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They’re in a dive bar in Indiana, just outside of South Bend. BARB’S — a roadside joint for cowboys and working girls and everyone else who has something to drink about. A real neon-beer-signed, country-music-on-the-jukebox-drowned, beer-soaked, dive bar. The air is blue with smoke. The tables wobble on books of matches and folded beer mats. Behind the bar, the eponymous Barb holds court with a menthol stuck between lips made gluey with pink lipstick: pulling beers, popping caps, sloshing whiskey into glasses in a way that rides the line between haphazard and disinterested. TEN CENT SHOTS is written in marker on a lined piece of notebook paper, stuck to the mirrored bar back. Lupe, tapping the face of her ring against the sticky bar top, waiting on a couple lukewarm Miller Lites, tilts her head until she can see her reflection past the paper sign.
The black eye she earned a week ago during practise — courtesy of Carson and her overexcited elbows — is more of a yellow one now. Slowly, she slides over a little, until all she can see in the mirror is her shoulders; her restless hands. Behind her, the bar heaves with the warm life of a middle-of-nowhere dive on Saturday night. Lupe picks Jess out of the mass easily, and by force of habit. Her red hair shines under the dim lights.
Across the room comes a high pitched dinging noise, followed by the rush of metal on metal. Lupe presses a few coins into Barb’s outstretched hand; watches her pink-taloned fingers close around the change; turns around just in time to see the last of the pay-out rattle from the slot machine’s mouth. By its light, the winner looks noncommittal: scooping the quarters out of the bucket and back into their paper cup, from which they continue to feed the machine. Before them, it pulses with a slick, electric life; its display endlessly reeling.
Lupe turns away from the scene.
Jess sniffed this place out. She’s got an unerring sixth sense for bars that lie on the fringes of society. Most of the time, that means gay bars. Places stuffed to the gills with people like them; plenty girls to watch, beers to drink, and guys who don’t have any interest in bothering them. Sometimes, like tonight, it means she and Jess are passing time surrounded by the heterosexual oddballs of the world. Working class men and women looking to let off a little steam; unbothered by their minor celebrity status in the way the pretty dykes in places like Vi’s aren’t.
Really, it’s not so bad. Lupe likes the nights she has Jess all to herself, anyway.
Their table is a small one right in the middle of the floor, because Jess likes to watch people like some people watch birds. Lupe finds it, loads it with beers, and then scoops an ashtray off a neighbouring table to complete the set-up. Smokes, beers, ashtray — Jess, grinning, pulling a bottle towards herself.
“Miller,” she says. Not a question, not anything. Her eyes flick up, pale under her heavy brow.
Lupe, accustomed to the way Jess communicates now, says, “No PBR.”
She sucks her teeth. “Figures.”
The Miller goes down easy. Jess isn’t a heavy drinker but she tackles it just like she tackles everything in life: with a kind of singleminded focus that’s there no matter what the task. Flirting with a girl. Sliding home through grit and sand from third base. Baring her teeth as Lupe pulls the zip of a dress up to the downy nape of her neck.
(She tackled charm school the same way. Lupe, in turn, tackled charm school Jess with a heavy hand and a wet washcloth, like she was a wayward kitten come in from the cold.)
The juke switches to something twangy and tender. A few guys clutch each other and howl. Jess, opposite, cradling an unlit cigarette between teeth and palm of hand, snorts. Cocks an eyebrow in Lupe’s direction.
“Way gay,” she confirms, and Jess laughs; lights her smoke.
She’s wearing a threadbare little tee, with rolled sleeves and a pocket at the front, deflated by the absence of her smokes. Thin, white, and clinging, its seams dotted with holes and trailing stray thread. Through it, Lupe can see her nipples. Can see a dark mole on the side of her breast. The way the reddish suntan on her forearms gives over to milky skin on her biceps. Lupe swallows. She swallows again. Amongst the din of the room, the slot machine vomits out coins, spins its display, calls out over that sweet country song: BIG WINNER, BIG WINNER, BIG —
Jess, leaning across the table: “I feel like I’m in National Geographic.” Politely, she gives Lupe a beat in which to reply. She doesn’t, and so Jess barrels on. “Straight men, in their natural habit —“ her voice drops low, takes on a cartoonish lilt Lupe realises, belatedly and with a laugh she has to cover with her beer, is supposed to be British, “ — contrive situations…” She seems to run out of steam, and just shrugs. Tips her beer to her mouth. “Not the worst place we’ve been.”
