Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5

Episode Five:

Moving On

Thanksgiving Day was always a special time at Rhonda’s. A lot of people on B Street weren’t as lucky as Jerry and Chad, and their families didn’t want them home for the holidays. Even more people could go home but didn’t really want to because families sometimes tried, but few made it to true unified acceptance of the gay in the family. So Rhonda’s served a Thanksgiving feast and set it out buffet style, and the only thing people had to pay for were their drinks. Stella said it was her way of giving back to the community, but Frances wondered how Stella could possibly feel like she had any debts at all on B Street. To hear everyone talk, and even from what little she’d seen since she’d been there, Stella was always helping someone. When Frances had said just in passing that she needed to find a part time job Stella had given her one on the spot.

Stella and Toni had just gotten back from their cruise and even Toni was here now which was apparently a big deal because she’d never come before.

            Tammy had gone home for the holiday. She’d invited Frances to go with her, but Francis didn’t want to go. If she went she’d feel obliged to go visit her family and she didn’t want to see them. She wouldn’t mind seeing Tammy’s parents, but she didn’t want to see her own. Didn’t want to be reminded that they didn’t do anything as “gauche” as sit down to a Thanksgiving Day dinner unless they could do it at some rich friend’s house and find an excuse to leave the kids at home alone or at a sitter. She wasn’t close to her brother, who was four years older than her, and she never had been. In fact he was a big prick who she hadn’t seen since he went off to college, and now she found herself also finding excuses not to go “home.” She wondered if one day they might not be close and sit down and talk about living in a house where you were nothing but status symbol children born so that their parents could keep up with the Joneses. A big house in the suburbs, a boat, a time share, two cars, two kids, and two high pressure jobs with busy social lives that fulfilled their every need so that they didn’t really need each other or the kids.

            It was no small wonder she and Steve weren’t close. Where would they have learned how to care about anyone? They’d been trained to be self centered because if they didn’t take care of themselves, who would?

            Everyone she’d ever known seemed to spend most of their youth trying to get over the crap their parents did to them when they were kids.

            Right now these people she’d only known for three months seemed more like family than her biological one, and she couldn’t see herself going home any time soon. Besides, she’d started working three nights a week at Rhonda’s, and they’d needed her help to get the Thanksgiving meal cooked and out.

            Not that she could actually cook, but she was all over the cutting stuff up.

            Now they were all seated, stuffing their faces, enjoying the food and each other’s company. She sat with Faye and Adrian and Jan, a trans-sexual man in drag who called himself Fabulass, and a gay man named Ryan who had taken the room at Stella’s house that Adrian had tried to rent to her and Tammy. Tammy kicked herself daily for not taking the room, but Frances was sort of glad she hadn’t. Frances couldn’t have afforded to pay her half, and that would have either left her living alone – or worse with some stranger – in her dorm room or mooching off Tammy. As it was she’d had to get a job when she realized that the small stipend she got with her scholarship barely paid her dorm expenses much less little extras like food.

            It was really the first time she’d ever been to a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, and she finally got why it was such a big deal. She’d helped in the kitchen and now people were eating and enjoying the food that she’d helped to prepare and it really made her feel like she was part of the group. 

            She was mostly ignoring Fabulass who was going on and on about how Thanksgiving was nothing but a celebration of the white man stripping the Indians of their land.

            She was glad that she and Faye could still be friends, in fact as odd as it might sound it seemed to her that they were closer because they knew each other intimately, and instead of it causing a rift between them, it was almost as if having gotten that out of the way they could now have a really good friendship without having to worry about that.

            Fabulass was still stuffing his face while talking about what a farce the day was.

            “Dude, I’m a fucking Indian,” Adrian said.  “Doesn’t matter why they started doing this, it only matters what you make things into. For me, right now, it’s about this community coming together to have a meal and celebrate our unity.” And then Adrian fell silent again.

            She’d been quiet through the whole meal, quiet even for Adrian, and every once in awhile she glared over at Toni, daggers in her eyes. Obviously she liked it better when Toni refused to step foot in this place.

