Hey! It worked.

So Lilith had a shower, and then went back to her room. The unmistakable click of her mistress boots passing by revealed that she was going out tonight. I got up, a little unsure of what to do, but the front door slammed before I’d decided.

I must have pissed her off by walking in. We went out together a lot—not all the time or anything, but a couple times a month—so it was a little unusual that she didn’t ask me if I wanted to go. But we’d only moved in together three days ago, and the patterns weren’t obvious yet. Maybe now that we lived together we wouldn’t hang out as much outside the house anymore.

That would be a shame. I love going out with Lilith. For years we went out dancing on Friday night at this particular bar. I could wear that cute lime-green skirt of a thriftscore that would raise eyebrows at work. I could say what I liked without it turning into stupid office gossip. We’d sit at a table, sipping our drinks, until some boy or pair of boys would come and try to chat us up.

Or really, chat Lilith up. She’s gorgeous: generous lips, her crafted cheekbones and flawless skin, her long black hair with shocks of white for a little bit of quirk, her green eyes with the aforementioned floaty quality. And her body, as curvy as it was trim—a body that had heard of fat, but only as something that happened to other people.

I, on the other hand, am not gorgeous: brown eyes, brown wavy hair with a couple of greys that, at 31, I’m alternately bitter about and proud of. I’ve oft been called cute, by strangers wanting to smooch, and if I dress strategically I can get my share of a certain kind of attention.

The cool thing about being with Lilith, once I got over myself, was that she was the proverbial sex magnet: she drew them in, and it meant that I met a lot of people. Some of them were even interesting. And I didn’t have to deal with the negatives associated with being beautiful, of which there are some.

Lilith was quite capable of dealing with the drawbacks, I discovered one night at the bar. As usual the women’s washroom had a line, so we went into the nearly empty men’s. When we came out of our stalls, there was only one guy there, weaving a little in front of the urinal. As we were washing our hands, he saw Lilith and his lip curled. I recognized him as last week’s Ill-Fated Pass #8.

“Whattaya—” I saw his little eyes squinting at us. “Whattaya doon in here ya fuggin’ whore?” he muttered as he pissed. His chin dropped to his chest after the effort, not even looking at us any more.

I felt my fists ball up and imagined myself throwing them against the beefy man’s torso. I could take being hit back—but what if he just laughed? My fists dropped to my sides as Lilith stepped quickly behind the man, grabbed him by the hair and, getting her shoulder against his back, cracked his forehead against the tiled wall.

She was out the door before he hit the floor, and I was hot on her heels.

We got downstairs and Lilith went to the bar, ordered drinks. I watched the stairs, sure that the guy would be coming after us, and realized that he wasn’t.

She handed me a beer and I toasted her. “That was— Remind me never to call you a whore,” I said. I took a swig from the bottle and put it on the bar because my hand was a little shaky. I cast around for a stool because my legs were rubbery, too.

She smiled. Her hand was steady, but her eyes were a little funny. She turned her head as a boy she knew came by before I could really look. Maybe I would have seen that quality I’d seen tonight in them. Maybe they would have been flying.

OK, I’m still smelling that weird smell. I’m going to go check her room. Maybe a candle’s still burning or something.

Posted at 11:47pm