Lupe hums, thoughtful. The noise of the bar swells between them, before, as one, they both say: “Boise, Idaho.”
Brown floors and walls and blank, uninterested faces. Despite all the cowboys, not a gay spot to be found. Her and Jess and Jo drank Pabst from buckets of lukewarm water until midnight; smoking cigarettes and not talking and not making any eye contact. When they left, they — and all the patrons of the bar they crashed — sighed a collective sigh of relief.
Here, the energy is good, if a little straight. Jess and Lupe, without the distraction of girls to attract, get drunk quickly and easily. Miller gives way to lager and Jameson, which settles them both neatly away into the warm sort of haze that’s good for inconsequential chat. They talk about baseball. About Carson and her burgeoning dyke-hood. About Sarge and about the house, about the bus, about baseball again — until they’re both drunk, and loose, and Lupe feels distinctly warm.
Jess, Lupe has noticed, goes red down to her chest when she’s drunk. The whole lot of her pink, disappearing into the frayed collar of that old tee. Lupe sometimes thinks about pressing her fingertips to it, just to see if that red would go white under her touch, like sunburn. But Jess is always watching her too close. Lupe knows she’d catch her wrist before Lupe made contact with her skin. And from there — the unknown. Lupe likes to know what she’s getting into when she acts. Or, she always used to.
She’d catch my wrist and not let it go, Lupe thinks, watching Jess methodically strip the label from her beer. Those square hands of hers; callused and rough and red-knuckled. She’d squeeze her hand around it ’til it hurts. Jess’ eyes flick up, catching Lupe staring. And I’d let her.
Very deliberately, Jess leans back.
They’ve been playing this game for some time. What started as glances across the back of the bus has coalesced into something weighty and real. The rise and fall of Jess’ chest as Lupe fastens the buttons on her uniform. The way Jess’ hands gravitate easily and without thought to the necklace at Lupe’s throat. Thumbing over the Virgin there, idly, while they talk. Lupe, breathless from the proximity: You’ve gotta tell me ‘bout one of those sinking boats one day, y’know. A smile, the medal flashing watery gold light across Jess’ face. Ask me later.
Lupe touches the medal now. Force of habit; absent prayer. Jess is watching her. Eyes like pale darts through the smoke.
She holds her cigarette in front of her crotch. Thumb tapping at the filter, cherry glowing vague in the dim room. Slumped back in her chair in that louche, unselfconscious way that makes Lupe’s blood run hot. As she watches, Jess passes her cigarette from one hand to the other. Ash falls to the ground. Close to her crotch, the inner seam of her pants has worn and split. Lupe can see skin through the tear.
Jess raises her smoke to her mouth. Lupe follows: trace of hot orange light. Finds Jess smirking, something teasing there in her half-lidded eyes.
“Something you wanna say?” she asks. The sound of the bar is muted, as though it’s coming from another room. Like they’re not sitting right in the centre of it, sharing a table mottled with the pale rings of old beer stains. Jess’ hand drops back down between her legs. Lupe makes a concerted effort not to follow it down, this time.
Say something smart, she thinks. Jess’ mouth is curling, like she’s about to erupt into laughter any second. The silence grows. A guy wanders past, and bumps the back of Jess’ chair; mutters a low, sorry, dude. She doesn’t react. Doesn’t turn. Doesn’t do anything but draw on her cigarette, cheeks hollowing, and cock an eyebrow at Lupe.
“You want another beer?” Lupe asks, and that laugh that Jess had been holding back comes out: rising above the music.
Her cheeks are pink. “No,” she says, and grinds her smoke out in the ashtray without looking away from Lupe’s face.
