by Bryce Oakley
Pia laughed. "Well, there's still time to fix that. Zoey, want to come pick out a few bottles for the table with me?"
"Oh, um," Zoey said awkwardly, as though she was caught off guard. She glanced at the rest of the group, but they were talking animatedly about something in the kitchen. "Sure."
Meg went back to the group and Pia led Zoey down a long hallway, walking slowly given that Zoey was in sky-high heels. Zoey's shoes clicked along the hardwood floor as they walked, and she glanced over her shoulder to see Zoey looking at the art on the walls and the dozens of closed doors that they passed.
"They're chock full of dead bodies," Pia said, gesturing to the closed doors they passed.
Zoey raised an eyebrow. "Only dead bodies? No paintings of yourself that age and decay so you don't have to?"
"Oh, come on, that's in the attic," Pia said, pointing up.
Zoey smirked, enjoying their banter again.
They descended the stairs to the cellar and walked into the climate controlled room. Okay, to say she loved wine was an understatement. In fact, the wine cellar was an entire room in the basement — it was wall-to-wall cabinets, full of wine. She had wine from her travels, wine from gifts, wine from fans... she estimated her collection to be around four or five thousand bottles.
She watched Zoey take in the room, seeing Zoey's eyes widen and her lips part slightly as she looked around the room.
She smiled with pride, but tried to maintain as blank of an expression as possible. She didn't want to seem too smug about her wealth — she had worked hard, but she had also gotten extremely lucky. She gave away large sums of her money to her foundation and other charities, including her own animal rescue charity, but she still had plenty.
She looked around the room with new eyes, wondering what Zoey must be thinking. The dark wooden cabinets had slots for wine bottles, and her wine fridge kept a dozen of her favorite white wine bottles chilled at her preferred temperature.
She began to envisioned pressing Zoey against the glass door of the fridge or bending her over the counter in the middle of the room...
"Damn," Zoey said simply, pulling her back to reality.
"Oh, this old thing?" Pia joked, gesturing vaguely into the room.
"How many bottles do you have in here?" Zoey said, reaching to touch a bottle in front of her. "I've only read about this wine."
"The Quintessa Red? I prefer the 2013, but the 2016 isn't bad. A little young, I think." Pia answered, looking for a different bottle.
"We should not be wasting your good wine," Zoey said, setting the bottle back down with so much fragility it could have been a grenade.
"Nonsense. Despite appearances, I'm not going to drink all of this alone," Pia said.
"I wouldn't blame you if you did," Zoey said with a laugh. "I'd be selfish about my collection if it looked like this."
"I'm selfish about certain things, but not wine," Pia said, not looking up at Zoey. She pulled three more bottles of red — they were having pasta, so a dry, heavier red would balance it nicely.
She finally glanced up to see Zoey looking at her with an unreadable expression. Confusion? Intrigue? The stunning woman in front of her looked as though she was trying to solve a puzzle.
"What are you selfish about?" Zoey asked lightly. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
Pia didn't move. "I'm selfish about who I spend my time with," she said diplomatically.
Zoey tilted her head. "I'm sure there are plenty..." Her voice trailed off.
"Plenty? Of?" Pia asked, her grip tightening on the neck of a bottle.
Zoey didn't answer. She only raised an eyebrow.
Pia cleared her throat. "I like your company, Zoey," she said simply.
And she liked the sight of Zoey, too. Something in Zoey brought out a long dormant side of herself. Was that so wrong?
"Why?" Zoey asked, sounding like an insecure teenager more than the confident, strong woman that Pia already knew she was.
And yet, there was something so tantalizing about how Zoey seemed to need reassurance.
Pia took a step toward her, but Zoey didn't step back. She held her ground. Good.
"I don't know why, but I'm curious to find out," Pia said. "Aren't you?"
"Curious?" Zoey swallowed.
Pia nodded.
Zoey shook her head. "I don’t date women. I don’t really date," she said, and Pia had the feeling that Zoey was asserting that to herself as much as to Pia.
