Diva
Two
WE LEFT THE GALA a little after nine and the limo drove us to an over-eighteen club near the University of Washington. The music was good with a popular local DJ spinning the tunes. No alcohol was served so the club could handle underage partiers. All the way there, Melody and I were trying to reach Lissa to see how the kids were doing and if we were needed. I was pretty much ready to ditch everyone and just catch a cab to the hospital. It was driving me crazy, not knowing what was going on.
“Maybe we should just go over there,” I said to Melody. “God, I hate not knowing how Damon and Drew are or what’s wrong. Why did they have to take them to the emergency room?”
“Oh, lighten up, Tony,” Bree broke in. “We’re supposed to be partying. They’re not your kids, after all.”
“You’re really a bitch, you know, Bree?” I shot back at her. “I’m not interested in listening to you put down the people I love. Shape up your attitude or go home.”
“Listen, you little prick. I’ve been playing the game and waiting my turn. If you’re not interested in me, maybe I should tell the athletic director a little more about your lifestyle and parties. I’m sure he’ll be interested in the new talent’s ability to represent SCU.”
“Listen to yourself, Bree! Jesus. The man is your father. He’s the athletic director, not your pimp.” That earned me a slap across the face, and it stung.
“Bree!” Sonia yelled. She grabbed her friend by the arm and dragged her away from me mouthing something at me over her head that I couldn’t understand. At least she was gone. My face hurt.
“Really, Dude?” Thor said to me. Shit. Was he going to get on my case now, too? “That was awesome. Somebody’s needed to take her down a peg for a long time. Welcome to SCU.”
“Thanks, I think,” I said. Melody reached up and kissed my cheek.
“I’m not doing anything tonight to ruin our night with friends,” Melody whispered. “But next time I’m alone with her, I’m going to kick her freckled ass into the next county.”
“I’m not justifying her or anything,” Thor said, “but I think she might be on something. She’s not acting normal, even for Bree. She’s a pushy slut, but she’s not usually that crass. Something must have set her off.”
“She’s just realized what different worlds we live in,” Amy offered. “Aside from her being hot for Tony, we’re probably as much to blame as her about polarizing things. She’s an athlete and we’re artists. This was the first time she saw what Tony’s art world really looks like. Sunday it was just a guy partying with a bunch of naked girls. She’s trying to get him back there.”
“Wow! Are you studying psychology, Amy?” I laughed. It was good to have friends around me, especially when I was feeling bad about causing a scene. I knew she didn’t mean anything.
“You need to add a ‘u-s’ in that word and then you’ve got it right.” I wasn’t getting it and looked at her strangely, I guess. “Pussychology,” Amy laughed. “I’m making a career of analyzing as many of them as I can.”
We all laughed and I was thankful that Amy was there and that we were mostly all friends. We were finally at the head of the line to get in and Sonia and Bree returned to stand opposite Thor from us. Bree refused to look in our direction, but her mascara had run and there was a black streak on her cheek. I gave Melody a squeeze, took a deep breath, and walked over to Bree.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you, Bree,” I said. “I can’t blame you for not understanding a weird situation.” I reached up with my handkerchief and wiped the smudge off her face. She looked at me and her lower lip started to quiver, but she kept the tears back. “Friends?”
“Thank you,” she said softly. She reached up and patted my cheek where she’d hit me. “Sorry I can’t wipe that off.”
Well, that was as good as it was going to get for tonight. We got into the club, got sodas, and danced. I could see that we weren’t really an integrated group any more. Amy joined Bree, Sonia, and Thor on the dance floor and the four seemed to trade partners regularly if partners were called for. Most of the time, it was just everyone dancing together. Amy was working hard at comforting Bree. Hmmm. Was Sonia intentionally trying to get between them?
Melody, Allison, Kate, and Sandra were with me. Kate looked like she was in heaven when she was dancing with Melody or with me. In fact, neither Melody nor I missed exactly how heavenly she looked. There might have been just a little more touching and brushing against each other than the dances called for. But she looked like she was near heaven even when she danced with Sandra and Allison. It was nice to see her having fun.
Melody and I checked our phones every few minutes for messages. Between the pounding bass of the music and the crowd noise in the room, it would be impossible to either hear our phones or feel them vibrate. At midnight, we called an end to our little prom and asked our limo driver to take us the long way home, whatever that was. We had an hour left on the rental and were determined to use it all.
It was bittersweet. My freshman year was over. Classmates that I’d met just nine months ago were now my lover and friends. I had another lover sitting with her ex-husband and two kids in a hospital. A cute student from Kansas had become a close friend. Two cheerleaders and a Norse god were friends from a new school. It was hard to remember why I’d been so depressed just a few weeks ago.
Sonia would be returning home to LA. Her plan was to spend the summer in the surf as she had done for the past several years. Thor was planning to visit his parents and then join Sonia. We were, of course, all invited to come down to visit.
Bree was staying put. She’d sobered up and was quiet in the car, but said she usually helped her dad during the summer when he went out to recruit athletes who had not yet committed. Most of it would be in the Northwest because SCU simply wasn’t big enough to draw athletes from further away. Being a Division III school wasn’t much to brag about, but the program was growing and she was determined to do her part.
“And no, I don’t recruit athletes by fucking them,” Bree said. “We just talk and, if they come to visit, then they know someone who will show them around. I’m not always a slut.” Melody was still pretty pissed at her, but even she tried to be enthusiastic about Bree’s job.
