Chapter 2
pri: You still coming early on Saturday??
lemon 🍋: yeah
pri: 5pm??
lemon 🍋: yes!!
pri: K cool
pri: If some weird senior citizen answers the door when you knock don’t worry
pri: That’s just Rita
lemon 🍋: why is there a senior citizen in kiara’s house
pri: It’s technically the senior citizen’s house
pri: Kiara’s her sister in all but blood so she lives there by default
lemon 🍋: i thought you said you lived with kiara
pri: I did and I do
pri: I also live with the senior citizen and her senior citizen friends
lemon 🍋: makes sense
pri: Look it’s a LOT cheaper than my other options were
---
lemon 🍋: are you still at work
pri: yeah 😔 we’ve been swamped all day
lemon 🍋: is it busy now?? :P
pri: no thank GOD
pri: I was about to go feral I’m so TIRED
pri: I’m hiding round the back since boa’s finally shown up to her shift for once
lemon 🍋: will you still be there in like
lemon 🍋: 20 mins
pri: yeah im still on for another hour
lemon 🍋: ✨ good ✨
lemon 🍋: i’ve got something i want to show you
pri: ?????
lemon 🍋: ✨ you’ll see when i get there ✨
---
pri: i’ve been staring at this paragraph for like
pri: 5 years
pri: and something about it looks REALLY wrong but i don’t know what it is
lemon 🍋: let me see it?? a second pair of eyes always helps :P
pri: [ An image of a paragraph from a typed essay. ]
pri: am I going insane?? please tell me im not going insane
lemon 🍋: you used the wrong there
pri: where
lemon 🍋: everywhere
pri: …
pri: OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE
pri: thank you
lemon 🍋: ✨ you’re welcome ✨
lemon 🍋: is it hard?
pri: is what hard
lemon 🍋: being that much of an idiot
pri: i
pri: what the fuck
pri: hello?? HELLO???
lemon 🍋: 💛💛💛
---
pri: i hate writing essays
pri: it’s been six hours and my back KILLS from bending over
lemon 🍋: 😉
pri: jfc wait for the 3rd date at least
lemon 🍋: 🥺🥺🥺
pri: i know
pri: cockblocked by societal expectation
lemon 🍋: have you ever tried the alexander technique
pri: is that a sex thing
pri: rita says hi btw
lemon 🍋: rita as in senior citizen rita??
pri: the one and only
lemon 🍋: hi grandma rita
lemon 🍋: and not really
lemon 🍋: it’s to improve your posture and movement
pri: that still sounds incredibly sexy
lemon 🍋: it’s gentle and hands on
pri: still sounding sexy
pri: you should give me a demonstration
pri: wink. wink.
lemon 🍋: what happened to being cockblocked by societal expectation
pri: oh fuck you
lemon 🍋: wait for the third date at least 😜
---
“I am so fucked,” Priyanka tells Rita on the Friday when they’re washing the dishes, words emphatic. Rita turns a severe, questing gaze on her, the barest hints of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“If you’re lucky,” she says nonchalantly, plucking a wet bowl from Priyanka’s hands and turning away from her wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression.
It takes her a good minute to formulate a response.
“No, I’m sorry, I’m not taking that from someone who’s too old to even have sex anymore.”
For that, Rita whips her with her wound-up towel, a sharp crack against the back of her upper thighs that stings like a bitch and forces a startled, high-pitched scream out of her.
“Ow, fuck, fucking hell, Rita!”
“What did you say about me?” And now Rita’s all saccharine words and angelic smiles, danger masked like a horde of piranhas beneath the murky surface of a river. Priyanka turns away from her with a horrified wheeze, dunking her hands in soapy water to mask the minor tremor.
“Nothing, nothing!”
They finish the dishes in silence, and if Priyanka can’t sit down right for the rest of the evening, then she refuses to let Rita know about it.
Priyanka’s drunk, fuzzy round the edges, and she only knows it because Boa’s singing no longer feels like an assault on her hearing, having long-since become shit - but tolerable - background noise, and because Kiara’s repeated suggestion of doing body shots is sounding less and less questionable.
Ilona has stopped bickering with people for a glorious five minutes (Priyanka doesn’t know Ilona all that well, but she’s glad that she’s no longer talking); Rita is speaking to Scarlett, who had, only a few minutes prior, been locked in a heated verbal battle with Ilona; and Lemon -
Lemon is supposed to have gone to the bathroom, but it’s been close to ten minutes and there’s no sign of her. Priyanka glances around the room, drains her drink, then stumbles to her feet, blinking rapidly when the ground lurches beneath her.
