Blue and Red by Fiona George
“the sexual tension of a year of heavy flirtation and potential sex”
Fiction by Fiona George
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Before stumbling our way out of the bar, the twenty blocks back to my apartment, stopping at the 7-11 for a bottle of wine because we weren’t satisfied with six cocktails each. Before all that, we were on bar stools at a narrow table in the corner. I was finishing a plate of fries and my last vodka Redbull. She was sitting across from me, watching me. Her last rum and Coke was ice turning into water, with her royal blue painted finger moving around the rim of the glass.
One red rose in a vase between us.
My drink makes the crackling sound of mostly air coming through the straw, and I’m starting to get lost in the drunken haze in her eyes, the drunken haze in my head. One petal off the rose and on the table in between us, maybe it had already fallen when we sat down or maybe it fell when we were talking. She’s looking at me in a way I’ve always wished she would, since the moment I met her. My drunk-red cheeks under red hair, reflected in her wide, round eyes.
I’m looking at her the same way.
The warm, comfortable sweater feeling of one of your best friends, the sexual tension of a year of heavy flirtation and potential sex, the electricity of countless nights of drunken inspiration that leave us both typing away our hangovers the next day. All in the way we’re looking at each other across the table.
Her thin fingers with the royal blue nail polish. Her hands, and every part of her, looks at least five years younger than she is. Smooth. My hands, seven years younger than her hands, look older than hers. The singer who never had to wash a dish outside her own home, and the dishwasher.
Royal blue nail polish, not a single chip on any nail, pinching the fallen rose petal between thumb and pointer finger.
The velvet smooth of the rose petal as she runs it over my face. Tickling my eyelids, brushing my lashes. The rose petal over my lips and I wish it was her lips, her royal blue pointer trailing behind the petal, lining my lips like she wants to cut them out and keep them. The cool of the flower over my hot cheeks. I can’t believe she’s watching me like this.
It's like she thinks I’m as beautiful as I think she is.
Her leaning in, looking me straight in the eyes, with so much purpose. More purpose than anyone as drunk as either of us should have. Made me hold as still as I could, wasn’t sure if she was going to kiss me but I wanted her to. Afraid that if I moved, she wouldn’t. No kiss from her lips, just the breath of five words. So close I could feel her breath on my lips, and I let my bottom lip go slack to inhale the air out of her lungs as she spoke.
“Let’s get out of here.”
So star-struck-drunk watching her slide off the bar stool, sway her hips away from the corner table. Past the jukebox by the doorway, where a dollar at the beginning of the night meant that we could be heroes, just for one day.
Everything she did was a performance and I was a captivated audience. Her small hips swaying, royal blue hair moving back and forth with each step like a waterfall down her back. All the way to the street corner outside I forgot to think, too busy watching her. Until I remembered.
“Shit! I forgot the rose petal! I was gonna save it.” My lips pout like a little kid begging. Her pink, full lips stretched over big white teeth in a smile.
One skip for her to get there, landing in the ballet position where both feet are angled out and one is in front of the other, pivoting two feet, in front of me with that big smile. The streetlights, the moon, the neon bar sign. She had a way of turning any light into a spotlight, getting them all to point at her.
A big flourish of her right arm, snapping her forearm down sudden yet smooth. And just like a magician, out of her jacket sleeve and into her hand, then still in her hand and right under my nose, the red rose.
Then I stopped suspecting and let myself know for sure.
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Fiona George is a Portland native who has been lucky enough to land in Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writing workshop through little fault of her own. She is a proud high school dropout who hopes to get out of food service. This is her first publication and she’s so nervous about it that she might pass out, in a good way.