you're too young & eager to love

I'm not pleased with this.
Oh well.






Drey lights her cigarette. Regina puffs twice before inhaling and buries her toes beneath the still warm sand. The beach is white and her lips are very pink, but Drey remembers that her mouth is pale without lipstick. Regina looks at the horizon, and she doesn’t know what she’s trying not to say.
“I’m friends with – “
“I don’t care.” Not unkindly, but the doctor has found her footing against the sand so her voice has too. “It doesn’t matter.”
There is a party. A weekend get-away, except what Drey was running from ended up directly in front of her. With a husband and nails painted the color of coral. Drey wants to press her forehead to the curve where Regina’s shoulder stretches into neck, wants to think that Regina’s hands would grip her own bare wrists. Regina has that smell about her, the sweet but never syrupy kind, only now it’s mixed with sea salt and a man’s cologne. It’s ruining the image Drey is desperate to hold.
She smokes her cigarette instead, a tall and dark haired woman on an unwelcoming beach. Near her, Regina is adjusting the length of her summer skirt. Her feminine blouse looks as though it could be easily ripped and too pure. Except pure means never having been dirty at all so the brunette smirks and flicks her ashes. Rubs her jaw like she’s thinking, feels the tension and awkwardness rolling off the waves and crashing into them - these two women that are standing too far apart to be casual.
There’s heat in the air. A simmering effect that gets carried with the wind. Regina shivers anyway, feels the way her skin tightens and prickles. She keeps her gaze very still, very focused, and twirls the diamond on her left hand. Her hair is still damp from when she went swimming earlier, and it’s making the back of her neck itch.
When she sits down on a makeshift swing, Drey thinks she could kiss her faster than Regina could pull away.


She’s been good. There are barely any marks left on the inside of her arm. Just a fading bruise that Regina explains away by being seen at the blood drive. When she asks, Drey gives her a pill or two from her dysfunctional version of a Marry Poppins’ bag.


“I can feel you looking at me.”
“I’m looking at the ocean, Regina. You just happen to be in front of it.”
“Stop it. It makes me uncomfortable.”
Colder now, the sun dipping below the horizon. Drey brushes her fingers against Regina’s shoulder.
“Stop. People can see.”
Drey laughs, short and quick, and removes her hand. “One of these days you’re going to want them to see.”


She isn’t sure how but Regina is knocking on her door, and it’s after midnight. Regina doesn’t get drunk, but Drey can taste the champagne. She doesn’t bother to ask why, or wonder how the other found her room number, and in the morning Regina has left sand in her bed.