Girl Love Happens: G&T Lesbian Romance Season One Episodes 1 & 2

  Table of Contents

  The First Time

  Gemma’s Lesbian Proclamation

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  GIRL LOVE HAPPENS

  G&T Lesbian Romance Season One: Episodes 1 and 2

  by

  T. B. MARKINSON

  Published by T. B. Markinson

  Visit T. B. Markinson’s official website at tbmarkinson.wordpress.com for the latest news, book details, and other information.

  Copyright © T. B. Markinson, 2016

  Cover Design by Erin Dameron-Hill / EDHGraphics

  Edited by Jeri Walker and Kelly Hashway

  e-book formatting by Guido Henkel

  This e-book is copyrighted and licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any forms or by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owner. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  The First Time

  “I’m going to fail!” I collapsed onto the pillows on my bed, with arms flailed out.

  Gemma, on her dorm bed with her back against the wall near the window, peered over a copy of Rubyfruit Jungle. We were both in a women’s studies class and had a paper on Rita May Brown’s lesbian coming-of-age novel due in a week. Gemma’s soft green eyes always calmed me. “No you won’t, Teeg.” I loved that nickname. Most called me Tiny T or TR, the initials of my first and middle name‌—‌Tegan Raye. Only Gemma called me Teeg. When possible, I avoided telling people my last name: Ferber. In grade school the mean kids had called me Furball.

  I grunted. Gemma always cheered me on, no matter what. We’d grown close over the past few months. During a weekly “gin and tonic Thursday” house party, which came into being after listening repeatedly to “Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms, one of our friends said, “You two belong together, like gin and tonic.”

  Jenny had added her two cents by saying, “Dude, you’re so right. Gemma is totally the gin: quietly confident and dependable and TR is the spazzy fizz.”

  Now, people referred to us as G&T. I wasn’t thrilled that Jenny viewed me as the fizz, but it was hard to argue the point considering I could be high-strung on occasion. Or so people kept telling me.

  On the portable speakers behind me, Whitney Houston belted out the line “And I will always love you.” I spied Gemma peeking longingly in my direction. The first time I had noticed, it frightened me. Now, I coveted it.

  “I haven’t been to class in over a week and tomorrow’s our first midterm.” I stared out our dorm room window where snowflakes zipped across the murky sky. The soft yellow glow of the streetlight across the road didn’t fit the stormy mood in our sleepy Colorado college town. The first of February had brought the biggest storm of the season.

  Gemma tapped a pink highlighter against her leg in time with the next song on my mixed tape: “Under the Bridge” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Her charcoal gray Cornhuskers hoodie made me smile. I wasn’t a sports person, but since meeting Gemma last August when we’d both started our freshman year I never missed one of our home football games. Hill University wasn’t in Nebraska’s division, but that didn’t stop Gemma from knowing all the top players on all the teams of our small-time conference. In Keller, her hometown, she’d been the sportswriter for the high school paper. No matter what, Gemma was always Gemma‌—‌as her ubiquitous hoodie confirmed. Even though she was attending school in Colorado, she usually wore a shirt, hat, or sweatshirt proclaiming she was a Cornhusker through and through. Her parents even mailed the Sunday paper so Gemma could keep up with her beloved state and school.

  “You always panic over exams, but then you rock them. Stay calm. Maybe you need a break. You’ve been cramming U.S. history into your brain since seven this morning.” She set her book on the floor.

  I sat up and rolled my neck from side to side. “Maybe.”

  We’d first met on the day we moved into our dorm room and discovered we’d be living together in the tiny twelve-by-twelve-foot space. Over a relatively short amount of time Gemma had become my best friend. My rock. My…

  She patted the big N on her bright red Huskers bedspread, beckoning me. I complied.

  “Here. Let me massage your neck.” Her soft hands gripped my shoulders and kneaded the tension. “You’ll be fine. You hardly attended class last semester for the first half of this course and got As on every test.” Her fingers roamed down my back. “You’re a nerd.”

  “I’m a nerd? I’m not the one who got an A-plus in Calc 101 last semester.”

  Her hands dug into my shoulder, pulling me back against perky breasts. Jasmine perfume wrapped around me like a hot towel straight from the dryer. “Don’t be mean,” she said.

  “I’m not being mean.” I swiveled my head to look into her eyes. Golden flecks glowed in her green irises. “I’m jealous. I had to take Math for Idiots and had several sessions on long division.”

  “It wasn’t that bad. Struggling with math doesn’t make you an idiot. You got As in all your classes last semester, even in math. Stop acting like you’re a nitwit.”

  I shrugged, and she pushed me away to focus on my neck once again.

  Moments later she said, “Lie down so I can work on your back.”

  A surge of heat pulsed through my body as I did as I was told.

  “Wait. Tug your shirt up a bit,” Gemma instructed in a not-so-demanding way. This wasn’t the first time she’d given me a backrub. That time hadn’t elicited any alarm bells. Weeks later, however, I noticed a tingling sensation when her hands were on my bare skin. It wasn’t until finals week last semester when I realized the throbbing sensation was sexual.

