Page 37 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls
“Yeah. Um, the most okay.” Skye brought a spoonful to her mouth and tasted not a damn thing. The light touch traveled back down to her knee, swirling slowly, like they always did this.
All the while, Celene didn’t take her eyes off Skye. She grinned like someone who knew her way around women. “Is she looking?”
Shit, Skye had forgotten about Mrs. Locke already. She blinked over and sure enough, their spectator’s glare deepened and as her name implied, locked on the under-table petting. “Big time.”
“Your skin’s so silky,” Celene said. Matter-of-factly. Her voice elevated, she posed a convincing, “Are you taking me home after this?”
Acting. Notacting. Skye stammered out, “If-uh, if you. Want. If you want.”
“I’ll show you what I want if you take me home.”
Performance or not, did whoever Celene dated realize how lucky they were? And who had she been engaged to? On a tangent she didn’t realize she’d fallen into, Skye just had to know. “Do you date women, for real?”
The way Celene’s gaze sharpened, Skye would need resuscitation. “Exclusively. Why?”
“Same. No reason.”
“So no girlfriend?” She’d upgraded to two fingers trailing the other thigh. “Not even June?”
Skye saved herself a groan. Despite June’s fiancée status, people occasionally mistook them for an item. “I mean, Luce was trying her hardest to hook you and me up. I’m free as a bird, as you said.”
Celene’s smile eased. Expression less playful, more pensive. “Is she still watching?”
Almost stumbling to ask ‘who?’, Skye brought herself back into her plastic Nell’s chair and not the fog of this moment. Shehad no choice but to check in on Mrs. Locke, who’d gotten up, all but breaking her neck to keep an eye on them. “You might not be wrong about her hidden sexuality. Kind of sad.”
“Are you into older women? Testing her marriage may be fun.”
Skye could gag. “No, I’d rather not sleep with my mean high school teacher, thanks.”
Breaking into a small laugh, Celene took another bite of her ice cream. Her tongue swept over the round of her spoon and—Skye could’ve blacked out—Celene performed that for Mrs. Locke, who’d turned into a visibly sweaty, offended statue over the trash can.
Celene’s hand settled fully on Skye’s leg, burning a hole there. “Do something she won’t forget.”
A request to improvise again. And now that she’d swum in eyes that weren’t as cold and unnerving, Skye reminded herself not to overthink.
Taking advantage of Mrs. Locke’s slow gait to exit, Skye slinked her fingers into Celene’s, ridding it of the spoon. She pulled Celene’s hand close to nuzzle at the skin of her wrist, above where her silver watch slipped. And to their victim, purred, “You were always my favorite teacher, Mrs. Locke.”
Mrs. Locke let out a sound that fell short of ridicule. It came out weakly as she retreated from the shoppe. The second the door swung shut, Skye and Celene nearly fell out laughing.
And the laughter continued in little spurts until they left, reaching the rec center parking lot. Until then, Skye hadn’t noticed they’d parked side by side. They stood between their cars, drunk on glee.
“We made Mrs. Locke’s life.” Celene jingled car keys by the loop, her grin smug. The nightfall couldn’t even mask it.
It startled Skye to witness Celene like this. Forced her to grapple with her concept of ‘types.’ The rude, condescendingperson she met before had drawn her attention with outward beauty. What happened when the inside began to match? “She’s definitely in love with you.”
“Me? Not with you and those bedroom eyes keeping her up all night.” Celene’s smile settled with a heavy sigh. She drifted her head upward, to the twilight. To the stars dispersed behind lazy clouds, the heavens above Yielding.
Skye stared, wishing to see the constellations in her eyes.
“We used to laugh like that when we were little girls,” Celene said.
Chills wracked Skye, under her long sleeves. “We did.”
“You always had a skinned knee and the biggest, sweetest smile.” Celene linked their stares. Quiet intensity. “I never felt wrong around you. Everyone else could be themselves on vacation, and…I couldn’t until I met you.”
Determined not to get weepy, Skye nodded. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.”
