Radclyffe - Love On Call

Glenn glanced over and instantly her whole demeanor changed, so subtly Mari might not have noticed if she hadn’t been watching her for the last half hour. Glenn’s expression blanked into remote, tight lines. Her eyes narrowed and scanned the entire room before settling on the teens in front of the counter, her shoulders coiled with tension. Mari followed her gaze, trying to see what had caught her focus so intensely, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. A couple of kids jostled a couple of the other ones, comments flew back and forth too quickly to sort out, but Glenn must’ve heard something Mari didn’t. Suddenly Glenn pushed her paper plate away and slid her chair back several inches. Her body flexed as if she was about to launch from the chair.

“What is it?” Mari asked.

“Probably nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Glenn said, her flat tone clearly at odds with her words.

When a dark-haired boy and a pretty girl with long, gold-streaked curls edged away from the crowd and claimed a suddenly vacant table, Glenn walked over, leaned down, and murmured something to them Mari couldn’t hear. The kids were a cute couple, fresh-faced and wholesome, terms Mari didn’t usually think about when looking at teenagers. The girl wore no makeup and had the slightly gangly, long-limbed build that heralded an elegant beauty in a few years. She was dressed simply in a red tank top and skinny jeans. The boy’s refined good looks could have put him in contention for a modeling job in a fashion magazine, but he seemed unaware of his appeal in his loose T-shirt, baggy shorts, and typical slumped, teenage-boy posture she’d seen on her brothers.

The boy shook his head. The girl just shrugged and gave Glenn a wry smile.

Whatever they’d said didn’t seem to defuse Glenn’s hypervigilant mood. When she turned and took a step toward the group at the counter, the blonde grasped Glenn’s wrist and tugged her back with a head shake. After a second, Glenn nodded curtly and returned to their table.

“Is everything all right?” Mari could tell from Glenn’s brusque movements she still was unhappy about something, and Mari’s instinct was to soothe her.

“More or less,” Glenn said.

“Who are the kids?”

“Blake Remy, Abby’s son, and Margie Rivers, Flann’s sister.”

“Wow, are they dating?”

“I don’t know,” Glenn said. “They’re tight friends, though.”

“They’re cute.”

“Uh-huh,” Glenn said, still looking as if she was ready to go into battle.

That was it. Glenn’s entire attitude emanated an air of readiness, not exactly aggressive, but prepared. Glenn’s gaze suddenly shifted to Mari, and she shivered. She wasn’t afraid, didn’t feel in danger, but ice swept down her spine. “What?”

“What’s a mean girl?”

Mari stared, then laughed softly. “You don’t know?”

Frowning, Glenn shook her head. “I guess I missed that in high school.”

“Who told you, then?”

Glenn tilted her head. “Margie. She said not to worry about the mean girls. But somebody’s hassling them, and I want to know why.”

“Oh, wow, okay. In a nutshell,” Mari said, “means girls are all about being the popular ones, and anyone who isn’t one of them is fair game for taunting and teasing.”

“Bullying, you mean?” Glenn got that look again—a spring coiling. Mari’s karate instructor when she’d been a preteen had called it a state of readiness. Watchful waiting.

“Not necessarily anything that extreme, but I suppose it depends on the person at the receiving end and how badly they want to fit in.”

“Why? What’s the goal?” Glenn asked, still looking flummoxed.

“Usually it’s about boys. The popular girls are most attractive to boys, especially older boys.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Glenn muttered.

“Don’t you remember high school? Everything’s about status, and who you date is a big part of that.”

“I wasn’t part of any of that.”

“Loner?” Mari guessed.

“I just kept my head down and put in my time.”

The statement was cryptic, but Mari sensed the memory was a hard one. “So the girls are giving Margie trouble?”

“Something like that, I think. Of course, neither of them would tell me.”

“It’s probably better they sort it out themselves. It’s a teenager thing.”

“Yeah, probably, but this is a little different.”

“Why is that?”

Glenn seemed to be giving her answer some thought until she finally said, “It’s not a secret, so I don’t think he’d mind me saying. Blake is trans, and he’s already drawn some unwanted attention from an older bunch of ass—morons.”

“He’s out to everyone?” Mari asked. “And Dr. Remy is supportive, I imagine?”

“Sure,” Glenn said, as if there couldn’t be any other answer.

Mari sagged back in her chair, so many emotions charging through her at once she had trouble sorting them out. “I think I’m jealous.”

“Of what?”

“Of Blake.”

“Are you saying you’re…?”

“Me? No,” Mari said, enjoying the look of worry that flashed across Glenn’s face. “No, I am firmly a women-only lesbian, but I didn’t really get that about myself until just recently. Makes me feel a little silly when I see someone like Blake.”

“Some don’t make all the connections right away. No harm, no foul.”

“I bet you did,” Mari said.

“What makes you think so?”

“Because you seem so certain, so sure of everything. Who you are and what you’re about.”

“Maybe that’s just a front.”

“I don’t think so,” Mari said softly.

“You still didn’t tell me why you’re jealous of Blake,” Glenn said, once again neatly deflecting the topic from herself.

Mari regretted her impulsive statement. She wasn’t ready to expose her private hurts, especially not so soon. “It’s a familiar story, I guess. It’s not important.”

“If it’s your story, it’s not familiar, and it’s not unimportant.” Glenn held her gaze, steady and strong. “But it’s yours to tell.”

Mine to tell. Maybe Glenn was practically a stranger, but somehow, she didn’t feel that way. Glenn was so intensely present, so focused on her, Mari trusted her in a way she hadn’t trusted anyone in forever.

“It is, isn’t it. My story.” Mari took a breath. Maybe telling it would take away some of the pain.

Chapter Seven

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Blake said quietly.

Margie swallowed her bite of pizza. “Who? Queen bitch?”

Blake cut a sidelong glance at the group of girls clustered around the counter, laughing with bright eyes that took in everyone in the room and quickly dismissed them, as if no one else mattered enough to be noticed. Usually Blake preferred to go unnoticed—but in a way, being erased with the flick of an eyelash was worse. Funny, he could barely remember when he wanted to be part of a group like that, though he never was. Too shy, too weird, too wrong. “Which one is the QB? Madison or Kaylee?”

“You can’t tell?”

“I don’t know, I don’t pay all that much attention to them.”

“That’s probably part of the problem.” Margie snorted. “Kaylee, of course. The one everyone follows around like a bunch of baby ducks.”

“Hey,” Blake protested, “I like ducks.”

“Yeah, me too, usually.” Margie leaned back and sipped her Coke, pretending not to notice when Kaylee, who she secretly envied for her straight blond hair that probably never got frizzy every time it even threatened to rain, looked in her direction. Margie practiced what Harper called a thousand-yard stare, looking somewhere over Kaylee’s left shoulder and imagining herself standing in the middle of a huge cornfield with nothing around her but miles and miles of rows of green. She’d drown herself in the horse trough before she let Kaylee know that a single snarky comment even registered in her hearing, let alone made her mad.