aquaburry Considering how much tad stuttered and fumbled over his words, he was much better with his mouth than Gord would have anticipated. Tad was fully dressed, a fact that titillated and frustrated alike. Gord's last article of clothing was slipped from his hips, discarded into the pile of fabric. Tad looked so grateful that Gord felt himself redden, had to look away. Tad kissed his ribs, smoothed bone beneath his lips with a tender precision. His hands were smooth and assured. He'd make an excellent surgeon, Gord mused, as he gripped his knees, opened his thighs. He sucked at the pale junction between thigh and body. Gord shivered at the feeling of his breath upon him. He reached out, stroked tad's hair. His movements stilled as Tad flinched, brief tremble and tenseness flooding his body. Gord hardly had a chance to hate himself as he stroked his nose over the very tip of his length. Gord swallowed, his heart pulsing so obscenely loud even as his mouth remained composed, silenced. Tad's eyes flickered up to him, a silent question met with a faint nod. He swallowed the tip of him. Tad's mouth wasn't the same sort of hot of stove tops and flame. It was the heat of summer days with the top down. Of pool parties and racing to shady spaces. Of pillow forts and secrets passed in folded notes and poor practiced cursive. Tad's lips shifted over his teeth and took him in deeper. His mouth clenched over him, sealing over him. And it was too warm. Too slow. Gord whimpered, color staining the bridge of his nose and the cheekbones he worried weren't prominent enough. He wanted to rip tad's clothes off and fuck him into the mattress. He wanted to run his hands over every inch of him. He wanted Tad to know how desirable he was even though he had so much difficulty saying it, and tad had so much trouble accepting it. But then Tad rolled his tongue over him in that gifted way he had of shutting off all thought and neurosis. And Gord forgot his own name, scrambling instead with tad's in desperate murmured prayers and pleas.
"Are you only with me because you think no one else will love you?"
And at first, Tabitha takes it as a challenge, a threat, an insult, a moment of possession. Because before Gordana, that was the love she received. With caveats. Fine lines to read between. A chain around her neck to drag her back.
So she doesn't answer immediately, feels the hurt wallow around her throat, into the grooves so used to the anxious bubbling of indigestion and heartburn.
"Because," And here, Gordana's eyes fall to her knees. They're dryer than her debutante lifestyle would lead an outsider to suspect, and Tabitha resists the urge to brush her fingers over them, to feel her imperfections, to remind herself of her girlfriend's very humanity. "Because...because you're wrong." Her eyes don't raise. Her voice remains steady. Her index finger trails over the small ring on her middle finger, a trinket purchased with much less flash and circumstance than Gordana deserved, a piece of metal that Tabitha still thought wasn't enough, could never possibly be enough, despite continued tearful assurances that Gordana adored it.
Tabitha shrugs. Her hands hang heavy and impotent. Her legs stick together in a practiced show of modesty and grace, even in the bedroom that was, by all accounts, Gordana's, but really had become theirs. "ours". They'd transitioned into we and us pronouns and Tabitha waited for the day Gordana wished to separate their nouns back into their independent slots.
"You're not unlovable. You're not...you're not hard to love. There are so many people who could...who would love you. As you are, no modifications, no questions, no demands. You are precious and desirable and beautiful and so fucking smart and clever and it hurts to see you lower your standards, compromise all that you could have, just because you don't think you can get anything else in this life." Her breath hitches, light reflecting from her lipstick.
"I don't lower my standards."
"Yes. Yes, you do. You always have." Her eyes finally raise, and it's almost surprising that they're dry, considering how much her voice wobbles. "I love you. I love you so, so much. And maybe it'll sound laughable, when we're older and more mature, when you've moved on to bigger and better things, and I'm still trying to figure out how best to honor my family name--and god, just your very existence already brings so much more to your name than has ever been there before. You are so incredible--but right now, I love you completely."
