Chapter Fourteen
Sharon
I Feel For You by Chaka Khan
Florence Fucking Nightingale was just flirting with me, I think as we inch closer to the door. I’m deliberately staring straight ahead, desperate to avoid eye contact with Kate.
That was flirting, wasn’t it? Or was she trying to scare me?
Did she notice how I couldn’t stop my eyes from feasting on her in that purple jumpsuit that clings to her slim frame?
Was she trying to frighten me off fancying her because she knows just how vulnerable I am when it comes to women?
Just how inexperienced. Untouched. Virginal.
Or am I being utterly ridiculous and was she just trying to apologise for calling me fat?
She didn’t sound apologetic. She didn’t even seem to regret calling me fat.
In fact, she didn’t even say it in a bad way.
She said it like it was a fact – which it is, I guess – and then what she said afterwards…
She talked about my body like it was a good thing. Like it wasn’t something to be ashamed of. Like it was desirable.
Which is flirting, isn’t it?
When we’re just a few people away from the door, Kate’s hand lands on my arm, halting my steps. I jump a little at the surprise of the touch, but I don’t think she notices as she leans in to say something.
“My money is on AJ being a bisexual femme,” she says.
I blink at her. How would she know somebody’s…
“I can tell fellow bisexuals a mile off,” she explains before I can even finish thinking the question.
I realise then what she’s doing, what she wants to lead me to do. We’re placing bets. And we’re ignoring the way she possibly did or didn’t just flirt with me.
“Fine.” I can do that too. In fact, that’s my preferred course of action. “I bet they’re a butch dyke.”
I say it because she wants AJ to be like her, so I guess I’m supposed to want the artist to be like me.
“What’s our wager?” Kate asks and I look at her properly then. She’s an arched eyebrow, a thoughtful pout and skin-tight purple. My throat moves as I swallow.
If I was a different woman – maybe the woman the world thinks I am, the one I like to pretend I am at work in my suits and board meetings – I would tell Kate that if I win, I want a kiss from her. Or maybe more. A night in her bed. In my bed. Anywhere. One of her orgasms. Ten of her orgasms.
But I am not that woman. No matter how I act at work or with strangers or, yes, how I have acted with Kate since the moment I met her, I am not that woman.
“I don’t know,” I mumble.
Kate chews on her lip and fixes her attention ahead again. We shuffle closer to the door as a few more people are granted admission.
“Dinner,” she says. “If you win, you have to buy me dinner. And if I win, I will buy you dinner.”
I almost want to slap my hand against my forehead. Of course dinner would have been a more logical answer. But I think it’s time I admit, at least to myself, that all my logic seems to fail me when I’m around Kate Chiu. Especially when she’s wearing a skin-tight purple jumpsuit.
“And if neither of us are right,” Kate continues, “then we split the bill.”
My mouth becomes unnaturally dry. Either way, it looks like I’m having dinner with Kate, and this realisation is as horrifying as it is thrilling.
I’m grateful when our tickets are checked – that paper stub she gave me that was warm from her being tucked against her breast – and we’re ushered into the comic book shop. I’ve been here before, a few times, but it looks completely different for this event.
It’s not a huge space but it’s plenty big enough for tonight’s gathering, which looks like it has approximately fifty or sixty attendees.
All the banks of comic book storage and shelves I normally peruse have been moved away and rows of wooden chairs fill the space, all positioned facing a small makeshift stage.
There’s a life-size cardboard cut-out of Lady Phantom behind a small desk with two currently vacant chairs and God, she’s hot.
She’s so hot and I want that cardboard cut-out in my house.
I would just stare at it all day and think of Kate in purple Lycra.
Kate, who is touching my arm, pulling me closer to the stage. She drags me to the very front row and sits down immediately in front of the stage.
“You want to sit here?” I remain standing.
“Yeah! Aren’t we lucky they’re still available?”
“But we’re basically going to be sitting on their toes.”
“I know! Isn’t it great!” She smiles widely and I realise she genuinely doesn’t see what I see. She thinks it’s a good thing to be front and centre, to demand attention and to take up space.