            Toni wasn’t screaming any more, and Frances was sure that the apartment dwellers were right and they’d gone on their “cruise” because Toni really had gone back on smack and Stella had gone with her for treatment to help her get clean again. Now they seemed happy, and that just had to be like a knife in Adrian’s chest because she wanted Stella to be happy, but she wanted her to be happy with her not Toni. She also wanted to continue to hate Toni, and it must be hard when she was obviously going out of her way to make up for the way she’d been acting.

            They all seemed to be more or less sure that Stella was going to let Adrian and Jan run Rhonda’s and go on a book tour to support her new book with Toni documenting it on film. Stella said she’d had bad writer’s block after her last book and then about a year and a half ago she’d started writing and finished this book in less than three months. Stella was worried because there had been five years between this book and her last one, and she was afraid she might have lost all her fans and felt she needed to give it all the support she could.

            Frances thought she knew a little bit about how Adrian felt. Basketball season was looming and Tammy had less and less time for her. When she wasn’t at practice she was studying or going to some school function the players were required to be at. Twice now when they’d made plans to do something Frances had found herself doing it alone because Tammy was busy or just plain tired.

            “Where’s Milly?” Frances asked.

            “She went to spend the day with Marcella’s mother and brother. Joanna is really cool and just treats Milly like part of her family even when Marcella’s gone,” Faye said.

            “Cheer up,” Jan said with a big, forced grin shoving the sullen Adrian. “It’s Thanksgiving, a time when we come together to celebrate the white man killing, raping and robbing your people.”

            “Fuck you, Jan,” was all Adrian said.

Thanksgivings at home had never been happy occasions for Adrian. Till she was twelve it was just another excuse for her father to get drunk and try to make everyone as miserable as possible. Her poor mother would spend all day cooking and he’d spend all day drinking and bitching. By the time they’d sit down to dinner he’d have a good buzz going on. Nothing would be right; he’d bitch about everything and then Adrian would chew her food wrong or let her fork scrape the plate and he’d beat her with a belt, stick her in the livingroom and tell her she didn’t need to eat Thanksgiving Day dinner because looking at her reminded him that he had nothing to be thankful for. Later her mother would bring her a plate of food in her room and say she was sorry. She had been glad to leave those memories behind and start a new tradition at Rhonda’s. Now… everything was ruined. Stella was at a different table than they were, soon she probably wouldn’t be here at all, and did she really want to run Rhonda’s without Stella? If Adrian left, too, what would happen to Stella’s House and the caf�?  What was going to happen to them without Stella?

            Where the hell would Adrian go if she did leave?

            Stella stood up and knocked a fork on her glass. “And now, in the Rhonda’s tradition we’ll go around the room and everyone will say at least one thing they’re thankful for. I’d like to start. I’m thankful for Toni and for all my friends, and I’m thankful that I’m going to go on my book tour and that I have friends like Adrian and Jan who I can trust to run things while I’m away.”

            Adrian couldn’t think of one thing she was thankful for at that moment. In fact, the fact that Stella just assumed that she and Jan would run Rhonda’s while she was off with Toni when Stella hadn’t even bothered to ask her if she’d do it chased any good thoughts she might have had right out of her head. As soon as they started on the far side of the room she got up.

            “Where you going?” Jan asked.

            “On a walk,” Adrian said, and without further explanation she left.

            She got away without Stella or Toni noticing, and that was all she cared about. It was cold out, so she tugged her jacket around her tighter.

            Adrian hadn’t talked to Stella alone since she and Toni had returned, and Adrian was sure that this was part of the concessions Stella had made to make Toni happy. She’d only felt this positively raw once since she’d left home. Stella didn’t love her, not like Adrian wanted her to. She wasn’t going to get rid of Toni and suddenly realize she’d always loved Adrian. That was all just a stupid fantasy, and she must look like the biggest putz in the world to Stella and all her friends.

            I have to move on.  I still have my job.  I know she’d never fire me – not as the super and not at Rhonda’s.  I have a great apartment and wonderful friends and I should just be happy that Toni isn’t screaming at Stella all the time now.  Damn it’s cold!  Shea city was close to the state’s southern border, and it didn’t usually get this cold this early in the year. She decided to walk back to Stella’s house and build a fire in the stove.

