Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [91]
“I didn’t know I wouldn’t be going home tonight,” Spyder said.
Niki nodded, looked over at Keith and Daria, twined in each other’s arms and legs, Mort alone.
“Hell’s slumber party,” she said.
“Yeah,” and Spyder shut her eyes a moment, opened them very slowly, a drawn out, predatory blink.
And through her weariness, Niki was amazed that she felt this comfortable so close to Spyder, someone she’d never even seen just a few hours earlier. More than an absence of discomfort, the pit-of-her-stomach homesickness all but faded away, the dread gone with it, mostly. She felt something like safe, something like peace. And she thought again about whatever they’d exchanged in the parking lot, whatever she might have imagined they’d exchanged; frightened at the possibility of it having been real, cautioning herself that it might have been nothing at all. Contradiction all around.
“You must be pretty pissed,” she said, praying her voice wouldn’t break the spell, the calm inside. “Your friends running out on you that way.”
Spyder closed her eyes again, and Niki marveled at her eyelashes, so black after her white hair, long and delicate. Spyder frowned, eyes still closed.
“That was just Byron,” she said, and Niki remembered the terrified face behind the wheel of the Toyota, the boy in his velvet frock coat that she’d watched across Dr. Jekyll’s. “He does that kinda shit. It doesn’t mean anything,” so much stress on that last part before she opened her eyes again. “You don’t count on Byron in a fight, that’s all. I guess he just freaked out.”
“You’re not mad at him?”
And the frown softened, a little of the tension in her face melting away.
“When I catch up with him, I’m gonna kick his skinny faggot ass all the way into next week.”
“Oh,” Niki said, and it was still there, that sense of rightness, something she’d experienced so seldom that it felt like borrowed clothes.
“But what I really want to know is why Joe Cool over there stuck his neck out for me tonight.”
Niki glanced at the mattress again, at Keith Barry, one arm slung protectively or possessively around Daria.
“I think maybe he just likes to fight,” she said.
“Crazy fucking junky. I thought he hated my guts.”
And then Niki turned and looked at Spyder’s eyes, eyes like marble the faintest shade of blue, palest steel, that divine wound between them, and Spyder gave her another long animal blink. And then Niki kissed her. Clumsy kiss, too fast and their noses bumping, urgent and too much force, but Spyder did not pull away, opened her mouth and Niki’s tongue slipped between her teeth, explored cheekflesh and teeth and tongue. Spyder laid one hand against Niki’s face, stubby fingers cold from the chill, and Niki opened her eyes, pulled away. She was breathing too hard, too fast, her heart stumbling, missing beats in her chest.
She’d never kissed a girl before, had kissed no one for what seemed like a very long time. Not since that last morning with Danny; immediate guilt, and Niki pushed his memory away again. Spyder smiled at her, brushed the coarse tips of those fingers across her lips and chin.
“I’m sorry,” Niki said, feeling the warm rush of blood to her face.
“Don’t be sorry,” Spyder said. “It’s okay. But I do have a girlfriend already.”
“I shouldn’t have,” Niki said, and she felt dizzy, the madness and violence of the night and then this, and the snow outside the window playing Caligari tricks with her head. Her exhaustion swimming upstream against the adrenaline flash, gathering itself like the drift piling up on the windowsill. And Spyder still getting in through her nostrils, the leather muskiness and old sweat, stale smoke and something else, sweet and sharp, that might have been Old Spice cologne, her father’s smell.
She shut her eyes, discovering the retinal burn-in of the window and the storm where she’d expected nothing. And then Spyder was talking, words as soft as the worn tapestry of her smells.
“Niki, do you remember when they’d