Chapter Text
The funny part is, her and Joe are doing better than ever. It’s not funny in a ‘piss yourself laughing’ kinda way. But funny in the way that, as 31 looms, she starts to get a taste for sickly sweet sugar coating her teeth with every bite of chocolate, and every time he comes home as floral as ever, it’s that comforting kind of smell she can close her eyes and cum to.
It’s with her outside their house now too, that smell. In the staffroom at lunch, floating on the breeze in the school pick up line. Strongest when she gives in to Gerald’s requests that she please bring them another of her ‘world-changing’ lasagnas. There, at the Howard dinner table, it’s overpowering enough that she dare not close her eyes for fear of a practically Pavlovian response.
On more than one occasion now, when Kristen Marie has dragged her from department store to department store, luxuriating in their free AC, Melissa’s found herself alone in the fragrance section. Toying with delicate glass bottles she knows she shouldn’t want. Tucked loose hair behind her ear when the assistant asks what she’s looking for.
A gift, for me, from my husband. Gives the faintest, demure smile. He likes florals.
She closes her eyes when they mist a hardly there gossamer of roses into the air. Revels in the intimacy of a firm grip on her wrist as they wait for droplets to dry against her pulse point. Just once, she’s offered a spray against her neck, where she has to lift curls to give access and tilt her chin off to the side just so. Where cool knuckles have to brush against her overheated skin if they’ll have any chance of the fragrance hitting the right spot. The scent gains richness as it dries.
It’s not quite the same as when it clings to Joe; something in her own scent mixing with it to create her own intoxicating version. Maybe Barbara’s floral is just a variation of the same bottle too. Her whole life led by notes of rose and vanilla and sandalwood, just differently seasoned.
The first time Melissa comes home smelling like Joe’s evenings, she wonders if he’ll notice. If he’ll know that she knows exactly what he does when he picks up ‘extra shifts’. That night, when every shift of her hair has the air flooded with the smell of I know, and Joe has his nose pressed so hard into her nape that she has to grip into his hair to steady herself, and the pot on the stove threatens to boil over but she doesn’t remember what’s in it anyway, it doesn’t matter. He can close his eyes and be pressing anyone against the counter with fervor enough to bruise. And when she closes her eyes, on the precipice of her own ruin, rose can make him anyone she wants.
–
It's a rare night that both Barbara and Gerald are free without a toddler in tow. Rarer still that they plan to meet at Melissa's rather than theirs, but her house is so much closer to the stadium that it really does make more sense. For once, the thought of Joe distracted with a call that'd see him leave for the rest of the night is a welcome one. He can do whatever he wants with his rose girl so she can spend some time with hers. And her husband.
Instead, Joe crowds her senses, sat on the bed's edge as she searches out the jersey she knows is in her closet somewhere. She doesn't need to see him to know how his eyes track her every move. She's experienced it enough times before to know exactly where his focus is - the dimples either side of her spine, her ass when she gives in and checks the haphazard pile on the closet floor. Give it another two minutes and he’ll be up behind her just to get a bird’s-eye view of her tits.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” She huffs, as though on any other evening she wouldn’t crave that appreciative gaze on her.
“That depends.” His voice has the lust-filled gristle it gets when he thinks he’s getting lucky. She hears it more often these days; they’re good. Better than ever.
“On?”
Two minutes had been an overestimation of his self-restraint - the one-two of his steps across the plush faux fur rug her only warning before his arm’s lacing around her waist, pulling her back flush against his chest. It’s familiar in the way that a decade of the same touch will always be - comforting for its expectation, its regularity.
“On where my girl wants me.” His breath is hot in her ear, stooped as he is to press wet kisses to her neck. Fridays would normally be her department store days - the draw of her neck is all but ingrained in him at this point - not today.
When, like now, she smells only of hairspray and he smells like cheap cologne, she has an easier time fighting off desire before it can start. When the unspoken presence of a third is far from either mind, it’s hardly a fight at all.
“Your woman wants you anywhere but here.” Melissa turns in Joe’s arms, palm solid against his chest as she shoves him back; gives herself breathing room, “Barb’s thirty minutes early to everything.”
“So we got time.”
