Archive of Our Own

 

The first thing Tiana notices about the woman is that she’s alone.

Single ladies sitting at the tables during lunch hours—usually holding a book or a newspaper in one hand and a cup of café au lait in the other—is a familiar sight, but lunch ended hours ago. Dinner brings out a different sort of customer: the businessman and his clients, the husbands and wives, the men with their mistresses. It also attracts the sort of woman her mother might shake her head over and condemn as a painted cat (if she were feeling saucy) or Naveen would nod to and poetically label a soiled dove (if he were feeling solemn).  Either way, she’d roll her eyes with a smile and get back to work, quickly forgetting there’d been a distraction at all.  

 

Tiana’s Place was rapidly becoming the premiere restaurant in New Orleans and she barely had time to keep on top of running it, let alone to gossip about its patrons.

 

Its part of the reason the woman keeps capturing her attention. Even though most of the pieces fit, she’s not one of the fancy women Tiana sees wrapped in silk and Carmeuse. With painted red lips and hard knowing faces. She’s got on stained brown trousers with suspenders over a white t-shirt. She’s dressed like the boys Tiana sees on the dock early in the morning when she comes to open the restaurant and begin another long day. The woman hasn’t glanced up once from the club soda she’s been nursing for almost an hour now. She’d even turned away a Planter’s Punch from one of the richest men in the city and if she were the kind of woman Tiana thought she was, the girl would’ve taken that drink.

A loud burst of laughter pulls Tiana’s gaze away and a smile lifts the corners of her mouth at the look of sheer joy painted across Lottie’s features. Usually, Naveen or her mother comes in to help but they’re not here tonight. Her mother’s older now and too tired to come in everyday and Naveen is still a prince with duties that have called him back to Maldonia but her old friend was more than happy to help.  Lottie nods at something a woman at the table says before looking up and wagging her fingers in Tiana’s direction. She returns the gesture, spins on her heel and is about to make sure everything’s going smoothly in the kitchen when she checks the last seat and finds the woman sitting there staring back.

She stops short, can’t tear her gaze away. The woman has all the hallmarks of being pretty (long dark hair, wide eyes, long neck decorated with a strange looking piece of seashell jewelry) but Tiana wouldn’t describe her that way. Striking would be a better word.  She’s all sharp lines, slash of a dark red mouth and a gaze so piercing Tiana wants to look away. She doesn’t.

 

Tiana feels something warm beginning to grow low in her abdomen. Something very much like what happens when Naveen bends his head and kisses her just behind the ear. When he touches her at the small of her back…

The woman’s eyes narrow and she purses her lips before they begin to spread into a grin—

“Princess!”

Lottie’s much-loathed nickname for her said so close to Tiana’s ear makes her jump. “Oh my gosh!”

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes, pulling her into a quick hug. “I didn’t mean to scare you but I’ve been calling forever! You were staring off into space like you were hypnotized or something.” She starts to look over Tiana’s shoulder but she grabs Lottie’s arm and turns her around. Something inside of her is frightened at thought of her friend seeing the woman too.

“What’re you—“

“What do you need, Lottie?”

“Oh, well…“ she goes off on some idea she has to bring in more of her daddies friends and to put this place on the map but Tiana is only half listening. When she finally builds up the courage to glance back toward the seat at the end of the bar, the woman is gone.

—

She’s the last one, as usual, at the restaurant and is busy locking up when someone off to her right speaks.

“I love it here.”

Tiana turns toward the voice quickly and the woman from earlier is leaning against the wall a few feet away from her. She’s staring across the street at a man and a woman arguing fiercely outside of a bar.

“It’s so different than where I’m from. There’s so much life.”

Tiana finishes locking up and watches the brunette from the corner of her eye as she stares at the couple arguing. Two men come outside seconds later and break them up, laughing as they drag them back into the club. Then she turns to Tiana who quickly places her gaze elsewhere, she can feel the woman’s stare on the side of her face but she doesn’t turn to meet it.

