“Is she now…,” a long pause as Sam spaced out for a moment, “Alice, how would you like to come to Miami?”

***** 

            “Going to parteeeeeeeeeeeeeeee……,” sang Alice as she and Quin drove to the airport.  Actually, Alice was driving, because, as Alice had just learned, Quin didn’t have her driver’s license.

            “I’m going to the beach, and just going to lie there…,” said Quin in a quiet voice, staring out of the window.

            “Oh, no.  I just found out that you, yes, you the blonde bombshell, kissed Shane,” said Alice in an accusing voice.  The information had been brimming on Alice’s lips for days, but she’d resisted saying anything, until now.

            “Who hasn’t?” shot Quin with a smirk, shifting uncomfortably in the seat of the car, tapping her fingers to the music that blared through the speakers of the Mini.

            “Ya know, ya can tell me, right?  If you are, or aren’t?  I mean, it’s not a huge deal….”

            “I’m not,” said Quin without thought, an automatic response that she’d forged in the last few years.  They sat in silence as Alice conducted her way through traffic, Alice shot a look every once in a while, but Quin was tight lipped for a very long time, “Ok, fine, yeah, I kinna am, are you fucking happy now?” blurted out Quin.  “Christ all mighty, I like snatch, ok?”

            Alice laughed hard, “I knew, I have gay-dar that works, unlike a whole lotta people I know, so your taste in music differs slightly most lesbians…”

            “From most LA lesbians you mean, most normal lesbians listen to everything, and not just The Murmurs and all that jazz, I mean, have you been anywhere besides LA?” asked Quin, turning in her seat, challenging Alice.

            “Umm, yeah…,” said Alice sarcastically, thinking to herself that it was a lie.

            “Where?”

            “San Diego, San Francisco, New York…”

            “Big cities, I mean, little town Nebraska, or very cold Vermont, middle of nowhere Ohio?” asked Quin, batting her green eyes.  When she’d hitchhiked across the states, Quin had forged out a path, cutting across states an settling, if only for a few days, in towns where even if people didn’t know your name, they treated you well.  But you couldn’t stay lost in a small town, and that was what Quin had been aiming for, losing herself.