The Lesbian Gene (Lesbian, Gay, GirlxGirl)

Chapter 9: Unknown

Audra tilted her head to the bathroom. "Come on, Pax."

Okay, so how do we do this? I thought, as we had finally entered the cubicle— Audra was facing the door. There was barely any space to maneuver with her in here, much less push my butt higher and pull my jeans low. But I managed to do nevertheless without tumbling down on the bowl.

I squeaked when she shifted her head to me. "I'm not looking," she assured. "It's just. . ."

"Just what?"

Audra suddenly twisted and clapped a hand over my mouth before I could scream. Something— something big crawled onto my arm just now!

"Cockroach," she whispered, eyes steadily fixed on mine. "I was about to say there was a cockroach."

I gave her a fast nod and was wishing that she wouldn't look down when she turned around again.

"Sorry," she added quickly. "I didn't see anything. For the most part."

The most part?!

I wanted to die on the spot. She most definitely had seen something. Why else would she say that? This was not what I had in mind when I hoped that we would be close or something. Not like this.

But after a while, she placed each of her hand on each of her ear. "See?" she whispered. "I'm not listening for the enemies anymore. Go do your business. Pretend I'm not here."

Right. I took a fast breath. I was sweating more than usual. Who would have thought that peeing could be so complicated like this?

After all was said and done, though, and I had flushed most of what I'd been straining to keep inside all day, what with knowing it might end up like this, Audra was allowed to turn around again. Her eyes lowering down to me.

"Thanks," I wanted to say. Thanks for noticing about the smallest things I was going through. Thanks for always rescuing me. For saving me. But then again, the words were stuck in my mouth, refusing in all ways to come out, just like that time after the school stage incident.

"You good?" she said, probably to have some kind of sound in the small, dingy bathroom.

"Yes."

My eyebrows cocked up when she suddenly went on her knee, hand resting on my leg because there was barely any room to place it. "This will just take a second," she said— I didn't know whether about the hand placing, or our conversation— maybe both. "But I wanted to talk to you about something, Pax. About your parents."

"My parents?"

She gave me a nod. "About going home. You wanted to go home, right? You deserve to go home. Your parents deserve to have you by their side. We can't just take you off somewhere. No matter how safe we think it is."

"So what? We just tell Neil that?"

"No," she said. "Neil is way past any talks at this point. Once he's had his mind set, he can be very unforgiving, even to me."

Yet you're still by his side, I wanted to say. He's an asshole and you're not. And how come he's saying that you're going to end up in prison one day? That didn't make any sense to me.

Audra gave me a shake of her head, as if she knew what I was thinking, and didn't want to answer me anyhow. "I will take you home, Pax," she promised. "That's all that matters for now."

"Why?" I couldn't stop myself from asking. Why would she do that? Why risk getting Neil mad at her when it was so easy doing what he'd wanted?

"Because. . ." She shrugged. "Because I think that's the right course of action."