nerves were still screaming, but the connection with Roxy calmed me. I was anxious. But calmer. She and I had some history, too. And like everything in my fucking life, it wasn’t simple.
Mickie walked up, let out a long hand. “Dance with me,” she said, and she said it sweetly.
Roxy sat up. Nodded her head, said, “Go on.”
I took Mickie’s hand, and she pulled me up and close.
My world recessed, then exploded into a galaxy its own within her eyes. We had discovered this place, a spiral in which only she and I could dwell.
She let her arms around my shoulders, fingers folded behind my neck.
I put my hands behind her back. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said back. “I’m really glad you came out with us.”
“Me too.” You know, if you took out all the awful shit and left only the me and Mickie stuff.
“I like you. Just in case it wasn’t, you know, obvious or whatever.”
My blood started singing, pushing past my worried nerves. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Like a lot.”
I smiled. It almost hurt. “Well I like you.”
“Yeah?” She turned her head, all teeth.
“Yeah. Like a lot.”
“Well that’s good,” Mickie said. “You should because I’m rad.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You’re rad, too,” she said.
“Hey, thanks.”
“No, I mean it. You’re so fucking rad it hurts me to look at you.”
I felt the secrets of our life together starting to unlock, unfolding toward forever.
4 | On Night Flights
With the wind on our faces, we rushed through the black air.
I saw the smiles of Danielle and Mickie and Wendy. I saw the pulse of life flowing within them, felt it within me. All our blood’s hot and moving, our breath fire in the throat.
Danielle’s place was best. There never seemed to be anyone there, and it’s huge. The lighting’s dim and crazy fucking atmospheric, almost as though it were designed just for the sorts of entanglements we got into there.
Lit by the boxed filament up and away, Danielle reclined with Wendy curling around her legs, pulling off her tall boots.
I watched from on high, up on the catwalk. Watched them watch me. Heard Mickie clicking up behind me, like a cat. Felt her fingers work my buckles and straps. Heard the clank of metal on the cold burnished floor ring out through lofted ceilings, the final notes muffled by leather. Felt Mickie’s breath hot on the back of my neck. Her fingertips on my stomach. I breathed out. My neck, warm and wet, I went up on my toes against the rail of the catwalk. My arms locked stiff.
Mickie’s long neck craned around the side of my face. Her mouth found mine. I tasted what she tasted and breathed what she breathed. Her teeth often fierce were tender then, striking mine but not hurting.
I looked down, saw Danielle bend back as Wendy ran her golden hair over her. Danielle closed her eyes, no longer seeing me, but I saw her still.
Mickie ran her hand from my stomach, around my ribs to my back, then dragged them down my spine. She pulled her head back. I felt her teeth and mouth against my scalp and hair. I felt her hand again, inside me, pressed down harder on the rail.
Our breath quickened. I felt the electricity in her nerves, felt it flowing into my own, surging, magnificent, and overwhelming. Mickie’s hips mirrored mine and rocked into me.
Her breath in my ear, loud, making hot moisture, worked into the bones inside.
“I want you,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Right fucking now.”
My heart thumped in my ears, sending hot blood everywhere, swelling with joyous knowing.
I heard Danielle’s cries through the loft. Wendy laughed. I thought it cruel at first, her laughing. Wendy was cruel sometimes. But then I heard Danielle join her and went easy.
Mickie turned me by the shoulders, hard. So hard, my feet came off the ground. Fear rushed me. Then she caught me by the hips and pulled me to her.
I wrapped my legs around her back, squeezed hard. I pulled her off balance, and we both tipped over the rail. She let go of one of my hips to press a palm to the rail, stopping our topple.
I looked in her eyes. They’re full of life and play. Her smile wide with teeth bared. She kissed my chest, licked it too. Blood filtered out the fear, made me warm again, but my attention was still split between Mickie’s mouth and the long fall we nearly took.
Mickie whipped me around and down to the cold hard floor, knocking the wind from me and filling my eyes with spots. I exhaled, then gasped.
What I took in was perfumed of her. My nose sorted the scents, refining them in greater detail, those I knew and those I did not, rendering a more complete collection of her likeness in my memory.
I blinked her dark hair from my eyes, along with the spots, and saw her looming, diving in to meet my mouth once more. Her teeth scraped mine with the kind of ferocity I knew only from Mickie. She was fiercer than I would have liked, but I liked it still. I wanted this with her above all else.
Danielle and Wendy shouted up into the lofts, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying, my ears still pumping blood and being bitten hard. Mickie said things into them, giggling but also making serious sounds that told me to forget whatever Danielle and Wendy were saying.
Mickie stood up, slunk into the room nearby, heels clicking and echoing through the high walk.
I pushed up to my hands and knees, then tried to stand. My leg was asleep, so I limped to follow, propelled by my enthusiasm.
The room was Danielle’s parents’ bedroom. That felt weird but also a bit daring. It had the strange smells of older people, scents at once comforting and off-putting.
Mickie crawled on the bed on all fours, looking like a jungle cat.
I limped over to the bed, went to climb on, when she stopped me with an outstretched hand, nails very near my eyes.
I stopped and waited, like she wanted.
She went to her knees, grabbed the bottom of her top with crisscrossed hands, then sent it flying across the room, her long dark hair spraying out everywhere.
I smiled, smitten.
Mickie put her thumbs into her waistline and pushed her pants down to the bed, then kicked her legs from under her and out to me.
