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Her stomach is already flipping when she walks in. Her stomach is in knots and her hands flutter by her sides and her mouth wants a drink. Shaken. Stirred. Something to give her something to do. What’s the difference, she shouldn’t be so damn nervous. It’s not like this is a date, for chrissakes.
If her mother were here she’d tell her don’t fuss, Tanya, stop touching your hair, Tanya, quit fidgeting, Tanya
She was never good at listening to her mother.
This isn’t a date. This isn’t, and she’s not some schoolgirl with a crush. She’s not back at Croydon. This is just a way for her to unwind after work.
With Stella.
Christ.
She smooths her hands down her thighs, contemplates ordering a drink that isn’t water if only to quell the shaking of her hands. And suddenly she’s fifteen again, sneaking wine coolers from her parent’s fridge and looking at photos of girls on the internet.
The jazz in this piano bar isn’t helping.
Why did she agree to meet her here? What did she think this would lead to, sitting next to her like a schoolgirl with a crush.
She’d been shocked when she issued the invitation. Shocked and nervous and she’d almost said no, standing in the morgue in her scrubs and Stella asking her in that cool way, “Want to grab a drink?”
And now, sitting next to her, she knows she can tell something’s up. That she’s nervous.
Reed takes another sip of her drink. Steels herself. She’s barely said a word since she got here, and thinking about it now, the first thing she thinks of when she looks at Stella is the scratches on the body in her morgue.
She feels the need to apologize, maybe. For prying. Truth is she asked because she wanted to know, not out of any sense of forensic need or whatnot.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “The scratches. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You were just doing your job,” Stella says, looking directly at Reed, daring her to deny it.
Reed’s throat is dry. They both know she wasn’t just doing her job.
(Maybe they both know she was thinking about Stella putting similar scratches on her own back)
But maybe she shouldn’t think about that.
She takes another drink. Stays silent until Stella asks about Tom.
“I helped him choose the video clips of Rose,” Reed says, just to have something to say, to talk about (like they can talk about anything that’s not this bloody case.)
“I didn’t realize you were so close to the family,” Stella says, and Reed feels herself bristling at the implications.
“To Tom,” Stella clarifies, and there’s a twist of jealousy in her gut at the thought.
“He’s not responsible for Rose going missing.”
“No I know. We are.”
That admission of guilt. It’s guilt tying them together and guilt that’s their common ground, and later if she goes to bed with her there’ll be guilt in the room there, too.
She’s almost relieved when Stella picks up the phone and goes to take a call. Relieved that the pressure building in her gut can settle.
And then he walks up. And she can tell by the look on his face he’s here to see about taking her home, because what else do you do with a woman alone in a bar?
Michael Day.
She want to throw her drink in his face but being cool is the only way she can get him to leave. She rattles off the root words for her job like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world, a fuck off to the man standing in front of her.
He chuckles and the sound sends a shiver of fear through her. “And now I’m thinking you must be Professor Reed Smith.”
Damn. Damn oh damn she just wanted to be somewhere she wouldn’t be recognized and now, here, in this bar—
And then—
Stella.
She smells her perfume before she sees her and then the next thing she knows Stella’s murmuring a throaty hello and—
When she kisses her it takes her by surprise. It is everything Reed hadn’t dared let herself hope for, it is smoke and gunpowder and want and desire and she stiffens, at first, but then she finds herself leaning into Stella, leaning into her own want, wanting nothing but to keep kissing her and—
Stella pulls back, smirking, takes the drinks out of Michael’s hands and sends him off.
“I daresay he knows who you are,” Reed says, a warning hum starting in the back of her head, like she’s fifteen and her mother’s walked in on her kissing a girl.
The smile Stella gives her tells her everything. Let them talk. Let them say something I don’t care I would burn down the world for you.
God but she can’t let her.
If she burns down the world there will be nothing left of Reed.
She finds herself staring at the elevator doors, willing herself to calm down calm down.
But she can’t. She can’t do it. Guilt is a hard stone in her throat and she’ll be damned but she can’t bring herself to swallow it down.
“I can’t,” she says.
I can’t I can’t I can’t.
She rides home alone in the dark, nothing but the guilt and the fear to keep her company, no flicker of flame to keep her warm.