Chapter Eight #2
Sasha grinned, that smile emanating from her over Daphne and April like some sort of sexy radiation. “What can I get you?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” April said under her breath as she looked at the cocktail menu printed on thick recycled paper.
“Something wrong?” Daphne asked.
“Fuckbois abound,” April said quietly.
“I’m sorry?” Daphne asked.
“Never mind,” April said, then louder, to Sasha, “I’ll have a pink lady.”
Sasha nodded once. “Coming right up. And you?” She slid her gaze to Daphne, who felt her cheeks warm inexplicably.
“Dirty gin martini,” she said.
Sasha lifted her pale brows, then slid her gaze down Daphne’s torso once before settling on her eyes again. “Unexpected.”
“What’s that?” Daphne asked.
Sasha flipped a navy towel over her shoulder, then started pulling glasses and bottles to make their drinks. “If I had to guess, I would’ve flipped your orders.” She chin-nodded at April. “Dirty martini”—then did the same toward Daphne—“pink lady.”
“Well, you guessed wrong, didn’t you?” April said.
Daphne was a bit relieved to see April’s sass wasn’t only reserved for her.
Sasha laughed. “I love a surprise.”
“Oh, I bet you do,” April said, shaking her head.
Sasha stirred Daphne’s martini, then poured it into a glass before spearing two olives to finish it off.
She set the drink in front of Daphne, then got to work on April’s cocktail, shaking the mixture before pouring a very pink, frothy liquid into a champagne glass.
Daphne had to admit, she also hadn’t expected a tiny Goth like April to sip on something quite so vibrant.
She laughed as April rolled her eyes back as she drank, moaning with pleasure.
“Wow, maybe we should switch,” Daphne said.
“Over my dead body,” April said, clutching the pink lady to her chest.
Daphne smiled, happy to see April relax a little. “To fresh starts,” she said, taking a deep breath and holding up her glass.
April hesitated for a second, her eyes dark and deep, but finally she tipped her head and clinked her glass against Daphne’s.
Daphne drank, loving the salty tang of her martini.
She’d never been a huge drinker, despite years of repression, but right now, she felt like draining her glass of every drop.
In fact, that’s exactly what she did.
“Well, damn,” Sasha said. “Another?”
“Please,” Daphne said, popping both olives into her mouth at once. Sasha, she noticed, followed the motion with her eyes.
“What’s your name?” Sasha asked, taking the empty glass.
“Really?” April said.
Sasha frowned as she started making Daphne’s second round. “Something wrong with asking your names?”
April tipped her head back and laughed. “That’s all you’re after? A name?”
Sasha shrugged. “It’s a start. And you are?”
April shook her head, but she was smiling. “April. And no.”
“No?” Sasha asked. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Can’t even give me a chance?” Sasha asked.
“I know your type.”
“Well, I don’t,” Daphne said, eyes bouncing between them like a ping-pong ball. “What is happening right now?”
“Your friend,” Sasha said, setting Daphne’s martini in front of her, then resting her elbows on the bar and steepling her fingers, “is turning me down.”
Friend.
Daphne rolled the word around in her brain, tried to focus on the matter at hand. “She is?”
“I am,” April said. “And so are you if you know what’s good for you.”
“I think we’ve established I definitely don’t know what’s good for me,” Daphne said.
April sipped her drink. “Let’s not add insult to injury, then.”
Sasha presented her palms. “Fine, fine. I get it. Just looking for some summer fun, that’s all.”
“And we look like fun?” Daphne asked. She still wasn’t completely sure what was going on—was Sasha asking April out, or Daphne? Or both of them? Maybe neither, but her face heated again anyway. To be fair, she blushed when someone smiled at her on the subway, so that wasn’t saying much.
“You sure do…” Sasha trailed off, expression expectant as she waited for her name.
“Daphne,” she said, then very nearly giggled at the way Sasha smiled at her. It wasn’t that she was turned on or even tempted—Sasha was just charming, and Daphne had never fared very well around hot and charming people, as her recent history testified.
“Daphne,” Sasha said, then winked. “Lovely name.”
“Oh my god,” April said.
Daphne did giggle then, covering her tomato-hued face with her napkin, which made both Sasha and April laugh out loud.
“I’m sorry,” Daphne said. “I’m so new at this.”
“New?” Sasha asked. “Are you a baby gay?”
“Um, sort of?” Daphne said. “I just got out of something serious, and before that…”
“Before that?” Sasha asked.
Daphne slurped at her martini and glanced at April, who simply lifted her brows.