"I lo-"
"No. Please, you don't have to. I don't...I'm not telling you so you return the favor. I just want you to know that you're worth loving. And you don't need to take the first offer you get, you know? You don't need to-"
"Oh my god, Gordana. Seriously?" Tabitha almost doesn't laugh. She tries so hard to hold it in. But she snorts all the same, crossing the threshold until they're close enough that the hairs on the back of Tabitha's arms prickle from proximity to a warm body. She rests her hands on Gordana's shoulders, leaning in and pressing their foreheads together. "Who gave you the right to be so melodramatic?"
"I'm being serious, though! You're-"
"You realize you're lovable too, right? You're so busy trying to reassure me that I think you've forgotten to look to yourself." Their lips touch until she feels Gordana smile against her. "I love you too, you dink. Not because you're the only one I can have, but because you're the only one I want. Honestly, you silly girl, I don't know what's gotten into you."
Gordana, definitely. It's more of a clutter thing than actual mess, though.
Who feels the most uncomfortable about PDA:
Tabitha, hands down. She thinks people are staring, or that they're going to anger some homophone, or any handful of things. She's also just generally not used to physical affection anyway, so it still is a lot for her to handle, but in a good way. It's a sort of "I'm not used to this" thing that's very very pleasant. But public displays still make her a little uncertain.
Who’s the funniest drunk:
Tabitha's tolerance is so high that she basically can't get drunk, so Gordana wins on default. Of course, Gordana's the sort that you could pull the whole "near beer" prank thing on and she'd "get drunk" without having alcohol in her system, so.
Who texts the most:
Gordana. Social butterfly. Tabitha spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to best convey her tone in print, while Gordana just blurts out any madness that comes into her head without worrying so much about how it'll be interpreted.
Who has the most embarrassing taste in music:
Gordana, because she has no shame. She listens to guilty pleasure songs and feels no guilt about saying "I like this and that's just fine."
That being said, Tabitha might be a bit more into Lady Gaga than she should be, a fact which might be more embarrassing than all of Donna's 90s nostalgia jams put together.
Who reads the most:
Tabitha reads the most in terms of time, but she tends to read the same books over and over and over again, and go back to familiar series and the like. Gordana's more likely to try new books, even if she doesn't read as often. Gordana also reads a lot of magazines.
Who’s better with kids:
They're both good with kids. Tabitha probably likes kids more (Gordana likes babies more, so).
Who’s the one that fixes things around the house:
Neither has to, but if they did, Tabitha actually has the capabilities to.
Who’s got the weirdest hobby:
Hm. I don't know. Gordana has an obsession over horror movies that is a bit odd, but not really weird. Her fashion thing isn't really weird so much as expected, honestly. Tabitha is pretty obsessive about medical research and surgical procedures. Her interest in vinyl records isn't really weird, but a bit odd, I suppose. So probably Tabitha, I guess.
Who cooks and who cleans up:
Tabitha can't cook. Gordana won't clean. So, there you have it.
This took me SO FUCKING LONG to finish and I don't even know why. Procrastinating, i guess. Anyway, so awhile ago I got a request for 1950s Tad/Gord. I swore and swore I wouldn't genderbend them.
So I did anyway. Whoops.
Anyway. So this is likely crawling with inaccuracies, but I'm too exhausted with what was meant to be a little story that I just...I'm done with it for now. SO. We have bad beatnik poet!Gordana and Tabitha and...yeah. Gordana is super excessively pretentious in this, but, I mean, she's kind of super excessively pretentious anyway (I mean, she is a genderflip of Gord, after all). I think I made Tabitha way too flimsy, but ah well. It was fun all the same. I hope some of you enjoy this.
Also, since Tad's genderbent, naturally I had to genderbend the chinless brother as well. it just worked better (brief mention as it is). I think that's everything. Thanks if you're actually reading this. I really appreciate all of you. Yeah. Okay, story now.
