Chapter 2: Bathroom Confessions and a Shared Secret
Another round, as it turned out, wasn’t so much ordered as it appeared, brought to the table by a passing server without them asking. Elise’s hand trembled slightly when she picked up the new gin and tonic, a telltale shiver of condensation streaking the glass. She took a large swallow, her throat working, before setting it down with a definitive clink. She and Kai looked at each other. The silent conversation was louder this time, filled with flickering glances and bitten lips.
Brian sat back, ceding the floor. This was Mallory’s op, her spell to cast. He was the anchor, the stable ground from which her audacity could launch.
Mallory waited, patient as a cat. She traced a pattern in the condensation ring her bottle left on the wood. Her body was a line of calm energy beside the crackling, silent storm of the other two.
Finally, Elise let out a shaky little laugh and pushed her glasses up into her hair. “Wow. Okay.” She looked at Mallory. “So, Pictionary as foreplay, huh? Is that normally your move?”
“Sometimes,” Mallory said, her tone light. “Sometimes we just play games. Tonight, I was feeling… ambitious.”
Kai shook his head, a grin spreading across his face that was part disbelief, part pure, male thrill. “You guys have, like, a system for this. I can tell.”
“No system,” Brian finally spoke, his voice a low rumble.“Just clarity. It saves time.”
Elise wiped her palms on her thighs. The music from the bar’s speakers, some bluesy guitar riff, felt suddenly distant, irrelevant. Their table was its own world now, sealed off by possibility. “And ‘clarity’ means…?” Elise prompted.
Mallory leaned in, her voice dropping but not whispering. Whispering was for secrets. This was just a private conversation in a loud room. “It means our hand is on the table. We want you to come back to our place. That would be nice. We want to take this,” she gestured vaguely at the board game’s cardboard box, “and make it something three-dimensional. If you want to. The ball’s in your court. You could finish your drink and go back to your AirBNB and tell each other about the weird couple you met.”
“Or?” Kai asked, the word hanging in the air.
Mallory smiled. Her eyes flicked to Elise, then back to Kai. “Or you could call it a night right now… and follow us.”
Elise exhaled, a long, slow release of breath. She looked at Mallory with an intensity that had shed its shyness entirely. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Mallory nodded.
They paid their tab, a quiet, focused exchange of cash and phones. The thud of the bar door shutting behind them was a punctuation mark. Out on the sidewalk, the city’s hum was a different beast—bigger, cooler, expectant. Neon painted their faces in passing flashes of pink and green.
The walk back to the dingy townhouse was only three blocks, but it felt infinite. They walked in shifting pairs, no one saying much. Mallory walked with Elise. Kai walked with Brian. Words weren’t needed; the purpose was its own loud, intoxicating sound. Mallory pointed to a small corner deli, its lights still on. “Place is good,” she said, just to say something. Elise nodded, her hands shoved in her jacket pockets. She was thinking it all through now, the practical weirdness. Was she going to do this? Walk into a stranger’s room.
Walk into a stranger’ limits room, potentially for anything.
She met Mallory’s sideways glance, saw only a serene, fearless confidence, and thought, maybe.
The townhouse’s sad brick facade loomed sooner than anyone seemed ready for. Its front door looked heavier now, worn at its hinges.
“This is it,” Mallory said, gesturing vaguely towards the peeling paint. A broken shutter tapped a relentless rhythm against a second-floor window.
Brian was on the stoop, retrieving his keys from a deep, torn pocket. Kai stopped just behind him. He was leaning on one foot like he was waiting for a bus. The relative discomfort earlier had vanished from him, melted in the heat of anticipation.
He looked intrigued.
The heavy lock made its familiar, grudging scrape.
The red oak must have sighed when that door swung open, releasing a puff of trapped heat, a puff of the same stale air.
Kai didn’t pause. There was no moment where he hung back, weighed decisions, second-guessed crossed lines. He just passed Brian on the threshold and stepped right through. Straight into the cramped hallway's gravity well. As natural as heading home.
Across the narrow porch, Elise braked hard inside her own mind. She wasn't looking at the open doorway anymore. She was studying the weathered stoop. The abandoned cigarette butt pressed into a crack. The sensible denim of her own outfit—jeans, sneakers, pressed but uninspired.
This was it.
Mallory saw the hesitation stiffen Elise’s shoulders. Her natural forward lean stopped. A busy circuit protection behind her eyes faltered.
It was vulnerable for only seconds.
Mallory eased backwards, putting a calming hand on Elise’s arm.
Her touch was gentle, pressing just beyond sleeve he told hips.
Stepping down from stoop to sidewalk she guided Elise away into the muted darkness left of the entryway. They fell silent against the crooked cast aluminum railing as Brian and Kai moved into their world above. Shoes shuffled on wooden interior stairs, paces distinct and purposely quick.
Now they were shoulder to high privacy of shadow.
Peeling stucco embraced their second silence.
“Listen,” Mallory began, dropping her public sales murmur. A side hall vendor’s lamp pooled diluted sodium light onto first sleeve and eventual collarbone, highlighting both hairs along the arm. Mallory voice took on sand grain over obvious patience. A crackle gone from interpersonal hardwood tearing inflammation old buffer wounds leaking.
She spoke facts, not seduction. A black hole of certainty.
“No pressure.Really. A step backwards never sunk a deal.”