Xia

Xia and the rest of the student body—the unlucky many who hadn't snuck out the back—sat through a protracted assembly on date safety, featuring vague demonstrations on safer sex, advice on choosing designated drivers, and weirdly victim-blamey suggestions for avoiding being ruffied. Xia was offended and confused in equal measure. At least they tried? She wasn't sure she wanted to give the guidance counselors who'd arranged this display even that much credit.

The assembly let out with the end of day bell. It was a veritable stampede to the exits. Nobody wanted to be the last one sitting to be singled out for individual attention. Xia was no exception; she braved the shoving horde to find daylight soon as she could.

She shouldered through the afterschool ramblers to get snacks from the tissue paper bedazzled vending machines. Rhinestones and glitter everywhere. The Student Council was a decorating menace that couldn't be stopped. Trail mix and Big Red were Xia's feast of champions for the hour and she consumed them ravenously at an outside picnic table. There was an ASA meeting in thirty minutes, she was killing time till the classrooms emptied out to the buses and the parking lot.

The smell of jasmine and myrrh reached her well before a lean shadow stepped into her light.

"Hey, cutie. You wanna drag?" Phae tucked her hands in her jeans and crossed an ankle behind her leg, looking like she'd stepped out of GQ and Vogue at the same time. Xia wiped her hand on her skirt. Sweat or crumbs? Both.gif.

"Like smoking or drag racing? I don't really drive much anymore." At all. She didn't touch cars. She didn't want to be a passenger, cargo, unconscious, dead in the trunk; none of it. Xia Qi was over the automotive experience.

"I don't smoke anymkre. My dad would have a cow if he caught me at it. You could drove with me, though. Sit shotgun, if you wanted. Me and some buddies are gonna get together Friday night. Just some fun. No betting. Come with?"

'Is that legal?' was on the tip of Xia's tongue before she bit it back. She didn't really care if it was legal if she got to do it with Phaedra.

"What time?" she asked because Phaedra looked at her liked she was dying a little inside every second Xia didn't say yes

"Eight. I could pick you up."

Xia was positive her mother would know. If not her mother, her grandmother or her aunt. Somebody would figure out that Xia was climbing into the souped-up coupe of a Webber Wild Girl and that would be the end. She wasn't ready for things to end, not when things were starting to go her way.

"Could we maybe meet somewhere? My parents have a thing about meeting my friends. They'd want you to come inside and talk about yourself. It'd be a job interview and a twelve-page background check."

"I'd do it if that's what they want."

"I—wha—you'd...for me?" Xia was squeezing the salt out of her bag of trail mix.

Phaedra sprung a smile on her and Xia's knees went weak even though she was sitting down. Phae had a smile like the earth moving under Xia's feet. Maybe that was just her heartbeat racing down interstate, chasing a feeling.

"You're easy peasy, sweet as pie. I'd do anything you ask. Just ask."

Just...okay.

"Meet my parents," Xia asked.

"Okay." Phae's husky voice cracked on the second vowel and though it wasn't  obvious she flushed in embarrassment. The most badass girl Xia had ever seen has been scared she'd say no.

Xia gulped and tried to slow her racing heart. This girl, who Xia had been trying to ask out for a month, had asked her out first. Am I in a coma? Did I die on New Year's? The afterlife was pummeling her expectations into the ground. Her pulse was thudding away in her ears; her head hurt a little. She was happy, it just made her a little dizzy.

"I have no idea what just happened."

Phae hung her hands from her back pockets. She had on her 'I know something you don't know' smile that made Xia want to hide her face before she started to blush as much as Phae was pretending not to.

"I met your mom and dad at the hospital. Your mom keeps sending me cat videos on Facebook. No big thing."

Her jaw dropped.

"You're friends with my mom on Facebook?! I'm not even friends with my mom on Facebook. Well, okay, I am, because she'd murder me if I de-friended, but...you don't have to be her friend."

"I don't have to be yours. Or anybody's for that matter. I like you. I like your mom. She likes me. We should go on a family camping trip and sing Kumbaya around a campfire. Wild Girls do whatever they want, with whomever they want. I want do pretty much anything with you."