Her foot nudges Lupe’s under the table. Abruptly, and without warning, Lupe feels a flush of arousal wash through her; so unexpected that she knows it must show on her face. Jess is grinning. The lamp behind her head haloes her. In its light, her pale red hair glows.
“Meet me in the toilet,” she murmurs, scraping her chair back from the table. Her cigarette, only half-stubbed-out, smokes weakly away in the ashtray between them. “Wait five minutes, then come.”
Why now? Lupe wants to ask her, but knows it won’t matter. Jess is a tide with no chart; an impossible-to-predict thing. So when she stands, and makes her way to the bathroom, Lupe sits and she waits the requisite five minutes, and then she follows.
The bathroom is small and hot and subterranean; dark walls, sodium lamps, the pervasive smell of hand soap and damp. Brown water stains pockmark the ceiling. The tile floor is slippery underfoot. Lupe closes the door behind her, and leans her back to it, eyeing the two stalls before her. Her heart is thumping under her breastbone; the whole situation taking on a wobbly sheen of the surreal as she detaches from the door. Steps toward the stalls. Nudges open the door of the closest one with her boot, and lingers there in the open doorway.
Jess is perched on the cistern inside, boots planted either side of the seat. Elbows on her knees, cigarette hanging between her knuckles. Trace of hot orange in the dim, warm room. Lupe, in the doorway of the stall, watches her raise it to her mouth. Watches the cherry flare. Takes a step forward, and then another, until she can swing the door shut behind her, and bolt it.
The room thumps with the distant noise of the jukebox next door. A rough, low, chugging rhythm. For a moment, all Jess does is look at her. Tracing her thumb back and forth over her lower lip, cigarette fluttering smoke into her hair. And then, imperceptible to someone not so attuned to Jess’ strange, silent means of communication; she tilts her head. Cocks an eyebrow Lupe’s way; the one with the stroke of white through it.
Lupe settles her shoulder blades back against the stall door. Tips her chin up; baring her throat. On the other side of their tiny expanse of warm darkness, Jess grins. Drops her smoke into the bowl between her feet, where it dies a tiny, hissing death. And then she advances.
“Kinda expected you to come in here and cuss me out,” she admits, bouncing down from her seat on the cistern and insinuating herself easily into Lupe’s personal space. The stall is small: very small. Big enough for the toilet and their bodies, plus the few spare inches of space that remain between them. Lupe thinks about saying something like — there’s still time — or — would you like me to? — but then Jess rubs the ball of her thumb down Lupe’s throat, and settles it in the hollow between her collarbones. The English language quietly and calmly takes its leave from Lupe’s brain.
All she manages is a small noise that later she will vehemently deny ever came out of her mouth. Somewhere there between a true gasp of surprise, and a whimper. Jess, upon hearing it, snorts. Closes that remaining gap between them, until Lupe is trapped between the stall door and Jess’ rawboned body. Heat radiates from her. Her thumb still lingers at Lupe’s throat. She feels it when she swallows.
“You’re sweating,” Jess tells her, carefully. Her hand moves; palming at the nape of Lupe’s neck, where her hair sticks to her tacky skin. “I can smell it.”
“You like it,” Lupe counters with, dazedly, and Jess laughs, and kisses her.
Jess’ mouth, against all odds, is soft. Lingering. Unhurried. The kind of kiss that deserves to exist outside of a dim dive bar bathroom, if the world was a fair place. But it’s not. And so they’re here. Under slick sodium light with old graffiti watching them come together. Jess is pressing Lupe back against the door, and the cheap metal lock is rattling, and Lupe is sighing, melting, coming perfectly and prematurely undone.
‘——!’ she thinks. Blissful nothing. Jess’ long, lean hands cradle Lupe’s jaw; pushing her hair back from her face as she mouths at her. Kisses her bottom lip, making a small, urging noise until Lupe opens her mouth and their tongues slide hot together. And with that comes the intensity. Fingers clutching in hair, surge of her lean body to Lupe’s front, hard enough that the door creaks. Jess’ natural raw energy reshaped and remade into something blunt and all-consuming. Her knee slips between Lupe’s legs. She grips her up so tight and so close that the world ends, is remade, and ends again, until all that’s left is this bathroom stall. Jess’ breath in her mouth. Her hair tickling Lupe’s face. The vague lump of the socks in her underwear that Lupe can feel when their hips press together.