  I obeyed and then settled on my stomach with my hands above my head like I was about to dive headfirst into the deep end of a pool. Gemma wended a finger down my back. Her fingertips lingered on my scar. “Is this from the accident?” She’d seen it before, of course, but never asked. Not many knew about what had happened, and Gemma knew how embarrassed I was by what I deemed a hideous scar. When it had happened, my mother joked I was damaged goods.

  “Yeah,” I croaked. When I was a junior in high school, I volunteered to help construct sets for the drama club. Some jock had to help us after getting busted for supergluing the locks on the principal’s Ford Bronco. He had been showing off with a nail gun the carpenter left behind and shot it off multiple times into a part of the set. One of the nails crashed through the flimsy board and lodged into my back. Luckily, it missed any organs. The tiny scar made me self-conscious, though. To this day, I still hadn’t worn a bikini.

  She outlined the scar tissue with a finger. “It resembles a heart, kinda.”

  A powerful wave trembled down south. I tried to focus on something else, but could only think that Gemma Mahoney, a woman who came from such a small town in Nebraska that when she uprooted they had to adjust the number on Keller’s billboard from population 407 to 406, was straddling me. Come on, Tegan. Get it together. You have a midterm tomorrow. This was not the time to pursue the thoughts I’d been having for week
s.

  Right before winter break I had a fantastic and vivid dream about kissing Gemma. When I woke, flushed and embarrassed, I brushed it aside. It wasn’t the first dream involving a girl, but it was the first with Gemma as the leading lady. Unlike those other dreams, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. When she’d given me a backrub during finals week, I knew why I couldn’t stop dwelling on the dream. I wanted her. Wanted her bad.

  “Are you nervous for this weekend?” I asked in an attempt to distract myself. Gemma’s parents were coming to visit, and she planned to tell them she was a lesbian.

  She stopped rubbing my lower back. “Terrified.”

  En Vogue’s song “Free Your Mind” started playing. “Why don’t you play them this song and then break the news?” I said.

  She laughed. “I can picture it. Mom. Dad. I’m black.”

  I chuckled and twisted my hip to nudge her. “You’re such a dork!” We both grew quiet again. “Ya know, you don’t have to tell them during this visit. You can wait until you’re ready.”

  “I know, but it’s such a shadow always looming over me. My parents are awesome and it’s 1993. Besides, who’s to say I’ll ever feel totally ready.” Her fingers drummed up and down my back, letting loose hundreds of goose bumps.

  I nodded. I tried to imagine telling my parents I wasn’t a virgin. That would not go over well, let alone compounding it with saying I was gay. My parents, who lived forty-five minutes south of Denver, a much more liberal city than Gemma’s entire state, would not be cool with it. I imagined Mother preaching Bible verses and dousing me with holy water to exorcise the evil lesbian spirits. My father wouldn’t say anything. He never did. His silence was deafening and hurt the most.

  Gemma’s parents were sweet, although old-fashioned. Gemma was the first in the family to attend college. When I’d met her father, Cormac, one of the first things he asked was how my father tolerated me living so far away from home. I was only a two-hour drive away, half as far as Gemma’s commute. Her mother, Ava, wore clothes I was certain she’d sewn herself. We were nearing the millennium, but her folks definitely weren’t as hip as Gemma hoped. And part of me wondered if they had ever heard the term lesbian spoken aloud. The concept they most likely understood, but the word was probably never muttered in their home or town for that matter.

  The image of Gemma naked flashed in my mind. Why’d I have to crash into the dorm room yesterday right when she’d dropped her towel? We’d both been super-careful not to expose too much skin around the other. I think Gemma did because she was a self-conscious lesbian, afraid she was forcing her sexuality on me, and I did because of my scar and other insecurities. As Mom was fond of saying, I was roomy in the hips.

  Gemma didn’t talk right away about her sexuality, but after a “gin and tonic Thursday” party last October, she had confessed to me in private. The next morning, she was so embarrassed she couldn’t look me in the eye and said she’d understand if I wanted a new roommate. I told her straight away I didn’t have any issues with it. Actually…‌If only she knew, but how could she? I didn’t until recently. Not until that dream coaxed the flowering of my lesbian seed.

  “I’m sure they’ll assume some bull dyke will get her hooks in me or something. It would be easier if I had a girlfriend to introduce them to.”

  We laughed nervously over the image.

  “I have an idea.” I wiggled out from under Gemma and sat down facing her on the tiny dorm bed. “Why don’t you tell them I’m your girlfriend? They like me. That might make it easier for them.” Was I being too obvious? Was I saying, “Gemma, I like you?” without really saying it? My mother always told me I loved to tap-dance around things instead of stating how I felt.

  Gemma stared, wide-mouthed.

  “Or n-not,” I stuttered and searched for the fragments of my ego on the carpet, which desperately needed vacuuming.

  “You would do that? For me?”

  Relieved, I placed a hand on my chest and said, “Of course. Wouldn’t you?”

  She smiled awkwardly, and for the first time since meeting, I didn’t know what one of her expressions meant.

