And Then We Fall

by Bryce Taylor

  As they disappear out of sight I look across at the guy seated next to me and he laughs at my expression. What the hell just happened?

  "Impressive, huh?" he asks as he gets up. "Under five minutes, must be some sort of record?"

  I'm still staring at him.

  "Your next drink is on the house," he says smiling, just as I realise that he works here and that I would have known that if Leigh had let me buy any of our drinks.

  Ten minutes later I'm standing out the front of the bar, debating whether to waste the last of my spending money on a cab or to face the depressing Saturday night bus ride home. The cab option wins when I consider my outfit, the likelihood of harassment on the bus and I'm sliding across the vinyl seat pulling the door shut, when the other door opens and Leigh inserts herself into the cab.

  "Where are we going?" she asks in injured tones, as if it is me who ditched her for a hot woman on the dance floor. "I didn't even have time to get her number."

  I am staring at her, because I have never, ever been into anyone this oblivious. Even Warren knew when I was pissed at him, he just genuinely didn't care.

  The cab driver is asking, "where to?" for the second time and Leigh is giving him instructions.

  "Somewhere less straight?" she explains with a grin at me.

  It definitely is somewhere far less straight, a carnival atmosphere, a tall corner hotel, a party on the roof with Latin American tunes to a hard beat. It is so gay that not only do I look out place, Leigh does a little too.

  I demand that Leigh has a drink and she reluctantly gets a light beer and a mojito for me. We find a seat in a corner and laugh because she has been hit on by two guys, in an arse grabbing kind of a way, who have taken her for a beautiful boy, but neither of us have had a single woman show us any interest at all.

  Not that there are many women here, either Leigh doesn't do lesbian bars or maybe there aren't any around.

  Leigh is holding but not drinking her beer and when I finish my mojito I take it off her hands and release her to go and buy a bottle of mineral water.

  She is far less tense when she gets back from bar, happy that she isn't drinking and she has brought me another mojito, taking the warm beer from in front of me with a smile and placing it on an empty table behind her. I sit cross-legged on the bench and turn sideways facing her, my head close to hers so that we can hear each other over the music.

  "So," I ask her, "why did you decide to become a surgeon?"

  It's a stupid question but one that normally surgeons and doctors are happy to aggrandise about, some parable about helping their fellow man.

  Leigh makes a face at me and shrugs, which makes me far more interested in her answer than I was a moment ago.

  I wait patiently.

  "I got the marks to get into the course," she says eventually, disparagingly.

  I raise an eyebrow, that's it?

  "Pretty much," she says looking embarrassed and catching my eye with a laugh, "everyone thought it was a good choice and I didn't want to be a lawyer."

  "You seem very dedicated to it," I tell her, pointedly looking at her mineral water.

  "Oh," she says, "well it wasn't until I actually became a surgeon that I realised that I was good at it."

  She looks away, and I elbow her in the side.

  "And?" I ask.

  "Well, I like being good at things," she says, the total honesty of the comment clear from her tone.

  "You are a whole different type of person, Leigh Grenfell," I tell her after a moment. She is, in comparison to Warren a far more endearing human. Not hard considering he was constantly pretending to be the humanitarian of the century whilst actually being a cocaine snorting jerk.

  Scratch that, there is no comparison between Leigh and Warren.

  Leigh narrows her eyes at me, unsure of what I mean.

  "It's a compliment," I tell her, smiling,

  I make Leigh get up and dance with me for a while and then we talk for a little longer whilst watching the pretty boys dance.

  She goes to buy me another drink and a woman from another table turns around and begins to talk to me. She is sturdy and broad shouldered, her black hair cut into a crew cut and a bright smile and beautiful laugh, both of which she uses readily. I am thoroughly tempted to just take her home because she might not be Leigh but what she is offering is uncomplicated, a fun night, breakfast tomorrow and maybe more if we like each other outside of the obvious immediate attraction.

  She gives me her number as I look around for Leigh, trying to explain that I am here with a friend. Then I see Leigh still at the bar, talking to a group of older guys and she catches my glance gives me a surreptitious thumbs up.

  I make my apologies and wind my way to the bar through the crowd and take Leigh's hand in mine. She smiles down at me quizzically but puts her arm around my shoulders and introduces me to the guys, an anaesthetist and a radiologist she knows from university days.

  "Are you ok?" she asks after a few minutes, her lips close to me ear.

  I shake my head. I'm not ok.

  Leigh pulls me away from the bar and leads me down the stairs to an alcove.

  "What's up?" she asks looking concerned.

