Xoraxorel

  1.

  At dinner, Amber ate very slowly, saying little, but smiling a great deal.

  While it was well on its way to wearing off, she still had a slightly pink tint over her brain from the drink Madaline had given her.

  With this rose colored aid, she'd settled into a decent comfort level, a sweet spot where she wouldn't need to excuse herself to freak out every fifteen minutes, but was also not so disarmed as to say anything that might reflect badly on Simon or Simon's choice of her, as she had earlier.

  She was sticking to her first principle of socialization, the less she said, the more successful she would be at ingratiating herself with those she was interacting with.

  Another factor she had not anticipated, which was proving to have its own costs and benefits, was how different Simon's mother and father were from her own:

  Tom Lockmann, Simon’s father, was a slender, soft spoken, and seemingly good humored man, constantly looking over at his wife and children with no veil over his affection for them.

  Amber did not need to pce too much concentration on him, as he was primarily involved in a friendly debate with Madaline about the merits of various drummers.

  "Neil Peart, freaking Neil Peart, has to be," Tom insisted.

  "He's great, I'm not saying he isn't great. He's just not Meg White or John Bonham, best drummer ever and runner up. Fucking travesty that Rolling Stone put Meg at like number 80 or something, but they gave Bonham the top spot, right above second pce where he deserves to be."

  "Don't swear at the table, your lucky your mom didn't catch you. Where was Neil Peart?"

  Madaline shrugged and slugged back a drink of soda, "Ah, he was top ten."

  "Hmm, what about Rick Allen?"

  "Don't remember, I mean respect to all drummers and extra respect to any who do it with one arm, but can we be honest, Tom? He's the most talented member of Def Leppard, but overall Def Leppard is over fucking rated and Allen can't save them from that."

  Madaline's mother, Cynthia Mellor, reached across the table and flicked Madaline's ear.

  Madaline's hand snapped to the side of her head, "God f-"

  "Not at the table, sweetheart," Cynthia gred.

  "-eed my loving family," Madaline finished, dodging another attack on her vulnerable auditory equipment.

  Cynthia turned her attention back to Amber. She, as it turned out, was the real dragon Amber had to face.

  She looked like Madaline with brown hair, the addition of an extra two decades, and the subtraction of a few inches, however where Madaline exuded cool, her mother radiated a kind of cheerful professionalism, a no nonsense, but amiable power suit wearing boss dy.

  By the time they'd gone halfway through the meal, she'd broken Amber out of her attempted silence by peppering her with questions, which made sense, Cynthia was a wyer.

  Thankfully, these questions were non invasive ones, get to know you kinds of things and Amber was able to give short simple answers, keeping things safe, at least initially.

  Which was good, because while it may not have felt like a job interview to Cynthia, it certainly felt like one to Amber.

  Amber’s responses included:

  “I was thinking of majoring in English, but that wasn't set in stone, I was really just trying to get my core out of the way while I figured it out.”

  “Um, my transition kind of took up a lot of attention, I left so I didn't end up hurting my grades and wasting money, I'm hoping to go back at some point.”

  "Oh, I'd love to go back to Mis U."

  “I’m a barista, nothing fancy.”

  “It’s alright, most of the people I work with are pretty nice.”

  But then they entered a serious danger zone.

  If Cynthia Mellor was a dragon, she was a kind hearted one who meant no harm, but even a kind hearted dragon might accidentally step on creatures smaller than them without meaning to.

  Amber's pulse bumped up when Cynthia asked about siblings, wagging her finger between Simon and Madaline.

  “No, I'm an only child,” answered Amber casually.

  Cynthia nodded and followed up with the question Amber had been dreading. Inquiring about Amber's schostic absence was bad enough, but now she asked about Amber's parents.

  "Um, my parents?" Amber said, repeating the question back to Cynthia, before cutting a sliver of chicken and pcing it in her mouth. She chewed slowly, wearing a thoughtful expression.

  Below the table Amber scratched at her jeans.

  She should have thought through how to answer before she and Simon set out. Why hadn't she? This couldn't be a mistake she ever allowed herself to make again, especially if she managed to make it through tonight.

  She finally had to swallow and fell back to handling the situation with what she had prepared in advance, a bright smile, then let herself work with scattered thoughts as they came to her. “They’re, um, they’re, you know, nice. My dad is an attendee... in a nursing home. My mom is a secretary, but they live up state, so you know... so I don’t see them as much as I’d like.”

  “But you’re on good terms with them? They accept you?” Cynthia pushed gently.