The tights had belonged to her older sister, smuggled home during a visit from the asylum. She'd washed the institutional smell from the fabric and pulled them over her own legs, letting them hang from her knees like loose skin that she might some day grow into. The skirt, hopelessly lost in the previous decade of saving for the boys overseas (boys her mother may have wished Tabitha could have been, might have been, had she had the good grace to give birth just ten short years earlier), was her mother's.
The shirt belonged to Tabitha. Her fingers lingered over the buttons, fingers lingering over the buttons, then smoothing the padding of her bust, before finally moving to the swoop of her skirt.
The wig itched her scalp. Its owner she could recall. A distant aunt, perhaps. A deceased grandmother. It had certainly been well worn when she'd retrieved it from the attic chest, before she'd scrubbed away dust and done her best to transform tangles into curls. She'd resorted to hairspray and a copious amount of bobby pins, and a desperation for it to remain atop her head.
She'd overheard one of the autoheads talking about the club. Which, admittedly, wasn't the most reliable of sources—not least of all because of her own eavesdropping. After all, what did the greasers know about culture or poetry or women?
What did Tabitha know about women, though? Aside from her existence as one, which was denied within every reflective surface she passed. Perhaps that made her more distant than the greasers.
Whatever the case, she'd trusted their words enough to seek out the location. It was the third time she'd walked past the grey door.
It was the first time she knocked.
The door snarled as it leaked open, spilling inward. The light of the sun dared not cross the threshold, so why did Tabitha have the audacity to lift one Mary Jane over the divide, then the second.
Ash crunched under her soles. Her toes curled, hands knotting the skirt into twin balls. She forced them to release, as she inhaled deeply. The smell of coffee grounds, cheap gin, and cigarette smoke was almost comforting. Her father, many vices as he had, was not a smoker.
Tabitha, on the other hand, was. And if it smelled so much of cigarettes, that meant she could probably bum one off of someone.
As if she wasn't too terrified to speak to anyone, let alone beg for a smoke.
Her family made enough money that she shouldn't have needed to rely on the generosity of strangers, of the negligence of cans and bottles she could cash in for nickles. She'd long since stopped thinking of her minor inconveniences. It did no good to focus on the pain.
Briefly, she wondered how broken the crowd around her might be, their frames cloaked in black, in smoke and wine and blank versed laughs.
And then she stopped wondering, because there was only so much she could focus on in such a circus of stimuli, and because she had no way to measure any hypothetical pain. She supposed there were likely equations that could predict the amount of shared suffering at any given time. Something with exponents and squares and perhaps irrational numbers to match the irrationality of human pain.
But Tabitha was no mathematician.
Nor, as it turned out, was she a poet.
So what right had she here? The stage, a rickety bundle of boxes and velvet black backdrop, teetered at what Tabitha tentatively called the front of the vaguely triangular room (she couldn't quite calculate the geometry of the space. She was certain the building was appropriately rectangular from the outside), housed a plethora of black turtlenecks and slack-wearing women.
Her own femininity now felt off in an entirely new way, and though it was refreshing to feel as though she was overly girly rather than deprived, she still felt her stomach sour around the baby boulder which always seemed to fill her belly.
At this point, a feeling of ease would probably only make her anxious, ironically enough.
Her eyes scanned the room, skipping over faces for fear of upsetting anyone for lingering too long. She spotted a chair, one leg cracked. It worried her how much she could relate to it, by itself with minimal lighting. It was fitting, she supposed, for her to gravitate to such a seat.
From the stage, a pasty-faced boy droned about communism and sodomy. Her face burned as she teetered onto the seat, glancing upward just long enough to take in his thin lips and the hairs on his face. Just long enough to brush her fingers over her own smooth cheek, desperate to figure out a way to keep it as such.
It was then that she saw her.
