Chasing Dragons by Thea Atkinson

Author:Thea Atkinson [Atkinson, Thea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BA
Published: 2013-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

We sat in the living room putting plastic cheese slices onto melba toast and drinking coolers. Mine, a pomegranate one with vodka, was nearly gone and the straw I was drinking it through was chewed flat so that the rest slurped its way into my mouth. We'd been sitting there, all three of us, for at least an hour, saying precious little in between crunching and slurping.

It had been Molly's idea, actually. When Stephanie and I had not moved from our spot on the floor's hallway, she'd shuffled down in a pair of pink, fuzzy slippers that I knew I'd left next to the couch a few days ago. She held a cooler in one hand: pineapple, I think, complaining that all I had in my fridge were girlie drinks. She took one look at us sitting there and said, "You two are freaking me out."

She ushered us onto the couch and demanded to know why I bought crappy cheese slices instead of real cheddar. "And this shit," she'd said, shaking the Melba toast box at me, "is the devil's handmaiden. They're fucken bland, Jay. Whatever would possess you to buy such rotten snacks?"

Stephanie had giggled and Molly, realizing she had found a new audience, had put on her best come-hither smile and set about the wooing thing she did with new acquaintances. She wanted everyone to like her. At least until she'd decided whether or not she liked them: then she didn't care. But for now, Stephanie was an unknown and Molly spent all of ten minutes gathering stuff onto plates and hugging three coolers into the living room.

She passed one to each of us. While I secretly worried Molly would be sizing Stephanie up for conquest, Stephanie was following Molly everywhere with her eyes. I doubted she was queer, but I also knew that Molly had something about her that drew people, and she'd won over more than her share of heterosexual women. It was a specialty, in fact; like Rachael Ray was good at cooking meals out of nothing, Molly was good at creating curiosity where there was no curiosity before. No wonder she thought every woman was secretly queer.

Regardless of Stephanie's orientation, that was the last thing either of them needed. I wasn't sure what I should be doing: ask my next door neighbor to leave and suffer the worry she'd be out in a second looking for crack, or ask her to stay and have a drink with a lesbian bent on bending her over.

I decided the best I could do under the circumstances was to sit like a wedge, emotionally, between them.

"I'm not sure I should be drinking this early," I said, really meaning that I didn't think we should be drinking in front of Stephanie.

"Then don't," Molly said. Flopping down onto the chair in the corner and lifting a bottle to her mouth. "But I am dying for this." She pulled a long draft off the mouth, eyeing Stephanie all the while. If she so much as licked her lips after that drink, I was going to get up and pummel her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.