The Art of Us

by KL Hughes

  She forces herself not to recede into the feeling, but she is rapidly approaching her limit with this conversation despite it having only just begun. “Because humans require sustenance in order to survive,” she says. “And while it may be questionable, given your otherworldly cheekbones and Alex’s weaponized jawline, I’m pretty sure you’re both actually human.” She pauses a moment, and when she speaks again, there is the slightest bitter edge to her tone. “I can’t speak for Kari, though. I don’t know anything about her other than that she has great taste in art. And in women.”

  “Come on, Charlee.” Vinny taps the bottom of her beer bottle against the top of the bar. “I’m asking you why Alex is still trying to get me to meet Kari.”

  “I don’t know!” Charlee snaps before clamping her mouth closed, instantly regretting the outburst. “Why…?” She huffs. Plants her hands on her hips. “Why are you doing this? Talking to me about this? Why not Alex?”

  Vinny’s expression softens. “Because you’re the only one who can tell me why you still haven’t told Alex that you broke up with Chris.”

  Charlee digs her fingers into her hips and tilts her head back. Fixes her gaze on the vaulted ceiling. She can’t stand the way Vinny is looking at her, like she knows—she knows—and she does. She knows way too much.

  “You’re the only one who can tell me why you still haven’t told Alex you want to be with her.”

  Charlee grits her teeth and rocks on the balls of her feet. She blows a gust of air up toward her eyes. “Stop.”

  “You’re the only one who can tell me why I have to go meet Alex’s girlfriend,” Vinny says, pushing it. “Because the last time I checked, I already met her girlfriend. I met her years ago, in fact. She was a pain in my ass then, and she’s a pain in my ass now.”

  A shallow breath stutters its way through Charlee’s lips as she dips her head back down and braces her hands against the edge of the bar. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say what you feel.”

  “I feel like—”

  “Not to me. To Alex. You need to tell Alex.”

  “I can’t do that.” Charlee moves around the bar and heads back toward the front of the gallery. She doesn’t wait for Vinny to follow, and silently she hopes she won’t. But heavy boots thud against her polished floor as expected, and Vinny is right on her heels.

  “Why not?”

  Charlee retrieves her cleaning supplies from the floor. “Please just go home, Vinny.”

  “I don’t disappear just because you want me to, and neither do your feelings.”

  “She knows!” Charlee throws her supplies to the ground again and whirls around. Her face feels hot. Too hot. The heat spreads down her neck, through her chest, and into her stomach until she feels flushed and nauseated, until she feels like she might explode. Part of her wishes she could. Disintegrate into dust. Be nothing but air. Then maybe this weight, this awful weight, would simply fall away and she wouldn’t have to feel like this anymore. “She knows.”

  “She needs to hear it.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Charlee says. “She doesn’t need to know that I broke up with Chris or that I still want to be with her or any of it. I made a choice for myself. I’m not going to make a choice for her. Our history is heavy enough. I’m not going to put my feelings on her and make her feel like she has to choose right now. Or ever. If she wants me, she can decide that for herself without any influence from me.”

  “I’m not telling you to propose,” Vinny says. “I’m just telling you to open up a bit. Tell her that it isn’t over for you, that you still have feelings for her. It’s an open door. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I can’t!” Her voice breaks, rough at the edges and weak in the middle. Frustration claws up the length of her throat. “You think I can just call Alex up and say, ‘Hey, I have feelings for you’? You think it’s that easy? That I can just graze the tip of the iceberg and not sink? Not completely fucking destroy myself?”

  “Charlee.”

  “No, you want to know why I can’t tell her, Vinny?” A strangled, humorless, helpless laugh barrels through her lips, its final note crashing into a restrained sob. “I can’t tell her because if I open my mouth, it’s not going to be ‘I still have feelings for you.’ It’s not going to be easy or simple or something that can be stuffed into a neat little package she can set aside to deal with later. It’s going to be everything. It’s going to be ‘I don’t want to be your friend. I can’t be your friend. It’s killing me to be your friend, because I don’t want a friendship with you.’”

  Charlee drags in a wet breath, tears pushing through her lashes. Closing her eyes, she imagines Alex is right in front of her. “I don’t want a few stolen moments in a bar or awkward double dates or heated glances across the room. I don’t want a history that we never talk about or all these tiny broken moments. I want a lifetime. I want nothing less than a lifetime.”

  Her knees shake like they might buckle beneath her, but Charlee manages to stay on her feet. She opens her eyes, blinks away her blurry vision, and looks at Vinny. “Because that’s what we promised each other.” Charlee wipes angrily at her cheeks and swoops to pick up her supplies again. “That’s why I can’t tell her what I want.” Her voice falls flat, melts into an almost whisper. Defeated. “Because I want things that aren’t mine to want anymore, things that haven’t been mine in years.”

  Crossing the short space between them, Vinny places a hand on Charlee’s shoulder. “Maybe that’s why you should tell her. What’s the point of a lifetime if you never actually live it?”

  “I can’t. I won’t be that selfish.”

  She sighs. “Okay.” She turns and heads back to the minibar, grabs her helmet, and makes her way toward the front door.

