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Pulling her hair out and tossing in bed, too worried about her future to sleep, Gee sent her resume to a bunch of New York internships at three in the morning. Now she has to pick up every unknown number in case of an interview. Her phone buzzes on her nightstand. She groans about her dumbass decisions right up until the last ring.
It’s not Cartoon Network or the like. It’s a voice she hasn’t heard since a coffee date last week. A date that, while sweet, had felt like pity and ended with Gee promising to call, then losing her nerve and scrubbing away the number written in pen across her palm.
Frankie says, “Hey, is this Gee?” and Gee realizes she hasn’t done anything but breathe heavily into the phone.
“Yeah!” Gee sits up in bed, shoving her plate covered in sandwich crumbs off her comforter, like Frankie could somehow see the mess and judge her.
“Cool,” Frankie says. “It’s Frankie. I got your number from Mikey. Hambone finally went through the pile of shit left behind at the party last week, and basically, I have your coat.”
Frankie’s voice is unfairly sexy even through the crackle of phone static. Every word is low and nonchalant, like she doesn’t try at all. Gee has a bad habit of starting every sentence with a near-squeak.
“Do you, um.” Shit, if she asks Frankie to drop it off, it might sound like she just wants to get Frankie in her bedroom again. Which she does. Obviously. Of course. But she screwed it up so monumentally the last time that she doesn’t deserve another chance. “Where can I take it off your hands?”
Does she really need her coat back? Fall’s going to turn into winter soon. And she went through all the trouble of painting a Planet of the Apes design on the leather back. It might still be worth sacrificing to avoid another run-in with the hottest woman in Jersey.
“Pencey’s playing a house show tonight,” Frankie says. “I can bring it, if you want to meet up there.”
In a stroke of boldness, Gee says, “What, did you not sell enough tickets yet?” and immediately wants to yell at herself. Could she go five seconds without stuttering or insulting Frankie, please, for the love of God?
But Frankie laughs, loud and musical. “I’ll put you on the list. Least I can do.”
Gee doesn’t know what that means, but like a dumbass, she agrees.
*
The house show is at Gabe’s parent’s place. Gee puts mascara on, hates it, scrubs it off, and reapplies it from the passenger seat of Mikey’s car. She ends up raccoon-like and worse off than she started.
She finds Frankie before Pencey’s set starts. Frankie grins brightly when Gee taps her on the shoulder near the amp pile. Before Gee can breathe, Frankie has a hand on her cheek. “I missed you. Can I?”
Gee couldn’t stop herself from nodding if she wanted to.
Frankie kisses her softly, then once more with heat. She smirks and leans down to adjust another setting on the amp. “Your coat’s back in our van. I’ll grab it for you after our set. Stick around, okay? We’re playing a new song.”
“You look good,” Gee says, and mentally curls into the fetal position as she hears the words come out of her mouth. Frankie’s in a wifebeater that doesn’t quite reach the waist of her ripped jeans, sparing a glimpse of the ink on her lower belly.
“Really? These are like, my painting clothes. I just never want to wear anything nice on stage because I know I’ll sweat through it all.”
Gee tries really, really hard not to think about Frankie’s tank top sticking to her skin, hiding nothing underneath.
“Well, it works. For you.”
“Thank you,” Frankie says, almost bashful. She touches the side of Gee’s neck with callused fingers. Their heat moves through Gee and sparks in her core. Gee’s own hands hang by her sides pathetically.
Frankie excuses herself to help her band out by their van. Gee waves, then stands frozen in place for a minute, before she remembers she’s at a party. And that she needs a drink. Several drinks.
If there’s one thing Gabe’s house has, it’s shots. She downs two of Fireball. When she gives them a minute and doesn’t feel them working, she grabs the bottle instead.
If she’s going to get on Frankie’s level—effortlessly touchy, charming, unselfconscious—she’s going to need all the liquid courage she can get.
The world gets swirly. There’s Mikey in her vision, smiling even though his eyebrows are knit. Gabe dragging him away. Pencey plays, at some point, and Gee is rooted to the ground by their music, her entire being made to stand and watch Frankie’s fingers on her guitar strings. Mikey again. A car. Throwing up, car door open, onto the Turnpike.
Gee wakes up her bed in the basement, her jacket draped over her legs like a blanket, head pounding. Her painted rendition of Nova and an ape stare up at her pitilessly.
