Bond, Jane Bond

shaky hands, each occupied. one with a cigarette, the other with her rocks glass. she has, quite intentionally, avoided looking at jane squarely. there is the fear, however irrational, that if blanche looks at her longer than glancing she might disappear. ghosts can only be seen out of the corner of one’s eye after all.

they mirror each other. blanche is balanced against the lip of a desk. her desk. the last time they saw each other blanche didn’t have anything of her own. not a house, not a desk, not even a dress that wasn’t borrowed or bought with someone else’s money. now she has her own apartment. sweet and small and only two rooms. a far-cry from belle reve but hers, absolutely and indefinitely.

i missed you, sits uncomfortably on the tip of her tongue but she can’t bring herself to say it yet so she washes it down with a pull from her glass too generous to be called a sip. “you should have phoned,” it comes out small and high, almost like a sigh. finally she flicks her eyes up to shyly meet jane’s. still lovely, still jane. she feels her eyes well and she drains her glass to keep from crying. “i didn’t know whether or not — it was a terrible thing you did.” her voice is still wavering, she stares down into her empty cup. “to leave without telling me where you were going. i was frightened.” crying outright now, she wipes at her cheek with the back of her wrist. her breath hitches messily. “i missed you.”

it was a terrible thing, even more terrible was that jane was only feeling terrible about it now, when confronted with tears. blanche downs her entire drink, too fast, and jane gives this soft, displeased sound as she stands, cigarette abandoned at first chance so she can approach and place her calloused palms on either side of blanche’s slim jaw. “i told you, i owed you better than that. and calling would have been worse, i’m shit on the phone.”

she watches her cry for only a moment longer, before she leans in to kiss the wet trails down blanche’s cheeks, then pulls back to look at her again. as if to study the raw emotion, to finally understand it. “i’m sorry i cocked up,” she smiles, “but i’m not sorry that you did so well after I left. i like your place. you’ve got picture on the walls, which means you’ve come further than i have.”

       “So that’s a tenner I owe you, since apparently I’m the one they kicked out first.” She pauses, smirking. “Well, officially anyways. Since you actually stuck with the death card and they kept pumping me back to life.”

     Foreigners are easy to spot, so easy that it stopped being a game when she was still a child, but she kept the habit of keeping an eye on them, especially when one stands out in the crowd. Someone just like the woman who enters in her field of vision. A quite odd sight around here which makes it even more interesting.

     Leaning against the wall close to the bar where her friend is working, Sofía keeps her gaze focused on her, unashamedly observing her even when she walks towards. This might become an entertaining evening. 

     ❝ Are you asking a Spanish woman if she dances, Belleza? ❞   Flicking her cigarette away as she straightens her back, she cannot help herself but smirk. The day she stops dancing may as well be the day she dies.   ❝ Let’s see if you can dance. ❞

    The complete sass makes Jane grin, wrinkles appearing faintly around her eyes. “I suppose I should have asked...will you dance with me?” She stands as she speaks, offering her hand. “Or, will you be able to suffer my forgetfulness on the steps? I’ve had other things on my mind for the past years, regrettably, that have caused me to forget the joys of dancing with a beautiful woman.”

       It’s an easy fall to surrender to, back pressed to the couch, arms wrapped around Min, suit crumpling and wrinkles forming around her closed eyes as she breathes in the scent of her wife’s hair. It’s familiar, comforting, and now she never has to leave it.

       “So the question is now when do you retire?” Jane purrs, leaning against a desk, terribly amused with herself. “Not from your work, but for the night? I’ve gone grey so I don’t have much time clearly, you should take a break and go somewhere with me. On the bike.”

       It had been years since she’d last been to a bar casually and it probably showed - though she was no amateur in seeking nightlife, her whimsy favoring the open-air Spanish bar that drew an eclectic mix of vibrant life, she was old in a crowd of youth, down to the last detail of her suit.

      But it felt good. She felt alive, for once, for more than just an hour at a time.

       They had changed, both of them, and yet somehow things remained unchanged in the way Jane watched her, lips slightly parted, a lit cigarette between her fingers that coiled smoke into the humid air. She’d come back here  in sole search of her troubled Aphrodite - a wild different from her own, free when Jane’s had been caged, seemingly caged now that Jane’s was free.