The bar's a bit short for her. It'd have been short even if she wasn't wearing heels, but she is, and she feels her height as she leans forward, putting her palms down onto the dark wood of the table. Her purse—a mini Prada shoulder bag in pink nylon—swings with the movement. The place is a bit tight as well. It's more of some very odd and very long walk, with enough room to have a couple tables pushed up against the wall opposite of the bar but with the majority of the tables hidden off in the depths of the room far away from the front door. There's no one down there, and there's no one at the bar, and the only noise is the squeak of the overhead fans, which turn on their ungreased wheels in sad, perpetual pirouettes.

"What'll it be?" The bartender asks as he swings on over, smoother than Trish's bag.

The shelves behind him are rather formidable in a way that might make up for what the rest of the place lacks. It looks like there's very nearly a bottle from wall to floor, and these shelves stretch down the length of the room with not a single space empty. There must be thousands of dollars of alcohol behind this man, and he doesn't even so much as give it a glance. But if he won't then Trish certainly will, and she gives it an appreciative eye before turning back to the bartender.

"What's popular?"

The bartender—whose name is Joshua, if his name tag is to be believed—continues to clean the glass in his hand, which is some odd variant of a champagne coupe where the bowl curves not once but twice before tapering down into the stem. "Margarita's are always good. Piña coladas too, if that's what you're looking for."

Trish leans forward a bit more. Even with the light of the early evening it's still dark inside, and the lighting behind the bar puts the man's face in the shadows. Not what she would have chosen, if she was designing the space, but she only really came here for a drink, and the place was across the street from the internet café from which she had just left.

"I'm looking for something a bit more interesting."

He puts his glass down. "So then I guess that knocks off a Miami Vice."

Trish tilts her head, but doesn't feel any hair shift forward. She brings her fingers up to her hairline and remembers what she had forgotten for just a moment—she'd cut her hair last night, nearly shaved right next to her scalp. At best it could probably be described as a pixie. Her manager had been nearly apoleptic this morning.

"It's a mix of strawberry daiquiri and piña colada. Got the different colors swirled in the cup. You like sweet or…?"

"I don't mind sweet." Trish settles down at the barstool to her left, which is the swivel kind with a round seat and leather upholstery in black and made of wood that's just as dark as the table. Her bag is very bright when she slips it off and onto the bar.

"What about a Key Lime Martini? It's got Stoli vanilla vodka, fresh made key lime curd, and our house special sour mix."

"Could you add something with a little kick to that?"

"Sure can. I could muddle a few peppers or put in a bit of cayenne pepper. Whatever wets your whistle."

Trish wraps the strap of her bag around her left hand, winding it and unwinding it in turns, listening to the creak of the nylon over the muted sounds of the cars in the street outside. Work traffic. It's going to be terrible trying to get back to her hotel. "What peppers do you have?"

"Jalapeños, serranos, habaneros… You want something really hot or a bit mild?" The door opens behind them with a hot gust of wind that rolls in, bringing with it particles of either dust or sand. None of the heat is cut by the waters of the Biscayne Bay, even though the bar is out in South Beach. The asphalt captures the sun in a way the streets of Naples, with all their stone and stucco, do not. Trish sees Joshua look away from her and towards the noise, but from the sound of scraping chairs it seems like the group has settled at one of the tables rather than come up to the bar. Joshua speaks over Trish's head, which is far easier for him to do now that she's sat down. "I'll be with you in just a minute!"

She waits for his eyes to settle back onto her, which is not the easiest to do, considering the lighting. There's a prickle at the back of her neck, and she sweats a little under her dress, right down between her shoulder blades. For all that Americans were known for their indoor air conditioning for some reason this bar had seemed to forgo that in favor of overhead fans. Terrible.

"I'll take a couple of habaneros. Do I pay now or…?"

"Staying for just this one?"

"Maybe a couple."

"Alright then, I'll just close your tab when you're done." Trish pulls a credit card out of her purse and hands it over. "Okay, your drink'll be coming right up." Joshua swings away as smooth as he came, going around the bar and presumably to the group that had settled down.

