Date Knight

by Bridget Essex

  Virago smiles at me and squeezes my shoulder.

  I have never been happier that she was from another world and could not possibly understand how terrible that joke was.

  So, obviously, I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge that all of these women are gorgeous, graceful and sexy. They're all lady knights, which has kind of been my happy mental default when I think sexy thoughts since I hit puberty. But I'm being perfectly honest right now when I say that I don't even really see them. Don't get me wrong: they're beautiful to look at, like a piece of art is lovely to look at, or some pride of lionesses out on the Serengeti would be a breathtaking sight to witness.

  But when I look at Virago... It's not that she's more beautiful than any of the other women here. Or more graceful, or sexier, or more confidant. She and her fellow knights are really evenly matched, and that's impressive. You can tell that they trained together, that they have fought together, and I'm not doubting in the slightest that any of these knights here would take a bullet (or a sword blade, as the case may be) for each other. They are a tightly knit group of women who are tremendously loyal to one another.

  But when I look at Virago, my heart lifts up inside of me, growing, pressing against my ribs and knocking loudly against my bones, because there's a bright connection between us, pulsing just like my heartbeat, alive and well.

  Virago is the love of my life. I'm surrounded by gorgeous lady knights, and the only sight I have eyes for is my beautiful girlfriend, who—when she gazes at me—sees to the deepest parts of me, with her bright blue eyes, her mouth turning up at the corners into that secret smile that's all for me.

  I'm in a kind of love that takes my breath away.

  Because she takes my breath away.

  Virago's all dressed to go out now, with her hair in a high ponytail, and it's falling over her shoulders like an inky black waterfall. She's wearing a suit that we bought in the men's department, but then we took the suit to a tailor who made it fit her curves perfectly. Hell, she's even wearing a black silk tie to complete the ensemble, the tie dangling loose around her neck, because the top three buttons of that button-down shirt, beneath the jacket, are teasingly undone...and that small bit of creamy skin that I can see is driving me crazy in the best possible way.

  And she knows it, too, because when I glance at her, she holds my gaze, smoothing the lapels of her jacket with her thumbs, looking at me through hooded eyes with her sexiest smirk.

  “So...” I stammer, clearing my throat. “I figured that we could introduce you ladies to Boston by way of something that would be...um...” I turn my hand in the air, trying to find the right words. “Less of a culture shock,” I tell them with a smile.

  According to Virago, there are a lot of taverns on Agrotera, and a lot of taverns in Arktos City, and, also according to her, drinking is one of a knight's favorite pastimes. So I figured we'd take them to Queenie's, a lesbian bar in the South End. We can all get there on the T, and Queenie's has burgers and fries (and one of the best veggie burgers in the city, believe it or not), so the knights and queen can get dinner, entertainment, possible lady-action... It's all there. And, in one place, I can keep tabs on all of the knights and make sure they don't get into trouble.

  I mean...I know they're grown women and can obviously take care of themselves. But in the time that they've been in my house, they've already broken three plates, broken my dishwasher (What in the world were they doing to it?) and recorded eight hours of TLC because they were playing with the remote.

  In a highly populated city on a world they've never visited? For some reason, I have a feeling they could get into a lot of trouble if they're not kept under constant watch.

  Virago doesn't share my concerns (I don't think she's even had the thought), because she's ecstatic that her best friends are here and that she can show them the world she found.

  “Just know that, when we leave this house, my friends, we mustn't get separated,” Virago tells the knights solemnly, but her eyes are shining as she holds the gaze of each one, then Calla, and then me. When she looks at me, she begins to smile, and she's smiling that special smile, the one that's so sexy it drives me crazy, and so love-filled that I reach across the space between us to take her hand, pulled to her like gravity.

  “We're going to have a wonderful time tonight, my friends,” Virago tells everyone, practically glowing as she steps forward, as she wraps her fingers around my waist and hips...and then she's actually lifting me to spin me around in a circle as I laugh, her hands wrapped tightly, but gently, around me, lifting me like I weigh nothing at all. And, I assure you, I do weigh a lot of somethings.