  A rush of winter air blows in as she opens it, and Charlee shivers.

  “Let me ask you this, though.” Vinny pauses in the doorway to put her helmet on and secure the strap. “You broke up with Chris because you didn’t think it was fair to be with him when you’re still in love with Alex, right?”

  Charlee nods.

  “So, what’s more selfish?” Vinny pins her with a challenging stare. “Telling Alex how you feel so she knows she at least has a chance with you? Or not telling Alex how you feel and letting her think there’s no hope, so she stays in a relationship with someone who deserves way fucking better than being her second choice?”

  Charlee gapes. She can’t summon any words to her lips, can’t make her voice form around empty air, but Vinny isn’t looking for an answer. She’s driven home her point. Charlee can feel its sharp tip slicing through the muscle in her chest.

  “There are more hearts at stake here than just yours and Alex’s.” Without another word, she walks out of the gallery and into the falling snow.

  Chapter 10

  “Take this off.”

  Charlee couldn’t bring herself to care that their private study room happened to be in a very public campus library or that the door didn’t lock. She let Alex yank her shirt off and toss it aside, then Charlee bunched up Alex’s own shirt so there wouldn’t be a barrier between them. The static on Alex’s skin, popping against Charlee’s stomach, made her head spin and her spine tingle, and Charlee swore in that moment she’d never wanted anything more than she wanted this—this touch, this girl she had only just met. She felt drunk with the wanting.

  She closed her eyes as Alex kissed down her neck and across her collarbone, lingered over the swells of her breasts. She wrestled her hand down into Alex’s pants and found her slick and wanting. Everything about the feel of her, the way she clenched around Charlee’s fingers, felt both new and familiar, like she’d mapped Alex’s body a thousand tim
es before but always found her surprising. Every breathy moan was a hidden treasure, every tremor a landmark, and Charlee was alive with how it felt to discover her.

  When she felt fingertips brush her stomach at the top of her jeans, she jerked. Her hips twitched. A quiet, guttural sound crawled through her lips when Alex slipped under the material a second later and swiped through the moisture collecting between Charlee’s thighs.

  “Oh God,” Charlee said, breathless.

  Alex dipped into her, just the tips of her fingers. Once. Twice. When she thrust in fully, Charlee clamped down around her and let out a loud moan, muffled by Alex’s other hand. At the first delicious curl of slender fingers, she felt ready to burst.

  As their breaths puffed, hot and ragged, against lips and cheeks and chins, they rocked against one another, and Charlee had to swallow down a sudden lump in her throat. Alex was watching her, her green eyes searching, steady. Charlee felt exposed in a way she hadn’t expected to, like more than just her shirt had been stripped away.

  Alex climaxed before her, moments only, and Charlee felt every perfect tremor. When she finished seconds after, Alex leaned up and pressed a whisper of a kiss to her bare shoulder, then her neck, then the corner of her mouth. Each was surprisingly tender, and suddenly everything about the moment felt raw and sensitive in a way Charlee thought it shouldn’t. But it did. It did.

  There were tiny aftermath echoes in her thighs and Alex’s breathing in her ears. The small room’s silence was wired, electric, and they were still buried inside each other.

  “Wow,” Charlee said. Her pulse was a marching band, drumming its way from inch to inch. She could feel it in her thighs, in her stomach. It hammered between her ears.

  Alex didn’t say anything but simply nodded—one little dip of her chin—and the moment was broken. All the awkward reality of what had just occurred began to seep rapidly into the room. Charlee felt it like a wave washing over them.

  When they pulled out of one another, Alex rose shakily to her feet, straightened her clothes, and settled back into her chair. Silent. The room became unbearably hot as Charlee followed her lead, putting her shirt on and grabbing her books. She lingered by the desk, then near the door.

  “Okay,” she said, unsure of how to maneuver in the aftermath. She wiped a hand through the sweat on her forehead and took a breath to try to calm her heart. It still felt wild beneath her ribs. “So, you want me to go or…?”

  Alex didn’t look at her. She took shallow breaths, still visibly winded, and her fingers trembled over pages Charlee knew she likely wouldn’t be reading anytime soon. “If you want to.” She shrugged a single shoulder. “Um, yes, yeah. Maybe that would be best.”

  “Okay, cool.” Charlee let out a strangled little laugh that she internally cursed herself for. “I mean, not cool, but just, you know, that’s fine. You probably want to study, so…” She shifted from foot to foot. Rubbed one sweaty palm on her pants. “Anyway, so, um, I’ll see you around campus, then?”

  Alex glanced briefly over. Their eyes met in one tense, almost questioning look, and then Charlee stepped out of the stifling room.

  She made a mistake, though, leaving so quickly. With so little information. She spent the next two weeks unable to do anything but hope she might randomly bump into Alex again. She had no contact information for her. Nothing. Not even a last name. In fact, the only things Charlee did know about her were that she was valedictorian of her high school class, she was not a theatre student, and she whimpered when she came.

