On the brink of falling to pieces, a tiny part of her brain that had been quiet—taking in all these sensations as if too surprised to protest—suddenly woke up, and her common sense returned. She pushed Maddie away, none too gently, gasping for breath when she was free.

Maddie looked still dazed, her lips still pursed, her hands held out as if to pull her in again, but Ryann shook her head.

“No.”

Maddie seemed to shake herself awake, her expression guarded, confused. “No?”

“Not here, anyway. I don’t want our first time,” she gestured, “to be outside in a dirty alley.”

They were a few feet away from a series of open trash containers. Ryann was currently leaning against the side wall of a restaurant, and the dumpsters reeked. A black stray cat, who had apparently been watching them, darted away when they looked its way.

“Fair enough,” Maddie said. She grabbed Ryann’s hand and started striding back into the street, nearly dragging her along as she stumbled along on semi-numb legs.

They could see the hotel now, the pink shiny and gleaming from the sunset as if lit from within, and they sped up, suddenly giggly and silly. Ryann was caught with a wild, vast joy and had to fight the urge to stop and scream about it to the world.

As they approached the door to the hotel, Ryann put a finger up to her lips, wanting, for once, to sneak into her room without being noticed. Maddie, clearly catching on, pointed upward at the bells above the door on the inside, and Ryann sighed, realizing her plan wasn’t likely to work.

“Let’s be as quick as we can,” she told Maddie. “Say hi and keep walking.”

As predicted, Ethel popped out of the dining room and into the lobby the moment they were inside, and while she and Maddie greeted her briefly, they kept moving forward and up the stairs to her room, almost as if they had somewhere they had to hurry off to, which was, in a way, true.

Once inside her room, that quiet, calming voice in her mind turned off, and she launched herself at Maddie, pushing her back and onto the silly heart-shaped bed. Maddie gasped and barked a laugh of delighted surprise before sitting up again to pull Ryann down and on top of her. Maddie flipped her a moment later, pushing her legs out and to the sides around her hips. Maddie’s lips were back on her pulse point soon after, and then Ryann was pulling at her clothes, urgently trying to wrestle her shirt over her head. Maddie laughed, sitting up a little to help her before unbuttoning and tossing her own shirt to the side. Their pants followed, and then they were back in each other’s arms, only their underwear and bras dividing their naked bodies.