Trish looks to her left, along the length of the bar. And then she looks to her right. Just as empty as when she came in a few minutes ago. Even with it being a Tuesday afternoon she'd expected more people milling about—it's the South Beach, after all. She'd been told that there were gay bars just a stone's throw away from each other. And to be alone, in a city like this? She'd wanted her first time in Miami to be memorable, at the very least. Or, well, she knows that it already will be, what with the test results she'd just gotten, but she'd wanted to tell—to tell the others about it in person. Not over the phone while eighty five hundred kilometers away in another country.

Trish looks down at her bag and it sits there in all its pink nylon glory. It catches what little light there is to catch and it looks practically fluorescent against the dark wood. The strap creaks as she twists it. A cocktail glass slides into her field of view just as Joshua does.

"Sorry for the wait." The drink in the glass is a vibrant and very limey green, probably from the titular curd. There are a few specks of muted orange floating around—presumably from the peppers—and the rim is lined with what looks like a mixture of ground up graham cracker and something fine and red. "Put some cayenne with the crust. You strike me as a bit of a spicy lady."

Trish moves her bag to the side and her drink closer with a smile. "You might be right about that."

Joshua smiles back. "I gotta get those folks a couple beers but I'll be right back. Got a few more drink suggestions if you want to give them a try."

"I'll be here." She gives him a toast as he floats off, somewhere into the depths of the bar to procure the aforementioned beers. She takes a sip. The cayenne is a heavy heat on the forefront of her tongue but the rest of the cocktail is fruity—both sour and sweet. Can't even taste the vodka, which is how they always get you. Trish has a few more sips before it becomes a bit cloying as the egg of the curd masks most of the heat from the pepper and powder alike, and she's left with maybe the faint tickle of spice in the back of her throat. She's going to need water or something to wash the taste away.

She doesn't really get the chance to ask. Instead there's a bottle next to her bag and someone settling down on the seat to her right, and the leather creaks with the weight of a body. The glass is that brown that characterizes most beer bottles and the label is one that Trish doesn't recognize. It's beachy, with its gradients of oranges and yellows, and it's got a sail boat featured prominently out front. If she's reading the English right—which is a bit hard to do, what with the title turned a bit away from her and partially covered by a hand—then it's some kind of amber ale.

"Hope you don't mind, but you looked kind of lonely."

"Bold of you to assume that I wanted company." Trish follows the fingers curled around the stem of the bottle up a wonderfully muscular arm to a bright face. Even in the dark Trish can see the dyed-green of the other woman's hair and the blue lining both of her upper and lower lids in thick paths that connect into a tapered wing at the outer corners. Her lipstick matches her eyeliner. It's cute in a sort of abrasive way—in your face and loud—even if it's not Trish's own personal style.

The other woman swallows audibly, but it's not even that hard to hear her because the group at the table have gone suspiciously quiet. They must be watching the two of them. "Oh, I, uh. I didn't mean to bother you. Your dress was… striking."

Trish turns her body towards the other woman with half a smile. "You mean my backless, strapless dress? The one that you couldn't have possibly seen from the front until right now?"

Another audible swallow. This time the woman licks her lips. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"What else did you like about my… dress?" Trish leans back as much as she can in her barstool, keeping her left arm on the table and perching her right elbow on the back of her seat. She watches the other woman watching her, and she crosses her legs with a deliberate sort of care that would be hard to miss. They both see when the hem slips up the swell of her thigh. It's a floral skater dress in cream, dotted with orange daffodils and blue leaves, with the sweetest sweetheart neckline this side of the Atlantic.

The woman doesn't look back up when she answers. "It's very bright. Hard to miss."

"Anything would be bright compared to you, carina." That gets her attention, and her face jerks up to meet Trish's. "You're wearing, what, black tank, black pants, black boots? What are you dressed for? A funeral?"

She blinks once. Then she blinks again. Completely ignoring Trish's question she says, "my nonna's Italian."

"Parli italiano?"

"Uh. No. Or, you know. A little. Stuff like…" The woman pauses with a lightly aggravated huff before hunching her shoulders into her neck and shoving a hand out into the space between the two of them, thumb pressed to her pointer and middle finger, waving it back and forth. "Pretend that I'm wearing a scarf around my head."

Trish tries not to laugh. "Alright. You're wearing a scarf. What else?"

"Bambina, vieni qui," the woman says in a voice that creaks and croaks on each vowel, "stellina! Farfalla! Mangia, mangia!"

