Chapter 5
It happened on a Saturday night, and it happened entirely by accident.
Ellie was half-expecting someone to call it, in all honesty looking forward to her bed after a long week at work, when Hannah said, “We should go to Cheer Up Charlie’s.”
Becca looked at Ellie and raised an eyebrow.
They'd been to Cheer Up's once or twice before, a bar with a big outdoor area, live music, a queer-friendly vibe that tipped into something more outright on certain nights.
Ellie liked it, Becca liked it, it wasn't their usual spot but it wasn't unfamiliar either.
"I'm down," Becca said, and looked at Ellie.
"Yeah, why not," Ellie replied. She could sleep Sunday after all.
Twenty minutes later they were there, and the energy was different, much looser and funner, compared to the bar they'd left.
Busier, louder, younger. A DJ had replaced the live act and the outdoor area was packed, string lights overhead and the warm night air carrying the smell of the food trucks nearby and someone's weed.
Inside was darker, even more crowded, the music heavy enough to feel like it was resonating deep down in your soul.
Their group found a spot near the bar and settled in with fresh drinks.
Ellie was talking to Leah and Hannah about some disaster Leah had had on a dating app, a woman who'd seemed perfect online and turned out to think that their date was only really about trying to sell her a crypto scam in person, when she felt Becca's hand on her arm.
"I'm going to go explore," Becca said close to Ellie's ear, loud enough to be heard over the music. She squeezed Ellie's arm and disappeared into the crowd.
Ellie watched her go, catching the unspoken subtext straight away.
Becca was wearing a white top that sat just off her shoulders with dark blue jeans and the kind of low sandals she wore when she wanted to be comfortable but still look good.
Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders.
She looked beautiful, even more than usual, and Ellie knew she’d get noticed as she walked through this crowd in particular.
She went back to her conversation with Leah but kept an eye out for Becca, spotting her a few minutes later at the far end of the bar ordering a drink, then losing her in the crowd, then catching a glimpse of her near the edge of the outdoor area talking to someone.
Inevitably, a woman.
Ellie felt the familiar surge of adrenaline, the involuntary response that she’d stopped trying to fight and learned to embrace weeks ago. She moved a little so that she could see better, half-listening to Leah while the rest of her attention funnelled towards Becca.
The woman was about Becca's height, maybe a little shorter but barely anything in it, with honey-blonde hair and tanned skin that seemed to glow even in the dim light. She was wearing a dress that showed off a figure she clearly wasn't shy about, a figure that you couldn’t help but take a second then a third look at. Pretty didn’t quite capture it…
she was gorgeous, in an easy, confident, Texas-sunshine way that was distinct from the carefully curated urban cool of most Austin bar-goers.
If Ellie had to bet on it, she’d say that the woman had grown up in Texas rather than migrated as an adult, she just had that look.
She was smiling at Becca and Becca was smiling back, and even from across the room Ellie could see the thing that made this different from the other times.
Chemistry. Genuine, electric chemistry.
This wasn’t the mostly one-sided flirtation that Becca usually attracted, not the casual attention of a stranger who found her cute and wanted to try their luck.
This was mutual, visible, electric. This woman was into Becca and Becca was into her, and Ellie could tell because she knew Becca so, so well.
Becca's posture had changed. She was leaning in, not out. Her weight was on her front foot, tipped slightly toward the woman, and her hands were animated in a way that they only got when she was genuinely engaged. She was laughing her real laugh and the woman was laughing with her, and they had that look, that unmistakable look, of two people who were surprised by just how much they were enjoying each other’s company.
Then Becca pushed her hair back behind her ear.
Ellie felt it hit her and do funny, gloriously funny, things to her inside.
She’d seen Becca do the tell a handful of times over the past weeks, always directed at women she was casually flirting with, always conscious and deliberate, always something about it that made it a performance for Ellie's benefit even if the other woman didn't know it.
This time it wasn't deliberate. Ellie was sure of it, the way she'd been sure that first night at the bar near Rainey Street when this whole thing started.