*
When Gee finally makes it out of bed and into the world of the living—the kitchen, for coffee—Mikey can’t even tell her what horrendous things she no doubt did while blacked out. He wasn’t watching her; he was too busy with Gabe fucking Saporta. Or too busy fucking Gabe Saporta. Gee doesn’t want to think about it.
*
Gee can’t skate. The last time Mikey tried to skate he twisted his knee backward and had to wear an ace bandage for three weeks. They have no business at the skate park, but Gee’s ass burns on the hot concrete at the top of the bowl anyway, because of course Mikey has some new skate rat boy toy he needs to follow around Belleville.
Gee’s just here to make sure Mikey doesn’t get on a board again and fuck up his fragile bird-bone body. Older sister duties.
At least the skate park’s graffiti is interesting. The spraypaint on the highway and around Gee’s neighborhood is all crudely drawn dicks; here, people play with color, have precision, artistry. There’s an alien face dripping with slime that Gee particularly likes.
There are still some dicks, but she can forgive that.
She’s describing to Mikey why the color combination of a graffiti tag on the side of a ramp is so effective when someone touches her shoulder. “Gee?”
Before Gee sees a face, she sees a fingerless skeleton glove and chipped black nail polish. Frankie smiles down at her, bright as the sun.
“What are you doing here?” Gee asks, feeling like her mouth is full of cotton. Frankie lifts her board into view. Oh, God. How does she keep getting hotter?
The spotty memory of the house show last week crashes over Gee all at once, and she cringes. If Frankie weren’t gripping her, holding her in place, she’d throw herself down the vert ramp. Recalling her idiocy makes her feel nauseous and hungover all over again.
“Just a spectator today?” Frankie asks.
“Mikes needed a ride,” Gee says. A lie—Mikey drove them—but if he contradicts her, she will snap his glasses in two.
He must sense this, because he keeps his mouth shut. That, or he’s not paying attention because boy-of-the-week just took his shirt off to wipe sweat off his face.
“Sweet. You can watch me eat shit.” Putting her board on the ground, Frankie plays with its tail with her foot. “If I skin my knees, will you kiss it better?”
Gee practically vibrates with the effort it takes to not reach out and touch Frankie. With Frankie standing, scoping out the park below them, and Gee on the ground, Gee is at eye level with Frankie’s perfect thighs. She wants to drag her teeth over them.
And she is not going to be a freak. She’s going to be normal. A deep breath, one two three, and exhale.
Frankie sits down next to Gee. Her elbow brushes Gee’s side as she gets settled with her board across her lap. Pointing to the part of the bowl Gee was captured by, she says, “This art is sick, isn’t it? I keep trying to find out who did the spread with the jack o’ lantern and the alien, but they’re an enigma. I partly want to find them to buy them a beer, or something, but mostly it’s for me. I need someone cool around here to design some ink for me. And maybe do something with the bottom of my board.”
Gee loves the graffiti too, but that doesn’t stop the nasty thread of jealousy that squirms through her. Then she realizes, oh. This could be her chance to seem mildly cool in front of Frankie for the first time ever.
Gee catches herself compulsively tugging at her hair and forces her hands into her lap. “I’m kind of an artist.”
“More than kind of,” Mikey says while looking at his phone. When Gee snaps her head over to stare at him, he raises his eyebrows. Then he stands up, brushes himself off, and wanders toward the ramps, like his work here is done. Fucker.
Frankie touches Gee’s arm to take her attention back. Gee jumps a little at the contact. Frankie says, “Are you about to make me an offer I can’t refuse?”
Gee doesn’t know how to answer that without embarrassing herself, so she says, “Do you have a pen or anything?”
Miraculously, Frankie pulls a sharpie out of her pocket. Gee takes it and holds onto Frankie’s outstretched wrist, tapping on it to silently ask her to open her palm. Frankie does. Gee uncaps the marker and starts to doodle. Space is limited, but she does her best rendition of a zombie and Dracula having a swordfight.
“You are the coolest motherfucker,” Frankie says when Gee’s done. Heat rises to Gee’s cheeks, and the praise feels too good to really even chastise herself for it.
Frankie’s gaze rests a little lower than Gee’s eyes. Gee realizes with start that she still has the marker’s cap between her teeth and quickly wipes it off to hand it back to Frankie.
“Damn. Now I can never wash this hand again.” Frankie stares at the drawing from different angles. The ink has started to bleed into the cracks of her palm, but Frankie still looks impressed. The attention on such a spontaneous drawing makes Gee feel small. Not necessarily in a bad way. Frankie says, “You’ll do my board, right? Just paint the bottom of it?”