  For just a moment, with Cynthia smiling at her, Amber almost thought about being honest with them, but then why would she ruin perfectly reasonable table conversation with the truth?

  “Um, yeah, absolutely, I text my mom, like, every day and I usually call my dad at least once a week. He worries about me if I don't. He's a worrier. ”

  Simon didn’t contradict her.

  “This chicken is so good.” Amber said, raising her smile higher.

  “Do you want the recipe?” asked Tom, who’d made the dinner.

  “Mmmhmm, please. I can make it for Simon.”

  Amber slid a nibble into her mouth and rearranged her pte. Her stomach started to rex as she walked away from the social minefield unblemished and perfect and appropriate.

  Across from Amber, Madaline’s eyes narrowed slightly and flickered.

  2.

  At 11:00, Amber and Simon retired to Simon's childhood bedroom.

  Same as it was every night, Simon took an Ambien and went out like a light. He had no critique of Amber's performance, his parents seemed to like her, which meant she’d done a good job. All she had to do was go to sleep and then get through the afternoon tomorrow, with that the good first impression she needed would be secure.

  Same as it was every night, getting to sleep was an issue.

  Amber’s schedule was often nocturnally inclined, the coffee shop liked to have her work te. This meant that normally she would y next to Simon and watch something on her phone with the sound off, but her phone was low on power and there wasn’t an outlet beside her half of the bed, so she preserved it’s life by scrolling through fan art on the same image search engine she'd used since she was ten.

  She also had her current library book, Matthew Gregory Lewis's the Monk, but reading by the light of her phone was usually a cumbersome process, and tonight turning up the brightness to a usable level would just make the battery run out faster.

  As she scrolled through images of fictional characters primarily in cute scenarios of friendship and romance that their source material did not have time to focus on, she began making a mental to-do list of things that would need to be accomplished before Madaline arrived next week.

  The biggest concern was cleaning out the spare bedroom, managing that would take at least a day. It would necessitate pnning around her work schedule and moving that day's usual chores to other points in the week. She decided the task would be best handled early, the day after tomorrow, that way she'd know ahead of time if Simon's old roommate had left any issues behind that had been obscured by the room's use as a rge closet.

  She also considered the addition of Madaline's presence in regards to next week's grocery shopping, before they left she would need to ask if Madaline had any special dietary needs. By the look of her she probably consumed a great deal of protein.

  At 12:45 she was looking at a drawing of Yumeko and Kirari from the anime, Kakegurui, ying on the floor, clutching at each other.

  At 12:46 her phone died.

  Unable to sit wide awake with nothing but her thoughts and the dark, she crept downstairs, pnning to get a gss of water and to charge her phone for a bit.

  As she headed towards the kitchen she had to pass through the living room, cold light flickered from the entryway as she moved down the hall.

  She entered, Madaline was there, still wide awake, her lengthy body stretched out along the couch, her hair falling down its arm, resplendent in her Csh t shirt, and a pair of boy shorts. Apparently an advocate for accessorizing, her neck was adorned with a pair of headphones and a short pstic cylinder dangled from between her fingers, a disposable vape pen.

  Madaline sucked on the pen and exhaled a cloud that smelled like peaches, her eyes locked apathetically on some old bck and white rerun on the TV.

  Amber almost went back to bed rather than disturb Madaline’s alone time, but she couldn’t deal with the idea of sitting up there with nothing to do, awake with no stimution, no distractions. She tried her best to be invisible, mousing her way through the room.

  As soon as she did, light sprang into Madaline’s eyes, she sat up, her full attention on Amber.

  Amber froze as the cat analogy sprinted back to her mind.

  “You’re up te,” said Madaline, twirling the pen between her fingers.

  “Um. Can’t sleep. I’m… thirsty,” Amber said quietly.

  “Sure,” Madaline responded, as though Amber had asked her to do something for her. She rose, stretched, and vanished into the kitchen.

  Amber stood in the middle of the living room, her dead phone in one pocket, the cord of her charger hanging slightly out of the other. She noticed an empty power outlet by the couch, but didn't make a move for it.

  Madaline returned with a gss of water for Amber and another pte of cake for herself.

  "Thank you." Amber took the gss and looked at it, then up at Madaline, then down at the end of the couch near the power outlet, finally she turned her head just slightly, as though to gnce back the way she’d come.

  She still needed to charge her phone, but she didn’t know if she should stay or if Madaline wanted to be alone. What was expected of her? She kept her head still, but cycled her eyes through the circle of targets, wondering what to do, her stomach tight.

