Fate Intervened Pt. 02

"Surprise!" Olive called out to Max's back as she reached up to fiddle with the stereo. It was early yet in the bar, and she didn't have to yell very loud to be heard over the background white noise of conversations and music. It was amazing she hadn't taken a day off to recover like Olive.

"Hey!" Max's face lit with delight, angular lines softened by the string of warm yellow lights lining the overhang. "What are you doing here?" A nearby customer on a stool hadn't turned his head from his drink, but he watched their interaction from the corner of his eye.

"I wanted to see you," Olive smiled, rocking onto the balls of her feet, hands wrapped around her little green canvas purse behind her back.

"Well, here I am," Max cocked her head back, chin out, shoulder back, posing statuesquely for a mental snapshot before winking and relaxing into her more slouched posture. She looked exceptionally tall for a moment.

"Can I get you something? You know, my job," Max laughed, blue eyes sparkling with the reflected points of light. "I can feed you this time, huh?"

Taking the stool in front of her, Olive pulled her little bag into her lap. "Okay. Hm... seems like a beer-and-French-fries kind of day to me."

"That's it?" Max asked, reaching below for a cold bottle, wrapping it in a small square napkin that melted immediately into the damp glass.

"And spicy brown mustard." Max's face pulled to the side, amused. "I really like the combo of beer and spicy mustard," Olive explained a touch defensively.

"I'll be right back." With a professionally friendly wink, Max hurried off into a swinging door in the corner of the room, disappearing into the briefly-blinding white light of a kitchen.

In her periphery, movement caught Olive's eye as the customer three seats down picked up his drink and stood. Olive took a cautious sip of her beer.

He was dressed well enough, the buttoned shirt and slacks of a man with an office job trying to blow off the monotonous boredom he might call "steam" before heading home to an equally uninspiring private life. The nearly empty glass didn't look to be his first, but he didn't stagger as he walked.

Taking a hair too long to start talking as his eyes traveled the curves of Olive's body perched on the edge of the stool, the man's oily tone carried more meaning than the words, "Hey there, how's it going?"

"Good," Olive nodded noncommittally while taking a long drink, turned slightly away, hoping to stall until Max returned to be her buffer.

"I'm Rick. What's your name?" he had the smooth operator in full swing as he leaned confidently on the counter, cocky pull at the right side of his mouth, thinning hair smoothed back.

"Olive," she answered more firmly than necessary, trying to give the unspoken signals that avoided her having to "rudely" express her desire to be left alone.

Unfortunately, but predictably, he picked up on the sign and chose to pretend it was unwarranted and, therefore, hurtful.

"No need to get feisty," he said, final shard of ice clinking against the side of his glass as he raised his hands defensively.

Something snapped. "Are you really that weak?" Olive asked harshly.

"What?" His head turned to the side as if lightly slapped.

"Just curious." She let it hang awkwardly, ignoring his question and bluntly making it clear she wasn't being rhetorical.

His falsely wounded expression had quickly melted into confusion. And that, now, was a thin layer over a rising anger.

Olive continued in a flat tone. "All I did was answer. You're the one who got offended."

The anger was winning.

"You're being kind of a bitch —"

"Then why are you still talking to me?" Olive whipped back. Bits of exposed scalp shone bright pink through wispy hair, and his posture caught the attention of the bouncer at the door, but the tension suddenly broke as he turned and stalked away.

Max came out an instant later with a plate of fries.

"Here we go — why do you look like a viper?" Olive felt her rigid pose in the stool as she watched Rick take a seat at a booth in the back, facing away from them.

"Oh," she relaxed in the other woman's presence. "I'm scaring off your customers... sorry."

Max noticed the empty seat at the bar. "Rick? Nah, he gets shot down all the time."

Olive tried to turn her full attention to the thick wedges of potato that were still too hot to eat. "Awesome!"

Halfway through the plate and two sips into her second beer, Olive felt a tap on her shoulder. When she looked, the man behind darted to the other side to steal a fry.

Heart stuck halfway in her throat, Olive recoiled in her seat. "Who are you?"

The bald, heavily tattooed man looked like he must belong in all the gangs at once, with no significant expanse of skin lacking a subdermal layer of ink.

"Max," he sang her voice in a mocking, childlike way that was incredibly disconcerting from this grown man, particularly in his oversized, and noticeably dirty, T shirt and jean shorts.