  "Oh, nothing," I try to tell her casually, "I've just had enough, shall we move on?"

  Leigh checks her watch.

  "I'm just about done," she says, "I've got an early start tomorrow anyway."

  I want to ask her who she is going to sleep with on her birthday but I'm afraid she has someone already in mind who isn't me.

  We end up at the beach, sitting on the stairs bare feet in the sand. Leigh discovers that the girl whose name I can no longer remember gave me her number and she looks pleased for me, congratulates me on being more successful than her.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  "What about that girl you picked up?" I ask her. "If I could do that I would never have to worry about sex ever again."

  Leigh laughs disbelievingly.

  "Come on," I tell her, "talk me through it, give me your professional advice."

  "I didn't do anything," she says seriously. "I just danced with her."

  I stand up and dust off my dress, hold out my hand and Leigh takes it, lets me pull her up.

  "So, it just goes like this?" I ask her. "You just walk up to her, tell her she's hot, ask if she wants to fuck on the dance floor and then do it again sans clothes at your house?"

  Leigh is looking horrified.

  "No," she says, "I didn't do anything of the sort."

  "Oh really," I tell her. "I'll be her and you show me how it is then."

  I love and hate that Leigh can't see the obvious ploy in this.

  I strike a pose.

  "So," I tell her, "here I am looking sexy, hanging with my girls, eyeing off the hot boys and you are?"

  Leigh frowns at me.

  "I'm nothing," she says reluctantly, "I'm just standing here thinking that she looks really beautiful and I wonder if maybe she wants to dance with me."

  "And the song change?" I ask her, "that was just happenstance?"

  Leigh smiles guiltily and lets out a long breath.

  "It wasn't that calculated," she says and starts to move towards me her eyes fixed on mine.

  "You can feel it," she says softly, stopping a few steps from me, "you can feel the music start to change, that she is looking around the club, that she is thinking that she doesn't want the same thing, the same relationship she just left. These guys, they are too full of themselves, too self-centred."

  Leigh pauses, trying to think of the right words.

  "She wants someone to hold her and tell her she is beautiful. She is sick of being told what to do and how to do it, she wants someone who is going to let her take control, who is going to let her choose," she says. "And me, fate puts me there at the right moment, I can feel the possibility of this instant, that it is going to fall into place or it won't."

  Leigh is watching me, waiting for a sign and a tiny smile creases the
corner of my mouth, an invitation.

  Leigh turns her hands out towards me, a question as old as time, mutely asking if I want her and I nod involuntarily.

  "And when she looks at me like that," Leigh says softly, taking the last steps to my side, "I can't even believe it, because she is even more beautiful than she was from a distance and she is saying yes, when I ask if she wants to dance."

  Leigh is taking my hand gently in hers, a request to come closer and I am up against her, her body against mine.

  "I want to touch her," she whispers in my ear, her hands hovering over my hips, "but I don't know if she wants me to, so I'm waiting for her to show me."

  My hands are pressing hers down against me and then mine are curving around her waist and her body is drawn to mine, mine into hers. The sand squeaks quietly beneath my feet and the waves are crashing in and I can hear a party at the other end of the beach, the wind driving the sounds our way, but mostly I can feel Leigh. The hard warmth of her body, the synchronicity of our movements, our legs intersecting.

  I can smell the scent of her, the slight hint of pine, can feel the soft of her skin.

  I sense her thinking, that she is realising a little late that I am not the girl from the club and that I am supposedly her platonic friend and if she is feeling half of what I am then this is not platonic at all.

  I pull back from her.

  "And those guys," I ask her, "what did you say to her then?"

  "Oh," she says, looking relieved, "I told her I was out of dance moves, but I did know some other ways to have fun."

  I stare at her.

  "And that actually worked?" I ask her, my voice high pitched in incredulity.

  Maybe Katie is right, I just do need to be more confident, because clearly there are enough girls out there who will go for a ridiculous pickup line.

  Leigh is looking offended.

  "Not all of us are so good looking that we can just sit at a table by ourselves and have women throw themselves at us," she says grumpily.

  I smile, pleased with her backhanded compliment, even if it is not true.

  "Why don't you just skip to the offer of moves off the dance floor?" I ask her. "You know if the dancing sucks that badly."

  Leigh grins at me wickedly.

  "Because it's a good way of finding out what she'll be like in bed," she says.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  "You know if she is into BDSM or something," she says, as if this is a totally normal thing to happen, "girls that want to take you home to their dungeon and choke you."

  I'm laughing and I'm about to ask for details because I can't say that that has ever happened to me when her phone starts to ring.

