Girl Games: A Sweet Lesbian Romance Read online

“A man stealing bitch who can’t stand other people being happy?”

  The words flew out of my mouth before I could really think about what I was saying. My hand flew to my mouth and my eyes went wide. I couldn’t believe I said that. That wasn’t me at all even if it did feel good.

  “Oh my God Gwen I’m so sorry! I didn’t…”

  I didn’t get a chance to finish my apology.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” Gwen said. “You come in and steal my man away from me and now you’re trying to turn it around on me? God you’re such a bitch.” She looked to Todd and smiled a sweet smile that was totally fucked up considering the fangs were out. “Don’t you agree baby? Isn’t she such a bitch?”

  Todd actually looked embarrassed. I guess that was a good thing? Not much of a good thing, though, because it didn’t stop him from going right along with her bitch routine. The guilt disappeared behind a smile and I knew he was in that stage where he’d say anything to get in Gwen the Great’s good graces.

  The asshole. I should’ve never agreed to go out with him. I mostly did it just to go on a date with a guy. Not that I’d had much success. I usually lost interest pretty quick. I was losing interest in him when Gwen stole him back, but again. The principle of the thing.

  Not to mention the less I thought of why I might be getting bored with him, why I didn’t really feel a spark when he kissed me, the better.

  “Yeah Gwen, you’re right,” he said.

  Gwen turned back to me. That grin was still on her face. Okay then. We were doing the nice mean girl. I’d seen her do it plenty of times and it always pissed me off and I’d never said anything. I guess that was coming back to bite me now.

  “Good. Glad we all agree, captain Lisa,” Gwen said. She put extra emphasis on captain and her eyes flashed. Oh yeah, she was very angry about that. “Now why don’t you…”

  “What the fuck is going on here?” a loud voice rang out through the crowd that had gathered around us. Everyone might hate being on the business end of Gwen’s unique way of dealing with the world, but it also seemed like everyone was always more than happy to stand around and watch it happen to someone else.

  Fucking high school.

  That voice. Was it a teacher? It sounded too young to be a teacher. I heard someone cursing and the crowd started muttering and parting. A teacher was the only person who could move through a crowd of students like a shark moving through a school of fish, right?

  “I said what the fuck… Oh. You.”

  My insides did little somersaults as I realized we were dealing with the only person other than a teacher, or maybe Gwen, with enough of a reputation to make it through a crowd like that. Kylie stood there wearing her usual all black outfit that somehow managed to look good even though she’d gone for the whole dark and brooding goth thing since we got to high school.

  Black miniskirt. Black tank top that skirted the rules but I was pretty sure most of the teachers were a little intimidated by her too so they never made a big deal out of it. Hair dyed a deep purple color that seemed to work for her, and several piercings on her face that looked like they would’ve been really uncomfortable to have done.

  There were rumors that she had piercings on other parts of her body that you couldn’t see walking down the halls in school. I shivered and wondered why I was shivering even as the involuntary reaction hit me.

  Where did that come from? Probably the same place some of my mixed feelings about Gwen came from. Feelings I was going to ignore thank you very much.

  The crowd went silent around us, though I could still hear the murmur of people chatting and lockers slamming in the distance beyond our small bubble. Kylie looked annoyed when she stepped through, but when she saw Gwen at the center that annoyance turned to pure fury.

  “What the fuck are you doing now, Gwen?” Kylie sneered. I felt a little better about everything, if anyone could stand up to Gwen it was Kylie, but then she turned the sneer on me. “A little mean girl on mean girl violence? Can’t say I don’t approve, but I also can’t let you do that on principle.”

  “Who the fuck died and made you boss?” Gwen said.

  I blinked. She must’ve been really mad to go that far. Usually she wouldn’t dare say anything like that to Kylie. In a flash Kylie was on Gwen and held her by the scruff of her official Morton Governors T-shirt. Gwen moved up on her tiptoes and her shirt rode up enough that her belly button ring glinted in the fluorescent light.

