"Bonnie, isn't it?"
Startled by the sudden call of her name, Bonnie nearly dropped the sweater she was inspecting.
"Jeez." She put her hand on her chest and turned. "You startled me -" Her voice choked off as she found herself face to face with Joss Possible. The other woman had exchanged her checked shirt for a blue tee, and the leather jacket was black instead of brown, but otherwise was dressed almost the same as when they first met, several days before.
"Howdy." Kim's cousin gave her a friendly nod. "Don't worry, I ain't stalkin' ya. I just came into the store t' get somethin' for Kim's birthday, and I saw you there. Club Banana woman, huh? You 'n' Kim would get on great."
Don't count on it.
"I try to buy Club Banana when I can. I went to school with their top designer." The tanned former cheerleader said, her mind more on her racing pulse than what she was saying. She folded the sweater up and regretfully placed it back on the pile. Even at twenty percent off, she couldn't quite stretch her budget to cover it.
"You should get that. Bright yellow would look great on you. Wait ..." Joss paused. "Their top designer? That's Monique Lincoln."
"... yeah." Shit. Why did I mention that? Now she'll know ...
"But ... if you went to school with Monique, you must have known cousin Kim!" The western-accented woman gave a big grin, her eyes dancing at the thought. "That's so cool!"
"... I did know her. But we weren't exactly close."
"No? Pity." Joss shrugged as she picked up the yellow sweater Bonnie had set down and checked the tag. "It's weird. The only Bonnie that cousin Kim ever mentioned was ..." she trailed off, her eyes widening as she stared at the tanned dance teacher.
"Was me." Bonnie sighed. "I'm that Bonnie."
"Oh." Joss was clearly taken aback. Bonnie let her shoulder slump, waiting for the other woman to storm off. To the brunette's surprise, Kim's cousin instead gave a cheeky grin.
"S'funny. You don't seem to be riding on a broom."
The gentle gibe startled a chuckle out of Bonnie. The former cheerleader shook her head.
"I left it at home. I'm guess 'cousin Kim' has lots of stories about me."
"Some." Joss admitted, setting down the sweater once more. "She said you rode her pretty hard in High School."
Trust me, I never rode her the way I really wanted to.
"I was a bitch." Bonnie shrugged, knowing it was pointless to try and hide the truth. It's not like she's going to talk to me again after the next time she speaks to Kim. "I was petty and vicious and did everything I could to make her life miserable." As miserable as mine. "You should take that sweater for Kim. She'd look great in it."
"Green's more her color these days." Joss waved the suggestion away. To Bonnie's surprise, the other woman didn't seem inclined to storm off. "Ya'll musta changed some since those days. The girl my cuz described would never've helped out a misfit like me."
"Too far down the food chain." Bonnie said dully, then shook her head. "God, I was an ass."
"Emphasis on 'was', I figure." Joss hooked her thumbs in her belt and gave the tanned brunette a grin. "Yer students wouldn't like ya so much if you were still like that."
Bonnie's eyebrows rose.
"How do you know what my students think of me?"
"Uh ..." Joss's grin turned bashful. "I may've done a little stalkin'. Askin' about ya with some of the folks in your classes 'n' such."
"Oh?" Bonnie's eyebrows rose further. "And what did you find out?"
"Tell ya what." Joss's grin grew once more, gaining a slightly salacious hint that brought a rakish cast to her face. Bet that smile's charmed the panties off a few girls in its time. "Lemme buy you a coffee and I'll tell you."
"Uh ..." Bonnie's mind raced. Fraternizing with a student. An openly gay student. Not a good idea. But she really wanted to.
"C'mon, it's only coffee. I promise not to bite anything but a donut." That dazzling smile flashed across Joss's face once more.
Well, she's not my student. And it is only coffee.
"Oh, okay. But just because I'm curious what the kids said." Bonnie sighed. Yeah, that smile's worked for her before. Better be careful it doesn't work again.
"Here's yer green tea." Joss set down the glass cup with a frown of distaste. "Though why ya'd want it, I'll never know. Gimme coffee any day."
