Crossing Borderlines - 7/?
A/N: I apologize for taking so long to write a low-quality, not proofread, short chapter, but, alas, here is my humble offering.
Chapter 7
February 2013
A silence fell over them while Arizona waited for Callie to say how she felt about the fact that Arizona still clearly kept the necklace on display.
Sighing, Callie stepped forward so that she was just inches from Arizona. “I was thinking that maybe…maybe you could wear it again?”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously,” Callie replied, allowing a toothy smile to spread across her face.
“I’d love to.”
Wrapping her arms around Arizona, Callie clasped the dainty chain around the shorter woman’s neck. She let the index finger of her right hand trace the chain until it came to the pendant. Callie held the heart in her hand and fingered the diamonds with her thumb.
“It looks so nice on you,” she said hesitantly.
“I’ve missed wearing it,” Arizona replied quietly.
“Arizona…” Callie started in a whisper, her eyes locked on the pendant still in her fingers, fearful that if she looked up she’d lose what little reserve she had left.
“Look at me, Calliope,” Arizona demanded softly, snaking her hand in between their bodies and lifting Callie’s chin. “You want this, right?”
Callie nodded. “Yeah, but - ”
“And I want this, too. So, yeah, maybe we’re jumping a few steps ahead, but we can’t fight this, Callie.”
A slight smile tugged at the corners of Callie’s mouth as she dropped the necklace from her hand and rested it on Arizona’s hip. “I agree.”
“Yeah?” Arizona whispered, her head instinctively leaning towards Callie’s.
“Yeah,” Callie answered in kind, dipping her own head so that their lips were mere centimeters apart.
“Dinner’s ready,” Arizona murmured, Callie’s lips brushing against her own.
“We can reheat,” Callie replied, wrapping her arms around Arizona’s hips and bringing their lips together. It was gentle at first, but it didn’t take long for Arizona to snake her hands around Callie’s neck and deepen the kiss.
“God, what are we doing?” Arizona asked somewhat rhetorically, only to be cut off by the overwhelming need to kiss Callie again.
“Coming home,” Callie answered. “This feels…like coming home.”
With Callie’s affirming words, Arizona stopped questioning how fast they were moving, how much they didn’t know each other anymore, and how their situations hadn’t changed. Instead she gently pressed the pads of her hands against Callie’s shoulders, pushing her towards the bedroom.
Arizona broke from Callie to turn on the lamp perched on her bedside table. When she turned back around, she noticed Callie had slipped out of her jeans and top and stood in the dim lamplight in her underwear. Arizona was sure she had never seen anything so magnificent. Sitting up, she hooked her index and middle fingers through the waistband of Callie’s underwear and pulled her to the bed. Callie’s knees buckled when they hit the bed and she fell on top of Arizona, hands either side of her head.
“Too many clothes,” Callie murmured into Arizona’s lips as one of her hands trailed under Arizona’s shirt.
“That can be fixed,” Arizona replied, reaching her own hands down to shimmy out of her jeans as Callie lifted up her shirt. Callie sat back on her heels to rid herself of her underwear. Arizona did the same, eager to feel the luscious skin-on-skin contact. They both hissed in pleasure when Arizona wrapped her hand around Callie’s neck and pulled her down.
Callie rocked her hips downwards, creating white heat in both of their stomachs. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?” she asked rhetorically.
Arizona nodded dumbly, meeting Callie in a wet, ardent kiss. “Fuck, Callie, the things you do to me,” Arizona rasped. Almost involuntarily, her hand crept down Callie’s body, sliding over her hip and between her legs.
“Not so fast,” Callie whispered.
Arizona shook her head furiously. “We have plenty of time to be romantic, but right now…right now, we need to make up for some serious lost time.”
Her hand still between Callie’s legs, Arizona hooked one of her own legs over Callie’s hip and flipped them over. “Agreed?”
