Insatiable Appetites

by Fiona Zedde

  Phil shoved the untouched glass of pineapple juice on the coffee table. “I can see why you kept yourself in the closet all these years. It wasn’t because of your parents at all. You live in fear and expect everyone else to do the same. I won’t do it anymore. I can’t.”

  Sage stiffened. “I’m not afraid of anything. You’re the one who’s suddenly afraid of being a lesbian now. You just want to be straight and leave all this gay shit behind—”

  “What?” Phil jumped to her feet, her eyes wide with anger and disappointment. “I— You know what? Fuck you.” Phil spun and stalked down the hallway to the master bedroom, her voice burning a trail behind her. “I’m over this narrow-minded, selfish shit you have going on. I thought if I waited, if I didn’t move out yet, if I showed you what we have… But no. I’m obviously the idiot Rémi accused me of being.”

  Not ready to let her out of her sight, Sage followed, slamming the bedroom door shut behind them. She wrenched on a light. “What do you mean? Phil come on. I just…” But she couldn’t go on.

  “You just want? Want to fuck that girl and eat me too, then claim all bisexuals fuck you up so you can carry on being the motherfuckin’ martyr you’ve been acting like the last few weeks? No. I’m completely done.” Phil’s breath came quickly, the fury obvious in the spastic motions of her body, in the way she jerked Sage’s clothes off her like they hurt. The tank top. The pants. Leaving her completely naked and striding toward the chair where her clothes from the night before lay neatly folded.

  “Baby, wait…”

  “No! You don’t get to ‘baby’ me. Not now. Not ever. I’m through letting you fuck with me, with pretending none of this hurts me while you go through your crisis.” She sneered the last word, yanking the black jeans over her legs one after the other. “Go find some pure fucking lesbian to put up with all your shit, and when she doesn’t conform to your ideas of how people should behave and not change I’m sure you’ll just dump her too and pretend the fault is all hers. Have a nice god damn life!” Her hands were trembling as she wrestled the buttons of her jeans closed then grabbed her blouse.

  Sage grabbed her arm. “You know it’s not like that!”

  “All I know is what you told me, and what you showed me.” Phil pulled the shirt over her head or at least tried to, but Sage yanked it away so she could see her face. Phil yanked it back with a low hiss. “I can’t be someone else, Sage. Not even for you.”

  Phil jerked her shirt on and smoothed out her hair.

  How the hell had they come to this?

  Desperation rolled in Sage’s chest, the truth clawing its way up her throat despite how many times she swallowed.

  “I can’t give you the damn kid you want!” Sage froze, her eyes wide, heart pounding like a war drum. “Can’t you see that I can’t do this? I can’t watch you walk away from me with a man, knowing only a dick can give you what you’ve wanted for so long.”

  Silence echoed in the room. Then Phil drew a deep and trembling breath that pulled her body up tall and straight. She swallowed a few times before she spoke again. “I would never leave you. I thought you knew that.”

  Never was a long time when you wanted a kid and had no ready source of jizz to give it to you. She’d seen it enough in couples within the community.

  “Phillida, don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said tiredly.

  They stared at each other, no more words between them.

  Phil finally spoke. “So this really has nothing to do with me being bisexual?”

  “I didn’t say that. It has everything to do with it. At least with the non-detachable dicks you want all of a sudden.”

  Turning away from her, Phil crossed her arms over her chest, looked out the large window splattering with the beginnings of rain. Darkness outside, artificial light and their chilly silence inside.

  “I never asked for this, you know that,” Phil said after a long time. Her narrow shoulders were stiff, her posture defensive like she was ready only for Sage to hurt her.

  Sage didn’t want to hurt her, not really. But she didn’t know how to handle this. “But you want a kid. That’s the thing you’ve been wanting for months now. Isn’t it?”

  Phil’s shoulders rose and fell with her harsh breath. “Yes.”

  They’d danced around the issue, even half-way planned to make it happened, but like most things that happened with them, they didn’t discuss, only assumed and moved forward.

