Who's That Girl? | Girls Chase Girls #1.5 [COMPLETE]

Part III

LUCIA

When Tremaine loped out of the stadium into the attached parking lot, Lucia was waiting on the hood of her violet Dodge Challenger. She was flipping through The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. She was really feeling Sapphic fiction lately. It made her want to be brave. That and her mum told her to quit pining and kiss the girl. Lucia always did what she was told.

"You kill it?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

Tré climbed onto the hood next to her, her model legs dangling almost to the ground  "You know I killed it." Tré was the best libero Webber had seen since it had a team. It wasn't about height, though the girl had legs enough for three different women; it was about reflex and speed. Tré thought fast and moved faster. She was a dream. Lucia's dream, if she were honest. In all the years she'd known her, Lucia had never met anybody better. It was only recently she realized it wasn't because Tré was one of her best friends—Lucia had plenty of best friends—but because Tré was the best person she knew. The funniest, the toughest. Sometimes the softest. Tré was meant to be her girl.

"So, the band's playing," Tré offered with uncommon awkwardness.

The league organizers did all they could to raise attendance to the girls' volleyball games, up to and including hiring food trucks and local bands to make them a family event. That was the only reason Lucia had fallen in with this bunch, besides the Webber legacy connection. She'd come and seen them play and when her mother had seen the names she'd made the connection. The Webber Wild Girls were trouble, on and off the court, but they protected their own. Dropped into a country she'd never visited without a friend in the world, Lucia had needed that. Now she loved it. The Wild Girls were home. Tré, more than anyone except Hunter, made her feel like she belonged. Lucia had finally figured out why.

"I don't know who's playing." Nobody ever knew; they were chosen at random and the band promotion was left to the bands themselves. Nobody had complained loudly enough to make a change in four years of doing it like this. It wasn't like Lucia listened anyway. Spoken word was more her thing.

Tré bit her bottom lip. Her grey eyes bounced around the parking lot, alighting on her teammates and the other Wild Girls as they adjourned to their cars to stow their gym bags. They were back to jeans and leather jackets. Sleek bouffants and hoop earrings. Piercings and tattoos back on display. Soon the lot was filled with the song of rumbling engines, backed by a discordant guitar in the distance acommpanied by the bandoneon and saxophone. Tré grinned like she never does, pale lips a half moon on her face. Lucia's heart did something strange. Her stomach dropped. Her fingers twitched between the pages of her abandoned book. All her favorite novels called it foreshadowing; to her, it was simply dread.

"You know them?"

Tré tried to keep a straight face. Tremaine never had to try. Disaffected was her thing. Cool was her default. Not soft like this (unless she's looking me, Lucia thought, and tried not to think again). Tré stroked her fingers through her surfer-girl beach waves hair, and that's when Lucia knew: Tré wanted her to approve. That's why she was telling her first. Because that's what friends did and Tremaine Kilallen was such a good friend.

"Can I tell you something? About someone? I haven't told anybody else."

Lucia swallowed her heart lodged firmly in her throat. Hunter had told her once that nobody would ever look at her like Tré looked at her. Lucia hadn't believed her. Lucia would believe her for the rest of her life if Tré ever looked at her that way again.

Lucia bumped her tense shoulder against Tré's as gently as she could. She put a smile on her face. "You can tell me whatever, love. You know that.

Lucia could be a good friend too. Such a good friend.

Tré took a deep breath. "That band that's playing, it's this Samba jazz band called Brown Sugar, and the drummer and lead singer is my new girlfriend. Her name's Zima."

"Zima?" The name rung a vague sort of bell. Maybe from Youtube or Soundcloud? Lucia wasn't much into music; she listened to what her parents listened to when she was with them, what her friends listened to when they cruised in her car. She preferred silence. She missed silence right now.

"Zima Pereira. She's going to the community college in town." Tré slung her hands together between her knees to hide how they twisted together. This was when Lucia was meant to do the friend thing, so she did.

"Oh, that's fantastic." It was the last thing Lucia wanted to hear; that didn't make it bad, just poorly-timed. Lucia had waited too long, that was all. Maybe in another universe, it could have been her..."I can't wait to meet her."

"You for real? You don't think it's weird?"

"No weirder than Phae going gaga for Baby face." They all thought of Xia as baby-faced despite her being only a year and some change younger than the oldest of them. She took it in stride. In just a few months, she had become the little sister most of them never had, slightly irritating save for the baked goods and party planning, worth smacking racists for. She was good and good for Phaedra; that was all she needed to be.

"Okay, good. I want everyone to meet her, so that's good. It's great." She smiled big and wide, all teeth. Tré was never all teeth. Lucia looked down at her book to find she'd wrinkled the previously pristine pages of The Paying Guests. She snapped it shut lest Tré should notice. No sense in making things awkward. If Tré had been into her once, as Hunter swore up and down she was, she wasn't anymore. Lucia would get over it. Eventually.

"It's perfect. But Phae's gonna get mad you stole her new girl shine."

Tré chuckled and hopped down from the hood of Lucia's car, pausing from habit to rub her ass print off the paint job with her leather sleeve. They loved their cars, their lot, but they respected each other's. Lucia mimicked her, only deviating to toss her book in the passenger seat through the open window. She hadn't watched the game, she really wasn't a sports person, but she was more than happy to join the festivities.

"Come on, time for you to introduce me to the new girl."

Tré slung an arm over Lucia's shoulder. They were as tall as each other and opposites in every other way. Opposites who used to attract. Maybe always would.

"Okay, but we have to get snacks first, I'm starving after that game. That game! You should have seen it, Luce. It was amazing."

While Tré babbled about her perfect game and hurried toward her new, perfect girlfriend, Lucia smiled at all the right moments and nursed her new bruised her heart. Her fault, she guessed. Nobody waited forever.