  How long have I been standing here? I should have just stayed-

  Madaline looked Amber over, before cracking a finger against her bare thigh. The water in Amber's gss trembled for a second. The crack brought Amber back to Madaline, whose bottle green eyes snatched hers and held them.

  Madaline sighed.

  She wants me to leave, I'm screwing up.

  "Drink.”

  The word didn’t quite register in Amber’s brain. She blinked. “Sorry?”

  “That’s alright, I forgive you,” Madaline smirked, then waved a blunt nail at the gss and spoke again, her tone somewhere between an order and a suggestion, “Drink some water. Unless you want me to make you something stronger?”

  Amber shook her head slightly and drank from the gss. The water chilled her, goosebumps rioted across her arms. She'd drank, but the predicament had not changed, she stood thinking, pressing the gss between her palms, trying to use the strong temperature to ground herself, trying to prevent herself from spiraling even further down into her own head or worse into a visible panic.

  Madaline went to the far end of the couch and sat down, she took a bite of cake, before gncing back at Amber who was still standing where she’d nded when Madaline’s gaze had first found her. She waved her fork at the opposite end of the couch. “Sit.”

  Amber breathed out, sitting down. “Thanks, I need to charge my phone.” She leaned over the couch edge and plugged it in. Sitting back up, Amber licked her lips and drank more water, watching as Madaline devoured the cake.

  Amber put on her smile, “So... you like cake?”

  She mentally kicked herself for all the reasons that question was stupid and annoying. I’m just going to shut up now and wait till my phone has like 30% and go back to bed.

  “I have a sweet tooth,” Madaline gave a little shrug. Setting her pte down, she sipped from a cup next to her on a side table and swished her tongue all around the inside of her mouth, before leaning across the divide of the center seat. She opened her jaws wide and hooked a green nail into her cheek, pulling it out to give Amber a look inside.

  “Got a crown. See?” She asked, indicating a silver mor on the left side, flicking her tongue back over it, before letting go of her cheek, “I got that when I was fourteen, Mom wasn’t the best about getting me to the dentist for a couple years after she divorced my dad, and so yeah, proof I'm partial to that kind of thing. Fruit, candy, cake,” she shrugged. “I’m more health conscious about it now, but I do like to indulge. Still, I haven’t had a cavity since then, so I must be doing something right.”

  Amber nodded, for some reason hearing about this made her more comfortable, except… She'd gotten a good look inside Madaline's mouth and-

  “You have two, don’t you? I thought I saw a second one, on the other side."

  "Mmm, yeah, good eye. I do," she pulled her other cheek and gave Amber a better look at the other one.

  "They're, um, not next to each other. If you've only ever had the one cavity?"

  Madaline had another bite and seemed to think something over, before setting her pte aside. “Second year of college, I was with this girl at Penny’s." She looked over at Amber, her tone was one that implied recognition of Penny's was assumed.

  “Penny’s?” Amber asked quietly, embarrassed at her ignorance.

  “Yeah. Penny’s Arcade?”

  Amber shook her head.

  “Really? You went to Mis U and never went to Penny’s? Well, it's great, you need to have Simon take you sometime. It’s like an old fashioned arcade, lots of old games, like the big standing boxes with joysticks and skee ball and such. Stuff like that.”

  “Oh, that sounds fun." Amber imagines it, a pce that is cool and dark, and lit with neon, brimming with a symphony of electronic noises, she's happy to know it exists, but she couldn’t see how an arcade led to Madaline having two crowns.

  “Right, so second year, I'd been going out with this girl, Jasmine, for a little bit. Its date night, she and I had a few drinks... well, more than a few drinks, and headed down to Penny’s to py some games.”

  The fact that Madaline is gay gets sorted into a growing file in Amber's brain.

  "We're pying House of the Dead together. In the middle of the game I die, and I realize we're out of tokens so I tell her to hold off the zombies until I get back from the dispenser. But by the time I come back, it's game over and she’s being hit on by this shitty guy. She probably lost because of him. I... don't take this well," Madaline pauses, measuring Amber's response.

  "Um, of course, you were on a date with her, I can see how that might upset you," Amber commiserated.

  "Yeah," Madaline nodded. "So, I get in his face, tell him to fuck off. We argue, then the arguing becomes shoving. Then out of nowhere the fucker escates to sucker punching me, one shot, knocked the tooth right out of my head." Madaline scowled at the memory as her fist cpped into her open palm to demonstrate. "Asshole. I swear to Christ I can remember hearing it go like ticking off the floor when it flew away." She bent her thumb around her middle finger and pressed for an audible crack.