“Time for you to get all sweaty and leave me disappointed? Yeah.” His expression sours and she presses up on tiptoes, lets her lips linger on his for just long enough to mitigate a full on blow out, “This is important to me, Joe. Best behaviour, promise me.”
Joe’s up in arms, regardless, the South Philly coming out all the stronger in his voice for it. “I ain’t good enough for her?”
For Barbara? Never.
For Melissa?
“Best behaviour. Please.”
Not to say that Melissa is not the same person at home as she is in Barbara’s presence, but something about Joe on anything but best behaviour, about how that reflects on her, about what Barbara might intuit, is too much to bear. She’s seen the looks her sisters give, knows exactly what Kristin Marie thinks, but she’s been drowning out their judgement since long before Joe. Whatever Barbara thinks or doesn’t think, she doesn’t want that clouded by careless crass remarks and hands claiming some kind of ownership over her. She doesn’t need Barbara to misinterpret what this is. Melissa could do better. She could. And she knows. Joe is the only one in need of reminding.
When Joe’s eyebrow steeples like that it’s all she can do not to double down. Not to lose her shit and remind him of all she’s let slide. Because yeah, things are good, better than ever, but they’re full worlds away from being the Howards.
She digs down, fights every Schemmenti impulse, and pulls out the placating, engaged tone normally reserved for seven year olds in need of more attention than she has time for, “She’s a kindergarten teacher, she’s not used to men like you, is all.”
“What’s that supposed t’ mean?”
He’s maddingly bullish in ways she doesn’t deserve when she’s wearing next to nothing, all her best assets on show, and she’s using every damn de-escalation strategy she knows.
Her hands fly skyward. Over a decade down and he still doesn’t know when to drop it.
She has a headache coming on, dead centre, where her glasses should rest. “For the love o’ God, Joe. I'm not getting into it right now. Find my jersey, or go make yourself useful downstairs.” The words come out through gritted teeth but, frankly, the herculean effort she’s putting in not to give him a piece of her mind deserves an award.
Instead of acquiescing, instead of diffusing the situation with an apology or quietly slipping from the room, Joe parks his ass back on the bed as though he’d never moved in the first place.
He fills the room, fills the whole damn house, with how much she’s aware of his every move, every look. It bristles in a way it wouldn’t have to if she’d just stuck to department store Friday. If one, or both, had followed the unspoken routine and sweetened the air around them for the night. If Barbara hadn’t proposed a ‘fun’ double date.
Closet a bust and the countdown to the Howard’s arrival ever-counting down, Melissa stomps to the chair that serves as laundry hamper - riffles through the last week’s clothing.
“Toni has it.” Joe states, bluntly.
“What?”
“After last match - you lent it to Toni.”
Her head hangs back, frustration channeling into a groan. The fucker’s right. Mostly. ‘Lent’ is a generous way to put it. Launched at her head after the Bird’s third defeat in a row was more accurate.
“Then why you been letting me look all this time?”
Joe shrugs disarmingly, a boyish grin overtaking his features as he gestures over at her like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “I like the view.”
“I'm wearing yours.”
She finds it in an instant, taking pride of place at the front of his closet. It’s softer than hers and, when she slips it over her head, it still has that fresh cotton feel that hers lost so many washes ago. It smells like Joe, and only Joe. Comfortable. Has always been comfortable. Might always stay comfortable.
Her eyes meet his in the mirror for just a moment and it’s true, they are doing better. They really are.
“You out here wearing my jersey and I gotta be on best behaviour? I'm supposed to just not look at you all night, that it?” His brusqueness from earlier is gone, swapped for genuine appreciation that she’s his.
“Best behaviour,” Melissa demures softly, the urgency lessened now that she’s draped in the oversize shirt - her brain able to focus and offer up the one tactic that has reliably worked on Joe their entire marriage. She settles in his lap, hands resting against his quickening heartbeat, lips just shy of meeting his, “And you can decide if it stays on or off when we get home.”
Full of the promise of more later, her hips roll languidly against his.
The groan he lets out as his hands grip at her waist has her almost wishing it wasn’t just as effective an incentive for her as for him. Wishing she didn't know Barb and her infuriating ethos that ‘on time is late.’ But, first rule of marriage - remind him you're as good as he's gonna get. And fuck does Melissa love reminding him.