Trish snorts. When she looks back up from shaking her head she finds the woman still watching, with her shoulders curled and her neck stuck out, and her head tilted and her hand still out between them. Trish snorts again, and this time it goes straight up her nose in a way that'd have her cringing if she wasn't laughing. Eventually she gets her breath back and the woman resettles in her seat. "That's supposed to be your nonna?"

"Supposed to be?" she squawks indignantly, "that's a perfect recreation of Nonna Suzi!"

"We've done things a bit out of order, haven't we?"

"Huhn?" The woman articulates her question with her body in a way that she doesn't with her voice—her shoulders shrug in a wave and she uses a hand to leverage her weight on the table and moves a little closer. It's only then that Trish notices the other woman is taller than herself. And Trish keeps noticing it as the muscles in this woman's arms shift with her movements, and Trish notices it as she sees that the boots have flat heels.

"You've already introduced me to your nonna," Trish says while leaning forward herself, "but, stellina, you never introduced yourself." The woman still hasn't found her words, and she makes a noise that—Trish leans in even closer. "Unless you want me to call you something else? Is that what you want, stellina?"

"It's, uh, Jo—Jolyne," Jolyne says at the same time she seemingly realizes just how close they are, and she pulls away and grabs her beer, taking a swig to presumably keep her mouth occupied with something other than stuttering.

"Jolyne." Trish repeats while moving back into her seat as well. Jolyne nods and takes another drink. "I'm Trish. Why don't we get to know each other a little better?"

Jolyne's mouth comes off the bottle with a pop, and her blue lipstick is still just as shiny as before. There are no stains on the glass. "Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that."

The bartender—Joshua, his name is Joshua—swings back into Trish's field of vision with divine, preternatural timing. "Joshua," Trish beckons with a wave of her right hand, "I think I'll have another drink now. One for me and Miss Jolyne here."

"What'll it be? Another beer for her and for you…?"

Trish look at Jolyne. "I was getting Joshua here," she emphasizes with another small wave of her hand, "to make me some fun drinks. How about we spice things up with something other than beers?"

Jolyne clinks the bottom of her bottle to the stem of Trish's glass. "I'll agree on one condition: none of these frou frou cocktails with the syrup ice." Trish doesn't know the phrase frou frou but can guess well enough from context.

"How do you feel about vodka?"

"Fu—uh, friggin' good. Done a lot of stupid shi—stuff with vodka, but maybe you can keep me in line?" Jolyne says with a tilt of her head and lips. She still hasn't moved her drink from Trish's.

Trish, who has never not felt silly while winking, winks. "I'll be able to keep you in line, stellina, don't you worry."

The sound of a throat being cleared interrupts whatever else they might have said. Trish turns her attention back to Joshua. "A vodka-forward drink then?"

"That would be excellent," Trish says while pushing her nearly empty glass towards Joshua. His apron is not quite as dark as the wood but he has the topmost part of it folded over and hanging down his waist, rather than off of his neck, which shows the vibrant red inner lining. Trish would hate to be wearing his button up in this heat, but from within his breast pocket Joshua produces a little notebook that he thumbs through with ease.

"If you're still looking for Florida-themed drinks I could whip up a Miami mule. Vodka and mint, just like the usual, but we've got key lime juice and this ginger beer that's been fermented with cardamom and coriander. How's that sound?"

Jolyne shrugs her assent when Trish glances over. "Sounds wonderful. Two of those, if you wouldn't mind."

"I'll get those to you in a jiffy." Joshua swings away, taking their glasses with him.

"Crazy how he does that, huh?" Jolyne jerks a thumb in the direction Joshua has just left. "He showed up like a ghost at our table and we didn't even notice when he brought out drinks."

"Convenient though, isn't it? To be able to come and go without people making a fuss about it?"

"I think people are always going to notice when you walk into a room, dollface."

Trish frowns. "Dollface?"

"Okay, so maybe not that one. Cupcake? Baby cake? Sugar plum?"

Trish shakes her head at each option, hiding her mouth in her hands and slumping further and further onto the table with her laughter. "No," she eventually manages to gasp out, "none of those."

"What about a classic?"

"Which is?"

"Babe." Jolyne says with genuine sincerity. Or, her face looks serious, at the very least.

"No."

"Baby?"

"No. Why don't you leave the cute pet names to me, stellina?"

"God," Jolyne says while stretching out the vowel, "if you keep calling me that I won't be able to look at my nonna without thinking about this."