Because Frankie is magic, Gee nods. A second later, actual excitement tightens in her stomach. Finally, something she’s good at.
“I’m so glad I met you,” Frankie says, like Gee is supposed to know what the fuck to do with that. Frankie stands up. “I’ll be back in a few, okay? Gotta find out if you have any more hidden talents.”
“Nope, no more. Unfortunately, what you see is what you get.”
“I really, really doubt that.” Frankie leans in close, too close. Her breath fans onto Gee’s cheek. “But what I see definitely isn’t bad either.”
As Gee frantically clenches her hands into fists on the concrete, Frankie sets her board on the edge of the bowl. She glances over her shoulder, grins, and drops in, flying down the wall like she’s made of the same energy that makes stars burn.
*
Dueling supernatural creatures are cute, but they don’t feel good enough to be on Frankie’s skateboard forever. Gee putzes around the basement, wishing she hadn’t gotten herself into this. At the same time, though, the itch in the back of her brain—the one that made her go to art school, the one that makes her hands move over a canvas in ways she doesn’t consciously understand—tells her that an idea is coming. And that this is how she can show Frankie how much she means to her.
She sketches the profile of a skeleton, then cuts it off at the ribs. Outlines it with the shape of Jersey. Writes PENCEY PREP under the pencil-smudged design.
Nodding to herself over and over, she reaches for her paints.
*
A few nights later, Frankie comes to Gee’s after band practice. Gee meets her in the driveway, board in hand. It’s twilight and the gold streetlamps are just starting to break up the denim sky.
As Frankie climbs out of her beat-up SUV, Gee holds the deck where Frankie can see it. May as well get the worst part over with. It’s a good design, but it may not be what Frankie wanted when she said whatever you think will look dope, I trust you.
Frankie squints, trying to make out the design in the low light, and comes closer.
She takes the board out of Gee’s hands and doesn’t say anything.
“Do you—is it okay? I didn’t seal the paint yet, in case it wasn’t—”
Frankie puts a hand on the side of Gee’s face, which is a very effective way to shut Gee up. “This is the coolest shit I’ve ever seen, and I need to hug you about it.”
“Oh, um. Go for it,” Gee says. She winces at her awkwardness, but Frankie throws her arms around her anyway, squeezing tight. Frankie smells so good. The warm scent of girl skin and smoke. Gee melts a little.
“Thank you,” Frankie says. “Thank you so much, holy shit.” She places the board down, gentler than she did at the skatepark, and coasts down the length of the driveway. The breeze carries her laugh back to Gee. Gee feels like there’s a balloon in her ribcage.
Frankie makes her way back. The board threatens to roll as she hops off, but she stops it with her foot. She looks up at Gee. “Come on, show me what you’ve got.”
“What I’ve got?” Gee asks, and puts it together a moment later. “Oh, God, no. I don’t skate. Painting yours was the closest I’ve gotten to a board since I was a kid.”
“I’m trying to get you in on this bliss,” Frankie says, as if watching Frankie beam isn’t twisting Gee’s insides around in all the happiest ways already.
“I don’t know how.”
Softer, Frankie says, “If you want, I’ll show you.”
The worst Gee can do is fall and hurt herself, she reasons, and then she has an excuse to return to the safety of her basement. The best outcome is keeping that excited, open look on Frankie’s face.
Frankie mimes putting her left foot on the back tail at an angle and her right foot toward the front. Gee copies her. The board wobbles under her, and Gee holds her breath until it stabilizes. Frankie doesn’t make her push off, but instead offers her hands. When Gee takes them, she steers Gee slowly down the driveway. The calluses on Frankie’s fingers rub against Gee’s inner wrists.
They’re moving so slow, it’s hardly scary, but Gee’s heart is still beating out of her chest.
“You’re a natural,” Frankie says before she stops their momentum.
“Frankie,” is all Gee gets out before her voice dies.
Eyes shining with the last gasps of light, Frankie says, “You can say anything, Gee.”
Gee closes her eyes tight. The inside of her head sounds like the crescendo of a song, like Frankie playing guitar. “If I don’t kiss you, I think I’ll explode.”
“Look at me,” Frankie says.
Gee opens one eye like she expects to find tornado wreckage in her wake. Frankie hasn’t moved, but that means she hasn’t run away. Gee opens the other.
