Flat Champagne, Sharp Fantasies

The champagne was flat and nobody cared. Riley lay upside down on the couch, her legs hooked over the back, hair pooling on the floor like spilled ink. Maya was cross-legged on the rug with a bottle between her thighs, drinking straight from it because all three flutes had been abandoned hours ago. Topanga occupied the armchair like a queen on a velvet throne — except the throne was a faded recliner and the queen was wearing an oversized NYU sweatshirt with a salsa stain on the collar.

"I'm just saying," Riley said to the ceiling, "we talked a big game about the mountain thing. We said we'd do it. We shook on it." "We did not shake on it." "We spiritually shook on it, Maya."
Maya took a long pull from the bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Spiritual handshakes don't count." "They count in my heart." "Your heart is drunk."

"My heart is honest." Riley swung her legs down and sat upright, her hair a chaotic mess, brown eyes bright with that particular gleam that meant she'd been thinking about something for longer than she'd let on. "We have three weeks before the semester starts. We have a car. We have the mountains. What we don't have is a reason not to go." Topanga looked up from her phone, where she'd been scrolling through vacation rentals with the intensity of a woman defusing a bomb. "I've actually already found six possibilities." "Of course you have," Maya said.

"Three in the Catskills, two in the Adirondacks, one in Vermont that has a hot tub." "Sold," Riley said. "I haven't shown you pictures." "Don't need them. Hot tub. Done." Topanga turned her phone around. The Vermont cabin was exactly what Riley's fantasy demanded — remote, surrounded by trees, perched on a ridge with a view that presumably went on forever. The listing described it as "secluded" twice and "private" three times, which was real estate code for "you can be naked on the porch and no one will know." "That's the one," Maya said quietly, and something in her voice shifted. Not arousal exactly. Anticipation. The kind that sits low in the stomach and hums.

Topanga booked it. They left Thursday morning at six a.m. because Topanga had calculated drive times, fuel stops, and what she called "optimization windows" on a spreadsheet she'd printed in color. Maya discovered the spreadsheet at mile twelve and nearly jumped out of the moving vehicle. "You color-coded a road trip." "Organization is not a crime, Maya." "It is when there's a column labeled 'Projected Emotional Milestones.'" Riley was driving. She reached over and took the spreadsheet from Maya's hands before the situation escalated. "I'm sure it's very thorough."

"There's a contingency plan for traffic," Topanga said, not remotely embarrassed. They hit traffic at mile forty-seven. It was the kind of traffic that exists only to punish people who make spreadsheets about traffic. A wall of red taillights stretched ahead of them on I-87, motionless, the kind of stillness that makes you question whether the universe has simply stopped. Riley turned off the engine. Maya put her feet on the dashboard. Topanga began recalculating. "If we take Route 9 north at the next exit, we bypass the congestion entirely and add only twenty-three minutes." "Twenty-three minutes and what?" Maya asked. "And nothing. Just twenty-three minutes." There's a column for what the twenty-three minutes cost us emotionally, isn't there?" Topanga said nothing, which was confirmation enough.

Riley took the exit. Route 9 was a two-lane road that wound through towns that time had forgotten — a feed store, a diner shaped like a teapot, a church with a marquee that read "GOD SEES YOUR BROWSER HISTORY." Maya took a photo of that one. The road was beautiful in the way upstate New York roads are beautiful when you're not in a hurry, all green tunnels of trees and sudden valleys opening up on one side. Then Topanga's GPS — the voice she'd named "Margaret" and customized to an Australian accent for reasons she never adequately explained — began to lose its mind. "Turn right in five hundred feet," Margaret said. "That's a dirt road," Riley said. "Turn right." "That's a cow path, Topanga." "Margaret knows what she's doing."

Riley turned right because she'd learned long ago that arguing with Topanga's navigational instincts was like arguing with weather. The road became a path. The path became gravel. The gravel became grass. They bounced along for ten minutes through what appeared to be someone's pasture until they reached a locked gate and a sign that read PRIVATE PROPERTY — NO TRESPASSING — THIS MEANS YOU. "I think Margaret has betrayed us," Maya said. Margaret said, "You have arrived at your destination." "Christ," Riley muttered, and executed a seventeen-point turn while Maya laughed so hard she couldn't breathe and Topanga silently recalculated.

