Author's Note: Readers! I was wondering: Are there any artists in the house?! I would LOVE to commission someone to illustrate some of the scenes/chapters in the story, but it's kind of hard to just approach T&S artists and ask if they'd be up for illustrating this kind of thing. ;) If you're interested, please please please drop me a note! I see all this in my head and would LOOOVE to see it in living color. ;) I now bring you the next chapter, appropriately titled:
Chapter 12 - Don't Run Away
It had been a good show, following the ridiculously provocative stage banter, and it was the last show of the UK tour. They wouldn't need to be on the road until morning, so the girls and the band and crew headed to a noisy pub nearby for soggy British pub food and warm beer. Once inside, the girls got a booth while the boys took over the snooker table, and Jamie ran into Ted on the way back from the bathroom. He had a pint of warm, flat beer in one hand and something bright red in the other.
"Cranberry cocktail!" he said, smiling and handing the glass to Jamie. "As virginal as you like it."
"Thanks, Ted," she said appreciatively, accepting the glass as Ted took a glance over at the girls' booth.
"So, how's it going on the bus with the wonder twins?" Ted asked with a grin, and Jamie laughed at him.
"Uhhhh it's good," she said, suddenly not sure how or where to start. It's good. We watch movies. They kiss. Sometimes we all get into bed together. . .
"You don't sound so sure," Ted said, curious. "Is everything okay? I mean, for a couple of days there. . . did I detect some weirdness between you and Sara?" Jamie's heart jumped a little to hear that spoken aloud; she'd wondered it herself, how obvious it had been, but in the last couple of days, Sara had regained her ability to look Jamie in the eye, and, mercifully, they were able to speak more than a couple of mumbled words to each other again before blushing and looking at the ground.
"Well. . . no, we're. . . um. . ." Jamie stumbled, sipping the cranberry juice and avoiding his eyes.
"Jamie," Ted prodded. "Come on! You can tell me. Seriously." Jamie shook her head, as the sudden and unexpected opportunity to talk about it left her speechless.
"Uh. . . no, I mean, it's fine but. . . let's talk later, somewhere else. . ." Ted raised his eyebrows, his whole face illuminated with glee over the possibility of gossip. "God, you're such a girl," Jamie added.
"Okay. Later. But don't forget," he said, as Shaun waved him over from the snooker table. "Want to play snooker with us?" Jamie took a look over at the booth where Sara was speaking, her face intense, while Tegan listened earnestly.
"Sure," she said, joining the boys at the table. She and Ted played against Shaun and Johnny and lost three games in the amount of time it took the boys to drink two pints each. At the end of the third game, she looked over at the booth and Tegan smiled and gestured for her to come. Jamie wished Ted luck and joined the girls at their booth, sliding in next to Tegan.
"Ask Jamie," Sara said, as Jamie sat down. "I have to pee." Sara slid out of the booth, leaving Jamie sitting on the same side as Tegan. She sipped the cranberry juice, looking around the table. There were six empty glasses on the table.
"Ask me what?" she asked uncertainly.
"We were just talking about what to do on our day off in Paris. We have like, one single day to see the whole city," Tegan said, taking a sip of her drink.
"Yeah, one day should be enough," Jamie laughed.
"Totally. I mean, it's just, like, the Moveable Feast or whatever," she said.
"Exactly," Jamie said.
"Who said that again?"
"Hemingway, I think," Jamie said, and Tegan nodded approvingly, swirling the melting ice around in her glass. "What is that?" Jamie asked, suddenly not able to remember what they'd been talking about as she involuntarily recalled the sight of Sara, her mouth on Tegan's, her hand moving inside Tegan's pants. . .
"Oh, it's a mojito. Want to try it?" Tegan asked.
"I think no," Jamie said with a distasteful look.
"Here, smell it," Tegan said, handing Jamie the glass. Jamie took it, smelled it, made a more distasteful face, and handed it back.
"Ugh. It smells like toilet cleaner," she said, and Tegan laughed.
"No! It's refreshing and delicious." Jamie looked skeptical.
"I'll just have to take your word for that," she said. "Wow, how many drinks have you guys had?"
"Uhhh. . ." Tegan said, looking around at the table, "three each." Jamie looked at the empty glasses on the table and remembered the night that she lay beneath them on the bus and overheard them, their whispered words, their soft moans.
Sara came back to the table with three glasses; one was the same as her previous glass, one was another mojito for Tegan, and another looked like a glass of Coke with ice. Sara smiled at Jamie, and set the Coke glass in front of her.
"I got you a Coke," she said, sitting down.
"Just Coke?" Jamie laughed nervously.
"Mostly Coke. It's like, sixty percent Coke. And twenty percent ice," Sara said.
"And the other twenty?"
"Shit, you're good at math," Sara laughed.
"Sara, Jamie doesn't drink," Tegan pointed out, giving her twin a confused frown.
