Chapter 4: Streetlight Confessions
The walk to Rio’s apartment was a blur of wet pavement and tangled fingers. They didn’t speak. The silence wasn’t awkward; it was thick, charged, a live wire strung between them. The rain began just as Rio fumbled with her keys at a sleek, industrial-looking building, a sharp, cold spray that sent them laughing, breathless, through the lobby doors.
Her apartment was exactly what Agatha had unconsciously pictured: expansive, minimalist, but lived-in. A wall of windows looked out over the slick, dark city. Abstract art in violent shades of red and black. Books piled neatly on a low shelf. It smelled like sandalwood and fresh coffee.
Rio shrugged out of her wet jacket, dropping it on a sleek, dark wood chair. “Drink?” she asked, moving toward a kitchenette.
“I’m already drunk,” Agatha said, her voice sounding foreign in the quiet space. She stood just inside the doorway, suddenly aware of her own damp clothes, the smudged mascara she could feel under her eyes, the monumental shift that had occurred in the last hour.
“On what?” Rio turned, a bottle of amber liquid in her hand. “Disappointment or poor life choices?”
“Both. A cocktail.” Agatha finally kicked off her boots, the act feeling domestically intimate. “It’s a popular one.”
Rio poured two fingers into a glass, neat, and walked it over to her. Her eyes were calm now, assessing. “Here’s a better one. It’s called ‘The Present.’ Ingredients: what’s actually happening. Served: now.” She held out the glass.
Agatha took it, their fingers brushing. She took a sip. The whiskey burned a clean, clarifying path down her throat. “Pricey?”
“Always.” Rio took her own glass and led the way to a large, plush couch positioned to face the cityscape. She sank into one corner, a study in casual ownership.
Agatha followed, perching on the opposite end, putting the bulk of the couch between them like a demilitarized zone. The rain streaked the windows, turning the city lights into shimmering galaxies.
“So,” Rio said after a moment, swirling her drink. “Bea.”
The name hit the room like a stone. Agatha stiffened. “What about her?”
“You want to talk about her?”
“No.”
“Liar.” Rio said it softly, without accusation. “It’s all over you. The ghost of her is sitting right between us. I can smell her perfume—something floral and anxious—clinging to your jacket.”
Agatha looked down into her glass. The defense she’d prepared—“It’s complicated,” “You wouldn’t understand”—withered under Rio’s direct, unnerving gaze. This woman didn’t deal in platitudes.
“She doesn’t show up,” Agatha heard herself say, the words simple and stark. “To dinners. To movies. To her own birthday party, once. It’s her special talent.”
“And you keep waiting.”
“I kept waiting,” Agatha corrected, the past tense feeling dangerous. “I sat in that bar for forty-five minutes tonight. Staring at the door. Like a pathetic lighthouse.”
Rio nodded slowly, absorbing this. “And when you stopped waiting? When you walked out that alley door?”
Agatha met her eyes. “The world got louder.”
A slow smile spread across Rio’s face. It wasn’t triumphant. It was genuine. “Good.”
She put her glass down on the side table with a definitive click. In one fluid motion, she shifted, curling one leg beneath her, facing Agatha fully. The distance between them shrank, not in feet, but in atmosphere.
“Come here,” Rio said. It wasn’t a command. It was an invitation.
Agatha’s hesitation lasted only a heartbeat. She put her own glass down and moved, the soft leather sighing beneath her. She didn’t know what to do with her hands until Rio reached for them, pulling Agatha into her lap, straddling her. The position was shockingly intimate, closing the final gap. Agatha could feel the steady beat of Rio’s heart through both their shirts.
Rain drummed a frantic rhythm on the glass. In the dim, reflected glow of the city, Rio’s face was all shadow and sharp, beautiful angles. She leaned up and kissed Agatha, slowly this time, a deep, exploring kiss that tasted of whiskey and certainty. Agatha sank into it, her fingers threading into Rio’s dark hair.
When they broke apart, both were breathing heavily. Rio’s teeth dragged, gently, across Agatha’s swollen bottom lip, a spark of sweet pain.
“Still worried about who didn’t show up?” Rio panted, her hands sliding up Agatha’s thighs, the rough pads of her thumbs tracing the patterns of her ripped fishnets, mapping the curves of her hips beneath.
Agatha shook her head, a faint, disbelieving laugh escaping her. She was dissolving.
“Or,” Rio continued, her voice dropping to a husky whisper as one hand splayed possessively against the small of Agatha’s back, pressing their bodies closer together, “are you just worried about how loud you’re going to be when I make you come?”
The crude, direct question should have jarred her. Instead, it ignited something. It was the antithesis of Bea’s vague, poetic murmurs. This was a promise. A challenge.
“You’re pretty confident,” Agatha managed, her own voice strangled.
“I’m pretty observant.” Rio’s hands were everywhere, tracing her spine, palming her ribs, learning her. “And you, Agatha, have been very, very quiet for a very long time. I don’t think you even remember the sound of your own pleasure.”
It was too true. The observation cut through every remaining layer. A shocked, shaky breath hitched in Agatha’s throat. Her eyes stung. She blinked rapidly, looking away, out at the blurry city.
Rio’s hand came up, cupping her cheek, turning her face back. Her thumb brushed away a traitorous wetness Agatha hadn’t even felt escape.
“Hey,” Rio murmured, her earlier smirk gone, replaced by an intensity that was almost gentle. “Look at me.”
Agatha did.
“This isn’t about her. This is an evacuation.” Rio’s dark eyes held hers, unwavering. “I’m going to help you evacuate that quiet, empty fortress. And it’s probably going to be a little messy. And you’re probably going to be loud.”
Agatha let out a sob that was half a laugh. She slumped forward, her forehead coming to rest against Rio’s. All her slick retorts, her dry wit, her fortified walls—they were just gone. Rubble.
“Okay,” she whispered into the minute space between their mouths.
Rio’s arms wrapped around her, solid and sure. “Okay.”
Then Rio kissed her again, and the last of the world—the rain, the city, the ghost of a woman who never showed up—fell away. There was only this: the warm, solid reality of Rio beneath her, the demanding softness of her mouth, the clever hands that were already pulling at fabric, finding skin, rewriting a story of neglect into something blazing and new.
And as Rio’s touch grew more insistent, more knowing, as Agatha felt a coil of heat tighten deep within her, she realized Rio was right. She had forgotten the sound. But the pressure of it, the building, seismic wave of it, was something her body remembered. And it was desperate to be heard.