They were back on Route 9 forty minutes behind schedule when Maya announced she needed to pee with the urgency of someone who'd been holding it since the cow pasture. Riley pulled into a rest stop just north of Lake George — one of those state recreation areas with a parking lot, a few picnic tables, and a bathroom building that looked like it had been constructed during the Cold War and not maintained since. "I'll be right back," Maya said already jogging toward the bathrooms.

"I'll come," Riley said. "You don't need to come." "I want to stretch my legs." "You want to come hold my hand while I pee." "I want to stretch my legs, Maya." They went together. Topanga stayed in the car, staring at her phone, trying to find a route that didn't involve livestock. The rest stop was nearly empty. One other car in the lot — a dark green Jeep with Vermont plates and a kayak strapped to the roof. Maya noticed it the way you notice things when you're not really looking: vaguely, peripherally, a detail that registers without mattering. The bathroom was a concrete block building with a rusted roof and a smell that suggested no one had cleaned it since the Reagan administration. Maya used the facilities with efficiency born of desperation. Riley waited outside, leaning against the wall, scrolling through her phone.

"Better?" Riley asked when Maya emerged. "Significantly. I may also have contracted something from that toilet seat." "You hovered." "I hovered. But the hovering was itself a risk. The hover requires thigh strength and faith, and I'm short on both." Riley laughed and took Maya's hand. They walked back toward the parking lot along a gravel path that wound through a strip of trees — maples, mostly, their leaves still full and green in late summer. The path curved, and they came upon a clearing with a wooden bench overlooking a small pond. The water was still, reflecting the sky and the trees with mirror precision. A woman was sitting on the bench.

She was maybe mid-thirties, tall, lean, with dark hair cut short against her skull and the kind of tan that comes from being outdoors constantly rather than from a bed. She wore hiking boots, cargo shorts, and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. A paperback book lay face-down on the bench beside her. She looked up when they emerged from the trees, and her eyes — green, sharp, assessing — moved over them with a slow, unhurried attention that felt like being read. "Lost?" she asked. Her voice was low, unhurried, the kind of voice that doesn't need volume to fill a space. "Taking a break from driving," Riley said. "Where are you headed?"

"Vermont. Mountain rental. Supposed to be secluded." The woman smiled. "Lot of that up there. Which one?" Topanga appeared on the path behind them, phone in hand, still frowning at Margaret's betrayal. She stopped when she saw the stranger. Her eyes did a quick sweep — the boots, the flannel, the lean muscle of her forearms — and then she adjusted her posture in a way that was so subtle and so deliberate that Maya almost laughed. "Who's this?" Topanga asked. "No idea," Maya said. "We just met." "I'm Drew," the woman said, standing. She was taller than Maya had realized. Easily five-ten, maybe more. She extended a hand to Topanga, who took it. "I'm local. Sort of. I guide trips in the Adirondacks, mostly, but I'm between groups this week."

"A guide," Topanga said, and her eyes lit up with the specific brightness of a woman who'd been fighting a GPS for two hours and had just been handed a human alternative. "You wouldn't happen to know a better route north, would you?" Drew smiled. "I know every route north. And south. And the ones that go sideways through places most people don't know exist." "Can you get us to Vermont without passing through any more cow pastures?" "That depends on why you were in a cow pasture." "Margaret," Maya said. "Who's Margaret?" "Don't ask."

They ended up sitting on the bench — all four of them, which was a tight fit, which meant Maya was pressed against Riley on one side and Drew on the other, and Topanga had positioned herself at the end with her legs crossed, her body angled toward Drew with a focus that was becoming less about navigation and more about something else entirely. Drew was easy to talk to. She had that quality — rare, specific — of making you feel like the most interesting person in the room. She asked questions. She listened. She laughed at Maya's jokes with a warmth that felt like a hand on the small of your back. When Riley described the cabin they'd rented, Drew nodded. "I know that area. Good ridge. There's a trail that leads up to a lookout about two miles from there. Best view in the state. No one ever goes up there." "No one?" Maya asked.