  "Sorry," she says after checking the number and answering.

  She listens to the voice on the other end for a minute silently, pulling on her shoes before saying brusquely, "I'll be there in twenty."

  She hangs up and looks to me. "I'm sorry," she says looking disappointed, "can I drop you off on the way?"

  Not the ending to the night I was hoping for.

  Chapter 10

  My birthday rolls around and I've barely seen Leigh. I stop going to the coffee shop in the morning, not wanting to get another one of her notes, so I just see her in passing. In the hallway before she starts work, our conversation stilted. As if there are so many things we can't talk about that there is very little left that we can discuss freely.

  When we talk about the weather I know that it is all over.

  The day of my birthday I have to work, but after we all go out to the pub, Diarmuid and Katie and a few of their friends. None of mine because I don't really have any, Gupta being in that happy state of making house with his boy or working, and asking other friends from work too anxiety inducing. I'm not sure I want to invite Gupta to my birthday anyway, he is far too smug in his coupledom to be any fun anymore. It's bad enough that both Katie and Diarmuid are newly dating, both to other Irish backpackers which I tell them is very cliché.

  Being an Irish bar there is a sing along. Old folk songs mixed with new covers. It's all good.

  Something is missing though.

  There is an itch. A cute guy buys me a drink and persistently tries to convince me to kiss him. I look at his bearded face and listen to his earnest words and I can't make myself go there.

  Even though it has been a while.

  I keep checking the doors, hoping that something, I don't know what, will happen. A revelation perhaps. We are arms clasped, singing along to that Cranberries song, titled ironically enough, I'm Free to Decide, when I spy Leigh sitting at the bar, looking uncharacteristically awkward. I don't know if it is because she is so English or the bar is so straight and working class, or because she is drinking her fucking mineral water.

  I am smiling at her so hard that I can't sing anymore, I'm just feeling the music.

  As soon as the song ends I duck out of the encircling arms and float towards the bar.

  She folds me into a hug and whispers a 'happy birthday' into my ear and I'm inappropriately breathing in her scent in a way that I can tell she can feel. She lets me though which makes me the happiest I've been all day.

  "Did you get me anything?" I ask her reluctantly letting her go.

  She is grinning.

  "What do you want?" she asks reflexively.

  Oh my. Questions she should not be asking right now.

  "A walk on the beach?" I ask her. Because I suspect that all the other things I want to ask for are highly implausible for the minute.

  She frowns a little.

  "Don't you want to stay here?" she asks, an edge of confusion in her voice.

  "We won't be long," I promise. Although I fervently hope we will. That we will be all night.

  I take her hand and make her come to the bathroom with me so that she doesn't disappear. So that Katie and Diarmuid don't catch wind of her.

  I take her outside by the hand, an action she doesn't question anymore. We walk along the path by the beach and I tell her about my day, my week, about current affairs. She looks happy.

  I'm not drunk.

  Ok.

  I am drunk.

  But not sloppy drunk or happy drunk. I have a clarity of purpose, I know what I want.

  There is a strength of desire burning through me that is blocking out all my inhibitions. I'm holding her hand tightly and all I can think of is where else I'd like her hand. Under my shirt. Down my pants. How much I just want her to fuck me.

  Fuck.

  She is looking at me quizzically. I've noticed that when I am drinking she can't quite measure me anymore. It puts her off balance.

  God, I wish she were drinking. Then we could do that thing where you pretend that we only slept together because of the alcohol. Because it's been too long of a friendship for any other reason to be plausible.

  Part of me is tempted to go back to the pub and find someone to fuck. Not that guy, someone else, someone fit. A girl. Taller and preferably blonde.

  Jesus Christ.

  I turn to Leigh.

  "Do you have any feelings for me?" I ask her bluntly.

  She opens her mouth and immediately shuts it.

  "Can we have this conversation tomorrow when you are sober?" she asks carefully.

  "Nope."

  She looks away.

  "Feelings?" she asks me, clarifying.

  I'm not in the mood, she knows what I'm asking.

  "Feelings," I tell her flatly.

  Then impatiently when she doesn't say anything.

  "You know that shit that you have when you want to get naked with someone?" I tell her crassly.

  "Ah."

  She is thinking, trying to reconcile the truth without tipping whatever is in her hand.

  "Lay it down," I tell her.

  "Why?" she asks bluntly.

  "Because I want to know if this romance we have going on where you are making me fall in love with you is because of that girl," I tell her.

  Her head jerks b
ack to mine, her eyes on mine, startled.

  "Justine?"

  "Yeah, no shit," I tell her.

  "New Years?"