Complementary and Acute

by Ella Lyons

  Blakely’s eyebrows shot up. “Dancing?”

  “Dancing. Oh, can we?”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want.”

  “It is!” Anabelle cried. “Very much.”

  They paid their checks (Anabelle very carefully left a generous tip for pretty Kara, just to make it clear there were no hard feelings) then went two streets over to Shay’s, a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar that Anabelle had never considered going into, but apparently she’d been missing out. The place was stuffed to the seams with girls from Dearington, even though it was Monday.

  “Do you think they have those pink drinks here?”

  “I’m sure they have something you’ll like,” Blakely said. “In for a penny I guess, right?”

  “Sure!”

  Anabelle’s blood was pounding with the heavy bass coming from somewhere above their heads. She grabbed hold of Blakely’s hand as they waded through the crowd to get to the bar, not even letting go when Blakely leaned across the bar to hug the bartender. When she came back, she was holding two shot glasses between her fingers.

  “Cheers,” she said, sliding one into Anabelle’s hands.

  “Am I going to hate this?”

  “So much!” Blakely shouted.

  She wasn’t wrong. Whatever the drink was, it burned like crazy going down, making Anabelle’s eyes water and her throat close up. She spluttered and coughed, slamming the shot glass down on the bar. “That was awful!”

  “Another?”

  “Absolutely!”

  Anabelle didn’t count her shots. That seemed to negate the purpose of drinking them in the first place. One moment she was standing at the bar, holding Blakely’s hand and choking down the burning liquor, which wasn’t that bad, honestly; and the next she was standing in a crush of sweaty bodies, Blakely’s hands on her waist, her voice in Anabelle’s ear shouting, “Just move your hips!”

  It was easier to move than Anabelle had expected. She swayed into Blakely’s hands, her blood warm and sweet and sluggish in her veins. The music curled around her sticky skin, touching her in between the places where Blakely’s fingers were spread out under the hem of her shirt. Anabelle tipped her head back against Blakely’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

  For once, it was easy to let go.

  “Okay?” Blakely asked, and now she was close enough that she wasn’t shouting. Her voice sent a shiver down Anabelle’s spine.

  Anabelle didn’t answer, just sank further back into Blakely’s body. She was so warm, which should have been awful in the heat of the room, but it was actually lovely. With some difficulty, she lifted her head and turned in Blakely’s arms—and froze.

  At the edge of the throng of dancing bodies, Jac was standing stock-still, her eyes locked on Anabelle.

  Anabelle’s heart rocketed to her stomach.

  “Jac.”

  Blakely had stopped dancing. Maybe she was looking at Anabelle, or maybe she had looked over her shoulder to see Jac standing there just across the room, jaw clenched, mouth set in a narrow line. Anabelle couldn’t say either way. She suddenly understood with an absolute clarity that made her want to throw up all over the dirty, gritty dance floor.

  “I gotta—” She took half a dozen steps toward Jac, never taking her eyes off her. She was almost there, could almost reach out and grab her hand, when some girl with shortly cropped blond curls came up behind Jac and kissed her neck.

  Anabelle stumbled to a stop and gaped as the girl slid her hand under the hem of Jac’s shirt and touched her stomach. Anabelle’s stomach churned. That wasn’t available for touching. Jac wasn’t available for touching. Not to Dahlia, not to this other girl either.

  Anabelle opened her mouth to tell this girl just that, but what came out was “Where’s Dahlia?”

  A muscle jumped in Jac’s jaw. “What are you doing here, Annie?”

  “Dancing.”

  “Clearly,” Jac said. “Drinking too, from the looks of it.”

  “So what, you can drink, but I can’t?”

  “I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth. Just surprised is all.” Her eyes flicked over Anabelle’s shoulder. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “I guess there’s lots of things you don’t know about me.”

  “Yeah,” Jac said, and her eyes narrowed. “You must be Blakely.”

  Anabelle’s hands itched to touch Jac, to knock the girl away from her and make sure no one else ever touched Jac ever again.

  “Who are you?” she heard herself say. She licked her lips.

  “Misty,” the girl said, nodding at Anabelle. She had a sharp, pointy chin and her eyebrows were too pale.

