Tea For Two

2

"Come in!" I call to her. She does.

I'm taking the bottom third of my mug in as large gulps as I can as she walks in, and she chokes me. I'm sure it wasn't on purpose, but she's wearing a skirt that hasn't seen a knee in its existence, and her hair is down, with a ribbon braided in to part of it.

"Damn," I say, wiping tea off of my chin. "You look nice."

"Thanks," she smiles. I'm pretty sure she could drive a nail into a wall just by smiling at it.

"But you know that you can't wear something that short at our school," I say, motioning to her skirt and finishing my tea.

"Oh, I know," she says offhandedly. "But no one knows that I know."

"Ah. I see what you did there." I reach out my fist so she can pound it.

She obliges, and gets distracted by my tea collection.

"Holy shit, August," she says as she paws through the large shoebox. "How much tea does one person need?"

"Twenty three different flavors.Ten have fruit inspired flavors, eight are just tea leaves. Five have caffiene, three are specifically meant to be cold. One induces sleep, and one clears sinuses."

"Damn. Do you share with your parents?"

"I rarely share with anyone. This is all I really spend my personal money on."

"Why?"

"Better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one," I say simply as I shrug and put the lid back on my collection and slide it back into its cupboard.

"Who said that?"

"It's a Chinese proverb," I beckon her toward the door, grabbing my school stuff in the process.

As we walk past the shops on Main street- which is on my route to school- we catch our reflections in their big picture windows. Next to my knee-length shorts and Vans, Emily's outfit looks just a little- well- attention-seeking.

She whistles, long and low.

"Well," I say, trying to put a positive light on this mistake she knowingly made. "At least you'll know why everyone is staring at you."

"Yeah," she says, smiling slightly and looking sideways at me. "Usually it's the hair."

I'm just going to pretend that I don't think she's catching onto my thing for redheads.

"Besides," she continues as I lead her down the road toward the school, "I'm going to request to try out for the baseball team today, and I thought I may as well give them a bit of a show."

I laugh, hitching my backpack up higher on my shoulder.

"What?" she asks, laughing as well.

"You're a sick woman, but I like your style."

~~~

I'm only a little sorry that she and I don't have any classes together- with how straightforward she was with me about her sexuality, the last thing I need is to be the girl that's showing the new lesbian to all of her classes.

So I get the entire day to think on her. To worry about her. To worry about us.

When the final bell rings, I go to the flagpole and lean up against it, waiting for her. I promised that I would take her to the baseball diamond as soon as practice started so that she could ask to try out, and this is where we agreed to meet. As my classmates all file out of the door, some wave to me, but most don't bother. It's a small enough school that we all know each other, but I don't really have a niche here. I hold my own, and that's fine by me.