She catches Kiara’s eye on the way out into the hallway, but gestures dismissively at her raised eyebrows; the Québécoise shrugs one shoulder in response, returning to her previous task of harassing Boa.
“... like to make a scene.”
Priyanka pauses. Tilts her head back and looks halfway up the staircase at Lemon’s legs, the rest of her body obscured by landing, then moves until she’s stood at the bottom of the steps. Lemon’s stood with one hip cocked, leaning on the banister to steady herself and nodding earnestly - and sat on the very top stair, a duvet wrapped around her shoulders, is Jimbo.
Much like Lemon is a nickname, so is Jimbo - but while Priyanka knows Lemon’s real name, she’s never known Jimbo as anything but, and that, admittedly, is a little disconcerting.
Part of her is convinced that Jimbo wasn’t born, but instead materialised one day in Victoria, British Columbia, fully formed. Jimbo’s degree is a mystery, much like her home life, her family, and anything else beyond the city from which she comes and the fact that she somehow knows Rita. She’s just… Jimbo. There’s nothing more or less to her identity beyond that.
That, in and of itself, is pretty weird, but what’s stranger still is that Priyanka has never thought to ask. There’s something strangely fun about Jimbo being this unknowable enigma - that, and the fact that Priyanka isn’t even sure how to break the ice.
“Lemon!” Priyanka shouts, and if she were any less drunk, she’d probably be embarrassed by how proud she is that she doesn’t slur when she speaks. “I thought you’d died! - Hiii, Jimbo.”
Jimbo waggles the fingers of her right hand. She’s a little crazed behind the eyes, no doubt a consequence of the stresses of her ongoing stalemate with Rita and studying… whatever it is she’s studying.
Lemon reclines util her back’s pressed to Priyanka’s front, but she’s still studying Jimbo. “Why’re you not dow’ there w’ everyone else?” she asks, and Priyanka realises that Lemon’s even drunker than she is, words significantly less intelligible.
Jimbo opens her mouth as though to answer, then closes it, a peculiar expression on her face, but Lemon seems so curious that Priyanka can’t leave her hanging.
“Jimbo’s grounded,” she elaborates in a whispered tone. Lemon, to her credit, only takes it in her stride; she nods resolutely, as though the idea makes perfect sense.
“How ‘s a grown person get grounded in her own ‘ouse?”
“‘Grounded’ is a dramatic term. You are an adult, even if you don’t always act like it.”
Priyanka freezes, eyes widening in comical alarm. Jimbo’s eyes wander from Lemon’s face down, past where they stand, and focus on the bottom of the stairs.
The tension’s electric, so thick it could probably be cut with the flat edge of a knife, so Priyanka ushers Lemon down the stairs, under Rita’s cutting gaze and back into the party.
“Jimbo likes to get on Rita’s nerves,” she explains at Lemon’s questing glance. “I don’t even know why they live together. They fight like old ladies in a care home over everything - or, well, Jimbo fights, and Rita just sort of stands there threateningly. I don’t even remember what this one’s about! Probably stealing food, or something.”
Lemon’s eyes crinkle in a laughing smile. “Is Rita always that…?” She moves her hand in some strange, interpretive dance.
“Oh, yeah,” Priyanka stage-whispers, glancing over her shoulder. “One time, she beat my ass with a towel whip so hard I couldn’t sit down for the rest of the day. I had to sleep on my stomach, it was that bad.”
That earns her a sympathetic wince. “I like getting spanked, but that’s too much even for me,” Lemon says nonchalantly, as though discussing the weather, and Priyanka feels like she’s been suckerpunched, trying desperately to pretend as though she’s not committing that information to memory as though her life depends on it.
She opens her mouth to reply, but nothing comes out. Lemon looks up at her and has the audacity to wink - then she’s gone from her side, weaving her way towards Kiara, who’s still chattering about body shots.
“You coming?” Lemon calls from across the room.
Priyanka’s helpless to do much besides follow.
In the end, they wind up on the couch together, Lemon’s legs thrown over Priyanka’s lap. Everyone else has long-since left, having taken cabs home - except Scarlett, who’s passed out and snoring lightly in an armchair with a blanket haphazardly draped over them.
“Sooo…” Priyanka drums her fingers against Lemon’s knee. “How are you getting home?”
Lemon scrunches up her face in distaste at the mention of getting home. “Walking, probably,” she says. “I know th’ path, so -”
“I don’t think so.” That’s Rita, ever the voice of reason, materialising in the doorway. She’s got her arm around Kiara’s waist, holding her up, and Kiara’s head’s on her shoulder, eyes closed.