  “Do you think they’d believe us?” she asked.

  I brushed some loose strands of red hair off her shoulder. Gemma hated when hair got anywhere near her face. It was either in a ponytail or glued down with tons of hairspray. “Maybe we should practice.”

  She squinted. “Practice being girlfriends? How?”

  I avoided her eyes and watched the snow splatter the window. It was really coming down. Still not looking at Gemma, I said, “Maybe we should kiss.”

  “Kiss?”

  “Well, what if they want proof or something?” I hitched up my shoulders. That sounded asinine, but I couldn’t think of another way to get the ball rolling. Outright telling her I was attracted to her seemed too risky for me, play-it-safe Tegan.

  “I doubt my parents will demand we kiss as proof.”

  “It will help us.” I added, “With our roles, I mean.” Did she hear the desperation in my voice? Ever since that dream, I had wanted to feel her lips on mine.

  Gemma swirled away as if a ship struck by a tsunami. “Uh, I don’t know.”

  “What? Am I not your type?” I tried to feign offense and not show how much the thought wounded my heart.

  During one of our recent late-night talks, Gemma had shown me a photo of her high school girlfriend, who in my opinion was as plain as a baked potato with no toppings. Of course, that could be my jealousy speaking. The girl dumped Gemma and started dating the quarterback their senior year because she wanted a normal life. When Gemma had arrived last August, she was still heartbroken.

  “Who wouldn’t want to date you? You’re blonde, blue-eyed, and not to mention gorgeous. And you have a sexy gap between your front teeth like Madonna.” A blush infiltrated her face so easily, as if always there.

  I was desperate to feel her lips on mine, but I feared Gemma would never make a move on a “straight” girl. Tegan stop playing it safe all the time. “Come on. It’s just a kiss. One measly kiss.” I moved closer with each word. She didn’t pull away.

  Our lips met briefly, and Gemma bolted back. Her eyes told me she didn’t want to stop but felt compelled to by our friendship. Every fiber of my body was pleading for more.

  I grabbed her face with both hands and our mouths met. Gemma kept her lips closed before hesitantly letting me in. I deepened the kiss. She responded. Her arms encircled me, and we kissed. Really kissed, not for practice but because we wanted to.

  In my head I kept chanting, “I’m kissing Gemma Mahoney!”

  Her lips were much softer than the boys I’d kissed. And she didn’t immediately stick her tongue in my mouth and drool like Mitch did in the eighth grade. At first, Gemma let me take control, but then she delicately took the lead. There was passion, but not the aggressive passion I was used to with Josh, my last boyfriend. This kiss was quickly becoming the kiss to which I would compare all others.

  Gemma snapped her head back. “What are we doing?”

  I wanted to rap my knuckles on her forehead and say, “I thought it was obvious.” Instead I said, “Kissing. What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?”

  “Yeah, of course I like it. But we shouldn’t.” Her voice was soft, and lust burned in her eyes.

  “Have you thought about that? About me before?” I twirled the drawstring of her hoodie around a finger.

  It was Gemma’s turn to gaze at the snow outside. Her shoulders slumped like she had forgotten my birthday or something.

  “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to answer.”

  “I want to. But…” She laced her fingers, pulled them apart, intertwined them, and ripped them apart again until she settled on frantically tapping her fingertips together in front of her rosy lips.

  “But what?” I needed to hear her say it.

  “You’re straight. Remember?” She stared into my eyes. “You had a boyfriend un
til recently.”

  It was true. Josh, the boy I’d started dating my senior year of high school, was now going to school in Texas. When we’d seen each other over the holidays, I realized my feelings had evaporated.

  “Just because I haven’t slept with a woman, doesn’t mean I’m straight. At least completely.” I stared down at my No Fear T-shirt Gemma had given me, the non-jock, for Christmas as a joke. It proclaimed, “Second place is the first loser.” Was it a sign that this was my last clean shirt today of all days? Have no fear? Go for it? Slowly I raised my eyes to meet hers.

  “Have you thought of sleeping with a woman before?” Gemma’s pinched face prepared for disturbing news. Would it be horrible for her to find out I liked her?

  “Yes,” I said, averting my eyes again.

  “You have?” Her voice faltered some.

  I nodded.

  “Who?”

  You, ya moron.

  I said, “There was this one girl in my drama class last semester who I thought about. She looked a lot like Demi Moore in Ghost. She even had the short hair.”

  “Did you ever kiss her or anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “Have you ever kissed a woman?” she pushed.

  “You mean, besides you?” I cracked a small smile. “No.”

  She swallowed. Her hand sought mine. It was clammy, but I didn’t mind.

  “I’ve thought about you,” I confessed.

  Gemma blinked as if she had spotted a leprechaun. I didn’t know what to think, but I’d come this far.

  “Have you thought about me?” I asked.

  The nod was so slight I wasn’t sure if I imagined it. I quirked an eyebrow.

  She cleared her throat. “Yes. Yes, I have.”

  The moment I’d hoped for on so many occasions was finally happening. It was like standing on a precipice before taking a fall, and the thought didn’t scare me. Not completely.