“I do.”
“Then kiss me, Birdsong.”
Rowan took a moment to savor the glimmer of the golden specks in her best friend’s hazel eyes. She needed to commit that sight to memory before she did the same for the feel of her lips. Juniper parted those lips, and Rowan mirrored the action as she leaned in closer. She watched Juniper’s eyelashes flutterclosed before hers did too. She positioned her lips between Juniper’s and held her breath as she softly pressed them together. The warm, satiny feel of Juniper’s lips interlocking with hers was beyond anything she’d spent her summer imagining. The yielding, the surging, a summer of pining born out of a lifetime of pure platonic love, and then suddenly of the only love she could ever imagine being hers.
Breath unsteady, their bottom lips stuck together momentarily as they pulled back, reluctant to leave each other as if they had found their new home. Faces inches apart, Juniper reached up to gently graze her fingers against the skin where Rowan’s collarbone met her neck. Rowan’s hands found Juniper’s waist to pull her closer, and she marveled at the soft, pliable skin gliding under her fingertips. Rowan’s heart beat in her throat at the eagerness of Juniper’s lips pressing back into hers, kisses coming one after the other until she was pretty sure she’d never be able to breathe again. They kissed over and over again, and once more before Juniper leaned back.
“That was…” Juniper trailed off.
“That was what?” Rowan nervously filled the silence.
Juniper smiled. “Like really good.”
Juniper hopped back onto the truck bed, placing her hands between her slightly spread thighs to lean forward and smile even harder.
“Again?” She asked.
Rowan knew the blush on her cheeks was apparent. She could tell in Juniper’s demeanor. She had always known exactly how and how much to push Rowan to get her to open up, experience things she might otherwise be too shy to do. It was one of her favorite things about her.
“Yeah, again.” She confirmed. Over and over again, she hoped.
She swallowed hard as the realization of their new positioning hit her. Was she really about to slide between the legs of her best friend? Before she had a chance to second guess herself, she felt a sharp tug on the drawstring of her basketballshorts that propelled her waist forward.
“I’m too short to keep leaning up like that. Plus, I like you better here, like this.”
“Oh my god Junie,” she breathed out against her lips before they crashed back together again.
Juniper’s hands shifted to cup her face as she changed the angle of their kiss and used her tongue to push Rowan’s mouth open. Rowan started to panic about what to do with her own hands. While her tongue was busy being led through a series of movements completely new to her, her hands were currently gripping into the grooves of the tailgate beside Juniper’s thighs, white knuckling the plastic, itching desperately to do something else. What she wouldn’t give for even an ounce of the confidence Juniper had in this moment. But the moment she felt legs wrap around her waist to hook against her lower back, her hands shot to grip Juniper’s hips instead. Fuck, she loved those hips. She had watched Juniper slide in and out of tiny shorts all summer, revealing even smaller bikini bottoms that caused her to war with her own eyes over whether they should look or get lost.
Her stiffness fell away as she melted into the girl she loved in front of her. So many other thoughts flashed through her mind as she slid her hands up, gripping Juniper’s waist to further arch her body into hers.
I love you. I don’t want to leave you to go to school 800 miles away. I wish you could come with me. I wish this could last forever. I wish I was braver like you.
???
Juniper hadn’t quite mastered the ability to not throw accelerant on an already blazing fire, so the fact that she already had her legs wrapped around her —best friend!— mere minutes after sharing their first kiss seemed like a natural progression. The fact that her shy best friend wasreciprocating by forcing her hips into hers was much more surprising to her.
She knew she had been preening that summer, and she was pretty sure Rowan had been taking notice. The first time she noticed something different was when she tried on two new swimsuits she’d gotten at the general store on the Rez. She’d saved up money from dancing powwow competitions in the spring and watched the clothing section of the store like a hawk ready to pounce when they released the summer stuff. If she weren’t quick enough, all the good swimsuits would get bought up, leaving her with the frumpy out-of-style swimsuits she was determined to never have to wear again. Her boobs had grown exponentially that year, and she was ready to show them off.
She bought four swimsuits, but she knew she could really only afford two. When she stripped her shirt and bra off to get Rowan’s opinion on which ones to keep and which ones to return, she noticed a shift of uncomfortableness from where she sat on the edge of her bed. She leaned down to dig in her bag to get the first one, the hot pink string bikini she was most excited about, and stood up to catch Rowan shifting her eyes quickly from her chest to a spot on the floor. They had seen each other naked plenty of times before, but Juniper knew this felt different.
Juniper also knew she could be a little shit sometimes, so from that moment on, she kept finding ways to test the waters of Rowan’s attraction. She hadn’t come to terms with exactly how she felt about this changing dynamic, but she knew she liked the heated gaze directed at her when Rowan thought she wasn’t paying attention.
That’s when she lost her own game, when she came to realize just how much she liked Rowan’s muscled shoulders and arms, the way her stomach flexed when they stripped down to sports bras and shorts to shoot hoops at Rowan’s house, the way Rowan’s gentle and thoughtful demeanor always made her feel safe. Juniper’s body had often been a siteof pain, rejection, and trauma at the hands of others; with Rowan, it was a site of joy, respect, adoration, protection, and what she secretly hoped it could be, pleasure. The realization that she had always felt cherished and protected so completely by one person throughout a lifetime of pain from those who were actually supposed to love and protect her stopped her in her tracks that day. From that moment on, she saw her future align fully with that one person.Herperson. Rowan.
“This is mine now,” she teased Rowan by waving the baseball cap she’d swiped from her head in front of her before putting it backwards on her own head.
“Junie,” Rowan sighed out with a smile.
Juniper hopped back down from the truck.
“What? I want to keep this with me while I’m at school. I’ll sit it on top of my computer monitor so it stares down at me as a reminder of all the things you’d tell me.” Juniper shifted her tone to one of fake authoritativeness. She shoved one hand against her hip and wagged her finger in the air dramatically. “Junie, do your homework! Junie, study for your exams! Junie, the school is gonna see your search history!”
Rowan shook her head and laughed. “Please don’t use the internet at school for that.”
“See!” Juniper accused, but then she smiled back. “I’m just happy to be able to use the internet at all!”
“Same,” Rowan agreed, with a smile that could split her face in half.
