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“I heard the Elite are starting to take an interest in our neck of the woods. So, try to keep an eye out for anybody sniffing around, ‘kay?”
I tune out Lisa’s words. I’ve already given Rachel my own version of the same spiel.
She’s the last to leave. I’d half expected there to be an ‘after-mission party’ – we’ll have those sometimes, especially after particularly arduous endeavors – and braced myself accordingly. Wasted effort, apparently. I idly pull at my fingers. Index uncurled, curled, middle up and back, until it hurts. Ring and pinky out, spread, back, testing the range of motion.
The door doesn’t quite slam when Rachel leaves, but it’s a near thing. She isn’t upset, I don’t think. If she was, I’d know. Would’ve been nice to have her around tonight, but she needs her alone time. I’m not worried. She’ll come find me when she wants me.
“Just us, huh?” Lisa says after a beat.
I hear and feel Rachel loading her dogs into the van. She hops in the driver’s seat, then nods at the empty air..
I wait for her to drive off before I confirm. “Just us, yeah.”I weigh the pros and cons of recreational reading, and whether I should grab a novel from my room. Something new, maybe? Or an old favorite. I like new experiences as much as the next woman. Though, when was the last time I’d read Catch-22?
Too long.
Lisa drops onto the couch the moment I make my mind up. She sighs and leans against my legs, then twists around to rest her arms on my knees.
I wait for her to say something.
She doesn’t.
I glance to the side, then back at her. “Yeah?” I kill the silence.
“I was kinda ready for a party, Tee-Bee-Aitch,” Lisa whines. “Can’t believe everyone bailed like that.” She flutters her eyelashes at me like she expects it to do something.
“Guess they’ve got their own things.” I shrug.
“Or they secretly hate me,” she pouts.
I don’t dignify that with a response.
Lisa sighs again, louder this time and more dramatic.
The sound drifts up into the rafters, and a comfortable silence hangs between us. I’m even less inclined to get up than before with Lisa propped against me.
Lisa’s eyes sparkle.
“Wanna get high?” she tosses out into the blue.
She crosses one leg over the other. I watch as she lazily swings her foot forth and back.
“What with?”
Lisa scrunches her nose as she considers the question. “Weed,” she offers after a moment. “I’m not feeling anything crazy right now.”
“Weed’s fine. Are you okay with me getting it?” We both know exactly what that entails, and I’ve grossed her out enough to know when to ask.
“Go for it.” Lisa says. She almost seems to melt into my knees. “There’s a pack of gummies in my room, First drawer on the right, one down.”
I follow her directions to the bag with a few gnats, and I'm about halfway through construction of a makeshift pulley when Lisa pushes my leg to the side.
I scooch dutifully until there’s room enough to squeeze between me and the backrest. We’d been forced to replace the couch again a few years back, and the new–new couch is wide enough to fit both Lisa and I lengthwise.
It’s a little snug, but we’ve been snug-lovers for years.
Most of the new ‘base’ is basically just a step up from our old one, the long-demolished loft. Except it’s an apartment this time. One of the nicer ones, too. I’d bought out the building’s penthouse suite so everyone could have their own place. Wasted money, really. Lisa and I are the only ones who ever use it.
I’ve had the time and freedom to make something of a reading-slash-thinking corner. A nice chair, big enough I could sit cross-legged without my knees touching the arms. A good view of the floor to ceiling windows – tinted, of course – so I could see the city, our city, sprawled out before me. Not close enough to feel like it’s overwhelming. Just enough to remind it’s there. Everything about my space is meticulously planned, neat and organized.
Everywhere Lisa frequents… isn’t. There are planning boards covered with incomprehensible string connections, long-forgotten coffee mugs and handwarmers used as paperweights. Her room, weirdly, is completely neat. Probably because it’s not a place she works in, and barely one she sleeps in.
Both of us watch with muted interest as the colourfully filled bag swings our way, suspended on a thin latticework of silk wires. I reach out to pluck it from the air then do a double-take. “Are these spider shaped?”