She wears them there when she goes out with sex in mind. A pair of grey socks, darned at the heel with a yellow shatter of star-like stitches, tucked away in the pouch of her stolen y-fronts. Lupe thinks hotly about cupping at them. Squeezing. Pushing her hand past Jess’ waistband to shove them aside and get at where she’s warm and wet.
Just to be a dick, she murmurs, “You’re hard,” into the hot air between their mouths. Jess’ eyes flash in the dim light. The fingers in Lupe’s hair tighten, and a flush of arousal follows it; prickling like goosebumps, settling down low and hot in her stomach.
She laughs. Jess grins along with her. And when she kisses her again, there’s something purposeful behind it that wasn’t there before. The door is warm against Lupe’s back, through her shirt; so thin that her hard nipples make peaks in the breezy fabric. Still, she shivers, overwhelmed.
They break apart, but Jess doesn’t go far. Her fingers have found their home, hooked happily in Lupe’s necklace.
“Open your pants,” she says, in a low voice. A disc of refracted light skates across her face, the same shape as Lupe’s medallion; that same light which always finds her.
Lupe touches her thumb to it. Jess’ skin is warm and flushed under her fingertip. Roughly, and teasingly, she murmurs, “You always this romantic?”
“Not really,” she says, simply, and Lupe understands. She’s not being treated like the usual girls Jess fucks — blondes, mostly, in skirts and little heels and pin curls. The knowledge sends a warm rush through her, half arousal and half something she can’t put a name to. All she knows is she likes it. That she wants more of it.
She opens her pants. The rattle of her belt is loud in the quiet bathroom; the jukebox switched over now to something soft and blue and twangy. Patsy Cline, maybe, crooning about her cigarettes.
Jess is watching her. Cheeks and neck flushed, that particular kind of pink that Lupe knows must go all the way down to her tits. She wishes she could palm at them. Rub over her nipples. But then Jess pushes her hand past the open waistband. Skims her hot palm over Lupe’s belly, her bush, settling between her thighs. And Lupe forgets about blushes, and tits, and mostly everything that doesn’t involve pushing her cunt forward into Jess’ touch.
“You’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” she mutters, fast and low, as her rough fingertips roll over Lupe’s clit. A brief, confident, exploratory touch. Lupe’s head knocks back against the door, eyes staring sightlessly up toward the ceiling as Jess begins making lazy circles there.”Wanted you from the first time I saw you, out on that diamond in your brother’s jersey. When I saw what you looked like dolled up — my brother wears a frock better than you.” Here, she laughs, and Lupe huffs out a half-laugh, half-moan.
“That’s what does it for you?” she asks, breathlessly. She’s so wet it’s a little embarrassing; Jess’ fingers skate easily, firmly over her. Her huge eyes luminous in the dim bathroom, peering out at Lupe from under her brow like she’s the most interesting thing in the world. A bug pinned to velvet. If Lupe pushes hard enough into Jess’ touch, she can feel the stir of the pin that sticks her there. Cold and silver, embedded in her insides.
“Yeah,” Jess is saying, her voice low and shot, like she’s the one getting her clit played with. “Knew soon as I saw those eyes of yours.” Hers bore into Lupe’s face, her upper lip shining with sweat. The bathroom stall is close. Lupe herself feels damp between her legs, under her arms, at her hairline. “Big and brown and mad at everything.” Her mouth twitches. Her fingers flirt with Lupe’s hole. “Can I fuck you?”
