Jesse chuckles politely, but Sawyer screeches.
“That’s exactly what my Native grandma used to say about white people and jigsaws. They’re so bored by their lives, they need to invent problems.”
Natasha's tickled by this, she laughs and claps her hands together in delight. No-one else laughs, but that's fine by Natasha. She enjoys giggling with Sawyer, feeling like two naughty girls at the back of the school bus.
“Let me grab my shit and we’ll go home,” Sawyer starts stuffing her laptop, lanyard and some pink stationary in her bag.
“Fuck – my hummus is in the refrigerator. I'll just quickly get it,” Sawyer disappears out the door.
Jesse stares at Natasha, Natasha stares at Jesse. She shifts in her black heels, pulls up the cup of her bodysuit.
“You catch the Sox game against the Astros?”
“Nah,” she replies. He doesn't make any further attempt at conversation.
Jesse and Tom go back to coiling up cables. Jenny hauls the bag out of the room.
“You ready?” Sawyer reappears in the doorway, rucksack slung over one shoulder.
She’s quiet as she leads Natasha to her car, then crowds Natasha up against the cool metal. With Sawyer in her steelies and Natasha in heels they are almost the same height. Sawyer is aggressive in her kisses, biting at Natasha’s lips and pulling her ears.
“Sawyer, come on. I want to get home now,” Natasha pants into Sawyer’s hair. Her shoulders feel stiff and heavy with wanting to fuck Sawyer. Her hands tingle, she doesn’t know where to put them. Even as she tells her to open the car door, she rocks her hips against Sawyer.
Sawyer looks beautiful while she drives. The bands of yellow light on the freeway pass over her face quicker and quicker as she accelerates. The raindrops on the windscreen look like stars as they reflect the light of oncoming cars. She doesn't remember Sawyer driving this quickly before, but Sawyer seems wild with adrenaline. She digs her fingers into Sawyer’s upper thigh. Her own top lip is sweating, and Sawyer’s leg vibrates under her hand. Sawyer stabs at the radio, but the late-night dance music just makes Natasha think of grinding into Sawyer. She cracks her knuckles.
Sawyer’s driving is getting faster and more reckless. A car segues out of the inner lane and into Sawyer’s, pulling out in front of them. She doesn’t slow or brake, just keeps her eyes on the road and her hand perfectly still on the wheel. Natasha can see every wrinkle in the plastic bumper stickers on the car in front, and Sawyer’s just smiling. Natasha’s never been afraid of death, has invited it too much to fear it. That’s coming in handy now, because she suspects that most other people would be clinging to the car door and closing their eyes in the face of Sawyer’s driving.
“How can’t you drive?” Sawyer raises her voice to be heard over the roaring engine. When all her friends were learning, Natasha had been far too anxious to even think about sitting alone in a small tin box with an old man. Then she’d been in art college in the city, and spent most of her 20s using various substances and trying to avoid killing herself.
She shrugs, “I’ve always lived centrally. Never needed to.”
Sawyer stares at her, “I love driving. My granddad taught me on all the dead roads in Northwoods, and I did the test the day I was allowed. I drove myself to college, and never drove home again.”
Sawyer takes a corner smoothly and capably, before overtaking three other cars in their lane.
“I could teach you.”
Natasha imagines herself in control of this two-ton death machine. She’d rather not.
Sawyer shrugs, takes one hand off the wheel to rub Natasha’s knee. Natasha’s knee is aching from the cold and sitting all evening, and she’s grateful for Sawyer’s big hot hand curled over her kneecap.
“Did you like the show?”
“I did. My favorite bit was the white light. I felt that was her, you know, self-awareness. And then when it went orange that was her shutting that awareness down.”
Sawyer hums as she bangs a left. Natasha knows she likes listening to Natasha ramble and hypothesize.
“And even though she knows what she’s doing is self-sabotage, she’d rather just do that than face the actual truth. Because those self-sabotaging behaviors are comforting, even though they also make you feel like shit.”
“Anything else?” Sawyer smirks as she watches Natasha bite her nails and think.
“The shadows were really clever, and the way you used them to demarcate space. Her lifestyle and her relationships are all in that liminal space, so it makes sense that her material boundaries are somewhat liminal too.”
Sawyer sighs, “I could listen to you talk about my work for hours.” Sawyer looks as smug as an overfed cat. Natasha needs to get to JP now, so she can throw Sawyer down and fuck her until she can’t move or speak.
Sawyer’s running up the steps to Natasha’s attic apartment practically as soon as she switches the engine off. Sawyer pulls at her own clothes as she steps through the door, and heads straight to Natasha’s room. Natasha tries to slow herself down, and follows Sawyer’s hips as they sway inside her dull black cargo pants.
“I like that suit but get it the fuck off,” Sawyer yells loud enough for the neighbours to hear as Natasha makes her way through the living room.
Natasha finds Sawyer