Becca didn't know she'd done it… Ellie didn’t know how she knew, but she knew with the same certainty that she knew the sun would rise in the morning. Becca’s body was reacting to this woman on its own, bypassing whatever conscious control Becca usually exercised, and the involuntary nature of it, the authenticity, made Ellie stir in her seat, that feeling of something casual suddenly getting real.
She watched for another few minutes. They were deep in conversation now, the woman's hand touching Becca's hip at one point as she leaned in close to make a point, Becca not pulling away, the gap between them shrinking with each exchange.
At one point the woman said something and Becca threw her head back laughing, and the woman watched her laugh with an expression that Ellie recognised because she'd worn it herself a thousand times.
The expression of someone who was thinking: God, you're gorgeous.
Ellie's heart was hammering. The unnamed thing that had been building for weeks, the watching, the fantasies, Becca's flirting, the slow escalation that neither of them had tried to name or control, it was all converging on this moment, funnelling toward a point, and Ellie could feel it happening like she was in a dream, unable to stop it but also unsure whether she wanted to anyway.
Because the thing was this woman wasn’t just hot, although she certainly was.
No, this was more. She was exactly the woman from Ellie’s fantasies, from both their fantasies: the woman who didn't exist until five minutes ago but who now, suddenly, impossibly, was standing right there talking to Becca in a queer bar in East Austin on a Saturday night.
Feminine, confident, beautiful in a way that was relaxed and genuine rather than artificial, the kind of woman who could plausibly be Becca's girlfriend in a parallel universe, the kind of woman who made Ellie think what if she prefers her?
and feel that thought spark something deep and red hot inside her.
And because of where they were, in this bar, on this night, this woman was interested.
She wasn’t a straight woman enjoying the attention without understanding the subtext, not someone who'd laugh it off and go back to her friends.
She was here, at Cheer Up Charlie's on a Saturday night, flirting with Becca with clear intent, and she was viable in a way that no one in the past few weeks had been.
The thought hit Ellie before she could stop it:
Tonight.
Not a question. Not a maybe. A certainty, coming from somewhere below her conscious mind, bypassing her usual analysis and logic, landing in her head with a weight that left her reeling. She gripped her drink tighter and tried to breathe normally but failed.
She needed to talk to Becca. Now.
"Leah, sorry… I need to go find Becca for a second."
Leah waved her off without breaking stride in her story about the crypto evangelist, and Ellie moved through the crowd towards where she'd last seen them. She was walking fast, weaving between people, her heart going so hard she wondered if it was visible through her clothes.
When she got close enough she caught Becca's eye and gave her a look… not the casual glance of a wife checking in, but something with more intent, more urgency. Come here.
Becca understood immediately. She said something to the woman, an apology, a just-a-minute, and came over to where Ellie was standing near a pillar, slightly away from the worst of the crowd.
"You ok?" Becca asked, searching Ellie's face.
Up close she was flushed, her eyes bright, her lips slightly parted.
She looked the way she looked after they'd been making out for ten minutes, that shade of arousal that Ellie knew as well as she knew her own reflection. Becca was buzzing, and so was Ellie.
"I'm fine," said Ellie. "Who is she?"
"Her name's Kelly. She's from out in the hill country, she's in Austin this weekend for a friend's birthday. She's..." Becca paused and Ellie watched her choose her words carefully. "She's really fun, El. We just got talking and it kind of... clicked."
"I could see that. The chemistry looks insane.”
“It is…” Becca started to say, then caught herself. Her expression changed, reading something a few seconds too late in Ellie's tone. "I wasn't going to let it go anywhere. I was just talking to her, it was just…”
"I know." Ellie took a deep breath. She could feel the words building inside her head, could feel the recklessness of what she was about to say, and she didn't care.
The weeks of watching, the fantasies in bed, Becca's voice narrating what Sara would do to her, what a stranger would do to her, all of it had been leading here, to this exact moment, to Ellie standing in a loud bar with her wife's perfume mixed with the smell of mezcal and night air, her hands shaking the same way they'd shaken that first night at the bar near Rainey Street.
"Tell her about me," Ellie said. "About us. Tell her that you're married and that I'm here and that I know you're talking to her."
Becca stared at her. "El…”
"And see if she's still interested."