Page 8 of Five Years
“What?” Leah quizzed.
Ariana was fresh-faced and enviably smooth-skinned—time seemed to have stood still for her. Leah watched as her lips closed around the edge of her martini glass, her frown prominent. The walls of hesitation slowly began to crumble.
“I don’t want to bore you with career talk,” Ariana admitted.
“Then why did you ask me to come here?”
It was a simple question. Ariana sat upright in her chair, one arm over the yellow leather backrest.
“I. . . wanted to talk,” Ariana admitted.
“Is there something you want to talk about?” Leah probed.
Ariana shook her head, as though having a topic of conversation in mind seemed bizarre.
“Okay. . .” Leah rolled her eyes.
Ariana laughed. “You haven’t changed.”
“What does that mean?”
“The way you roll your eyes—it’s amusing to me.”
Comically, Leah rolled them again.
“Do you remember the second trip we took to New York?” Ariana asked.
“Yes, how could I forget?” Leah said.
“Do you still have it?” Ariana rolled the leg of her satin trousers to reveal the small black smudge on the inside of her left ankle. It was the world’s tiniest, most minimalistic pizza slice tattoo. Leah ushered the strap of her high heel upwards to reveal the same, matching tattoo.
The permanent mark on their bodies had been a way of commemorating their time together. Leah had considered removing it altogether a few years prior, but unfavourable thoughts about the laser removal process caused her to reconsider—at least, that’s what she told herself.
“I still can’t believe you talked me into getting a pizza slice permanently tattooed on my body,” Leah laughed.
“I actually like it. If you squint your eyes, it sort of looks like a baby penguin sliding on its belly.”
“That’s quite the imagination you’ve got there,” Leah teased.
“Seriously, look.” Ariana lifted her ankle upwards. “There’s the penguin’s beak, its tail is the tip of the pizza, and its wing is the bit of cheese dripping off. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”
Leah could 1000% unsee the penguin. What she couldn’t unsee was Ariana’s legs. Her gaze traced the curve of her calf, the smoothness of her skin glistening underneath the soft light of the bar. There was a time when those elongated legs would wrap around Leah’s body like a work of art in motion.
“Uh-huh.”
She jolted from her trance as Ariana lost her balance, using Leah’s thigh to stop herself from falling face-first off the edge of the chair and into Leah’s lap. The hand placement caused Leah’s body to tremble.
“Sorry,” Ariana smiled nervously. “I’m a klutz.”
Leah had always thought that side of Ariana was cute—the clumsy, blunderful side of her that not many people got to witness. Ariana was seemingly unbreakable on the surface. She had this aura that told of a self-assured individual who knew exactly who she was and what she wanted. Leah knew her to be that person, but she also knew her to be the playful, charismatic, dorky girl who once folded twenty-five individual pieces of paper into origami cranes so she could stealthily place one on the shoulder of every guest at her parents’ anniversary party.
“You always were,” Leah said, a nostalgic twinkle in her eye.
“You always had this way of making me feel like I could truly be myself,” she admitted, a hint of vulnerability in Ariana’s tone.
Leah chuckled softly; her gaze lingered on Ariana’s face. “I’m sure other people make you feel that way too.”
Their eyes met, and in the silence, something lingered—an understanding, a vulnerability.