"I know. But I thought she might like to try it. . . tonight," Sara said, with a long look at Tegan.
"Um. . . the other twenty percent?" Jamie repeated.
"Rum," Sara said, "but you can hardly taste it. Have you tried it?"
"No, it smells like lighter fluid," Jamie said.
"It's better than it smells," Sara said, pausing for a moment. "Am I pressuring you? Do you feel pressured?" Jamie laughed.
"A little." Jamie saw Sara give Tegan another look, and the slight bewilderment on Tegan's face. Sara broke the eye contact and turned back to Jamie.
"Let's have a toast!" she said with a jovial tone.
"To what?" Tegan asked, raising her glass as Jamie did the same with her cranberry juice and not the rum and Coke.
"To baked goods!" Sara said, and Tegan made a soft groan and reddened a little as they clinked their glasses together. Jamie snorted and blushed too as she took a drink with them, recalling, again involuntarily, the sight of Sara urgently grasping Tegan's hand and roughly pulling it down the front of her own pants.
"Damn, whoever baked those should open their own bakery," Tegan said with an anxious laugh. Jamie smirked and shook her head, but wondered if they would notice if she were to crawl under the table.
"If they did, I would be a regular customer," Sara laughed, sipping the icy whisky.
"You totally would," Tegan said. Still trying to lighten the awkward conversation, Jamie thought. "They'd be like, 'Oh, hi again Sara. The usual?'"
"Yeah and I'd be like, 'Sure thing, Guido. I've got some friends coming over. . .'"
"Haha, Guido?" Tegan snorted. Jamie was laughing but was having a hard time finding a way into the conversation. She sipped her virginal drink and said nothing.
"Yeah, Guido. . . Lenny. . . I don't know. He knows me and he knows my order," Sara said.
"He knows because every time you have friends over, you order a dozen cupcakes," Tegan laughed. "Like, the way other people order like a fruit and cracker and cheese tray, you get your party pack of pot brownies." Sara nodded her approval.
"Fucking right. I mean, I've been at parties with cheese trays and there was like. . . I don't know. . . people played charades. . . maybe there was karaoke. . ." Tegan watched Sara intently.
"Everyone remained clothed," Tegan added tentatively.
"Yeah, like, nobody got their pants pulled off. . ." Sara trailed off, taking another swallow of whisky. Jamie quietly watched the ice melt in the rum and Coke that had been brought for her. "Nope," Sara continued, "all pants remained on. Nobody invited a third party to join them in bed. . ."
Jamie's heart started racing. Did she really just say that out loud? She looked quickly at Tegan, whose pink face reflected her embarrassment. Tegan picked at the coaster under her glass, but, unlike Jamie, managed to reply.
"No fun. Cheese and crackers are so last year."
"Yeah, this year it's all about the pot brownie party tray."
"I think it could really catch on," Tegan said.
"I think so," Sara agreed. I mean, it provides something that cheese and crackers just don't."
"What's that?" Tegan asked. An excuse, Jamie thought.
"An escape," Sara said. "An escape from like. . . the parameters of. . . convention."
"An escape from. . . the rules?" Tegan added, getting unsteadily to her feet, sliding past Jamie, and gesturing towards the bathroom. Jamie watched her go, her stomach fluttering a little, apprehensive to be left alone with Sara while she was on this tangent.
"From sanity?" Jamie suggested, for the first time, stirring her cranberry juice.
"Exactly," Sara said, studying her whisky glass and not looking at Jamie. "People need that sometimes. I mean, some people are able to just let go and they don't need help. But some people have inhibitions. . . reserve. . . some people need help. There are things that maybe people want to do but couldn't do if they didn't have something to tear away those boundaries." There was a kind of cool reserve in the way Sara delivered all of this, as though she were reading it from someone's dissertation. Jamie glanced quickly at Sara, uncertainly, but involuntarily warming. Sara went on. "And people might not even, like. . . I mean, they might even want to do something but something, like, gets in their way. They get in their own way," she concluded deliberately, spinning her almost-empty fourth glass on the table thoughtfully. Jamie watched the glass as Sara continued. "Like right now, for example, it's kind of. . . hard. . . to have this conversation. You're shy and sober and I'm a little bit drunk but still a little bit uptight but. . . after two more drinks, I'll be able to say almost anything to you. . ." Jamie glanced at Sara, surprised, her pulse quickening, as Sara continued to gaze at a spot across the room, largely avoiding Jamie's eyes. "And after another two, I'll be able to do. . ." Sara shrugged a little, picked up her glass and finished it off. Jamie stared at the glass of rum and Coke on the table. "Tegan's had three already," Sara added casually. Feeling Sara's eyes on her, Jamie glanced up as Tegan returned to the table, her face pink, looking from Sara's meaningful gaze, and then to Jamie. Jamie picked up her glass, met Tegan's eyes, and drank.