Pia simply nodded, her body so close to Zoey's that their toes were touching.
"I don't believe you," Pia whispered.
For one beat, Zoey looked frightened. Her pupils dilated slightly, her breath hitched.
And then, just as quickly, she straightened her posture. "That was a fluke."
"If I knew by the strike of twelve, I'd find you, I wouldn't have wasted all of my midnights," Pia quoted Zoey's song back to her.
She had been pleasantly surprised — no, that was an understatement. She had been mindblown to find that Zoey had written a song about their kiss. When she had gotten the review copy and found the track listing, she just knew the moment she saw the title 'Midnight.'
Zoey raised an eyebrow. "Artistic license," she said, her voice solid.
"Liar," Pia said, edging slightly closer toward the woman in front of her.
What was it about Zoey? What made her want to take Zoey's hair and wrap her fists in it, to hold her in place, to kiss her again to make sure it hadn't just been some... fluke.
Zoey didn't answer.
The air was thick with tension. Pia's heartbeat pounded in her ears.
She had to get herself back under control.
"Grab any two bottles you want," she said, turning on her heel and walking out of the wine cellar without taking a glance over her shoulder.
What in the world was happening to her? She held two bottles in her hands and jogged back upstairs, hurrying to put as much distance as she could between her and Zoey.
"What's my budget?" Zoey called up to her, and Pia couldn't help but smile.
Finally, when it was time for dinner, Pia was able to sit and relax. She was always on her guard around new people, and The Shrikes band, even though they were lovely and sweet, were still brand new additions to her life.
Pia lifted a glass of wine as Meg slipped into the last chair. "A toast." She quoted a poem:
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
She purposefully avoided looking at Zoey until the very last line.
Zoey had a grin on her face. "My second favorite Yeats poem," she said.
Pia’s chest clenched with interest and appeal and attraction.
"What's your first?" Billie asked, turning to her. "Wait. Let me guess."
Zoey raised an eyebrow, the wine swirling in her glass.
"Yeah, I'm joking, I don't know any of those poems by title alone," Billie confessed.
"Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm starving right now," Domino paused, thinking of the next line. Eventually she shrugged. "Billie and Zoey, will you please stop talking about poetry-ooh?" She ended with a laugh, trying to make the line rhyme.
Pia raised her glass again. "Here, here."
Zoey played her part well during dinner. No one would have known about the tense moment they'd had in the wine cellar. Apart from the slight flush in Zoey's cheeks when she returned back upstairs, she'd have never sensed that she was bothered at all.
But Pia didn't want sexual tension. As fun as that was, she wanted what came after that part.
"Oh my God, stop talking about the pho place," Domino said, laughing.
Pia came back to earth.
Zoey looked animated. "No, it's the best pho on earth," she said definitively.
"Except in Vietnam, you mean,"
Billie said, raising an eyebrow.
Zoey rolled her eyes. "Of course I mean the best pho anywhere on earth besides Vietnam," she said.
"Where is it?" Pia asked.
"Houston," Zoey said.
"I'd have never guessed," Pia said, smirking. “My favorite place is in Santa Ana.”
"Please, take Zoey, put us out of our misery. She talks about it constantly," Domino said, looking exasperated but still amused.
Pia smirked with a grin. “We’ll go and maybe get that Houston place out of your system.”
Wow, if that didn’t sound like a euphemism…
Zoey's brows pulled together in confusion. "Uh," she said, as if she had forgotten what words were. Six sets of eyes snapped to look at her.
Zoey’s cheeks flushed. “Sure,” she said finally.
As dinner ended, the group sat around the table finishing the wine and chatting.
Pia felt grateful that she had invited them over. They were a sweet and kind and funny group of women, and she hoped that she'd be able to call them friends in the future.
They wrapped up conversation and began saying their goodbyes. Pia hugged them.
