Chapter 2: Claiming What's Theirs
The dressing room hallway was a stark, buzzing contrast to the stage’s warm oblivion. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, bleaching everything into shades of sickly blue and gray. The floor tiles were sticky under their sneakers. The air smelled of hairspray, cheap body glitter, and the ghost of a hundred nervous performers.
Rose was still scrolling through her phone, grinning at a blurry fan-cam video someone had already posted. “Look, you can see the exact moment your soul left your body and then decided to come back for the fun part.”
“Don’t,” Lisa groaned, but she was peeking at the screen, a flicker of pride cutting through her residual embarrassment. “I look like a startled deer.”
“A very hot, rhythmic deer.”
They rounded the corner toward the communal dressing rooms—a narrow lane of dented lockers and peeling mirrors—and the ambush was instantaneous.
One moment they were walking. The next, a figure detached itself from the shadows near the water fountain and slammed Rose back against the lockers with a soft, metallic bang. Jisoo’s hands framed Rose’s face, her long black hair a curtain that briefly shut out the world before she crushed their mouths together. It was less a kiss and more a statement, deep and bruising and full of grinning teeth.
Rose made a muffled sound of surprise that melted into a laugh against Jisoo’s lips, her phone clattering to the floor.
Lisa had half a second to process—the heat in her own cheeks, the sight of Rose’s fingers tangling in Jisoo’s hair—before a different set of hands grabbed her. Somi. Her girlfriend’s eyes were dark with a playful, possessive intensity Lisa knew well.
“Hey—” was all Lisa got out before Somi pushed her backward, through the nearest open doorway into a small, dark storage room. The door clicked shut behind them, plunging them into near-total darkness, the only light a sliver from under the door.
The space was claustrophobic, smelling of old mop water and dust. Somi didn’t give her a chance to adjust. She crowded Lisa against a shelf of cleaning supplies, her body a familiar, welcome press. Her mouth found Lisa’s ear.
“That hip roll,” Somi whispered, her voice a low, textured thing that went straight to Lisa’s core. “During the second chorus. The one where you looked right at her. That was for me, right?”
Lisa’s breath hitched. Somi’s hands were already under the hem of her crop top, palms flat and warm against the tight muscles of her stomach, sliding upward. The touch was electric, a live wire on her over-sensitized skin.
“It was choreography,” Lisa breathed, even as she arched into the touch.
“Bullshit.” Somi’s teeth grazed her jaw. “You don’t do choreography like that. Not unless you mean it.” She kissed her, slow and thorough, a contrast to the frantic energy outside. When she pulled back, her forehead resting against Lisa’s, she sounded almost rueful. “Do you know how hard it was to watch that? To see you move like that for a whole auditorium?”
“It was just dancing.”
“It wasn’t.” Somi’s thumb brushed the underside of Lisa’s breast, a deliberate, teasing stroke. “But it’s okay. I’ll just have to remind you who you come home to.”
Out in the hallway, the sound of Rose’s laughter echoed. “Get a room! Oh, wait…”
Jisoo’s voice followed, bright and teasing. “You’re one to talk, Park. Your lip gloss is all over my face.”
“A good look for you!”
Lisa melted into another kiss, the last of her stage jitters transforming into a different kind of tremor. The distant noises of the retreating crowd, the shrill of someone’s phone, it all faded under the rhythm of Somi’s heartbeat against her own.
Eventually, Somi pulled away with a final, soft nip to Lisa’s lower lip. She reached behind her, fumbling for the doorknob. The fluorescent hall light invaded the little room, making them both squint.
Rose and Jisoo were leaning against the opposite lockers, waiting. Rose’s mouth was indeed smudged, her hair deliciously messy. Jisoo looked impossibly pleased with herself.
“Done marking your territory?” Rose asked, arching a brow.
“Just getting started,” Somi shot back, her arm slinging possessively around Lisa’s waist, her hand still tucked under the back of Lisa’s top. Lisa didn’t shrug it off. She leaned into the solidity of it.
“Burgers,” Jisoo announced, pushing off the lockers. “I’m starving from all the emotional labor of cheering you degenerates on.”
“You were cheering?” Lisa asked, finally finding her voice, rough at the edges.
“Screaming,” Jisoo confirmed. “Professor Griggs told me to ‘temper my youthful exuberance.’” She did a perfect, doddery impression of their elderly bio professor. Somi snorted.
They moved as a unit down the hall, a tangled, laughing knot of sweat and glitter and relief. Lisa felt spent, but in the best way. The adrenaline was gone, replaced by a deep, glowing contentment. Somi’s hand on her back, Rose’s shoulder bumping hers, Jisoo’s infectious cackle echoing off the tiles.
As they pushed through the heavy doors into the cool night air, the sounds of the campus welcoming them back to reality, Rose threw an arm around Lisa’s neck.
“Told you it’d be fun,” she murmured, just for her.
Lisa looked at Somi’s playful smirk, at Jisoo digging in her bag for keys, at the dark sky sprinkled with stars. She nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” she said. “It was.”
The night stretched ahead, fragrant with the promise of greasy food and easy laughter, the echo of the music still a faint, joyful pulse in their veins.