“Yes,” Lupe gasps, and conversation is abandoned. Jess sinks herself knuckle deep into Lupe’s cunt; two fingers all at once, slim and rough and unerring against that spot that makes Lupe’s mouth open and her eyes close and her breath still in her chest. She normally spends more time fucking than getting fucked. Jess’ touch is a revelation, after a few long weeks with nothing inside of her. Hot and electric and so good it robs Lupe of thought and speech. All she can manage is small, strangled noises; panted into the air between their months. And then Jess kisses her, and that too is muffled. They become one being, pressed so close together the door at Lupe’s back threatens popping its lock entirely. She ignores it. Jess is panting against her mouth, slipping her fingers in and out of the wet mess her cunt has become. She has more important things to do than think about a goddamn door.
Then Jess leans back, and mutters, “You are so fucking wet,” and Lupe orgasms: soundlessly, unexpectedly, hand pressed over her own mouth to muffle her moans. Jess watches her with bright interest in her pale eyes, a small smile curving her mouth. “Should I stop?” she breathes, fingers slowing in their slick slide, and Lupe shakes her head, fast. Panting wet into the cup of her palm as she allows her orgasm to roll over her.
Jess pulls her fingers out. Rubs at her clit; slowly, soothingly, bringing Lupe through her orgasm and into another, gentler one. Mouthing at her ear, whispering, “Jesus, you come so easy,” pulling back to grin at her when Lupe gives a full body shiver and begins to work her hips into Jess’ touch once more.
“Keep going,” she breathes, taking her hand from her face to anchor in Jess’ braid. The touch tugs her head back; Lupe feels a small thrill of pleasure at how Jess allows it. But even with the jerk of her head back, her eyes trace white fire through the gloom. Watching Lupe’s face as her fingers press smoothy back inside. Watching like her whole world is suddenly contained in this dim bathroom stall. Orange light in her pale eyelashes, shining in her teeth as she bares them to the hot air. Like there’s nothing to look at but Lupe. Nothing that matters except watching the twist of her expression as Jess begins to work her fingers inside her again; a slow, rocking sort of rhythm. Lupe’s pulse pounds in her teeth. Pounds against Jess’ fingertips. Races in her ears.
Jess works her fingers deeper. Works them harder. Lupe’s head tips back. Her mouth opens. Jess leans in, and replaces the breath in there with her tongue.
The door rattles. Lupe, clutching desperately at the wrist disappearing into her pants, eyes half-closed and fluttering, can’t focus on anything but the slide of Jess’ fingers. These rough, abortive little movements; grind of her fingertips to that spot inside her that makes Lupe eyes roll back in her head. Not enough space between her cunt and the wet-and-getting-wetter crotch of her pants, so Jess has to settle for what she can. Fucking her, pulling out to tease at her clit; so much of that initial manic energy gone now that Lupe’s gotten off a couple times. Now Jess is leisurely with her touches, indulgent, smiling into Lupe’s temple as she shakes and clutches at her.
“Like that?” she purrs, like Lupe isn’t grinding the bones of her wrist into fucking powder between her fingers. The lamplight shines in her teeth, in the sweat on her throat, in the mad shatter of her flyaway hairs, framing her flushed face. Lupe doesn’t reply, just drags her down into another kiss, moaning as her long, lean body surges against her own. All that intensity of hers concentrated, clarified, honed into a sharp point. Lupe feels speared by it. Flayed raw. Each time Jess leans back from kissing her, she expects to see blood on her teeth.
Jess’ voice, in her ear: “C’mon. One more, Lu.”
Lupe’s so wet she can feel it welling up under her clit. Can feel it slick down to her ass, smearing into her bush, her thighs. Jess thumbs at her, gently. So soft it’s almost too little — has Lupe panting, pushing into the touch, eyelashes wet as Jess mouths at her jaw, her temple, the sweaty curl of hair there, whispering dirty little nothings into the salty skin there —
Her thumb — callused, big, and unerring — slips over Lupe’s aching clit just right, and she falls apart. Clutching at Jess’ shoulders, at her nape, thighs pressing together and toes curling in her boots as she shakes through it. Mouth pressed to Jess’ collarbone, open and panting wet into the skin there as she tries hard not to make any noise. Three orgasms is her natural limit. She slumps back against the door when she’s done, feeling wrung out and dazed, a complete fucking mess.
