Page 49 of XX Love Affair
They went to dinner afterward, although they didn’t speak much at all. Helena was consumed by the menu, her shopping bags, and freshening up her makeup when she didn’t think Delia was looking. It wasn’t lost on her girlfriend that Helena had taken to eating lower calorie foods now that they had been dating for a month. Is she worried about getting fat? Did she think Delia wouldn’t be attracted to her if she ate a meal? Or was she worried about not fitting into her dress that Saturday?
Delia never asked. She focused on her work emails still coming in, eating her food, and thinking about what she wanted to do to Helena once they were back at the apartment.
She had a hundred ideas. Yet when they walked in and Helena immediately began removing her clothes, Delia decided to try something.
No sex. Only being intimate in other ways.
They bathed together. Drank tea together. When Delia offered to brush Helena’s hair for her, she was given a look that suggested she had partially lost her mind. Yet Helena never said no to any of it. She was so agreeable that Delia was more annoyed than ever.
“What do you want to do?” Delia asked her as they crawled into bed. “Besides sex. Pretend it’s not on the table.”
Helena rolled onto her back. “Anything but talk.”
“All right.” Delia opened her nightstand drawer. Helena knew better than to have her interest piqued.
Sure enough, that was a deck of cards landing between them.
“You’re kidding…” Helena said.
“Nope. Your choice. Poker or Old Maid?”
“Are those the only two games you know?”
“Fine, teach me a new one.”
Delia already knew all of the two-player card games. She merely wanted to see what Helena would come up with.
War. It was always War with these girls.
The weather cooperated for Francesca Blake’s indoor-outdoor garden party. Not only was it one of the first days that spring that held steady above seventy degrees, but there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.
Helena sashayed out of the passenger seat while Delia dealt with the valet. Once the car was well on its way, Delia rendezvoused with Helena in front of the Blakes’ urban home and approached the doorman in his penguin suit.
“Ms. Delia Benoist and her guest, Ms. Helena Pierce.” The man’s voice carried so naturally that Delia couldn’t even say he yelled their names down the hallway and to the enclosed garden in the middle of the city. Already, the scent of spring flowers hit Delia in the face. She had taken care to not wear perfume that day. It was too much.
Unlike Helena, who had gone out of her way to spray on a new musky scent that both complemented and established a rivalry with all of the allergy-generating buds in the garden. Delia’s nose itched as she accepted a glass of Champagne and a mint. Helena followed, her hand gracefully grasping the flute as she and Delia navigated the cramped living quarters and emerged in a palatial rendition of fairy-tale storybook parties.
The Blakes, especially Francesca, suffered no peasantry. The best China and softest napkins were laid out on the finely covered tables dotting the garden. Guests were invited to sit and enjoy their drinks and hors d’oeuvres, which included vegetarian offerings like spinach artichoke bites and more eclectic finger foods like mussels steamed in white wine and chiles. Everyone was offered endless glasses of Champagne, but there was also seltzer water, iced tea, and freshly squeezed orange juice for those who wanted a mimosa. Helena stuck with slowly nursing flutes of Champagne while Delia swapped to tea once her first serving was gone. So were two of the delicious mussels offered to her on a silver platter. She nearly lost it when one of her favorite garden party foods, tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise and crustless Japanese shokupan, appeared.
There weren’t many people she knew here since many of them were over the age of fifty and were primarily friends with her mother. Since the divorce and Eustace’s subsequent remarriage to a young, tarty thing, Delia’s mother had eschewed many of the parties she used to enjoy so much. “The judgment makes me sick,” she had explained to both Delia and Lemon, “don’t they already know I’ve been humiliated enough?”
So, women were more likely to say hello to Delia than the other way around, but only because they recognized her more easily. Some, including the snooty and aloof Isabella Warren, demanded to know Helena’s pedigree only to be promptly disappointed when it was the military.
But that was how Helena was. She already fooled so many of these matriarchs and other older women that she was part of their crowd. Clearly, with a dress from The Crimson Dove, she was someone’s granddaughter. If not an heiress, then a respectable child who graduated from Winchester Academy and currently attended Harvard or Yale. How could she be a simple lower middle-class girl from Olympia? And how could she be here with… Delia? Wasn’t she a lesbian?
Oh.
That was the look on most women’s faces when they realized Helena was Delia’s girlfriend. Dating her. Sleeping with her. Doing that thing that had caught so many well-to-do granddaughters by storm. Jokes declare that the lesbian plague has taken our humble city by a chokehold. Worked for Delia. The more women like Helena migrated here because of the rumors, the easier it was to get laid.
Which was something she thought a lot about while sitting with her date at a table, fetching each other more drinks, and making small talk with other guests.
To think, I rejected her last night. Delia had been out to prove a point, and Helena had been surprisingly amiable. How much is that her, and how much of that is her keeping me happy? Who was the real Helena Pierce, college co-ed who was barely old enough to be seducing people in the naughtiest nightclubs around?
She rarely talked about herself. She mentioned having no siblings, distant parents with military backgrounds, and being the captain of her high school championship team. But who was she, really? What were her dreams? Her aspirations? Did she want to get married one day? Have kids? Or was she permanently stuck in the cycle of looking for validation in other people’s beds?
The more they spent time together, the more Delia hated herself for attempting to piece together Helena’s personal puzzle.
Something made you like this, sweetie. She slipped her hand over Helena’s knee, parting right through the slit in her maxi dress to make the most of that sly maneuver. Nobody else could see. Not with guests bypassing them to take photos of the gardenias blooming by their table. What, the jasmine wall behind us isn’t enough? Delia’s nose was now immune to the smell.