  Gwen’s eyes went wide and she looked to Todd for help, but it was pretty obvious there was no help coming from lover boy. He looked between the two girls in obvious confusion. Kylie was attacking his girl, but Kylie was also a girl and that short-circuited the small town values that had probably been drilled into him from a young age that a gentleman never hit a girl. Even if it looked like that girl was about to deliver a beatdown to his girl.

  “I made me boss when you decided to make me miserable for years,” Kylie said. “And it’s my mission to make sure you never do that to anyone at this school again, even if it is your stupid friend who couldn’t be bothered to say anything when everyone else was on the business end of your bitchiness.”

  I hung my head. Not quite in shame, but I didn’t exactly feel great about myself either. I tried to be happy and bubbly and nice to everyone, and it sucked when I was reminded that maybe some of the things I did to try and keep the peace with everyone around me weren’t so nice for other people.

  Gwen and Kylie stared at each other for a moment, then Gwen looked away. Kylie grinned and seemed to take that as meaning she’d won. She lowered Gwen until she was on the flats of her feet instead of her tiptoes, and Kylie dusted off Gwen’s shirt where it had been crumpled up in her fists.

  “Good. Glad we could come to an understanding. Again.”

  Kylie turned to the rest of the crowd and they took a step back. I would’ve giggled, except I worried that might draw Kylie’s attention to me and I wasn’t sure how welcome that would be. I couldn’t even work up the energy to smile. That was how drained I was from this.

  “What are you all looking at? Bell’s about to ring. Get to class!”

  She sounded for all the world like an angry teacher, and everyone obeyed her like an angry teacher. I started to turn away as well, but Kylie rounded on me and I was rooted to the spot. I’m not sure why. It’s not like I was afraid of her. Not exactly. I mean everyone had at least a bit of a healthy fear when it came to her, but that fear was only justified if you were the type of person to mess with other people.

  Like Gwen.

  “You okay?” she asked, her face softening. “Look, I didn’t mean to be so hard on you there. Trust me, I know what Gwen can be like. We all deal with her in our own way.”

  “Your way seems better than mine,” I said, looking down. I felt the waterworks threatening at the edge of my eyes as my vision blurred. I reached up and wiped them away with an angry swipe.

  Kylie shrugged. She didn’t smile, but she still looked so pretty and I was jealous. Jealous that she could throw all that stuff on and still look perfect. Jealous that she could go through life not giving a fuck what other people thought of her. Jealous that she could stand up to a bully like Gwen and I just tried to make nice and still everyone was pissed off at me and thought I was a bitch by association.

  “Yeah, well, everyone has their own problems,” she said. Her eyes ran up and down for a moment and I shivered again. That almost looked like she was checking me out. I don’t know why that should excite me, though. Besides, wasn’t I the one who just looked her up and down thinking about how pretty she looked pulling off that whole dark and angry look?

  The bell rang. Well, beeped is more like it. The point is I was now officially late to class. Damn it.

  “I should probably go,” I said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Kylie said.

  The two of us stood there in an awkward silence for the space of a breath. The hall emptied out as soon as the bell beeped letting us know we
were officially tardy, so it was just the two of us. I felt like I should say something more. Kylie almost looked like she was blushing, though I didn’t know what could make someone whose whole image screamed “I don’t give a fuck what other people think of me” blush like that.

  Then she turned away and the moment was gone. I sighed and turned towards my own class in the opposite direction. The moment had passed, but I kept thinking about Kylie for the rest of the day for some reason, and I was the one blushing when I thought of her.

  Weird. And not something I wanted to think about too deeply lest I find something there that would complicate my life way more than it already was.

  3: Into the Game

  Kylie:

  “Um, I’m not so sure about this,” I said.

  “Come on,” Travis said. “It’ll be fun. You just slew the vicious hellbeast of Morton High School. This would be sort of like that!”