            The basement – she sometimes thought it was more her refuge than her own apartment. When she’d first started working on the apartment house, the stairs to the basement had been completely fucked; the entrance to the stairway had been in a large janitor’s closet. She’d gotten rid of the closet, built a new wall just around the staircase, and then she’d opened a doorway to her room so she could open what looked like a closet door in her bedroom and go down the stairs into the basement. It made it easier for her to check breakers and work on stuff this way, and there was a door from the basement to the outside so she didn’t have to haul stuff for her projects or fuel for the stove through her apartment.

            The old apartment house had originally had steam heat, but when Stella found out it would cost more to repair the system than she’d paid for the whole building, it hadn’t been hard for Adrian to talk her into letting her install electric baseboard heaters in all the apartments.

            The building had been built over the old steam boiler, and there was no getting it out without cutting it into pieces. So she’d learned to weld and made it into a giant wood stove with an airtight door so big that she could stick whole pallets in it. She’d knocked a hole in the wall behind the huge stove, put a stove pipe out it, and then she’d built a chimney up the outside of the building right next to the fire escape all the way past the roof. That hadn’t been much fun – lots of work, lots of hauling heavy buckets of bricks and cement up the fire escape, where often as not she was standing on a ladder on the fire escape to do the work. Then there were the last few feet where she’d been hanging basically on a board with a rope around it suspended from the roof having Marcella lower mortar and brick in buckets from the roof down to her.

But it was well worth it. She’d fill the stove full of all the garbage from the caf� and any pallets or scrap wood she’d find around the neighborhood, and on cold days like this she would light it and shut the door. By adjusting the dampers just right she could sometimes make the stove burn for days, keeping their apartments warm and saving them a fortune in electricity.

            She’d had the air conditioner installed down here – a huge unit that was vented to all the apartments. In the winter she undid the duct work in the basement and put a strong fan in the opening. It kicked on when the room hit seventy degrees, and that forced the warm air from the basement through the whole building, basically making the basement into a huge hassa. Since fire places were legal in the city, and her chimney and stove had passed inspection, they were in the clear. She’d even built the stove with a double burner and catalytic converter; it didn’t put out much smoke. So it was fairly environmentally sound, too.

She opened the door, threw in the stack of boxes they’d brought over earlier, and then she lit it, locked down the door, and engaged the fan on the bottom of the stove to get the draft going good. In minutes the cold basement was warm and as she walked around just straightening out her tools and materials the fan kicked on and started pushing the air upstairs which should stop the baseboard heaters from even having to engage that night.

Stella had originally wanted to make this the rec room, but like most basements in this part of the state it leaked water a big part of the time. Even to use it as a work shop she’d had to make a lot of modifications. First she’d had to rebuild the support columns. Instead of tearing the old ones out she’d just taken concrete blocks and built new ones around the old ones up to the concrete floor above the basement which she figured made it double strong. The columns were huge but so was the space and she didn’t care. She’d patched the walls as best she could and then painted them with a sealant. Of course they still leaked, so she’d poured three inches of concrete on top of the existing floor and left a four-inch wide trench all around the outside of the room. This caught the water when the walls leaked and also gave the sweat from the air conditioner someplace to go. Now when the stove ran it dried up most of the water and the sump pump hardly ever came on. She’d built her work benches so that they didn’t touch the walls and bolted them to the floor so it was a great work space.

She had a recliner and a small TV down here as well as a little refrigerator full of beer. Sometimes – like now – when she didn’t want to have to put up with anyone or anything, she’d just grab a beer, sit down here, put her feet up and turn the TV on to drown out her thoughts.

            That was when Toni wasn’t screaming so loud you could hear her through the pipes and the floor.

Toni wasn’t screaming now, and she had to let it all go.

