Thank you for the love! It's much appreciated. This is kind of a weird one, because I'm on a million pain meds right now. RIP me.
"I don't know, babe, I really think I should've bought the blue dress instead. I mean…" Jessica stepped back from the floor-length mirror, smoothing out her fancy silk gown. "I don't know. Like, this just looks… frumpy on me. Usually I can pull off red, but—"
Emily clicked down the hallway in her heels, her steps softening as she entered their carpeted bedroom. "Stop insulting yourself. You look great in any color. Now let's go."
Jess could see her girlfriend behind her in the mirror, scooping up her car keys and leather wristlet from the bedspread. A prickle of panic fluttered in her stomach. "Wait, what? What time is it?"
Em rolled her eyes. "It's almost seven." She eyed Jess, who had plunged her fingers into her messy hair, uneasily. "I swear, if you put even one more bobby pin in your hair, we'll be late."
"The reservation's for seven-fifteen," Jess protested. She jammed a few hairpins in her mouth, gripping them between her teeth. "I'll just be one more second, hon, I promise."
"Famous last words," Emily sighed as she walked out of the room again.
Jess tried to suppress the irritation burning in her gut. She quickly gathered her long hair into a braid, then twisted behind her head to form a bun. Her fingers worked nimbly as if they had minds of their own, knowing just the right way to tame every last stray blonde curl. After roughly a minute, she had it all pinned up and with one last layer of lipstick on, she was ready to go.
She walked out to the foyer and found Emily texting furiously on her phone. Her eyes were fixed intently on the device, the brown irises replaced with miniature white screens.
"Took you long enough," Emily grunted without looking up. She sent whatever message she'd been typing and picked up the car keys. "Alright, let's go."
Jess stopped her, fastening a hand on the other woman's arm. "Em, wait. Don't I— I mean, do I look good?" She moved back a few inches so Emily could better look her over. "Y'know, hot? Charming? Ravishing? … captivating, maybe?" She placed one hand on her hip and struck a pose, directing her eyes to the vaulted ceiling of their apartment. One strand of hair fell free from the bun, and she groaned.
"You look great. Now come on." Emily's brisk words stung like salt in a fresh wound.
Jess frowned, dropping her ridiculous pose and tucking the loose piece of hair behind one ear. "Maybe I should just cut my hair short like yours," she mumbled as they got into the car.
Emily laughed. "Don't be silly. You'd look—" She stopped short, taking in her girlfriend's hurt expression. Her eyes rolled as she started the car and drove. "Well, it's your choice what you do with it, I guess."
When they arrived at the restaurant— at 7:13 exactly, not a minute later, to Emily's relief— the other half of their double date group was waiting for them at the table.
Jess couldn't help but glance around with plain awe on her face. This place was amazing! The food smells wafting around were absolutely delicious, and the décor was eye-catching. Their booth was situated right next to an enormous aquarium of colorful fish. Her jaw was on the floor by the time she and Emily had slid fully into their seat. Right then, a clownfish with bold orange and white stripes swam by right next to Jessica's head. She shook Emily's arm excitedly like a little kid, grinning stupidly.
"Look, look, Em! I found Nemo!" Her words dissolved into giggles, while Emily, embarrassed, looked the other way.
"My apologies," Emily said to the other two women on the other side of the table. "She usually doesn't get like this until after she's hit the wine."
"You don't hit wine, silly, you drink it," Jess remarked casually. "If you hit wine, it'll just spill all over the floor and make a mess." With that, she flashed a blindingly bright smile at her girlfriend.
The stifled fury on Emily's face was as easily readable as words in a book. Something about playing dumb like that always amused Jess, because the pained expressions Em would produce as a result were often hilarious.
On the opposite side of the table, Beth was perusing the menu while Sam sipped a frosty glass of water.
"We've known you guys since sophomore year of high school," Beth commented idly with a smirk. Her dark eyes flitted upward briefly to acknowledge Emily's effort to make apologetic eye contact. "We know how you two are by now."
"Yeah, it's not a problem at all," Sam chuckled. She pointed at a spot near the top of the large fish tank. "Aha! I found Dory." Jessica's gaze followed the other blonde's index finger, and sure enough there was a blue fish swimming between some tall plants.
One glass of wine later.
"I've never had shrimp before," Jess hummed as she scanned over the menu. She was resting her chin on one hand, her words muffled as she went on. "Maybe I should have shrimp. What do you think? The shrimp sounds good."
Emily turned to her with a stiff jerk of her head. A short curtain of black hair escaped from its holding place behind one ear. "There's a million types of shrimp on the menu, hon."
Jess let the menu fall on the table. "Well, then." She sucked the last few drops of merlot out of her glass. "What if I just want plain shrimp, huh? No sauces, no sides or add-ins, just plain shrimp fresh from the Pacific."
