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Kori King had Suzie all the way fucked up if she thought that they were doing matching Halloween costumes with Kori’s girlfriend. It would bring far too much attention to the fact that Suzie was not only a massive lesbian, but an incredibly unsuccessful one at that. Like, painfully unsuccessful. The kind of lesbian whose most meaningful romantic experience was pretending to throw up as Lydia and Kori made out at pretty much every gathering they’d ever been to together. So yeah, sue her if the idea of third-wheeling in a more major way then she already did wasn’t appealing.
They were in Suzie’s dorm, the air already dense with weed smoke and cheap vanilla candles, pregaming before one of many upcoming halloween parties. Lydia was lounging on the ratty Goodwill couch, legs draped over Kori’s lap, puffing lazily on a joint like some kind of gothic 1950s housewife who just found out her husband was cheating and decided to get a little sapphic with it. Kori, meanwhile, was dressed in the world’s shortest minidress, which was an offensively garish shade of pink.
“Baby,” she said, poking Lydia in the side with a perfectly manicured nail. “Tell this messy little theatre dyke that we absolutely need to be the three Sanderson sisters tonight.” Suzie rolled her eyes.
“I’m not doing that, Kori. Find a couples costume to do with your girlfriend and leave me out of it. People will think we’re a throuple.”
“Let’s just go as something stupid,” Lydia said, her voice low and scratchy from the weed. “Like... I don’t know. Ghosts. Sheets over our heads. We’re gonna look better next week at the actual halloween party, why bother with this one.” She had a point. While this was technically a halloween party, it was quite a while out from the actual event. Still, any opportunity to get beyond fucked up was one worth taking. Lydia leaned over and handed Suzie the joint again.
“Okay,” Kori said suddenly, clapping once. “I’ve got it. Walk with me, walk with me. Lydia’s going as a hot vampire, I’m going as her slutty mortal bride, and Suzie is going as the gay best friend who gets killed off in the first ten minutes.”
“Wow,” Suzie said dryly. “That is both typecasting and homophobic.”
“Don’t be mad just because I have vision,” Kori said, taking a long sip from her wine and grimacing. “Besides, you can’t be homophobic and gay. It’s a double negative, it cancels out.”
“Oh my god,” Suzie groaned, flopping dramatically onto the floor like a Victorian maiden fainting at the sight of ankle. “You and your homophobia are literally the reason I have trust issues.”
“No, babe, you have trust issues because that girl from your freshman acting class ghosted you after you told her Mamma Mia 2 made you cry.”
“That movie is sad!” Suzie wailed. “She sang My Love, My Life to a ghost, Kori. A ghost! And I still got left on read!”
“Left on ghost, technically,” Lydia added quietly, eyes half-lidded as she took the joint back and drew in another long hit. She exhaled slowly, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I’m so funny.”
Kori adjusted her position on the couch, pulling Lydia closer until the two were an amorphous tangle of fishnets and minidress. “Listen, I just think we’d be a serve as the Sanderson sisters. You can be Winifred because of the boss bitch vibes. I’ll be Sarah, because neither of you have the tits or the vocals. And Suzie can be Mary because she’s always sniffing around for attention.”
“I hope you choke. You are evil, Kori King. Pure evil.”
“She’s really not,” Lydia mumbled, eyes closed now, but she squeezed Kori’s thigh under the blanket. Suzie caught it and promptly died a little inside. Fuck her stupid lesbian life. She sat back up and grabbed the bottle of wine for herself, pouring what remained into her plastic skull cup. It was going to be a long night. But Suzie figured if she had to be a third wheel, at least it was with the hottest, gayest bicycle she’d ever seen.
Kori eventually declared it was time to leave, sweeping off the couch with a dramatic flourish and clapping twice for effect.
“Chop chop, sluts,” she said, already halfway out the door in her thigh-high boots and oversized faux fur coat. “We don’t have to have costumes, it’s not even halloween, but thanks for ruining such a good thing Suzie. We’re late enough to be fashionable, but not so late that we look desperate. Let’s move!”
Suzie groaned from her spot on the floor. “I’m not drunk enough to socialize with people.”
“You’re never drunk enough, babe,” Kori called from the hallway, voice echoing. “But you still come crawling back to that jungle juice.”
Suzie dragged herself upright with the grace of a zombie on her fifth shift at a main street McDonalds, and stumbled into her Doc Martens, one sock halfway off. How did that even happen? She pulled it back on all the way, hopping on one foot out to the car. Outside, the parking lot was mostly empty except for the usual scattering of discarded solo cups and a traffic cone someone had lovingly thrown into the gutter.
