124. Chapter 124

Maggie splutters helplessly when Alex steps out of her bedroom, taking in the sight of her girlfriend in a tight, low cut black dress, makeup just so, and glasses… glasses very much on.

“Al… Alex, you… you look, um… I don’t know if Blue Springs High quite ready for your… for you.”

“Oh,” Alex pouts, adjusting her glasses and licking her red lips. “Should I change?”

“No, no, nnhnn, no. Not at all, not even a little bit.”

“I think what my daughter is trying to say is that you look beautiful, Alexandra,” Maggie’s mom supplies as she passes Maggie’s room, and Alex blushes deeply.

“Thank you, Mrs. Sawyer.”

“Yeah, thanks for being smoother with my girlfriend than I am, Ma.”

Her mother just laughs and waves them off.

“You’re going to be late for this reunion. Might be nice for you to show up on time, Margaret: show them all you’ve changed some.”

Maggie groans as she pulls her mom in for a kiss on the cheek, adjusting her suit jacket and offering Alex her arm as she led her down the stairs.

“Feel like I’m taking you to prom.”

Alex beams. “Who did you take to prom?”

Maggie wilts slightly. “I didn’t go. I was uh… I was dating this girl, but her dad found out and it uh… wasn’t exactly pretty.”

“Oh, babe.” Alex strokes her cheek and kisses her face gently, lightly, so she doesn’t leave a lipstick stain.

“It’s cool. Look who I get to bring now.”

“Oh, so I’m your trophy girlfriend?” Alex flirts, but Maggie’s eyes grow serious.

“No. Never. You are everything to me, Alex, I’d never reduce you to – ”

“Oh honey, I was just teasing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Yes. But… trophy girlfriend or not, I am proud to be going with you. Get to see where you grew up.”

Maggie’s smile is back, and she opens the door of her pickup for Alex and offers her hand to help Alex step inside.

She drives with one hand on the wheel, the other hanging out the window, regaling Alex with stories of her childhood, pointing out which dirt roads led to trouble and which led to adventure and which led to both.

She grows quiet as they pull into her high school’s parking lot, and her eyes grow keen like they do when she’s on a mission. She rattles off the names of the owners of some of the cars in the lot, some of the trucks in the lot, because this isn’t a town that changes very much.

“You sure you’re okay to come with me? These people aren’t all gonna be used to… this. Us.”

“I’m not any less sure than I was the first sixteen times you asked me, Mags. And anyway, wouldn’t Tommy kill you if we bailed?”

Maggie grins at the mention of her high school best friend, the only other out gay kid in school. In town.

And Tommy is the only reason Maggie leaves Alex’s side even for a moment during the night, the gym crowded with memories and old grudges and old flames and old inside jokes and old traumas and old prides.

Maggie steals off with Tommy, just for a moment, to see if a secret passage they used to take partners to make out in is still there, and Maggie wants to bring Alex but Tommy invokes an old code they had to keep it sacred, to keep it only between them and their high school people, and I really like you, Alex, and this one really loves you, but we swore a blood oath and Alex laughs and waves them away because I’ll be fine, babe, you guys have fun, and it’s only for a moment, but a moment is all it takes.

“Hey beautiful,” a deep voice sounds right on Alex’s neck, and she closes her eyes for a moment to refrain from punching him right away, because Maggie’s told her stories, and odds are she’d love to deck most men in this room.

Alex turns and Alex just arches an eyebrow and Alex simply regards the man who still has the lean build of a football star with bored eyes.

“They don’t make ‘em like you in Blue Springs, baby, so I’m guessing you’re someone’s date, but lemme tell you, I came here alone and I can show you a better time than he can.”

“Oh, no man – and certainly not you – could give me a better time than she does.”

The man’s brow furrows and his jaw clenches and he barks a harsh laugh. “What, you Sawyer’s girl? Little science freak’s family should’ve known they didn’t belong here, and she should know that a girl like you deserves a real man. I can give you that.”

Alex puts down her drink and Alex licks her lips and casts her voice low. “A real man?”

He grins and takes a step closer to her, his lips a breath away from hers.

“Yeah.”

Alex arches a quick eyebrow, and Alex nods, and Alex shifts, and Alex slams his head down into the table behind her.

“Next time you wanna be a racist, misogynist prick, you might wanna remember that your entire high school class just watched you get slammed down by a woman in five inch heels who’s going to go home to Maggie Sawyer’s beautiful family and have far better sex with her than any woman will ever have with you.”

She tugs him back up by his hair and she picks up her drink and she strolls away, toward Maggie and Tommy’s slack jaws, Tommy’s eyes alight like a five year old on Christmas morning, Maggie’s eyes alight like she’s never seen anyone quite as attractive as Alex fucking Danvers.

Because she hasn’t.

And the slow clap that starts in the back of the gym and circulates through all the nerds, all the misfits, all the people of color, all the queers, and eventually spreads even to the popular girls who’d never really liked how the quarterback treated them anyway makes Alex curtsy, makes Alex blush, makes Alex fall into Maggie’s arms and swoon as she’s kissed like she’s never been kissed before, to a combination of angry silence and liberated cheers.

And that night, she does have far better sex with Maggie than any woman’s ever had.

With anyone.