Trish smiles, ducking her head. Then she turns her body back to Jolyne, carefully uncrossing and then recrossing her legs, causing her dress, which she had never smoothed down, to hike up even higher. It was already short to begin with. "Why don't I give you something to really remember me by when you're talking to your nonna?"

Jolyne's swallow this time is quick. Trish can see her jump back quicker than the previous few times, but her words still wobble a bit as she speaks. "Yeah?" Jolyne asks in a voice that's more of a whisper than anything else, "what're you gonna give me?"

Jolyne looks like she's about to lean forward. There's a glint in her eye that she's got directed at Trish, and Trish shuffles to the edge of her seat before Jolyne can even move. She pitches her voice low, lower than how Jolyne had just been speaking. "I've got a few toys in my luggage back at the hotel. Maybe we can see which one you'd like me to give you."

"That sounds—"

"—Hey barkeep! Another round over here!"

Trish and Jolyne jerk back, turning towards the voice. There's a group of people all dressed similarly to Jolyne, all with the same bottles of that amber ale. A few of them don't even pretend not to be watching when Trish's eyes pass over them, and she dismisses them before they can even take it as an invitation to talk.

"Those your friends?"

"Not really," Jolyne says with the world's most put upon sigh, spinning her chair back and forth while she turns her head between the group and Trish. "Just a couple of losers that I need to impress in order to rise up."

"Rise up?"

"You know, like, in the ranks?"

Trish shakes her head. "No, I don't know. What does that mean?"

"Maybe it's because you're Italian so you might not know this, but those guys," Jolyne says while keeping her voice low, "are part of a gang. I've been rising up pretty quick, but they're being dickheads about it right now." Trish frowns but does not speak. Jolyne stares at her for a few moments before she frowns herself. "Normally people think this is cool when I tell them."

"A gang is dangerous business, Jolyne. I wouldn't want you to get hurt."

Jolyne stretches her arms high above her head with a crack of her neck and a groan as the pressure releases. Trish tries to focus on Jolyne's shoulders, and at the way her collar bone pokes out of her tank top, but keeps circling back to the topic of gangs. Were they like the mafia? She's not sure. And she's not sure if she wants to know. For all that she—for all that she loves the others, their business is not one in which she involves herself.

"Yeah, well, I know what I'm doing," Jolyne says while popping her knuckles, looking at Trish expectantly.

"Alright. Will it be a problem if you end up leaving with me?" Trish resolutely does not turn her attention back to the table, no matter how annoying the scrape of chairs is, and their voices. It seems that whatever interest they had in watching the two of them has moved on to other matters, but now their presence asserts itself in a way that makes Trish want to go out the door. She'll wait for her drink though. She'll wait for that much.

"Nah," Jolyne says with a shake of her head that turns into her stretching her neck left and right. "These seats are killing me though, so I don't know how long you wanna—"

Jolyne's words trail off, and her eyes have caught somewhere around Trish's belly. Trish looks down. She can't see any stains. She looks up. "What's wrong?"

"Your, uh, your underwear's pink."

"My—" Trish looks back down, but this time lower. From when she had shuffled a bit off her seat she'd caused her dress to ruck up under her as well, and from her angle she can see that her thighs are very bare. She wiggles just ever so slightly more off of her seat. "Do you like them?"

"They're really something else." Jolyne still hasn't looked back up.

"Alright," Trish says while slipping all the way off her chair and standing up, "enough of that. We've got drinks to drink." Trish makes a production of smoothing her dress down but is unable to do the usual song and dance of leaning over to adjust her shoes. She'd only worn a simple pair of ballet flats in nude after all, and there wasn't much in the way of having something to look at. She'd have worn heels out had she not been in them for a good majority of the day, but the dress has been successful enough on its own so far. With the low light it's hard to tell if Jolyne's been blushing or not, but Trish hopes that she has been. She'll just have to confirm the blushing or not if they do decide to go somewhere else.

"How does he keep doing that? Did you see when he brought the drinks?" Jolyne asks, completely interrupting wherever else Trish's mind was about to go. What Trish finds instead of her lost thoughts is a copper mug being pushed into her hands, and she sees Jolyne give her cup an experimental sniff. "This going to be fruity?"

"Only if you think lime juice is particularly fruity."

"Let's have a toast. Do you want to say cin cin or…?" Jolyne puts her cup out expectantly.