"You'd have to know it was there. And you'd have to want to find it." Riley shifted beside Maya. Their thighs were pressed together, and Maya could feel the heat coming off her skin. She knew that heat. She knew what it meant. "We should get going," Topanga said, but she didn't move.
"You should," Drew agreed. She looked at the three of them — really looked, that green-eyed gaze moving from face to face with a perception that felt almost physical. "Unless you don't want to."
The silence held for exactly three seconds. Maya felt it — the pivot point, the moment where the afternoon could go one of two ways. Riley's hand found her knee. Topanga's breath changed. "Or we could stay," Maya said. "For a while."

Drew's smile changed. It went from friendly to something else — something that knew things, that had been in this exact moment before and understood exactly what it was. "There's a spot," she said. "Just past those trees. Private. The kind of private you're looking for." She stood and held out her hand. Maya took it. The spot was a clearing maybe fifty yards off the gravel path, hidden by a dense wall of young birches. The ground was soft with fallen leaves and moss. Sunlight came through the canopy in broken pieces, warm on the skin, cool in the shade. The pond was visible through the trees, still and empty. No one was anywhere. The silence was the kind that only exists in places where humans rarely go. Drew kissed Maya first. It was a decision she made with her eyes — she looked at Maya, then at Riley, then at Topanga, and she chose Maya the way you choose the first note of a song. Her hand came up to Maya's jaw, tilting her face, and she kissed her with a slow, deliberate pressure that opened Maya's mouth and sent a jolt straight through her center. Maya's hands found Drew's hips, pulling her closer, and she could feel the lean muscle underneath the flannel, the strength in her body.

Riley watched for a moment, her brown eyes dark, her lips parted. Then she stepped forward and put her hand on Drew's back, and Drew broke the kiss with Maya and turned to Riley with a smile that was almost tender. She kissed Riley differently — softer, teasing, her tongue barely touching Riley's until Riley chased it and deepened the kiss herself. Topanga stood at the edge of the clearing, watching. Her hand had found her own collarbone, fingers resting against the pulse point. Drew looked at her over Riley's shoulder. "Come here," she said. Topanga crossed the clearing. Drew turned from Riley and kissed Topanga with a confidence that made Maya's breath catch — one hand in Topanga's hair, the other at the base of her throat, holding her in place while she took the kiss deeper. Topanga made a sound that Maya had never heard from her before — low, raw, surprised by its own need.

They undressed in stages. Drew unbuttoned her flannel and pulled it off, revealing a sports bra and a body that was all wiry strength and angular lines. Maya pulled her own shirt over her head and unhooked her bra in one practiced motion. Riley stripped down to nothing with her usual lack of ceremony, stepping out of her shorts and underwear at the same time, kicking them aside. Topanga took her time — she always took her time — unbuttoning her blouse, sliding her skirt down, standing in her underwear in the dappled light with the self-possession of a woman who knew exactly what she looked like and what it did to people. Drew looked at all three of them and exhaled. "You're something." "We know," Maya said, and stepped into her.

The moss was soft underneath them. Drew lowered Maya down first, kneeling between her legs, running her hands up Maya's thighs with a firmness that was almost clinical in its precision. She knew what she was doing — that was immediately, overwhelmingly clear. Her thumbs traced the crease where Maya's thighs met her hips, and Maya's skin prickled into goosebumps despite the warm air. "I'm going to make you come," Drew said, not as a question but as a statement of fact, the way someone might say "the sun will set." "Well, don't make it sound like a weather report," Maya managed. Drew smiled and put her mouth on her.

She was good. Devastatingly, specifically good. Her tongue found Maya's clit immediately and worked it with a rhythm that was neither fast nor slow but something in between — consistent, relentless, building. Two fingers slid inside her, curving upward, pressing that spot with a pressure that made Maya's hips buck off the moss. Drew held her down with her free hand, pressing firmly on Maya's hip, and kept going. Riley appeared above Maya, kneeling beside her head, one hand stroking Maya's hair. Maya turned her face and Riley kissed her, and the combination — Riley's mouth on hers, Drew's mouth between her legs, Drew's fingers inside her — built something in her core that tightened and tightened until it snapped.

