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Melissa Schemmenti knows how to clean up.
Barbara knows this about her. She’s known it since they met, when she was still the shy new teacher and Melissa was the only one willing to ask her out for drinks after work; she had walked into that bar wearing a hideous burnt orange sweater and tights, and Melissa had greeted her in a skin-tight leather dress right out of a magazine, and Barbara’s eyes had skated across every inch of her before she remembered that she was married, now, to a nice man, and she’d left all that business behind in high school. She knew it five years ago, when they first kissed—Melissa fresh off her divorce, just starting to go to clubs again, knocking on Barbara’s door just to ask Do I look okay? Promise? She even knew it the day Melissa showed up for her and Gerald’s own divorce hearing, wearing a soft blue dress and heels, looking nervous and hopeful and in love. Melissa may be a tough-as-nails South Philly type, but she knows how to class things up.
Still, Barbara thinks that tonight may be a new personal best.
It’s the biannual staff mixer—something to get all of the faculty acquainted at the beginning of the school year—and the entire Abbott Elementary staff is in the gym, dressed in their 40k-a-year finery, sipping plastic cups of cheap red wine and eating tiny corn dogs off of hors d’oeuvres plates. Barbara has spent the last hour standing in the corner, chatting distractedly with anyone tenacious enough to approach her. After a few minutes, almost all of them get the hint: she has better things to worry about.
Namely, Melissa Schemmenti, who is leaning up against the back wall of the gym looking so delicious that Barbara is beginning to reconsider her own relationship to the divine.
It’s the dress. It’s a short, tight number, not short or tight enough to be inappropriate, but just enough that it draws the eye along her soft edges. It’s also the lipstick—bright red, making her mouth look like a smashed valentine—and the jewelry—fairly understated, gold drop earrings and a little cross that has fallen into the valley between her breasts—and her hair, which is—well, the same as always, really, but God, Barbara wants to run her hands through it. Melissa always looks good, but tonight she looks so undeniably pretty that it’s making Barbara’s heart beat in overtime. Not to mention the fact that they were planning to go home separately tonight. Took their own cars and everything.
“Are you okay, Barbara?” It’s Jacob, popping up at her elbow like an awkward sprite, his teeth pink from the wine. “You look kind of… um. Are you okay?”
It’s been three years since her divorce, since she and Melissa started doing whatever this is full-time. They’ve been keeping it private, but still, kissing her in front of the entire faculty feels just possible enough that Barbara has to press her fist to her mouth to keep from marching over there and doing it.
This cannot stand.
Barbara forces herself to wait exactly half an hour before she walks up to Melissa, her keys already in her hand, her jacket folded over one arm. “I’m thinking of heading home,” she says. “It’s almost eleven.”
“Is it really?” Melissa checks her watch. “Shit. I should probably leave, too. School night.”
“Let me take you home?”
“Oh, come on, Barb. I had one drink.”
Barbara presses a hand into the small of her back. “Melissa,” she says, very quietly, so close now that she can smell the perfume in her hair. “Let me take you home.”
Melissa laughs. It’s a short, startled, beautiful sound. “Oh,” she says.
— —
They end up leaving Melissa’s car behind. They stumble into Barbara’s empty house like teenagers, trading hungry, open-mouthed kisses, tugging at zippers to get their hands on bare skin. “Jesus, Barb,” Melissa says, flushed and breathless, already tipping her head back so that Barbara can suck on the soft underside of her jaw. “What’s gotten into you?”
“You look wonderful tonight.”
It comes out honest, not playful. Barbara will never get tired of the way Melissa’s face softens and opens when she gets a compliment like that. It makes her look, for a moment, very young, and by the time she gets it under control, rearranges her expression into something a little bit more classically Schemmenti, Barbara isn’t sure whether she wants to kiss the fear off of Melissa’s face or track down her ex-husband and smack him with her travel-size King James.
As usual, the dilemma resolves itself.
In her bedroom, she spreads Melissa out so that she’s flat on her back, leans down to kiss her neck. “Such a pretty girl,” she murmurs.
Melissa whimpers, digs her fingers into the bedspread.
“All dressed up, looking like the most beautiful thing…” Barbara draws her thumb over Melissa’s mouth, smearing the lipstick sideways, and the sight of her—Melissa, a clenched fist in a leather jacket, spread open and looking up at her with those hungry eyes—fills her with a flood of hot, fierce love, and when she speaks again, it’s soft and reverent: “I can’t believe how lucky I am.”
