Milk is a divey dark place that smells of forbidden cigarette smoke, and the Chemical Brothers play loudly on the jukebox, kicking up my pulse, reminding me of a million similar nights on the hunt, and compelling my gaze to seek out the dimly lit curves of strange new women. Neon, and darkness, and scuffed barstools. Totally my kind of place.

I pay my cover and follow Alice to the very back, where a group of women is sitting around a table. “Hey, guys.” Alice says. “Guys, this is Darah. These crazy bitches are Dana, Tonya, Jenny, and Shane.”

Huh?

Is that Dana Fairbanks? She introduced her as Dana. Hmm. Well, she is gay. She’s pretty, prettier than on TV.

Wait a minute, did she say Shane?

“Hey,” I say to all of them, making eye contact briefly. Yep, it is Shane.

Dana is much more femme than in her Subaru ads, Tonya has this Felicity hair thing going, Jenny is this elfin little ultra-femme Snow White type, and Shane...

Oh, now, this is interesting.

Sure enough, Shane’s sitting there looking perfectly beautiful in the dim light, hair cut a bit shorter than it was two weeks ago, still gorgeously messy around her face. She looks a bit shocked; I don’t know why, and there is a beguiling softness in her big brown eyes.

Desire out and out bitch slaps me. I want to taste her, right here and now.

Instead I smile at everyone and no one in particular. “Hey. How are y’all?”

They are polite, regarding me with interest. “Hello,“ Jenny says. “Hey,“ Shane says softly and the sound of it is sweet. Dana Fairbanks is glaring at me, and I’m not sure why. I clearly recognized her, even though I didn’t say anything, but she should be used to that by now, right?

I get the vibe that they’re a close knit group, and probably wondering if I’m Alice’s love interest. I turn away, give Shane my killer smile. “How’ve you been?”

“Good,” she says, and her smile is no longer that shit-eating grin, but softer, sort of sweet but uncomfortable. She doesn’t seem to want to stop looking at me.

“Small world. You look great.” I turn to face the others. “Hey, what are you all drinking? This round’s on me.”

I repeat their orders and disappear toward the bar. I manage to get four longnecks in one hand, two mixed drinks in the other. I throw some cash on the bar, turn around, and there’s Shane. Her white shirt is very bright in the black light.

“Hey. Let me help you.” She seems to have recovered some of her composure.

“Sure.” She carefully takes the two glasses from my hands, her warm fingers inadvertently soothing the cold slick bite of condensation on my fingers. “Thank you.”

“So, you and Al?”

“Huh? Oh, no, just friends. I hope she doesn’t think-”

“She doesn’t. Says you have a good friend vibe.”

“Good,” I say with relief.

“That means I can come home with you.” She gives me a full-throttle smile that, when coupled with her past behavior, and the look she had when I just strolled in here, is mildly perplexing.

I shift three of the bottles to one hand, and sip my beer from the other. I swallow and lick my lips, tilt my head, take in her lush mouth, was she this beautiful before?

“You can come home with me any night you like, you doofus.”

We return to the table and I know from the way that they look at us that they’ve been talking about us. Dana seems, for some reason, less wary of me.

“I cant believe,” Alice says “she’s already on the board.”

“Shane, you’re a slut!” Dana says with no real malice. She seems a bit buzzed, and she‘s kind of leaning drunkenly onto Tonya.

“What board?” I ask, handing Jenny her beer.

They all turn and look at me. It gets quiet. Shit, have I made some faux pas?

Everyone looks sheepish but Shane, who rolls her eyes and takes a swig of her beer. “Al has this dry erase board with this chart of every lesbian in LA and who has slept with who.” She sits gracefully, pulls one knee up to her chin, leaning back, resting an arm on her knee, elegant like the creation of Adam, but with a Heineken.

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”

“And we all know who’s the crusty little hub at the center.” Dana quips, glancing at Shane. There’s some weird subtext going on there, but I don’t get it. Her anger appears to be directed at Alice, not Shane. She is glaring daggers at Alice.

“Anyway,” Al says pointedly. “What are you guys up to tonight?”