Hands on Gee’s waist, Frankie helps Gee off the board. It rolls the opposite way down the driveway and stops in some dead grass. Frankie doesn’t take her hands off Gee.
Gee doesn’t know if she leans in or Frankie does, but their lips collide, achingly sweet. Adrenaline surges through Gee and she tugs Frankie close so their chests are flush.
Gee spent too long denying herself this, because now she can’t keep her hands off Frankie, can’t stop roaming for hips and thigh and neck and shoulder and the small of her back. Frankie is electric, and she kisses Gee like she means it.
Gee nips at the edge of Frankie’s jaw. The guttural noise that comes out of Frankie makes Gee hot between her legs. “I would love to see your basement again,” Frankie says, “if you’re down for that.”
The proposition should strike Gee with fear, but it doesn’t. She pulls away for a moment to think more clearly. Frankie has already seen her in one of her worst states; she’s seen the best of Gee, too, in her art. She’s stuck around through both.
“When I was blacked out at your show,” Gee asks, because she has to, “did I do anything horrible?”
Frankie’s grin shows all her teeth. “You, uh. Told me you wanted to start a record label just to sign my band. You said you thought we were the best band in the whole world. Then you played some air guitar.”
Not—great, not as bad as it could be. “That was it?”
“That was it.” Frankie nods. “It was very cute.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t tell you how hot you are when you perform,” Gee says, and catches the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth.
“Oh?” Frankie raises a devilish eyebrow. “Well, never too late.”
“Shut up,” Gee says. And for good measure, “Fuck you. Come inside already.”
They fumble their way into the basement. It takes several tries to get to the bed, because they keep grabbing each other to steal another kiss or five. Frankie pushes Gee up against the wall next to the bedpost, and Gee gasps.
When they finally make it to the bed, Frankie lands on top. She cages Gee in with her arms and straddles her. Her hot mouth trails down Gee’s neck, across her collarbones, on her shoulder through her t-shirt.
“I’m gonna let you take things off for both of us,” Frankie says against Gee’s skin. “Whatever and whenever you want. Is that okay?”
Gee immediately pulls Frankie’s tank top off and sits up to yank her own shirt over her head.
“Oh, fuck,” Frankie says softly. She ghosts her hands over Gee’s chest with a single-minded focus. “Good?”
Gee says, “Uh huh,” and arches into the touch. Frankie brushes her thumb over Gee’s nipple through her bra, and Gee’s breath catches. Glad she’s still sitting up, Gee reaches back to unhook her bra. Frankie helps her slide it off her shoulders.
Frankie stares at Gee’s bare chest hungrily. She cups one side, pinching the nipple, while her tongue finds the other. The noise that leaves Gee is truly embarrassing, but it eggs Frankie on. She swirls her tongue around Gee’s nipple before sucking it into her mouth and Gee has to scratch her nails down Frankie’s back just to survive it.
“What do you want?” Frankie asks, but she’s still rubbing her thumb over Gee’s nipple, so the only answer she gets is a pathetic whine. Gee tries to push her hips up, needing more.
Frankie buries her face in Gee’s neck and runs her teeth over Gee’s earlobe. “Tell me.”
“Inside me,” Gee manages. “Get inside me.” She flushes, and the heat burns down her chest.
“I can do that,” Frankie says, her hand wandering down from Gee’s chest. “Thank you for telling me. Good girl.”
The full body shudder that wracks Gee—she didn’t even know she could do that.
Frankie just kisses her shoulders for a minute, and eventually Gee’s frazzled mind remembers that she’s in charge of taking their clothes off. As soon as those wires connect, though, she reaches for the button of her jeans and pulls her zipper down.
Again, she makes herself get the worst part over with and pulls her jeans and underwear off at the same time. Dropping them over the side of the bed, she crawls back to Frankie, who seems unable to keep her hands still.
Gee’s back hits the mattress. That’s when she registers for the first time that she’s fully naked. Exposed. Frankie can think anything she wants right now about Gee’s lopsided tits and belly rolls, and all Gee can do is live with it.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” Frankie says, hovering over her. “You look like a statue somebody carved. Jesus.”
Like she can’t physically stop herself, Frankie puts her mouth back on Gee’s chest, licking with just the edge of teeth. Her other hand travels down, stopping itself where Gee’s hips and thigh join. She scratches a nail over the sensitive skin, and Gee shivers. She’s so wet. She needs Frankie to do something about it already.