She was seeing to customers on the other side of the bar, but the sound snapped her head up. On locating its source, her eyes went wide.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Max hissed as she rushed back.

"You didn't tell her about me?" he used the same falsely wounded tone as the other man had, though far more overt and condescending.

He turned to Olive. "She's my little sister," he said with a proud grin that showed missing teeth, head tilting side to side.

"Half!" Max corrected instantly.

"Best half! Am I right?" He reached across the bar for a high five. Max didn't move her tightly crossed arms.

"Why?" she snipped at his extended palm. "Why are you here? In this bar? In my life?"

"Well, I *was* at your apartment. But did you know the door's locked?"

Max sighed irritably, lip visibly twitching.

He took another French fry boldly.

Max nodded hard at him. "You're looking pretty thin. Are you *de*toxing or *re*toxing?"

He snorted, bowing his head as if acceding to the superior chess player. "I'm on my way up. So get me something to drink."`

"No." Max was made of stone. "But is that why you were at my place? Did you go to my house to *burgle* me?" she asked in a nearly parental tone, one that spoke of repeated transgressions that strained, then broke, trust long ago.

"No," he let the word elongate melodically. "That's not why I went there," voice pure saccharine.

"There's nothing to steal there anymore anyway. I kicked Trey out yesterday. He took whatever music stuff he had with him. Don't bother adding another line to your rap sheet for nothing. Seriously." The final word took on the genuine plea of a person who wanted to see someone make the right choice for once.

"Why'd you kick him out? Makin' room in the nest for this one?" He touched the edge of Olive's sleeve, sliding his hand inappropriately along her skin.

Everything happened at once.

"Get off me —"

"That's it!" Before Max's fingers were up to signal, the bouncer was on the move.

No stranger to starting trouble, he saw the approaching guard and instantly backed off, hands in the air.

"I'll go. I'll go." The world snapped back to normal speed. As he made his loping way, escorted, to the door, he looked back. "Catch you later, sis," managing to infuse the words with a disturbing passive aggressiveness.

"Yikes. When I was a kid, sometimes I was jealous of my friends with brothers or sisters. Right now it doesn't feel so bad," Olive mused out loud as she stared in the direction of the bouncer guarding the door.

"Yeah, he's... bad news. If you ever think you need to call the cops on him, don't hold back on my account."

Olive's eyes widened briefly. "Okay. Got it. Is he really the kind of person to break into his sister's house?"

"Don't call me that. And yes. Especially if he's on drugs. Which," she gestured to where he'd been standing, stealing fries.

"Well, what should I call him if not your... um...?"

"Ruben. Look, he's a violent asshole with no life skills who will be back in prison again soon. I'd love to be wrong this time, but..." she pursed her lips and inverted her hands helplessly.

"Hm," Olive avoided the fries near the ones he'd taken. "Should I be worried about him?"

Max shook her head. "No — well, yes. I mean," she gestured widely explaining the nuance of the threat he posed. "He's never done anything like hit the chick who had his kid or —"

"You're an aunt?" Olive blurted out.

Max paused, momentarily taken off guard. "Oh yeah. Huh," she shrugged. "But he doesn't have, like, a history of violence against women as, like, a thing. That being said... he's a lunatic. Just... the less we have him in our life, the better."

Olive tried to make a mental note to come back to the aunt subject, but the more pressing concern, "How did he know who I was?"

"Oh," Max looked to the side, hands hiding under the black apron tied around her waist in a novel show of bashfulness. "Well, he usually shows up right after talking to our mom." She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "He always gets her to spill details about my life I don't want him having. She's old and not super with it, and he's a manipulative sociopath. So yeah."

"So I'm a detail you shared with your mom?" Olive asked curiously.

With an embarrassed smile, Max looked at the ceiling for the answer. "It would have been weird to send the photo without explaining it's the girl I'm in love with."

Even though Max's eyes were still locked on the ceiling, she couldn't smother her grin.

"You seriously told your mom — jeez," Olive laughed lightly, wanting to chastise her for jumping the gun again, but it was cute.

"She must have shared the good news with Ruben." Shaking her head, Max sighed. "It's so hard to be mad at my mom. All her mistakes revolve around her being too nice. It's really annoying."

——

Noise and male voices slipped into the stairwell from behind Max's door as she pulled her tired legs up the steps. Ben had walked the dogs and given them dinner. He would have been welcome to stay. But the second voice...