  Virago is so, so happy, I realize, as she sets me down, and as she gathers me close in her arms. Her happiness is infectious; I tilt back my head, reach up and kiss her, and she kisses me, kisses me fiercely.

  All of the knights surrounding us whoop and begin to clap, laughing good-naturedly, but Kell clears her throat, her eyes flashing as she puts her hands on her jeans-clad hips.

  “I'm happy for you, my friend, truly,” Kell says to Virago, her head to the side as she grins, “but I'm ready to find my own woman to kiss.”

  I'm chuckling, my cheeks flushing from one-part embarrassment (I mean, they were just clapping while we were kissing), and three-parts attraction to the woman I was just passionately kissing. “All right,” I tell them, standing straighter and pointing to the front door. “To the bar it is!”

  When we step out, I watch the knights and queen closely. Like Virago, they are suitably impressed by this other world but not overwhelmed by it. We set off down the sidewalk, aiming in the direction of the nearest T stop, and the knights gaze wonderingly at cars, large trucks, the crane and construction site at the corner and the flashing lights and crazy neon colors of all the signs and billboards surrounding them. The advertising on the blocks near my house runs the gamut from the different plays that are currently in town, different alcoholic beverages and—somewhat out of place, but completely welcome among all the buy-me-now advertising—a billboard urging us to take care of our national forests.

  “Do you not have horses here?” asks Magel then, her hands buried deep in the pockets of the dress pants she's borrowed from Virago. Her hair is plaited down her back in one long, thick braid, and she looks so striking in the black button-down shirt she's wearing. She gazes at me with those deep, dark eyes, and she looks like she's taken in everything and processed it in about a second.

  FYI, it's not Magel I'm currently worried about taking to the bar.

  Before I can answer, Calla is speaking. “I'm not certain if they have horses, but they certainly have unicorns,” she says pleasantly, gazing at me then. “Holly has several statues of them in her bedroom.”

  And before I can correct the assumption that we have unicorns on this world (as much as Carly and her Cryptozoology Club would argue about that), Kell answers back with a smirk. “Ah, she has many unicorn statues,” she chuckles. “It figures.”

  I blink, then turn to Kell.

  “Wait a second. 'It figures'? What's that supposed to mean?” I ask her, raising a brow.

  Virago snorts, then glances at Kell, eyes wide, shaking her head as she tries to cover a smile with her hand. “Kell, must we start the—” she begins, but Kell is grinning like a very happy cat right now, and she talks right over her friend.

  “'It figures,' because you must consider the horn on a unicorn, milady,” she says mildly, leaning close and raising one brow.

  “Yeah, I've considered it. I know it's a phallic symbol,” I tell her with an exacting shrug as I return her grin. I realize I just sounded like a twelve-year-old who has no knowledge of below-the-belt stuff, but dammit, two can play at this game—and I wasn't born yesterday. I got my lesbian card pretty damn early, so...

  My internal monologue is cut very, very short when Kell leans closer to me, her eyes flashing with obvious delight.

  “Well, on Agrotera,” she murmurs to me, her grin deepening to a ve
ry, very wicked one, “when you're a woman who loves women, we use naturally fallen unicorn horns, sand the edge down so it's not sharp, and we—”

  “And that's a plane,” says Virago loudly, pointing above us as a plane circles overhead, aiming for Logan airport. “Planes are used to transport people in the air. Much like our winged horses,” she adds very quickly.

  Calla, walking beside me, gazes at me with bemusement, shaking her head. I guess I look shocked.

  “Well, here on Earth,” I soldier on, determined not to be out-knowledged (is that even a word?) by a knight who looks so damn smug, “we make our dildos out of plastic,” I tell her. “And...and lots of other stuff.”

  Kell's actively laughing now. “What is this word?” she asks, her head to the side in an exaggerated motion. “Dildo?” she says, sounding it out loud. We get a couple stares on the sidewalk, and Virago is currently covering her entire face, trying not to show me her laughter. “What does it mean?” asks Kell obnoxiously.