  So she was stuck with hoping Alex might randomly pop into her path so Charlee could tell her all the ways she had occupied her mind since their spontaneous tryst in the university library. No such luck, though, and Alex seemed to be actively avoiding the library, or at least the third floor, because Charlee had spent quite a lot of time lurking there and had yet to spot a snarky brunette with a weakness for banter and blondes.

  She thought she saw her once. Just a glimpse. Walking into Rich Hall only a week or so after their encounter. It wasn’t Charlee’s dormitory, so she didn’t follow. But she spent the next week and a half walking by Rich Hall every chance she got. Getting shit for it from her roommate every other day.

  “Why didn’t you get her number?”

  “I don’t know, Cam.” They walked together toward the Commons, the early morning breeze nice against Charlee’s face. “It just didn’t seem like a good time.”

  “Post-sex isn’t a good time to ask for someone’s number? Since when?”

  “Since it was more than what it was supposed to be. I think.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlee said. “We had a moment.”

  “Like a real moment? Or like a moment you thought was a moment but wasn’t actually a moment?”

  “I’d answer you, but it’s early, and I’m too tired to understand anything that just came out of your face.”

  “You know, sometimes when you’re all high on your orgasm and out of breath, you think you’re having a moment, so you’re like, ‘Oh my God, this could be love,’ only to realize later that it was actually your vagina having a moment, not you.”

  Charlee shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She let out a sleepy laugh. “It felt real.”

  They entered the Commons, and Charlee nearly tripped over her own feet. There was Alex. Sitting across the way by a large window. Eating a banana.

  When Charlee stopped, Cam smacked into her back. “Dude, you can’t just hit the brakes like that.”

  “That’s her,” Charlee said, doing her best to motion toward Alex with her head, because thrusting out her arm and pointing seemed a touch too dramatic for seven a.m.

  As she took a bite of her banana, Alex looked up, and their gazes locked. Charlee swore she could hear the other girl choke all the way across the building. She started to make her way over, but Alex nearly dropped her breakfast in her effort to bolt out of the nearest exit.

  “Hey!” Charlee took off after her, suddenly energized. When she rushed back out into the warm fall morning, though, she found Alex was nowhere in sight. “What the hell? Can this girl teleport? She just freakin’ disappeared.”

  “Looks like it,” Cam said, walking up beside her and clapping her on the shoulder. “You got it on with a bona-fide wizard, dude. Congrats.”

  Charlee laughed despite the pain in the pit of her stomach and let Cam lead her back inside.

  After another week, Charlee began to feel discouraged. She didn’t know why she cared so much, but she did. Her stomach hadn’t stopped swooping since the library, and she had to know if what she felt was genuine, if it was mutual. But Alex certainly wasn’t making it easy. Charlee briefly considered drastic measures, like drawing up a rough sketch of the girl and posting signs around campus with a caption that read: If you’re this girl I had sex with, I think I might love you, so could you maybe stop avoiding me, please?

  But then there she was again. Alex. Walking down the sidewalk just ahead of her. It was early evening. Little traffic was milling about campus, and most of it was likely headed home or to a late class. Alex disappeared inside the building for the School of Hospitality Administration, and Charlee took off after her. When she caught up, she didn’t think before grabbing the girl’s arm and yanking her into the nearest room, an unoccupied classroom.

  Alex squeaked. “What the hell?”

  The lights were off, and Charlee barely got the door closed behind them before she felt her arm being jerked and then twisted behind her. In a matter of seconds, Charlee found herself face-first against a wall with Alex pinned to her back.

  “Holy shit.” Charlee grunted. “You’re a ninja.”

  She heard the tiniest intake of breath. “Charlee?”

  “Hi,” she said, cheek squished against the wall. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  The strain in her arm eased
as Alex instantly released her and stepped back. When Charlee turned around, there was already half a classroom of space between them. Alex was straightening her shirt and the strap of the bag on her shoulder. She looked uncomfortable.

  “Sorry, I—”

  “—obviously took a self-defense class at some point,” Charlee said, rubbing her shoulder.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, totally. It was my fault. I kind of just grabbed you. Sorry about that.”

  “Did you follow me?”

  “You’ve been avoiding me.” Charlee chewed her bottom lip.

  Alex stiffened. “No.”

  “Really?” Charlee gave her a knowing look. “You choked on a banana when you saw me and then teleported.”

  Alex’s brow quirked up. “So first I’m an asshole, and now I’m what—a witch?”

  “If the disappearing shoe fits,” Charlee said, and the barest hint of a smile touched Alex’s lips.

  They stared at each other for a long time. Charlee could tell Alex wanted to bolt again and assumed she had a class, so she definitely had an excuse. But Alex didn’t move. That fact made Charlee’s chest burn with hope.

  “Why have you been avoiding me?”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Okay, but we—”

  “I’m aware.”

  “I know it got a little awkward after, but you don’t have to avoid me.”

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  “Maybe just how you feel.” Charlee shrugged, unsure of how to proceed. So she rambled. “I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything, like a date or whatever, because you don’t. I don’t expect anything from you. I promise. And if you want me to go, I will, but if you’re just avoiding me because you think it’ll be awk—”

  “Why have you been looking for me?”

  Charlee took a deep breath. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” she said, cheeks flushing with heat. “About, you know.”