Lying Under the Moonlight by Bailey Grams

“Are you sure we’re allowed to be here?”

The other girl hesitated as they crawled through the thick bushes.

“Of course!” Robin said with a decisive nod, “Don’t worry about it! Mr. Gomez loves me. Besides, he’s out of town anyways.”

Robin had always been a good liar, and this was no exception. Or maybe it was because nothing she said had been a lie, strictly speaking. Mr. Gomez did love her, and he really was out of town. This just wasn’t his house anymore.

She tried not to dwell on it too much - it’d only make Jamie nervous if she knew they were most definitely trespassing. So, Robin just shrugged it off and nudged Jamie forward the last few inches through the hedge. Only problem was instead of moving on, Jamie had leaned back to free her jacket from where it had snagged on a wayward branch. Robin expected to gently guide the two of them forward, but there was no stopping her simple “nudge” from turning into a championship tumble, Robin’s momentum barreling her onwards until she practically tackled Jamie into the small clearing. Their foreheads made contact first, banging together with a dull thud that rattled loudest in Robin’s ears before Jamie’s back hit the tall grass and sent an echo of the collision up through Robin’s chest.

Robin giggled through a groan and opened her eyes slowly only to catch her breath at the sound of Jamie giggling back.

Now that was a sound that Robin needed to hear again. And she fully intended to, but there was something much more pressing at hand. Jamie’s lips were right there.

“Ouch,” Jamie said, a smile in her voice, “do you think the grass is gonna stain my shirt?”

“Of course not,” she lied offhandedly. She hadn’t even meant to do that one, she was just caught up in the way Jaime’s soft, button nose bumped her own, in the amber sparks in Jamie’s eyes, in the fact that her lips were right there. And they looked soft. So soft. All she had to do was lean forward a bit more….

BANG.

A screen door hitting the wall. Robin’s head hitting a chest as she ducked. The gasp of breath from Jamie’s beautiful, perfect lips at the impact. The jingle of a collar.

“Okay Stella, you better do your business before The Bachelor comes back on. I didn’t pause it so you’ve gotta be quick.”

With her head on Jamie’s chest, she could more than hear the other girl’s heartbeat, fast. She could feel it. She could taste it. It was inside of her and out. And Jamie’s hands were in her hair, on the nape of her neck. Squeezing reflexively, pulling Robin close, it was clearly brought on by fear and adrenaline, but behind her eyelids Robin could picture a whole future consumed by tiptoe tingles playing games across her skin in time with the brushing of Jamie’s gentle hands.

“I thought you said the man who lived here was gone!” Jamie’s voice hissed in Robin’s ear, disrupting the tingling-tag to trigger a gooseflesh avalanche plunging down past the shell of Robin’s ear, along the side of her neck, all the way down her arms.

“Hm? Ah, he is. That’s probably just the person he got to dog sit for him. Don’t be scared, it’s only a little chihuahua.”

There was no doubt this one was a lie. Mr. Gomez never owned a dog, said they were all bark and teeth and poop and a waste of money on food. But the Staton’s who moved in after him did have a dog. A big dog. A big rottweiler type dog.

Luckily, she was geriatric in dog years, had lost her sense of smell, had a bad hip, and worse eyesight. Not to mention the fact that a week ago she had gotten a nasty scratch from a stray cat that had been hiding in a bush just like the one the two girls were currently stacked behind, so the odds of her discovering their position was unlikely at best.

She could feel Jamie’s fingers, still glancing across the nape of her neck, as they tensed and fidgetted. Robin frowned slightly at that, she had to at least try and put Jamie at ease. “Hey,” she whispered, “should we make it a contest? See who can hold their breath the longest?”

She waited only long enough for Jamie’s wide and nervous eyes to meet her own before taking a comically deep breath that puffed up her cheeks and setting her forehead down on the other girl’s shoulder. If she was asked why she did this, she would, of course, say that ducking helped her hide and she didn’t want to be seen from the porch. A true answer would be that, pressed like she was against Jamie, from calves to hips to head, she could feel the startled chuckles that Jamie was doing her best to silence and she wouldn’t have missed that for the world. But the truest answer involved the spreading blush on her cheeks and how she didn’t want to be found out so soon, but this Robin wouldn’t even have admitted to herself.

