Page 16 of Push & Pull
Chapter 6
Petrapattedherhairdry with the hotel towel before pulling her baggy T-shirt over her head. The only reason she also pulled up some boxer shorts was because she was sharing the room with a stranger.Let’s be real, Simone’s the only reason I’m wearing clothes at all.
With any luck, Simone would already be passed out by the time Petra went out there. Then again, Simone was an interesting person to talk to. When she wasn’t a precious princess.
I like precious princesses, though…Especially ones that still dressed like fancy tomboys well into their twenties. Those were the best.
No. Petra totally didn’t have a crush on Simone.That would be absurd.
For one thing, Simone wasn’t interested in her. That was clear from the clipped conversations and the not-so-polite requests to be dropped off at the airport the next day.She’s as interested in me as I am in having my teeth filed down.
Simone was still hot, though. Petra loved a tall girl she could climb like a jungle gym.
Jesus, I need to get laid.With a woman who turned her on and made her come like a rocket to the moon. Not with the likes of Clyde Quimby, who was still railing against her from somewhere near Gary, Indiana.
Well, maybe…
…Simone would be game?
Petra checked herself out in the mirror as soon as some of the steam dissipated.No makeup on, that might be a minus.Should she put some on now? No, that was silly. She had washed it off to go to sleep.Speaking of sleep, I really need it.The caffeine was already wearing off. Pretty soon, Petra would be the one passed out on the bed, snoring up a storm like Simone had in the car earlier that day.
I liked it when she snored.It was amusing, at least. Definitely human. Petra liked human.
No, Simone would have no interest in her like that. Not after Petra shared that she was a former foster kid whose mom had been in jail more often than not. At least back then, Nicolette Kallis had been in an Illinois jail. Now? Oof, a women's prison in Pennsylvania.Almost in record time!Some habits, as Uncle Michail had explained to Petra, were hard to break.
So why did he keep pushing her into the same ones? This was a woman who slept and stole from men because she had her uncle’s bills to pay.
If Simone knew what I was really like, she’d bear mace me and run.So Petra didn’t focus on that. Instead, she flashed a smile at her reflection and drank in the pronounced chin and nose that offset the roundness of her face. Her asymmetrical haircut also kept her from looking like a total “blob,” as the first girl she asked out had called her back in Forest Glen. Petra couldn’t help her face shape or her height, but she wasn’t too bad at styling herself now if she were honest.
She turned off the bathroom fan and stepped out into the hotel room. The place was clean and quiet, as Simone had requested, but tiny. Small enough for Petra to immediately see what had transpired while she was in the shower.
“Are you serious?” she said to the woman who sat up in the bed, reading glasses on her face and a book in her lap. Simone’s things were neatly repacked in one of the chairs by the window, whereas Petra’s shit was all over the floor.Just how I like it!“Made yourself at home, did you? We hadn’t decided who gets the bed.” It should have been her since Petra was paying for it. Discounted rate thanks to her uncle’s connections to the owner, but she was still parting with hard (stolen) money for it.
Simone barely glanced up at her when she shrugged so nonchalantly that Petra had half a mind to overturn the bed and dump her onto the floor. “You were busy. I wanted to go to bed.”
Petra gestured to the loveseat by the TV. “So, am I supposed to sleep here? Why? Because I’m the short one? That’s not how this works. Couches are uncomfortable for short people, too.”
Simone flipped a page in her book. “I didn’t say you couldn’t join me. You’re the one imposing that rule.”
“I mean…” Petra lowered her hands from her hips.She can’t be serious.This was a trap. An ungodly one. “I doubted you’d be cool with that. We barely know each other.”
“Please. I sleep with strangers all the time. At least I know your name.”
What does that mean? She sleeps with strangers?Was that code for Simone being promiscuous? Petra really shouldn’t read much into it. She’d go crazy – and she’d be damned if she let girls like Simone drive her crazy… like that, anyway!
Other types of crazy were unavoidable.
“All right.” Petra stopped by her luggage to sort out what she wanted to wear the next morning. As soon as they were ready to go, she’d drive Simone to the airport andthenworry about breakfast. “Whatever you say.”
“Is it really so weird for two women to share a bed?”
“Uh, I mean, we’re gay.”
“I didn’t realize we were bound by the same social rules as the straights.”
“I’m just saying.” Petra closed the lid on her bag and lingered by the empty side of the bed. “You didn’t strike me as the type of person who wants to share a bed with the woman whose car she woke up in that morning.”
“You’re the one making that weird.”
