She rested a forearm on the table and leaned closer to me. “I’m doing fine right here.”
Vail was different tonight. Maybe it was the alcohol? Or the atmosphere of the bar? All around us were sapphic people and particularly sapphic couples. Many of them engaged in amorous pursuits. The general horniness of the bar could not be overestimated.
Everywhere you looked, someone had their tongue in some else’s mouth, and it made your thoughts go in a certain direction.
My eyes flicked back to Vail to find her staring directly at my lips. Go figure.
I leaned closer to her, wondering if we were on the same page.
“I’m good right here too.”
She inhaled through her nose and then leaned back, grabbing for her drink and looking away.
It was like she’d dumped a bucket of cold water on me.
Guess that was my answer.
At a loss for what to do, I focused on my own drink, making it down to the last of the melting ice, sucking a cube into my mouth to crunch down on.
Now things between us were weird, and I didn’t know how to un-weird them.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go?” I asked again, wincing at the tone in my voice. I sounded weak and desperate.
“No, I’m…I’m fine.” The ice clinked in her glass and all of the fire between us from the dance had been thoroughly doused.
“How-how are the kitties?” Asking about the cats seemed like the right thing to do.
Vail held up her phone where a message showed a picture of the kittens playing on the floor.
“She’s been sending me periodic updates. Everything is good.”
Silence returned and I was starting to get so uncomfortable that I wanted to be anywhere but here. That was the first time it had ever happened to me at Sapph.
“I think I need some air,” I announced and headed toward the door, not looking back to see if she was coming with me. It didn’t matter.
The air outside was bitingly cold for late spring in Maine, but it was just what I needed. I breathed deeply, filling my lungs with it.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” a voice behind me asked and I turned to find Vail right behind me. Clusters of smokers and vapers huddled together, puffing into the air.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I told her. “Just got overheated.”
She watched me with concern on her face. “Okay. Then I’ll wait with you.” Stepping beside me, she faced the street and crossed her arms, sighing.
I tilted my head back and looked up at the sky, but you couldn’t see anything because of all the city light pollution. Too bad. I could have used the stars right about now. Looking at them always helped ground me. When I was a kid and things were bad at my dad’s house, I would wait until the sun went down, climb out my bedroom window, and sit on the roof until I started to fall asleep. I’d try to find shapes in the constellations. I learned the accepted ones of course, but they’d never been accurate enough for me, so I’d created my own.
“Looking for the stars?” she asked, and I remembered that Vail was standing next to me.
“No. You can’t see them.”
“I remember when you used to sit on the roof and look at them.” I turned to her in surprise.
“I didn’t know you knew about that.”
She grinned at me. “You weren’t that quiet, Lea. I could hear you climbing in and out of your window.”
Oh.
“I figured you’d be asleep.”