“Yeah,” Lisa says. “Figured the cubes were kinda boring. Like ‘em?” I can feel the smile in her words without even looking. Was she saving these for me? Kinda weird.
“They’re cute, I guess.” I turn the bag around to get a better look. “And they probably taste a bit better than the real thing,” I joke.
"Ew. Please don't remind me,” Lisa pleads.
"I'm still keeping it as an option.” I say, diplomatically. “Just in case."
"Taylor, no. We are not eating bugs."
"I'm just saying, things are good now, but it only takes a few bad weeks in a row to-" My words are interrupted by Lisa flicking the side of my head. She reaches across me and grabs the bag before pulling out a mottled green and red spider with chubby little legs.
"Absolutely none of that. Open up, hon."
I roll my eyes but obey, and open my mouth so she can press the gummy to my tongue. I chew it slowly, then reach into the bag, pull out another and offer it to her, eyebrow raised. Lisa follows my example and opens her mouth for me to drop it inside. I watch her chew. Hers is lumpy and a little lopsided. It must’ve been one of the first ones she made.
My first few chews are thoughtful.
Comparing the taste of weed gummies to bugs isn’t all that crazy. Neither are very good, but at least with bugs you can make them taste a little better. A little.
“Mmh,” I hum in deliberation. “Think the real thing might be better.”
“The real thing doesn’t get you high.”
“High in protein,” I grin. I don’t even mind when Lisa slaps my shoulder. She’s too much of a twig for it to do any damage anyway.
Lisa groans. “Stop. I swear you take every opportunity to bring this up. I don’t care if the world ends, I am not eating bugs.”
I frown. That’d been a lot more touch and go than I’d have preferred, but she’s right. With Jack gone Dinah’s predictions stopped making any sense. Presumably, because whatever apocalypse she saw hasn’t happened, and probably won’t.
The probably is what always concerns me. Every thinker has blind spots.
“Nope. No moping,” Lisa says, as she shakes her head in fond exasperation. Probably more exasperated than fond, actually. “Stop thinking so hard.”
She holds out another gummy and I open wide without a second thought. Again, I do the same for her. We’ve always done it like this, since way back during that ill-fated Merchant party. The drugs weren’t real then, but the trust was.
That’s kind of what it’s about for us, the drugs. We don’t really do anything harder than alcohol with the other Undersiders – well, I would do things with Rachel but she’s really not interested – Lisa and I are. We’re also a bit loose-lipped for comfort when we’re high, but I'm pretty sure Lisa already knows everything there is to know about me, and I think Lisa likes having an excuse to be more candid.
“Last one?” Lisa asks, holding the bag up in front of me. I can’t help but scrunch my face up in thought. Right now, I’m weighing the benefits of getting a proper high against having to have another gummy.
“Do we have anything to wash it down?” I ask instead. I haven’t really been paying attention to the cupboards the past few days. Too focused on the latest mission.
“Depends on what you’re after. There’s some vodka in the small fridge in the kitchen, plus some mixers in the cupboard.”
It’ll be about an hour before the gummies actually kick in, but my stomach’s already rolling. “Mixers, no alcohol. Please.”
“Yea that’s fair.” She catches my eye with a smile that’s half-teasing, half-sympathetic. “Don’t feel like having a good hard cry?”
“Not particularly, no.” The only way I've been able to drum up tears is by mixing alcohol and weed. It's probably unhealthy, but I'm sure I'll die before my liver feels the worst of it.
Sadly, prepping drinks with bugs is tricky, and we’d need to be sitting up to drink them anyway, so we get up and make our way to the kitchen. Lisa takes point and gives me the “lowdown” on what’s happening in her turf. It’s not the in-depth breakdown she gives the entire team every week.. Originally, when we’d carved up pieces of the city, we’d taken borderline random chunks for ourselves and did whatever we wanted.
Once I took over I took a different approach. For one, not everyone has hard territory. Lisa doesn’t have any, for instance. Instead, she has a loose connection of pies and a finger in all of them. Schools, hospitals, police; anywhere you can get intel has a rat or three on her payroll.