Kori’s beat-up car waited for them like a sad, loyal dog. The inside smelled permanently of mango, pineapple, and Lydia’s weed, with a dash of whatever glitter Kori was always shedding like fairy dandruff. Suzie climbed into the backseat and immediately found herself squashed between a bag of fabric scraps and a pink furry coat that looked like it could send someone with seasonal allergies straight to their grave. “Why does your car look like Barbie had a nervous breakdown in here?”
The engine sputtered to life, the car making a sound like it was apologizing for existing. The drive was short, maybe fifteen minutes, but it might as well have been fifteen hours. As much as Suzie loved Kori, she wished the girl would learn to shut the fuck up.
“And on your left, you’ll see the frat house that hosted a ‘Cowboys and Indians’ party in 2022 and then issued a non-apology in Comic Sans . Boo, bitch.”
“Scariest thing I’ve heard all night,” Suzie muttered, resting her head against the window. Somewhere down the street, a group of students in half-assed costumes was already stumbling down the sidewalk toward the same party. “I swear to god if I see one more guy in a toga, I’m calling campus security.”
“You say that every year,” Lydia said softly.
“And every year I mean it a little bit more,” Suzie replied.
The car pulled up to a sprawling off-campus house that looked like it had been halfway demolished and then redone by three guys named Chad and one named Chris. Music thumped through the walls loud enough to rattle the windows, and flimsy orange lights lit up the yard. A cheap fog machine coughed out pathetic plumes on the porch, making the whole place smell like melted plastic and Axe body spray. Plastic skeletons were zip-tied to the porch railing, one of them holding a plastic cup like he, too, was rethinking his life choices. A giant inflatable Grim Reaper stood guard near the door, but his fan was wheezing, and his head flopped pitifully forward like he was nodding off. All good signs, Suzie was sure.
She regretted the decision to show this much thigh in the cold the millisecond she stepped out of the car and started walking towards the house. She hugged her jacket tighter around her as she caught up, trying to ignore the way Kori and Lydia naturally fell into step with each other, shoulders brushing, Lydia murmuring something low that made Kori giggle. Maybe you could be homophobic and gay.
Inside, the house was packed. Music blasted from every corner, a sweaty pulse of bass and bad decisions. The living room was filled with half-costumed twenty-somethings drinking like prohibition had just been reinstated. Someone was already throwing up in the downstairs bathroom. A boy in a devil costume with LED horns handed Suzie a plastic cup filled with what tasted like fruit punch and gasoline. She took it without making eye contact.
Kori dove headfirst into the crowd, already waving at three different people, air-kissing a guy dressed as a sexy vampire with dollar store fangs. Lydia followed, her expression unreadable but oddly magnetic. People made room for her. Suzie brought up the rear, sipping her drink and scanning the room for any other out-of-place gay girls who might be hiding behind a lampshade or something. Maybe she should check the closets, just in case.
The trio found a half-collapsed couch in the living room, and Kori immediately flopped into it like she was a single mum who worked two jobs. Lydia flopped down beside her, thigh pressed against Kori’s, fingers already sliding beneath the hem of Kori’s dress to rest possessively on her upper leg. Suzie wondered if the balcony was roped off, and if it wasn’t now, it certainly would be after she was done with it.
“This is for sure more vodka than punch,” Suzie muttered, swirling the bright red liquid in her cup.
“Good,” Kori replied, tipping her own cup back. And then, like clockwork, because of course it was always like clockwork, Kori leaned over and kissed Lydia, who tilted her head just slightly, her fingers now curled in Kori’s hair, and Kori made a soft sound that could not be interpreted as anything other than “I am absolutely about to climb you like a tree.” Which would never work, as Lydia looked like she could barely lift a wet cat out of water, let alone a whole person.
Suzie blinked, trying not to stare. She looked away. Then back. Then away again. Jesus Christ, could these people keep it in their pants for five minutes? She stood up, abandoning her drink on the sticky windowsill and brushing invisible lint off her skirt. Kori and Lydia, of course, didn’t notice. She was going to make the Saw movies look like playtime at a kindergarten when she was done with the two of them tomorrow.
She pushed her way out of the living room, slipping past a couple grinding awkwardly to the beat of a slowed-down Monster Mash remix. A girl dressed as a sexy mushroom offered her a gummy. Suzie smiled politely and kept walking. Outside, the air was sharp and clean and mercifully quiet.
Suzie pulled out her phone. She could text someone. She could find a different party. Or just walk home and cry in the shower. She was, after all, a classy sort of girl. But for now, she just sat there. On the curb. In her dumb slutty ghost costume that really wasn’t a costume and was just the white shirt she’d woken up in.