She wants to ignore her, to just walk on and forget this woman ever came into her restaurant but something’s holding there. A string, pulled taught but unbreakable, between them. She has that wild urge to run again, to go to the small home she shares with Naveen, curl up in their bed and not leave it until he disembarks from the ship that will bring him back to her. Then there’s a gentle touch on her elbow and Tiana comes face to face with the most beautiful pair of violet eyes she’s ever seen. The bustling street they’re standing on fades away. Her memories, her family… none of it means anything. All Tiana can see is her. “Where did you come from?”

The woman laughs knowingly. Studies her face and lets her thumb drift down to Tiana’s wrist. “Some place extremely boring,” she drawls, exerting more pressure against the thin skin. “Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Home?” She questions, looking back toward the street longingly. “How can you sleep with all of this around you? Aren’t you afraid you’ll miss something?”

“Anything I need to know I’ll hear on the news. Everything else is none of my business.”

The woman looks surprised at first and it makes Tiana smile. Then she begins to laugh, a low musical sound that turns over and grows like a wave. Keeps going, becomes the sort of cackle the witch in the Halloween play that would keep her up nights as a child made. It’s a strange noise that makes her frown, and raises the hair on the back of her neck.  She clutches her purse tighter and moves back a step.

“I think I’m going to go on now,” she says, trying to cover her hesitancy. “You have a good night, alright.” The woman crosses her ankles and leans against the wall. Pulls out a small cigarette case and a lighter. “I’ll see you around.”

The woman still doesn’t respond, just looks at her with a toothless grin. Tiana turns her back and walks slowly until she rounds a corner. Now that she’s out of the woman’s sight, she tugs her coat tighter and picks up her pace but that pull, that string connecting her to a total stranger, holds tight.

—

She’s somewhere between half-awake and half-asleep when she hears a knock on the door.  Tiana’s drifted off in the chair in front of their fireplace again and Naveen’s come to wake her up, to walk her to bed. There’s another knock then and Tiana sits up straight, she remembers then that that can’t be true. That her husband is out of the country now and neither her mother nor her best friend would show up in the dead of night if it wasn’t something serious.

She’s suddenly wide-awake, on her feet and opening the door. “What—“ When she meets a pair of violet eyes and a curious face, Tiana stops cold.

“Royalty lives here?”  The woman from the bar asks with a slightly turned down mouth as she steps around Tiana and into the small house without an invitation. The question should get Tiana’s back up but she’s too busy staring after the other woman disbelievingly.

“What are you doing here? How do you know where I live?”

She turns on her heel and looks at Tiana like it should be obvious. “Don’t look so surprised. The people here love to make outsiders feel welcome and there’s nothing they like to talk about more than the local girl who caught the eye of a prince.”

She closes the door behind her guest with a little more force than necessary and crosses her arms over her chest. “Why are you here?”

She runs her thumb along her bottom lip and tilts her head to the side. “Why do you think I’m here?”

Tiana starts to answer more than once but no words leave her mouth.

“Come on,” the woman says lowly, a mischievous glint in her eye, “take a guess.”

She shakes her head but the woman doesn’t look away. She stares at her, waits for an answer and Tiana feels that warmth from earlier in the night spreading through her once again. “You have to leave now.” She starts to move towards the door when her guest picks up a photo from the bureau behind the couch and falls into the chair Tiana had just gotten out of.

She can’t see it from where she is now, but Tiana knows the picture well enough to describe it anyway. It’s the one of Naveen out in the street in front of Tiana’s Place. They’d still been renovating then and his white t-shirt was wet with sweat. He hadn’t wanted to take a picture so it’s one of the few photos’ she has of him without a practiced movie star grin. He seems real in it. More present than he ever is in most photography. It’s her favorite.

“Where’s your husband now?”

“Um,” Tiana shakes herself out of the memory. “He went home” She narrows her eyes, “like you should.”

The brunette chuckles a little but makes no move to get up. “He’s handsome,” she says lowly and Tiana clears her throat before shoving her hands in her pockets.

