"You're Top Tits With Me, Dorian"

Hotel rooms are no fun, no fun at all if you’re there by yourself like Beatriz was. Magdalene was away in New York somewhere, doing whatever with whomever not that Beatriz really minded. They had made their peace; they didn’t really need to, though, both were eager to forgive or be forgiven by the one they love, Magdalene more than Beatriz.

Maybe time apart was good, makes the heart fonder.

Beatriz owned Magdalene a million sorrys and felt terrible today for what she had done those months ago, but they never needed to be said and she didn’t know how to say them.

Anyway, Magdalene’s away and she was alone, nothing to do, nothing to watch, no company to entertain. Just a stocked bar and a very nice room with no one to drink and trash the place with.

What a drag.

Maybe she should go out, but where? She didn’t know any bars and didn’t really feel like being surrounded by drunken assholes.

Not tonight anyway.

Well then what?

…

Ice cream would be nice. Yeah, ice cream’s always nice. When’s the last time she had ice cream, she couldn’t even remember. Ice cream and maybe some videos, surely there’s a video store around here.

She set out for a pint of ice cream and some toppings and videos to pass the time, but then she saw an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant, The Jade Dragon.

Her stomach growled at her.

Hmm, can’t gorge on an empty stomach. Well’s the last time I even ate?

The place seemed nice enough and the hostess was very friendly and a fan. Beatriz smiled at her and she got her all settled in. She grabbed a plate and surveyed the buffet before making selections. She was shoveling shrimp fried rice in a giant heap on her plate when she had a slight collision.

"Sorry," the lithe figured grunted and glanced up at her.

"It's cool." She spoke soft, like a murmur and acknowledged the woman who grinned a bit and stepped back.

Why, well, well, well, Ms. Dorian Riley. How nice.

"'Ello, Batista. Nice to see you out of the squared circle," she said softly, picking up a piece of some brown-liquid covered chicken, setting it on her plate.

"Likewise." Beatriz smiles too and helps herself to some eggrolls.

"Fancy meeting you here," she said, sounding very friendly.

She nods. It was very rare that she ran into co-workers outside of the arena and even there she rarely ran into anywhere.

"It is something different."

Dorian just shrugs and nods and then Beatriz adds, "A truly pleasant change." and she smiles.

It’s such a nice smile.

"Indeed. I needed to get out." She pauses while taking another piece of chicken, "I needed comfort food, more than that."

"Yeah, I was on my way for ice cream, but I thought, 'What's the point of eating junk food on an empty stomach?'"

She laughed at that, shaking her head and heading toward the table, waiting for Beatriz.

She is so nice.

For some reason, she didn’t peg Dorian and the nice type.

"Good thinking. I knew there was a reason I liked you."

Beatriz laughs and follows her.

She likes me, wow.

For some other reason, she didn’t think Dorian would have liked her, just like she thinks a lot of people probably don’t. She doesn’t care about most of the people who don’t, but Dorian seems like a cool chick.

That hot, butterfly fluttery feeling came, the kind you feel when you meet someone you admire and they want to spend some of their time with you.

"I'm glad I ran into you, I hate eating alone."

She really did, it was something that stemmed from being an only child and being by herself while her mother worked. It was something about eating dinner alone that always bothered her, didn’t feel right.

Dorian went ahead and sat her food down at Beatriz’s table and grabbed her drink, sliding into the seat.

"I'm in total agreement there. I hate it, but I'm used to it. I suppose if Erin had his way, though, it'd be different," She contemplated, both brows arching, her face molding into a grimace.

Beatriz didn’t know who “Aaron” was, but it was somebody that was obviously bothering her.

"Lemme guess," she says sitting as well, "your guy's giving you shit?"

Dorian snorts at this.

"Hell no, he's not my guy. He wants to be, and that's the problem. Dorian Riley does not do relationships. I dislike emotions, because I dislike the pain that comes with them. I'd rather be stabbed in the foot than have my heart broken," she grumbled.

Oh, I see.

"Yeah, yeah, I been there a few times. Miserable place to be. My heart's been used and abused, but that's mostly my fault." She speaks with a rueful smile.

She had a tendency to trust her love with the wrong kind of people.

Dorian sighed and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it and taking her time to inhale and enjoy the taste before exhaling.

Beatriz mentally added cigarettes to that list of ice cream and videos.

"I don't know what to do, Beatriz. He seems sincere, but like I said. I don't like being with anyone. The past haunts me, you know? It haunts us all."