Priyanka squints at her. “... is she dead?”
Rita jostles her a little, and she flops limply, offering no verbal response to the disturbance.
“Dead weight, maybe,” Rita snorts. “She out-drank herself - and everyone else at the party. I’m putting her to bed, but Lemon -” she turns her attention to the blonde - “you might as well stay the night; we can’t have you walking home out in the dark all by yourself, especially since you aren’t sober right now.”
It’s a fair point. Priyanka nods agreeably.
“You can sleep with Priyanka, since she has a double bed and because she’s the reason you’re even here, and I expect no disturbances.”
Priyanka’s jaw drops - first at the arrangement, then at the accusation.
“You - I - Rita,” she stammers.
Rita offers her a mawkish, innocent smile and swans out of the room, dragging Kiara with her - and then it’s just Priyanka and Lemon. The latter looks at the former expectantly, hands folded neatly in her lap.
Priyanka clears her throat a little too loudly. “Well!” she announces, leaping unsteadily to her feet, “let’s go sleep.”
---
Priyanka’s pyjamas are just too big for Lemon, nightshirt hanging loosely over her shoulders, and she looks so cute that it’s almost ridiculous.
They take opposite sides of the bed, Lemon closest to the door, and Priyanka lays with her back to the blonde, staring at the sliver of light beneath her curtains.
“You sure you’re cool with this?” Priyanka asks for what might be the thousandth time. “Sleeping with me, I mean. This is, like, the first time we’ve hung out, but I promise I’m not gonna feel you up while you can’t see me or anything.”
The bed shifts slightly with Lemon’s quiet giggling. “I mean, I’d not mind,” she says, “I’ve kind of been trying to hint that I like you for a while now.”
“Mm,” Priyanka says, eyes heavy and half-shut, only half-listening. “Yeah, right, okay.”
Things slot into place several moments later, once Priyanka’s sluggish brain has processed every mumbled syllable. I’ve kind of been trying to hint that I like you for a while now.
Oh.
Oh.
It’s as though she’s been struck by lightning. Suddenly wide awake, Priyanka rolls over towards Lemon, faces mere inches apart.
“Wait,” she blurts, “you like me? As in - you like like me?”
It seems impossible, even as she weaves together the evidence, needle and thread pulling points into place. “For real real?” She hesitates. “Is it the pain au chocolates? I didn’t actually bake any of them myself, ‘cause I’m really shit at making food, but -”
“Pri. Shut up.”
There’s more laughter in the dark, and oh, that’s Lemon’s hand, sliding clumsily under her pyjama shirt and against bare skin, and there’s something about its gracelessness that makes it so damn perfect.
“You’re so fucking stupid,” Lemon murmurs, low and reverent as though it’s a prayer, and Priyanka wonders if wires have crossed somewhere in her brain for her to feel flattered. She thinks that at this point, anything that comes out of Lemon’s mouth is worth wanting.
“We’re really drunk,” Priyanka says, because someone has to pretend to be responsible. “You’re really drunk.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Lemon insists. Her thumb’s digging into Priyanka’s hip and Priyanka can feel her already-pitiful self control waning, first crushed by alcohol and now by this - a single, maddening point of contact.
She can barely make out the lines of Lemon’s face but she knows it well enough to know that there’s a strand of hair curling over her temple because she’s constantly tucking it behind her ear, and Priyanka mimics that motion now, palm lingering against Lemon’s cheek.
“Don’t throw a bitch fit in the morning,” she warns, a final window through which to escape.
Lemon, being Lemon, grabs the metaphorical latch and wrenches it shut, responding almost petulantly.
“Are we gonna make out or not?”
And, well - it’s difficult to argue with a point like that, even when Lemon starts kicking off her shorts and pushing one of Priyanka’s hands between her thighs. Priyanka gets her to come like that, fucking her with two fingers, thumb circling her clit and three fingers on her tongue to muffle her mewling cries. She gets off against Lemon’s thigh, messy and rushed, and Lemon murmurs nonsense that she can’t quite make out over the rush of blood in her ears but that fills her with heat regardless.
“That was a bit more than making out,” Lemon says once they’re spent, breathing shallow and uneven.
“You started it!” Priyanka retorts. Her eyes have adjusted enough to the dark that she doesn’t miss the way Lemon sticks her tongue out as she shifts closer and throws a leg over Priyanka’s waist. “And anyway, you loved it, don’t lie.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Lemon shrugs, burrowing close. Priyanka snickers. “... You up for round two?”
Priyanka shuts her eyes and furrows her brow as though thinking about it. Then: “Yeah, sure, why not?”