More Wild West

The Visitor Has Company (Visitor #7)-2

“Probably.”

“That’s… gonna take some getting used to.” Kirsten made a face that caused the silvery tracks of salt down her cheeks to catch the light. “I mean, Lea-honey, you could go back there. Or I could, you know, go for a walk.”

“No, K, honest —”

Now Kirsten’s face was in a more typical mode: skeptical. “Sweetie, I interrupted y’alls… fun.”

Lea was about to deny it, but Kirsten pointed to the chairs, still back-to-back, handcuffs still dangling. Then she pointed over to the counter, where the strap-on and lube were waiting. Lea shot her friend a sad smile. “Well, yeah. But we’d been going for quite a while, and honestly, I can do without for a night. I’m… very satisfied in that department.”

Kirsten gave a sour snort. “Bitch.”

There was a grunt from Andy’s room at the back, and then another, followed by the rhythmic sound of the bed hitting the wall.

“Oh, damn,” sighed Kirsten, and then held up her hands. “I’m trying not to visualize any of this too much, but… I mean, how do those two not, like, crush you?”

“Well,” Lea answered, trying to think how to say anything that wasn’t going to make her friend want to puke, “they kind of… do. But in a very nice way.”

“Damn.” Pouting, Kirsten looked down the hallway, where the thump of the headboard was growing stronger. “Gotta be Andy on top, right?”

“Well, actually, it’s probably Sean. Andy likes… Yeah. Though we all sometimes take —”

Kirsten held her hands up. “Sweet Jesus. Here I always figured you and Sean for straight vanilla. Thought I was the kinky one. Damn.”

One of the men — Lea was pretty sure it was her friend’s brother — screamed. Kirsten blanched.

“Come on, K,” said Lea, taking her friend by the hand and leading her back to the table. “I think we should grab another drink. And you need to tell me all about Gianna.”

They sat and drank, both pretending not to listen to the increasing sounds of passion coming from the back room. Kirsten told Lea the whole story — most of which Lea already knew — of how Kirsten and Gianna’s relationship had disintegrated once Gianna’s ex, Frankie, had reappeared in her life. “I mean,” Kirsten sniffled, “it’s not like I didn’t see it comin’. I feel like such a…” Kirsten blinked and shook her head. “Am I really drunk, or is the wallbangin’ happenin’ in stereo?”

Lea, who was a bit woozy herself, had to listening for a moment before she heard the echo from downstairs. “Oh. Um. That’s Lorelle and Freddy. I guess the boys kind of… inspired them.”

Kirsten gawked at Lea, and then, though her eyes were still red-rimmed, she began to laugh, snorting until tears were flowing again — tears of laughter.

At that point — as Lea had begun to giggle along — their laughter was interrupted by a series of bellows (Lea was able to identify them as Lorelle, then Freddy, then Sean, and finally Andy). And then Lea and Kirsten truly couldn’t do anything but laugh.

What else was there to do?

Waking up the next morning, Lea was discombobulated. She was in her bed, sure. There was an O’Connell wrapped around her, murmuring amorously though (blessedly) unintelligibly into Lea’s ear. These things were not unusual.

What was unusual was that the O’Connell in question was Kirsten, who was (again, blessedly) still asleep.

Lea gingerly detached herself from Kirsten’s full-body embrace and tip-toed off to the shower.

By the time that she’d rendered herself more or less human again and returned to the main room, Andy, Sean, and Kirsten were all seated at the table nibbling on toast. None of them seemed to be able to meet any of the others’ eyes.

“Good morning,” chirped Lea as cheerfully as she could.

The three Georgians muttered “Morning” back, but still none of the three of them looked up.

Well.

Shit.

Shitty-s**t-s**t.

Lea had learned as a stage manager and director to face awkwardness: to name it and move on. Nothing was going to get done after an opening had bombed until someone said, “Well, we sure sucked last night. How are we going to do better?” And so Lea faced the elephants in the room and addressed them. “Kirsten, Andy and Sean are in love. They are also, apparently, in love with me. We all f**k, but they like to f**k all on their lonesome when I’m not available. Being large guys, sometimes they f**k pretty loudly.”

Now all three sets of eyes were wide, and focussed on her.

“Sean, Andy: Kirsten and I could absolutely hear you last night. That’s fine. We could also hear Freddy and Lorelle from downstairs, which was hilarious. Kirsten, does it bother you that Sean and Andy have s*x?”

Kirsten shook her head.

“Sean, Andy: like you, Kirsten is bisexual. Does it bother you that she likes women as well as men?”

Both men shook their heads. Sean reached out and took his sister’s bright pink hand.

“Good,” Lea said. “Does it bother you that she was in bed with me last night?”

Both men now blinked. Andy’s eyebrows shot up.

Kirsten turned bright red, which told Lea she was on the right track. “Not in-bed in bed. We just snoozed on the same matress. Any problem?”

The men once again shook their heads.

Lea took a deep breath; she was about to head out into deeper water. “Kirsten: when you woke up this morning, were you dreaming about Gianna — or were you dreaming about me?”

Kirsten threw her hands over her face. Sean petted at her head, but Andy — mortified as he still clearly was — snickered. “She was moanin’ your name, Lea-baby.”

Sean backhanded Andy none too gently, and then whispered to Kirsten, “I don’t blame you, Sis. I’ve dreamed about Lea here for years.”

“Thank you,” Lea said, choking a bit on a sudden upsurge of emotion. This was beyond complicated. But she needed to say the last bit. She reached out and urged her friend’s hands down from her face. “Kirsten, I need you to look at me, okay?”