“I’m going back across the mountains after next weekend to fend off the breeders for the summer. I’ll be… oh god, you just wouldn’t believe what I do in the summer,” Amy said.
“Come on, Amy,” I encouraged. “Fess up. I bet you paint houses.”
“That would be a great job!” Amy said enthusiastically. “Especially compared to what I really do.” She waited for us to egg her on a little more and then continued. “All right, I live in a resort community in the mountains. Everything has a Bavarian theme. I mean everything. At the local drive-in, you can order schnitzel. I know, because I work there.”
“Do you cook or wait tables?” Sandra asked.
“God, this is so embarrassing. It’s a drive-in. An old fashioned one. I dress in a cute little Bavarian maiden outfit and roller skate to people’s cars to take their orders. When things are slow, we do trick skating in the parking lot. That usually brings people in.”
“Wait. You do roller skating tricks in a little Swiss Miss costume for the summer?” Melody howled. “You know if you’d have pulled that on me last fall you might have gotten lucky!”
“Well, it’s never too late to try. You know, Tony, just because I won’t do you doesn’t mean we couldn’t double-team the little brat,” Amy said.
“I don’t know, Amy,” I said. “The very thought of you in that little short skirt and skates just makes me want to yodel.”
When asked, Sandra said that she was going to spend her summer being the chauffeur to her five little brothers and sisters and try to give her mother a break. She was the oldest by five years, then the rest all came fast and furious. All five were between 10 and 14 years old with one set of twins.
Allison would go with Lissa and me to Chicago Sunday night and watch National Singles and then head back to Kansas for her summer job as entertainment director at a YMCA camp.
“Kate, where will you spend the summer?” Melody asked.
“Oh, I’ll be around. I’ve got a job as a docent at the Art Museum. Mostly, I’ll be giving groups of kids, about Damon’s age, tours of the children’s collection. I think it’ll be fun,” Kate said. “Or I’ll be dead. I’m not sure which.”
“Okay. What about you guys?” Sonia asked. “Planning a summer full of art and naked slumber parties?”
“You guys all have the wrong idea,” Melody said. “We really aren’t that wild.”
“We were there, you know,” Allison said.
“And exactly how big an orgy did we have?” I asked.
“Well, we didn’t actually do anything,” Kate agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we weren’t thinking about it.”
“Kate!” Sandra exclaimed. “My, the girl has come out of her shell!”
“I’m flying out to Chicago to join Allison, Lissa and Tony as soon as my last final is done on Thursday,” Melody said. “Then I’ll sit with Saul and Deborah and my parents to watch my boyfriend win a national championship. I can’t wait to meet them in person, Tony. And it will be so weird to have my parents meeting your parents.”
“We’ll spend the weekend in Chicago,” I continued. “Then Melody has to go home to Boston for a while and Lissa will have to get back here to work and take care of the boys. I’ll go back to Nebraska for a while and then I’m coming back out here so I can start helping Lissa get ready for Opens. As soon as Melody gets back we’ll all be together again.”
The limo pulled up in front of Bree’s house and the three SCU students got out. Well, we all got out, because you can’t just say goodbye without hugs and kisses. Bree’s kiss was a little tentative and less aggressive, but she did hug me pretty fiercely. She hugged Melody, too, and said something to her that I couldn’t hear. I glanced at Thor in time to see Amy go into a lip lock with him, so I used that opportunity to plant a good one on Sonia. She giggled.
“I hope you’ll be seeing more of us in the fall,” she said, and laughed as she got swept up in an even more passionate kiss by Amy.
We piled back into the limo and took the next three back to the dorm. Sandra came at me for a big open-mouthed kiss, but I stopped her and used my fingers to close her mouth.
“Kissing is about the lips,” I said as I leaned in and caressed her lips with mine, then brushed my tongue against them. I gave her a squeeze and backed away. She didn’t move, but just stayed there with her face upturned and a look of bliss. Melody used the opportunity to kiss her just as sweetly. We could see her chest heaving in deep breaths and her huge nipples straining at the fabric of her gown, bra be damned.
“Why didn’t anybody ever tell me that before,” she said dreamily.
Allison hugged her new friends and I hugged Amy and gave her a little kiss that she accepted as one good friend to another. Melody wasn’t so demure, however. She gave Amy the works.
“Holy shit,” Amy gasped. “What finally came over you?”
“I just had this image of you on skates in that little skirt and peasant blouse,” Melody laughed. “It was just so hot.”
Melody and I stood in front of Kate while Allison was hugging Sandra and Amy and suggesting that they come to Kansas for a visit. We closed in on her at the same time and kissed her cheeks. Kate smiled and turned to Melody. She kissed her tenderly, then turned to me and did the same thing. She sighed.
“I wish Lissa were here,” she said softly. “That would be just right. I hope I’ll see you guys later this summer. Call me?”
“Oh yeah,” Melody said. “This is from Lissa.” We both moved in on Kate with what had become practiced precision in three-way kissing. Kate could hardly kiss us back, she was grinning so hard.
“Wow! That girl can really kiss, can’t she?” Kate giggled.
We promised we would call her as soon as we were back in town. Everyone verified that we had everyone else’s phone numbers in our contacts and the last three of us returned to the limo.
I sat between Melody and Allison and they snuggled up to me on either side. It was pleasant having the two there, but it just wasn’t… right. Allison was sweet, but she wasn’t Lissa.
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