            Adrian’s life didn’t suck; her life was good. The thing with Toni and Stella sucked but only for Adrian. Stella loved Toni, and it was good that Toni had stopped yelling and Stella was happy. Of course Toni had only quit yelling because Stella had caved to her every fucking demand. It didn’t matter; there wasn’t anything Adrian could do about it. There were other women and eventually she’d fall in love with one of them or maybe not and it wouldn’t matter because her life was good anyway.

            Right?

            Logical thought was never very helpful when your every emotion was on edge. She felt worthless, unloved, and unlovable. She was miserable, and if she wasn’t happy what right did anyone else have to be happy? Least of all Toni. How could Adrian love Stella so much when Stella loved her so little?

             She couldn’t sit any more and the TV was only annoying her not drowning out her thoughts. More beer is needed. She turned off the TV, got another beer, and then walked over and turned her stereo on instead and popped in her favorite CD – Billy  Idol’s “White Wedding.” She set the CD player on automatic replay. As Billy started singing she started drinking her beer and working on the toaster Ryan had brought her a week ago. It wasn’t really her job to worry about the tenant’s personal appliances, but they didn’t act like it was and usually she didn’t mind doing them a favor. Tonight, though, the more she worked on the toaster the more she had no idea what was wrong with it, and when she got shocked because she forgot to unplug it before working on it again she pulled the cord out of the wall and slung the toaster as hard as she could at the far wall – where it busted into a billion pieces.

            She poured some beer on her fingers and then licked it off and said out loud, “I’ll just tell him it couldn’t be fixed.”

            There was a rattle at the door to the outside and then a stack of boxes came walking in. Adrian at first was just angry that someone was invading her space, but then she ran over to help whoever it was and found Frances under the stack of boxes.

“Thanks. We all wondered where you’d gone.” Frances dumped the rest of the boxes she was carrying on the floor.

            “They’re easier to carry if you break them down first,” Adrian said, and just started doing it. Frances helped her.

“Duh,” Frances said, making fun of herself. “Even monkeys eventually learn, and I will too, I promise.”

“Just stack them over there. I can’t open the stove it’s too hot now.”

            “Wow! This is really cool down here.” Frances looked at the work benches and tools. “You are really insanely tidy aren’t you?” she asked with a smile.

            “Pretty much so.” Unwillingly her eyes went to the broken toaster on the floor, which drew France’s eyes to it.

            “What did that used to be?”  Frances asked with a wry smile.

            “Ryan’s toaster,” Adrian said with a shrug. “I was working on the damn thing, forgot to unplug it and it shocked the piss out of me and… well apparently it felt so bad about it that it committed suicide.”

            Frances laughed. Not at all a bad sound. “Are you all right?”

            “Yeah.” She held out her hand. “Just made the hair on my pussy stand up and scorched a couple of fingers.”

            Frances took her hand and looked at it. “Does it hurt?”

            “A little,” Adrian said. Something about the real concern in the girl’s voice hit a nerve. She jerked her hand away and spat out. “It’s all right.”

            “Good!” Frances snapped back, apparently not intimidated by Adrian’s temper at all. Frances turned on her heel and started to leave. Adrian ran up to her back and grabbed her shoulder.

            “I’m sorry, Frances, I’m just in a mood. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

The girl turned to face her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” She should have left it there, but even as the girl started to turn to go again she found herself spitting out. “No, I don’t want my head shrunk by some wanna be Freud. I just want to be left alone!”

“All right. I’m sorry. God!” She turned again and started towards the door then turned back around and marched up to Adrian. She looked up at her. “For the record, shit head, I wasn’t trying to psychoanalyze you I was trying to be a good friend. Do you ever get over yourself or are you always just this moody ball of angst?”

Without thinking Adrian wrapped her arms around the girl’s waist and pulled her against her. She kissed Frances hard on the mouth, forcing her lips apart and stuck her tongue in Frances’s mouth. Frances fought her for all of part of a second, and then she started to respond excitedly.

            What the hell is wrong with me? What am I doing and… how the hell is this going to make me feel better? A fucking bisexual carrying God only knows what and with at least as many hang ups as I have and every time I fuck without thinking about it, it’s nothing but trouble. But God I’ve wanted her from the moment I saw her. I’m not going down on her that’s for damn sure… There now I thought about it, it ought to be fine.