  “You know I can’t give you that.” Saying it felt like such a failure. So stupid.

  “Yes, you can. You know you can. We’ve seen it happen.” A few of Phil’s tangential friends had either adopted or had kids through artificial insemination. It was the new lesbian “it thing” to do, she’d joked before. Her tone implying she wanted none of that.

  “But how convenient is it that after that, you tell me you want some dick in your life? Too fucking coincidental, and you know that.”

  A bolt of lightning illuminated the pain on Phil’s face and thunder shook the house. The rain came down harder, tapping an urgent SOS on the roof.

  “If I’d wanted to skip the insemination clinic and get some dude to shove his dick into me just to get a baby, I would’ve said that. My being bi has nothing to do with that.”

  Sage shook her head. “I just don’t want to lose you,” she finally choked out.

  “And that’s why you just threw me away?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Yes, you did.” Phil’s voice vibrated with pain.

  She didn’t have to say anything else. The fucked-up details of the last few days streamed behind Sage’s eyelids in vivid High-Definition. Hurt after hurt. Rejection after rejection. In the midst of it all, she’d felt justified, victimized even. But now, with distance and time and the woman she loved stoic and hard-eyed in front of her, she had no choice but to see the wreckage her actions had left behind.

  “I’m sorry,” Sage said.

  “I know. But sometimes that’s just not good enough.” The sadness in Phil’s voice twisted the knife of regret in Sage’s chest.

  The corners of Phil’s eyes tightened. “I’m leaving for real this time. I stayed too long as it is.” Her movements disjointed and stiff, she pulled on her high heels and grabbed her purse from the dresser. “I guess we’ll talk later.”

  “Where are you going, anyway?” They’d talked a lot about Phil leaving but not a word about where she would go.

  “I’m not sure yet, but I’ll figure something out,” Phil said, not breaking her stride.

  Sage followed her from the bedroom. Other words crowded behind her lips, ready to tumble free and somehow convince Phil that…that she was sorry. She didn’t pray very often, or at all, but she squeezed her hands into fists and prayed to every deity she’d ever heard of for Phil to stay and at least begin to forgive her.

  Lightning flashed again, the rumble of thunder quick on its heels, and Sage felt the vibration of the thunder through her whole body. Then the world went dark. She almost bumped into Phil who stopped suddenly, both of them frozen in the sudden and absolute dark.

  “Seriously? This is happening right now?” Phil, who already had her hand on the door to the garage, turned the doorknob and peered inside.

  Everything was dark, the hulking shape of both their cars hidden in layers of shadow.

  “Why did you park in there anyway?” Sage asked. “You could’ve just left your car in the driveway.”

  “Well, I didn’t, okay?” Phil muttered, clearly annoyed.

  “And now you’re stuck here.”

  As butch as she claimed to be, Sage never bothered to find out how to open the garage door without electricity. Assuming there was a way.

  “Well, my car may be stuck here, but I’m not. I’ll just grab a cab for now and come get it later.” Phil pulled her phone out of her purse. “Shit.” She frowned down at the dark screen like it had done her wrong. “It’s dead.” The disgust, whether at the phone or at herself for not chargi
ng it, came through loud and clear.

  “You can use mine,” Sage said. They didn’t have a house phone.

  They went back into the bedroom to get Sage’s phone, only to find it dark and dead, too. Another nine-hundred-dollar paper weight.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” Phil muttered.

  Quick heat rushed into Sage’s face but she refused to act like she was the one who had fucked up. She stepped back with crossed arms and peered up at Phil.

  “Shit.” Phil had the grace to look embarrassed. After all, she was the one who’d shown up at the house with a phone nearly dead. At least Sage had the excuse of being at home, a place where she regularly forgot to charge her phone unless Phil reminded her.

  Phil turned away with a hiss of frustration and left the bedroom with a rapid click of high heels against the tile floors.

  Shit. What were they going to do now?

