"I opened my wallet, put 20 dollars on the bar, then proceeded to smash my palm into the Bitch's face."
- Lexa
I opened my wallet, put 20 dollars on the bar, then proceeded to smash my palm into the Bitch's face.
I didn't know her name, but I did know she had insulted me, Clarke, and roped our mothers into it just for fun, and that was why she was now staggering back to her posse clutching a freshly bleeding nose, in shock at the fact that someone had actually taken her up on her challenge, and more so that they knew Krav Maga.
She shrieked at the top of her lungs, and realized too late that that was a bad idea, much to my delight.
Clarke was hurt, and on the verge of crying when the Bitch had decided to bring up our less than stellar childhoods and even worse parents, but now she was staring at her in surprise and distress, unable to decide if she should cheer and told her she deserved it, or if she should emphatically wince and apologize for my behaviour.
I grabbed her arm and gently coaxed her off her seat and out of the bar. "C'mon, Clarke, let's go." I said.
Clarke grabbed her purse and followed me without protest. The bartender pocketed my money, wiped off some of the flecks of blood off the counter, and pulled out a thick sheaf of napkins. One of the bouncers stepped behind us, making sure we didn't turn back and cause yet more trouble.
You could insult me. I was used to people making fun of my shit life to feel better about their shit lives—I had the last laugh anyway, when I actually did something to make things better, unlike them.
You could make fun of Clarke, to a certain extent. She was a lot tougher than her cheerful, peppy, sugary personality let on, and I knew she positively hated it when I got in serious trouble for a fight that just wasn't worth it.
But you could never, ever insult either of our mothers to our faces and get away with it.
It felt good to do it—up until we stepped out the bar's doors and into the muggy summer night, and I was reminded on why exactly we were spending this night out in this one bar instead of hopping from place to place like we usually did.
"Have a nice evening, ladies." The bouncer said as they put both hands on the doors.
"You too…" I grumbled, before they pulled them shut and cut me and Clarke off from the cool air-conditioning inside.
Normally, we would have sat down on the curb or perched ourselves on the walls of buildings while we decided what to do now, but both were concrete surfaces and would be uncomfortably hot, to say the least. So instead, we stayed near the closed bar doors, silently praying for a long or frequent stream of people coming in or out to let us get a much-needed blast of the cold air inside.
"Sorry for ruining our bar night." I said as I wiped the sweat and stickiness already forming on my brow. Much to my chagrin, everywhere else on my body would have to wait until I could get home and take a shower.
Clarke smiled. "It's fine." She reached into her purse and pulled out—mercy of mercies—her wet wipes, in all their bacteria murdering, skin cooling and moisturizing, apple-cinnamon scented goodness. "Thanks for giving that bitch a nosebleed earlier." She said as she handed it over.
"It's nothing," I replied as I started wiping down the parts of myself I could like my arms and face. It wasn't quite the complete relief from wet, warm, uncomfortable stickiness I wanted, but it would have to do for the moment.
When I'd done all I could do against the oppressive heat and humidity of the night, I checked my wallet again and counted how much cash I had left—it was my turn to pay for our girl's night out tonight. I quickly learned some unfortunate things: one, I'd brought much less money than I usually would on the assumption that we would stay in the one bar; two, we really should have spaced out the cocktails we'd already had farther apart than we did; and three, though I didn't regret it, the 20 dollar nosebleed earlier took out a huge chunk of our budget.
We were in the area of the city that charged at the door and laughed heartily at the mere idea of serving dollar drinks; after far too many bad experiences during our college years, we weren't about to go to the places that only asked for ID at the door and wanted to make sure you were reasonably sober or just buzzed at the worst; and we weren't about to go pay to go to our usual bars and sit around all night hoping someone else was going to buy us drinks.
I didn't have the heart to ask Clarke if she had any spare cash on her, but ever emphatic, she told me without me needing to. "I've got our emergency taxi money and little extra cash just in case," she said, which I took to mean, "Yeah, our night's over."
I cursed quietly; it was hours still till midnight, we couldn't go home now, because however Pyrrhic of a victory it was, taking a cab back to either of our places meant that the Bitch had successfully ruined our night.'But we don't have much of a choice, do we?' I thought, since we were effectively broke, and putting our girls' night out on our cards was just too 'irresponsible yuppie' for the both of us.
I was about to break the bad news to Clarke, but she was still smiling and hopeful that I just kept my mouth shut. "I know there's a public park around here—want to go hang out there?" She offered.
"What are we, twelve?" I reflexively snarked back. Clarke's smile turned to a hurt frown. "Uh, sorry about that… knee-jerk reaction." I was glad she knew me well-enough to understood that I meant it.
Clarke smiled again, grabbed my hand, and led me off up the street, going away from all the trendy bars, upscale housing, and upper-middle class boutiques that were slowly taking over this part of the city.
Both our hands were sticky and sweaty from the weather, but somehow, I still thought it felt pretty damn good to be holding hers.
I supposed that the park was something of a relic of the past, relative to the speed of the development happening around it; there were trees, a playground, and even a nice little pond, but we doubted there were many families and young children hanging around her all the time, and if there were, they were probably being watched over by uniformed nannies and were dressed up in Armani and Chanel for kids.
At first we thought of sitting on the swings, but unfortunately, it hadn't avoided the well-meaning but excessive child safety craze; instead of the flat planks or curved seats bolted onto chains from our childhoods, it was that hard plastic diaper that was so awkward and unwieldy you couldn't ever get any decent amount of speed on it—and worse yet, you couldn't jump off and land several feet away, "the best part about them" as Raven would have said.