Right as expected, the doorbell rings and the way she smirks against Joe’s lips is sure to have her paying later. Good.
“See, no fun being disappointed.”
–
There’s something about games at the home stadium that speaks to Melissa’s inner being. Long ago memories that still sit front and centre in her mind of hot summer evenings, sat in the parking lot (because there was no way they were getting enough tickets for every Schemmenti), car radio blaring out live commentary, while every chant and cheer vibrated straight from the stadium to them. Without fail at least one of her siblings would leave with a black eye - normally whoever didn’t win the fight for the front seat. But the front seat had nothing on the sun-warmed car roof. Melissa was there, every game, like clockwork, eyes up at the sky, breathing in every second of it.
It’s a habit that’s hard to break all these years later. Joe still makes fun of her for it - for preferring seats up in the rafters where the tone of the crowd tells you more about the game than your own eyes do. In those edge of your seat, nail-biter moments, letting her eyes drift skyward - letting the 70,000 people around her pass the outcome to her rather than seeing it for herself. Letting the world feel it first.
She prays the same way too - when the very act of staring up and demanding of the heavens is the only option left to her. Only on her own. Only when she most shouldn’t. Eyes up, palms outstretched, hoping for a direct line with the Big Guy each time.
Maybe the two got mixed somewhere along the way - her pleas all the same when it came down to it. Let me feel it too.
A firm hand in hers pulls her back to the present, eyes losing focus on the stars to flutter closed as rose fills her senses. Before she can so much as breathe in deep, cheeks flushed, heart pounding, the reality of being sandwiched between Joe and Barbara slips in and her eyes are back open in a flash.
Barbara’s all but grimacing, as out of place as it’s possible for a person to look in an anonymous crowd of thousands. She’s poised, and ready to reprimand a sea of South Philly’s finest for their outlandish behaviour.
As grateful as Melissa is, there’s no logical reason for Barbara to be here, let alone to have extended her and Joe an invite.
“You good?” Despite leaning in close, Melissa practically has to yell to be heard and she absently runs her thumb across the back of Barbara’s hand in apology for the way she tenses up in response.
There’s a diplomatic response working itself out behind those eyes, she can practically see the cogs working in the furrow of Barb’s brow, the way her lips pout as though to keep the words in until they’re appropriately mild.
“Remember,” Melissa lowers her voice just a fraction, leaning in closer to compensate, “I’ll know if you’re lying, Howard. I always know.”
Barbara’s laugh is hypnotic. Maybe it’s the way it breaks her frown into something more carefree. Maybe it’s how it rumbles through Melissa, richer than the mass of sound around her. It’s at least partially the heady scent of Barbara’s perfume so close and mingled with all that it has come to mean.
“It’s louder than I remember games being in college.” Barbara admits, truly a master of skirting questions she doesn’t want to answer.
“Yeah,” Melissa laughs, “it’s been a while since most of us got a stern telling off for disrupting the peace. Doesn’t work on us anymore. Well,” she tilts her head around Barbara for just a second to where Gerald is just as enwrapped in the game as Melissa had been but quiet as anything, “except maybe Ger.”
“I think you’ll find it works on you just fine.”
“I-” All protest is lost when Barbara’s brow raises, practically daring her for an excuse to show just how much a good scolding has Melissa sitting up and listening. Self-preservation has Melissa knowing just how unwise that would be.
“You and Gerald are alike, you know.”
Self-preservation can only do so much and she itches to ask how; to know which qualities of hers Barbara loved enough to marry. But her face is already flush with heat and all it would take is one glance in her direction for Joe to know more than she wants him to.
So instead, she grumbles low in her throat, nudges her boot forward just a fraction until the toe taps Barbara’s, “It’s not my fault you’re good at it.”
“You’re just so receptive.”
With one phrase, Melissa’s entire world order is rewritten. She’s not at a football game with her best friend and their husbands. She’s not doing everything she can to tread the careful balance between two worlds. She’s not lifting her friend’s mood when she’s in need of distract. She’s being toyed with. Unabashedly flirted with in the presence of the two people who most shouldn’t witness this.