  Sage followed, carefully navigating her way through the darkened house and out the front door. The scent of the rainy evening rushed into Sage’s nose. She breathed it in, caught up with and matched Phil’s footsteps across the small verandah. With a quiet click, she opened the umbrella she’d grabbed from the stand on the way out, and lifted it over Phil’s head.

  Phil smiled briefly at her in thanks.

  The solar lamps along the walkway blushed in the dark, guiding their slow steps to the edge of the empty circular driveway. Rain, neither heavy nor light, tapped the umbrella over their heads. Rainwater eddied around Sage’s bare feet.

  The entire neighborhood was covered in gloom.

  Warm evening air brushed over Sage’s bare shoulders and throat. She tilted her head back to look at the stars. They winked down at her from their place in the immense darkness like they had a secret to tell. But she had a feeling no secrets would be shared tonight. Not by the stars, not by anyone.

  “Whose idea was it not to get a home phone again?”

  “Yours,” Sage answered, now watching the endless shadow that had become their neighborhood. Where did they even keep their flashlights? Did they even have batteries?

  “We better go back inside,” Phil said. “No use standing out there looking like targets in The Purge.”

  Sage rolled her eyes. “The first motherfucker who comes in here trying to Purge will get a bullet straight between their fucking eyeballs.”

  “You don’t even know where we keep the gun,” Phil said with a soft laugh.

  “True.”

  Guided by the solar lamps, Sage made her way back into the house with Phil close by her side and still under the wide umbrella.

  “So…now what?” Phil closed the door after Sage shook out the umbrella and slid it back into its low stand.

  Details of her form were shrouded in shadow, but Sage could clearly make out the confrontational lift of her shoulders.

  Well, if it was one thing Sage wasn’t in the mood for was more confrontation. She’d had enough of that for the day, thank you very much. She

  “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink,” she said. But first thing was first.

  She lit the candles in the living room, nearly two dozen of them, with the silver lighter they kept easily accessible on the bookshelf. Candlelight flickered golden and soft around the room, lending the large space an intimacy, a softness it hadn’t had in a long time. Raindrops drummed steadily on the roof, a sound like music. With the rain and candlelight, the gentle shadows hugging the room, it was easy to pretend the last few weeks hadn’t happened.

  A dangerous illusion.

  Denim whispered against leather as Phil sank into the couch and lay back. “God… What did people do before electricity?”

  “They went to bed early and got up with the sun. Maybe play board games?” Get drunk? Sage shrugged off her mild irritation and went for the bar where she fully intended to make herself a very large drink. “Thank God for progress and modern inventions.”

  “I’m sure kids today feel the same way about the internet and free porn.”

  “We’ve come so far…” She made two drinks, a rum and coke for herself and an extra dirty martini for Phil, and walked them to the couch.

  Phil murmured her thanks and sat up, reaching for the martini. A sip, then a low sigh left her mouth. “You haven’t lost your touch,” she said with a pointed purse of her lips. You still know me, her gaze said. I haven’t changed. Not really.

  “Maybe not that, but I lost my mind. Just a little.”

  And the divide between them came back sharply into focus.

  “Did you find it again?” Phil sat with the martini glass tilted next to her mouth, her pose on the couch one of complete relaxation. Shoes off, long legs stretched out in the dark jeans, her shoulders back. But Sage knew her well enough to feel the tension practically vibrating from her. It tightened her mouth into a plush line.

  “I’m trying to,” Sage said.

  She spoke softly, matching Phil’s low tones. Maybe it was the candlelight. Maybe it was because tonight was the first time since being at Shadow and Vine with those other women, so-called friends, that she could see herself for what she’d become. What she’d done.

  Darkness often changed things. It brought with it a clarity often missing during the day, a womblike space that nurtured the things that daylight obliterated.

  Her father’s words came back to her.

  You’re acting like the bigot you thought your mother was.

  It hurt, but it also was true. Sage tried to lick the nervousness from her lips.