I gawp at her for a few more seconds and try to formulate an appropriate response whereby I can explain how mortifying it is to be dressed this way, to be a big woman and to be sitting at the very front of an event like this.
But it’s impossible to come up with something that I know she won’t refute.
Because she’s the one in the right here.
I’m the one making an issue out of something that, actually, doesn’t need to be an issue at all.
Sitting down next to her, I arrange my suit so it covers my rolls and I clasp my hands together over my stomach. Kate’s looking around behind us, and further into the store.
“Oh, yes, great, there is a bar,” she says and then she’s moving again, getting up. “Do you want a drink?”
“What?” My body elongates with panic at the thought of her leaving me here, alone. “No, I…”
“Are you sure? I’m getting one.”
“Right. Well, yeah. Okay. Er, I’ll have a beer.”
“Okay. Save my seat!” she says and then she shimmies away, slipping past the people who start to take their seats.
Fixing my gaze straight ahead – at the empty stage – I hope that nobody notices me.
That they don’t think I’m some sad and lonely superfan who has come here alone.
I had surprised myself by how quickly I’d shaken off my horror at Kate effectively making me dress up as the Director, but a lot of that had to do with the joy I saw on her face as she showed me her own outfit and produced the mask she’d made.
She looked so proud. So excited. It was enough to make me swallow whatever discomfort I was feeling.
But now I’m alone, that discomfort comes rushing back in like a rogue wave full of force and fear. And somewhere underneath all the growing panic is a new realisation: that Kate makes all of that disappear. Kate helps me forget what other people think.
When Kate’s been gone several minutes, I risk a quick look behind me.
Almost all the seats are now occupied and our own front row is also mostly full.
I’ve had to explain to a few people that Kate’s seat is taken, and so I’m starting to wonder where she is.
Ice-cold fear feels like a needle going into the back of my neck as I consider that perhaps she’s left me here.
That this was all part of some cruel joke.
To lure me here. To dress me up. To seat me right in front of AJ Ripley, only to disappear and leave me hanging.
As the lights dim, and some action-movie-style music starts to play, I am convinced that that’s exactly what has happened.
Lights illuminate the stage and two figures make their way to the desk.
One is a man I vaguely recognise from the comic book shop.
He tried to sell me some 1960s comics about other female superheroes the last time I was here and he'd sold out of the latest issue of Lady Phantom, but I wasn’t interested.
They were all boobs and big hair and unnaturally long legs.
They were about women who were sidekicks to men, or adjacent to another male superhero, not heroes themselves with their own powers, their own identities, their own stories.
Not like Lady Phantom.
Accompanying the man from the shop is a smaller, heavier-set figure wearing a suit not dissimilar to mine and it’s almost certainly a man’s fit as the shoulders are too broad for the person’s frame and the sleeves hide all of their hands but their very fingertips.
As they sit on one of the chairs, the one behind the AJ Ripley name card, I look at their face.
They have a closely-shaved head, big brown eyes that look slightly startled as they take in the crowd, and a very straight and long nose.
Their mouth is small and pursed a little, like they’re assessing their next move with great consideration, and when they settle in their chair, their suit jacket seems to swamp them even more, hiding their physique completely.
I am clueless if they’re a man or a woman and find my brain is more inclined to think they’re something… else.
“Looks like you won.” Kate appears from nowhere, plonks down in her chair and hands me a drink.
I open my mouth to respond, but the crowd’s murmuring has all but stopped and I can practically feel everybody’s anticipation as they fix their gazes hungrily on the stage. They are both holding microphones now and the man is holding his up to speak.
“Welcome everybody,” he says with all the introverted energy of… a comic book shop owner. He clears his throat and tries again. “My name’s Martin Sullivan and it’s a pleasure to have everyone here and especially to host our guest of honour, AJ Ripley.”
An enthusiastic round of applause fills the room and I’m only a little taken aback when Kate lets out a loud whoop.
“I’m going to ask AJ a few questions to begin with.
” Martin is reading from a sheet of paper on the desk, his eyes downcast, which seems to make him a lot more comfortable.
“And then we’ll hear AJ read an extract from the next edition of Lady Phantom for us all.
Finally, we will open the floor to questions from all of you. ”