“I’m aware.”

That gets a full-fledged laugh out of her. “Don’t you ever worry?”

“About what?”

“About what a handsome man like that’s getting up to all by his lonesome.”

Tiana stands to her full height and looks down at her uninvited guest with derision. “What are implying?”

“Why are you always asking questions you already know the answers to?”

“Why do you think it’s okay to force your way into strangers’ homes and comment on their marriage?” The woman sinks further back into the chair and shrugs delicately. That simple gesture, more than anything else she’s done today, gets her goat. Her lips thin into a flat line. “Get out of my house.”

The woman simply looks at her.  “You haven’t answered my question.”

“I said get out!”

Her words hang in the air for a moment, vibrating between them, as the grin falls from her guests face and the pink in her cheeks dulls to a chalky white. Tiana steps back, all her previous fire extinguished.

“And I asked you a question you never bothered to answer.” She stands and returns the frame to its place on the bureau. “Do you ever worry?”

For the first time since Tiana saw her, the woman isn’t trying to make eye contact and she can feel fear—cool and terrifying—wash over her. “Why are you—“

“Just answer the question,” she replies flatly and she seems bigger suddenly. As though she’s taking up more space than she was a moment prior though Tiana can see with her very own eyes that the woman is still as slight as she ever was. She’s still showing Tiana her back but she can see the woman breathing deeply, slowly. “Answer me.”

“Yes,” she answers quickly and with more honestly than she’d intended. “Sometimes I—“

“What?” She asks and suddenly the woman’s directly in front of her, taking her wrist again like she did outside of the restaurant and Tiana’s never felt more breakable. “Tell me everything,” she whispers. “I want to know every secret you have.”

“I’m afraid that one day he’ll get on one of those big boats home and never come back to me.” She’s never said those words out loud before and it makes them real. It scares her, like they’ll carry on the wind and make it all the way to Maldonia. As though he’ll somehow hear her. “That he’ll wake up from whatever this is and want to be the prince he’s supposed to be.”

The woman steps closer until they touch at hips and breasts and when she looks at her, really looks at her, it makes her think of the first night—of every night—with Naveen. The way his desire for her skin and her smell and her mouth and her touch and the slick flesh between her thighs both embarrasses and enflames her.

She tries to pull back her guest won’t let go. She’s looking off to their side at a picture of Lottie and Naveen, drunk and smiling at her wedding reception.  “What are their names?”

That feeling she got in the restaurant when Lottie almost saw this woman comes over her again and she knows she shouldn’t tell her their names. That she’ll regret it. That they’ll all suffer for it.

“I’m sure one of the oh so helpful people who led you here, spilled the beans on that too.”

The woman’s hold tightens incrementally. “What are their names?” she asks again and her voice sounds lower than it did forever. The violet eyes Tiana so admired have gone dark and inky and her teeth… she turns her face away. She can’t look. She won’t look.

“Naveen and Charlotte,” she breaks, terrified and not knowing why. “Their names are Charlotte and Naveen.”

“Lottie,” she coos and her voice sounds normal again. When Tiana turns back, her eyes are still the most beautiful things she’s ever seen. “That’s what you called her.”

“I’ve called her that since we were children.”

The woman’s hand is on the side of her neck now and Tiana struggles to draw breath but she can’t break away. Even though the one thing Tiana’s always had is her will. She looks at the woman again, her eyes a bottomless swirl of something empty, something without end. It takes everything inside of her to look away when it comes to her suddenly. It’s almost unforgiveable that it took this long: Facilier and his magic. This woman could be one of his shadows sent to finish the job he started but he’d never been able to make her feel this way. Had never been capable of capturing her so thoroughly even when he’d offered everything, everything she’d ever wanted, she’d still been able to say no.

Her guest watches her think and Tiana can’t even begin to fathom what this woman truly is. How powerful she must be. “What’s your name?”

