Page 71 of Take Two

She checked her phone for the seventieth time. At the most recent text exchange between her and Callie.

You want to come over tonight?

Yeah, what time?

7.30. I’ll leave the door open.

She hadn’t added,My heart will also be open, as well as my legs. Please be careful with both.That felt a bit much.

She’d cleaned her room like a maniac. Not that Callie cared about dust, but it gave her hands something to do. She stripped her bed and put on the good duvet cover. She lit one candle, then decided it made the place look as if a séance was about to take place rather than… She blew it out again. She changed her bra twice.

She had time to think, which was the problem. About her body. About the fact that nobody had seen it properly, not like this. About how Callie had, undoubtedly, seen plenty.

At seven fifteen, her dad shouted. ‘I’m off, love.’

‘Good,’ she called back and then realised what she’d said. ‘Have fun,’ she added.

‘Back about eleven.’

The front door closed. His footsteps faded down the street.

The silence that followed was enormous.

You don’t have to, she thought, for the hundredth time.You can just have her round, watch a film. You can take another month, another year—

But she didn’t want a year of imagining. She’d spent so long running from what she wanted, and now she was running towards it. She wanted this to be real. She wanted to give herself fully to Callie. If she could.

Her phone buzzed.

Outside.

By the time Mae got to the front door, her hands were shaking. She wiped them on her jeans, took one breath, then another, then opened it.

Callie stood on the step in her battered leather jacket. She looked like sex on a stick, which was not what Mae needed to calm herself.

‘Evening,’ she said, as if this were nothing. But she knew. She had to know.

Mae’s fingers tightened on the door. ‘Hi,’ she managed. ‘Come in.’

Callie stepped past her, bringing the outside chill and her own familiar scent with her. She glanced around.

‘Your dad out?’ she asked, uber-casually.

‘He’s terrorising the darts board,’ Mae said, shutting the door. ‘Wanna drink?’

In the kitchen, Callie hopped up onto the counter. Her dad would hate that, but Mae couldn’t worry about that right now. She opened several cupboards before she found the glasses.Which was odd, because the glasses had always lived in this cupboard.

‘You all right?’ Callie asked as Mae finally put her hands on some wine glasses.

‘I’m fine,’ she said without looking at Callie.

‘Alright,’ Callie said.

Mae shoved a glass of wine into Callie’s hand a bit more violently than she intended. There was a small slosh overboard.

‘I don’t think you’re fine,’ Callie said, rubbing dribbled wine off her hand. She cocked her head at Mae. ‘We don’t have to…doanything tonight. We can just hang out like always.’

Mae’s face burned. ‘I know.’