Page 65 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls
Their table laughed harder, spurred on more when Nadine added, “‘Thank you for modeling healthy, everlasting love. It changed nothing.’”
Celene relished in their cynicism as she flicked through every printout for ideas, in an uncomfortable state of indecisiveness. She enjoyed people who broke away from the obsession with making a life with a romantic partner. It didn’t matter that she wanted those things; everybody deserved their own path. Especially if Nadine opened that door again.
She stopped on a sheet displaying four coaster-sized circles with wavy edges. On top of it read: trinket bowls. It transported her to Luce’s Mosaic Wonderland, to Skye’s habit of straightening counter items. “I don’t hate this one.”
Nadine approved with a curious smirk. “That’d be cute. For you or Edna?”
“Or Shanice. How’sshebeen? Still with your old dad?” Dante wagged his brows, receiving blank faces. Wrong audience. “You could give them to your girlfriend.”
“Interimgirlfriend,” Celene corrected.
Who was she kidding? She didn’t give a damn about flowery trinket bowls for herself. Or Edna or Shanice. A text on being sorry about Skye’s grandfather fell a little flat. She’d value something tangible.
The dried flowers lacked fuchsias but carried an acceptable variety to make up for it. Energized by more structure to her plan, she rooted around thoroughly.
They settled on work talk while Celene and Nadine assembled. Dante goofed around, tossing a flower he found “okay-looking” at his sister now and then. Nadine tied her dark hair into a ponytail, long wisps grazing the most determined face Celene had ever seen on her.
With the help of their instructors—a straight couple who’d been married so long, they favored each other as much as her twin tablemates—their ideas became reality. For safety reasons, the instructors handled pouring hot epoxy into molds. The process materials lacked an intense chemical odor, but Celene fitted a mask to her face anyway.
As neatly as possible, she’d arranged her dried choices in the epoxy, mixed in some pigment, and had to congratulate herself. For a non-artist, these would be passable.
“My frame’s complete.” Nadine did a very cheerleader-like routine in her chair. “I almost want to keep it for myself.”
Dante paused a music video playing on his phone. “Yourframe? I helped.”
“Barely. I should sign it:Love Nadine and Only Nadine, the better twin, born twenty-nine minutes earlier.” She’d wiggled her fingers over an imaginary typewriter, voice dropping to deadpan, “Best twenty-nine minutes of my life.”
Nadine’s front couldn’t deceive Celene or Dante. Not a chance, since she’d included all of his selections in their present. Celene continued to refine her four arrangements while Nadine ambled to neighboring tables, nosy about everyone else’s projects. It was adorable how she sought validation, making sure she’d done as well—or better—than others in the workshop. That probably trickled into work life under her mother.
When an instructor applied another layer of clear resin to Celene’s bowls, she took a couple of pictures. Celene decided against sending them to Skye. They could dry cloudy, or shatter by the day she returned to Yielding.
“She’s going to love those.”
Celene glanced up at Nadine’s comment—her best friend crept too well. She heard the smile behind the compliment.
“She will,” Dante agreed, burying himself back into his screen, his groomed eyebrows furrowing.
They weren’t a saccharine bunch, nor overly affectionate. All the same, an unavoidable swell of pride touched Celene.
Looked like she’d needed some validation, too.
Celene paced her apartment,the faint smell of drying resin wafting from a top shelf. She’d been very intentional about everything’s place on the glossy wooden shelf: colorless stoneware, metal meditation bowls—one holding the logo pinfrom Luce’s booth—hardcover nonfictions, ferns in dishes that wouldn’t die, as they were fake.
Convincingly fake, like her relationship.
Draping a loose braid over her shoulder, Celene checked the soil of the only real plant in her home. Edna never understood her design choices, always quick to criticize how Celene kept things sparse purely for the aesthetic.
Well, yes the fuck she did. If she were to live in a peaceful setting, she demanded curation. Clean walls, filmy curtains. Rugs in clean angles. A Zabuton, its round teal cushion perfect for comfortable meditation despite the disruption of traffic outside.
Celene flopped onto her cool sheets, frowning at the only nuisance in her space—boxes holding her newest influx of paperbacks. Having an e-reader should’ve remedied this, yet she tended to switch it up when she lay in the hammock in Pennsylvania. Once a lucky new homeowner signed on the realtor’s dotted line, Celene would miss that pocket of quietude behind Boob Mountain the most.
Right. She’d missa hammockthe most.
Before she second-guessed it, she brought up the video of Skye communicating with Beaker. Alone, she let herself long for what could be, let herself wonder how soft those long sleeves would be crushed within Celene’s hands. Skye’s smile at the end still made her heart race, so she went the easy route—focusing on her legs.
God, if there was one thing Skye loved, it was showing off those lithe, smooth legs. Before Donovan’s family interrupted them on the hammock, she’d allowed Celene to stroke her, and at one point, Skye’s knees parted. Celene could’ve gone feral, a word she’d never associated with herself.
Had they been caught up in a sensual moment, bred of two lonely lesbians? Or did this suggest Skye would’ve gone further?Celene squeezed her eyes shut, skimming her knuckles on the tight ends of her comforter. She couldn’t decide if they would’ve dashed into the house, falling onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, or if they’d gone the semi-exhibitionist route, where Celene slipped fingers into Skye’s shorts and rubbed her until Skye bit her lip through a concealed orgasm.
