Secretly, Mari is glad Danny Mears dumped her. She’s grown tired of showing up to parties on his arm, getting just wasted enough to ignore the sinking in her stomach when he smiles at her.
Let it never be said Mari Ibarra doesn’t understand what’s required of her— she’s done her best to fit herself into the tiny box of expectation, and that (unfortunately) includes Danny.
She’d picked him because she knew he had a thing for his cousin, actually, because she was a human being with eyes and he was so not subtle. It’s easier to settle into the pretending of it all when she knows he’s a risk-free target. And that choice didn’t come without whispers, of course, but life was a balancing act: you took what you could get. Plus, Mari’s an expert at gossip— it’s easy enough to steer away from her and her boyfriend’s proclivities. Sorry Coach Ben— you may not have gonorrhea (probably), but nothing gets people talking like STDs.
As much as she’s grateful for the reprieve, Mari’s also hyperaware that it means more eyes on her. Not only is she newly dumped, the most shameful way of being single, Danny’s also now stupidly confirmed every rumor about him. People stare and whisper in the halls twice as much, wondering if stories they’d forgotten about Mari are true too.
And they are, of course, but that’s not productive. Mari works overtime to avoid being caught staring at her teammates, and it mostly even works. And when it doesn’t, people know Mari is dangerous to fuck with, which is a small mercy. She does her best to hold her head high and ignore the rubbernecking, the way the girls who sit in front of her in history hide their faces in books and folders to pretend like they’re not talking about her.
The breakup has other downsides, of course— Mari also hasn’t had a good fuck in weeks. Not because Danny was anything to write home about, but because she no longer has the cover of coupledom to sneak away and screw girls in the back corner of the parking lot, in someone’s fortunately unlocked bedroom during a rager, under the bleachers. She wishes she’d taken advantage more when she had the chance.
Upsides of soccer, she thinks to herself, besides getting to kick ass and show off— it’s also ripe breeding ground for flings. Obviously, there are pairs Mari wouldn’t get in the middle of even if you paid her: Van and Tai are untouchable, even during downswings in their relationship, and Jackie and Shauna are similar, though Mari’s learned how to read Jackie’s face for the days she wants to prove something to Shauna. Mari isn’t above being a bad-idea fuck, if it means fingering Jackie Taylor.
Still, there isn’t a number of one-night stands and messy drunken kisses that can prepare you for a sudden dearth of it all. That, combined with all the looks— both pity and judgement— has Mari on edge. Knee-jerk edges go sharper, the kind of thing she can’t find it in herself to be ashamed of. She plays harder on the field, in need of somewhere where she’s allowed to vent her frustration, and though it earns her appreciative looks from the coaches, it’s not enough.
She craves the blood-stinging warmth of attention from girls, the way they bite their lips when they smile at her, the way they quirk an impressed eyebrow and throw their heads back in laughter. The longer she goes without it, without excuse to hold girls’ hands and bend close to gossip in the halls, no boyfriend-built defense against the dyke allegations, the more she feels herself about to explode.
By the time she’s been officially dumped for a week and a half, Mari is practically vibrating with her boredom. What good is a boyfriend if he makes you patient zero when he dumps you? Nobody even offers her a pity date, like they’re afraid she made Danny Mears want to fuck his cousin, like she must’ve been unimaginably awful if he decided to look to his family tree instead of her. She’d show up to a party with just about anybody at this point, if it meant she could drag Gen upstairs and box her up against some dumbass’s parents’ dresser.
Instead, she finds herself alone at some lacrosse player’s house, shoes and socks tucked next to her as she dangles her feet in their pool. She’d spent a good three hours drinking and dancing and grinning in the house, only to find that as people began to couple off, her heart wasn’t in it anymore. Jackie and Shauna are clinging to each other, no space for Mari to slip in and homewreck. Gen is sitting in her boyfriend’s lap, and Lottie is sharing a joint with Van as Tai leans closer and closer.
So here’s Mari: alone, exhausted, and grumpy. Winning combination.
“Christ, you look like shit,” rasps a voice from over her shoulder. Mari turns to catch the shine of Nat’s smirk.
“Fuck off,” Mari grumbles, tied between annoyance and a spike of pleasure when it earns a bright laugh.
Nat shuffles down the walkway, settles beside Mari, close enough that it feels like they might be the only two people in the universe. Combined with the bruise-dark sky and the noise of the party muffled by the sliding glass door, Mari feels some of the caution drain out of her.
She’s never been close with Nat, primarily because Nat seems to give precisely zero shits what people think of her and Mari can’t help but care so deeply it hurts. But tonight, Nat is here— is close and warm and smelling like cigarette smoke— and Mari can’t remember why she ever ignored her.