Gordana Vendome was a neighborhood beauty queen without a crown, a star who'd yet to find herself on television (though Tabitha doubted the greyscale would suit such a colorful personality). Old Bullworth Vale prided itself on maintaining an air of sophistication, but Gordana was one of the few who actually struck Tabitha as genuinely worthy of the term. She demanded attention, and had done so perhaps not as long as Tabitha could remember, but for at least since the summer Tabitha found herself thrust into the cusps of adolescence.
They'd played together as children, the sorts of make believe fantasies that had certainly engaged Tabitha's memory more than Gordana's, she was certain. Separate schools had broken ties, as she'd gone to boarding school downstate, and Tabitha, of course, had attended the Academy, as her father and his father before him had. She still saw her, though, in the house not too far down the block whenever she came up from school. They'd occasionally make eye contact at weekend parties hosted by their fathers, and Tabitha would both envy her elegant femininity and desire her on her own arm.
Tabitha glanced down at herself, and felt her chest pang with the fear that she'd be recognized before she had a chance to embrace her identity. And then she felt the air rush through her as she realized she certainly wasn't enough of a presence to have made any sort of impression on Gordana to warrant being recognized.
Gordana had stars sewn into her beret. And in a sea of black, she radiated blues and purples. Her lips curled pink as she looked upon Tabitha. They parted and Tabitha died a thousand meaningless lifetimes between her breath and her speech.
In other words, she was way too pretty and way too soft and it was a race between Tabitha's lips and fingertips to see which itched more with the desire to touch her.
She wondered if she'd been in the building long enough for her mind to be soaked in poetry.
That of course wouldn't explain her infatuation outside of the club, but at least this way she could pretend it was something external stealing her coherence, and not her glow. It wasn't so much a walk as it was a waltz, her steps slithering towards Tabitha. She leaned over the table, remaining standing without a broken stool to collect her form. Her elbow pressed against the table, her palm collecting her chin, as she appraised her.
“What's the opposite of stage fright, dear?”
Tabitha leaned in to catch her words as though the room were much louder than it was.
“Stage infatuation? Stage lust?”
She tried to rehearse a response, but Gordana continued, her hands waving through the smoke and words.
“I do not understand how Shakespeare and Eliot could craft words of their own invention so seamlessly, yet I cannot fathom one miserable antonym.” One of her ankles slipped casually behind the other. The button of her blouse parted briefly, before her digits reclaimed it, placing herself back in order. “Honestly! And here I am, about to take the stage, and I cannot even think of a word to describe my absolute adoration for the eyes of the public.”
Narcissism came to mind. Tabitha tried to force herself to find it less endearing and more irritating. She also tried to figure out what Gordana expected her to say, or why she'd approached her seemingly uninitiated. Her heart didn't race. It sputtered, tapping out the stuttering Tabitha's lips couldn't utter.
Not that Gordana gave her opportunity to speak.
“Of course, I cannot be faulted. I'm only a part time poet, dear. A minor part of my personality. But all the same, you'd think I could at least come up with a simple antonym without buckling under the pressure. I...ah, it seems that's my cue. Do excuse me, if you please! I shall of course rejoin you momentarily.”
She robbed the pale boy of the stage before he'd even properly stepped down. Her nails glittered on the microphone, the stars dancing on her hat. She smiled, and Tabitha could feel the crowd smile back at her. She forced her own lips to remain flat, even as she gazed upward.
Gordana spoke of longing, of love, of passion, of hope.
And it was utterly inadequate. These weren't the words of a scribe or a bard. These were of a clumsy teenage girl, a woman who's voice was sure and pleasant and right, but ungainly and without craftsmanship.
Gordana recited her poems with pride, and her adoration for the words she'd birthed couldn't have been purer even if they had been properly beauteous. Tabitha couldn't even bring herself to be embarrassed by the spectacle. Failure became her, draped itself around Gordana's poised shoulders until even that seemed fashionable and adorable.
To their credit, nobody booed. There was no outrage or horror. The smiles were polite, the sort of polite Tabitha was well aware of at country clubs and wine tastings, the sort that hid condescension and sarcasm until a back was turned. A few of the more intoxicated sort even appeared to find genuine talent within her words, or at least took the time to leer approvingly in her general direction.