Her tongue pokes between her teeth before disappearing back into her mouth. “It’s a secret, but since you’ve shared one of yours, I’ll share one of mine.” Tiana is a little taller and the woman has to get to her tiptoes to reach her ear.  Her breath is warm against the side of her face.

“Vanessa.”

Vanessa

It crawls around the edges of Tiana’s mind and when she meets her eyes again, it takes root. Vanessa.

She kisses her then and Tiana doesn’t push her away. She doesn’t want to—the thought never even crosses her mind—and when Vanessa undresses her, she helps. When Vanessa begins to pull off her own clothes—everything except the seashell tied around her neck with a string. It reminds her of something else. Another necklace someone else wore but that she can’t quite place because she’s too absorbed in watching Vanessa. Then, when she walks back toward the bed, Tiana forgets she was thinking of anything at all and follows as gently as a kitten.

She can feel her touch everywhere—behind her neck, in her hair, spreading her legs, holding her down, sliding inside of her with something too thick to be a single digit but too smooth to be anything else. She can hear rustling just behind her, something big, and Tiana tries to stop thinking, groans and bears down on it. It feels good. It feels wrong too and—secretly, shamefully—that makes it even better.

“Lottie,” Vanessa mutters again and a memory Tiana rarely lets herself sink into pushes it’s self to the forefront of her mind. She’s fourteen years old, sitting on the floor of Lottie’s enormous closet (He asked me to the Rex Ball and daddy said I could go!) feeling happy for her friend and envious at the same time of how easily things came to her.

(“What if he wants to… you know?”

“Don’t let him!” Tiana replies indignantly.

Lottie raises her gaze slowly, looks at her friend from under lowered lashes. “But what if I want to?”)

Neither of them has ever kissed anyone before.

Tiana can still see her leaning forward with a warm smile, can still feel Lottie’s shy tongue slipping into her mouth, and remember the waxy taste of her lip color, the feel of her hand against the side of her breast.

(“Like that, Tia? Does that feel good?”)

Tiana’s a good person, a hard worker and she tries, more than anything else, to be fair, but she’s still human. She groans and Vanessa laughs darkly, like she knows even though Tiana’s never told a soul what happened that afternoon. How Charlotte has always been able to talk her into anything. Always, except once.

The svelte woman she brought home is impossibly heavy against her back now, slick with sweat and a smell that makes her think of the coast of Maldonia; the briny scent of the ocean and Naveen on his knees in front of her lifting her leg over his shoulder.

She’s shaking, terrified and wanton. (“I won’t take you, not before the wedding,” he pledges, “but you won’t say no to this will you, my dear heart?”) He says it like it’s a question but Tiana knows it isn’t, it’s a declaration. A promise.

(“You won’t deny me a simple taste of paradise, will you?”)

He’s the one thing Tiana wouldn’t hand over. The one thing she held onto with both hands. Then Tiana shivers because suddenly—she knows it won’t last but for this moment it’s enough— she doesn’t feel guilty anymore. She doesn’t feel sorry for wanting Charlotte’s sweetness and need to please. For being excited by Naveen’s shamelessness, his yearning to experience every part of her. For being attracted to this stranger’s darkness: Vanessa’s mouth and Vanessa’s eyes. She wants it all. She deserves it.

Vanessa’s voice is a rolling growl. “Open up darling,” she whispers, and Tiana can feel her lips against her temple. She shivers with something more than pleasure. She wants to roll over, to look at Vanessa, to touch her back but Tiana makes sure to keep her eyes shut. She knows without understanding why that this will all be over if she opens them.

“Come on,” Vanessa says and Tiana gets up onto her knees, spreads her thighs wider and Vanessa’s so far inside of her now it almost hurts but she still demands more. “Give it all to me,” she orders, in the deep timbre that makes something low in Tiana’s belly flutter and unfurl.  That makes her want—need—to obey. “Let me in.”

Outside, thunder cracks overhead.

