Heather Buyce-Vasquez
Lyllian 199Something
Sabrina’s well-timed quip sends them into laughter at the skinny guy with the pockmarked face trying vainly to contain a growing yellow stain of mustard that oozed down the front of his blue IZOD polo shirt frantically ducks by headed toward the restroom. Lyllian and Sabrina are alternately wolfing down a Red Robin Mud Slide pie and exchanging low blow-by-blow stats about their mutually satisfying love lives.
“So let me get this straight. You finally saw it and your very first word is “fire engine”?” Lyllian laughs again stirring her melted mush pie into lumps of fudge, peanut butter crust and whipped cream.
“Totally. Fire-engine red no doubt”, Sabrina says proudly.
Sabrina was way ahead of Lyllian when it came to ‘experience’ despite the fact that Lyllian and Michael had been exclusively dating for several months. The closest they’d come was a very decent but brief feel under the streetlight near the Wilderness Trail leading up to the house Sabrina shared with her eccentric mom. Lying on the cool pavement, watching the moon twinkle in and out past the yellowed flickering streetlight high above, music playing in her head, Lyllian’s cheek was warm against his, her fingers tentative on his back. He kissed her lips hard. Flames inched along her belly in tight swirls. Hers eyes, dark and soft met his, bright with a tender fluster and an acceptance coiled them together. His hand was warm under her tee-shirt, gentle and familiar.
Later lying on top of the covers of the spare bed in Sabrina’s downstairs Lyllian let herself absorb what had happened. She shifted back and forth in her head. What would her mother say? Her father? Who cared. But what would Jesus do? She sighed and turned over. He would have said to be patient.