"We could do that," Trish says while holding her cup to Jolyne as well, "or we could do something a bit different."

"Different how?"

"Did your nonna ever teach you any regional ways to have a toast?"

Jolyne rubs the back of her neck with her free hand and offers a shrug for an answer. "I mean, not that I remember, but I haven't seen her in a while."

"How would you like to toast like a napulitana?"

"You know my nonna's from Venice. She'd probably hate it if I came over and started talking like a southerner."

Trish shifts her weight between her legs, taking a half-step towards Jolyne's seat and resting her hip against the bar. Not the most comfortable of places by far, but she can only get so close while sitting on the barstool. "I wouldn't want to make her upset—"

Jolyne laughs, cutting Trish off. It's short and definitely not happy, biting off whatever else Trish was going to say and causing her to pause. "I don't really care what my family's going to think about this anyways." She shakes her head, and with the heat her bangs have begun to clump together in sweaty curls at her temples. "Whatever. How about we just keep it to the two of us. So. How do we do it?"

Trish raises her forlorn cup up and then looks down at Jolyne. It's hard to tell what color exactly her eyes are, but they've got to be some shade of blue. It's harder to see her irises than it is to see the eyeliner she's wearing, but it's no real trouble to find and maintain eye contact. Even while standing up and with Jolyne sitting down Trish has not gained much in the way of a height difference, and Trish figures that Jolyne must be at least a good several centimeters taller than she is.

"First you say up. Aiz' aiz' aiz."

Jolyne puts her mug out and up, still looking Trish dead in the eye. "Aiz' aiz' aiz," she dutifully repeats.

"Bit closer to mine. We want to be able to clink the cups together."

Jolyne clinks her mug to Trish's. "What next?"

"Well, we don't actually want to clink the cups together on the first pass, but I'll let you get away with breaking the rules just this once." Trish tamps down her embarrassment to wink at Jolyne once again before she rolls right on with her explanation. "Then we go down and say acal' acal' acal'." She demonstrates by doing just that, by bringing her cup back to her body and then she holds it loosely in front of her chest, waiting for Jolyne to copy her movements.

Jolyne does just that, following Trish's words to a T. "Are we always going to repeat a word three times?"

"No, not on the last one. Now we bring our glasses back up and this time we clink them together. Accost' accost' accost." Trish waits for Jolyne to move again before repeating the words, and they clink their cups on the third and final accost'.

"Got it," Jolyne says with a smile. "How do we finish this thing?"

"A salut' nost'!"

"A salut' nost'!" Jolyne echoes with a boisterous flourish, throwing her shoulders back and sitting even taller on her barstool. "What's that mean?"

"To our health, just like if we had said salute."

Jolyne clinks her cup against Trish's again before she speaks. "I think I've got all that. Let's, uh… faccio… facciamo un…" Jolyne's brows scrunch as her lips mouth around some unspoken word.

"Brin…" Trish helpfully supplies.

"Brindisi?"

"Sì!"

Jolyne snaps her thumb against her middle finger before she points her index straight at Trish. Her smile has turned positively goofy, wide and showing off some of her front teeth, with her tongue caught between a few of them. "Facciamo un brindisi! See? I remembered something."

"Now do you want me to lead or would you like to?"

Jolyne ducks her head with a shake, finally breaking eye contact. "I'm good with you leading, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind at all, stellina. Let's start on the count of three. Ready?"

Jolyne nods her head. "Starts with aiz', right?"

Trish nods as well. "One… two… three! Aiz' aiz' aiz!"

"Aiz' aiz' aiz'!" They bring their cups together, and in her rush Jolyne clinks hers against Trish's.

"Acal' acal' acal'," Trish says while bringing her cup down, and Jolyne follows with only a slight slosh in her drink.

Together they finish their toast with an "Accost' accost' accost a salut' nost'!"

Jolyne only stumbles on the words a little bit, and they share a grin before getting to their drinks. Trish takes a small sip before deciding that she likes this one much more than the previous sugary concoction, and she takes another, longer sip. She finds Jolyne nearly gulping the drink down before she's able to put a hand out to stop the other woman.

"At least taste it before you chug it," she says with a playful swat to Jolyne's arm, the one holding her cup. Trish keeps her own fingers there, and she feels when Jolyne's muscles shift under the skin of her forearm as she moves the drink away from her mouth.