Until Barbara blinks and it’s like she’s resetting, pulling herself back to something respectably chaste, and altogether uncomfortable in her surroundings again.
So Melissa can’t be blamed for squeezing the hand that’s in hers. This is about making Barbara comfortable again. She can unpack whatever she thinks just happened later.
“You ever sit in your car with the music so loud your heart beats with it?” She tries, a touch too enthusiastically - overcompensating.
“I have a healthy respect for my hearing.” It comes out far too prim for their surroundings - shuttered off, as she was before.
A swell rolls through the crowd. Melissa’s not sure what she missed but whatever it is is positive - keeps Joe and Gerald distracted for a moment longer so she can keep this to just them.
“Imagine for me.” It’s a demand as much as it is pleading, and Barbara acquiesces keeping her eyes on Melissa’s, “Don’t try to take everything in. How’s the sound feel?”
“Loud.” Barbara huffs.
“How’s it feel? Here?” She pulls Barbara’s hand to her chest, knows she’ll be able to feel the rush of Melissa’s heartbeat but can’t bring herself to care, “Let them tell you if you’re happy, sad, mad as hell at Armstrong fumbling another pass. That’s you now. Got it?”
“Like choir.” Barbara affirms, a connection forming somewhere behind her eyes.
Melissa laughs, high pitched and girlish - the very notion of this being equated to church enough to startle it out of her.
Joe’s trademark grunt of displeasure sounds next to her and already best behaviour’s over. Already he’s turned and the very act of her paying anyone else the slightest bit of attention has him riled. Like she’s the one fucking other women rather than just laughing with one. She pauses her thinking, reassesses. Maybe she is fucking other women, but not as frequently. Not recently. Not this woman.
She reaches behind her, takes Joe’s hand with her free one, tries to communicate through it that she needs a minute. That he can have his damn attention once Barbara’s settled. He doesn’t get it, or he ignores her, or he just flat out doesn’t care. His arm loops around her waist, doing his best to pull her to him and claim his ownership. Stake his claim. Normally she’d let him - she’d slither in next to him, hand on his thigh, or his cheek, and luxuriate in the warmth of him against her as much as the thrum of the game. But right now there are soft brown eyes on her, flitting from Joe’s touch, to her face, becoming lost in the exuberance around them again, before trying their hardest to focus back on Melissa.
“You get mad at choir?” She tries leading Barbara back to that distraction. Begs humour me and forget my idiot husband and let me make this good for you.
Barbara’s eyes are on Joe’s hold on her again, uncertainty there. Forget my idiot husband. She lets go of Joe’s hand, reaches for Barbara’s chin for just long enough to tilt it up, back to her and the smile she shouldn’t be giving.
“How can you get mad in a house of God?” The crowd is cheering, and Joe’s grip is tightening, and everything vibrates through her with a force that’s only magnified by Barbara and roses and her eyes on her. Because of course Barbara gets mad. Melissa’s seen it enough times - when the administration wants to take yet another basic need out of the classrooms, wants the children to get by with less. She sees it now, in the judgement plainly steeled at Joe, the one she hoped beyond hope to avoid.
“I just go where the music takes me.” Barbara smirks, fire still in her eyes, and whether it’s for Barbara's benefit or her own, she doesn’t know. But she’s so, so, thankful that Barbara knows best behaviour better than her husband does.
“Barbara Howard.” The admonishment is all fake, but it sets Barbara chuckling anyway, both of them well and truly committed to the bit, “Make this choir then.”
Melissa stands abruptly, freeing herself from Joe’s grasp, not pausing for the question all over Barbara’s face. God gave her strong lungs for a reason and this was where she knew how best to use them, “Fly, Eagles, fly! On the road to victory!”
Knowing Joe’s a lost cause, she reaches over Barbara to Gerald - if the man owns a jersey, he knows the chant. Her head jerks over to Barbara as he turns, confused, and she longs for the skill in silent communication that he and Barbara share. Instead, she’s bandying him along, all but spelling out that she needs him to join in for Barbara’s sake. He understands towards the end of the second line, his baritone boosting the volume more than she thought possible from someone so mild mannered.
