subside. She sees her therapist more over the next few months, and so does Judy, and somehow their attraction to one another becomes something inconsequential, something that gets lost in the blur of family days and work and pretending like two friends who occasionally almost fuck and share a bed is normal. Judy knows she wants more – has shared that fact with her own therapist – but she doesn’t push Jen when things have been so good between them recently.
But the calendar seems to taunt her as she watches the days wither away. She knows what day is coming up, and she has a feeling Jen is painfully aware of it, too. She’s been quieter the last few days, drinking a little too much wine (that’s something they’ve both been working on, to varying degrees of success) and turning away from her arms at night. It slowly chips away at her, piece by piece, but she doesn’t mention it. She thinks maybe if she doesn’t vocalise it, the date won’t come at all; it might simply disintegrate into the rest of the 365 days, passing by without a blink of an eye.
Of course, it doesn’t go that way.
She wakes with a dread hanging heavy over her shoulders and the same kind of guilt she carried for the first year of living with Jen – the same kind of guilt she became accustomed to as a child, taking up too much space and finding herself where she wasn’t wanted. She reminds herself as she looks in the mirror that morning that things are different now. Jen had forgiven her months ago; today doesn’t have to mean anything more than the day Jen lost her husband. It doesn’t have to mean the day she killed a man.
Jen goes out for a few hours that morning and comes back with an extra pack of cigarettes and an unmistakable smear of makeup under her eyes. The boys spend the Saturday sullen and quiet, not daring to bring up the day’s date with their mother, and Judy feels the weight of it as if it could crush her chest. It had been naive of her to think it would be any other way.
What she hadn't expected is for Jen to wrap her arms around her waist that evening as Judy makes pasta, leaning her head onto her shoulder and whispering, “Meet me in the guest house after dinner.”
She shivers, despite herself, and she can’t help the smile that works its way onto her lips. Jen’s tone is indecipherable, but it’s deep and it’s velveteen, and somehow Judy instinctively knows what that means.
They eat dinner in silence, Charlie looking up at them both every once in a while. She knows Jen has hugged them close today when Judy wasn’t there. She knows she whispered reassuring words into their shoulders and let Henry cry. The thought that she caused this family so much grief still sits uncomfortably in her chest, and before dinner finishes she has to wipe away the tears that have escaped from the corners of her eyes.
Once both Charlie and Henry have made their way upstairs, Judy turns to Jen as they clear up the dishes.
“I’m sorry, Jen. I’m so sorry.”
Jen pulls her into a hug immediately, bringing her hands to tangle in her hair as she presses her further into her body. They’re impossibly close, and Judy can feel Jen’s pulse in her neck, she can feel her heartbeat against her hand, and suddenly she’s leaning upwards, pressing her lips against Jen’s in a sweet kiss. It’s different this time, it’s softer, and there are tears still falling from her eyes as she slips her tongue into Jen’s mouth.
When Jen pulls back, something has shifted in her expression. Almost in a matter of seconds, something dark crosses over her eyes and she pulls on Judy’s hand.
“Come on,” she rasps, and she leads them to the guest house.
It isn’t soft, the way Jen presses her against the door when it closes. It slams shut with the weight of Judy’s body and she can’t even say she’s surprised, because she thinks this has been building for months now, and as Jen’s confidence grows, so does the roughness of her hands. It almost hurts when she bites down hard on her shoulder, and she relishes in it. She revels in the feeling of Jen’s anger permeating every movement she makes, every kiss and bite she places on Judy’s neck and her chest.
“Fuck,” Judy breathes when Jen pulls down the front of her dress and her bra in one swift motion. She drops her head to flick her tongue over her nipple and she bites, just enough to sting. “Please, Jen. I need you to fuck me.”
“Yeah? You want me to fuck you here?” Jen lifts her head and leans in close to Judy’s face. Her breath tickles her skin and she can’t help the way she bites her lip. She wants Jen, she needs Jen, like nothing she’s ever needed in her life.
“Yes. Anywhere.”
“Anywhere?”
Judy just about manages to nod.
Suddenly, Jen is pulling her by the hips and onto the desk next to them. Without stopping to hesitate, she lifts her until Judy is sitting atop of it, her legs instantly wrapping around Jen’s waist. It doesn’t take long for Jen to reach under her dress and pull off her underwear, letting them fall to the floor.
“Is this what you wanted, hm? When you moved in with me? Did you want me to fuck you on his desk? In his bed?” She says as she enters Judy with two fingers. For a moment, Judy almost pulls back, but then she sees the glimmer in Jen’s eyes, she sees the smirk on her lips, and she knows: she’s not actually mad at her this time, but she’s turned on by this. Judy hates the fact that it’s working.
“Oh god, fuck, Jen,” she moans and her head is tilting back, her back arching. She can hear the sound of her own wetness in the silence of the guest house and it’s obscene; everything about this feels wrong, but God, she can’t say it doesn’t also feel like everything right in the world.
“Tell me,” Jen demands.
“Yes! Oh fuck, Jen, it’s what I wanted. I wanted you to fuck me.” The words tumble from her mouth like they’re pulled from the depths of her, and she thinks they’re not untrue; she has wanted Jen from the beginning, and she can admit that now.
“You’re so good for me, baby. Are you gonna come?” Her voice is sickly sweet, and Judy knows it’s feigned. She knows Jen already sees right through her; she already knows every word that can make Judy melt.
“I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come,” she says over and over again, her voice breathy and broken. It’s embarrassingly quick, but before she knows it she can feel herself clenching around Jen’s fingers, her hips grinding down to ride out the pleasure, and Jen only fucks her harder. After the first orgasm hits, it almost instantly leads into the next – this time, Jen presses the fingers of her other hand to her clit, and Judy is keening with Jen’s name on her lips.
Before the moment can be lost, before they come to their senses and the silence creeps into every corner of the room as her post-orgasm daze wears off, Judy jumps from the desk and pushes Jen backwards onto the bed.
“Let me make you feel better than he did,” she whispers as she leans forward, pressing open-mouthed kisses to her jawline.
“I’m so wet, Jude,” Jen mumbles into her hair, “I’ve never been this wet. I can feel it.”
That only makes Judy moan into her neck, and she soon begins unzipping her jeans as Jen works at the buttons of her shirt. Their hands work with haste, as though this moment can’t come quick enough: the feeling of Jen’s wetness against Judy’s fingers, against her tongue.
Jen keeps her bra on, because not everything is perfect, because today’s been a day, but Judy enters her with two fingers, then three, and she thinks that if this makes her a bad person, it’s never felt so good.
Afterwards, lying half naked and wrapped in the sheets, Jen turns to her and says, “I meant it when I said I don’t miss him.”
Judy faces her, brushing her hair out of her face. “Yeah?”
“It’s just a shitty fucking day. How do I fucking move on when I’m supposed to feel something, and I don’t anymore?”
“You were good with the boys today,” Judy says as she moves to rest her head against Jen’s shoulder. “You’re a good mom, Jen. You’re a good person.”
“I think we both know that isn’t true.”
“Well, neither am I.” She doesn’t look up, but Jen wraps her arms around her body and begins drawing invisible patterns on her shoulder.
“I guess we’re made for each other,” she laughs.
Judy doesn’t need to nod and she doesn’t need to reply, because Jen presses a kiss on the top of her head and it feels like a mutual understanding.
Jen’s anger has always left a burn that consumes and taints, but Judy thinks she has decades worth of her own to exorcise between the sheets.
She thinks that makes them something like a perfect match.