For the tenth time that night, Emily's eyes rolled to the ceiling. Beth tilted her head in confusion. "Like, raw shrimp?"
"No, no, no, I don't want sushi," Jess objected. "Just some nice, natural… shrimp." She opened her mouth again, but then the waiter came up and Emily swooped in before she could speak.
"She'll have the shrimp scampi."
Another glass of wine later.
"Y'know, Sam, did I ever tell you about how me and Em got together?" Jess paused, looking puzzled for a moment as if her own question didn't make sense to her. Then she added, "And Beth. Do ya'll know how—"
"I… don't think they need to hear that, hon," Emily cut in, only to be ignored.
Jess slurped down a mouthful of red wine and giggled. "Oh, man, it was at one of— one of Mike's big freakin' parties, right? I think it was. Anyway, we were out on the porch, allllll alone, me and Em, and I was like, 'you know, you have a little bit of lipstick on your teeth' and she was like, 'no way!'"
Sam and Beth grinned. "Then what happened?" Beth asked.
The effects of the wine were already beginning to show on all of them. Emily's face was all flushed, cheeks burning as if she had rested them against stove burners. Jessica's hair was all askew, her sloppy bun hanging by a single strand. A pile of hairpins now sat on the table next to her plate. Beth's bangs were a little sweaty, sticking to her forehead. Sam was wearing a crooked smile and had a glaze in her eyes that only ever showed after two generous servings of wine.
"I really don't—" Emily started.
"So I told her… I told her I would get it for her," Jess explained. "And I did! Except— except not in the way you'd think." She leans over her mostly-eaten plate of food to throw an exaggerated wink at the other two girls. "I leaned in, a- and I kissed her! And the rest is history!"
Emily let out a relieved sigh. "Oh, thank god, I thought you were going to—"
"Oh, and then we fucked in Mike's mother's bedroom." Now Jess was cackling, and other nearby patrons were fixing death glares on them. They felt like lasers poking and burning Emily's skin, but Jess was like a pane of glass that the lasers just bounced right off of. She was impenetrable.
Another glass of wine later.
"That waiter is ho- o- ot!" Jess sang. "I- I should get his number."
Emily snorted. "Really? Do I suddenly not exist?"
Jess scrunched up her nose in bewilderment. "Who are you? I don't remember—" Her statement was broken off by a harsh shove from her girlfriend, and she was sent into another laughing fit.
Another glass of wine— and a half.
Jess stared up at the aquarium tank, her face illuminated in a softly glowing blue light. Over the past few hours, the fish had been swimming calmly, deaf to the rowdy booth that sat on the other side of the thick glass.
She rested her hand against the cool surface, watching as the fish continued swimming behind her fingers.
"I wonder…" She cleared her throat. "I wonder if the fish in there think… think my hand is a- a starfish?"
"Probably not," Emily said.
"Aw," Jess replied.
Beth slammed a hand on the table. "Hey, a girl can dream! If she aspires to have a hand as a starfish, then she can damn well have her hand be a starfish!"
Emily rolled her eyes.
"It's crazy," Sam commented suddenly, her eyes also focused on the tank. "These fish just keep… going. And going, and going. Life moves forward, and they move with it."
"Your point?" Beth grunted.
"There's nobody to tell them anything otherwise. No one is around to make them stop. They just, well… they go with the flow." Sam shook her head sadly, returning her gaze to her placemat. "What a sad life to live. No adventure, just the same route over and over and over again in the same tank, day after day, night after night. Nothing new, nothing interesting. Just the same old stuff."
Beth jerked her thumb at her girlfriend. "Well, damn. As you can see, wine makes her all depressing."
"Oh, shush," Sam retaliated. "I'm just… letting out my scrambled thoughts. Don't mind me."
Jess startled abruptly, working her hands like a madwoman. "No, you're right, Sam! Our lives are boring." She whirled to face Emily. "We can't be like these— these fish! Just swimming around, doing the same shit every day." She gripped Emily's shoulders and shook her. "We have to live!"
"… okay, I think it's time for the check," Emily noted as she wrenched herself free of Jessica's surprisingly strong grasp.
Twenty minutes later, they were in the car on the way back home. Emily felt somewhat woozy, so she kept her eyes firmly on the road and refused to peel them away for anything.
When Jess piped up after a while of silence, her tone was not what Emily expected it would be. The slurring, obnoxious gigglefest had marched on, only to be replaced with a low, chilling parade of words.
"Why are you like this?"
Emily bit her lip. The red light at the intersection was glaring so brightly through the windshield, she winced. "What?"
"Boring. Dull. Just swimming along with life, like one of those stupid fish." Jess trailed one hand along the car's dashboard.
Emily stiffened. She sounded stone-cold sober now. How was that even possible? Did she guzzle some alcohol antidote in the bathroom before they left?