Jess is grinning at her. Fingers wet and shining when she pulls them from the open vee of Lupe’s pants, and wipes them carelessly on her thigh. Lupe wrinkles her nose, but Jess pulls her in for a kiss before she can make some comment about Jess’ hygiene practises. The stall fills with the sound of the bar beyond, and the small noises Jess makes against Lupe’s mouth as she presses against her, running her hands over Lupe’s hips, her waist, the sensitive peaks of her tits —
“Stop,” Lupe gasps, and pushes her away. Jess, red-mouthed and pleased, goes easily. Jaw tipping up, eyes dipping down, fingers already twitching at her pockets for her cigarettes. “You’re a dog,” Lupe tells her, breathless, and Jess laughs.
“Heard that before.”
“Bet you have,” she says, closing her eyes as she sags against the door.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jess says, waving her hand. But her eyes are bright, cheeks flushed, mouth tugging with a smile that she’s visibly trying to keep at bay. For a moment, all they do is look at one another. Jess’ huge, hungry eyes flicking over her. Lupe feeling dishevelled, exposed, red in the face. Thinking, oh God, and what did we do?
Then Jess snorts, and Lupe ducks her head, grinning, and the moment passes.
“Stupid,” Lupe mutters, fondness bubbling up red in her chest as she shakes her head, and heaves herself up from her slump against the door. “C’mon, move.”
Jess rolls her eyes, but moves; the two of them shuffling past each other in the tight space. Then Jess takes Lupe’s spot against the door, and Lupe shoves her pants down, and plants herself on the toilet seat.
“That’s nice,” Jess says, crossing her arms over her chest as she watches Lupe rattle toilet paper from the dispenser. “Just lovely.”
“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” Lupe says, and when she looks up, winks. Jess huffs, and takes the opportunity to light up a smoke. The match flares, a bright point of light in the dim bathroom. Then she blows it out, balances it carefully on the toilet roll dispenser.
The toilet flushes. Lupe, she lingers in pulling her pants up. There’s something in how Jess is looking at her that’s sticking her in place. Despite the warmth of the room, she shivers.
Jess breaks the steady silence. Smoke streaming from her nostrils, hips tipping out toward Lupe as she says, “Lemme see it, then.” The meaning is clear, but she flicks her eyes towards Lupe’s lap anyway, as if to illustrate her point. Lupe raises her eyebrows.
“Really?” she asks.
Jess pushes her bottom lip out, shrugs. “What, now you’re shy?”
“Shy’s not the word I’d choose,” she mutters, but leans back all the same. Sometimes she thinks her and Jess fit so well together because they’re both the same specific kind of weird. She can’t imagine doing this for anybody else. Can’t imagine anybody else asking her to. The cistern is cold between her shoulder blades. Her bush still wet from how turned on she was. When she feels Jess’ eyes settle on the crux of her legs, Lupe feels an idle pulse of arousal roll through her. Jess’ cheeks hollow around her cigarette. Eyes heavy-lidded and appraising.
“Pretty,” she comments. Her cigarette smoke hangs in the still air. “Real nice.”
Lupe makes a noise — halfway between a scoff and a nervous laugh — and closes her legs, embarrassed and turned on all at once. Face so hot she’s sure she has to be red-cheeked. “I want to eat you out,” she counters with, still sat there with Jess looming over her, the light behind her head making a tarnished little halo of her cigarette smoke and staticky hairs.
Jess sidesteps Lupe’s comment very neatly. “Maybe next time.” Her cigarette flares in the dim room; its burn drowned out by the jukebox’s distant thrum. It lights her up from below, casts her deep-set eyes into shadow, for a moment. Then she’s drawing it away, ashing idly to the dirty floor, saying, “I got what I want.”
She looks like she did too. Cheeks flushed, eyes bright and clinging. Lupe knows she’s not the sort of dyke who likes being touched; knows Jess gets off on her own terms and in her own particular ways, so it doesn’t hurt her feelings. Still, she reaches out to graze her knuckles against the front of Jess’ pants, feeling the lump of her stitch-spangled socks there.