  “I love you, Phil. I can’t pretend anymore that I don’t. And it hurt me, all this bad shit going on between us.” She held up her hand when Phil opened mouth. “I know. This isn’t about me. I know that. That’s why I’m asking you, honestly, what do you want me to do with what you told me?”

  It was a question she’d never asked, not really.

  Phil’s lashes fluttered down to hide her expression as she sipped her martini. All Sage could see was the wide fan of her lashes against her cheeks.

  “What do you need, Phillida?” she asked again.

  The glass in Phil’s hand shook and quiet tears slid down her face and plopped, one by one, into the barely touched martini.

  Phil looked up, her eyes big and wet. “I need us to stay us. I need the life that we planned together.”

  The lump in Sage’s throat got bigger. “I’m scared—,” She choked out the words. “—that I can’t give you the kind of life you want now. I’m scared you’ll find it with someone else.”

  “I’ll never leave you,” Phil said softly. She cradled the martini in her lap while fingers plucking at the stem of the glass. She met Sage’s eyes as she spoke. “I told you that. Not for any woman, any man. Or even any kid that ends up in my belly. We swore this to each other. Remember?”

  Sage nodded. Of course, she remembered. Even though she was the one who’d broken that promise.

  If she so easily broke her word, what would stop Phil from doing the same thing?

  But she knew Phil was would never do that. Her girl kept her word even about the smallest things. Appointments. Threats. Buying shit on their grocery list. Sage was the one who fucked up constantly. Hell, even the friction with her parents was her own damn fault. At some point, she had to start cleaning up her messes. Ice rattled in her glass as she put down the drink she’d barely touched.

  “I’ve been an idiot, I know that, but I—”

  A loud barrage of knocks at the front door cut off the rest of her words. The sound of voices rang out, too muffled for her to understand.

  Sage spun toward the door. “What the fuck is that?”

  Rain still pounded hard on the roof and the window panes blurred with lines of falling water. Who was out there at this time of night in this shit weather?

  Their phones were dead. What if someone was trying to reach them?

  What if something was wrong?

  The flickering light from the candles showed the same questions on Phil’s face. Sh
e and Phil rushed at the same time toward the front door.

  “Who is it?” Phil asked just as Sage unlocked the door and yanked it open.

  Someone could need help.

  But no.

  The lightning flashed again, illuminating the figure on their doorstep. A nameless terror seized Sage’s chest and she almost slammed the door. It wasn’t some masked boogeyman with a knife. It was Zachary Baxter.

  The man was soaking wet, his hair plastered to his face and shoulders, clothes dripping water and stuck to his body from the steady rain.

  Didn’t this guy have to be in Hollywood someplace?

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  Despite the drenching rain, he looked as comfortable as if he were standing on the deck of a yacht taking in some sun.

  “I’m here to see Phillida,” he said.

  Nobody calls her that but me. The ineffectual words rattled around in Sage’s brain.

  “Zach.” Phil came up from behind her, a hand on Sage’s shoulder. “This is a surprise.” She gave Sage a look, then pushed the door open wider. “Come out of the rain. There’s no point in you standing there like a drowned rat.”

  “Thank you.” He smiled faintly and stepped around Sage who was frozen in the entranceway. This guy was in her house. What was going on? What did this mean?

  Baxter was steadily dripping rainwater in their foyer and for that alone, Sage was ready to shove him back out into the rain and say “good luck, bitch.” But moments later, Phillida appeared with a large towel.

  “Dry yourself, please.” She looked at Sage again, “I promise she won’t bite.”

  To make Phil into a liar, Sage growled.

  The guy didn’t look the least bit intimidated, though.

  “Thanks for the towel but I’m only here for a few minutes.” He took the towel and briskly ran it over his face and throat. “I’m heading out of town tonight and wanted to make sure I put this back in your hands.”

  “What…?”

  He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out an envelope, and gave it to Phil. “I know how special this is to you.”