A group picks it up a few rows away, spreading it out across the stadium and Melissa’s laughing her way through - Barbara’s bemusement making her grin all the wider. Gerald’s coaching Barbara through the words, swaying her as she swats at him. A mirror image of her and Joe, filled with contentment.
Melissa’s eyes beg to fly skyward again, to get lost in the feeling - the joy. But, as strong as she is, she doesn’t think anything could have strength enough to tear her gaze from Barbara’s befuddled smile.
All hints of the grimace from earlier are lost for just a moment, just long enough that Melissa can bask in the glow of Barbara's laughter. Barbara's head shake of endearment. Barbara's hand still clutched tight in hers.
“Melissa Bianchi, you are something.” It’s filled with laughter and, maybe, if she squints, something else. Something that has Melissa’s heart all aflutter at thought.
“In’t she just?” Joe shoulder’s his way out of the stalls, best behaviour be damned.
–
It’s not very Barbara Howard to chit chat while she’s pissing, but three quarters in, and the feel of Joe still tight around her waist, Melissa doesn’t give a shit. She leans against the stall door, ankles crossed over one another as she waits.
“So,” Her reflection in the mirror opposite practically mocks her for trailing Barb in here like a lost puppy. She pulls a face at it before glancing downward, “Better or worse than college football?”
There’s a rustling of fabric from the other side of the door and, for a second, Melissa thinks she’ll be left without an answer. Until, that is, a defeated, “Louder.”
Laughs, “You’re really stuck on that, huh?”
“It’s an affront to the senses.”
“Don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel.”
The thin layer of plywood between them does little to mask Barbara’s indignant huff. It’s the kind Melissa knows she pairs with pursed lips and a tongue across her teeth as she searches for her next words. Searches for the nuance beneath a knee-jerk reaction. Quietly, it’s a trait Melissa’s attempted to adopt herself over the last 18 months. No one does it quite like Barb though.
“I see why you enjoy it so much. I can see the energy wash over you. You don’t like being contained.” It’s considered. Knowing. All together too much to unpack in a dirty stadium bathroom.
Instead, Melissa opts for a safer, teasing, “So you hate it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
The toilet flushes and, though she should have expected it, the door swinging open sets Melissa stumbling back. Her cheeks heat in response and, if it weren’t for Barb’s eyes on her, she’d be flipping off her own reflection for its fresh round of judgement.
“If one more unexcused belch is directed my way though-”
Their eyes meet in the mirror as Barbara soaps her hands and mirth rings out between them.
“They belch on you, I’ll hit ‘em. Scout’s honour.” She raises a fist in readiness, a smirk pulling at her lips.
Whatever residual tension Barbara had been holding onto dissipates at that, expunged by a shoulder-shaking chuckle. Pride washes over Melissa. Barbara’s not a tough woman to amuse, but she is discerning to a fault. Somehow, it means more than a thousand laughs from anybody else.
A dusky atomiser bottle is pulled from Barbara’s bag - delicate and refined, and however lost in Barbara’s laugh Melissa had been, it pales in comparison to the laser focus she has on that bottle. When Barbara spritzes, the acrid bathroom scent is gone. Everything is roses and the shiver down Melissa’s spine is, frankly, ungodly.
It’s not the same bottle she sees every department store trip. If she’s sure of anything, it’s that. This is Barb and Barb alone. And, by extension, hers.
“Here.” Barbara’s hand is cold against her wrist as she mists the fragrance against Melissa’s skin.
However illicit the act of coming home smelling like Joe’s lover had been, it was nothing to this. To standing in a home team bathroom, wrapped in the familiar comfort of Joe’s too big jersey, as Barbara’s scent claims her where his hands couldn’t. She daren’t even blink. Daren’t close her eyes for fear that only the sight of damp paper towels and a dripping faucet will keep the wimper from her lips.
“Surround me with something other than the stench of hotdogs and unwashed men and we’ll see how I feel about the game then.” Barbara asserts, a twinkle in her eye.
And then she’s brushing sweat-damp hair from Melissa’s neck, and the world is ending and there isn’t a single thought in Melissa’s head other than Barbara. Cold touch at her nape. Barbara. Fingers woven in her hair. Barbara. The way her lips part in concentration as a fresh cloud of fragrance freckles Melissa’s neck.