Instead, we decided on settling under the shade of a tree and the comfort of some grass. It was still stupidly hot and humid out here, and the trudge through a few blocks of concrete jungle had already made us plenty sweaty and disgusting, but with the actual trees and all the green around us, it went down to just bearable levels.
We didn't bother with the wet wipes this time; I think the both of us realized we had reached the point where nothing short of dunking ourselves into the pond would help.
Clarke laid herself down on the grass, I settled back on the tree trunk, her head beside my knee. It was a comfortable setup, reminded me of bygone (if not entirely fondly remembered) times, even if the both of us were wearing dresses that were tastefully cut in key locations and matching high heels each. We stayed like that for a while, just enjoying the silence, what little of the night sky we could see for the haze over the city, and the occasional cool breeze that brought a little bit of relief.
"You were really brave back there at the bar." Clarke said, breaking the silence.
"Brave? Me? Nah, I was just… you know, doing what every good daughter should, I guess. Besides, that bitch had no right insulting our mothers like that."
Clarke gave me a confused look; that her face was tilted to one side from where I was didn't dampen the effect.
"I guess you could say it's because I still love my mother." I offered lamely.
"You do?" Clarke asked, sounding more confused and surprised than anything else.
I shrugged. "I forgave her for all the shit she's done and don't hold a grudge against her for all the times she's screwed up or screwed me up; I'll defend her whenever someone thinks its a good idea to insult her to my face."
Clarke stared blankly at me.
"Look, I know our parents weren't exactly sterling examples of maternal love and affection, or good role models for anyone, much less highly impressionable children, but I guess, like it or not, they had a big hand in making us the somewhat decent people we are today." I blabbered on, suddenly feeling nervous and panicky. "And no matter how true or deserved those words were, no one should get insulted behind their back like that."
I shut my mouth before anything else could come spewing out of it. We spent a few moments in awkward silence, I assume from Clarke wondering when I'd suddenly turned into the poster girl for love and forgiveness. Then she got up from the grass, and sat herself back down beside me.
"You are really brave, you know that, Lexa?" She said softly.
"Clarke, I thought we already went through this—I'm not brave." I was going for "blasé" but ended up with "uneasy and confused."
Clarke went onto her knees and put her hands on my shoulders. My heart started racing faster and my cheeks burned red as she put our faces close together—just a few inches away, I guessed. "No, you are, Lexa." She said. "I don't know what'd happen to me if I never met you—if you were never there to be brave and bring me, Raven, and Octavia together; if you were never there to brave and lead the four of us through all the things we did, and just keep us together; if you were never there to be brave and tell me I'm more than just a pretty face, if you were never there to help me get away from my mom, and just—if you were never there to be brave when I couldn't."
She sniffed, tears glistened in her eyes. "I am so glad I met you, Lexa. Even more that you're my friend. And especially glad that one time, you told me boyfriends are overrated…"
'The redness in my cheeks is from the heat,' I thought. 'Clarke's leaning in closer to whisper something in my ear,' I thought. 'Her lips taste like apples and cinnamon, she's so soft and, and I want more of her,' I thought.
I could have blamed the heat for broiling our brains, making us prone to bad, spur of the moment decisions, but we both knew there was more than short-circuiting senses then and there.
I reached behind Clarke and threaded my fingers into her hair. Even if they were sticky and damp from sweat and the humidity, they were still soft and luxurious and it felt so good to run my hands through them. I made it down to her shoulders and pulled her in closer, parted my lips, prepared to prod at her mouth and beg her to let me in.
Clarke beat me to it, dipping her tongue into my mouth before mine even went past my lips.
She tasted like vodka, apples, and a hint of cinnamon; she told me I tasted like strawberries, rum, and sugar. All those flavours quickly started melding together into one wonderful, fruity, boozy mess as we took turns exploring each others mouths, taking the time to savour our tastes and get as familiar as we could with each other before we had to break away for air.
The both of us were panting, sweat pouring down our bright red faces. The temperature around us had gone up dramatically, and it was a no-brainer it was just us.
I tried to laugh from the shock, the speed, and what just happened—we were two buzzed adults furiously making out in the middle of the night in a public playground—but all that came out was a little gasp.
We looked each other in the eyes, Clarke's ocean blue staring into me, my emerald green staring back into her. Our lips quickly turned up into huge, irrepressible grins. She suddenly surged forward—I thought she was going back in for round two, but instead, I felt her warm, affectionate tongue slowly running up the side of my face and licking the sweat off my skin.
Clarke sheepishly pulled back, still grinning.
"Oh my god…" I mumbled. "Clarke, that was so gross yet so hot at the same time."
"You want to get a cab home now?" Clarke asked. "I think the two of us are going to need a long shower pretty soon." She purred.
I blushed even brighter red, then nodded so hard I thought I might get whiplash. I pulled out my phone, and started fumbling with the damn touchscreen with sweaty, slippery fingers, leaving more wet smears over the screen than actually calling the cab company.
Somehow, I managed it, and soon we were at the curb, getting ready to climb into a taxi ready to take us back to Clarke's place—it was closer. The driver didn't look too happy to have two sweat-soaked, disheveled, and grass-stained women getting into her nice backseats, but frankly, she should have been grateful we managed to control ourselves till we got in Clarke's bedroom.
Sure, our girl's night out had been ruined—but what we did instead was far better than hanging around in a bar, knocking back cocktails, and making fun of people.