“Before that, I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family with my preacher father and Sunday school–teaching mother, both of whom believed, along with most of my town, that being queer was a one-way ticket to hell. I’d never so much as held a girl’s hand before college, where I kissed exactly three people and couldn’t move past first base until I fell in love with someone I suspect might actually be evil. ”
Daphne’s face grew even hotter, and she grabbed her martini again, taking a big, salty gulp.
“Well, shit,” Sasha said.
“Exactly that,” April said, though her voice was softer than Sasha’s. Daphne glanced at her, but the eye contact with her ex’s ex at that moment was a bit too much, so she stared down at the olives floating in her foggy drink.
“So…you’ve slept with…” Sasha started, a baffled expression on her face.
“One person, yes,” Daphne said, eyes still on her glass.
Sasha nodded, her mouth pursed. “That’s…that’s…wow.”
“Spoken like a true fuckboi,” April said. “She doesn’t have to have notches on her bedpost to have a fulfilling queer experience. Ace people exist. So do monogamous people who fell in love with their person when they were, like, seventeen.”
“No, yeah, I know,” Sasha said. “Just couldn’t be me.”
“I refer you, again, to my fuckboi comment,” April said.
Sasha laughed as she wiped down the bar. “No argument here.”
April rolled her eyes, but Daphne barely heard their interaction, her mind whirring.
She knew April was right, but at the same time, she didn’t feel like she’d had a fulfilling queer experience at all.
Or even a fulfilling life experience. No wonder Elena’s reactions to her art were always lackluster—she hadn’t lived enough to produce anything earth-shattering.
She hadn’t produced anything worthy of the Devon.
“It’s not just about sex,” she said, finally looking up. “It’s about my whole life. I feel so…young.”
“You are young,” April said.
Daphne laughed mirthlessly, met April’s eyes. “Young and naive, right?”
April let out a breath. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Daphne shook her head. “No, but I am. Elena said so all the time too.”
“Fuck Elena,” April said, spitting out the name like it tasted terrible.
“Who’s Elena?” Sasha asked.
“No one,” April said, but Daphne wanted to say it. Say something, at least. There was power in words, she knew, power in speaking things out loud, and maybe if she said everything to this hot bartender, it would make more sense. She could leave April out of it.
“She’s my ex,” Daphne said. “And I just found out she cheated on someone with me. She was engaged when we met three years ago.”
“Well, shit,” Sasha said again, and took out a shot glass and a bottle of tequila. “Next round is on me. Sounds like you need it.”
“Make that two,” April said, holding up two fingers.
“It’s more than Elena though,” Daphne said, still unsettled.
If anything, saying it all out loud made her more desperate to do something.
Be something, anything other than this version of herself.
“I had a boring college experience, too scared and unsure to really try anything, followed by a too-serious relationship that ended in literal disaster. I have no career, no money. No best friend. I’ve never had a one-night stand.
I can’t even say a curse word without blushing.
I’ve never stayed out all night and gotten so drunk I puked the next morning. ”
“I wouldn’t recommend that last one,” Sasha said, pouring the shots.
“Point is,” Daphne said, “I want to do something.”
“Like have an actual one-night stand?” Sasha asked, adopting a wide-eyed, innocent expression. “Because I have a few ideas for that.”
Daphne, predictably, blushed again.
“Okay, slow down,” April said, holding up her hands. “Zero to a hundred and fifty is probably not the best plan here.”
“So you’ll help me?” Daphne asked.
“Wait, what?” April said, brows lifting. “Me?”
Daphne couldn’t stop herself from smiling. For the first time in a month—no, longer than that. For the first time in multiple months, maybe a year, even, she felt excited about something. The Devon, and now this.
This was what she needed.
Something fun. Something sexy and wild and maybe even a little dangerous. And perhaps it was silly or juvenile, but as she sat at this bar with two fierce and gorgeous queer people, she realized just how little she’d lived the kind of life she wanted.
The kind of life she’d left home for.
And April and Sasha were the perfect people to help her.
“Yes, you,” she said, then looked between them. “Both of you.”
“Oh, I’m in,” Sasha said, rubbing her hands together. “What tattoo are we all getting?”
“Right?” Daphne said. “I need a tattoo. I’m long overdue, and yes, I do want to mar this soft baby skin.”
Sasha laughed. “Okay, well, let’s mar away.”
“Wait,” April said again, shaking her head. “I don’t—”
“Please,” Daphne said. She reached out and took April’s hand before thinking twice about it. April glanced down at their fingers, and Daphne let go. “Please,” she said again, quieter this time. “You’re the only person I really know here.”