Just as quickly as it had happened, the contact is lost and her bare-knuckle grip on the counter is barely enough to keep Melissa upright. She breathes shallow - every inhale enough to have her lost all over again.
“You know,” Barbara’s voice is low, soft enough that it practically has Melissa melting into her catch every detail over the stadium’s ambient hum, “You might make a convert of me yet.”
–
When they make it back to their seats, Melissa on legs so shaky it’s a wonder she doesn’t topple headfirst to the pitch, Gerald sits alone aside three empty seats. She follows Barbara’s lead, lowering into her seat as Barbara’s lips brush Gerald’s cheek.
Barbara’s unphased, as though she hadn’t had Melissa practically at her mercy mere moments before. As though she weren’t still ensnared by her, back in the stands only because Barbara had shepherded her - looped arms to guide her.
She would have followed her regardless. Wouldn’t have questioned if they’d ended up in the away seats, or the parking lot, or on another damn planet. Doesn’t question it when the place Barbara leads her to is husbands - one adoring and one absentee.
If she had the capacity for clear thought, maybe she’d be pissed. Maybe she’d question how Barb could carve out a moment, just theirs, in a dingy bathroom and return still the doting wife. Question if she’d imagined the whole thing, been so taken up in the thrill of the game that she’d created something out of nothing.
But her thigh presses against Barbara’s and, where Barb’s right hand sits securely atop Gerald’s knee, her left is mirrored on Melissa’s. Every inhale is roses and the reminder of Barbara’s hand against her neck. The stadium has reduced to three seats, just rows from the back, unoccupied one be damned.
Her head is a fuzz of static. So much so that, by the time the final whistle blows, Melissa couldn’t tell you who won, let alone the score.
She’s stationary. Pinned to her seat until Barbara says otherwise - until her hand gives a gentle squeeze and lifts from her knee.
They’re blocking the row. There’s a growing crowd on Gerald’s other side, raucous as anything, but Melissa’s only just blinking back into existence and it takes a firm hand at her elbow to remind her to stand, turn, and exit the row.
“Didn't take you for the silent type after a win.” It’s Gerald, trailing the pair as they shuffle their way into the slowly dispersing masses.
Huh?”
The context of a win repositions the crowd's buzz around her, adds clarity where before had just been a distant barrage noise. They won. Her team, her city, her game and she’d be hard pressed to tell you a single moment from it.
Roses still infiltrate her senses with every breath, a heady intoxicant that has her on sky nine in a way altogether different than the game.
“Think Barb's our lucky charm.” Gerald chuckles, the sound so reminiscent of his wife’s laughter.
Melissa’s eyes flit back to Barbara, the guiding presence at her side, weaving them this way and that through the celebrations, effervescent smile on her lips. She’s in her element. Thriving under the gracious gaze of her husband. Lavished by the praise he bestows at her mere existence.
Barbara twists, arm still firmly in Melissa’s (not letting her out of reach when she could so easily be lost in the revelry surrounding them), “What does your lucky charm get for a win?”
“For breaking that losing streak? Anything your heart desires.”
She squeezes Melissa's arm in hers, releasing a chuckle so deep the vibration rumbles through Melissa too, “I might have to come to games more often.”
They make it to their cars - to where their cars should be, where only one car is, and the indulgent delirium that had settled over Melissa begins to dissipate. Her car’s missing from the lot. Joe has the keys.
Son of a-
“Night’s young,” She spins abruptly, drawing focus from her lack of car, nearly pulling Barbara off her feet with the suddenness of it. Their arms unlink and she’s free falling from hazy comfort to the cloying hold of Philly summer nights all too suddenly, “There’s a bar round the corner, call me ‘Annette’ when we get there and I’ll get us free drinks, no problem.”
She’s stumbling for a reason to hold onto whatever today’s been, she knows she is. Knows the reality of what’s to come once Barbara’s back at home is the opposite of what she wants. Knows that sleepy, appeasing smile that means Barb’s done for the night.
