Page 39 of Serpentine Valentine
“Am I bleeding?” I asked because it made sense.
It hurt so much. The pleasure had ripped me apart from the inside out.
“No,” Luna said, her fingertips on my cheeks. She pulled away toshow me the clear wetness. “You’re crying.”
I stood so quickly, I almost fell over and had to catch myself on the railing. My hair fell forward like a welcomed curtain, shielding me from Luna’s gaze, enfolding me in gloom. I stood there trying to hunt down my breath, trying to close the gaping crater that single orgasm had left inside me. Everything wanted to spill out of that gap—my rage, my pain, my awful, bone-chewing loneliness.
“Lex, I think you’re having a panic attack.” Luna’s voice reached me from leagues under the sea.
I spun around to tell her to fuck off, but halfway there I lost consciousness and everything went black.
Honestly, it was a relief.
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
––George Bernard Shaw
Luna
I tried to catch her,but she was too far away. Helplessly, I watched as Lex fell gracefully to the ground like a fallen silk scarf, almost dissolving into herself. Aroused, frightened, and panicked, my first response was to try to pick her up to take her inside, but she was too heavy for me to lift from the ground without breaking my back. I considered calling an ambulance, but I had the feeling Lex would be furious with me for doing that.
So I stared at the oversized front door of the Victorian home and sucked in a deep, bracing breath before I knocked on it, then pushed through without waiting for an answer.
“Hello?” I called out, walking into the narrow front hall.
“Yeah?”
I followed the sound of that feminine voice to the right into a kind of front parlor with a round table set before large bay windows. Three girls sat around it playing cards and sipping roséwine from vintage water glasses. One was dark-skinned with a sun-kissed halo of fine, curly hair, while the other two were almost as pale as me, one blonde and the other brunette with twin ski-jump noses and enormous brown eyes.
All three of them stared at me as if suspended in animation.
The brunette, the one with a cigarette hanging by the edge of her lower lip, was the one to recover first. “You’re Luna Pallas.”
“I am,” I agreed. “I’m sorry to barge in here, but, well, Lex fainted on the porch, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Fuck,” the Black girl grumbled, pushing out of her chair to stalk into the kitchen at the back of the long room.
The brunette rolled her eyes. “She’s so dramatic.”
“No, I mean, I think it was serious,” I tried to explain, wringing my hands at the thought of Lex just lying in the deepening dark and cold lie without supervision. “She had a panic attack.”
The blond frowned at me. “What was she doing?”
Touching herself for me, I thought but didn’t say.
I think the blush that set fire to my skin was answer enough though because the brunette snickered as she got up to go out on the porch.
When I moved to follow her, the blond reached out to catch the sleeve of my sweater. “Ignore Grace, we mostly do the same. I’m Juno.”
“We’re not having the girl over for tea, June-bug,” the girl came back from the kitchen and glared at me as she passed through the hall to the front door. “Get out here and help me.”
“That’s Effie,” Juno explained as she stood, then started to lead me back out to the porch. “We’re Lex’s sisters.”
I wasn’t sure how four multicultural girls of around the same age came to be sisters, but now wasn’t the time to ask. There were too many other questions on my mind, the predominant one being my concern for Lex.
“Has this happened before?” I asked as we stepped outside, and Isaw Grace and Effie kneeling beside Lex.
“Unfortunately. Since the incident…” She trailed off, suddenly letting me go to kneel beside her sisters.