            She slid her hands up and down the girl’s back, then slid her hands under her shirt and easily undid her bra. She backed off and pulled Frances’s shirt and bra off in one motion. Frances had an amazing body, the kind that made you come looking at it. She pulled her own shirt off over her head. She ran a finger down the side of Frances’s face, tracing her lips then she kissed her again. She continued to run her finger down the side of Frances’s throat and then down her body between her breasts, and then as the girl shivered she took one of Frances’s breasts in each hand and kneaded the flesh till her nipples popped. Her mouth on Frances’s became more demanding, and Frances made it obvious by the way her hips ground into Adrian’s leg that she was more than prepared to give Adrian anything she wanted from her. Adrian shoved Frances against the work bench and started working at the buttons on Frances’s pants. When they were undone she pulled Frances’s pants and her underwear down to her knees then moved her mouth to envelope one of Frances’ nipples, as her hand went between Frances’s legs. Her fingers skillfully caressed Frances’ clit, and she felt the girl’s nails bite into her back, sending a thrill through Adrian’s whole body, and Adrian groaned with desire.

            “Oh my God Adrian!”

            Adrian smiled; she loved a screamer.

For a second Frances had actually tried to get away, but Adrian didn’t let her and that had just turned Frances completely on. Then there had been a moment when Frances had thought about reminding Adrian of her rule, and then there had been a point at which she thought about stopping her because she was pretty sure that Adrian was just using her because she was hurt and angry and just needed some sort of release. But now she wasn’t thinking about anything but what Adrian was doing to her body.

            She was screaming. She knew she was and she didn’t care.

            Adrian was sucking her nipples raw and making her clit sing and there was no part of her that wanted any of it to stop. Then Adrian released her nipple and she was kissing her again, kisses so deep Frances swore she felt them in her toes. Adrian’s tongue was warm and demanding and tasted like beer.

            Adrian picked Frances up by the waist, set her on the workbench and pulled Frances’s pants the rest of the way off and then…she stuck two fingers into her and searched around till she found Frances’s G spot –at least Frances was sure it was her G-spot because when Adrian started to work it Frances couldn’t be quiet, her whole body arched, and Adrian had to hang on to her with her free hand to keep her from flopping backwards and falling off the workbench.

            “Do you want me?” Adrian asked in a husky breath against her neck.

            “Yes oh God yes I want you,” she moaned out. And then Adrian was kissing her again and then just when she was sure it couldn’t possibly get any better and she couldn’t cum any more the lyrics of White Wedding were screaming through the air as all of Adrian’s fingers pounded deep inside her Adrian’s thumb working her clit till Frances’s whole body was convulsing and she thought her head was going to explode. She came so hard she made the work bench wet. Adrian slid her hand out of Frances and stopped kissing her.  She wiped her hand on her pants leg, which was almost funny.

            Then Adrian held her, just held her until Frances’ body quit shaking, her head resting against Frances’ shoulder.

            “Oh my God, Adrian,” Frances wrapped her arms around Adrian tightly and kissed the top of her head.

            “So are you a bisexual or a queer, Frances?” Adrian asked against her shoulder not looking up.

            “Well you don’t screw bisexuals, so I must be queer,” Frances said with a laugh.

            “That’s what I thought.”

They had wound up upstairs in Adrian’s bed, and it didn’t dawn on her till two hours later to even think about where everyone might have thought she’d gone, even then she wasn’t willing to get up and leave to go find out.

            She had made love to Adrian feeling clumsy and nervous for the first time since her very first time. Adrian was just so skilled it made her feel like a rank amateur. Like she might be graded afterwards on her performance and found wanting. After Adrian had come hard she’d made love to Frances again, and that was the reason why the girls lined up for a piece of Adrian Bar, not the stamina or the skill or because she was extremely hot. Adrian didn’t fuck you, she made love to you. It was just straight vanilla sex, no toys, no strap on, no role-playing, and it was magnificent because Adrian had a way of making you feel like you were the most important person on the planet. She actually cared – at least for the moment – enough to explore your body and find your triggers. She kissed and caressed you and made you feel cherished.