Beatriz knew that whole thing all too well.

Poor girl.

"Yeah, yeah it does, but I think there's a time where we have to step outside of ourselves and go, 'I'm sick of your shit', accept that things happened that you couldn't change, and then focus on the things that need to change now.

She dips her eggroll in some red orange sauce and chews on it.

Mmmm…

Dorian nodded in agreement eating before puffing on her cancer stick.

"Yes, I gathered that much about life. But fuck me if I don't really want to take the chance of getting socked in the heart by the laughing Fates of Life's cruel sense of humor."

"You get bit the first time and think you'll get bit the second. I can sympathize."

She nibbles the eggroll while Dorian laughs lowly with her brow cocked, flicking the exhausted ashes.

"The second time, darlin'? Why don't y'try the... oh... seventh time?" she drags and through a cloud of smoke, "I was very trusting as a child, but as I grew older, my tolerance and ear for bullshit became a lot clearer than anyone would expect it to have come to."

"Well, I was speaking hypothetically." She smiles and feels sheepishly. "But I know what you're saying."

Dorian smiled a little and nodded, sighing, and finishing her cigarette, and eats some more. Beatriz follows suit, digging into her rice.

"Yeah. I know what you mean, love, I do. But I don't know if this is a river I'm ready to cross. I'm...afraid." She wrinkled her nose and shuddered visibly. "I'm afraid that if I take this leap, I won't be able to turn back to being the cold, heartless little bitch I was before Erin, and steel myself against this kind of shit."

"You're looking at this the wrong way." Beatriz polishes off her eggroll and continues. "You think that he'll weaken you and maybe he will in some places, but I think you'll only lose that ability to steel against this kind of shit if you want to."

She sucks thoughtfully from her straw and then adds, "But then again, I'm not really one to talk to about being steel and heartless."

She could be steel and heartless to complete strangers in the ring, but once somebody softened her up with affections, she was pretty much a glob of impressionable putty. Someone told her once she was intimidating, and that made her laugh because she’s really like a pussycat: blasé and affectionate and occasionally catty.

Dorian shrugged slight, nodded, and sipped her soda.

"I guess that's right. I don't know, though. I guess I need to think on this, but he needs to give me space. I guess he doesn't understand that. Guys usually don't, though, do they?" Her smile was as rueful as the one Beatriz gave earlier.

Beatriz’s experiences with men had been the opposite, most of them seemed to only want you at night and wondered why you even hung around in the morning and she wondered the same so opted to leave before the guy woke up so things wouldn’t be awkward, their business was finished.

"I wouldn't know, lately I've been waking up and leaving them before they could do anything. I had a few guys do that to me and decided to beat them to it."

She briefly remembered the first time she woke up from a one nighter when the guy was gone and felt so much like a whore and she couldn’t understand why she did. But she stopped feeling guilty, it’s not like she was slutty about it. She then thought again of how she had let David beat her to the punch of leaving first. If only she hadn’t went back to bed, back to his warm, passionate embrace…

Dorian chuckled at that and shook her head grinning and blushing for some reason before patting her lips with a napkin. She shifts in her seat.

Now she thinks I’m a whore…maybe I am.

"Well, see... I mostly always beat the guys to that after the first two times. I don't remember a time in the past three or four years where the guy has beaten me to it.", she grinned and shrugged, arching her brows, "More less waited until their snores filled the room, got up, got dressed and got the fuck out. In the way of guys, it’s the five F's rule. You find them, you feed them, they finger you, and you guys fuck. And then? You flee before they get the chance to steal that from you." She laughs and winks.

Beatriz smiles and is very amused, what a way to put it.

"I don't think about it quite that way, but yeah," she shrug, "I'll go with that."

Dorian shrugged and smiled again, Beatriz realizes how much potential this friendship could have.

"Eh, it's just the way I've learned to think of it these past years of my rakehellish ways. And you know what? I can't be called a slut, because I fuck to fuck. Sluts fuck to find someone they think will love them."

"I fuck because I don't like masturbating." She laughs loudly at herself, not believing she said that but yet feels comfortable saying things like this in front of Dorian. "That and, uh, y'know, fucking's just nice sometimes. Like ice cream. Or better." Smile.

"Touché," she says with a wiping her grinning mouth. "Masturbating is no fun; and ice cream is very, very good."

You’re top tits with me, Dorian.