“Please,” Gee says as Frankie’s eyes meet hers. Without needing to be asked twice, Frankie drags her fingers through Gee’s folds before dipping one inside.
Sparks fly behind Gee’s eyelids. “More,” she says. She can’t hold room in her mind for the shame of how much she wants this anymore, not when Frankie feels that good. Frankie adds another finger, kisses Gee’s neck, and hums.
“Feel good?” Frankie asks.
“I am—” Gee gasps as Frankie curls her fingers, cutting her off. “Literally fucking myself on your hand. God, Frankie, do you know how much I’ve thought about this?”
“Probably not as much as me,” Frankie says. And Gee can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of that—that, Jesus Christ, Frankie would spend any time thinking about her. She feels Frankie grin against her skin. “You didn’t answer my question, beautiful.”
Gee’s mouth falls open as Frankie adds a third. “Fuck, fuck, you know the answer.”
“Don’t be a brat.”
Gee whines, an uncontrolled sound from the back of her throat. “Feels so good, Frankie, I— fuck. So good, okay?”
“Good girl,” Frankie murmurs again. She hits just the right spot, and Gee cries out. Gee needs more. She reaches down to touch her own clit, but Frankie bats her hand away and adjusts so her thumb brushes Gee’s clit with every thrust.
“Don’t try that again,” Frankie says. “I’ve got you, pretty girl.”
Gee’s eyes are closed, so she feels Frankie’s other thumb come to rest on her bottom lip rather than seeing it. Without a conscious thought, she opens up to suck Frankie’s finger. Frankie groans like the air’s been punched out of her—the hottest noise Gee’s ever heard.
Without any warning, Gee comes, shaking. The world darkens around the edges as her whole body tightens and lets go.
Frankie grins wickedly and kisses Gee, but she doesn’t stop moving her fingers. Gee tries to wriggle away from the overstimulation.
“You gotta—gotta—enough,” Gee says between long gasps for air. “Too much.”
Pulling out, Frankie wipes her hands on Gee’s goddamn Millenium Falcon sheets. In her current state, Gee hardly even notices.
Frankie rolls off and falls next to Gee on the mattress. She kisses Gee’s arm softly, trailing her lips up to her shoulder.
“Thank you,” Gee says, still catching her breath.
“I feel like I should be thanking you,” Frankie says. She looks like she means it, too, eyes half-lidded and pupils blown huge. Shorter curls of hair fall into her face, and Gee brushes them back. Frankie closes her eyes and leans in to the touch.
Gee recalls some distant health tip from her art school friends who actually got laid and says, “I’m gonna go pee. Then you’re going to sit on my face.”
Frankie rolls onto her back and lifts her eyebrows at Gee. Gee doesn’t look at her, but that probably does nothing to hide her blush. “Oh? You have been thinking about this, huh?”
“Maybe,” Gee says. “Only if you want.”
“If we don’t, I’m never gonna be able to stop thinking about it, so yes. Let’s.”
Gee comes back, still dizzy from her orgasm but functional, and Frankie takes off her bra to reveal nipple piercings that just about put Gee into cardiac arrest. Frankie pins Gee’s arms on the mattress above her head as she rides Gee’s face. It takes her longer to come, and Gee loves every minute of it—Frankie’s taste, Frankie’s smell, Frankie’s strong thighs on either side of her face. Frankie’s deep moans.
Exhausted, they curl up together. Gee has enough energy to say, “We should do this again.”
“We should do this tomorrow morning, ” Frankie says, and they both laugh, delirious and high on feeling so close.
*
Gee comes to Pencey’s practice the next week. Their shabby space reeks of weed and cigarettes, and it’s easy for Gee to get comfy on the couch.
“We weren’t expecting an audience,” Hambone says as he checks some wires.
“Come on, you saw the logo.” Frankie adjusts her mic, then puts her hands on her hips. “She’s our in-house artist. She needs to be here. We’re inspiring her.”
Gee nods from the couch. If Frankie wants her here, that’s enough to believe she belongs here.
“More like she’s your girlfriend,” Hambone says.
“Fuck off,” Frankie says, but Gee doesn’t miss the edge of her smile. “Let’s do Eighth Grade. Don’t be fucking slow this time.”
There’s another answer to what Hambone said, one Gee knows will happen soon, has faith in despite all her usual nagging doubts. An answer where Frankie says: Yes. That’s Gee. She is my girlfriend.