Brian and Cozen run The Hand, closer to a merc group operating under our say-so than a traditional gang. On their ‘off-hours’ they keep an eye on the upmarket parts of town.
Rachel’s the only one with any hard territory. She’s set up a shelter in the city’s outskirts and runs her own cell to keep an eye on the more rundown parts of The Bay.
Her shelter’s been something of an unexpected boon to our public image. It's hard to paint us as truly dastardly criminals when there’s multiple videos of us – me and Rachel mostly – letting puppies lick our faces.
Sure, there’s the odd complaint when someone gets mauled, but it isn’t enough to outweigh the goodwill. Besides, it’s not hard to follow a few simple rules. Anyone who can’t do that doesn’t deserve dogs in the first place.
Overall, we run a mostly ordered operation, with mostly ordered meetings, while everything Lisa’s telling me borders on pure gossip; heavily biased and redundant to the point of being useless.
It's my favorite part of the day. Idle gossip isn't something I'd have ever seen myself enjoying, but I guess life is full of little surprises.
Soon enough we’re back on the couch, mocktails in hand. We feed each other one last awful-tasting spider before washing them down with our drinks. They’re sweet and fruity; a little too sweet and a lot too fruity if you ask me. We're definitely meant to drink this stuff with alcohol.
That period between eating gummies and them taking effect is always just that little bit awkward. Normally, we’d watch something, or Lisa would keep talking about the things she’s heard about, but I think we’re both a little too worn out to bother.
It’s easier to just lie back and idly spin webs on the ceiling. It’s relaxing, a bit like doodling. First I make the spokes, then I start on the outside. Connect the line, crawl clockwise, connect, clockwise, connect. There’s a rhythm to it.
“It’s skew,” Lisa says eventually. She points toward the inner spiral of my latest web and my gaze follows. It starts out regular on the outside, but closer to the center the gaps grow inconsistent.
“Huh. gummies must be starting to hit.”
Suddenly, Lisa giggles, her hand dropping down to lightly slap her face. She has to take a moment to collect herself before simply saying “spiders,” before giggling again.
I don’t even try questioning it.
Now that I’m paying attention I can feel the telltale effects. I don’t really do much with computers these days, but I like to compare the feeling to a computer that’s got a bad connection, like a rusty wire. Everything has that fuzzy feeling of static interference, my limbs especially.
I’m sure my mind isn’t all that far off. Not that I’ll end up being like Lisa, who’s only just managed to get a hold of her giggling. We weed differently and I’m not going to begrudge her her fun.
A switch is flipped, and Lisa abruptly goes from holding in giggles to sighing melodramatically.
“I can’t believe everyone else just abandoned us!” She complains.
I shrug. “You mentioned. It’s not that surprising I suppose, everyone’s got their own things,” I repeat my musing from earlier.
Lisa groans into my shoulder in lieu of a response. When did she tuck her head there? I carefully pick my hair out from under her face; she always whinges when it gets in her mouth.
“I’m here?” I say, painfully aware how lame it sounds. I’m not the most eloquent at the best of times, and these aren’t those.
“You are,” Lisa says, “that’s why you’re the best… best.”
My neck tickles where Lisa frowns against me.
“Best friend? You’re my best friend too, Lisa.” Her and Rachel are, at least. Even though it’s been years now, the fact that I have two best friends still feels kind of surreal.
“No,” Lisa says suddenly, with force. She pulls back from my shoulder and I tilt my head at her, raising an eyebrow.
“No?”
“Best friends is too–” Lisa trails off, her eyes unfocused. “Too small,” Lisa declares.
What the hell is she talking about? Lisa tries and mostly fails to elaborate after sensing my skepticism. “Taylor you’re like… my world. And stuff. I, like, okay, like, sometimes I’ll imagine it. Life? Without you? And I get this like… ow. Hurts. Don’t like it. We’ve got this connection you know?”
“Okay,” I say.