I sip my beer and watch the group dynamics. Dana and Tonya are totally grafted together, clearly a Couple post-merge, with matching halter tops and hairdos. Tonya talks over her and speaks for her. Dana, despite her fame and money, is quite obviously the bitch in that relationship. Jenny sits somewhat shyly, cupping her beer with two hands, observing with big lucid blue green eyes, though I don’t get the impression that she’s shy exactly. She has long jet-black hair. She’s very sexy. Too femme for me, though. She has an interstitial, unfinished quality that I can’t quite put my finger on. I might have been intrigued by her when I was younger.

Tonya launches into a story about someone and I watch Alice as she tells it. Alice has an open look of disgust on her face, her big black earrings swinging every time she moves her head.

Wow. There is a total love triangle going on here.

Tonya reaches the punch line of her little joke, gesturing dramatically, tan face composed with the utmost seriousness, and nobody really reacts, except Dana, who giggles energetically, and Jenny who smiles politely.

“So, Darah, what do you do for a living?” Jenny asks.

“I’m an ER nurse.”

“Wow. I bet you have a lot of good stories,” she smiles.

“Yeah, a few. It isn’t always interesting though. What do you do?”

“I’m a writer. Slash waitress.”

“Good for you.”

“Thanks. Could I, um, ask you some questions sometime, maybe? Because I’m writing this story...”

“Sure. Any time.”

“Yeah? Okay. How about lunch on Sunday?”

“Um… sure.”

“Great.” I give her my phone number.

“That’s cool,” Shane says. I’m not really sure how to interpret that. She doesn’t seem to think that Jenny was hitting on me, or me on her. Not that she should care even if it were true. I can only conclude that her comment should just be taken at face value - she thinks it’s cool that I’m helping Jenny.

Despite the fact that I’ve just bought a round, Tonya flags down a waitress and loudly orders a round of tequila shots. I push mine to the side and sip my beer. “Aren’t you gonna drink,” Tonya asks.

“Not just yet,” I say. This chick is already getting on my nerves. I slowly nurse my beer, and when Tonya isn’t looking, slide my shot over to Shane. She grins at me, then downs it.

.

Shane stumbles up my front steps. I pull her close, enjoying the taut warm curve of her waist. “Come here, hottie. You’re plowed; you’re gonna fall.”

She gives me a fuzzy smile and I wonder if she’s been using drugs other than alcohol tonight.

She stumbles in after me and pushes me against the door. She grins dopily, hand moving under my top without hesitation. Jeez, this chick doesn’t really have much of a sexual reperatoire, but tonight I happen to feel like being fucked up against the door, all night I’ve been so hungry for her lips and eyes and legs, so it’s good. I pull her head to me and hungrily kiss her, tongue moving heavily, her lush lips feeling so good. I could kiss her forever, if she let me, which she never would. She removes my shirt, undoes my jeans. My fingers fumble on her shirt, undoing buttons, parting the cloth to reveal creamy hot skin.

I run my thumbs over her nipples, run my hands down to her waist, and up, faintly feeling the bones beneath her flesh. I move to push the shirt from her shoulders, but she impatiently reaches for my jeans, pushing them down. We stumble over my clothes and lie down on the couch. I watch her follow me there. Her body is beautiful, her parted shirt heightening the shadows in the hollow under her breast, long thin legs, jeans still on, slung low along her slim curving hips.

I press my fingers at the juncture of her legs, feel the warm moisture under the denim. I undo the button and zipper, pull her close to me, arms around her, pressing my face into the skin revealed as the fabric peels away. She has a tiny scar above her hip, I note, crescent shaped, non-surgical. She shudders when I graze my lips over her side, and the feeling of her shaking under my fingers rockets lust through me, causing me to pull her closer.

She seems to have a rule that I must come first. As much as I enjoy the tease of her slow undressing and the skin it reveals, she pushes me down. She hovers above me, fucking with her fingers. I instantly lose the ability to object. She fucks me like a man, and it is sexy and masterful and it makes me wonder for a minute if this is how straight women get off. Her fingers are amazingly nimble, thrusting and rubbing at once, and seeing her face above me, concentrating, is suddenly so hot. Her eyes meet mine, and then she grins, and closes her expressive eyes, moving faster and faster.