Jolyne has the good decency to look apologetic, and her skin flushes dark with embarrassment. Trish has all the confirmation that she needs: Jolyne can and does blush. "I just thought—if I—"

"Good things come to those that wait," Trish says while smiling around her mug. She takes another sip. "Or did no one ever teach you about the virtue of patience?"

"Please don't tell me that we're going to stay for another drink?"

"I had no idea that you were so eager to get away from me."

Trish feels Jolyne's arm shift before she sees it move, but it seems that Jolyne does little more than move her hand around the mug. With a lick of her lips she says, "I didn't mean it that way."

"I know that you didn't, stellina." Trish gestures with her own mug, moving it towards Jolyne. The ice cubes clink coldly against the copper of the cup. "Why don't we get back to learning more about each other. Were you named after that Dolly Parton song?"

"No. I mean, yeah, my mom's a country fan, but that wasn't why—it's not my—I'm not really sure how to… explain that. But she does like the name Jolyne, so there's that I guess." Jolyne shrugs her shoulders and Trish squeezes Jolyne's arm, trying to say what she does not say.

"I apologize for asking. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"Nah, it's okay. But anyways, my—my father," Jolyne spits out the word, and Trich can sympathize with the sentiment, "had some weird thing about needing to name his kids Jo-something." Jolyne's brows furrow in what is quickly becoming a familiar expression of her embarrassment and she says, "Oh. You can call me JoJo, if you want."

"Do you want me to call you JoJo?"

"Jolyne, JoJo…" she takes another long gulp of her drink before she continues speaking, "stellina… all of those are good. What about you? Is your name short for anything?"

"Short for anything?" Trish takes another drink. She can see the way the cocktail clings to the quickly melting ice cubes and the way it leaves behind faint paths of pale cream wherever it sloshes, and through it all she can even see the burnished copper of the bottom of the mug, peaking through the drink. She imagines that Jolyne must be very nearly done with her own cocktail.

"Like… Patrizia? I haven't really heard of that name before, besides for this one person… I didn't think it was that common."

"No," Trish says with a shake of her head, "it's not short for anything."

Jolyne goes to take another drink but finds what Trish had suspected: her cup is empty. Jolyne takes one long searching look into the depths of whatever ice cubes must remain before she slides the mug onto the table. "That's cool. And you share your name with a really hot singer, so that's even cooler, right?"

Trish stills, and her grip on her own cup and Jolyne's arm both tightens and then loosens at seemingly the same time. She's not really sure quite what to say, and her mind has stalled on Jolyne's words. Normally when people approached her nowadays they knew who she was, and she had assumed that Jolyne could not have possibly been actually speaking about her dress, and instead had approached her for some other reasons. And yes, she had assumed one of those reasons had been attraction, but it wasn't so unusual for a fan to come up to her in these situations.

Jolyne's brows are furrowed again, but this time not with embarrassment. "Did I… I didn't mean to offend you or anything by comparing you to another woman, it's just—"

"If you're speaking about Trish Una," Trish cuts in, "then I am Trish Una."

"You're… Trish Una." Jolyne's mouth flops open rather ungracefully, not that any part of her has been particularly graceful throughout the course of the conversation, but her mouth hangs open wide, and Trish can see the tops of the molars on Jolyne's bottom jaw, which is entirely too much to be seeing on any occasion. With quickly rising incredulity that reveals itself in a quickly rising voice Jolyne squeaks, "you're Trish Una?"

"Yes," Trish says in a low voice, and she brings her index finger up to her lips in a gesture meant to indicate silence. Jolyne follows the unspoken command easily enough. "I thought that you knew? Isn't that why you…?"

"No!"

Trish shushes Jolyne before she can get even louder.

"I mean, no. I just. Saw a cute woman in a cute dress, you know? And… doesn't Trish Una have longer hair? Pink hair?"

Trish has to laugh at that. She snorts, and the air rushes up her nose loudly, and it whistles out her mouth and between her teeth. Jolyne seems charmed all the same, if her goofy grin is any indication. "I shaved my hair last night, and with the lighting in this bar… I guess maybe it would be hard to see my hair color."

"I just can't…" Jolyne leans in closer and her eyes leave Trish's, seemingly taking in Trish's face for the first time.

"Like what you see?"