  “Misty,” Anabelle repeated. “Fuck, Jac, how many girlfriends do you need?”

  “Whoa,” Misty said. Behind Anabelle, Blakely hissed in a breath.

  Jac laughed. “You’re one to talk.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, you. Dancing like that with her all over you.”

  “No one was all over me. And besides, what do you care?”

  “I don’t,” Jac said dismissively. “Do whatever the fuck you want, Anabelle.”

  The girl still hadn’t moved her hand off Jac’s stomach. Anabelle couldn’t stop looking at it, at the way her wrist flexed, her hand hidden under Jac’s shirt. There was the tiniest sliver of Jac’s golden skin visible in the flashing lights of the club, and the whole thing was going to make Anabelle sick.

  “Fuck you,” she spat out. “Fuck you, Jac. Just—”

  Her body jerked forward without her consent until she was right up in Jac’s space, so close she could smell the alcohol on her breath, could feel the heat coming from her skin. She couldn’t ever remember feeling so sick in her life.

  “Anabe—”

  She grabbed Jac and kissed her.

  It was nothing like she’d imagined, and apparently this was something she’d imagined. Apparently this was something she’d thought about a million times, something she’d played over and over in her mind, because she knew instinctively that it was all wrong. It was all wrong. Jac wasn’t melting into her, wasn’t threading her long fingers into Anabelle’s hair and holding her close. She wasn’t tilting her head to let Anabelle move in closer, and she wasn’t kissing back.

  She wasn’t kissing back.

  Anabelle let go abruptly and stumbled back. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God.”

  Oh God, she was going to be sick. She was going to be very sick, very soon. With Blakely at her back, Anabelle ran from the club and into the muggy summer air, where she promptly retched on the sidewalk, splattering watermelon and moonshine all over her perfectly shined penny loafers.

  * * *

  Blakely was very gentle with her, helping her off with her clothes and into her pajamas, which Anabelle hoped she’d be grateful for in the morning. She desperately wanted to crawl into Jac’s bed and breathe into her pillow for a while, but she didn’t dare, not while Blakely was still in the room anyway. Instead she accepted a couple of pain killers and a bottle of water and smiled weakly at Blakely, who hovered nearby, hands shoved in her pockets.

  “Sorry,” she said hoarsely. Her voice was shredded from vomiting all over the sidewalk outside the club. She didn’t clarify which part she was sorry for, hoping Blakely knew she meant all of it.

  Blakely shrugged. “It’s all right. It’s not like I didn’t know.”

  “About Jac?”

  “About you. You and Jac.”

  “Did you?” Anabelle curled even further under her duvet. If Dahlia was a hedgehog, Anabelle was a turtle, hiding in her own little shell, never sticking her neck out. Should have just stayed in there.

  “I suspected. You weren’t exactly subtle.”

  “How could you know? I didn’t even know.”

  “It happens like that sometimes,” Blakely said. “For what it’s worth, she doesn’t know either.”

  Anabelle laughed weakly. “
She does now.”

  Blakely grinned. “You did mount quite an offensive. That was…” She whistled. “That was something, Anabelle.”

  “Go big or do the other fucking thing, I guess.”

  “I like hearing you curse.”

  “I curse,” Anabelle said. “Fuck. Shit. Damn.”

  Blakely gasped and clasped her hand to her chest, looking scandalized. “You probably have a spreadsheet for it, make sure your swearing to non-swearing ratios are in order.”

  “Oh, fuck off. Do not.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprising, though.”

  “Probably not, no.” Anabelle breathed out and turned her face into her pillow. She stayed there for a few moments, the room swimming around her. Moonshine was not good. Moonshine was from the devil. “Are you mad at me?” It surprised her how much she wanted the answer to be no. Maybe she didn’t want to kiss Blakely, not like she wanted to kiss Jac, but she didn’t want to lose her.

  “Mad at you? Why would I be mad at you?”

  “About Jac.”

  “About Jac? Anabelle, hon, I wasn’t trying to get in your pants. I just wanted to be your friend.”

  Anabelle peeked out of her covers. “Wanted?”

  “Want. Present tense.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And as your friend, I’m going to make you drink the rest of that water and put a trash can beside your bed, just in case, all right?”

