Fictionlet
Brigid closed the apartment door behind her and, looking up, was confronted with Yvonne, who was coming out of her own apartment. For a brief moment Yvonne stared at Brigid with that deer-in-the-headlights look of somebody who’s pulled a major boner and doesn’t know what to do about it, but quickly covered that up with the facade of polite anonymity common to building neighbors. For her own part, Brigid tried to suppress the smirk that was fighting to take control of her face at the mental image of her neighbor looming up before Greg in her underwear and his subsequent pitch to the floor — it was one of the toughest battles of her life. Yvonne was, Brigid had noted long ago with a certain amount of acidity, an attractive woman and was not afraid to use it; thus Brigid found herself more than a little curious how she’d reacted to as dramatic a rejection as she’d received from Greg.
Both women walked to the stairs in silence, Yvonne leading the way, and began to descend. This forced Yvonne to turn back and face Brigid on the landing — and she stopped short.
“What!” Yvonne demanded, apparently having read the battle on Brigid’s face.
“Er, sorry?” said Brigid.
“He told you, didn’t he?” Yvonne said.
“Um,” said Brigid, trying to find a diplomatic response. Unfortunately, this just seemed to incense Yvonne further.
“Well come on, come on, I know you want to say something about it, so go ahead! I admit it, I threw myself at your boyfriend. It was stupid and I made a complete idiot of myself, okay? If you want to make a big deal about it–”
The short “Ha!” that came from Brigid cut off the rest of Yvonne’s sentence. “Ha, ha, ha!” Brigid added, against her will. Realizing that this wasn’t going to make Yvonne any happier, she tried to wave in a way indicating Don’t mind me, I’m just overcome by a random laughing fit and I’m not trying to mock you or anything, really!
Yvonne blinked and stared at Brigid like she was crazy. “What!!!” she demanded again.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Brigid finally managed to say around giggles. “It’s not you, really. It’s just that you called Greg my boyfriend.”
“He’s not?” said Yvonne, looking slightly lost. “Then why…?”
“Why did he go flying backwards like you were a poisonous snake instead of starting up the chika-boppa-WOW music?” Brigid said, still chortling. “Well obviously, because he’s a fathead.”
“So, you’re not, like, jealous or anything?”
“Heck no,” said Brigid. “If I didn’t know Greg, I’d think he was a hottie, too.”
“What does that mean?” Yvonne said, a bit of sharpness returning to her voice.
“Nothing,” Brigid replied, shaking her head. “Nothing at all.” She edged around Yvonne and tried to continue her descent of the stairs.
“Is there a chance?” Yvonne blurted out after a long moment of silence.
“What?”
“For me,” Yvonne said.
Brigid raised her eyebrows. “With Greg?” Yvonne nodded, and Brigid looked back in the general direction of the apartment. Finally, she said, “Well, really, I have no idea. Showing him your breasts was probably a bad move at this stage of the proceedings.” She then zipped away down the stairs, leaving Yvonne staring at her chest, apparently wondering what was wrong with it.
-The Gneech
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