Chapter 8
8
Franny walked into Lucky Leagues Bowling Alley with a shiny new ball and a pair of truly silly clown shoes on Sunday. Despite her slight humiliation during the team’s bingo night and her confrontation with Jade, she was determined to be in good spirits.
There was a lesbian bowling team that met at Lucky Leagues in Greenbelt every other week. Franny had found out about it while scrolling through a local LGBTQ+ events Facebook page. She’d been looking for a way to make new friends that didn’t solely involve nightlife activities. As much as she loved the surprisingly good bar scene in Greenbelt, she craved some weeknight platonic companionship too.
As always, Barb and Stella were already at their reserved lanes. They’d been married for twenty-five years, their relationship so lived-in that they practically dressed the same.
“Hey, y’all,” Franny offered as she slid into one of the hard chairs, immediately going about changing her shoes. Everyone else rented a pair each time and laughed at her for insisting on buying her own. She was unmoved, though. Whatever the kid behind the counter sprayed in those things couldn’t be nearly enough to disinfect them.
“Hey there, girlie.” Stella gave her a grin as she sucked on something out of a Styrofoam cup.
She threw a look at Barb, who was sitting up close to the automatic scorer with her nose in a notebook. The woman kept meticulous records, had done since she and Stella had started their small bowling team a decade ago. She kept hers and her wife’s scores, and it was deeply adorable to watch Stella—who clearly wasn’t as into the numbers as her wife—take special pains to look after the notebook at almost all times.
A few minutes later, they were joined by the rest of the women. Janet, a Black woman who exclusively wore purple. Charlie, a tiny white woman who always seemed to be channeling Stevie Nicks. Last to arrive was Carmella, a Mexican woman who always came after babysitting her grandson on Sunday afternoons.
The chatter didn’t start until they were all gathered around their two designated lanes, shoes on, food secured, waiting for Barb to give them the go-ahead to start. The woman always insisted that they go in the same order every game for structure. Everyone else seemed to be amused by it but put up no fight.
The first time Franny had shown up, she’d worn a thrifted vintage bowling shirt and a pair of cuffed khaki pants, completely expecting to be among a bunch of ironic, mullet-wearing, Diet Coke–drinking queers. She knew nothing about bowling; she could have counted on one hand the times she’d ever even been to a bowling alley. She figured they might sit around and pretend to sip on beers and shoot the shit long enough that she met her self-imposed socialization quota.
Instead, what she’d found were five sixtysomething lesbians in crewnecks and mom jeans who set the lanes ablaze. The gals were serious about bowling. And when Franny had tried to worm her way out of actually participating, they’d heard none of it.
“I had a hell of a week,” Charlie said in her small, soft voice after she’d sunk seven pins. “One of my favorite girls who works at the crystal store in Port Royal quit to follow her boyfriend to Houston. Then the health food store ran out of mullein tea.” She dug an elbow into Franny’s side. “I need that to clear my lungs out after my daily smoke sesh, you know. And I think there are starlings nesting in my attic.”
To Franny, that didn’t seem like too bad of a week, but she figured retirement came with its own special set of troubles.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Franny told her, trying to make her hand on the woman’s shoulder as sympathetic as possible.
“How was yours, Francesca?” Janet asked. “Please tell us something exciting happened. I feel like I spent my week watching my lawn grow and counting the cans of soup in my cabinets.”
“How many cans did you have?” Franny was genuinely curious.
To her credit, Janet’s eyes lit up a bit at the question. “Fourteen cans of Progresso and twenty-five cans of Campbell’s.”
“That’s impressive,” Carmella commented.
“Not as impressive as whatever Franny’s gotten up to, I’m sure.”
“I hate to disappoint you ladies, but my life is absolutely boring as shit.”
“That can’t be true,” Janet argued. “You’re what, thirty? You’re just getting started at this whole life thing.”
“I remember when I was thirty.” Charlie’s eyes took on an almost mystical effect. “I had this girlfriend named Big T. She drove a motorcycle and had the biggest arms you’ve ever seen. The things we got up to…”
Franny smiled with interest. “Like what?”
Barb cleared her throat. “Francesca, please do not goad this woman into telling us about getting fisted in a river bend in South Dakota again. We’ve only got the lanes for two hours.”
Franny turned her mouth down. “Aww, but now I really want to hear it.”
Charlie patted Franny’s knee. “I’ll tell you after. It’s a hell of a tale. She ended up leaving me for a Denny’s waitress in the middle of Montana, and I had to hitchhike home.”
“Yeah… my life isn’t nearly as interesting as that. All I’ve got is a hot coworker who basically wants me dead. That’s literally it.”
“Hold on now.” Stella held up a hand. “Those coworker romances are some of the best ones.”
“And the worst ones,” Barb interjected as Charlie left her seat for her turn at the lane.
“Me and Connie met at work,” Janet said, a soft smile on her face as she spoke of her partner. “We used to complain about our supervisor at the paper mill together so much that we ended up falling in love.”
Franny laughed, reflexively tightening her ponytail. “Yeah… I don’t think Jade and I are anywhere close to falling in love. Like I said, she hates me.”
“Hate and love aren’t always that far off,” Charlie said, almost wistfully. “People confuse the two all the time.”
Janet nodded. “Exactly! Maybe it’s just passion.”
