Page 28 of Smoke & Ashes
Possibly wrong choice of expletive.
“Okay.” She frowned. “I wasn’t necessarily expecting agod yes take me nowbut I was hoping for you to maybe saysomething?”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Was it me, or was it suddenly hot in there. “No, it’s not—it’s—that is to say you’re very…”stop looking at her breasts, stop looking at her breasts, stop looking at her breasts. “It’s just Sofia is a bit like the little sister I never had and…”
She sidled forward in a way I was really confused to see from somebody born around the turn of the millennium and took my hands. “I’vegotsisters,” she said. “And one of the absolutebestperks of having them is that you get to perv on their friends.”
“Yeah, your use of the wordpervisn’t exactly making me feel more comfortable here.”
“Look.” She laced her fingers through mine, like we were playing mercy in the playground. And I had to step away from the schoolyard imagery, it wasn’t helping. “You want to stay here to protect Sofia. And you don’t want to sleep on our crappy sofa. And I’m an adult who can make her own choices. And youclearlyfind me attractive. So what’s the problem?”
I shook my head. “Did I, like, roll in catnip for lesbians this week or something?”
“Well I don’t identify as alesbian,but seriously, Kate, you’re a hot older woman with purple eyes and Marlene Dietrich cheekbones who solves crimes and fights vampires and who has personally saved my best friend’s life more than once. Catnip is about the word for it.”
“This is a bad idea. My last casual hookup was with a woman whosekidswere closer to your age than I am.”
She shrugged. “I kinda like that you don’t buy into the prevailing cultural narrative that denies the sexual agency of women over forty.”
“Are you”—I examined her expression very, very closely. For purely investigative reasons—“are you trying towokeme into bed?”
“Is it working?”
“No.” I mean, okay, maybe a little bit. Around the edges. But that was less to do with the politics and more to do with the … all the rest.
She backed off. “I’ll tell you what. If you don’t want to do anything I understand, but if you’re as much of an old lady as you claim, sleeping on the sofa will put your back out. Come to my room and we can share a bed like two mature, sensible people.”
Itdidsound better than trying to get the cushions in order. I let her take me through to her bedroom, which was quite a decent size for student digs, scattered with books that had titles likeWhat is Mathematical Analysis?andGroups: A Path to Geometryalongside a reasonable selection of prominently displayed sex toys of the entry-level variety. I laid down on the bed, which wasn’t the sleeping-in-a-cloud perfection I’d got used to at Safernoc, but was several steps better than a sofa, floor, or pool of my own vomit. I got myself comfortable.
Just as I was adjusting my daywear into a configuration I could comfortably sleep in while preserving some element of modesty, I realised I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book.
“You have no intention of going straight to sleep, do you?”
Flick, who while I’d been averting my eyes and adjusting my underwear had slipped into something resembling appropriately platonic nightwear—an oversized tee-shirt with a picture of Robert Smith on the front and, I couldn’t help but notice, kind of nothing on her bottom half—gave me two seconds of the faux-innocent look, then sat down at a surprisingly respectful distance from me. I updated my mental instructions todon’t look at her breasts or legs. “Listen,” she said. “I happen to think you’re being silly with this wholeDon’t Stand So Close to Mebit, but I’d never want to do anything that made you uncomfortable.” She inched closer. “Nottoouncomfortable anyway. And obviously if you changed your mind and decided you were cool to fuck me until my eyes bleed, that’d be awesome. But I won’t push it.”
I peered at her. “Until your eyeswhat?”
“Call it a colourful metaphor.”
“It’s a fucking disturbing metaphor.”
She stretched out on the bed next to me. For something not-at-all form-fitting, the tee-shirt highlighted her curves surprisingly well. “That’s how I like it.”
While I was trying to get comfortable, Flick got up and switched the lights off before bounding back into bed with an enthusiasm which bordered on kittenish.
She nuzzled me. “For what it’s worth, I’m still counting this as a win.”
“Yeah?” I had to admit, it would have been a pretty nice setup if not for the crushing guilt and frustrating need to exercise self-restraint.
“I got you into bed, didn’t I?”
She had. It was a bit embarrassing how much of my time lately I was spending getting schooled by people who could barely vote. I shut my eyes and did my best to sleep. It was surprisingly easy to let myself drift off, even if I did occasionally find myself having very inappropriate thoughts about the technically-not-a-teenager lying next to me.
“Bit of a weird question,” she whispered in the dark. “Do you mind if I wank?”
“Points for boldness.”
I felt her shrug beside me. “Don’t ask, don’t get. It’s just that this is turning out to be a bit harder than I thought it would and I’m having trouble sleeping.”