Melissa goes very still at that, and Barbara can’t help but laugh. She feels proud and content, feels generous—but she can’t reach Melissa’s zipper like this. “On your stomach, sweetheart,” she says, pressing one last kiss to the hollow of Melissa’s throat. “You look so pretty. I want to see you.”
“Barb?”
There is something unsteady in Melissa’s voice, and Barbara is quick to pull away from her. This happens sometimes—both of them are used to it. The first time Barbara ever took Melissa to bed like this, sweetly and tenderly, Melissa had spooked before it could get anywhere; she felt trapped, felt tricked, and Barbara had to gently turn down her attempts to start a fight while they sat half-naked in her bed.
Now, she knows to be more careful. She knows to offer tenderness, rather than assume it; she knows to hold out her hand and wait for Melissa to take it.
Melissa swallows. “Sorry,” she says finally, her voice gruff, a little embarrassed. “Needed a minute.”
“Of course. As much as you want.”
Melissa’s face and chest are blotchy pink, and she’s breathing heavily—still turned on, still wide-eyed and wanting, but vulnerable now. An open hand. It’s clear she’s trying to work out how to say what she needs. “Could you…” she starts, then stops, looking unsure of herself. “Could you maybe say it again?”
“What? How pretty you look?”
Melissa shakes her head.
“How lucky I am to have you?”
Melissa nods, chin up, as if daring her to poke fun. Barbara reaches out to push a lock of hair behind her ear. “Of course I’m lucky,” she says, in a voice that is soft but firm, allowing for no argument. “Look how beautiful you are. Look how generous. Look at how you provide for us, how you keep us all safe.” She kisses the shell of Melissa’s ear, drops her voice to a whisper. “You, Melissa Schemmenti, are funny and intelligent and good, and you love like a house on fire. Everyone at Abbott is lucky to have you in their lives. But me especially.”
Melissa lets out a shaky breath, eyes pinned to Barbara’s. “Love you,” she says, fervent as a prayer.
“I love you,” Barbara says, because despite what she might claim, she knows Melissa likes to hear it. Knows that even though they haven’t said it out loud yet, those secret years—all that sneaking around, swapping kisses in broom closets and deleting texts from her phone, because as much as she loved Melissa they both knew it wasn’t worth wrecking a marriage, wrecking a life —had left some tender spot inside her that needed to be soothed.
(Melissa, pulling on her coat in the doorway saying I never expected you to choose me, Barb, but you have to fucking choose somebody. At least give me that little bit of fucking dignity, and her, still barefoot in the living room and holding her husband’s cufflinks, saying nothing.)
“Do you need another minute?”
“No,” Melissa says, sounding strangled and half-desperate, and her fingers dig into Barbara’s hip. “No, not that. I love your love of boundaries, hon, but I’m gonna explode if you don’t fuck me.”
Barbara laughs. “Come here, pretty girl.”
— —
Melissa would never admit it, but she likes to be taken care of. She likes to be treated gently. Barbara is more than happy to do both. She spent fifteen years with a good, steady man, and Gerald was always kind to her, but she never felt the fire that she does when she puts her hands on Melissa—the hot rush of love that comes over her when she opens Melissa’s thighs and eats her, slowly and with empathy, the way they both like it.
It was a learning curve, the first time she tried this. Now, she knows exactly how to make Melissa arch and cry out, how to make her gasp and moan and whine. She pulls three shuddering orgasms out of her like a string of pearls, one after the other, fucking her through the aftershocks with her forehead pressed against Melissa’s stomach so she can feel the shift of muscle under her flesh. She nearly comes on her own, just from the revelation of touching and tasting Melissa. Each one feels like an apology—like an atonement.
“Okay, okay, I gotta stop,” Melissa says finally, turning on her side to get away from Barbara’s fingers and tongue. Her chest is heaving—the mottled flush makes it look like strawberry ice cream—and there are curls of red hair plastered to her sweaty forehead.
Barbara sits up and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I did say that you looked wonderful.”
“Nobody looks that wonderful, Barb. Jesus.”
“Do you want a glass of water?”
“Sure. And my toothbrush.” Melissa pushes herself up into a seated position, still out of breath, and shoves a hand through her hair. “And remind me to wear this dress more often.”
“Honey, I think this was reminder enough.”
Barbara can’t go back in time and fix all of her mistakes. She can’t make up for all the years they wasted on their husbands, on their reputations, on God. But for now, this—Melissa sprawled exhausted in her bed, panting and slick, and still smiling at her—feels like it might be enough.