Emma does the dishes while her mother and father go down for a nap, then she goes to her room, stretches out on her bed, and wonders if Josh will arrive at the barn in the evening for her the one kiss she has planned.
Emma reaches under her dress and up to the skin of her bare stomach, pulling at it, contemplating the possibility of another stomach tingling affair.
Just one kiss – that’s all.
But wait, no. She thinks she will want him too bad to stop at one kiss. She hasn't done her thing in months, and thinks she should try to take some of the edge off. If she has already fucked herself, perhaps she will not want to fuck Josh. She doesn't want to fuck herself, though. Since Michael, she has wanted a man. Her finger won't quite do.
Emma cans her room. She sees her desk in the corner.
Emma pulls up her dress. She pulls her bra over her breasts and up around her chest. She licks her thumbs, getting them dripping wet, and starts circling them around her nipples.
"Michael," she whispers.
Only seconds pass before she is dripping wet with a throbbing button. She gets up from the bed and takes a pillow with her to the desk. Emma wraps the pillow around the corner of the desk and straddles it, so that the pillow-covered corner jabs into her pussy with a softened blow.
"Ahhh," she says, as she begins thrusting against the desk corner.
"Ah, ah, ah," she says with each thrust.
On the fourth one her abdominal muscles ripples and her groin contracts as she comes all over the pillow.
"Michael," she says.
At the church service that evening, Emma has her hair tucked neatly behind her ears with bobby pens, and a freshly ironed yellow dress on. Emma sees Judith sitting with her daughter two rows behind her to the right. Emma glances back every few minutes to see if Josh is there with her, but he isn’t.
No Josh, just Judith.
Emma looks away quickly before Judith sees her looking. But within a minute Emma looks back. She and Judith make eye contact once, and Judith smiles, but she is holding Marybelle in her lap and seems unconcerned with the stare as a female soloist belts out verses to a hymn, How Great Thou Art.
When her father leads a prayer after the song, Emma stares through the stained glass windows behind him, straining to see hints of a fading light outside. Emma thinks about Michael throughout the service, standing when others stand, and saying “Amen” when others say Amen, but she is wondering if Josh will meet her.
She mouths the words in a low breathy voice to what used to be one of her favorite hymns; Jesus is Tenderly Calling You Home.
Jesus is tenderly calling you home
Calling today, calling today
Why from the sunshine of love will you roam,
Farther and farther away?
In the latter part of the service the palms of Emma’s hands are sweating, and her neck is flushed and splotchy. Her mother notices, fanning Emma with an open hymnal.
Emma thinks perhaps it is the temperature in the un-air conditioned sanctuary. The tall A-frame ceiling draws heat to the top of the church and a breeze blows softly through the opened stained glass windows lining the sides, but she is hot, nonetheless.
When her father calls in the last verse of Just as I Am for the snakes to be fetched by the deacons, Emma rises with Judith, sitting a few rows back, and others who are not participating in the snake handling service. They turn and walk slowly out the church’s front door as the verses ring out and the deacons are gone, out of sight, to get the snakes.
Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To thee whose blood can clean each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Out the sanctuary door and holding her daughter’s hand, Judith turns back as she walks down brick pathway leading to the gravel parking lot to tell Emma, who has also left the church, goodnight.
“Hope to see you soon, girl,” Judith says.
Emma smiles with a clinched jaw.
"I hope to tongue your husband soon," she is thinking.
Judith walks with her daughter toward the parking lot. Emma quickens her pace walking away from the church. The air is outside cooler than the church was inside, and the breeze blows the tiny sweat droplets that had beaded on her forehead away. Her heartbeat hastens its pace, and Emma moves away from the church in a fast walk, taking long strides in her white dress and sandals.
Emma wonders if the fact that Josh wasn’t at the church service is a sign that he will surely be at the barn. She wonders if he shows, what the kiss will be like?
Will he use his tongue to touch hers, like Michael? Or, will he kiss with his lips softly, leaving his mouth closed, and her longing for more?
She wonders also if he wasn’t at the church service to send her a sign. Maybe he is not coming to the barn, she thinks.
But Emma keeps moving and reaches the last turn in the road she can see the barn straight ahead. She squints to see if Josh is there, but she does not see him. The sun is setting earlier in the late summer season, and the sky is in a deep dusk as she approaches, meaning she can only see its outline in the fading light.