“Fuck…yeah…agreed,” Callie managed to reply as Arizona entered her swiftly with three fingers.
March 2003
“So, did you pick up your cap and gown today?” Callie asked through her bite of lettuce.
“Yes, and I look like a heffalump in it.”
“Really, Arizona? A heffalump?”
“You know, the elephant character from Winnie the Pooh?”
“I’m 21 years old, so no, I don’t know.”
“Whatever, you’re missing out.”
“So, I was thinking,” Callie began, without missing a beat, “that after graduation we could take a trip…somewhere warm and beachy.”
Arizona’s fork stopped mid air as she looked towards her girlfriend, mouth agape. Callie was blissfully oblivious to Arizona’s shock as she cheerfully munched her salad, now picturing Arizona in a skimpy bikini.
“What? Do I have dressing on my face?” Callie asked, when she finally looked up.
“Um…no. No, I just…trip?”
“Yeah, a trip,” Callie responded with a wide grin. “I was thinking Majorca. I’ve always wanted to go to Majorca. We could sit on the beach drinking dangerously strong cocktails, which I will order in Spanish.”
Arizona let herself picture the delicious images Callie was conjuring up for just a moment, before reality caught up to her.
“Yeah, and then when I try to come back to the US, I’ll be deported,” Arizona responded matter-of-factly. Alarmingly so.
“Very funny, Arizona.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
Callie narrowed her eyes. “Arizona, cut the crap. You’re not here illegally, so what the hell are you talking about?”
“My visa. It expires a few weeks after we graduate,” Arizona explained.
Callie laughed. “I thought it was way worse than that! So we just extend your visa until you get a job here.”
Arizona shook and ducked her head, a small sad smile gracing her lips. “It’s not that simple, Callie.”
“No, it is that simple, Arizona. What was your plan? To just up and leave? Go back to England in two months?”
Arizona reached for Callie’s hand, but Callie pulled it back as if Arizona’s hand was literally burning hers. “Callie, we always knew this was coming,” she sighed. “Yes, in two months, I’m going back to England.”
March 2013
“Go awwaaayyy,” Callie whined when her phone rang for the second time that morning.
“It’s 8. You need to leave in an hour to catch your flight anyway,” Arizona reasoned, though she made no attempt to unwrap herself from Callie’s arms.
“God damn it,” Callie muttered, reaching over Arizona to grab her phone. “Hello? Mark? What time is it there?” She quickly slipped her arm from under Arizona and walked brusquely out of the bedroom.
Arizona sat up, resting on her bent elbows, and watched Callie walk out of the room. She heard Callie’s hushed, yet somewhat panicked, tone, but could not understand most of the words. Arizona laid back down and turned on her side when she heard Callie’s voice growing louder, so that it wouldn’t look like she was trying to eavesdrop.
“One dose of Triaminic, Mark. It’s in the medicine cabinet. Yes, for the tenth time, turn the humidifier on. She’ll be fine, Mark, and I’ll be home tonight. Okay? Yeah. You, too. Bye, Mark,” Callie finished as she entered the room again.
“Sorry about that.”
Arizona turned to face Callie and smiled. “Was that Mark Sloan? You two are still friends?”
Callie chuckled. “Yeah, turns out he’s the best friend I could ever ask for.”
“Who’d’ve thought the frat boy would turn into a concerned parent?” Arizona mused.
“What?”
“I just…I heard you mentioning Triaminic. I assumed he has a sick daughter?”
“Oh, uh, yeah…no, he’s just babysitting Sofia.”
“Ah, I must say I was surprised…not that he would have fathered a kid at some point, but that he was actually taking care of it.”
Callie grimaced, but let Arizona’s jab slide. She crossed over to Arizona’s side of the bed and sat down next to where Arizona lay. She took one of Arizona’s hands in her own and smiled awkwardly. “That was Sofia,” she began.
“So you mentioned,” Arizona replied with a laugh.
“Arizona, Sofia is my daughter.”