Adrian didn’t go down on her, and while she’d been some disappointed she certainly didn’t feel deprived.

            She really wasn’t a bisexual. After this she couldn’t even think of going back to a man, any man. She was a lesbian. She had thought she’d been all right being bisexual. It had seemed like a more comfortable place to be than being a lesbian, but now that she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was a lesbian it just made her feel like she finally knew what she was and what had been missing. People fought labels, but Frances found security in the knowledge that she really didn’t want both men and women. She really wasn’t neither fish nor fowl.

            Adrian was holding Frances. Her chest pressed against Frances’s back and Frances could tell by the way her breathing had taken on a pattern that Adrian was asleep. Frances wondered briefly what the protocol for sleeping with Adrian was? Was she supposed to get up, get dressed and leave? She didn’t want to, and Adrian wasn’t awake to tell her to go, so she didn’t.

            Besides her clothes were still somewhere in the basement.

Adrian woke to find a naked Frances in her arms, and she just wanted to shoot herself. “What the hell have I done?” she mumbled.

            Then she heard the knocking on the door, disentangled herself from the girl – who didn’t wake up – pulled herself out of bed, grabbed a pair of boxer shorts and a T shirt off a chair, smelled them to make sure they were clean and slung them on as she headed for the door.

            Whoever it was knocked again more urgently this time. “I’m coming, God dammit!” she yelled then mumbled to herself. “Wow, just like a real super.”

            She slung the door open and it was Jan looking all worried with Frances’s clothes in her fist as she walked in and just started rattling. “Man we got trouble I sent Frances to bring some boxes to the basement and well I got busy,” which translated to she’d found some girl to fuck, “and it wasn’t really a work day and everything was done when she left so I didn’t notice that she didn’t come back but now… well she was supposed to stay at Faye’s last night and Faye said she never showed up and when I went to the basement I found her clothes and a toaster was broken…”

            Adrian laughed at her friend. “And you immediately deduce that it’s foul play Holms? Dude, calm down.”

            “Calm down! Dude anything could have happened to her and…”

            “Dude,” Adrian took a deep breath and then just shrugged, “I happened to her, all right? She’s fine.”

            “What?” Jan asked.

            “Give me those.” Adrian took the clothes from Jan’s hand. She pulled her own shirt from the pile. “This one’s mine. Do you get it now?” Jan still looked confused. She could be a little slow sometimes – years of drug abuse had no doubt dulled her senses.

            As if on cue Frances walked into the living room rubbing her eyes and wearing one of Adrian’s few dress shirts, and when Adrian saw the look of relief mixed with realization cover Jan’s face only to be immediately followed by a smirk, Adrian really did want to shoot herself.

            “I thought you didn’t do bisexuals,” Jan taunted.

            “I’m not a bisexual; I’m a lesbian,” Frances said as she walked up and wrapped her arms around Adrian’s waist.

            “You let her sleep with you, Adrian?” Jan laughed, no doubt at the “help me” look on Adrian’s face.

            Then just as Adrian was about to scream that she didn’t let her do anything, break Frances’s hold and run off to find that gun, her panic was replaced by a sudden calm. This might not be so bad. Stella was going to leave with Toni. She and Adrian’s time together had ended, and if Stella was going to stay with Toni maybe it was just as well that she was leaving. Adrian liked Frances. There had been something about her that drew her to her the very first time she saw her, and the only reason she hadn’t fucked her before was because of the bisexual thing – and that now seemed to be a non-issue. If Frances got a thing for her and she wouldn’t go away… well, it didn’t matter because she wasn’t saving herself for Stella anymore. Who knew but that Frances might not be fun to have around? If she wasn’t, it wasn’t like Adrian couldn’t just run her off later. And all that was assuming that Frances wanted her for anything more than sex.

            “So, when did you decide you were one of us?” Jan asked Frances with a sly smile.

            Frances hugged Adrian tighter. “Last night in the basement.”