“You get it.”
“Yea.” I close my eyes, and relax further. “I get it.” I don’t think ‘best friends’ is ‘too small’ to describe us, but I get it.
“No one else does,” Lisa says, stronger this time, with more conviction. “No one else understands our… thing. Our,” she gestured between the two of us then stared at me meaningfully. “Y’know? Our thingo.”
I stare at her. “Our… relationship?”
Lisa crinkles her nose. “Ew. No. Gross... Relationships. Stupid.”
“People are stupid,” I correct.
Lisa goes quiet for a few seconds, digesting my words. I can say some pretty profound stuff sometimes. I can’t blame her for needing to mull it over for a little bit.
My nose itches, but I’m too comfortable to scratch it, so I get a bug to do the deed.
“Not me though. I’m smart,” Lisa says and pushes herself up. She leans on my shoulder for leverage, and I sink under the pressure, under the couch, under the floor.
I blink and Lisa’s right in front of me, eyes narrowed.
“You know I’m smart right?” She asks, sounding deadly serious.
“Uh,” I say intelligently. “Usually, yeah.”
Lisa frowns
I hurry to correct myself. “Like, sometimes you’re kinda illun-smart, but then other times you’re really smart, so it averages out.”
Lisa considers my words for somewhere between a few seconds and an entire minute before she flops down on top of me, boneless.
“Ow,” I monotone, Not because it hurts, really – my body feels a bit too far away to register it – but because that’s the sort of thing you do when someone flops on top of you.
“Sorry,” she apologizes, completing the ritual.
“That was my boob,” I say, vaguely annoyed.
“Was–” Lisa doesn’t manage to get through her words before doubling over, snickering. Was it?
I narrow my eyes at her. “Fuck…” I pause for breath. “Off.”
I try my best to be mad, but her happiness is contagious. It’s been a while since my chestal deficiencies bothered me anyway. Lisa doesn’t say anything, or move, and I don’t push her off.
Eventually her laughter subsides, and she goes quiet. I’m left with nothing but the soft sound of breathing and the feeling of her forehead on my collarbone. This is normal for her, just like the excitement and the weirdness and the giggling, so, I don’t worry. I do run my fingers up and down her shoulder, pressing hard. Harder than I would if I were sober, cause I don’t quite feel like bringing Lisa back into the gigglezone. Maybe if we weren’t exhausted I’d be up for that, but right now, I’m perfectly happy to just lie here, barely aware of the world around me.
I do quite wonder what she’s thinking, but I don’t press. If she wants to share she’ll share, and if she’d rather pass out on the couch it’ll be pretty obvious soon enough.
The silence seems to suit Lisa just as well, but not for long. I’m not surprised when she speaks. I am surprised by the way she sounds. Tentative. Almost nervous. “Hey Taylor, you remember when you and Brian were dating?”
I’ve only heard that particular tone a couple times before. Once when she was sober, finally dumping her sordid backstory. Then again a few days later, not sober at all, when she convinced me to ignore Dinah’s note. There was another time, also not sober, the first time Lisa and I mixed alcohol and weed. But I don’t really remember the specifics. Just the tone.
“Taylor? You still with me?” The words are accompanied by a few pokes to my stomach, where my shirt’s ridden up without me noticing.
“I’m here. Forgot I was supposed to answer.” I absently poke my own stomach alongside her. “Yeah, I remember. We only broke up a year ago.”
“I never know with you, Taylor, you have such a rich internal world.” Lisa finally lifts her head from my chest to fix me with a vague approximation of her normal vulpine grin “You have an impressive ability to selectively forget crap.”
“That’s not what I do.” I shove Lisa’s fingers away with my own, leaving my stomach all to myself. It loses its lustre quickly. “Why do you ask?”
Part of me is worried she’s going to make fun of me for fitting into my “people are stupid” category. I hope not, it’s kind of a sore topic for me. Even a year later things are still weird between me and Brian.
“You remember when you guys went on dates? Like… proper dates I mean, not having gross sex in construction sites.”