  Virago glances at me then, clearly unable to hide her mirth as she shakes her head, looking just as bemused as Calla. “This discussion need not continue, my love,” she says, a brow up, but I continue on, anyway—because I'm stubborn.

  Sometimes, being stubborn is not such a great trait.

  “It's. Um. It's a thing. That you use. Well, you don't have to use it. But some people use it to make love. It's great for penetration,” I tell Kell, trying to put on my best librarian game face, the same librarian game face I use when teenage boys are being stupid to us librarians and asking where the porn section is.

  Kell's laughing so hard there are almost tears streaming down her face, Alinor joining in now while Magel is trying very, very hard not to smile. “We have that word on Agrotera, milady Holly. I just wanted to hear you explain it,” says Kell with a wink.

  I say the only thing I can think of to say, but I realize I'm chuckling, too. “You're such a jerk,” I mutter.

  “I have been called many things,” she says, sweeping a low bow to me, “and that is one of the nicest yet!”

  Virago chuckles, putting an arm around my waist and drawing me close to her as we walk along the sidewalk. “They but tease you,” she tells me softly, one brow up.

  “I know,” I tell her, putting an arm around her waist, too, as I smile up at her. “Just a thought, but are they always this sex-obsessed?”

  Virago's laughing. “Just Kell,” she mutters, glancing over her shoulder and shaking her head at the knights behind us.

  “I heard that,” says Kell happily.

  We reach the T stop and board the bus with a surprising amount of civility and understanding from everyone involved. I mean, I'm starting to expect it from Magel and Calla. But Alinor and Kell are beginning to strike me as Navy ladies who have just been given shore leave after about ten years on the high seas without another woman in sight.

  For example, the very first thing that Kell does, after climbing up and onto the bus, is sit down in one of the seats, cross her legs elegantly, and tilt her chin up, her eyes flashing, as she winks at a woman two seats back. This woman appears to be out for a night of partying, too, because she's in a club dress, her long, blonde hair in elaborate waves, her makeup spot on. But when she glances at Kell, she sighs, rolling her eyes, diving back into her phone—probably to unhappily tweet that a woman just hit on her.

  “I'm sorry, Kell, but not everyone here is like, well, us,” I tell Kell, with a shake of my head, biting my lip as I try to figure out how to explain this to her.

  “Us?” she asks, raising one brow, completely not understanding.

  “On our world,” I say, clearing my throat, “it's called 'being a lesbian.'” I draw my fingers in a circle to encompass all of the knights, the queen and me. “It means that you love women,” I tell her, defining the word in the simplest way possible.

  “The thing about Kell,” says Alinor, leaning forward onto the back of her seat with a wide grin, “is that she never met a woman who wouldn't love her.”

  “What?” I ask, bewildered.

  “She's just that good,” says Alinor, spreading her hands with a shrug.

  “But...but not everyone is attracted to the same thing,” I'm beginning, but Kell shakes out her hair, works her shoulders back, lowers her chin and makes her eyes utterly dazzling (I'm not sure exactly how she's doing it, but it seems that the temperature actually goes up around her when she does this). Kell then stands and prowls her way across the crowded bus to stand next to the woman who had—a moment earlier—looked like Kell's wink may have made her throw up a little in her mouth.

  “On our world,” says Calla quietly, glancing sidelong at me as she tries to hide a smile again, “we have a belief that the Goddess made women with the ability to love everyone. So, if you have not yet loved a woman before, there is some place inside of you where you hold the possibility of that love.”

  I blink. “I mean...” I trail off, considering things. “There have been studies on our world saying that all women are bi...” I start, but I realize I'd have to explain a lot about that sentence, so I clear my throat. “Huh,” is what I follow that up with. “But...that woman looked pretty unhappy that Kell was giving her attention.”

  “See for yourself,” says Alinor, inclining her head toward the back of the bus.

  Kell and the woman who rolled her eyes so hard that they were in danger of falling out of her head...

  Are currently making out.