"Coffee's bad for your teeth, your nervous system, and your skin." Bonnie's fingers unconsciously rose to touch the side of her eyes as she watched the shorter woman set down a blueberry muffin and take a swig of her Caffé Americano.
"Bad for the skin, eh?" Joss grinned. "Guess how old I am."
"Twenty-two." Start low. May as well be flattering.
"Lower."
"Lower?" Bonnie gaped. So much for flattering.
"I'm what you might call 'weathered'." Joss grinned, taking another gulp of her coffee. "I'm nineteen. I'll be twenty in a little over two months."
"Bullshit." The denial was instinctive, even as Bonnie's heart sank. Not just a student, but just a kid. This had better just stay coffee.
As if it was ever going to be anything else. An ugly voice jeered back in her mind. You've told exactly one person in the world that you're gay, and you only did that after finding him doing the horizontal tango with his pool boy.
"Really." Joss nodded. "Nineteen, but I swear it ain't down to the coffee. I grew up on a ranch in Montana and I spent all my time in the outdoors. Last check-up I had, they said I have the skin of a thirty year old." She grinned, evidently completely unconcerned by this. "And Aunt Annie says I'll have to be careful about skin cancer when I'm older."
"You grew up on a ranch?" Bonnie seized on the seemingly harmless topic, a little surprised by the younger woman's blithe unconcern about her health. But then, look at the shape she's in. Skin of a thirty year old, but the body of an Amazon. "That must have been fun."
Joss nodded, then downed another third of her coffee.
"It was. Just me 'n' dad and the horses."
"Sounds rustic. I guess your dad wasn't much like Kim's, then?"
"Robot horses."
"Ah." Bonnie blinked, and took a sip of her own drink. "That's a 'no, they were actually pretty similar' then."
"Yeah, the Possible gene is kinda strong." Joss sprawled back in her chair with a lazy grin. Bonnie did her best not to notice how the other woman's blue t-shirt pulled tight over her washboard stomach. "Dad and Uncle James are two of a kind. Cousin Kim 'n' I are a lot alike, too. Short. No tits. Queer as a nine dollar bill."
Bonnie choked as she nearly inhaled her green tea.
"You okay?" Joss asked when at last the former cheerleader was back in control of herself.
"Yeah." Bonnie croaked. "It just went down the wrong way."
"You did know Kim's gay, right?"
"I think the whole world knows that story." Bonnie admitted. "It's not every day the world's number one hero announces she's dating a woman who used to be wanted in a dozen countries." And it's not every day I learn that if I hadn't been such an ass in high school, I might have had the woman I dreamed of.
"Fourteen countries, actually. Shego's real particular about that."
"Must have caused quite an uproar when Kim told her family."
"Some." Joss shrugged. "Made it a lot easier for me to come out to my dad after Kim dropped her bombshell, though."
"I bet." Bonnie said dryly, before putting down her tea and picking nervously at the paper napkin on her plate. "So ... you were going to tell me what my students said about me."
"Oh yeah. Well, yer real popular." Joss assured the older woman. "They all think yer about the best teacher in that department. They do like t'gossip about yer, though."
"Gossip?" Bonnie's neck prickled. "What kind of gossip?"
"Nothing bad." Joss explained hastily. "It's just ... an attractive woman like y'self, with no boyfriend or husband and seemin'ly no int'rest in one. They all got theories about that. Some of 'em think ya had yer heart broken by an unrequited love. Others think yer jus' gay."
Try both.
"And what do you think?" Bonnie deliberately kept her tone light and casual, trying to seem like she was amused, rather than unsettled, by her students' comments.
"Well, I kinda hoped it was the latter." Joss admitted frankly, that rakish grin lighting up her eyes once more. "But I guess I couldn't be that lucky."
Tell her! Tell her!
"I guess not."
Coward.
Author's Note: Yeah, Kim and Shego are a couple in this universe. They're just so cute together :)
The pool boy-bonking ex-boyfriend, however, is not Junior (or Brick, or in fact a character from the show at all). He'll won't actually appear in this fic, but you will learn more about Bonnie's time with him, as well as why Bonnie and Junior split (other than Bonnie being into women, of course!) in a later chapter.