            “I felt the heat; I thought Adrian had just lit the furnace.”

            Adrian looked at Jan and waved. “We’ve all got the day off so… bye Jan.”

            “Bye.” Jan gave her a look that said she wasn’t sure Adrian hadn’t been taken over by pod people, and then she just shrugged and left closing and locking the door behind her.

            Adrian turned around and put her arms around Frances’s neck. “So… you ah,” Adrian shrugged she’d never actually woken up with a girl before. “You want to get a shower and then maybe go get some breakfast?”

            “I want to make love again,” Frances said, shy and as if she half expected to be rejected.

            “Well,” Adrian said, releasing her walking past her and taking her hand as she led her back towards the bathroom, “I said shower.”

            It was a big shower and easy to have sex in, so they did. Then they got dressed and walked down the street to a coffee shop holding hands, and Adrian was the one who had taken hold of Frances. They ordered a couple of English muffin sandwiches and some coffee, and at least for the time being Adrian wasn’t worried about were Stella was or what she was doing.

“So haven’t we already gone over your two times rule?” Frances asked carefully.

            “Who told you about that?”

“Everyone.”

“It’s not a hard, fast rule you know,” Adrian laughed. “Besides, you know what they say – once you try pot you’re more likely to try crack. You’re like a gateway drug, baby.”

            Frances loved Adrian’s sense of humor, but more than anything else she loved the way Adrian made her feel – not just physically but emotionally. For most of her life she’d just had this detached feeling like she was floating somewhere watching herself do things and not really feeling attached to anything. But now with Adrian she felt attached to the world, to herself. “I really like spending time with you. I don’t want to make this weird for you, so if it’s not something you want just say so and I’ll be fine with it, but… I’d like… well I’d like to spend more time with you, more days, more nights…”

            “All right,” Adrian said simply, “but… well don’t take it personally, but I want you to be tested for everything. Get a clean bill of health. To make it fair I’ll get tested, too. After all, I’ve probably had more partners than you have, all women, but women can carry shit, too.” She smiled. “Because of men.”

            Frances thought that over. Was she reading too much into that? She could get all the tests through a free clinic on B Street so it wasn’t a matter of cost. Tammy was always screaming at her that she needed to have it done anyway, but what did it mean that Adrian said we’ll both get tested? “Does that mean… are you saying that we’d be in like an exclusive relationship?”

            “Is that a problem?” Adrian asked, sipping her coffee making it impossible for Frances to read her expression.

            “Are you trying to scare me off?” Frances asked suspiciously, her eyes narrowing as she remembered that it was Adrian who told her how to get rid of Faye.

            Adrian laughed. “Why? Does the idea of an exclusive relationship with me scare you?” she asked setting her cup down.

            “Surprisingly no. I just don’t want to be reading you wrong. I mean if you want to get rid of me all you have to do is say so. I wouldn’t force a relationship with you just because we spent most of a night making the most amazing love of my entire life.”

            “I think… well that you can get tired of damn near anything and that we both need a break from playing the field. I’m not saying you and I are on the brink of passionate, undying, everlasting love, but I like you and you like me right?”

            “Of course I do.”

            “And sexually… well we’re just getting started, and I think we’re already more than compatible there. I don’t know how and won’t pretend to know why, but I think we’ve made a connection and that may be more important than romantic love. I think we could work together for at least awhile, and maybe that’s all people can really hope for. But if we’re doing this thing, let’s do it right. I won’t screw around on you, and you don’t screw around on me. If either of us need out for whatever reason we sit down and talk just like we are now, and you go your way and I’ll go mine with no ugly shit agreed?”

            “Agreed,” Frances said excitedly.

            “Then as of now we’re dating exclusively,” Adrian said with a satisfied smile.

            “Yes,” Frances said, but couldn’t quite believe her ears. How had this happened? Had she really just managed to get the most elusive dyke on B Street to agree to have a relationship with her? Was she who had fucked everything that moved since she was fifteen really ready to be in an exclusive relationship? Frances smiled and again said, “Yes.”

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