  Amber nodded, enthralled by the story.

  "Anyway, they had to put in a screw, falsey and crown to repce the tooth, cause I didn't get it back."

  “How come? They should have thrown him out and let you find your tooth so a dentist could put it back in.”

  Madaline paused here, appearing to deliberate internally once more, before continuing, "Because at that point I’d had about eight years of self defense courses and the fight started with me pissed and drunk. If I'd had a few less drinks that punch probably wouldn't have nded, it was sloppy, or I would've at least rolled with it, but after I lost the tooth, ah, well, then I was really pissed. I mean fucking livid. He was totally pstered, but less then a minute ter, he knew damn well that he'd fucked up at least twice."

  "Twice?" Amber asked.

  "Uhuh." She took another bite of cake and looked away from Amber, out at the bck and white fifties housewife on the TV. "Mistake one, hitting on my... girlfriend. Mistake two, hitting me, but not knocking me out," she counted off the guy's critical errors on her long fingers, leaving them up; a peace sign hanging in the air. "I don't remember too much in between, except my fist nding on his face, fights can be like that, but it all ended when I put him in an arm bar over the seat of one of those driving games."

  "Wow." Somewhere in the back of her head, Amber noticed that her face felt a little odd, but didn't think anything of it.

  "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't fully intending to break his arm,” Madaline's peace sign fell back into a clutching fist, she gave her hand a sharp twist. "Spiral fracture, real nasty stuf-"

  Madaline's eyes popped wide as she turned back to look at Amber.

  It took Amber a moment to realize what had happened.

  Why did I? When did I?

  Her face, the problem was in her face. She could feel the expression sitting on her features, a grin.

  It felt nothing like the nice PR smile she usually wore. She could picture what it must look like; her slightly open mouth stretched in a wide curve, like a crescent moon, fshing her teeth in return for seeing Madaline's, they must look like sharp silvery knives between her lips in the low glow of the television's light.

  Her anxiety spiked, she forced her face into something acceptable, a concerned frown. "Sorry," she mumbled, unable to think of any way to expin this unnatural and inappropriate reaction.

  She’s going to think something is wrong with me.

  Madaline looked her over, almost curious now. "You’re fine," she said in her reassuring voice.

  Amber rubbed her finger over the lip of her gss.

  "Anyway, Jasmine saw where things were headed, so she yanked me off of him before I could do any real damage and basically shoved me out the door. That was probably the right call, by the time I had his arm behind him he was screaming his head off and we'd gotten the attention of the staff, who normally weren't paid enough to care, so it was probably best we decided to continue our date elsewhere."

  "I'd certainly say that was the smart move."

  Madaline's expression shifted, becoming slightly sheepish. "But to tell the truth I'm still a little sore about it. I just mean, I lost my tooth, I'm down my bottom right first mor, that's permanent damage, losing a tooth like that can cause health problems and fixing it was expensive. All he got was a bck eye, some bruises and smashed pride."

  "So you lost the tooth somewhere in there during this fight and then left cause they were probably calling the police and you were underage and drunk?"

  "Yeah, you get it, and I didn't go back to Penny's for another year,” She paused, “Still, he probably thought it over the next time he wanted to hit on some girl, which I consider a public service, so overall it was worth it," she concluded. She cracked another knuckle and scowled again, her lip twitching just slightly, there seemed to be a pregnant absence in her evaluation of whether or not the fight had been worth it, but she shook it off after a moment, her face regaining that almost bored composure.

  They both went quiet for a few, Amber gnced at her phone, thought about turning it on, but instead she turned back to Madaline. “Um, what are you doing up?”

  “I’m a night person, but there’s not much to do, so just hanging out.”

  Madaline picked up the remote and offered it across the couch to Amber, “There’s Netflix, I’m not really watching this, you want to pick something?”

  “Can we watch some anime?” Amber asked hesitantly.

  Madaline held her palms up and smiled, “Absolutely, whatever you like."

  Amber slid the remote control out of Madaline's hand, her glossy clear coated fingernail clicking against Madaline's green thumbnail.

  She searched through the avaible options.

  "Is Dungeon Meshi alright?"

  "Seriously, whatever you like."

  Amber selected the show, the opening began to py. She gnced back at Madaline.

  God, her eyes are just so... pretty.

  Xoraxorel