 

—

When Tiana startles awake, she can hear the steady hoof beat of rain and a man forecasting flash floods in a serious voice on the radio she doesn’t remember turning on. Vanessa is gone. She stays still; listening for any sounds in the small house, and hears nothing. A feeling she doesn’t want to examine begins to grow in her chest as she tries to sit up, winces at the pull between her legs and takes a breath before gingerly getting to her feet.

Her houseguest is gone and that’s for the best, she tells herself. No awkward morning after, no need for Tiana to look her sin in the face. She could almost believe it never happened at all and after she puts on the kettle, takes a warm soak, eats some breakfast and—with the way the weather’s looking—has a much-needed day off from the restaurant—it would almost be true.

She’s on her way to the bathroom when the backdoor opens and Tiana turns to see Vanessa standing there. She’s completely nude—hair soaking wet and plastered to her face, standing in a steadily growing puddle of water. She worries if the neighbors have seen her. Then they lock eyes and without realizing it, Tiana’s counting how many days they have together until Naveen gets back. She’s thinking of ways she can get Lottie and her mother to stay away from the house.

Vanessa saunters toward the bed, pulls the quilt her grandmother sewed for Tiana’s 16^th birthday off it and wraps it around her shoulders. “It’s so cold. I’m not used—“ she stops short and asks instead. “Did you think I had gone?”

“Yes.”

She moves toward the living area and sits on a chair. Cuddles further into the blanket and watches Tiana curiously. “Did you want me to be gone?”

“Yes—no… I’m not sure.”

Vanessa laughs at her confusion and licks her lips. Reaches back to squeeze the water out of her hair onto the floor. Her behavior should annoy Tiana, but it doesn’t. She hardly even notices it. “I love the rain when I’m up here.”

She thinks that’s a strange way to phrase it but doesn’t question her. She knows now that it won’t be answered anyway. “They’re saying it’s going to flood. There’s a hurricane warning—“

“Even better.”

“I was going to make breakfast,” she says pointing back toward the small kitchen and mentally saving the bath for later. “Just some grits and bacon. Any requests?”

“No. That sounds great,” she answers softly. Yawning and curling her feet up under her as she shuts her eyes. Tiana watches her for a moment, then turns back to the kitchen as she pulls out the pan, and the rest of the things she’ll need to make them a meal. She walks to the radio, turns the knob and doesn’t stop until she hears music.

This is wrong, she knows it with everything in her but she doesn’t feel it. Her conscience—the always present sometimes annoying thing—hasn’t piped up since Vanessa touched her and it’s still silent this morning. She tries to force herself to feel something: regret, guilt, sadness… but all she can muster is contentment.

She still loves Naveen, that has never been and will never be up for debate, but she’s beginning to believe that she can have this too. That she can have these few days with Vanessa and it won’t interfere with her other life, her real life in the restaurant with her husband and her mother and her best friend. That she’ll be able to live with this transgression and the more she cooks, the lighter her heart feels.

This isn’t real. This woman has cast a spell on her and by the end of this hurricane, she’ll be long gone. Tiana will have her family and this will all be a half forgotten dream. A song she loves comes on the radio and as she dishes the grits and bacon onto two plates as she begins to sing along.

She turns, reaching over the bar for two glasses, when she sees the woman—Vanessa—staring back. Just like last night. Her gaze filled with things Tiana can’t begin to decipher. “I’m sorry. Am I too loud?” She asks lowly, her voice husky with sleep and other things.

“No,” Vanessa answers, staring at her intensely, raising the hairs on the back of her neck and bringing her mind back to the sharp teeth she’s no longer sure she actually saw the night before; to the dark eyes and the inhumanly still body sitting in her favorite chair. Then Vanessa looks away, stretches lazily before meeting her gaze again and she’s different now.

Vanessa’s skin is flushed and dewy, her eyes warm and welcoming and Tiana feels her breath catch. There’s nothing she wants more in this moment than to cross the space between them and kiss her again.

“Keep singing,” Vanessa purrs, fingering the seashell around her neck, her mouth curling up into a secret smile. “You have such a beautiful voice.”