Chapter 5 #2
“It’s for the club,” Akilah replies as she zooms in on her own designs. They don’t look any worse, but they don’t look any better.
“You picked someone?” Akilah can feel her looking at her again, but she’s too overstimulated to look back. The overhead lights, Tanner’s perfume, the way she taps her toe against the table leg. Akilah wants to look at her, though. She files that away for later.
Still, even with the way her mind races, she only lasts a few moments before she looks at her. Tanner is drawing, brows furrowed; lip tucked between her teeth.
She’s kind of adorable.
“Yeah,” Akilah replies.
“Should I be offended?” Should she? Not really, she was the one who left.
“I didn’t pick her; she’s the only person who would work with me.”
Tanner’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t believe her, or she’s thinking about it. Akilah hopes it’s the latter. Akilah looks at her, swallows and looks away.
“Show me your plans.”
Akilah zooms in on the image again. “I didn’t apologise so you’d help me.”
“I didn’t say I was going to help you,” Tanner replies, “But if you asked nicely, I might say yes. You already interrupted my lunch.”
Akilah leans back. “You had a free chair.”
“Uh-huh. You didn’t just miss me?” Akilah flounders, though she keeps most of it at bay, hands tucked before her thighs. She can see Tanner watching the blush stain her cheeks.
She looks away. “I don’t know you.”
“You can miss me anyway.”
“I did think about you.”
Tanner leans her chin on her palm. Akilah thinks she’s going to pout again and traces the movement with her eyes when she’s correct. “That doesn’t mean you missed me.”
Akilah pushes the bottom of her pen again. “Did you miss me?”
Tanner shrugs. Akilah can’t figure out if she’s not flirting obviously enough, or if she’s awful at it. She copied Tanner word for word, but she’s not blushing over a simple question.
Before she can spiral, a waitress comes over with two slices of cake. Akilah doesn’t pick up everything, but she’s sure she would have noticed Tanner leaving to place an order.
“I’m putting them on your tab,” Darcy says as she takes the empty plates.
“Thanks, Darc,” Tanner replies as she pulls the fork from her napkin, scrutinises the cakes in front of her.
Darcy stops and looks at Akilah. Akilah knows she’s blushing again. She’s not nervous; her body just doesn’t know she’s not in an active interrogation when someone stares at her.
Akilah can see Tanner watching her, probably thinking about what else she can do to make her blush again, since it seems to bring her great joy.
“How’s your date?” Darcy asks. She’s clearly asking Tanner, but she’s looking right at her. Akilah doesn’t like it. It’s rude to stare.
Tanner doesn’t answer as quickly as last time, but she does look at her. Holding her gaze until Akilah buckles under it like a cheap garden chair.
“Akilah doesn’t date.”
“Oh,” Darcy replies. “That sucks, they’re totally your type.”
Tanner rolls her eyes. “You’re my type, we’re still friends.”
Darcy laughs. “True! Okay, enjoy your not date.”
Akilah has been someone’s type before, but never more than that.
People like her for her general demeanour, she guesses, but the moment they know her better, they run for the hills.
Akilah gets it. She comes with a whole host of things people would have to get over to spend the evening with her.
She likes to kiss, but she doesn’t want to have sex most of the time.
She likes to be close by but doesn’t always want to be touched.
She craves intimacy, but in the form of knowing each other’s favourite films and making soup because you know the other had a long day, or fingertips brushing when they walk.
“I’m your type?” Akilah asks.
Tanner smiles as she takes a bite. She sips her drink, wipes her mouth with her napkin as if Akilah hadn’t asked a question that could cause immediate death.
“Is that shocking information?” Tanner asks.
Akilah looks at her, then away, tucking her hands between her thighs again. “What?”
“You seem shocked that you could be my type,” she replies, taking a forkful of chocolate cake. It hovers next to her mouth, and Akilah wants to be brave enough to ask if she’s doing it on purpose to draw her attention there. “I have called you beautiful in a multitude of ways.”
“I haven’t thought about it.” It’s not entirely true. She’s thought about Tanner. About the way her eyes are kind, even when she’s annoyed. The way she skipped over the puddles in the bar.
Tanner pushes the Victoria sponge towards Akilah.
“Save me some.”
“You have the chocolate one,” she replies as she takes the spare fork from Tanner’s fingers. There’s no spark when their fingers touch, but she’s mad about the contact.
“Friends share.”
Akilah looks at her. “Are we?”
Tanner smiles at her. Akilah waits for her to look away, but she doesn’t. “Seeing as I’m not your type. I suppose we’ll have to be. Show me the plans.”
“I said yes,” she whispers. Tries to figure out how to take the words back, but the way Tanner looks at her makes her feel braver than she should. “When you asked me if I would get on my knees for you. I said yes.”
“Oh.”
Akilah looks at her for a moment and passes the plans over.
God, even with the new angle, it looks awful.
Akilah watches Tanner instead. Perhaps the tilt of her eyebrows will tell her what to pick.
Akilah did look at Tanner’s portfolio in the end.
After spending an embarrassing amount of time on her profile page, she finally looked at the designs properly.
They weren’t all her style, but they were nice. Thought about. Inclusive.
Akilah would have picked her.
Tanner rubs her brow. “What was it about her that you liked?”