  “All right. Hey Blakely? Do you want to co-captain the Number Ninjas with me?”

  “I’d love to,” Blakely said. “Now get some sleep, yeah? Everything will still be fucked up in the morning.”

  After the door shut behind her, Anabelle counted to sixty, then to sixty again, then wrapped her duvet around herself even more tightly, gathered up her bottle of water and trashcan, and shuffled over to Jac’s bed. She pressed her face into the sweetly familiar scent of Jac’s pillow and filled her lungs with it.

  Chapter Five

  It took Anabelle a long moment to realize the miserable groaning sound filling her ears was coming from her own mouth. She shut up, then whimpered pathetically and tried to climb even further under her covers.

  Moonshine.

  Blakely.

  Jac.

  If her stomach hadn’t already been on the verge of staging a revolt and climbing up her throat and flinging itself against a wall, thinking of Jac would have done it. Anabelle peered out from under the covers and found a bottle of water and some Tylenol on the edge of her desk, and Jac asleep four feet away.

  ‘Um,” Anabelle said, wondering if this was some kind of moonshine-induced hallucination. She carefully reached for the water bottle and unscrewed the cap,, never taking her eyes off Jac. She swallowed a couple of painkillers with a careful sip of water, then recapped the bottle and put it back on her desk.

  Jac was still there. She hadn’t vanished into thin air, and she was snoring softly into Anabelle’s pillows and—oh god, Anabelle’s pillows. With a sudden, sickening lurch, Anabelle remembered climbing into Jac’s bed and crying into her pillows and probably drooling on them quite a lot as well. Had Jac seen any of that? Anabelle hoped not. She was mortified enough as it was.

  Lying in bed, trying not to just give up and die, Anabelle tried to convince herself that she’d feel better if she got up and showered, put on some clothes that didn’t smell like stale alcohol, maybe made her way down to the dining hall for some breakfast. But really, she knew she was waiting on Jac to wake up. Little though she wanted to relieve the horrors last night, if she wanted to salvage what was left of her friendship with Jac, she was going to have to. Too much had gone unsaid between them these past few weeks, hell, maybe more. Maybe months. Maybe years. All Anabelle knew was that when she looked at Jac, her heart beat harder. Her palms went sweaty, and suddenly she was no longer able to push aside the thoughts of what if? What if I kissed her? What if I held her hand? What if she saw me—really saw me? What if this thing between them really was worth taking a chance on? She’d finally yanked on the string and the knotted tangle of her heart had revealed the exact thing she was terrified it would

  The Tylenol was making a dent in Anabelle’s headache (it no longer felt like someone had scooped out her brain with a melon baller at least) but her stomach still lurched and churned miserably, and thinking about Jac wasn’t really helping.

  Of course that was the moment when Jac stirred and rolled over, stretching her arms above her head and turning to look at Anabelle.

  Anabelle slammed her eyes shut and tried not to breathe.

  “Anabelle.” Jac’s voice was creaky and soft with sleep, and it sent a pang of longing through Anabelle’s heart. She had been so stupid. How could she have been so very, very stupid?

  “Anabelle, I know you’re awake.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Should we talk about how you’re sleeping in my bed?”

  Anabelle paused. “I was drunk.”

  “All right. Should we talk about how you were drunk on a Monday night?”

  “Shhh,” Anabelle said weakly. “People are sleeping here.”

  There was a rustle, a short stretch of silence, and then Jac was dropping down on the bed beside Anabelle. Anabelle’s body moved, making room for her even as her mind was screaming at her to get up get up go run get out!

  Jac’s fingers slid into Anabelle’s hair. “How are you feeling?”

  “Awful,” Anabelle said, and she was pretty sure they both knew she wasn’t just talking about the hangover.

  Jac sighed and shifted closer so that she could pull Anabelle against her. The duvet was still between them, but Anabelle went shaky all over just from being so close. It should have been so familiar to her, but instead her insides felt like a bottle of soda someone had shaken up. “Is this about Dahlia?”

  “Not really,” Anabelle said, shrugging from her duvet cocoon. “No.”

  “Is it about Misty?”

  “Is that the girl from last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  Jac paused. “Is it about Blakely?”

  “Not even a little.”