Suzie didn’t hear the footsteps at first, just the scrape of someone’s boots against the sidewalk, a soft crunch of dead leaves. She didn’t look up until a shadow fell across the cone beside her, and even then, it took her brain a few seconds to catch up.
“You look like you’ve had better nights,” said a voice. Warm. Slightly hoarse, like she'd been yelling.
Suzie blinked, then turned her head, squinting into the streetlamp glow. The girl standing there was tall and lean, with a wide mouth and olive-toned skin, her black curls gathered up into a messy bun that had started falling apart in a way that somehow made it better.
Jewels.
Of course. Jewels fucking Sparkles. From Intro to Stage Movement.From Suzie dropped a prop sword and it bounced directly into Jewels’ ankle during warm-ups, causing her to need to sit down for a bit. Of all the people.
“God,” Suzie muttered, dragging her hands down her face. “Don’t sneak up on me like that. I could’ve died.”
“Yeah, well,” Jewels said, stepping into the glow of the streetlamp, “seems like that would’ve been an improvement from whatever you were doing before.”
Suzie made a noise of protest, halfway between a groan and a laugh, and dropped her head into her hands again. Jewels sat down beside her on the curb without asking. She let her elbows rest on her knees and tilted her head to glance sidelong at Suzie. “So. This your party trick? Sitting in the dark on your own?”
“No,” Suzie said flatly. “My party trick appears to be being the Worlds Best Third Wheel.” Jewels smiled, the corner of her mouth tugging up in that way Suzie had noticed before, across the room during rehearsals, in line at the vending machines, under stage lights when Jewels was stretching her arms above her head like a goddamn goddess.
Because Suzie was not just the worlds most unsuccessful lesbian, she was also the worlds most predictable and had a crush on a girl in her musical theatre class. Which also played a part in Suzies current desire to curl up on the road and take a nap.
Suzie sighed into her hands. “Why are you here?”
Jewels blinked. “Because… it’s a party?”
“No, I mean, out here.”
Jewels shrugged and plopped down beside her on the curb, letting her elbows rest on her knees. “Because Lana and Crystal decided it would be fun to start grinding on the dance floor, which is like, really rude to do without me but whatever.”
Suzie groaned, throwing her head back. Finally someone who gets it. They fell quiet for a moment. A car rolled past, headlights brushing over them before disappearing down the street. The muffled thump of bass leaked from the house behind them.
“I hate parties,” Suzie said eventually, softer. “Or I hate going to them with people who forget I’m there once they start making out.”
Jewels nodded. “Yeah. I get that.” She glanced sideways. “Kori and Lydia?”
Suzie groaned. “They’ve been eye-fucking since the pregame. Now they’re just regular-fucking, and I get left standing alone at every social function like some sad little lesbian theatre clown.”
Well. Shit. She hadn’t meant to say the lesbian part out loud. Jewels didn’t flinch. Instead, she smirked. “Don’t look at me like I’m about to call you slurs and hit you with my car. I already know.”
Suzie blinked. “Wait, you knew?”
Jewels smirked. “Babe. You talked about that one actress from Hadestown for ten uninterrupted minutes during warm-ups. I’ve known since week three.”
Suzie buried her face in her hands. “Kill me now. Jesus Christ. Actually kill me. Strike me the fuck down. I think I need a drink.”
“I’ve got a flask,” Jewels offered, already pulling it from the inside of her coat like it was a magician’s trick. “Watermelon vodka.”
Suzie took it. “Perfect.”
She swigged, coughed, and handed it back. Suzie handed it back and watched Jewels take a daintier sip, her eyes glittering just under the lamplight. When she licked the liquid off her lips, Suzie forgot how to breathe.
“You know,” Jewels said slowly, “for someone who claims to be tragic and ignored and miserable, you’re kind of... giving.”
“Giving what?” Suzie asked, suspicious. Kori had told her she was giving a lot of things; More depressing Annie, old-ass Victorian clown, and elderly to name very few. It was a good thing, then, that Jewels seemed a little nicer than Kori. Not that the bar was particularly high.
Jewels leaned a little closer. “You’re giving I’ll cry about you in the greenroom but also maybe finger you in the props closet.”
Suzie choked. “Excuse me?”
Jewels grinned. “You heard me.”
“That is… that is offensive …”
“And accurate?”
Suzie narrowed her eyes. “You’re disgusting.”
“Correct,” Jewels said. “And you’re into it.”
And fuck, maybe she was.