Tabitha clapped until the skin in her hands stung. And she watched the color rise on Gordana's cheeks, the smile which indicated self-pride, self-assurance, an unshakable belief that the words she'd spoken had been true and touching and worthy of the stage.
And honestly, she'd spoken them so sweetly that Tabitha was prone to believe the same. After all, she was no poet herself (part time or otherwise).
Gordana once more gravitated to Tabitha's table, tucking herself there and stealing a seat of her own. She didn't ask how her poem had been or demand adulation. She didn't speak of antonyms or Shakespeare or try to fit her words into a contrived rhyme scheme.
She talked about Elise Cowen and Diane di Prima and whispered about the milliseconds before the bullet devoured Joan Vollmer. Her hands soared as she waved a tapestry of women and inspirations who Tabitha had never heard of, and probably wouldn't remember after this, but tonight, everything mattered. Tabitha felt her own self grow more relevant just by virtue of containing such syllables within her ears for the moment. Her fingers had stopped tapping, her feet stilled against the ground which was more cigarette butt than carpet.
“But they won't be remembered for their writing or their thoughts or their personal tragedies—well, perhaps the latter, as an afterthought—but by their place beside their husbands or the important men in their lives. I mean, if any of these men will be remembered as important in the first place. Who knows, really? And I don't want that. I don't want to be a muse. I want to be a legacy on my own, you know?”
“Well,” Tabitha said softly, and she realized it was the first moment she'd actually opened her mouth since approached by her. She tried to will her voice into an elegant lilt, but instead it creaked within the confines of her throat, “I guess that means you should marry an unremarkable man then.”
Gordana laughed, a husky, joyous sound which made Tabitha smile without even realizing what there was to find amusing. “I don't think I'll have to worry about marrying any men, god help me.” She leaned in a little closer, her hand resting against Tabitha's kneecap. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Anything, darling, anything! What about you? Your interests, your hopes, your dreams, your desires, your filthy secrets, why you can't seem to take your eyes off me, so on and so forth.”
“I...oh!” Tabitha averted her eyes. She hoped the dim lighting would disguise her blush, though apparently it had been enough to betray her gaze. “I'm sorry.”
“Why? I'm gorgeous. Why wouldn't you look?” Tabitha glanced back at her just quickly enough to catch Gordana winking. “Oh. My name's Gordana, by the way.”
She resisted the urge to tell her she knew. “Tabitha,” She mumbled. “I mean, I'm Tabitha. It's nice to meet you.”
“Oh, darling, the pleasure, I assure you, is all mine.”
It was the sort of cliché that Gordana might have shamelessly shoved into one of her poems. And Tabitha blushed all the further for it. “I doubt that very much.”
“Why? Have I struck you as a liar?”
It wasn't the way a sixteen year old should have spoke, but it struck Tabitha as more of an affect to sound mature rather than Gordana actually being mature. Each character flaw and quirk only drew her closer, made her want to wind an arm around her and pull her into the sunlight and fresh air, to undo her with kisses that Tabitha knew better to let grow further even within her own fantasies.
“No.”
“Then why the doubt?”
“No one would be pleased to talk to me. I'm completely ordinary.”
Gordana leaned in closer, tucking a strand of hair behind Tabitha's ear. If she knew it wasn't real, she didn't betray the fact in her mannerisms or voice. “Look around, sweetie. You're the most extraordinary one here.”
Tabitha scoffed, then regretted it for fear she'd take it as rude.
“I'm serious! You have an absolutely classic look to you.”
“You mean my clothes are out of style.”
“Well...yes, there is that. It's cute, though.” Gordana's voice hesitated for a moment. “Or, well, you're cute, and the clothes are more of an unfortunate afterthought.”
“I guess I should have bought a turtleneck then.”
