SHORTS (gxg): Sapphic Short Stories

Pull Over

Chelsea Healey was quiet. Academic. Easily amused. How could Kai resist?

"Thank you, Kai," Chelsea said breathlessly between her laughs. "This is the first time I've laughed this much in months."

"Eyes on the road, Chels," Kai replied, a satisfied grin on her face.

Kai loved riding shotgun when Chelsea drove. Chelsea always had this really intense focus when she did anything, so she would never notice anything else—especially not Kai's frequent glances.

On the other hand, Kai noticed everything: Chelsea's poorly repressed eye-rolling when stoplights turn red, her jaw-clenching when she takes left turns, and her eye-squinting when she parallel parks. Her subtle, mundane habits were endearing. And she drove with two hands on the steering wheel, which was just so... Chelsea.

The road ahead seemed endless, but that was fine. Idle time was, during these moments, desired. They were still a long, long way from their hotel.

"You laugh at literally everything," Kai said. "Sometimes I don't know if I'm actually funny to normal people."

"Hey, I'm normal!"

"You listen to country music."

Chelsea tucked a loose strand of her own blonde hair behind her ear, rendering Kai's brain useless. "Kai, your music taste is just Disney soundtracks on loop. I don't even know how people find you intimidating," Chelsea said.

"I'm very pretty. That's why," Kai replied with a childish grin.

"No argument there," Chelsea conceded, stealing a glance that briefly stole all the air in Kai's lungs. Chelsea, her eyes on the road, reached for the radio and turned the volume up to blast her dreadful taste in music.

Chelsea, with her confidence and, well, just confidence (talent was a different story), sang along to the incomprehensible song, and suddenly it didn't sound so terrible anymore. Eventually, the car smoothly slowed down at a stoplight. It made Chelsea's face glow a bright red, which balanced gorgeously with the orange of the impending sunset. She looked like she just walked out of an indie music video about a cheerleader-esque girl way out of the singer's league.

As expected, Chelsea rolled her eyes upon stopping. For someone who had the kindest brown eyes in the universe, she carried all the impatience in the world against stoplights, but that seemed to be her only flaw apart from her questionable singing prowess.

Chelsea sighed and slumped on her seat, her thick, grey university hoodie swallowing her small frame. "I hate stoplights. Why can't they just turn red after I'm through?"

Kai reached out a hand to massage Chelsea's shoulder. "Relax. Just a few seconds."

Chelsea turned her head and kissed the back of Kai's palm. It sent a strong, warm buzzing shock throughout Kai's body. Kai pulled her nervous hand away, under the guise of adjusting her collar.

"I would be in jail without you," Chelsea said, her kind eyes still on Kai's before she resumed staring offensively at the inanimate stoplight. "Probably for a hundred thousand traffic violations."

"What would you do without me?"

"I'd probably have a lonely, routine life. Maybe married to a misogynistic professor with a nice beard," Chelsea said, absolutely clueless. "Probably pregnant."

"Now you're single and stuck with me. You're welcome," Kai replied.

"Way better. I don't think I'd look good pregnant anyway."

"You would," Kai said. "You'd probably be one of those weird, supernatural pregnant women who'd still be super fit and just have a huge belly bump."

"Supernatural?" Chelsea asked, laughing.