Another question and the alarms in my head start going off. She’s working up to something.
Even stoned she’s still so Lisa. I shake my head. Would it kill this girl to give a straight answer for once?
Actually, it might, I think with a dopey grin. The smile drops when I start thinking hard about the Brian of it all. As much as she was right that I’d be happier with the team than the Protectorate. As much as everything turned out okay in the end, it was still shitty for Brian to clue Lisa into my plan. Not that he had to say much. She can be annoyingly canny.
Suddenly I’m smiling again.
“I remember. Um,” My lips tingle, and I brush the tips of my fingers over them. Then I remember I was supposed to be talking and drop my arm. “They were nice,” I say as I go tomato-mode. I feel a little pathetic putting it like that.
Lisa rests her head on the couch’s arm in lieu of a response. She looks at me, down at her lap, then back at me again.
Is she mentally dissecting me or just spaced out? It’s hard to tell when she’s high; even harder when we both are..
Her expression softens after a beat. Sort of. The smile she gives me is uncomfortably genuine.
“They were,” she admits.
Not judgement then. Apparently I misread something.
“Used to follow us around,” I mumble. “Brian never noticed, but you never tried to hide from me.”
“Be a bit pointless,” Lisa says. She flashes a familiar teasing grin, then drops it again..
I wait for her to explain.
She doesn’t.
Even at her candidest, she’s still annoyingly… not candid.
“Are you going to tell me why you did that?” I ask.
“Guess.”
“No.”
Lisa pouts.
“Fine.” I throw my head back in something vaguely like annoyance. “I figured… you were trying to look out for me. In your own way. Make sure Brian was treating me like a gentleman or whatever.” It’s the most I’d ever thought about it. Lisa usually had her reasons for these sorts of things. And her reasons were usually pretty reasonable.
“That was part of it, I guess,” Lisa says.
She’s avoiding the question again.
Lisa grabs one of my hands and pulls it close, then fidgets with my fingers. She furls and unurls my pointer finger.
“Jealous,” she admits. “I think.”
“Of me?”
I can’t really picture the two of them together.
Middle finger out. Middle finger in.
“Not really.”
And suddenly, I’m not exactly sure where this is going. Or how it got here.
I blame it on the weed. McGruff the crime dog warned me about this..“Of Brian?” That sort of question usually makes things awkward. Which makes me wonder why I asked it in the first place.
Ring and pinky, splayed out to the side, close to painful. Back. And out. And back.
“Also not really,” Lisa says. “Sorry.” And for the first time, maybe ever, she really sounds like she means it. “I know you’d want me to be.”
I twist my mouth to the side. Would I?
I don’t really want to unpack that. So I don’t.
“So. What?” I say. “Wanted someone of your own?” Lisa shakes her head. “Nah.”
I frown. Can’t help it when Lisa’s being so Lisa-y.
“You’re not making any sense.”
Lisa places her palm on top of my hand, dips her fingers down between mine, then splays them out. My hand copies hers.“I guess that you could say I was jealous you wanted it.” She stares at me, eyes wide. “You know?”
“No.”
Lisa twists her mouth together, then nods. “Yeah, me either.” She looks away, matching my frown. “Be a bit simpler, though.”
“Would it?” I sit a bit straighter. “I thought you said relationships were stupid.”
“They are,” Lisa half-shouts out of nowhere. She rolls her head to the side. Her hair tickles my neck. “People are stupid.”
I look down at our still-connected hands, at the way she fidgets with them the exact same way I do myself.
“You’re sure this isn’t, like, some weird love confession?” I ask
She grabs my index with her thumb and forefinger, and pulls it to the side.
“You’re not gonna tell me you were lying back around Echidna? That you’ve been secretly pining over me for years?”
“Nah,” she says. “Too easy.” She stops methodically fidgeting with my hand and fixes me with another look. Her eyes dart around my face, searching for… something. “You don’t get it. I know that, but you do get the confusion, right?”