Franny wasn’t a big enough fool to deny that there was passion between her and Jade. It was obvious. The air between them practically sparked every time they were together. But that didn’t mean much of anything…
Nor did it mean anything that Franny’s heart pounded faster in her chest every time she so much as looked at the other woman. All of that was just… well, she didn’t know, to be honest. Sometimes it felt like they were playing some big, elaborate game of cat and mouse. Sometimes, she stood toe-to-toe with Dunn, looked in her eyes, and thought she saw the exact opposite of hatred.
In another life, maybe Franny and Jade would have met for the first time at a lesbian bar in Houston. They would have danced, shared a couple of drinks, gone home together, and put that spark to good use. Maybe it would have even led to something more.
She also knew that she didn’t hate Dunn. Not in the slightest. Franny wanted—needed, even—the coaching position. As it stood, she was floundering. Her breakup with her ex, Caroline, had been traumatic in and of itself. She had spent a couple of weeks of PTO—and unpaid leave—holed up in her apartment listening to Tegan and Sara, trying to cope. But when the initial shock and awe of the abandonment had worn off, Franny had found herself surprised when the overwhelming emotion left had been a profound sense of loss. Not for the girl or the relationship they’d had but for herself. For the parts of her that she’d packed up and tucked away in a suitcase under her bed.
Her first six months in Greenbelt had been spent firmly under the wing of an incredibly flighty bird. The only people she’d known were Caroline’s people, the only passions she’d cared about were Caroline’s passions. It had been a total mindfuck to find herself alone in a strange place and feeling like she hardly knew who she was anymore.
Franny’s first instinct had been to run back to the safety of her old life in Texas. But even that hadn’t felt completely right. She had a good job and a cute apartment and just enough willpower to try to stay and make it work. Just under two years later, Franny had made a good life for herself—even if it was lacking. It was only recently that she’d started to feel that itch for more than just good again. She wanted to feel hopeful and ambitious, and she wanted all the upsets that came with those things too.
It had been right there in front of her the entire time. The thing she’d loved but had relegated to hobby status because no one else seemed to understand its importance the way she did.
She needed football again. The thrill of it. The competitiveness. The heart. Getting out on that field every day and helping coach those kids—through their wins or their losses—was something she had lived without for far too long.
And if getting all that back meant that she had to use whatever flamed between her and Dunn to completely burn the other woman, so be it. It wasn’t as if the fight wouldn’t be a fair one. Jade was doing the exact same thing to her.
“If good old-fashioned dislike is passion, then I suppose it is,” Franny said with her tongue in her cheek.
She floundered for a moment, her mouth still open but releasing no sounds. Her argument was so flimsy that she barely had any way to argue it, even in her own head. The silence drew out until, finally, her name popped up on the display screen above their heads, signaling that it was her turn to knock down some pins.
The other girls were quiet, obviously letting her have it. But she could see by the looks on their faces that they didn’t believe her.
Which was fair enough, since she was lying her ass off.
Later that night, she lay in her bed in the dark, wishing for the first time that she’d put a television in her bedroom to distract her from her thoughts.
Her mind kept replaying the conversation from the bowling alley and the conclusions she’d come to. Her mind wasn’t changed in the end, but she was finding it impossible now not to focus on the other feelings she’d identified.
The spark, the heat, the passion. Whatever her rational mind was made up of completely dissolved after 2:00 A.M. Anything that was left burned and ached to the point that she didn’t even see the point in pushing it down anymore. What for? There was no one here but her. The images that flashed behind her eyes were only for her to see.
Jade Dunn smiling at her. The smooth skin of her chest and shoulders extra golden because of the sunlight. Jade had a little scar above the knuckle of her index finger on her left hand. It was darker than the rest of her skin, shinier from the way it had healed. Franny imagined running her own finger over the mark, bringing it up to her mouth, and laying a kiss on it.
She sucked in a sharp breath, her thighs squeezing together tightly when the next frame in her mind became an image of her sucking on Jade’s finger. Just one, then two. Her tongue swirling around the hot flesh, her lips keeping them inside.
Suddenly, she could practically feel those fingers sliding into her panties. It was so real that Franny had to put a hand on her mound to make sure it was just her imagination running rampant. She was hot there, so soaked that she could feel it through her underwear just by pressing against herself a little bit.
The motion set her body alight. Her nipples hardened to stiff points underneath her little white T-shirt; even just the fabric brushing against them felt good enough to make her hiss.
Franny settled back into her pillows, closing her eyes and shutting out everything but the fantasy.
Jade’s fingers—hers—were soft as they circled her clit, and Franny’s thighs clenched imagining Jade’s soft, plump lips pressing kisses into her neck as she worked her over. She squirmed in her bed, trying to re-create for herself what it might feel like to have Jade on top of her, inside her.
It was a heady feeling, so much so that Franny could practically smell whatever perfume the other woman wore. As if she could feel her tongue brush against her lips. The weight of her, the sweetness.
It didn’t take much to send her over the edge. She’d been so worked up recently, so much tension wrapped around her body that a few fast circles around her clit and Jade’s name on her tongue were enough to make her come so hard she had to turn her head and scream into a pillow.
She kept her fingers underneath her panties, even after she was done. Feeling herself with soothing strokes and pets as she waited for shame to fill her. It was entirely unethical to think about your coworker like that, to masturbate to the thought of her. To call out her name in the darkness of your bedroom. Franny didn’t know how in the hell she was supposed to look Dunn in the face after what she’d done.
Still, when she turned over on her side, finally ready to fall asleep, her brain was far too hazy to fight off the image of the other woman curling around behind her, arm over her waist, breath against the back of her neck.
Franny figured she couldn’t be responsible for what her head dreamed up in such a vulnerable state. She’d had far worse nightmares than this, after all.