“Oh, goodness, no. Beatnik culture is fun to play around in for awhile, but the fashion itself is almost inconceivably atrocious!”
“Play around?”
“Well, didn't I tell you I'm only a part time poet, dear? Not least of all because I'm still in school, juvenile of course as it is. I just have too many passions to settle for just one, being a thoroughly modern woman in these painfully restrictive times.”
“What?”
“Oh, just something some of my more liberated colleagues like to say. I'm paraphrasing, of course. I'm certainly not a part time intellectual. It just bogs down the mind, you understand? No, I prefer the aesthetics. Art. Poetry. Dance. Fashion...oh, I could go on for days!”
She didn't take days, but her words ate up the hours. Tabitha allowed herself a few sentences here and there, where Gordana obviously expected her to contribute, but she was more content to listen. To take in her demeanor, the pompous tone which would occasionally break as she'd gush more genuinely. Even Tabitha couldn't deny the fact that she was flirting, brushing her fingers over her wrists, leaning in close and not-quite batting her eyelashes.
It felt nice, to be flirted with.
It felt nicer still to be flirted with by Gordana.
The club began to splay its patrons onto the sidewalks outside, and Gordana grabbed Tabitha's wrist, pulling her to a back alley. Tabitha waited for the moonlight to betray her identity, for Gordana to recognize her as some sort of fraud at the very least, or as the companion she'd played with occasionally in her youth. Neither came to pass, as instead they shared a cigarette. Tabitha could taste Gordana's lipstick as she took a puff.
And then tasted it more thoroughly as she leaned in, brushing her mouth so faintly that for a moment Tabitha thought it was the smoke itself.
“I'm going to write about you,” She'd promised after scribbling her number into Tabitha's wrist (and telling her to call between four and six, to avoid reaching her daddy, as she'd put it). And she'd left her there, in the fog of their shared nicotine.
Tabitha had gone home, pulled off her wig and let the oversized tights pool at her ankles. She washed away makeup and donned pajamas before she looked at the seven digits in her skin. Her finger lovingly caressed the curly handwriting.
Then grabbed a bar of soap and wiped it away, burying herself beneath the covers and trying to unlearn the buzzing Gordana's lips had fused to hers.
She wouldn't go back to the club again. She wouldn't try to recall what she'd written. She even tried to forget the poetry which had been so objectively bad, but Tabitha had so subjectively and unintentionally loved.
It was easy to lose one's thoughts at the social functions her class dictated. Her mother had chosen the suit, and had called her handsome, and then assured her that the bruising around her eye which her father had so graciously gifted was hardly noticeable.
To be honest, Tabitha was so used to such acts that she hardly noticed herself.
Or noticed anything else, drifting between polite conversations and mild outraged complaints which had little to nothing to do with her. She smiled and let her voice sink into basser tones, and tried to pretend it was all a stage production rather than any semblance of reality.
Her heart wouldn't break for something as trivial as a party.
The smell caught her before the words, the lilac scent which had been overwhelmed in all the smoke, but cut cleanly through the outdoor party. It matched seamlessly with the bright tones of her voice.
“Your poem is almost done.”
Tabitha jerked against all three pieces of her suit. And though there was no dark makeup around her eyes, she felt just as clownish as she had in the smoke of the club.
“What?” She said and hoped the squeak in her voice wouldn't give her away.
“Your poem is almost done.”
Gordana had no stars today, but her hair glowed under lightbulb wattage. Her hand melted into the small of Tabitha's back. “I'm afraid it isn't as dazzling as you, though.” She pouted, “Even if you never called me as you'd promised.”
A picture's worth of words cycloned through her head, but all Tabitha could manage were three pitiful letters.
“How?”
“How does it fail to dazzle? I only possess so much vocabulary, and you hold an infinity of beauty.” She stopped and cringed, the bridge of her nose creased. “That was stupidly pretentious. Some things just sound better in verse, on the written page.”
“I mean, how'd you...you think I'm beautiful?”
