NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY | updates every monday

19: a root

            The night warms at least two degrees when I'm left alone in it with Joe. We stare at each other, uncertain of how to act outside of our Spectrum-established routine. Caleb took her empty bottle inside but now Joe has nowt to do with her hands. I fidget with my rings.

'I like your makeup,' I say. 'I like how you always match the colours of your eyeliner with your clothes. And the shimmer—it makes you look like a fairy.'

Joe stares for several seconds before she realises what she's doing. 'Sorry, I'm just not used to men complimenting my makeup. Half of you people think my eyelids are naturally purple.' Her laugh chokes on a grimace. 'Sorry, I didn't mean to offend.'

'I weren't offended,' I say. 'My best mate's a drag queen, so...'

Joe inclines her head to say "fair" before she smiles again. 'Well, thank you. The eyeliner is actually face paint that I've had since I was seven.' Her eyes journey over my features. 'I like yours too. You look fit with liner. You should wear it more.'

I blush. I'd completely forgotten about the eyeliner Caleb drew on me during pres and I wrestle the urge to rub it off. 'Eyeliner is kind of my brother's thing. He covers like half his face in the stuff.'

Joe's mouth curves into a grin I don't quite understand. Until: 'You talk about your brother a lot.'

Forget serial killer vibes, I'm all "boring single parent" vibes now.

'Yeah.' I drop my focus to my feet, nudging flattened fags into the gaps between the paving stones. 'Well they're important to me. I'm sorry. I know it's annoying.'

But Joe's face has none of the cruelty I expect. No irritation or boredom. Her gaze is gentle. 'No, I think it's sweet. You're lucky to be so close.'

Close. Right...

'I used to be really close with Jaz—that's my older sister, we're the middle kids. There are four of us in total. We shared a room when we were young and she'd always wear the dresses my mum kept buying me and I'd wear her boy clothes. Win-win.

'But then she moved to Hamburg to study and even after she moved back to London, it just wasn't the same. Which is a bit pathetic. We've not had a row or anything. But we used to be like... telepathic.'

Joe smiles at the memory, fond more than sad. Joe has long since accepted that they'll never have the relationships they had when they shared a room in their parents' house. Maybe it's inevitable: distance between siblings. Maybe there's summat nauseatingly father-like in my attempt to keep Cece close—not keep, pull.

It's laughable to describe Cece and I as "close". Though things are so much better between us now than two years ago, even a year ago—hell, a few months, I dunno if I'll ever get them to really trust me again. Not the way he used to.

When we lived with our parents, we shared a room too, though in a way it felt like a studio flat. The rest of the house belonged to someone else, Mamá and Papá odd neighbours you barely see in the corridor when you're throwing the rubbish. Even after we went into care and they split us up, I used to go visit him all the time. Shayna bought them a cell phone so I could call regularly without his foster parents complaining that they hog up the phone or drive the bills up too high.

But as time passed, my visits became less and less frequent. There were always summat more important at school. Though I found the time to go to parties and the club and date and fuck, fat load of good owt of that did.

Fun fact: Plants will compete with others of the same species but be accommodating to those grown out of seeds from the same parent. Family love is found everywhere. Even plants are better at it than me. I should've visited them more often. I would've known how bad it were.

I should've been there.

I shouldn't have had to see it for myself. How he tensed at any threat of physical contact. The three different locks he uses on his bedroom door. The way his stare always strays after whatever he's seeing. How he can look right at me with absolutely no recognition, with fear. The burns, the blood...

They told me recently that they started drinking at twelve, smoking soon after. Twelve. How the fuck did I not notice that? I should–

'Where've you gone?'

I blink. Joe is watching me, lips flattened. I try to hide somewhere but this street is empty and the only armour available for me to pull over myself is the pink neon light from the Shot Locker bar front. My emotions flare in my chest, tearing open the stitches I've tied into my ribs, and the ocean is exultant to rush out. My face is going to reveal all of it.

Joe don't care for my plan of ignoring her until I get it under control. She takes a tentative step closer to me. 'Can I hug you?'

The corners of my eyes burn. I nod, mostly so I'll get the chance to get rid of my tears before she sees them, but once her arms wrap around me, that plan is proven to be ridiculously dense. There's not even a chance that the tremors aren't reverberating right into her chest.

But Joe holds me tighter. She smells like shampoo and some well posh perfume I could never name.

'I'm sorry.' I swab my tears away with the base of my thumb. What a charmer I am crying inexplicably in front of someone after a month of knowing them. And I wonder why I can't find a partner. 'This is kinda pathetic.'

'You don't have to be sorry. I mean...' Anxiety thorns her confidence and Joe fidgets. 'We're friends... aren't we?' There's a pigment in her tone I don't have the tools to identify.

But I nod. 'Yeah, we're friends.'

'So your emotions aren't an inconvenience to me.'

Summat takes root in my chest when she says that. I think it shocks me out of my tears. The landslide stops devouring. I wipe my cheeks.

Joe is still close, too close. Her body heat melds into mine, the honeysuckle scent of her shampoo clouds around my head, and though I've not had a drop to drink, I'm light-headed.

We've only been working together on four shifts but it has been enough for us to learn our flirtatious choreography. I could perform it in my sleep. But there's summat different about it here, in the world beyond Spectrum, and as I look at Joe's lips, the voice reminding me how inappropriate it is at work is absent. And so I watch the well-moisturised skin, brown save for a hint of pink on the bottom lip.

When my eyes slide to hers, I find her staring at my mouth. Our breaths weave into a thread. It would be so easy to allow it to tug, to fall with her next inhale...

'We shouldn't.'

I step back, hands sliding into my pockets as I concentrate on the cigarette butts. My resolve crumbles almost instantly and my gaze finds hers again.

'Well I hope this don't prove me to be a delusional careculo but I'm pretty sure there's, you know, mutual attraction here. But we shouldn't.'

Joe retracts into herself like a touch-me-not. 'No. Cause we work together.'

'What? No. Who gives a fuck?' I grimace at the laugh that has strayed into my voice, almost brazen in its dismissal. I feather my voice to coax her focus from the graffiti beside us. 'But you're looking for meaningless sex and I don't do that anymore. So it's just not...' fuck, do it break me to say this, I hate thinking with my brain! '–compatible, us.'

For a split second, I think Joe will slap me, give me a zero-star review. Instead, she nods in a way that's disturbingly chipper. 'We'll be friends,' she states. 'And the attraction will fade soon enough, right?'

'Yep. By the end of the week, you'll probably think I'm ugly.' Why does that reality depress me so much? 'It'll definitely fade.'

Notes

Careculo: (lit.' assface') Spanish insult.

Touch me not: Mimosa pudica, also known as the shame plant. Its leaves fold into themselves and appear wilted when touched. They will reopen a few minutes later. This mechanism protects it from insects or animals that try to eat it.