“What crawled up your ass and died?” Nat asks, an interest in Mari that feels refreshingly unjudgemental. “Oh,” she adds after a second, snapping her fingers like it’s just occurred to her, “that’s right. Mears.”
Honestly, Mari’s surprised Nat even knows. She’s not a gossiper, usually the subject of whispers rather than a participant in them. Mari’s used her more than once as an easy out, a redirect that works just as cleanly every time.
Her surprise must show, heart on her sleeve, because Nat laughs a little. “Lottie told me,” she says, and it clicks into place.
Mari crosses her legs, angles herself a little bit more away from Nat. She’s seen Lottie and Nat together enough to know they’re among the roster of regular flings, figures Nat must be gathering some valuable intel to drop in Lottie’s ear as an excuse to guide her away from Van later. “Great,” Mari manages, sarcastic, “glad to provide some entertainment.”
Nat hums, leans back on her hands, one palm closer to Mari’s thigh than she expects. “Alright, Ibarra, off the high horse. Last month, you told everybody Kevin and Travis Eiffel-towered me.”
She had done that, yeah. Tara Garcia had been talking about the dykes on the soccer team, about how close Mel and Mari were sitting during pre-calc. And Melissa wasn’t even Mari’s type, not really— too eager, a reflection of Mari’s own image she found she didn’t like looking at. But they were… friends, kind of, had both slept with Gen, at least, teammates for sure. Plus, the word had been aimed at them both, and Mari didn’t like how close to home it hit.
“Everybody says that crap about you, though,” Mari says instead, because it’s true.
Nat shrugs, a little. “Everybody says crap about you, too. It’s just this one is the first to stick.”
It’s true. Even with Mari’s desperate attempts at changing the narrative, people still won’t let the whole Danny thing go. It’s a huge piece of confirmed gossip, multiple trustworthy eye witnesses seeing both the breakup and Danny with his hands up Lisa’s shirt. It’s a clean triple-header: Lisa being easy, a slut who’ll let her cousin palm her tits; Danny being a freak, a kid who wants to fuck somebody related to him; and Mari, a dyke so unimpressive in bed that she can’t even distract Danny from his own family. Hooray.
“Yeah, well,” Mari replies eloquently. She trails off, sighs. “I’m just tired of it, I guess.”
Nat laughs. “Suck it up. They’ll come up with something more interesting soon. You can’t force that shit.”
“You totally can,” Mari insists, bristling some at the thought. “That’s how the ecosystem or whatever works, basically.”
“Oh, my mistake,” Nat mocks, “forgot who I was talking to, I guess.” She pauses for just a breath, and then, like she has some preternatural knowledge of Mari’s weak spots, adds, “you really controlled the narrative on that fucking vibrator thing, so.”
Mari snaps her head around to face Nat so quickly she thinks she’s given herself whiplash. There’s a tiny little smirk on Nat’s lips, her expression otherwise unmoved.
“That’s not fair,” Mari insists, feeling the way her face goes hot at the reminder. “People forgot about that in like two days, you know.”
It had taken a truly thorough misinformation campaign to win that war. Mari had been determined to squash it before people started actually wondering about the mechanics of it all, terrified of how easily dots could be connected.
Of course, Nat isn’t just anybody.
“Let’s hope you got that sorted before you started fucking our captain,” she says, and Mari chokes on air.
“It was dark and we had, like, two minutes before people came looking, okay? I’d like to see you try.”
As she says it, Mari becomes hyperaware of how close the two of them are sitting, of how long it’s been since she had free rein to screw a girl. She could drop to her knees and thank Jesus right now, it’s such a perfect opportunity to fall into her lap.
“I don’t have any vibrators on me,” Nat says drolly, proof that she knows exactly what Mari’s thinking, sought her out for this very reason. “But I’m sure we could make do.”
Mari chances a glance behind them, at the closed patio door. It leads right into the kitchen, though she and Nat are far enough away that if someone went looking, they’d be two blurry shapes. No identifying information.
She hums lowly as she turns back to Nat, a smirk sliding across her face. “You as good as Lottie says, Scatorccio?”
Nat throws her head back and laughs, bright and clear. Mari traces her eyes along the curve of her neck. “Why don’t you come find out?”
It’s enough to have Mari lean across the scant few inches that separate them, grab Nat by the collar of her gray t-shirt, and pull her into a kiss. It’s messy and fast, an awkward angle from being side-by-side, but Mari doesn’t care. She groans into Nat’s mouth, feels the smirk it earns and tightens her grip, bites warningly down on Nat’s bottom lip. Nat makes her own little punched-out noise at the sensation.
When they pull apart, just enough for the two of them to catch their breath, Mari arches an eyebrow. “I’m not eating you out by the pool. That gravel is hell on your knees.”
