The women lay face to face in the wide bed. Pillows seemed to nestle them together in the middle in a soft protection against the stress of the day, Gia placed her hand on Angela’s cheek in assurance.

“You? You won’t go?” Angela’s words were halting and cautious. Too many promises they both made with every intention of fulfillment had been rudely shoved aside by the world in which they dwelt, but sometimes to care little, come what may, indeed cares more than enough.

“I will never leave you,” Gia said even as she began to kiss Angela’s tears away. Loss was no stranger to their home. But grief and sadness had been shadowed by hope and joy. Where one should have been, two now loved and lived.

“May I?” Gia’s smile was barely there, a testimony to her desire to see the best for Angela seeking not her own need. But where condemnation once resided in Gia’s heart, mere deferential love bloomed. She did not need to set her own desires aside, since she and Angela had sought the best for each and so fulfilled their own in blessing for the other. Gia’s hand strayed slowly down Angela’s face to caress graceful neck and shoulder before falling softly upon the cleavage that seemed to display Angela’s breasts.

And even as her attention intensified, she nearly missed the soft scrape of her mate’s hands on her own nipples. Their caresses seemed to cause a start in both, as if both electric and soothing at the same time.

“May I?” Angela asked in her own need to please. The need that is not urgent or compulsive but more attention born of the mutual desire to share and grow and love more fully than each preceding time. Gia nodded as Angela reached under the band of Gia’s panties and touched her softly, evoking yet another start.

“I love you,” Angela said with a gleefully tearful smile.

“I always have, and I always will. I…” She broke off and buried her face in Gia’s breasts, sobbing.

“I miss him sometimes,”Gia half-frowned, almost in shame over the distant and recent past.

“But he’s quite content where we are now,” she said as her gaze fell upon Angela’s hands.

“You don’t mind,” Angela said, almost echoing in hindsight what permission they both now sought at that very moment.

“I think.” Now Gia’s words were halting as shame overtook her. Angela placed the index finger of her other hand against Gia’s lips. It is said never to speak ill of the dead, but at times, many in fact and even in awkward places, it is a good thing to speak well of the dead. And Angela had always loved that Gia had a past with a past love.

“Dee would tell you that you are who you are no matter what anyone has ever told you” Gia went to protest, but Angela shook her head in a soft ‘no.’

“We loved you. She loved you then, and still loves you from above. And I love you now. I love who you were. I love who you are becoming. And we will always love, you and I.” She cupped Gia’s chin and kissed her gently. Permission recalled. Permission repeated. Permission bestowed. Gia began to sob, but the tears the that streamed across her face and down Angela’s were no longer shameful but just as powerful as any moment of life and love they would ever know.

And they kissed and kissed and kissed.

Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50
composed by Gabriel Fauré
Duo Rosanna is Anna Comellas (cello)
and Rosalind Moussa (guitar).