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“Please, Mikasa, you’re not gay,” Levi’s voice comes through the receiver disembodied and bored; she can almost imagine him shaking his head as he says it. “There’s nothing even remotely gay about you.”
“She’s gorgeous, though,” Mikasa replies, bringing her cigarette up to her lips, but not taking it just yet.
“Everyone finds people attractive… It doesn’t mean we want to fuck every attractive person.”
“Of course, Levi,” she says after a long pause, a hint of exasperation in her voice, because she’s not sure how many times she must explain that it is precisely more than just an urge to be screwed by or screw a pretty stranger to him before he understands?
But to Levi everything must come back to sex without feelings. The walls of his heart must be made of plaster and Viagra, Mikasa thinks.
They stay on the phone for a few more awkward minutes while Mikasa watches her cigarette burn. It would be nice to simply believe him, but Mikasa can’t bring herself to believe baseless claims for the sake of comfort. Her eyes roam the small apartment she’s renting.
Sunlight pours in from the balcony (where she wants to be, but can’t be because the line won’t reach it. As she watches, the curtains sway in a light breeze. Her wine sits untouched on the table., sparkling crimson and begging to be raised to her lips to rid her mind of the thoughts that have plagued it since she landed in this city with its stubborn natives and beautiful women. So many beautiful women…
And, of course, there are men. Strangers willing to throw themselves at any unsuspecting beauty to have the audacity to even breathe in their direction. They feel like more of a nuisance than a pleasant surprise, but Mikasa reminds herself to limit her disdain to a blank stare whenever a man attempts to charm her.
She can see the ocean from her apartment and yearns to be there quite suddenly and without explanation. Perhaps, because she’s drunk and, whenever inebriated, she wants to enjoy herself and life as much as she possibly can. This is a habit that has brought upon her several hard to excuse kisses and lovers. She knows she should avoid these sorts of situations for they are precisely the cause of her reprieve, but she can not repress every urge.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, she ends Levi’s silence abruptly, telling him that she has an affair she really must see to before the sun goes down. That’s true, with several major details left out for modesty’s sake.
Because she can’t stand to suffer beneath the weight of her untouched desires, she has made arrangements to quell several needs and answer a few of her own questions regarding herself in a clean manner. And if she’s left feeling more guilty than pleased, she’ll know the truth and that will be that.
But what exactly is that ?
A matter of sexual orientation. After years spent in solitude without an ounce of interest in the opposite sex, but recurring near obsessions with women, she’s been questioning, but too shy to act on her suspicions. A drunken kiss with a woman sent her into a frenzy (the topic of her conversation with dear Levi who cannot know or understand what he does not know or understand). And now she’s overseas, thinking. (Relaxing, if you ask any of her friends who are all still quite clueless.) It’s a new age. If she’s gay, she’s gay.
Her heels click loudly in the silence of the apartment.
Silence is new. Home, there’s the constant hum of life: people walking, cars screeching, neighbors arguing. Here, there is nothing, but the ticking of the clock, and - if one focuses - the waves crashing in the distance. At night, there’s music, but the days are dull for their lack of noise.
Catching her reflection in the mirror mounted beside the door, Mikasa tucks her hair behind her ear. She watches her reflection sigh before pursing her rouged lips and gazing down at the bouquet of flowers she picked up on a whim from the boutique a few buildings down an hour earlier.
Roses.
“Are they too romantic?” she muses aloud, tilting her head. She captures a single smooth petal between her fingers and plucks it only to roll it between her fingers until only a wet residue and wilted red strands remain between her digits. “Does it matter?”
Annie is not one to pace, but tonight she paces her apartment while Mikasa infests her every thought. She hasn’t eaten yet, too nervous to even consider anything with sustenance coming anywhere near her lips. Mikasa, on the other hand, and what lies between her thighs…
What a filthy thought…
But not at all unprecedented. They met in town. Annie had attempted flirting in French, never one to shy away from a woman regardless of circumstance. But she didn’t speak French all that well. Mikasa caught her meaning, though, and had humored her advances without once mentioning her orientation until two days later on their first date when she’d leaned across the table. Every so sweetly she’d said,
“I’ve never been with a woman.”
Then Annie knew she was just another experiment. Like other times, she felt irritated by the prospect of being reduced to another straight woman’s experience, some challenge out of the ordinary. But she could see some curiosity in Mikasa’s eye that had her imagining teaching Mikasa the steps. Who cares if she uses them on anyone else so long as she learns them with Annie?
It wasn’t like Annie had hoped to fall in love.
Annie jumps at the sound of knocking. Three sharp taps against the door. She wonders if Mikasa does other things in three. Among these possible things: kisses, bites, licks, fucks. The last, more hopeful than the rest, leaves her nearly breathless.
As the door swings open, her face if passive again and for some inexplicable reason, she murmurs, “ Ça va ?”
“You’re so bad at that,” Mikasa says, her face lighting quickly in her amusement. “Maybe you can practice with me later?”
Annie rolls her eyes and ushers Mikasa in, taking the flowers with flushing cheeks when her date offers them. She can’t help the smile that plays across her lips as Mikasa leans in to peck her lips.
Mikasa smells like flowers, sweet things, like something warm to be wrapped in. It’s a scent Annie can’t wait to smell lingering on her pillows and between her sheets tomorrow long after Mikasa leaves. But before that, she wants it to rub off on her body.
“Why the flowers?” Annie asks.
“I thought you might like them,” Mikasa replies, blushing and gazing at the roses which suddenly seem silly again. “They’re too much, aren’t they? I shouldn’t have…”
“I like them,” Annie says. “They’ll remind me of you.”