It was only a few minutes later that a “good girl, Stella” followed by the closing of a door indicated that the coast was clear. Robin made a show of letting out her breath before dramatically flopping onto her back in relief. The way that she pulled Jamie along with her to effectively flip their positions probably gave her away a bit, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to let her go. For Jamie’s credit, she didn’t complain, only continued to laugh, this time without trying to suppress the compelling sounds that her chuckles made coming out of that kissable mouth.

Robin tried not to pout when Jamie slid off of her to sit next to her thighs, already missing the comforting cadence of the other girl’s breathing. “Oh my god, Robin,” she thrust her hands over Robin’s face to show off their tremoring, “my hands are still shaking! Can you please tell me why we’re here?”

Robin grabbed Jamie’s shaking hands to still them but only because in their position she could do so under the guise of pulling herself up into a seated position using their point of contact.

“Just look.”

She turned to seat herself shoulder to shoulder with Jamie as the other girl took in the view. It really was gorgeous. When Mr. Gomez had been living there, he had loved landscaping and was incredibly proud of his backyard. In the center was a three tiered marble fountain. The edge of his glossy, pristine porch twinkled with fairy lights. Instead of a fence, he wrapped the perimeter with oleander bushes that he nurtured until they stretched eight feet into the sky, clearly thinking they could reach the heavens if they just grew a little more for him. He adored them, but insisted that the whole thing needed more depth. He quickly resolved to plant lines of shrub roses as a secondary border inside the oleanders, cutting the corners at a diagonal after the charming pink blossoms whispered riddles into his ears, convincing him that they were much too whimsical to be rooted eternally in conventional patterns. He installed old fashioned lamp posts at each corner of the rose bushes, stringing more fairy lights between each post as a lasso of stars to capture any dreams that might pass by on the open air. The result was a gorgeous backyard where he could sit on his porch with a warm cup of tea and enjoy the evenings under the supervision of the night.

What he hadn’t anticipated while concocting his perfect backyard was to have created an idyllic pocket for the young next door neighbor, who he had asked to water his plants while he was away one summer, to have picnics and pretend the fireflies passing were radiant pixies living between the pink of the roses and the oleanders’ white. Robin told him about her Secret Spot the second he got home, excitedly introducing him to the floral dance halls where the ladybugs hold court and the thorny thicket that grew to protect the fairy princess while she slept blanketed in the moonlight. She had wanted him to join her, but he just chuckled and said he was too old and big to be crawling around in the dirt. But that didn’t stop him from buying her a neon patterned picnic blanket that clashed horribly with the flowers to set up in her corner of his yard with an open invitation to enjoy this personal garden whenever she wanted.

Even eight years later and with a new owner, Robin figured that the offer still stood. It’s not like anyone else would ever know it was there anyway, and with the new owners not sparing a second glance to Mr. Gomez’s beloved yard, it was just a matter of time before the uncared for flora died, forgotten. So while it still stood, she knew she had to show Jamie. A place this magical would perfectly suit a girl as magical as her.

Robin didn’t try and hide her soft, pleased smile when Jamie’s breath caught at the sight of their fantastical bubble, the fairy lights and the moon doing a waltz through the soft pedals that surrounded them. Scared of shattering the mood, Robin kept her voice low as she stumbled through her words telling Jamie the story of this grove, her voice less confident in honesty. She could hardly look away from the shrubbery as she spoke, but hearing Jamie’s exhale of “it’s beautiful” had Robin turning to find that the other girl wasn’t looking at the scenery at all. She was looking right at her.

Robin’s brain all but short circuited as Jamie surged forward and pressed their lips together. Her lips were just as soft as Robin had expected them to be, but it was strange. Even though this was all Robin had been thinking of, hoping for, all day, in the moment, when it was finally happening, all she could think was, this was the first time all day that I wasn’t lying.

There might be something worthwhile in the truth after all.