Kirsten unwillingly lowered her hands as Sean continued to stroke her hair. She was once again crying, not that Lea blamed her. She looked as if she were waiting for Lea to scratch her eyes out, but she met Lea’s gaze.

“Thank you.” Another upsurge. Another breath. “Kirsten, my BFF, I really, really don’t mind. You can dream about doing whatever you want to me. I’m… I’m honored, I guess.”

Kirsten’s eyes widened.

Now it was Lea’s turn to reach out and take her friend’s hand. “Just so long as you understand I am not bisexual, and that it’s your brother and this eternal twelve-year-old —” She flicked her head toward Andy. “— that I am in love with and planning on spending the rest of my life with. Though God alone knows how that is going to work out. Okay, K?”

Kirsten shot her a bleary, off-center smile and nodded. “God. Now I feel twelve.”

Sean kissed the top of his sister’s head. “Long as you don’t start sighing about Bobby Wang.”

“Wong, shithead. His name was Bobby Wong. And if I hear that name again, I’m going to tell your fiancés here all about a certain Giselle —”

“Yeah. No.” Sean held up his hands in surrender, but he was grinning. “Listen, Sis, we’ll get a real breakfast together. Why don’t you go and clean off the plane dust.”

Kirsten got up, gave her brother a hug back, and then shuffled off to the bathroom, while Andy got up and walked over to the kitchen.

When the door closed behind Kirsten, Lea turned to Sean, ready to tease him about this Giselle, whoever she was, but Sean was staring at Lea, his expression as serious as Lea could remember seeing it.

“What, Sean?”

He bit his lip, but his gaze remained knife-edged.

Suddenly nervous again, Lea frowned at him. “Sean?”

That night, after the boys had driven into work, Lea and Kirsten were on the pull-out watching Clueless, working on their second bottle of Pinot Gris, and getting very silly.

“Gawd, I wanted those clothes when I was a kid,” Kirsten tittered.

Snorting, Lea leaned against the body pillow she was propped up against and said, “You did have a thing for plaid when I met you.”

Kirsten poked her. “And you had a thing for wearing all black.”

“I was in mourning for my life. I was unhappy.” Lea tried to say it with a straight face, but couldn’t even begin to manage it.

“Yeah, right.”

“I got over it. You never went through a goth phase?”

While Alicia Silverstone applied makeup in a mirror, Kirsten actually considered this. “Naw. Well, maybe for a week or two. To try to impress Bobby that Sean was teasing me about.” She gave a nostalgic smirk.

“Bobby Wang?”

Kirsten’s eyes narrowed. “Wong.”

Lea grinned. “Same name, you know. Chinese doesn’t have a long A sound.”

“Well, I know that now. When I was in eighth grade, all I knew was Bobby was cute, and always wore eyeliner and black Green Day shirts, and that Sean wouldn’t stop givin’ me s**t about him.”

“How in the hell did you find a boy named Wong to get a crush on?”

“Hey! You’ve lived here. Atlanta ain’t San Fran, but it ain’t just black and white. First girl I ever wanted to kiss was Tracy Rodriguez.” Kirsten’s eyes flicked to Lea and then back to the screen. “Guess I always kind of liked people who had more pigment than me. Which is, you know, anyone with any pigment at all.”

“You have pigment. Just, you know, in spots.” Lea almost touched a freckle on her friend’s arm — would have done it a year before — but instead fell back into watching the silly movie, watching Alicia Silverstone’s Cher banter with her black best friend Dionne. Who reminded Lea of a less curvy, younger Cherry. Cherry. “So Stacy Rodriguez. How old were you?”

“Gawd. Twelve, thirteen maybe? Freaked me the f**k out. I mean, it was okay that I thought she was cute, ‘cause, you know, she was, but I started having all of these thoughts, you know?”

“Yeah. I know. Being thirteen is hard for anyone.” Lea looked at her friend. Kirsten was sitting with her knees pulled to her chest. Lea could ask about the first time Kirsten actually kissed a girl, or when Kirsten realized that she had a crush on Lea, but that was probably too direct. So she took a completely different tack. “So Sean. Who was this Giselle?”

That got Kirsten to laugh. “Giselle Beauchamp!” She took a swig of wine. “So there I was, crushing on Tracy and Bobby, and Sean being an asshole about it — about Bobby, ‘cause I didn’t tell no one about Tracy, ever — and there’s this girl in his freshman class that he keeps talking about. And one night I’m coming back from the bathroom and I hear this, um, groaning from Sean’s bedroom; he’s moaning her name. Well, I thought, time for me to pay you back for all the Bobby Wang s**t. So I shove open his door and…” Kirsten laughed and turned bright red.

“And?” Lea asked. “And… what?”

“And there’s my damned brother’s naked white ass. He’s on his bed, on his pillow, humping away at it, groaning, ‘Oh, Giselle, Giselle.’”

“Oh, man.”

“Right? So I walked back out, wanted to puke, but the next morning, I told him if I ever heard another word about Bobby Wang, I’d tell Giselle he f****d his pillow and pretended it was her.”

“Wow. Bet he never said another word.”

Kirsten gave a pleased grin. “Nope.”

Lea clicked her glass to her friend’s. “So what was this Giselle like?”

“Don’t know. Never did meet her.” Kirsten turned toward Lea. “Bet she looked like you. I think Sean’s been in love with you since before he even knew you.”