"Um. What are you trying to get at, hon?"
"What I'm 'trying to get at,'" Jess said, mocking Emily's voice, "is that you don't do anything fun. Like, ever. And every time I try to make us do something interesting, you always put me down and drag us right back into the normal stream of people." She crossed her arms and put on a pouty face, once again reminiscent of a child. "I want to be part of the un-normal stream."
"You mean the abnormal stream?"
She went right on as if Em hadn't spoken. "I want to do things. I want to go places! I don't want to live every day just like the one before. After we finally graduated from high school and college and all that shit, I thought— I thought we'd be free! But here we are, still stuck in the same stupid boring rut. Lives going nowhere except forward, always on the same road, no obstacles, no other paths intersecting to change things. Just the same, the same, the same." Her head snapped to the left so she could glare at her girlfriend. "And you encourage that boring sameness."
"Well, sorry if I don't want to risk my life doing something idiotic like skydiving. Or maybe I- I don't wanna get arrested. Maybe I just want to stay safe, Jess, did you ever think about that?"
"There's safe. And then there's boring," Jess pointed out. "Those words aren't cinnamons, but they aren't antonyms either."
Emily's brow furrowed. "Cinnamons? You mean synonyms?"
"Whatever!" Jess exploded. She crossed her arms and pressed them against herself. She was slouched so far down in the seat, her head was almost below the window. This proved to Emily that she was most definitely still drunk.
Another uncomfortable balloon of silence began to expand around them, closing them into the small space inside the car. It was almost suffocating. Emily rolled down a couple windows and let out the breath she'd been holding.
Out of the corner of her eye, her girlfriend was still slumped, glaring at nothing in particular. Her hair was completely free from the bun, having toppled down around her shoulders in a frayed braid.
Emily swallowed. Something about Jessica's words finally sunk in to her. She gritted her teeth, and with a flourish, she rolled down all four windows the entire way. Then out of nowhere, she jerked the wheel to the right.
"Woah!" The cry was forced out of Jess, as the car's seatbelts pressed into their guts hard enough to leave imprints. The sedan had turned onto a narrow, unpaved and dimly-lit road. Jess twisted around to look out the back window, watching as the lights of the highway receded in the distance until all the cars and people inside were just a cluster of twinkling red and white lights.
Wind roared in through the open windows, tickling Emily's ears and teasing her hair. She was grinding her teeth at this point, fear making her stomach feel hollow yet stormy at the same time. She slammed her foot down hard onto the gas pedal, and the car bounced over a pothole.
"Emily! What the hell are you doing?" Jess shrieked.
"Am I still boring to you now? Huh?" Emily yelled over the screaming wind. "Am I still just one of those stupid fish, swimming along with life? Am I, Jessica?"
The car was going over seventy miles per hour now on this worn-out path. Gravel crunched under the tires and spit at the sides of the car, hitting with a million loud clunks.
It was almost completely dark this far away from civilization. Emily had no clue where they were, and she doubted either of their phones would have service this far out. She began to lessen her pressure on the gas pedal, trying to catch her breath. She put on the car's high beams and squinted around.
"Oh, fuck, Em—! There's a fence, watch—"
The car came to a literal screeching halt. The front bumper was mere centimeters away from a barbed wire fence. Emily's chest was sore from a combination of the seatbelt pressing in and her ragged breathing.
Jess immediately unbuckled herself and leaned over the center console to take Emily's face between her hands.
"What the hell were you thinking?" she whispered.
Emily could barely see her girlfriend's face in the shitty lighting. She was able to glimpse the outline of her slender face, but at this point she was relying more on touch than sight. She felt soft lips on hers, gentle fingers caressing her cheeks, a warm breath puffing against her mouth.
When they finally broke apart, they stared at each other in a way that could be described as nothing but sadly.
"Can't you— can't you be happy with the way I am?" Emily said. Her words almost drowned in the sound of cicadas chirping in the endless night landscape through the open window.
"Of course," Jess replied. "I mean… clearly adventure doesn't suit you too well." She continued rubbing her thumb along Emily's jawbone. "But I think there's a way we can… compromise."
"Really?"
"Yeah, totally." She sounded more and more confident with each word. "We can do your boring dinner dates with our friends, but every once in a while, we can also do something cool with Sam and Beth, like— like maybe rock climbing."
Emily started to scoff, but stopped just in time. In its place, a genuine smile formed. "Okay… rock climbing. I guess these legs could use some shaping up."
"Not just your legs, honey," Jess said jokingly, which earned her a harmless slap on the arm. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry. But don't you think I should be the one to drive home?"
"Are you kidding? Please tell me you're kidding." Emily began to turn the car around so it was hopefully facing the highway again. "You drank, like, two gallons of wine."
Finally, it was Jessica's turn to roll her eyes. "Yeah, whatever."