  I fixed him with what I knew was one of my most terrifying glares. People in the halls backed away from me when I did it as though I actually had magical powers or would fly off the handle and try to beat them up. Small towns. Crazy.

  The look didn’t work on Travis, though. No, we’d known each other for way too long. Long enough that we were still friends even though he’d gone the preppy route and I was firmly on the dark and brooding side of the social spectrum. I didn’t even know what we were calling ourselves this week. Goth? Emo? Scene?

  All I cared about was that I fucking rocked this outfit. I couldn’t imagine having the fashion sense of miss bubbly coward.

  Miss bubbly coward. Lisa. Why did I still feel a little twinge every time I thought of her? I should’ve left her to the “vicious hellbeast” as Travis so eloquently described her. I had no business saving Lisa. I’d spent the past few years trying to forget all about the feelings she stirred in me that day.

  Not that I’d done a very good job of burying those feelings considering here I was thinking them over again.

  “Kylie? You still with us? I mean thinking about nearly punching out Gwen is probably fun and all, but we were kind of talking here?”

  I shook my head and came back to the real world. I was not about to explain that I hadn’t been thinking of Gwen at all. What were we talking about?

  Oh, right. Dork games.

  “You’re serious about this? You guys just roll dice or something? You don’t even use controllers or anything like that?”

  “Nope. It’s all in the imagination,” he said.

  I looked Travis up and down. He was the height of fashion. At least fashion as it was reckoned at our school. Always in the latest and greatest, which was pretty easy to do in our area since just about everyone in this town was dirt poor.

  “You really don’t strike me as the kind to get into a game like that. Why’d you never tell me about this before?” I asked.

  Travis looked down for a moment. A sure sign he was feeling conflicted about something. When he looked back up, though, he had that easygoing grin. The one that convinced me to date him a couple years ago near the end of middle school, though ultimately we’d decided we were better as friends. No spark there. Though I seemed to not have that spark with a lot of the guys I dated.

  Lisa drifted through my head again. For probably the millionth time since thoughts of her first took over my imagination I stomped down on it. I was not going to think of her like that.

  “Honestly? I figured you’d never let me hear the end of it,” he said. “I mean come on. You said it yourself. A dorky game? What’s the fun in that? But it is pretty damn fun, and this game has been going on for a long time around here. Like decades.”

  “If I go will you shut up and stop bothering me about it?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “I promise. If you go and you don’t like it then I promise I won’t say anything else about it ever again.”

  “Fine. You’ve got a deal,” I said.

  And so a few hours later, after slaying the hellbeast of Morton High, I found myself in someone’s basement staring at a bunch of papers as Travis walked me through the process of putting together a character for this game. I was so engrossed in the process, which was actually kind of fun, that I barely noticed when someone slipped in beside me at the table.

  Until I heard a voice. That voice. A voice that I absolutely despised.

  “Well hello there beautiful,” Dave said. “I didn’t think I’d go from one beauty to another this evening.”

  I glared at Travis. Glared. If there was a way for my stare to bore through his skull and set his brain to boiling then I would’ve gladly done it. He gave me an apologetic grin and a shrug.

  “Sorry,” he said. “He’s Jeff’s cousin and we can’t really get rid of him. I knew if I mentioned him coming then you wouldn’t be interested.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” I mouthed to him. He apparently got the message because his eyes went wide and he scooted even farther away. Not that it would save him. I had every intention of making him pay for this later.

  For now, though, I had bigger problems to deal with. Like Dave. Jeff’s cousin. Jeff the guy who was running the game. So of course he wasn’t going to kick Dave out even though the guy brought the asshole everywhere he went. He’d turned being a first rate dick into an art.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and forced down the rage threatening to break free. That had gotten me in trouble a few times. I thought it might get me in trouble with Gwen today, but everything seemed to have worked itself out there.

