This section's got a long preamble, but I'm building to something.
Erin:
It had been a difficult six months, to say the least. After seducing my best friend and training her to be my personal lesbian sex slave, I'd lost Alyssa as quickly as I'd had her. She came back from a weekend with Paula and I knew it was over. She was distant, hardly texting, and making excuses to avoid me. She said it was just nerves for the play--the play that started everything--the one I'd helped her practice for. Or was supposed to. It was set to run the following weekend, and by Monday morning she asked if we could pause our "games" until after the play so she could concentrate. Not a great sign, I knew, but I acquiesced and gave her some space.
The night of the play, I took a front row seat. Or more accurately, as the theatre was set in the round, one of the four front rows. People trickled in, gradually finding their seats, many of which had been marked reserved with jackets and purses. The lights started flashing, signaling to stragglers to take their seats. And then, just before the lights came down, I saw them: Alyssa's parents. They were directly across the stage from me. Alyssa's dad, goateed and spectacled, reading the play program while his wife chatted with the young blonde woman beside her. The young woman's face was obscured by a giant bouquet of flowers she was holding. A sinking feeling settled in my stomach. In the last bit of light before total darkness, the bouquet shifted and I confirmed my fear. It was Paula sitting with Alyssa's family.
And how to describe the play? Very much a student play. Alyssa was great, though. She looked beautiful. She moved about the stage with so much confidence and poise that it was hard to reconcile the previous weeks--how could someone who had looked at me so pleadingly, who'd stood before me appearing more naked than naked, looking so ravenous with desire--how could that body also possess the capacity for such assurance?
When the infamous kissing scene arrived, my eyes were on Alyssa. Her co-star pulled her in for the kiss and when her lips met his, the scene crackled with an untold intensity. She'd learned well. Her eyes were shut tight in concentration, and just before they broke their embrace I saw her steal a glance into the dark sea of audience members, lingering on the exact spot where Paula was seated.
It was my first heartbreak, and I won't lie: it hurt so fucking bad. I felt like crying in the theatre, but I held it together. When the play was over, I made a quick getaway. I turned on the radio and "Help Me" by Joni Mitchell was playing, and then I really fell apart. I cried so hard that I pulled into a Burger King parking lot to do it without multitasking. I didn't speak to Alyssa for the rest of the school year. My parents kept asking "What happened? You guys were inseparable." And I'd always say the same thing. "We just grew apart." The summer passed like a summer. Nothing to report. I worked. I moped. I blocked and unblocked Alyssa on social media, looking long enough to see some clue implying Paula's presence-- her pair of white tennis shoes by the door in the background of a photo, for instance, before I'd block her again. I moved to [a different college], two hours away from [a college] where Alyssa and Paula were, and the beginning of freshman year was actually really restorative. I loved my classes and meeting new people. I hooked up with a few girls. I picked up one girl with a nice, fat ass at an improv show and I thought of Alyssa. We had nice but mostly vanilla sex.
Then, sometime in October, Alyssa sent me an email from her new college email address. I had blocked her on every other platform. Her message was contrite. She wrote that she'd hated how she'd handled things. How she'd been confused by her feelings and felt embarrassed she'd fallen so deeply for Paula so quickly. The email ended with a curious couple of lines. "You and I have meant so much to each other for so long. It's weird not having you in my life at all," she'd written. "The past six months have been so eye-opening and it's weird not telling you about it. I want you to come visit me during your fall break so I can show you the life I'm living."
I thought about just deleting the email and putting her out of my life for good. It was an insult, reaching out the way she had after the indignity of our break-up. If you could even call it a break-up. But there was also something intriguing about the end of the message--this life she was living. I considered it over and over, the implications made me incredibly horny. Lust won out over pride. I waited a few days before replying that I might be able to come spend a day or two with her and Paula. She said Paula had a club rugby game the same evening I would be arriving at [a college], so I should just meet her at the game. When classes were done on Tuesday afternoon, I got in my car and drove the hundred and thirty miles in a trance. I couldn't believe I was traveling any distance to visit my ex-best friend/ex-lover and my ex-family friend/romantic rival like we were all old friends. Which, of course, we were. I was swallowing any last bit of pride I had by making the trip, and I didn't care. I needed to know what was happening without me. I needed to know what she had meant.
I parked my car at the lot near the fields and texted Alyssa.
"Just got here."
"I'll be there in a minute."
I turned and saw Alyssa coming over the hill. My jaw dropped. She was wearing tiny jean shorts that hugged her fat ass and thighs at every seam. She paired the shorts with a black crop top and wedges that made her even taller, and when she hugged me I had to stand on my tiptoes.
"It's good to see you."
"It's good to see you, too," I said. "You look good."
I looked at her. She wore eye make-up now. And her lips were shiny with lip gloss.
"Before anything else, let me first say I'm sorry, again."
"Let's forget it."
"I've felt so bad."
I just looked at her.
"Come on. I want to introduce you to my friends."
I walked behind her, watching her ass sway in those jean shorts. She looked like someone you'd see waiting for an Uber outside a bar on Miami. Alyssa stepped up onto the bleachers and slid down towards a group of women. They were an interesting assortment, a mix of some butchier looking girls, some athletic types, and a few other dolled-up, girly-girls. I noticed that one of the women, a femme in a corset top, was at least twenty years older than the rest of us. The crew greeted Alyssa.
"Hey, what's up Lips."
"Guys, this is my friend Erin."
I recognized Steph, the girl from the FaceTime who was fucking Alyssa. She was gorgeous--freckles, blonde highlights, toned arms peeking from her t-shirt sleeves. Pukka shells. Straight out of your favorite mall retailer.
"Erin, this is Steph. And this is Steph's friend, Maggie," Alyssa said, gesturing to the older woman. Maggie held out her hand to me tentatively, presenting a set of expensive-looking red nails.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Maggie. So, how do you all know each other?" Dumb question, but I just had to know how Maggie had become entangled with these dykes.
"We all know each other from school," Steph said, smirking.
"I met Steph at my daughter's softball game, " Maggie said.
"I was coaching. The other team."
"Then Maggie decided to switch teams," a girl with a shaved eyebrow quipped.
"Where does your family think you are now again, Maggie?" Steph said.
"Weekend retreat with my book club."
"Ah, that book club again. You've got the world's most active book club. Don't they notice you're never reading any books?"