Chapter 420

Loretta’s Northwesterner wasn’t actually very far from the airport, it turned out, but we’d had to circle around it via highways to get there. It was a tavern sort of atmosphere with a bright halogen sign out the front, and the place was pretty busy, but we managed to get a little table out in the back sitting area next to an honest-to-God wood-burning fire pit, and we had our drinks fast as hell.

“To having a boyfriend who is willing to drop everything if he’s needed,” Becca said, holding up her beer bottle in a toast.

“To finally realising I was carrying around a massive problem, and dealing with it instead of trying to ignore it,” Wanda added, tapping her bottle to Becca’s.

I took a breath and raised my own beer, though it was in Guinness in a glass, and raised it as well. “To being blessed to know the two most beautiful women in the city,” I said.

“Cheers,” Wanda chuckled and then took a sip of her beer. Becca and I echoed her, but Becca only had a taste before lowering her glass. “To be fair, Anna Faris is from Seattle. I dunno if we’re the top two.”

“What?” I asked with a laugh. “I mean, she can be funny, and she’s cute, but compared to you two?”

“OK, how about Bianca Kajlich?” Becca said. “She’s super hot.”

“Yeah, but isn’t she like late forties now?” Wanda asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“She was in Bring It On,” Becca said.

“And one of the Halloween movies,” Wanda added.

“And Bosch recently,” Becca said. “Still hot.”

“OK, but like, MILF Hot, and that’s a different kind of hot,” Wanda said.

“I choose to believe you both,” I laughed. “But I’m still saying it’s you two, then whoever else can fight for third place.”

Becca rolled her eyes and grinned at me, and Wanda just leaned over and kissed my cheek before taking another swig of her beer. That was when our waitress came back and we had to order, which my stomach was thankful for, and once she was gone, I sighed and took another sip of my Guinness before setting it down and reaching over to Wanda and grabbing her hand, which she squeezed.

“So, want to talk now, or wait until later?” I asked.

“I can go first,” Becca said, cutting in when she saw Wanda hesitating to answer. Then she turned to face me a little more - we were sitting in a triangle at a low round table in front of the open fire pit, and I was in the middle directly across from it. As she turned a bit in her seat she ended up leaning away from me a little to be comfortable, but this meant she was also able to easily find my leg with her foot and rub my calf familiarly. “So, stuff we haven’t talked about on our phone calls...”

It’s funny how in love with her I could be without knowing all that much about her regular, day-to-day life. It was another one of those kick in the gut moments, reminding me how fucking weird our relationship was.

Becca’s week, outside of the us stuff and the Wanda stuff, had still been a bit up-and-down. The model community knew that the trip had happened, and folks wanted to know how it went; so far, things hadn’t ‘leaked’ really, but it was bound to eventually and Becca was keeping an eye on Heather and Sherry’s social media in particular. Even without anything getting out yet, though, there was always a little more drama before and after an event - a couple of girls who hadn’t been invited back from previous trips for bad behaviour and vibes were being passive aggressive and snarky, a couple of over-involved fans were trying to be a little too familiar acting like they deserved some sort of big recap of the trip and any scandalous details, and apparently there was a mid-level photographer claiming that he was supposed to have been on the trip but he got cancelled on last minute. That last one was a complete fabrication, but people did weird and crazy things looking to try and farm some clout.

Other than that, Becca’s neighbour in her condo building was being a pain in the butt complaining about extra noise going on - and the complaints had started halfway through our trip when no one was staying in her condo. She had a meeting with the management company next week to try and figure it out.

The last item on her mental list of things from her week to talk about was put on pause by our food arriving. We’d spent almost twenty minutes chatting already, with Becca playing a little bit of footsie with me, and Wanda reaching over and holding my hand lightly. Part of me had wondered if people were noticing us or anything - I felt like we were kind of being blatant, and Cassidy’s list of App Perks and the encounter with Janet had me thinking about people’s reaction to the orgylationship. But no one was staring, no one was scoffing. Maybe no one even noticed. Maybe it was just because we were in Seattle, and somewhere else we’d get more attention (though, if that was the case, we’d probably look downright normal in the weirdness of Vegas.)