Zara emerged from the bathroom five minutes later wearing the black shirt and her own dark pants, and Ramona’s brain simply ceased functioning.
The shirt hit at Zara’s navel. Maybe an inch below it. Her stomach was bare — a strip of skin between the hem of the shirt and the waistband of her pants, smooth and warm-looking and completely, devastatingly exposed. Zara did a spin.
If she looked closely — and who could resist? — she could see what looked like a moving, flowing tattoo down Zara’s back, peeking out from under the fabric.
It wasn’t even that much skin. Ramona had seen more at the beach. At the pool. Literally anywhere.
But on Zara, in her apartment, at seven o’clock on a Friday evening with the golden light coming through the window, it was?—
“Does it work?” Zara asked, looking down at herself and then back up at Ramona with a perfectly neutral expression.
Ramona’s mouth was open. She closed it. Opened it again.
“You can’t go out like that,” she managed.
“Like what?” Zara glanced down again, genuinely confused. “It’s a shirt and pants. It’s appropriate for a casual venue.”
“It’s—” Ramona gestured helplessly at Zara’s midsection. At the exposed skin. At the way the black fabric made her look impossibly sharp and elegant despite being Ramona’s thrift-store find. “You can’t just… show up like that. Looking like?—”
Zara looked at her with one raised brow as if daring her to continue that sentence.
“Like…” Ramona’s face was on fire. Her entire face. Possibly her entire body. “Temptation. Do you know how many women would just be begging you to take their soul?”
Something shifted in Zara’s expression. The mask cracked, just slightly, and underneath was something knowing. Something very pleased.
“Begging, hmm?” Zara asked softly.
The air between them went thick. Charged. Electric in the way it had been in Ramona’s old bedroom, in the way it had been on the couch during movie night, in the way it was every single time they stood too close and neither of them moved away.
Zara’s eyes dropped to Ramona’s mouth. Lingered there. Came back up.
“I think,” Zara said, tilting her head with that slight, devastating smile, “that I’ll wearexactlythis.”
Ramona made a sound that was not entirely human.
“Ramona!” Felix’s voice rang down the hallway. “Kashvi’s here! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s goooo!” he singsonged.
The moment shattered. Ramona took a step back, then another, smoothing down her own outfit with hands that were definitely not trembling.
“Fine,” she said. Her voice only cracked a little. “Fine. Wear that. It’s fine.”
“Great.” Zara grabbed one of Ramona’s jackets — a leather one that actually fit, thankfully — and headed for the door. Asshe passed Ramona, she leaned in close enough that her breath ghosted across Ramona’s ear.
“You might want to breathe,” Zara murmured, her voice velvet against Ramona’s skin. “You’ve gone a bit pale.”
Then she was gone, leaving Ramona standing in the hallway trying to remember how lungs worked.
The venue was small— a converted warehouse on the edge of downtown with exposed brick walls and string lights strung haphazardly across the ceiling. The band was local, three women and a guy with a guitar, playing music that was somewhere between pop and indie rock with a distinctly witchy undertone. Enchanted instruments, Ramona noticed — the drummer’s kit hummed with a faint blue light, and the guitar strings shimmered when they were struck.
It was intimate. Warm. Nothing like the sterile concert halls where Ramona had gone with Simone, dressed up and performing enjoyment for an audience of other academics.
This felt real.
“See?” Zara said, appearing beside her with two drinks. “Not overwhelming.”
“Not overwhelming,” Ramona agreed, accepting the glass. Their fingers brushed in the exchange. Neither of them pulled away.
Felix and Kashvi were already near the front, Felix dancing with absolutely zero self-consciousness while Kashvi filmed him on her phone. Gerald was snuggled somewhere deep inside Felix’s tote bag.