Sabrina squeezed her tightly. "Be careful," she said quietly, taking a step back.
Pia raised her eyebrows, surprised. Be careful? Of what?
Sabrina gave her a look as though she could read her mind.
Pia gave Zoey a loose hug, keeping her distance.
If Sabrina had noticed, who else had? She hadn't exactly done a stellar job of hiding her attraction, but she was friendly with everyone. She had made dates with Billie and Meg to check out the new exhibition at LACMA later that week, and she had promised Domino she'd get to meet the dogs the next time she came over.
She led them out the door and the group walked into the night. She watched them go, trying not to read into how only Zoey looked back over her shoulder to give a small wave.
She walked to the bedroom where Tulip and Cricket, her dogs, were and pulled out her phone to find two unread texts from Freya.
Freya: New motto. SFWSW
Pia raised a brow, reading another incoming text.
Freya: Stop flirting with straight women.
Pia: Can you tattoo that on my hand?
Freya: OMW
And sure enough, Freya showed up ten minutes later. Freya was the type of friend who could walk right in the side door.
Pia was sitting on the sofa in her bedroom, both Tulip and Cricket were cuddled up on either side of her. Freya was such a common sight that the dogs barely even stirred, except to wag their tails until Freya came over to pet their big, blocky heads.
“So, tell me the worst of it,” Freya said, rolling her eyes. Her perfectly straightened bob bounced as she shook her head. “Wait, we need more wine for this.”
She ran out of the room and returned shortly with two very generous pours in a pair of glasses.
"I'm in trouble," Pia admitted.
Freya snorted. "Don't you dare open that door," she said, shaking her head again. "She's a straight woman in the public eye, P. It's never going to happen."
"I'm not saying I want a relationship," Pia said, swirling the wine around in her glass and holding it under her nose. Fruity and floral and musky, all at once. Her favorite scent in the world. "No doors. All doors are closed. No room at the inn, you could say."
"What inn? The Vagina Inn?" Freya said with a snort.
Pia almost choked on her wine. "Jesus, Freya," she said, wiping at her chin. Tulip groaned, shifting in her comfortable sleeping position, annoyed about the commotion.
"My point exactly," Freya said with a wink.
"I don't want to sleep with a straight girl," Pia said.
"And we're positive that Zoey is straight?" Freya asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
Pia blinked, trying to remember if Zoey had said those exact words. She hadn't, right?
"Oh no," Freya said, watching her. "Stop rationalizing this little crush."
"Aren't you supposed to encourage me to get out of my comfort zone?" Pia asked.
"Not if it sends you full speed ahead into Disasterville," Freya asserted.
"Disasterville? Is that where The Vagina Inn is located?" Pia asked.
"The one and only. Population: Every lesbian who thought that a straight woman wasn't trouble." Freya nodded definitively.
"Maybe it's not like that. It could just be a fun fling, couldn't it?" Pia asked.
"'Just For Fun' is the first stop on the train to Disasterville," Freya said, as though she was exasperated that she even had to explain herself.
"And what's the second stop?" Pia asked, laughing.
"The second stop is 'Just One More Time.' 'We Don't Have To Tell Anyone' is the third," Freya said, counting the stops on her fingers.
"This train sounds like a good time." Pia grinned.
"You mock me, but I'm right," Freya said, pointing at her with narrowed eyes.
Pia raised her fist in the air as if she were pulling the cord for the train horn. "All aboard."
Chapter Five
Zoey
Zoey fidgeted with her hair, sitting at the table. She had arrived a bit early, mostly just to stop herself from standing in front of her mirror at home, touching up her makeup or adding another bobby pin to her hair.
She always got this dressed up to go out with completely casual friends to a very, very casual hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Santa Ana. What if there were paparazzi? Or fans? She had to look her best.
That was the driving factor of her spending two-and-a-half hours getting ready that afternoon. Completely.