Opening the door, Ruben was sitting on her couch, a happy dog's heads in his lap. One hand held a beer clearly taken from her fridge, the other was behind the dog's ear making his leg twitch in sympathy scratching.

"Hey, sis!" he called out jovially.

In the large chair on the far left wall, also facing the TV, Ben sat with his own beer. His greeting smile fell away as Max laid into the heavily-tattooed man.

"Dude, we've talked about boundaries. This isn't okay."

"Is this *not* your brother?" Ben asked, eyes widening as he stood.

"No, no, he is, but —"

"If you say 'it doesn't matter,' I'll cry," Ruben taunted.

"Oh fucking shut up," Max snapped, still at the open door.

Ben nodded and sat back down. "The dogs did seem to know him."

Max rolled her eyes so hard her head was carried along. "They love everybody. I swear, they'd be licking my blood off a murderer's knife. Loyal my ass..."

"Are you gonna eat mommy?" Ruben asked the dog in his lap playfully while smooshing his face. The wagging tail knocked over the beer he'd left on the edge of the coffee table.

"That piece of ass you've got right now," he redirected his attention to Max, completely ignoring his mess that was soaking into the spotted carpet.

"I wouldn't mind stretching her back out when you're done lez-ing out with her."

"Dude! Be more crass!" she yelled, slamming the door and throwing her hands up, finally going to the kitchen for a towel to soak up the beer the other dog was now licking from the saturated carpet fibers.

Out of the corner of her eye, Max saw Ruben try to share an elbow nudge of "you'd fuck her too right?" with Ben. He returned a disapproving look.

"You *know* I really like her and — I mean, of course you do. That's why you're doing it. Because you get off on annoying me."

"Hey, hey, we talked about this. It's not a sexual thing," he laughed far too loud at his dumb joke.

"Look, it's extremely late guys, and I didn't think I'd be coming home to anyone. So nicest way possible, get out. Don't gotta go home. Whole thing. Go. Shoo." Shoving only Ruben out the door, Max closed it and turned to Ben, shaking her head.

"I'm sorry." Ben rubbed his ear absently as he looked to the spot Ruben had been sitting on the couch. "I'm actually not sure how he got me to let him follow me in here after the walk."

"Yeah, he's like that. People are more suspicious now with all the tattoos, but he's talked his way into my apartments, work, places he shouldn't have been."

"Like he's stalking you? That's weird." Ben's face tightened with a sour twist.

"He sends stuff too sometimes. That's usually when he's locked up. It's a dominance thing. He wants me to know he knows where I am."

"That's psychotic."

She shrugged, resigned. "Okay."

"I'm still here, ya know," Ruben's voice loudly whined from beyond the door.

"Well none of this is news to you, is it? Now get out of here before I call the cops!"

Ben looked mortified that their conversation had been overheard, but she shook her head as if to dismiss any wrongdoing on both their parts. "See, Ruben and I," her voice increasing as she angled her face toward the door at her back, "have had many discussions about intruding on my space. In fact, he was already kicked out of my workplace earlier today. Which I'll explain to the cops if I have to get them to clear the *fucking* hall!" by the end, Max was yelling.

"God," she heard his petulant voice followed by retreating clomping steps down the stairs.

After a moment, Max released her held breath.

"Wow," Ben said quietly. "He's... exhausting."

"I like it better when he's in prison."

——

Olive vaguely became aware of the music and lights around her. She'd existed in their wash for an indeterminate length of time, swaying under their hypnotic influence. The only aspect of existence. The beat of her heart was one with the vibrating speakers, and her eyes only perceived the flashes of light and dark, color, impressions of shapes.

Alone in a faceless crowd.

In the calm euphoria, a spark of discomfort blossomed into fear, then panic, as an entity split from the mass, a discrete other in her serenity. Spinning to catch it only made her dizzy.

Hands kept her from falling.

A car. The passenger's seat. A cold, hard window vibrating as it held up her head. The world rushed away in a blurry, blue-black distance.

Terrified of the unknown destination and the silent driver, they drove endlessly, night never lifting, gas never running out.

Olive woke in a cold sweat. It took too many breaths to fully accept the shift in reality, her fingers tangled in damp sheets.

Extricating her hands to take the phone from the nightstand, she redirected her concern, typing out a text to Max. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," came the nearly immediate response followed by the bouncing dots of current typing.