"Jesus H. Christ," Jolyne somehow manages to say with her jaw hanging slack, totally ignoring Trish's question. "How did I not notice…?"

Trish snorts again. "You're acting like it's some kind of crime that you didn't recognize me—"

"Because it is!" The register of Jolyne's voice bounces high and painful, and Trish can't help but pull back a little. Jolyne rubs at the back of her neck, sheepish and self-conscious. "Sorry."

"Alright, I'll bite. Why is it so important that you didn't recognize me?"

"It's not important, per se, I'm just… a big fan."

"Okay…?"

"No, I mean… like, I've looked at your pictures a lot and…" There Jolyne goes again, bouncing somewhere in her own head and not giving her thoughts a voice.

Trish still isn't seeing the explanation. "Sure," she says with a shrug of her own shoulders, "loads of people have looked at my pictures. I am a model—"

"No, no, I mean—"

"JoJo." Trish says in a voice that brooks no argument, and that has Jolyne almost immediately sitting up straighter in her seat. "You've really got to let me finish my sentences. You keep cutting me off, stellina."

Jolyne's face flushes again, even darker than the last time. She gnaws on her lower lip for a moment before she speaks. "It won't happen again, I promise. I'm just real nervous, and I definitely never thought that I'd meet you at some bar. Hell, I don't think I would've had the confidence to approach you if I'd known who you were."

"So. What were you going to say? Right before all this?"

Jolyne blinks. "What? Oh—oh! Right. I've just… been looking at photos of Trish U—I mean, of you a lot lately because I'm—I mean. It was quite… It was something else, the way you came out. And I." Jolyne swallows, looking anywhere except at Trish. "If you know what I mean."

Trish does know what Jolyne means. Or, she thinks that she knows what Jolyne means. She won't press Jolyne to say it out loud if she doesn't want to, but they can certainly talk around the subject. "That's why you were a bit uncomfortable when I asked you about your name, isn't it, JoJo?"

Jolyne's flush is so dark that it's incredible. It's got to be one of those full body flushes—the ones that go into the roots of your hair and down your chest. Trish can't see much besides Jolyne's collarbones, but she hopes that she'll be able to get her confirmation soon. "I didn't expect you to guess that so fast, to be honest."

"Guess what? That you're a beautiful woman?" Jolyne's head whips right round to look at Trish, who she had been, just seconds ago, studiously avoiding. Her mouth opens and closes with no real intention of saying anything, so Trish cuts right in. "Have you ever been with another woman before, Miss Jolyne?"

Jolyne's mouth snaps shut with a click of her teeth, and she stares at Trish with bright eyes. "No."

"Would you like to?"

"God yes."

Trish smiles, and she takes another half-step towards Jolyne's chair, pulling nearly flush against Jolyne's side. "Here's what I propose we do: I'm going to go close my tab with our wonderful bartender over there, and you're going to tell your friends that you'll be coming with me for a little bit. And then I'm going to take you back to my hotel, where we'll eat some food, and then you're going to tell me if you want me to take you to bed or not. But we're only going to do that after we've had a little more time together, and it'll be completely okay for you to tell me to stop at any point. How does that sound?"

"That sounds… that sounds good," Jolyne says with a bob of her head, but she makes no move to get up.

"You can tell me no right now, if you want." Trish moves away and picks up her purse, and she swings it over her shoulder as she smoothes down her dress.

Jolyne half gets up out of her seat and half stays in it, awkwardly caught with one foot on the floor and one hand still gripping the back of her barstool. "Let me just go tell the others."

"Good. I'll wait for you outside."

A/N: Told myself I wouldn't post this until I was done, but I am very tired, and this is taking very long to write. Originally I did plan on writing a sexual encounter between these two characters, but I've decided to go off the outline and see where the characters take me. I hope that you'll come along for the ride.

You can talk to me on discord, if you are so inclined, over here: JacksD#9423
Or you can join my server: (forward slash) WbdEqFQ

This server was originally conceived by asheliabd and is now also promo'd on monsterkiss' fics, and it's purpose is to discuss any and all jojo. Ideally this a community for jojo fans that are queer minorities (trans/enby, intersex, ace/aro, and/or questioning) and it's a nice space so far where you can discuss why you think a joe is trans, you can be as Academic about the series as you like, or just be involved in something as casual as our movie nights, etc. Give it a look if that sounds like something you'd like to be involved in!