I study her for a long, long, long while before answering. “Yeah,” I sigh. “I get the confusion. More now, after listening to you,” I half joke.
“Try telling me about it?”
“I’m not sure if I can” I say bluntly.
Lisa smiles. I can practically see the moment the memory registers. “Cause I’m part of the problem?”
I frown again. Deeper this time. No point beating around the bush.
“Yeah,” I say. “You are. I bring our hands up; draw attention to them. “I don’t know if this means anything. Sometimes it feels like it does. But I don't feel any different about you on the days it does, it’s just…” I hold out a hand, like I’m trying to physically grab the right word. I can’t find it, though, and after a moment I drop my arm back to my side.
“What about Rachel?” Lisa asks, quirking an eyebrow.
“The same,” I shrug. “But at least with Rachel I know for sure it’s not romantic on her end.
“And if it was?” Lisa presses, “what would you do?”
I shrug again. “Reciprocate? I guess.”
“Like with Brian?”
“No,” I say before I have time to think it over. “Not like Brian. With Brian, I knew what I wanted. I could picture it. Easy. What it could be. Even when I knew it wasn’t realistic, or accurate. Even when I knew it wasn’t gonna happen like that. I could see it. Y’know? But with Rachel or–or—” I dart my eyes toward Lisa, suddenly aware of how much I’m talking. “Or you… it always just sort of looks like normal.”
Lisa scoots closer, tilting her head. “Normal?”
“Yeah,” I nod. “I don’t see a house with screaming kids or marriage or anything like that. Just… this.” I gesture between the two of us, then pause before admitting, “maybe there’s a little bit more kissing.”
Lisa hums thoughtfully. “I think I’m getting the idea, actually. Walk me through it. This ‘fantasy of yours’.” Her grin’s nearly up to her usual form. “Just need little more to piece it all together. I’ll be happy if at least one of us gets to figure themselves out a little bit today.” She seems to sense my hesitation, so she continues, the grin gone again. “I promise I won’t hold it against you, trust me, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve learnt kinda embarrassing details about you.”
Not surprising, and also not all that reassuring. I could lie, or try to downplay it, but I won’t. It’d defeat the purpose of this whole exercise. It’s fine, if Lisa teases me about it later I can deal.
“It’s the sort of standard stuff I guess? A house, screaming kids. I liked to imagine Brockton Bay as it could be in the future. The ideal version that kind of just existed in my head at the time.” We have something close to that dream version of Brockton Bay, or at least we’ve been steadily moving it in that direction. “I liked to picture Brian covering me with his power, like he used to do when we had sex.” Oops, probably too much information.. Whatever, she asked. “But not for sex, in those. There it was just to give me a small moment of tranquillity, where it could be just us. I liked to imagine us kissing.”
“Just kissing?”
I turn the words over, letting them tumble through mental fingers.
“Yeah,” I say hesitantly. “Just kissing. I liked the other stuff too, but not for the actual stuff, y’know? I liked the intimacy, I guess. I don't think it really mattered to me what form it took.”
Lisa doesn’t respond immediately and I don’t press. We just lie there, silently, staring at the ceiling. Occasionally, one of us puts pressure on our joined hands or idly rubs with a thumb.
“Huh,” Lisa says, after finishing whatever contemplation she was doing. “I think I get it. You, I mean.” She pauses, just for a moment. “And myself too, a little bit.”
I don’t respond, she’ll say what she’s thinking eventually. It’s never been something Lisa could resist, and I wouldn’t want her to anyways. She wouldn’t really be Lisa otherwise.
Instead of telling me what she figured out, Lisa hooks one of her ankles around one of mine. She pulls herself partway onto me, so that some of her weight is pressing onto me. She’s gripping me tightly, using one arm to press her chest to my chest, and her legs to press her hips to my hips. It’s nice, comfortable. Reassuring? Kind of like a human sized comforter.
Lisa shifts a little bit, then relaxes. She still keeps a tight grip, but the rest of her body just sort of… loosens.She tucks her head into the crook of my neck, like she’d done when she’d done during that manic, laughing mood, but slower this time. More intentional.