She glanced around the shop. It was clean and tidy, but there were only four or five tables. She sat at a small two-person table around the corner of the kitchen, where she could see a female cook inside. There seemed to be only one server, a very kind man named Minh who had given her the impression that with serving, he was also the owner and the other cook.
Despite the small interior size, it was absolutely packed with people. She was lucky to get a table at all, but mentioning Pia had gotten her in immediately.
She unfolded the sticky menu for the third time as she lifted her plastic water cup to her lips, gingerly taking a sip for fear that she'd mess up her lipstick.
Who wore lipstick to go eat pho with a completely casual friend for whom she did not harbor any illicit or strange feelings?
She set the menu back down — she had already settled on a medium P13: Tofu pho with beef broth the first time she had looked through it. Last night. On her phone. Once or twice.
The thought of meeting Pia anywhere for a meal made her stomach flip in anticipation. She hated not knowing what to expect, and Pia, as a whole, was something unexpected.
The bells above the front door jingled and Pia stepped in, her short, dark hair perfectly touseled in a way that made Zoey think of running her hands through it.
Down, girl.
"Pia!" Minh exclaimed, leaving the kitchen to give Pia a hug. "You have a woman waiting for you."
No one in the restaurant even glanced up at the superstar in their midst. Did she come here so often that it wasn't even exciting to the patrons? Or did they simply not care?
Zoey was impressed, either way.
Pia laughed, standing next to the table. "I told her this was the best pho in the world, so I hope you're ready to back me up with a good meal."
Minh waved his hand in the air as though dismissing the idea. "You know it is," he said. "I'll bring you some water. Beer tonight?"
Pia nodded, glancing down to where Zoey still sat. "Bring two," she said.
Zoey stood, reaching to hug Pia in greeting.
Pia held her body tightly in the embrace, firm and warm and strong. She smelled like notes of cologne — oakwood? Zoey tried not to creepily breathe in too deeply trying to determine it.
"Were you here long? Parking was super annoying," Pia said, settling into the chair across the table from Zoey.
Zoey shook her
head. "No," she said, reaching to fidget with her hair.
Pia reached, taking her wrist and holding from touching her hair. "It looks perfect, don't ruin it," she said with a soft smile.
Zoey resisted the urge to gasp as Pia held her wrist. It wasn't aggressive, but it was firm, like Pia always got her way. "Oh," she said awkwardly. "Okay."
The server gave them two beers and took their orders. Pia held the cold glass in her hand, and Zoey eyed her fingers. Pia had beautiful hands. Long, slender fingers — not delicate, but definitely soft.
"How will they ever compare to what you've had before?" Pia asked, taking a sip from her glass.
Zoey almost spit out her beer. "What did you just say?" She asked, staring at Pia's fingers. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand once she was able to swallow and regain some of her composure.
Pia tilted her head to the side with a small, curious grin. "I only asked how this place compares to your favorite pho place in Houston," she said.
Zoey took another large swig of her beer. "That's so funny, I was just thinking of how cozy this place is. I love my Houston place, but it's busy, and larger, and the food is good but this food looks like it's being made in my friend's kitchen. I like that," she explained, glancing around. Her cheeks were warm from embarrassment.
"I hope you like it," Pia said.
"Oh yeah? You're that attached?" Zoey asked.
"I own it," Pia said, shrugging.
Zoey laughed in surprise. "You own this restaurant?"
Pia nodded, grinning.
"This restaurant," Zoey said, pointing down to the table.
Pia nodded.
The server came and set their bowls down on the table. Zoey had ordered a medium, but the bowl was gigantic. Pia watched as they set down the condiments plate with basil, sprouts, jalapeno, and lime. The plate was overflowing.
Zoey tossed basil, lime, and two slices of jalapeno into her pho, then reached to the end of the table for the sriracha, but Pia shook her head quickly.
"Try it without first," Pia said. "Believe me."
Zoey raised an eyebrow, looking from the sriracha and hoisin sauce to her bowl. "Okay," she said skeptically, taking a sip of her broth.