Xia clutched at the side of the bench she was sitting on. This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Not to be alone, to get to say thank you; being Phaedra Barlowe's girl. That was it, here it was. So why was she shaking so hard?

Because it's one thing to be her girl where her friends can see, but what about everybody else?

Xia didn't have years of trauma behind her. She wasn't picked on much; she was invisible, its own kind of adolescent torture. She was used to not being seen. If Phae treated her like a queen one day and a stranger the next, she was pretty sure that'd would be it for her. All her years of guarded social interaction would go up in flames and it would hurt. Xia didn't want to hurt; broken bones were enough not to want a broken heart.

"I've been trying to think of a way to ask you to the V-Day dance since...since New Year's Eve."

Phaedra hummed in understanding and climbed the bench to sit on the picnic table.

"What closed the deal, the concussion or the exploding gas tank?"

"Probably the part where you kept showing up after you made sure I wasn't dead. The flowers. The apple juice. You bought me a neck pillow for my whiplash. Who does that?" Xia compressed the skin between her forefinger and thumb, fighting back the nausea churning in her stomach. "You know I like you, don't you?"

"You shouldn't lie, you're not good at it." A line of irritation appeared between her plucked brows. She locked her hands together between her knees.

"You act like I like you all the time, I'm just not sure you get what I mean. I'm not...I'm bad at being anything but alone. I'm not sad by myself, I don't miss people. You can't miss friends you didn't have. But..." She inhaled, trembling and hating it. "I got to be your friend and I wanted more of that. I wanted more than that. I wanted you. So I made up excuses to talk to you. They were dumb and obvious—I'm going to be sick if I think about it. Just know that I know I'm bad at lying to your face. I wanted you to like me or just get used to me."

"I've been trying to tell you, I am. I'm fine with it, I'm used to you. Stop trying. Stop."

"If I wasn't like this...like me, would you maybe go out with me?"

"No. No, there's...that's not what I'd want."

Xia sucked in a pained breath. It wasn't a whimper. She wouldn't call it that. It hurt like something else, sharper, a stalagmite to the stomach after a long vertical fall.

"Okay. Sure. Just thought I'd ask."

"I wouldn't like you any other way."

"You don't like me anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter."

"Man, you are bad at being with people. I'm saying, I don't want you to change. There's nothing wrong with you. I didn't save you because you're cute—though, since we're on the topic..." Phaedra looked her over from her dark brown hair to her rainbow Nikes and nodded in approval. "Hair, yes. Face, yes. Everything else, yes, yes, yes. Sorry, cutie, I don't risk life and limb for a pretty face. I did it because I could. I'd have done it even if was somebody else. Mom's an EMT, dad's a firefighter; saving people is literally in my blood."

"Oh." I'm an idiot and...kind of a stalker? High school was a nightmare.

"Don't be embarrassed." Phae looped an arm around Xia's shoulder. "You were covered in glass and blood when we pulled you out. Yeah, I had help, I don't do much on my own. I couldn't have gotten you out without at least three other people to jimmy the door."

"They didn't come to the hospital."

"Because I was going." She shrugged off Xia's surprise. "You'd just lost a fistfight with a Honda, how many people did you really want stuttering in your face?"

"Not that many."

"Exactly. So..." Phaedra scuffed her converse on the pebble sidewalk. "Did you only want to go out with me because of...the me-saving-you thing?"

"That's not it. That's the opposite of why." So not convincing. She sighed, scratched at her still-healing stitches. "You were nice. You came to see me, you kept coming to see me."

"That part, I did because you were cute." Ego saved. Phae crossed her arms, smug, and stupidly hot at the same time.

"Even with the bruises?"

"Mmhmm. Better once the swelling went down," she granted, reluctantly. "I remembered you from school and figured you could do with a little company."

"I don't need company."

"Tough tits, cutie. You're stuck with me." She leaned down and kissed Xia's cheek, soft and lingering, her breath warm on her neck. "Eight o'clock?"

"Eight o'clock."

Xia's eyes followed Phae till she disappeared into the parking lot and her car roared into the street.