Lauren returned to the table at Mascara feeling smug, spent, quenched. ”I’m ready,” she said to Kenzi who had finished the last bit of her cocktail. Kenzi returned the smile. It was piercing daylight when they emerged from the club, cloudless and windless, and they both squinted as their eyes adjusted to the brightness. Without saying a word, their steps found a shared rhythm as they strolled the wide boulevard that wound past the designer shops, onto the chaos of Las Ramblas, and finally spilling into the dark labyrinth of the Bari Gothic and their flat with the view of the Barceloneta and the ships in port.

They hardly spoke as they walked shoulder-to-shoulder, letting the pleasantness of the weather, the lispy patois of the Spaniards, and their mid-day intoxication float them apace.

Lauren grinned to herself. The lingering taste of salt and desire made her thirsty. “That was some present.”

“Present?”

“I’m surprised you’re not begging for details,” Lauren elbowed Kenzi.

“Of your slap and tickle?” Kenzi laughed. “I’ve heard you, remember.” In an instant, their mirth was interrupted by a second of memory, Bo’s memory, and how even the slightest sound carried through the clubhouse. The clubhouse was definitely not the place to harbor secrets. “So how was it?”

“Pretty. She was pretty. Well, you know that, you picked her out.”

“Actually, Lauren, I didn’t.”

Their steps slowed as their comprehension quickened. Lauren ran the scenario through her mind apace, trying to click through every detail of her encounter. She called me doctor. “She knew I was in love with a woman.” She posed it more as a question.

“And you didn’t find that odd – and by the way, how could that possibly come up as a topic of conversation during…y’know.”

“Somethings you can tell and besides I thought you sent her to me!”

Kenzi and Lauren suddenly wanted to get off the street and rushed to enter their apartment building. They began the ascent up a steep and narrow stairwell to their flat on the fifth floor. Their breathing became heavy and labored by the third landing.

“You’re sure in the throes of hoedom you didn’t say anything?” Kenzi put her hand to Lauren’s elbow to stop her from continuing upwards, and maybe a little to help her catch up a few steps.

“No, it wasn’t like that, Kenzi …”

They began the climb again, slowly this time. Lauren heard the soles of Kenzi’s heavy boots hitting each step with a thud.

“Then what?” Kenzi wheezed.

“She was pretty in that way. And she might have said my name…I figured it for payback, by you.”

They were at their landing. “You mean she looked like Bo.”

“Enough, yeah. And she said she was a gift.”

“From?”

“The friend with the dark hairs.” The woman’s accent and mispronunciation stood clear in Laurens’ memory and jogged a sudden sense of alarm in both she and Kenzi once the words were spoken aloud. Kenzi reached for the dagger tucked into the back waistband of her pants. Lauren shoved Kenzi behind her on the tiny landing, hoping she wouldn’t send her tumbling down the stairs. The sheen of sweat they earned up the stairwell turned them both cold. The door of their flat swung open with a flourish.

“Fuck me!” Kenzi growled, thrusting her dagger in the air.

“You!” Lauren said matter-of-fact.

The eyes of the dark-haired man in the doorway gleamed with mischief. He opened his arms waiting for an embrace. “What? Is that any way to greet your old Uncle Vex?”