  Except for those confusing feelings coming back. Feelings that surfaced at the worst time. Like when I was making out with some guy and not really feeling it and suddenly Lisa popped in there and the juices got flowing and…

  Damn it. I was doing it again. I had bigger problems than my sexuality.

  “Dave,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  I turned around and faced a huge grin that I would’ve rather not dealt with right now. Or ever, for that matter.

  “I think I should be the one asking you what you’re doing here,” Dave said. “I never thought I’d be lucky enough to have two fair maidens gracing me in the space of one evening.”

  I looked around the table. There were no “fair maidens” other than me hanging out here. I figured if I looked up “sausage party” in the dictionary the picture next to it would look an awful lot like the guys around me. I did note that of all the guys, Dave was the only one who was acting like a creeper. Not that it surprised me coming from him and given our brief but rocky history.

  I was going to murder Travis. That was the least he deserved for doing this to me.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I’m the only girl here.”

  “I just finished a lovely evening date with the beautiful Lisa Soren,” Dave said.

  Lisa Soren. Lisa. The very same Lisa I’d pulled out of the fire earlier today. The same Lisa who used to sit by and do nothing while her stupid friend made fun of me. The Lisa who kept intruding on my thoughts with images of kissing a girl. The one who’d started those very unwelcome thoughts.

  The girl who’d been the gateway to other unwelcome thoughts about other girls. I might have started with Lisa but other girls had popped in there since. She was the first, though, and thinking of her always twisted my insides.

  “Is there any escaping that girl?” I muttered to myself.

  “What was that?” Dave asked, leaning forward as though he thought I was actually going to repeat myself. Fat chance of that. I’d never told anyone about those thoughts, and I sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell Dave.

  Although if I did tell him he’d probably have to head back to his house for a long shower or something and I wouldn’t have to deal with him tonight. Almost worth it, but not really.

  “You didn’t go on a date with Lisa Soren,” I said.

  “I did so!” Dave turned to Travis. “Tell her about my date with Lisa!”

  Travis leaned forward, though he looked reluctant to joi
n any conversation between me and Dave. I wondered if that was because he knew I’d look for the first opportunity to smack him or if it was because he didn’t want to get pulled into a conversation with Dave. I could understand either motivation.

  “Are you talking about the math tutoring thing?” Travis asked. “Because that is not a date.”

  I barked out a laugh. Maybe it was a little mean. Maybe I was emulating Gwen just a little bit. Becoming that which I hated. The key difference was that Gwen walked through the halls of Morton High like a malevolent spirit who would lash out at anyone beneath her for any reason, and she thought just about everyone at our school was beneath her.

  Me and Dave? We had a history. The creeper had done annoying things that I’d rather forget about. Things that made him deserve every bit of scorn I could muster.

  “Seriously? You were helping her with her math homework? That is not a date,” I said.

  I wouldn’t mind helping Lisa with her math homework, though, if it meant getting close to her. I could picture it now. Us on her bed going over our homework and giggling about stuff until we started talking about something cliched like kissing and decided to practice so she leaned in close to me and…

  Damn it. My imagination was cliched and unoriginal on top of totally betraying me and everything I believed about my heterosexuality.

  “Whatever,” I said. “Let’s get started with this game. I promised you one night, Travis, and that’s what you’re going to get.”

  The unspoken promise that hung in the air, of course, was that the one night was all he was ever going to get. If Dave was going to be a regular at these sessions then I wanted nothing to do with it even more than I wanted nothing to do with it back when I thought it was just a bunch of dorky guys sitting around a table in a basement chowing down on junk food and playing pretend.

  Then we started actually playing the game and something weird happened. I started enjoying myself. Really enjoying myself. I was never one for playing pretend with other girls on the block with their dollies even before we moved out to the country for a bigger house, but this was fun in a way that playing with Barbie and her Dream Car or her Dream House or her Dream Whatever wasn’t.