It’s not the first time we’ve been close like this, both of us are pretty touchy feely gals. But this feels different. I’m not entirely sure why.
“Would you say this is better or worse than fucking Brian?” Lisa asks.
I blink at her, and lean forward slightly. I can just about hear the gears in my mind grinding to a halt.
She already knows the answer, judging from what little I can see of her expression.
I think about the pressure, her body wrapped around mine. It’s not the sensation itself so much as who’s doing it. And why. That Lisa knows me well enough to know what I like, that she’s comfortable enough to do it without me asking. That I trust her enough to not push her away, and that she trusts me enough to know I wouldn’t go further. The both of us could stay like this, wrapped around each other until we fall asleep, I think. It wouldn’t even be weird the morning after. I wonder whether it’s the weed doing this, but that only lasts for a second before I decide that no.
No… this is all us.
“Better, I think. In some ways. Most ways. Maybe.”
Lisa hums against my neck, sleepy and satisfied. The buzz travels down my neck to the tips of my fingers, right in that valley between pleasant and weird.
“I’m overthinking it,” I realize. “Or I guess I’m thinking about it wrong?”
“Overthinking,” she says firmly. “Weed does that.”
“Yeah.”
“So stop it.”
“Okay.”
We’re quiet for a moment, then Lisa taps my nose without looking. “You’re still thinking.”
“Yeah,” I say, then awkwardly add a “Sorry.”
I sit and stare and try to figure out whatever it was my Brian-filled fantasies and Lisa-filled reality had in common. I can’t figure anything, except maybe… “I think I’m just comfortable.” I say. That’s the one constant. How comfortable it is. Or how easy it is. Or both. The house and the kids and the sex are really just set dressing. Lisa’s proud smile ghosts across my neck. It tips the scale into unpleasantness and I push her off. Just enough to meet her tired eye.
She drifts back and forth in front of me. Our noses touch every now and then.
“You’re overthinking,” I mumble. I point an accusatory finger. Lisa narrows her eyes and swats my hand away.
I’m captivated by the way she scrunches her nose. “I’m not like you Taylor. You’re,” she sighs and purses her lips. “You’re interested. You’re interested in your own weird way. But you are interested. And I’m… not.”
Okay.
The gears turn slowly. My thoughts feel heavy. I don’t want screw up again. I don’t want to mess up another relationship.
Then it hits me, all at once. Why it lasted so long, the sulking. Why it hurt so much. It wasn’t that I was super duper in love with him or anything. I just hated how awkward things became. Hated the fact it wasn’t easy anymore. That I couldn’t just walk up and hug him without it being weird. Without raising questions. Without Cozen seeing it as a big deal.I don’t want that with Lisa.
But…
I take another look at her and a little bit of the tension in my chest relaxes.
It’s fine. If it gets weird it gets weird, but we’ll handle it.
It’s fine.
Probably.
“It’s not something you’re looking for.” I only realize I’m speaking a split second after the words leave my mouth. Somehow, I can’t stop them. “But, uh, if it’s,” I wet my lips. “If it’s something you’ve got, would you try to get rid of it?” Lisa stares at me. I might be imagining it, but somehow she looks a lot less peeved than I thought she would.
She looks…
“I think I’d feel a little bit bad. Keeping you from being…” She hesitates a split second before saying the word ‘happy’, then reconsiders. “Keeping you from the kind of relationship you’d want.”
I stare at her and she stares at me.
She’s lying, and I know she’s lying. And she might even know I know too.
She and I both know she’s not that selfless.
Maybe.
I don’t call her out on it.
“Tough,” I say, and settle back down.
Lisa doesn’t argue the point.
She relaxes back against me after a moment.
It feels like this would be the part in a romance where people kiss. Or at the very least try to talk it out, figure out exactly what they are and where they stand.
But we don’t. And won’t.
There wouldn’t be much point, I think as I shut my eyes. I don’t think anyone could understand whatever it is we have.
Least of all, us.