“I'd give you some pretty simile on the subject, but obviously I'm not prepared for that. So yes, darling, yes. You are. I feel like I shouldn't stare too long lest I have my sight robbed for the audacity of gazing upon such—wow. I am super pretentious when I'm nervous, aren't I? Even more so than usual.” She wanted to stop and ask what Gordana could possibly be nervous about. How couldn't with such poise ever worry about anything?
Tabitha swallowed her inquiries, though, and her flattery, and mumbled. “How'd you know who I was?”
“Oh! That was what you were howing.” Her smile hung crookedly from her lips. “Did you forget that I'm a poet, dear? Your details are very clear to me.”
“A part time poet.”
“Well, yes, part time, but all the same. I wouldn't forget your adjectives. Besides, you've been my neighbor for ages and, frankly darling, you're not particularly subtle.”
“Oh.”
“Don't be so glum! You're memorable. Most people would find such an honor flattering.”
“Well, you can already see I'm not most people. I'm such a fool. I thought you...” Tabitha's throat swelled in the sort of dangerous way that she couldn't allow in private, let alone in such a public venue. She struggled to swallow it down, nursing a glass of water and hoping the water would either slither down her esophagus or drown her then and there.
“What?”
“I thought you...you made it seem like you thought I was beautiful, and for a moment, I guess I thought you...that we...”
“Yes?”
“Forget it.”
“As a poet, I cannot simply forg--”
“Please? Please just forget...forget everything. Okay? I'm so stupid. I can't believe I--”
She silenced her with fingertips, pressing them to Tabitha's lips until she tasted her pulse. Gordana leaned forward, until their foreheads pressed and her features blurred into abstracts. She lowered her finger, settling it against Tabitha's shoulder. “You are beautiful. Your outfit is horrendously tacky, but that's alright. I'm a part time stylist in addition to being a part time poet, and I'd be happy to assist my muse and girlfriend in any fashion she may desire.”
“Girlfriend?” Tabitha couldn't determine the emotion in her own voice, but she thought perhaps it must be joy. She looked away from the kaleidoscope that contained the colors of Gordana's skin, staring at the shoes that could have been twins to her father's. “Part time girlfriend, I suppose?”
“Oh, darling, I could never deprive myself of your company by only seeing you partially. I do hope you don't intend on shutting me out before we've even started.” Gordana pulled back, until her face sharpened into focus once more. “I mean, of course, only if you want to.”
The night before graduation, Tabitha lingered at the edge of Gordana's bed, pulling her shirt back over her head, as her girlfriend swooped her hair back into place with swift, confident motions of her fingertips.
"Spoiler alert: Ted and Mandy'll be broken up by the end of the night," Gordana mused into the back of Tabitha's neck, kissing at the top of her vertebrae until she earned a giggle.
"Spoiler alert," Tabitha corrected, "They'll be broken up before the final diploma is handed out."
"Ooh. Scandalous. Spoiler alert: somebody is going to wear the same dress as Barbie and she's going to demand her head on a platter."
"Spoiler alert: I'm going to wear the same dress as Barbie."
"You're not!"
"No. I'm not." She turned around, catching the tip of Gordana's nose with her lips. "I'd wear it so much better though."
"Oh, truly. Though the Rough and Rich line doesn't quite suit you."
"Was that a pun?"
"Hm?"
"Suit you."
"Wha--Oh. Because suit, as in clothing, and we're talking about-"
"Mhm."
"If you think it's funny, then yes, it was a pun, darling! If not, then of course it was completely and totally unintentional."
"Spoiler alert: You're adorable."
"Plot twist: You're looking in a mirror, and you're the actual adorable one."
Tabitha pushed Gordana back onto the bed, hip to hip, chest to chest, fingertips winding like ivy. They'd always had a way of growing inwards. "Is it a spoiler that I love you?"
"Well, they advertise that right in the trailer, dear, so there's no harm in saying it without warning."
