“Alice! Alice come out of the bathroom sweetie!” Heather was at a loss for how to get the young woman to come out. Laurie started knocking on the door as well.
“It’s only going to be for a couple of days. You’re a big girl. You can handle this!” The blonde girl shrugged. Alice was being stubborn.
Finally they heard a dim voice penetrating the hole that Heather’s fist had made in the bathroom door. “No, I can’t handle this. It’s too much,” she whimpered.
Heather spoke directly through the hole in the door. “Alice honey, you’ve lived through outing yourself and you’ve survived being tied up and paraded around like a cocker spaniel by Liz. This should be a piece of cake.”
“Maybe, but those things happened one at a time,” Alice said, opening the door. The poor, brown-haired ex-wallflower looked terrified. She had just received a phone call that had taken what she had anticipated to be an ordinary, run-of-the-mill apocalypse and made it much, much more confusing.
Shortly after final-exams were over, the band was going to be auditioning for one of a limited number of spots in the KLEZ Battle of the Bands contest. The winner of that contest got a five-song set opening for the Eagles that August. This was a big deal for the girls to begin with, but Alice was the one writing all their material. She was terrified. Liz had promised to be there to support her girlfriend at the contest itself. This was a good thing. Then they had gotten a call from Jane, informing the girls that she, Freddie and Michelle were going to be making the trek to support their young friends. From the moment Alice and Liz had started their relationship, Liz and Michelle seemed to have developed some animosity towards each other. Even though they had never met or even spoken to each other directly. Michelle didn’t trust Liz’s motives for “drawin’ Alice” into a dom/sub relationship and Liz didn’t like Alice being so influenced by “an old flame.” And for the first time, the two very dangerous women were going to be within arms-length of each other. That had been the bad part.
The worse part was Alice’s father calling and saying that he would be there for his daughter’s “big debut.” Her fairly religious father had been wrestling with the concept that one of his children was gay and much to his credit, he had handled things well. He still loved his daughter. But he was unknowingly stumbling into a hornet’s nest. And Alice was faced with her father showing up and getting caught between the cowgirl that took his daughter’s virginity and the biker/graduate student who tied her up to the bed and spanked her to orgasm. Those sorts of things might be a little harder for him to deal with. Somehow, she had to keep everything under control. “I am so . . . in trouble,” she whimpered as Laurie and Heather sat her down on the bed. “I mean my dad . . . Michelle and Liz want to kill each other . . . ooh! Why is everyone being so difficult?”
Heather was hiding her smile behind her hand. Alice was the shyest, quietest member of the group, so being the absolute center of controversy was a bit overwhelming. But Heather and Laurie had already had their turn in the spotlight. It was someone else’s turn.
“Poor baby,” Laurie cooed, sitting behind her friend and rubbing her shoulders. Alice started to relax. Laurie’s massages had that effect on living organisms. “I’m sure it’ll all work out.” Laurie scrunched up her eyes and pursed her lips. “Maybe you should take them on a picnic!” she said, with an expression that made it seem like she had just had the most brilliant idea ever. “Take your dad, Liz and Michelle out somewhere public where Liz and Michelle have to behave since you know neither of them will embarrass you in public and . . .” Laurie had to stop when Heather started chortling. “What? Not a good idea?” Heather laughed and kissed the blonde girl on the lips.
Watching those two actually made Alice feel better. Since their whirlwind breakup and reunion following their spring break quarrel, the two had slowly reverted to, and perhaps surpassed, their previous level of cute couple-ness. If they could survive their trials and tribulations, maybe Alice could as well.
“Well, we have YOUR birthday to celebrate in the meantime,” said Laurie. “And you still need to decide what you want to do.”
Alice sighed. She was the last of the crew to hit the twenty-year mark, and Laurie wanted to make a big deal of it. Liz wanted to make a big deal of it. Alice just wanted to crawl into a dark place and wake up in August.
“And no,” Laurie continued, “we won’t just ‘skip it.’ So what do you want to do?”
Heather sat down next to her girlfriend and kissed her again, trying not to disturb the movement of the girl’s hands on Alice’s shoulders. “You might as well give in. You know how she is about birthdays.”
Alice sighed again. She was racking her brain for something fun but not too ostentatious. Alice would have been happy with a group dinner-and-a-movie outing, but Laurie wasn’t going to be happy unless it was something she could over-plan or was novel somehow.
“How about the carnival?” Heather suggested. Laurie perked up. Alice looked quizzical. “There’s one of those traveling carnivals setting up on the corner of 4th and Lexington. That might be kind of fun.”
Alice smiled. It had been a long time since she had been to anything like that. She distantly remembered going to the county fair when she was younger. But as she grew older, she and most of the other kids decided they were too “grown up” for stuff like that. It might be nice to not be a grown up for a while. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds nice.”
“Cool!” was Laurie’s response. “And . . . ooh! We could have a contest to see who can win the coolest prize for Alice! And . . .” And like a shot, Laurie’s mind and mouth were moving as one. Alice smiled shyly at Heather. It was a good idea.
“C’mon folks,” Heather said while standing up. “We’ve got band practice in a bit.” She pulled Laurie to her feet and the two girls exchanged a quick kiss and rubbed noses. It was strange for Alice. Even though Heather had gotten noticeably friendlier in general over the last year, she was like an entirely different person around the blonde girl. That got her thinking about her own girlfriend. Then she thought about the upcoming chaos. Finally she put her head back in her hands and groaned.
—————- ————
That evening . . .
—————- ————
“I can’t believe this,” said Alice as she stormed out of Liz’s bedroom. “I thought we’d cleared this up! Michelle will be up for Battle of the Bands. She IS coming with Jane and Freddie! And NO, I won’t un-invite her! Why are you being so pigheaded about this?”
Alice and Liz had been at it like that since the moment the younger girl had walked into Liz’s apartment. The greetings had been friendly, but then Alice started talking about the material they were working on for their set and how she hoped “everyone” would like it. Liz jumped on that “everyone” with the firm belief that Alice was talking about Michelle, and the argument had started. After a while, Liz had actually asked Alice to ask the muscular cowgirl not to show up. The young girl had naturally refused. Liz’s jealousy towards Michelle boggled the mind. Alice had been tempted to point out that she had been sexually involved with Jane and Freddie as well, so why not “ban” them all. But she decided she was too tired to fight. She was actually grabbing her stuff and preparing to leave when Liz started to calm down.
“Please, don’t go,” the tall girl said with scarcely concealed forced-calm. “Let’s just drop it,” she said, putting one hand on Alice’s shoulder. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Alice returned. “She is going to be there. And you’re going to be there and my dad is going to be there. And if you actually care for me at all, you’ll try and make this easier for me instead of harder.” She felt Liz’s hand twitch. She had struck a nerve, but her girlfriend recovered quickly.
“Let’s just watch Leno and go to bed. Okay?”
Alice sighed but tried to smile. “Sure,” she said. They sat on opposite ends of the sofa, watching television and not speaking to each other. Then they went to bed. When Alice had first come over, she had sort of been hoping for a little bit of bondage fun, but the two of them had agreed that they would never engage in their dom/sub relationship if one of them was angry. There was some strained small talk, but that ended quickly as they lay under the covers, facing opposite directions. Alice thought back to how Heather and Laurie looked earlier that day. Despite almost breaking up not long ago, the two had rebounded and were a stronger couple than ever. And they looked like what a couple was supposed to look like. ‘Not like this,’ she thought as she was drifting off to sleep. ‘They don’t look like this.’