"Are you still up?" The tiny glowing time in the corner of her phone's screen showed 3:30 a.m.

"Having trouble sleeping," she half-lied, suddenly embarrassed she'd woken Max for something as inconsequential as a dream.

When Olive had gotten home from visiting Max at work, she found her mind stuck on the name Andy Greene. The name she'd tried to temporarily forget at the bar. The name of the man who had tried to take her. Learning his name from police had given him a sliver more dimension in her mind. He wasn't just "that guy from the kitchen," a fragment of a memory. He really was a person in the world. The world she lived in.

"Sounds like I should come over." The bubble of text pulled Olive from her anxious thoughts.

Two weak protests were typed and deleted. Olive finally settled on "xo" and waited with all the lights on until a grinning, slightly sleepy Max was outside her door, wrinkled deep red T shirt over blue and grey plaid pants, short hair only slightly askew from being mashed against a pillow.

In Max's thin but strong arms, Olive released the knot of tension that pulled her neck and shoulders. Max kissed her forehead as she sighed.

"Thanks," Olive said softly.

"For the opportunity to come help you get to sleep? Yeah, you're welcome," she tickled Olive's ribs slightly, eliciting a happy wiggle.

A peck and Olive fell into Max's cool blue eyes, drawn passionately back to her lips and the safety they provided.

Fully ready to sweep her off her feet, Max cupped Olive at the lower back and neck, dipping her slightly while firmly holding her up.

Olive's hands slid up and around the other woman's neck as she leaned back further, kissing hungrily with small, mewling noises.

Pulling away to breathe, they looked into each other's eyes for a long moment until Max finally laughed in a tiny defeat, as if she'd lost the staring contest. "All right. Want me to take you to bed?" With a pleased grin, she gestured with her elegant chin over Olive's shoulder. "Or do you need me to throw you down on that couch right now?"

Feeling her face pull back with interest, Olive breathed "Couch?" wonderfully unsure what the word had become.

Max licked her lips as they pulled into a smile that tried to reach her ears. Taking two shuffling, clumsy steps, Olive tried to walk backward while her attention was intensely focused under Max's salty sweet lips.

With a squealed huff, Olive suddenly bounced onto her couch, Max crawling instantly to join, guiding Olive to lie lengthwise, flat under the gentle, hot pressure of her body. Olive's hands found the loose edges of Max's voluminous shirt.

The wrinkly mass of red fabric was tossed to the side, and Max sat back to tug at Olive's pale lavender night shirt. Arching and twisting, Olive contorted to let it come free.

Sliding her hands along Max's back as she leaned back down, pressing their chests together, Olive moaned, "Oh fuck," legs wrapping around to trap the other woman tightly to her.

Max ground her smaller breasts lightly into Olive's yielding mounds. Leaning back, Max repeatedly caught her nipple against Olive's tight nub, grazing the edge as she rotated her shoulder blade.

Olive squealed, the sensation in her nipple becoming almost physically hot. Max's mouth descended on the electrified point. At the same time, her hand went to Olive's needy pussy as it squirmed between them, flesh contact with her engorged clit tearing through the last shred of control.

Max's lips held fast as Olive arched her back to the utmost before falling back, hands grasping, legs trying to grapple but only flailing.

The crashing continued, the vibrations of Max moaning resonating through her chest as fingers and thumb working her clit from multiple angles, for an eternity until she realized she had stilled under Max's withdrawing fingers, soft lips delivering light kisses to her panting chest.

"I was wondering how long you could keep that up," Max murmured, though she sounded far more proud of herself.

"I can't move," Olive, eyes closed, said happily to the weight above her.

"Then I guess I have to carry you to bed," Max's smile was evident in her voice as she stood and scooped Olive up from the couch.

——

In the comforting arms of her lover, Olive was eventually able to find her way back to a restful sleep, and when the latest of the alarms insisted she get out of bed, she felt just shy of ready for the demands of the day.

Max, however, was not. But with a heavy grumble, she pulled herself out of bed too. "Trey was a fuck, but he'd feed the dogs when I wasn't home."

"I'm sorry..." Olive chewed on her thumbnail, instantly guilty again.

"Why?" Max asked over her shoulder as she grabbed her pants from the floor.

Olive didn't want to admit that a stupid dream had started the whole thing. "I don't know. I made you come over."

Laughing, Max shook her head and stood. "I like being with you."