Maya came against Drew's mouth, her body arching, Riley's name and a word that wasn't a word at all coming out of her. Drew didn't stop. She slowed, adjusted, let Maya ride it down, and then pulled away with her chin wet and her green eyes bright. "My turn," Riley said. Drew laughed and shifted, and Riley took Maya's place on the moss with an eagerness that made Topanga shake her head. "Patience." "I've been patient for three hours in a car, Topanga." Drew went down on Riley with a different technique — broader strokes, more pressure, her fingers spreading Riley open while her tongue worked in tight circles. Riley grabbed fistfuls of moss and leaves and held on. Maya moved behind Drew, running her hands down Drew's back, over the curve of her ass, between her legs from behind. Drew was wet — soaking, actually, aroused from having her mouth on both of them — and Maya slid two fingers inside her without preamble. Drew groaned against Riley, and the vibration made Riley cry out. Maya fucked her from behind with steady, deep strokes, her palm slapping against Drew's ass with each thrust. Drew's rhythm on Riley faltered, her hips pushing back against Maya's hand.

"Keep going," Riley gasped. "Don't stop — your mouth — fuck —" Topanga positioned herself at Riley's side, leaning down to take one of Riley's nipples in her mouth, sucking and biting gently while her hand found Riley's other breast. Riley was pinned between three points of sensation — Drew's tongue, Topanga's mouth and hands, the open sky above her — and she came with a sound that scattered birds from the trees around the pond.

Maya pulled her fingers out of Drew and turned her around, pushing her flat on the moss. She kissed her, tasting Riley on Drew's mouth, and the mingling of it — her own taste, Riley's taste, Drew's mouth — was so intensely erotic that she felt another pulse of arousal go through her already-sensitive body. Topanga took over. She straddled Drew's face, facing Maya, and Drew's tongue found her immediately. Topanga's eyes went wide, her hands finding Maya's shoulders for balance, and Maya watched from inches away as Topanga's expression shifted from surprise to pleasure to something close to abandon. Drew's hands gripped Topanga's hips, guiding her, controlling the pace, and Topanga rode her mouth with increasing desperation.

Maya lowered herself between Drew's legs. She spread her open and licked her slowly, thoroughly, tasting her — salt and musk and the clean scent of someone who spent her life outdoors. Drew's hips strained upward. Maya held her down and fucked her with her tongue, then her fingers, then both, curling and pressing while her mouth worked Drew's clit. Drew came with her face still buried in Topanga, and the sound she made into Topanga's body sent Topanga over the edge. Topanga ground down against Drew's mouth, her thighs shaking, her nails digging into Maya's shoulders, and she came with a long, shuddering exhale that sounded like surrender.

They lay in the clearing, four bodies on the moss, breathing hard, the sunlight filtering through the birches in gold and green. No one spoke for a long time. The pond glittered through the trees. A dragonfly passed overhead. "That," Riley said eventually, "was not on the spreadsheet." Topanga, flat on her back, eyes closed, said, "Nothing this good is ever on the spreadsheet." Drew propped herself up on one elbow. "So. Vermont." "What about it?" "I know a shortcut." Maya started laughing. Riley started laughing. Topanga opened one eye, looked at Drew, and said, "Does this shortcut involve livestock?"
"Only if you want it to."

They made it to the cabin by sunset. The ridge was everything the listing promised — the view, the trees, the privacy. They stood on the porch as the sky turned orange and purple and drank champagne from coffee mugs because no one had packed flutes. Maya leaned against the railing and looked out at the mountains. "So. Same time next weekend?" "We haven't even finished this weekend," Riley said. "I'm a planner." Topanga raised her mug. "To Margaret." "To Margaret," they all said.

The GPS, for the record, got them home in four hours and twelve minutes without a single cow. Topanga framed the spreadsheet. Maya framed the dragonfly photo she'd taken in the clearing. Riley framed nothing, because some things, she said, didn't need a frame to remember. And Drew — Drew sent a postcard two weeks later. It read: "The shortcut is always worth it. Come find me if you get lost again." Topanga pinned it to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a cow.