I come hard and hot, frustrated and bewitched by this woman who can fuck me so boldly but be threatened by mere eye contact. In that sweet, wet spasming second, however, with my clit throbbing and pleasure blooming beyond my eyes, I have no complaints.

When I open my eyes again, her gaze is riveted on me. For someone who doesn’t want to be seen, she seems to crave my reaction. Now that I’ve been rendered into a useless, babbling heap of molten flesh, she seems less shy about losing her clothes and getting off. I don’t know why, because her body is beautiful, and she doesn’t seem burdened with the hang-ups women often have. She is the shit and she knows it. I can only conclude that her lack of desire to be naked is related to intimacy and not body insecurity. Not that I can conclude much in my state of mind.

I can’t complain, because she kisses me ravenously. Tastes like beer and gin. God, something about the feel of her skin, the slight weight of her body on mine, the insistent needy press of her hips. I press my fingers into her, and she rides me like that. I’m nowhere near as dexterous as she is but she comes quickly, her face beautiful, as if in pain, gorgeous, something about the vulnerability of orgasm making her look inexplicably and uncharacteristically feminine, and watching her come has the opposite effect of being fucked by her - it makes me feel restless and edgy and a bit violent inside, and I want her more than ever.

She collapses against me for a second, and I move my arm as if to hold her, but I change my mind at the last minute. I don’t know why. Maybe because the fleeting second of her spent weight on me is so sweet that I don’t want to ruin it.

I settle for sinking my hand into her messy hair. “Hmm,” I mumble. Soft, underneath my fingers.

“Hey,” she says. “This time I really do have a thing. I have to be at work early.”

I actually believe her, because it’s Saturday. But she’s got to still have at least a point O-nine blood alcohol, and likely more than that, possibly even a 0.15.

“Okay. But you’re in no state to drive. I’ll drive you or you can just crash here.”

She looks up at me, angry. “I’m fine.”

“No,” I say, scooping her keys from where she dropped them near the door. “You were staggering in. You can crash with me, or there’s a guest room upstairs, or on the couch. Or I’ll drive you home. But I’m not giving these keys to you.”

“Fuck!” She yells, looking around at her clothes, but she must know I’m right, because she doesn’t say anything else. I just turn my back on her and go to bed.

I set her keys on my nightstand with a metallic jingle, crawl under the covers, feeling dirty from the smoke and sin of the bar, yet cleansed from sex, and very wet inside. The linen haven of my bed feels cool and good on my flushed face, and I listen for quiet sounds beyond my own breath. Is she going to storm out? Come up and sleep next to me? Crash downstairs? I don’t hear anything, so I conclude the latter. I close my eyes, and sleep.

It’s bright out. Like six or seven a.m.. I close my eyes against the light and remember the night before, Milk, and Shane, and... her keys are still on my nightstand. What woke me up?

I feel warm pressure of a body pressing against mine, and smile. To be honest the last thing I want to be doing is fucking, but she crawls behind me into my bed and she’s touching me and the heat rises and quickly and lingers. She touches my jaw with one hand, forcing me to look back toward her, kisses me roughly, and there is no way I could deny her.

And then, she reaches further, past me, and snags the keys lying on the nightstand, roughly nibbling my earlobe. And she stands up abruptly, leaving me wanting her body, back with mine on the bed.

I blink and roll over. She grins, dressed and ready to go, fresh as can be, apparently untouched by the heat she’s engendered in me. “I gotta go.”

I don't bother to hide my frustration. “Oh, that’s cute. Punish me, why don’t you.”

She just grins, and she is so beautiful that I can almost forgive her. “Bye,” she says.

“Nice!" I yell at her retreating back. "Sometime I’ll tell you graphic stories all about the condition of patients in car accidents, and how they’re missing faces and heads and limbs and stuff!”

She turns and looks at me from the doorway, still smiling, but a look flickers behind her eyes, something dark, and I know I’ve called it correctly. She is being a tease.

Unfortunately I’m most vulnerable to her, and my body is screaming for release.

“I’ll call you.”

“Whatever. Lock the door on your way out.” I have already moved to finish myself off with my fingers. I come as I hear the door shut, hear her testing to make sure it’s locked.

Fucking Shane, I grumble to myself as I come down from my orgasm, back into sleep.