“The city will shut us down if we’re not up to grade in three months,” Akilah replies. “She was the only person available.”
Tanner frowns and skips to a new image. “Don’t they give you twelve months?”
“Yes.”
“So, the only person available when you realised you cared about it failing?”
Akilah swallows, embarrassed. She takes another bite of cake. “I always cared.”
“Okay,” Tanner replies. “Why did you open the club?”
“I was bored of finding queer events that have to fit around everyone else. There was a book club I went to a couple of times, and some sapphic club nights and stuff, but they were easily rescheduled because the football was on television or something ridiculous. I wanted somewhere people could be safe and looked after and know it was their time every time, not just for an hour a week. And well, hot if they wanted to be.”
Akilah looks up from the table to find Tanner looking at the tablet. Oh. Is she listening to her? Sometimes, her parents zone out when she gets passionate about something, when they only wanted to know how she was.
Tanner looks up at her. “That’s great. You’re great.”
She swallows. Avoids the sense of dread that rattles around her body, bouncing into the shame and embarrassment that seem to linger beneath her bones.
“Continue,” Tanner says as she looks down again. “Please. I like it when you talk.”
“When I was younger, I used to be a little more outgoing, I suppose.” Tanner smiles at the tablet.
“But it always seems to be sensible events. You know, like, oh, you’re different, so you should be grateful for the back of this village hall for half an hour.
I want people who are vilified for nothing to have somewhere to go.
It’s not always a strip club. You’ve seen it during the day, too.
I was going to make it just a club or a restaurant, but why shouldn’t we be allowed to strip if they want?
Why can’t they be hot just because they want to be? ”
Tanner’s smile just gets brighter. “Okay.” She looks at her then. “Let’s make it hot.”
Akilah attempts to smile back. No one has ever asked her what the club means to her before. Let alone listen to her for real. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she says, holding the fork in her mouth as she pulls her own tablet out. She moves around for a moment and places it in front of Akilah. “Which one do you like most?”
Akilah looks at the colour grids for ten seconds, though she picks the one she would have the moment it was in front of her. Watches for anything on Tanner’s face that suggests she’s picked correctly.
“What’s the second?” Tanner asks.
Akilah frowns. “You said one.” If she’d known she had to rank them, she’d need more time. Perhaps a pen and paper.
Tanner tilts her head. “Do you work better with direct questions?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she replies. Makes some notes in her sketchbook.
“So, ask her to bring images of mock-ups and design boards and specific things she needs your input on. She might complain because you’re in the early stages, but she should have more than one idea.
Especially for the amount you’re paying her. ”
Tanner keeps reminding her of things she should ask her designer, but Akilah can’t keep them in her head long enough.
She nods, pretends she has any idea what Tanner is still saying as the back of her neck gets hot.
She pulls her jacket off, pushes her hair behind her shoulders and leans her forearms against the table.
“What did you say?” Akilah asks the moment Tanner takes a breath. She can feel the air on her arms. There’s no cage around her; she can understand that now.
Tanner stares at her neck, eyes swooping down her arms. Akilah doesn’t care when people ask about her tattoos, though she never wants to entertain them and give them a meaning behind them.
There’s a frog on the back of her arm because she thinks they’re sick, not because she had a dream to be a frog handler.
She’d figure out something to tell Tanner if she asked.
Instead, Tanner looks at her. Unamused. “You’re utterly unreasonable.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“My point stands,” Tanner replies. Akilah frowns. Perhaps she’s annoyed that she’s given her more insight into the designs than she should because Akilah was rude, and she hasn’t remembered a single one.
“Here,” Tanner says, handing her a slip of paper with everything she said out loud. And her number. “If my handwriting makes no sense, ask.”
“Oh,” Akilah says. “Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Akilah runs her forefinger over her number. Wonders if there’s a timeline when she’d be able to get this without being a damsel in distress. “The number is for work?”
Tanner smiles, pointing mainly at the plate in front of her. “Of course. Strictly business.”
Akilah nods. “Are you going to flirt with me the whole time?”
Tanner laughs, takes the last bite of her cake.
“What if I do?” Tanner will have no notion of what her words do to her. They ache brilliantly in her chest, more the promise of pain than it is likely to be. If Tanner knew how much power she wielded right now, she might not be so bold with it.
Akilah hasn’t had an honest-to-God crush in years.
It always ends with heartbreak because she can’t give anyone what they want.
She’s spent the past ten years being okay with being alone, and she’s done it well.
Sometimes, she cooks dinner and her chest aches with the need for someone to be next to her, but she lets it pass and lights another candle, pretending that if she had someone, they would hate the smell.
This isn’t that. But it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.
“Do you want me to stop?” Tanner asks. Perhaps worried that her lack of response is anything other than her brain tripping over itself.
“Do you flirt with everyone?”
“No.”
Akilah nods. “Then no.”
“Friends,” Tanner says.
Akilah nods in agreement, pushing a third of the Victoria sponge towards her. “An agreement.”
Tanner’s eyes light up. Her small smile is dangerous. Lethal. “For me?” Akilah might dream about what her lips feel like.
“Yes. Since I heard friends share.”
Tanner’s smile spread so far across her face that the café must be blinded with it.
All of her is lethal. Truly.