“Hey, what’s with the bandanna?” Ava asked. “I’ve wanted to ask since the third time I saw you wear it.”
Maia looked down at it. “This? It’s lucky. I actually have about eight of them, so they do go in the wash, for anybody who’s wondering.” She eyeballed Vienna, who held up her hands like she was being robbed.
“I didn’t say a thing.” But Vienna smiled.
“Ah, okay.” Ava stifled a grin as she said, “’Cause it looks kinda gay.”
Maia’s eyes went wide. “What? Does it?” Again, she looked down at her bandanna, pulling it out as far as it would go while tied around her neck. “Seriously, does it?”
Vienna’s laugh was throaty as she began to pull Maia away. “Let’s go before you dig yourself a hole you can’t get out of.” Behind her Vienna met Ava’s eyes and they both laughed, then she tugged her roommate away.
Ava grinned and shook her head as she closed the door. She returned to her desk where she’d been about to jot some notes on ideas when Regan returned. “Short walk,” she commented.
“Rain.”
“Bummer.” Ava hadn’t even glanced out the window, so she had no idea it was wet out. She watched Regan as she took off her sneakers, crawled onto her bed, and sat back against her headboard. “So, we had a couple visitors,” she told her.
Regan furrowed her brow. “At six in the morning?”
Ava nodded with a grin. “Yup. Maia and Vienna came to see if we’d gotten an envelope, too.”
“Ah.”
“Also, Maia thinks we have an unfair advantage because you’re gay.”
Regan’s snorted laugh somehow gave Ava whatever it was she needed to say the next words.
“I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’m gay, too. I was afraid her head might explode.”
Regan’s bark of a laugh was so quick and loud, it made Ava jump in her seat, and she laughed along with her.
“I also questioned that purple bandanna she wears all the time. I may have told her it was a little gay.”
“Oh my God.” Regan laughed harder. “Itsois, though.”
The two of them laughed for a moment before Regan pushed to her feet and grabbed some clothes out of her wreck of a suitcase, still open on the floor. “The rain made me cold. Gonna shower and think about how we can use our gayness to make better gay cake.” As she walked past Ava’s desk, she pointed at her with a grin. “I knew it, by the way. I knew you were.” Then she closed the bathroom door behind her with a click.
Ava kept smiling.
The rain that had arrived that morning slowly became angry and morphed into storms, complete with thunder and lightning, and while Ava couldn’t speak for Regan, she was glad to be able to just stay in their room and work on design ideas. She’d never liked thunderstorms. They frightened her, which she knew was silly and childish, but she’d never been able to shake it.
As if to underline her thought, a loud crack of thunder shook the house, and Ava nearly jumped out of her skin.
“You okay?” Regan asked from where she sat on her bed across the room, laptop open, seemingly unaffected by the crashing of the clouds above them.
Ava nodded, and she needed a moment to swallow her heart back down out of her throat and into her chest. “Thunder’s not my favorite.” She grimaced as she glanced out the window, bracing for the next crack.
“You’re welcome to come sit here with me. I promise I won’t bite. Or say something assholish.” Regan shot her a look that was half grin, half grimace. “Plus, we’re both working on the same thing. Might makeit easier…” She let the idea drift off, then made a show of scooting over on her bed.
Ava glanced around the room. Regan’s bedwasquite a ways farther from the window than Ava’s desk. And theywereworking on the same thing, namely their idea for the Pride cake. With a quiet sigh and one nod, she picked up her laptop, pen, and notepad and moved to sit next to Regan on her bed.
As if making their anger about her move known, the clouds crashed together again, and this time, the lights flickered. Ava flinched, a quiet gasp escaping her lips.
And then Regan’s warm hand was on her thigh. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “I’m right here. No worries.”
The combination of embarrassment for being such a baby and arousal from Regan’s hand on her body annoyed her. But she found herself giving Regan an explanation anyway. “When I was a kid—I was twelve, actually—there was a night when my dad didn’t come home. This wasn’t unusual. He was a drinker and a womanizer and verbally and emotionally abusive, but my mom always did her best to keep him out of trouble. So that night, the bar he normally frequented called my mom and told her to come get him because he was being ‘unruly.’” She made the air quotes. “She left me home alone in case it got ugly, and it did. He apparently got in a fight and was arrested, and Mom had to follow him to the police station, and it was a whole thing. She ended up being gone for hours.”
“During a thunderstorm,” Regan guessed.