  Jac took a deep breath and stilled the hand that was gently untangling Anabelle’s hair. ‘Is it about me?”

  It was something, ambling up to the edge of a cliff with no clear picture of how to get down. Something terrifying, but maybe something a little wonderful too. Anabelle nodded. “Yes.”

  For a long while, neither of them said anything. Jac resumed her petting, and Anabelle closed her eyes, relishing in Jac’s nearness. Even if she decided Anabelle was awful and she wanted nothing to do with her, at least she had this moment. At least she could fold it up like a secret and store it away in the tiniest, most hidden corner of her heart.

  “You know,” Jac said finally, “I couldn’t give a shit about Modern Appropriation of Queer Culture, or Navigating the Complexities of Intersectionality. I mean, I’m sure it’s all wicked important, and my classes have actually been really cool so far, but really, I joined GLG because of you.”

  Anabelle cracked one eye. “Me?”

  “You. I thought, maybe if I met some other girls, I might be able to forget about all these feelings I have for you.”

  Anabelle opened the other eye. Jac was staring up at their ceiling. “Feelings?”

  “Feelings,” Jac confirmed. “Big, stupid, messy, can’t-sleep-at-night feelings.”

  “For me?”

  With a sigh, Jac rolled over and touched her fingertips to Anabelle’s cheek. “For you.”

  “Oh.” Anabelle couldn’t think of what to say. She bit her lip to stop herself from smiling, but it didn’t work. She reached up and covered Jac’s hand with her own, lacing their fingers together.

  “Can I…” Jac’s eyes flickered from Anabelle’s face, to their joined hands, then back again. “Can I kiss you?”

  If someone had strapped a rocket to her ass, Anabelle wouldn’t ha
ve flown any higher than she did in that moment. She stopped trying to hide her grin and leaned in, pressing her mouth to Jac’s. It was hardly anything, just a tiny press of lips and the sharing of a stale, morning-tainted breath, but it was enough for Anabelle’s heart to kick up a relentless beat.

  Yes, she thought. This. Yes.

  When Jac pulled back, her grin was huge. “Hi,” she said, squeezing Anabelle’s hand. Anabelle squeezed right back.

  “Hi.”

  “Was that okay?”

  “Better than last night when you pushed me away.”

  Jac’s smile slid into a frown it was almost funny. “You were drunk,” she said, still holding onto Anabelle’s hand. ‘I didn’t want it like that. I wanted it like this—just me and you. I didn’t want you drunk and mad at me. You’re not still mad at me, are you?”

  When she’d rolled over, Jac’s shirt had ridden up, exposing a stretch of smooth, golden skin. Anabelle’s hands itched to touch it, and then she realized that maybe she was allowed to. She snaked her free hand between then and brushed a knuckle down the soft curve of Jac’s stomach.

  Jac shivered. “Anabelle…”

  “No, I’m not still mad at you. I don’t think I ever really was. I think I was just jealous.”

  “Of Dahlia?”

  Anabelle flattened her hand and pressed her palm against Jac’s ribs, intoxicated by the way she could feel them expand and contract beneath her touch. “Maybe don’t talk about Dahlia while I’m trying to put my hand up your shirt.”

  A breathless gust of laughter escaped Jac. “Two kisses and you’re already trying to get under my shirt.”

  Anabelle brushed her lips over Jac’s again, then kissed the corner of her mouth, then the soft hollow below her jaw. “Five, now.”

  “Always were a fast learner.”

  It was unbelievable, how easy it was to hold Jac like this, to kiss her and touch her soft skin and drink in the way their bodies tangled together, like a basket full of yarn.

  Anabelle needed to get up and brush her teeth, because she had to be pretty ripe from the night before. She needed to shower and change so she could try to make it to at least some of her classes that day. She needed to call Blakely and apologize for the night before. And she probably needed to spend a little bit of time freaking out over her feelings for Jac, and what it meant to fall for your best friend, and what would happen now, and if she would get to kiss Jac a million more times like she wanted to, but she didn’t do any of those things. Instead she tucked her head under Jac’s chin and laid her hand over Jac’s heart, relishing the steady beat of it beneath her palm, content and happy and for once, exactly where she wanted to be.