Arms still crossed, Jess cants her hips into the touch, her lips parting a little. A strand of hair escapes her braid and falls forward over her face, shuddering in the sigh that escapes her.
“You’re still hard,” Lupe jokes, and the corner of Jess’ mouth lifts. She’s watching Lupe like a hawk watches something small and furry and very edible.
“I’ll fuck you with it next time.”
Lupe grins, her overworked clit giving one final and heroic pulse at that. “I’ll hold you to that,” she says, affection bubbling over in her chest when Jess just smiles, shaking her head as she raises her smoke to her lips.
Jess reels her into a kiss after she stands, busy with buttoning her pants and tucking her shirt back in. A sweet, lingering thing, Jess’ hand on her waist, curving Lupe’s body toward her own. Any post-orgasm anxieties disappear: questions about what comes next, or whether whatever happened in this bathroom tonight will change things for them in the future. The world shrinks. Becomes this hot, little room with its dark tiles reflecting their bodies ad infinitum. Then Jess leans back. Tucks an errant curl behind Lupe’s ear, something dangerously fond warming her eyes as she busies herself with fixing Lupe’s collar.
“What now?” Lupe asks, feeling Jess’ thumb skate along the warm line of her necklace chain. She tips her chin up, eyes closing when Jess ducks in close to kiss her throat.
“Beer,” Jess mutters, mouth warm and wet against Lupe’s neck. She shivers, eyes on the water stained ceiling as Jess noses at her, hands curling over her shoulders as she slots their bodies together.
“No, I mean after the beer.” Silence. Lupe swallows. “When we go home. Tomorrow, next week, whatever.”
“There’ll be more beers,” Jess says, flippantly, but when she leans back to look Lupe in the eye, her expression softens. She thumbs at Lupe’s nape, at the jut of her spine. “When we go home, we’ll go to sleep. And tomorrow we have practise. Next week, we’ll play baseball. And the week after that, and the week after that one too.”
Lupe, fingers toying with a loose button on her shirt: “So we just forget it happened?”
Jess’ teeth catch the orange light of the lamp overhead. “That’s not what I said.”
Outside the bathroom, a bell rings: a loud, clear noise pealing out over the thud of music on the juke. Last call; end of the night. Neither of them react. Lupe’s too busy searching Jess’ face for any trace of deceit. Jess is too busy looking innocent as a lamb.
“You mean, we keep doing this kinda thing?”
Jess shrugs. “I’d like that. Would you?”
Up close she smells like cigarettes and sweat, like the men’s cologne Lupe knows she keeps hidden in a pair of socks and only brings out for occasions like this. It makes Lupe want to turn her face into Jess’ neck, to try and find the places she dabbed the cologne by taste alone. Instead, she shifts her weight, restless. Mutters, hesitantly, “Yeah, I’d like that.”
A grin. Jess’ hands squeeze playfully around Lupe’s biceps. “Shit, don’t sound so pleased.”
“Quit it,” Lupe grumbles, biting at the inside of her cheek to contain her smile as Jess shakes her, gently. “Stop. You think it’s really that easy?”
“Could be,” Jess says, releasing her arms. Immediately her fingers gravitate towards Lupe’s necklace, her thumb passing over the face of it absently as she adds, “Only way to find out is to try it.”
The overhead light catches on Lupe’s medal; shatters itself in shades of yellow and orange across Jess’ face. It’s a familiar sight; one Lupe’s been a necklace-length away from more times than she can count. In a sweltering dugout, a dusty baseball diamond, back of a moving bus with Jess’ sweaty armpit pressed hot against her shoulder cap. In bar after bar after bar; Lupe’s only constant. Jess gravitates towards Lupe like light gravitates towards her. The realisation reorients her. Has her blinking at Jess as that fractured light slides over her face; open, and honest, blurry with the dregs of pleasure.
“You still want that beer?” she croaks, and Jess grins, baring all her teeth.