  “She talked to her for, like, a minute,” I whisper, awed. The woman that Kell is kissing pretty passionately is initiating it, is—in fact—looking like this is the best moment of her entire life.

  I'd expect someone on the T to say something about a making-out session that is so, well, robust, but surprisingly no one makes a single remark. Maybe it's the presence of all the women toward the front of the bus that Kell came in with—strong, muscular women who could probably take down anyone they wanted to.

  But, for a moment, I realize what it must be like to live on Agrotera, or—more specifically—to live in Arktos, a country ruled by a woman who loves women, in a city of women who love women. Where this is completely the norm.

  I mean...isn't that every lesbian's secret fantasy? To be in a place where she's not just “tolerated” or, on the negative side, in danger at any given time. To not be considered the minority or an abnormality or different...

  But to be normal. And to be surrounded by women who are just like you.

  I tuck a red curl behind my ear and smile up at Virago as I cross my arms over my chest. Virago grins down at me, wrapping me in her arms and holding me close as Kell and that lady go to town on each other.

  All things considered, this is starting to shape up to being a very strange night.

  I don't know how much stranger it could get.

  Yet.

  The bus grinds to a brake-screeching halt near Queenie's, and when we get off the bus, we're no longer the group of six women who climbed up onto the bus. We seem to have gained an additional member.

  “My name's Jeana,” says Jeana, the woman who Kell was making out with, who Kell now has an arm around, a satisfied smirk making her wet mouth round up at the corners. “I'm from Georgia,” says Jeana, her smirk deepening. She fishes around in her purse and takes out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Nice to meet y'all.”

  She already sounds pretty drunk. Jeana taps the bottom of the cigarette pack, taking a cigarette out, and—holding it between two bright red nails—she offers this cigarette to Kell.

  Kell's about to take it, gazing at it with curiosity, but I move too fast for her.

  “She doesn't smoke!” I pipe up, getting between Kell and Jeana in that instant (no small feat since I don't think atoms are currently capable of squeaking between their bodies, they're pressed so tightly to one another). “She...she quit. It'd be bad for her to have another cigarette,” I'm stammering, holding up my hands like I'm in some desperately under-budget after-school program to teach kid
s not to smoke. All I need is to get Kell hooked on Earth's nicotine...

  “Suit yourself,” Jeana mutters, rolling out from under Kell's arm. “I've got places to go,” she says, waving over her shoulder.

  Kell looks slightly annoyed as she glances at me then, but she shakes her head, obviously undaunted by the woman's departure.

  “Where we're going, there are many women?” she asks me, raising a brow.

  “Loads,” I tell her, putting my hands at the small of her back and propelling her gently down the swarming sidewalk towards Queenie's.

  The door to Queenie's is opening and shutting as women make their way in and out of the bar, and the loud music is pouring out of the door every time it's opened, washing the sidewalk in poignant, wailing hard rock. I actually think it's a live band tonight, which will be much more interesting for the knights than the usual, overly loud DJ with all of the premixed club songs. I guess it means that I'm well and truly in my thirties that the prospect of listening to loud, mixed club music isn't making me excited. But to see a live band? Especially if it's one of the hard rock, woman-fronted ones that Queenie's often has? Yeah, that makes me feel pretty stoked.

  And as we make our way into the dimly lit bar, I can see the stage at the back of the large room, and I'm happy to see a band I recognize, Batty Sisters, a local hard rock act that's comprised of four women—all lesbians. It seems like a very nice omen for the night, like the knights are going to have a good time because there's a leather-wearing, sexy musician on stage, swaggering around and crooning into the microphone like she owns the universe.

  When Kell, Alinor, and Magel's eyes adjust to the darkness, they look around the place, taking in the sight of all of the ladies. An immediate swarm of women descends on them, and by the time I turn around from the bar, two overly full glasses of beer in my hands, one for me and one for Virago, the knights have completely disappeared into the sea of women. Calla, too.

  Virago laughs as she takes the beer from me, holding it up in a small salute. “That was quick,” she says mildly, sipping the foam off the top of the beer. “Thank you for the drink, my love.”