“I got a ride.”
“You got a ride at one in the morning?”
“It was the best time I could get here.”
Josie undid the deadbolt, and the regular lock, and the chain lock, and let her in. “Jesus Christ, Darla, you scared the shit out of me.”
“Apparently I scared the clothes off of you, too. Josie, what are you doing? Isn’t this some sort of entryway where other people could see you?”
“Yeah, well, no one’s looking at 1 a.m.” She tiptoed back to her door, shivering. It may have been warm when she went to bed, but now it was cold. She welcomed Darla into her apartment, and then her little cousin gave her a giant hug. It was almost enough to warm her up. Where Josie was a stick, Darla was all curves and lushness. You would never guess that the two came from sisters. Marlene had been the skinny one, and Cathy had been the pinup girl—at least, that was what their moms always said. Although “pinup girl” wasn’t quite right; she thought that came from her grandma. Darla wore a baby blue v-neck t-shirt, old jeans, and flip-flops, and carried just two suitcases.
Josie looked back. “That’s it, that’s all you brought?”
Darla shrugged. “That’s all I need. Where’s my room?”
“Come here. I don’t even have a bed for you, so you’re gonna have to crash on the couch.”
“That’s okay, I’ve slept on worse.”
“Of course you have.”
“Hey,” Darla said indignantly.
Josie stared her down. “Is what I just said untrue?”
“No.”
“Come here.” Josie went in for a second hug, really giving her the time and the embrace that she needed. Darla was shivering just a bit, and Josie held on until both of them had stopped shaking. When she pulled back, Darla was noticeably more relaxed.
“This is a big city,” she said. “Nothing like Cleveland or Pittsburgh.”
“No, it’s actually pretty small.”
“Then it seems bigger,” Darla added.
“That’s what she said,” Josie joked. The groan that came out of Darla made Josie realize that there was no hope that she was going back to bed. It was time to make some tea, sit down, and chat like sisters.
“Let’s go have some tea and talk.” Josie showed her into the kitchen. It seemed completely surreal to have Darla here, in her escapee life. When she went back to Ohio, it bothered her how easily she fell back into speech patterns and habits of thought that were more from her childhood. Including little things, like craving a cigarette whenever they went to Jerry’s. She’d always had a cigarette with her beer until she moved to Boston, and decided that it wasn’t worth the fight to try to find a bar that let you smoke. And it also was unsophisticated, if not a bit trashy, at least in Boston, to be a smoker. Everyone where she came from smoked—though Darla, she’d noticed, had never picked up the habit.
As she set the electric kettle going and pulled out about twenty boxes of teas, she heard Darla wandering through the rooms, and then…
“Oh my god!”
“What?” Josie said, trying not to shout and wake up the folks who lived above her.
“This is my room?”
“Yeah,” Josie winced, “it’s a bit small.”
“It’s huge!” Darla came tearing back into the room, her flip-flops making a smacking noise that Josie knew was going to bug her after two days of listening to that.
“It’s bigger than my shed.”
“Barely.” Josie gestured to the boxes of tea and said, “Pick your poison.” Josie had known Darla would go straight for the lemon, and she did. “Your shed?”
“I took that old shed out next to the trailer and turned it into my little place.”
“You did?” Josie was intrigued. That thing had been there since they were kids, and was probably home to more muskrats and raccoons than anything else.
“I cleaned it up real nice,” Darla said, looking up at the tall ceilings. “Man, it’s like something out of a movie in here.”
Josie looked up. They were nine-foot ceilings with crown molding around the edges and large cracks through the plaster. It was an older building and she’d loved the charm, how it had been so different from anything she had grown up with in Ohio, and certainly a million miles away from her own home.
“This looks like something out of one of those old-fashioned ice cream shops you see on TV—like in a movie from the 1920s.” Darla smiled, her eyes wild and her cheeks quite pink.
How she could be this alert at one in the morning blew Josie away. The kettle whistled, and Josie poured the cups of tea, joining Darla in her Lemon Enjoyment. As they sat at the table, Darla craned her neck around the corner of a wall and looked in the living room again.
“Cool. It looks like something you’d find at an apartment at Kent State.”
“It’s just thrift-shop finds. You know how well we have that drilled into us.” The two shared a look that Josie could not exchange with any other human being on the planet.
Darla nodded and took a sip. “That’s what my shed’s all about.”
“So, tell me about your guys.”
“My guys.” Peals of laughter poured out of Darla, and her chest shook as she giggled. “My guys. Yeah, I guess I have to think of them as my guys.”
“My friend Laura thinks of hers as her guys.”
Darla stopped cold, half dropping her mug of tea onto the table. “You know someone else who has guys?”
“I know someone else who has guys.”
“Holy shit!” Darla’s eyes widened, and she looked like she was about to choke on something. “So, I’m not the only one?”
“You didn’t invent threesomes, Darla.”
“It sure as hell feels like we did, me and Joe and Trevor. I haven’t said that aloud to anyone, Josie.”
She could see the tension in Darla’s chest relax, her body going from that excited, wired sense that you get when you travel long distances by car to a relaxed, easygoing countenance. “You can talk about it here,” Josie said. “In fact, you’d better get pretty damn comfortable with it.”
“With what?”
“With talking about threesomes.”
Darla’s face froze, brow furrowed in an expression of incredulity. The tip of her nose was pink and her ears turned red, as a flush crept up her neck and into her jaw. “Why?”