“I think the game was quite enough excitement for me.” It’s resolute in exact juxtaposition to the languid fluidity of Barbara’s flirtations from moments before, in a way that has Melissa suddenly certain that Barbara’s very proximity was enough for her to-
To what? To have imagined that deep richness that had seeped into every word? The inherent possessiveness in Barbara seeing Joe’s arm around Melissa and dousing her in her scent in rebuttal?
But it’s Barbara Howard. Mother, kindergarten teacher, woman of God, wife. Already seeking solace in the familiar comfort of her husband’s touch in the absence of Melissa’s. Welcoming a feather-soft kiss to her brow, an arm around her waist - nowhere near as possessive as Joe’s had been, but still enough that doubt seeps in. Floods in. Rushes in and, despite the literal crowd of thousands that surrounds them, filing to their cars and out to the streets for a weekend filled with celebrations of today, there’s enough doubt to flow into a rapid between them. Impassable, even spanning only an arm’s breadth.
“Come on Barb.” Cajoles Melissa, one last dying chance to assure herself that she hasn’t let fancy carry her away with something as simple as a spritz of perfume, “Mr Knight-In-Shining-Armour will drive you home after, won’t you Ger?”
The keys are already in Gerald’s hand, fished from his pocket when Melissa wasn’t looking. His eyes flit down to his wife’s, hers up to his, communicating something in that unspoken way Barbara has down to an art. A silent eyebrow raise from him. A barely perceptible shake of the head from her. A hand unconsciously skirting over her lower abdomen before smoothing out the fabric at her hips.
“Why don’t we raincheck? Give you a ride home?” It doesn’t even come from Barbara. That placation filled with so much concern that their lasagna dinners have seemingly given him false right too.
Melissa Bianchi isn’t for pitying, “Nah, night like this?” She glances up and, as it ever is, the sky is there to hold her as her city rumbles through her soul, “Birds gotta stick together.”
She straightens, meets Barbara’s eyes, glances down to where Gerald’s hand rests protectively against her stomach for just a fraction of a second, lets her eyes drag up. She can know just as much as she’s known.
“See you Monday, Barb.”
She salutes, turns, and loses herself in the heady hum of the crowd. Barely even hears Barbara’s quiet, “See you Monday.” in response. Certainly wouldn’t care if she did.
–
She feels stupid - overheated and smothered by Joe’s jersey, but it’s all that separates her from the rough brickwork behind her. Even still, her forearms are grazed in ways that’ll bring about more questions than she’ll want to entertain. Still, something in her screams to rid herself of the jersey anyway. Let her back be rubbed raw enough that Joe can’t help but know. Raw enough that she can’t sit back without wincing still when Monday rolls around. Let Barbara know too.
The thought pulls a groan from her lips unbidden. Let them know.
“God, you smell good.”
There’s breath hot at her neck, teeth toying with the sensitive skin. There’ll be plum lipstick when she finally looks. Teeth bite down and she’s seeing stars. More than just lipstick. Her hand presses insistently, pulls her in for more. Let them know.
It feels like cheating when she closes her eyes, but she’s so damn close. And (if she takes away the dingy bar bathroom, the braids, the dress that looks like something out of Melissa’s wardrobe) when she inhales, roses can still overwhelm her senses. She didn’t get a name. It doesn’t matter. Eyes closed, inhaling deep, Melissa can make her anyone she wants.
“Barb.”
–
It well and truly feels like a game night by the time she stumbles home. Like a victory. The city still thrums with celebration and, with the mingling of her own sweat and time, she smells almost like herself again.
Her car isn’t in the drive. The fallout she expected, needed, still agonisingly out of reach.
Today isn’t the day to go to bed without him. It’s the day to yell out her knowledge, to show just how much she sees, and accepts and lets slide. And how much better she can do at any bar, any side of Philly.
She waits to greet the fallout head on - sits on her front stoop, head back towards the sky, and takes in the stars.
The sun’s rising before her car pulls into the street.
It’s not rose that hits her when Joe brushes past her to the door, it’s jasmine. She should be seeing red just as much at that as the sorry state of her neck should have him demanding answers. But her and Joe? They’re good.
“Great job at best behaviour.”
“Yeah, you too.”