Because Jewels had this lazy, magnetic confidence about her. The way her thigh pressed just a little closer to Suzie’s on the curb now, the way her voice dipped low when she teased, it made Suzie’s heart start hammering in a way that had nothing to do with vodka or embarrassment.
“What are you doing later?” Jewels asked suddenly.
Suzie blinked. “Like, tonight?”
“No, next summer . Yes, tonight.” Jewels didn’t say anything at first. She just stood up from the curb and offered Suzie her hand.
Suzie blinked at it. “What’s that?” She immediately wanted to throw herself into an active volcano. Real smooth, Suzie. Real smooth.
“Jesus it’s a good thing you’re doing theatre and not biology,” Jewels said. “It’s my hand, which I am offering to you so you don’t spend the night sitting outside like a rejected American Idiot understudy.”
Suzie squinted. “That’s specific.” Another fumble by Suzie Toot. What a generational run, a true inspiration to loser lesbians everywhere.
“You scream Billie Joe Armstrong’s cousin who dropped out of college to write a one-woman show.”
“Okay. I’m going back inside just to escape this bullying.”
Jewels only grinned. They reentered the house in a wave of bass and heat and other people’s sweat. It was louder now, and stickier, both atmospherically and literally. The crowd had thickened, and some genius had turned the lights even lower, the whole living room bathed in deep purple and the occasional flash of strobe. The air was clogged with bad perfume and vape smoke, and someone somewhere was yelling about running out of vodka.
Suzie hesitated just inside the doorway. Jewels didn’t.
She turned over her shoulder, her curls bouncing with the motion, and said, “C’mon. We’re dancing . ”
“Dancing?” Suzie echoed, uncertain.
“Yes, dancing. You do have a pelvis, right?” Suzie rolled her eyes and followed her through the crowd. She could dance. For sure. She did musical theatre for God’s sake, the word music was in the name. A flap ball change might not be the most romantic dance move ever, but Goddamn Suzie was good at it.
They landed somewhere in the middle of the living room dance floor, if you could call it that. It was mostly just a patch of hardwood that had been cleared of furniture and filled with bad decisions. The beat had dropped into some comically terrible remix of a Britney song, and everyone around them was moving like they’d just discovered rhythm and were now wildly overcompensating.
Jewels started slow, hips swaying, her hands sliding into the pockets of her jacket. Suzie tried to play it cool, arms loose, shoulders swaying, but Jewels caught her eye and raised a brow, smirking.
“What?”
“You dance like a faggy Victorian orphan,” Jewels shouted over the music. Suzie laughed, shoved her shoulder, and then, to prove a point, rolled her hips forward in time with the beat, daring Jewels to say something else. Thank the Lord for that High School production of Grease.
Jewels did not say anything else. In fact, Jewels stepped in closer.
Her hands slipped from her pockets, one finding Suzie’s waist and the other brushing along the curve of her arm. They didn’t say anything after that. They didn’t need to. The music told them what to do; slow grind, hips in sync, bodies aligning. Simple choreography. Impossible for Suzie to fuck up. Suzie didn’t know who leaned in first. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was Jewels. Actually, it was almost definitely her. Either way, the space between them disappeared fast.
Jewels was warm and soft in the way that made Suzie feel reckless. Suzie slid her hands to Jewels’ hips, let her fingers curl in the fabric of her jacket, pulled her just a breath closer until there was no more pretending this was just friends-or-more-accurately-kind-of-acquaintances being silly. This was something else.
Jewels’ breath caught.
“You’re trouble,” she said into Suzie’s ear, voice dark and low and amused.
“You have no idea,” Suzie whispered back. Which was stupid because Suzie had never even received a detention, let alone done anything that could put her in the troubled category of people.
Their hips moved together, slow and teasing, the music thrumming in Suzie’s ribs like it was part of her blood now. Jewels pressed her lips to Suzie’s jaw, lingering for a moment, then tilting her head to murmur, “You wanna get out of here?”
Suzie turned fully to face her, their foreheads nearly touching, breath mingling.
“I thought you said we were dancing,” Suzie said, smiling now.
Jewels’ hand slid to the small of her back. “We’ll dance later. Right now I want to see what else you’re good at.”
Suzie’s breath hitched. Her heart was doing gymnastics. She was going to die. This was it for her.
“Bold of you,” she said. “Assuming I’m good at anything.” And just like that, Suzie let herself be led back into the night, her head spinning, her fingers laced with someone else's. Jewels didn’t let go of her hand. Suzie hoped she never would. She didn’t even let go in the chaotic stumble through the party, or when they pushed past a couple making out in the hallway like they’d been away at war for thirty years, and not even when they had to sidestep a girl dressed as slutty Shrek puking into a bucket. Suzie barely registered any of it.
