Honesty - SF8 by Susan X Meagher

tantalizing breasts, the door from the kitchen opened and Mia entered the room. She paused for a moment, trying to decide if she should return to the kitchen, but she knew that she would be able to hear them making love from there, so she quickly dismissed that option.
    Both heads turned in her direction and both sets of eyes widened. Mia gave them a sympathetic look and offered, "I’ll go sit in the yard until you’re done. Give me the all clear when it’s safe to come back in, ‘kay?"
    It took a second for the lovers to regain their senses, but Jamie finally scampered to her feet and said, "No, really, Mia. That’s not necessary."
    The curly-haired woman stopped her retreat and gazed at Jamie for a second. "Um…why not?"
    "We shouldn’t be doing this in the living room anyway. The living room is for all of us. We’ll go upstairs." She extended a hand to Ryan, giving her partner an encouraging look as the mortified woman tried to extract her hands from the tangled shirt. She finally managed, and then slipped it back on, the last tatters of her dignity intact.
    As the pair climbed the stairs, Jamie asked, "The timer’s gonna go off in a second, Mia. Would you take dinner out of the oven?"
    "Sure," she said, giving Ryan one last long look. "You might as well take the tags off those undies, Ryan. I don’t think you can return them now."
    "Everybody’s a comic around here," the scantily clad woman grumbled, following her fully dressed lover up the stairs.
     
    The interruption had cooled their ardor, so Ryan got into a more modest outfit and they returned to the main floor just a few minutes after they heard the timer buzz.
    Mia had set the table and was just serving the meal when they came back down. "Finished so soon?" she asked,
    "I just bought Ryan some new underwear and she was trying it on," Jamie said with a completely straight face. "I think it fit pretty well."
    "Oh, I understand, Jamie," Mia agreed. "That’s exactly how most people try on underwear. I just hate it when I go to the store and forget to bring a 120-pound weight to straddle me while I try on clothes. It’s such a pain to get the salesclerk to do it."
    Ryan smirked at her and walked over to give her a kiss on the cheek. "I hardly miss being at home with you around, Mia," she said as she ruffled her hair affectionately. "You’re just like a female Conor!"
     
    After dinner Ryan and Mia cleaned up while Jamie sat at the kitchen table chatting with them. When they were done, the slyly grinning blonde reminded Ryan that she had not finished opening all of her gifts. Ryan shot her a puzzled glance and asked, "Do you want Mia to watch? I think we’ve scarred her tender psyche enough for one day."
    "It’s okay, Honey," Jamie assured her. "You’ve gotten to all of the R-rated stuff."
    Ryan sat down and grabbed the last big bag. It was from the bookstore on campus and quite heavy. Blinking in surprise, she pulled the big white and gray box out to reveal a new PowerMac G-3 notebook computer. She stared at Jamie for a moment before she opened the box, revealing a sleek, black 500-megahertz machine.
    Ryan reached up and absently scratched her head, then let her hand drop to tug on her ear a few times, a gesture Jamie correctly read as one she made when she was completely astounded. The two roommates looked at her curiously, wondering when she was going to say something.
    She finally nodded her head once, placed the laptop on the table, and scooted her chair over until she could comfortably wrap her arms around her partner. "I love it. Thank you for being so generous."
    Now it was Jamie’s turn to look stunned. She reached up to feel Ryan’s forehead, but it was cool to the touch. "That’s it?" she finally managed. "No arguments?"
    "Nope. It will really come in handy this term, Jamie. The thought of three-day-long road trips without a computer was starting to give me hives," she admitted. "It’s going to be bad enough to be away from home, but to be