“Not my knees,” Nat points out, wry, and Mari can’t help her laugh.
She pulls her feet out of the water, manages to stand semi-gracefully, and tugs Nat up behind her. There’s a pool chair with oversized striped cushions, half-hidden behind some bushes that tuck around the outside of the fence. Mari steps, barefoot, into the damp grass, sits down on the end of the chair with one leg to either side.
Nat doesn’t hesitate. She crawls up after Mari, sorting herself out so she’s lazing comfortably in front of her, knees akimbo. She lays a weighty hand on Mari’s thigh, the skin bared by the stretch of her skirt. Mari’s veins are alight with excitement— this is what she’s been missing, and it’s happening poolside with the school burnout. There might be a lesson in there somewhere, if Mari could be bothered to look.
Mari is a giver, first and foremost— she thrives on performing well for the girls she takes to bed and learning all the different ways to please them. In that sense, Nat’s no different than Gen or Lottie or Jackie or anybody else. Another pretty girl, a warm body, and, critically, someone she knows isn’t going to go running to tell everyone about the dyke who forced herself on her. There’s a kinship there, a sort of if I go down, you’re coming down with me, and it’s the way Mari’s managed to keep her sex life alive for this long.
So she pushes up Nat’s skirt and tugs down her underwear, goes to work with a fervor reserved for the soccer field and math homework. She sucks a bruise into the apex of Nat’s thigh, revels in the way she squirms beneath her. She slides her tongue in long, slow strokes, enjoys the way the teasing seems to only make Nat needier. Nat’s hips cant toward her mouth and Mari lets it happen, tries to follow the rhythm of Nat’s body. It’s an easy game to learn once she sets her mind to it, with the noises Nat makes and the way she sneaks a hand into Mari’s hair to tug her the way she wants. Contrary to what the vibrator rumor may have you believe, Mari usually uses her fingers as a secondary tool rather than toys, finds it much easier to drag Nat across the line into orgasm without a little metal bullet getting in the way. And that way, she doesn’t even chip her tooth. Win-win.
She guides Nat through the aftershocks of her orgasm, presses a little kiss to her thatch of hair and smirks up at her, lipgloss long gone and hair surely a mess. From her place propped up against the cushion, Nat grins, toothy and pleased.
“Not bad,” Nat murmurs, low and hard-fought and just for Mari. Not to be a predictable romantic in the middle of a convenient fling, but the tone softens something in Mari’s core, has her lips twitching up into a smile instead.
Still, she musters up some arrogance, a necessary front. “Damn right,” she replies, though she can’t even feel all that annoyed when Nat laughs. There’s still an impressed sparkle in her eye, like she’s laughing with Mari and not at her. It’s hard to get cranky about that.
Nat leans awkwardly, closes the distance between them to kiss Mari again. Even through her surprise, Mari reciprocates, pleased at the tenderness.
When Nat pulls away, it makes Mari bolder— she flashes her best charming gaze up at her, all puppy-dog eyes and batted lashes, and says, “We could do that again, sometime. If you wanted, I mean.”
Nat’s brow knits into consideration and she gives Mari a long, slow look up and down. “Mm,” she says, eventually, “yeah. Why not. Just don’t get any ideas about hanging off me in the hallways like you do with Lot.”
Mari rolls her eyes, pinches Nat in childish retribution. “Whatever, like I’d even be seen with you.” They’re still smiling at each other, tiny, revealing things that they can’t seem to bite down on. It feels like too much at once, the way Mari knows she can swing hard in one direction to protect herself from being caught in the other. “Can I bum a cigarette?” She asks, electing to punt the conversation rather than examine it.
Nat chuckles, tugs her underwear up and her skirt down, though she doesn’t make to adjust it the way Mari might. She reaches into an inside pocket in her jacket and produces a carton, thumbs it open and offers it to Mari. “I’m not lighting it for you,” she says as Mari takes one, though Mari didn’t expect her to.
Mari digs in her own pockets until she finally produces a lighter, stolen off someone else months ago and running low on fuel. Still, it flickers gently to life, lights the high points of Nat’s face in front of her in warm reds and oranges. She lights the end of the cigarette and puffs slowly on it, blows the smoke away from the pair of them the same way Nat does after she lights her own.
They stay like that, silence except for the occasional cricket, until both cigarettes are done, just cherries they drop to the ground. Mari’s still barefoot, so Nat graciously stamps out both under her boots. It’s a strange kind of peace that Mari doesn’t think she gets a lot of in the middle of quick, tense hookups, and she finds herself looking forward to the next time even before this one’s over.
Strange, she thinks, to enjoy Nat Scatorccio’s company like this. First time for everything.