Suzie was so caught up in that, in the rush of blood behind her ears and the taste of watermelon vodka and the thought of Jewels’ lip gloss possibly being on her mouth, that it took her a second to notice the couch as they passed by.
Kori was still draped across Lydia’s lap, practically horizontal at this point, one knee hiked up and an entire hand buried somewhere under Lydia’s thrifted lace shawl. Suzie didn’t mean to look. She just noticed. Like one might notice a chandelier falling or a cat leaping onto the stove.
“Oh my god,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “Get a room .”
“Right?” Jewels said, tugging her along. “And then give it to me when you’re done.”
Suzie snorted, which quickly became a half-cackle. “You are such a bitch.”
Jewels grinned. “You love it.” And she kind of did. The hallway they ended up in was dimly lit and lined with coats and plastic Halloween streamers that had clearly seen better parties.
“Wait,” Suzie said, heels skidding slightly on the worn wood floor. “This isn’t your house, right?”
“Nope,” Jewels said cheerfully, already testing doorknobs. The third door opened with a stubborn creak.
The room was dark and empty, probably someone’s neglected guest bedroom, with a half-made bed shoved against one wall, a lava lamp flickering drunkenly on the desk, and a surprisingly clean floor. It smelled faintly of laundry detergent and weed. Typical.
“Are we sure this isn’t where people keep their hostage skeletons?” Suzie asked, peeking in.
“Only one way to find out,” Jewels said.
She yanked Suzie in by the wrist and kicked the door shut behind them. Then there was just breath. Silence. Staring. For a second, they didn’t move. The lava lamp threw sluggish pools of color across Jewels’ skin, green and blue and purple shifting up her cheekbones and across her throat. Suzie’s heart was still racing, not nerves, not exactly. Actually, she was lying. It absolutely was nerves, and they were in fact so severe she might throw up. Which wouldn’t be ideal, but would be unfortunately on brand for her.
Jewels stepped in again, her hands coming up to cup Suzie’s jaw. “Last chance to back out,” she murmured.
Suzie grinned. “If you don’t kiss me again right now, I’m calling campus security and shutting this whole place down.”
And then Jewels did .
It was just teeth, tongue, and a low sound from the back of Jewels’ throat that made Suzie’s knees buckle. She let herself fall backward onto the bed, dragging Jewels with her in a clumsy, laughing sprawl of limbs and hair and heat. Hands sliding under jackets, across bare thighs. Jewels’ fingers tangled in the hem of Suzie’s fishnet top, yanking it higher. Suzie’s mouth found the curve of Jewels’ jaw, then her collarbone, then lower still. They were still giggling between kisses, bumping noses, knocking teeth.
Jewels bit down gently on Suzie’s lip and Suzie gasped, half-laughing, breathless. Her shirt was halfway off one shoulder, and her hair clung to her forehead in messy little strands, but none of it mattered. The air was thick and warm and sweet with their breath, and Suzie couldn’t stop smiling.
“I haven’t done this in, like…” Suzie whispered against Jewels’ mouth, voice shaky, “...ever.”
Jewels pulled back just slightly, just enough to look her in the eyes, fingers still cradling her hip. “You’re doing fine.”
“I think my bra is inside out.”
“You’re still doing fine.”
Jewels’ hand was resting absently on her stomach, thumb brushing slow, aimless circles into the fabric of her fishnets. There was a faint thump-thump-thump of bass from downstairs, muted and distant, like the world had kindly decided to take five. Which was so out of character considering Suzie’s luck up to this point in her life that she briefly considered the probability of a gas leak having killed everyone downstairs.
“Hey,” Jewels said quietly. “You okay?”
Suzie turned her head, looking over at her, blinking. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m great.”
“You looked kind of in your head for a second.”
Suzie hesitated. Then, “I think I’m just… waiting for it to stop being real.”
Jewels looked at her for a long beat, then leaned in and kissed her forehead, gentle this time. “It’s real, Suze.”
Suzie almost teared up, which would’ve been mortifying , so instead she made a face and said, “If you call me Suze again I’m jumping.”
They curled into each other like something they’d done a thousand times before. The room spun, the lava lamp cast slow oceans of color over the ceiling, and Suzie let her eyes flutter shut. Not to sleep, not yet, but to hold onto the quiet.
Eventually, the party would end. Eventually, Kori and Lydia would find her and scream-laugh and demand a full debrief. Eventually, there’d be a hangover and a 9am stagecraft lecture. But for now it was just Suzie and Jewels together, and goddamn it, she was going to remember what that felt like.