Page 56 of Vengefully Matched

“I want to explain something to you. I don’t think I have been entirely fair.” Agatha nibbled on her lip, trying to calm herself with random facts. Like how dinosaurs roamed the earth for about 180 million years, while humans had only been around for about 300,000, which meant that dinosaurs, though now extinct, existed for far longer than human beings had in history.

That calmed her. Magic and all, they were nothing, blips in time compared to dinosaurs.

“Because you suspected I was trying to murder you up until I literally lost a digit?” Prissy smiled wryly, holding up the still-bandaged, albeit much less bulkily, finger.

Agatha shook her head, taking a deep breath and remembering the dinos. “No. I wanted to say I’m sorry for how much I acted like I hated you these past months.”

“And here I was thinking we were bosom buddies,” said Priscilla, and her eyes did in fact skate Agatha’s neckline.

Fuck it. Not even terrible lizards could distract from this feeling, this tension, that stretched taut between them.

She wanted to play it cooler, but she was incapable, and she found her own hand trailing down one side of her neckline, over the top of the heft of her left breast, and then back up over the right one and up the other side of the V.

Prissy watched her, face impassive, but for her eyes, which gave her away—hooded, with pupils blown wide.

“I never really hated you. Just the idea of you, and your freedom, but also because of what Jonathan did.” Agatha’s hairs stood up. She felt raw from the honesty of the admission.

At the sound of his name, Priscilla’s eyes snapped back up to hers, the moment of longing snapped clean in half.

“What did he do?” Her voice was dangerous. Low.

“It was right after you ran, and then Evelyn went after you. Vickie came back in and was talking to the wedding party, I think strategizing a smooth exit plan, and that’s when my—despicable drunk Jonathan stood up.” She couldn’t even bring herself to call him her boyfriend out loud, not even with ex in front of it. He was a bastardly, pigeon-livered, rump-fed runion, too dreadful to even describe with modern insults. She needed finely aged ones to match the level of his repulsion.

Priscilla cracked her knuckles. “I’ll kill him if you like.” She didn’t sound like she was joking.

Agatha shook her head. “He’s not worth that kind of effort, all things considered.”

Raising her glass, Prissy nodded. “Well, I’ll drink to being well rid of an awful man.”

“Cheers.” Agatha held hers up and gulped down what was left. “He gave this absolutely dreadful speech,” she admitted. “After you had gone, he got up and spoke the most embarrassing and horrifying things. I very nearly cast a spell to vanish into a hole in the ground.”

“A speech? At my wedding?” Priscilla raised an eyebrow. “Are men okay?”

Agatha shook her head vigorously. “Most of them are not, not at all. And I guess it was your almost wedding, not that this makes it better.”

“Ouch. But true.” Priscilla gestured to the server, her long, tempting fingers somehow procuring two more drinks in record time, and raising another glass to Agatha.

She drank. “He said he was inspired by you leaving, and that he’d like to leave me, too, because I was boring, and trite in what he called my phases and silliness trying to make up for that boredom.” Agatha swallowed, trying not to let the memory of the awkwardness creep up too much.

“He told you it was just a phase while breaking up with you?” Priscilla’s nostrils flared now, and her voice was angry.

She nodded, miserable at the memory. “In so many words. He didn’t say it directly, but he was absolutely alluding to the conversation we had a year or so earlier, when I came out to him.” She ran a hand down her face. It had been stupid of her to think that this specific man could see her for who she really was, could look at her authentic self and not feel threatened and like he needed to run, or crack a bad joke at the very least.

“I take it he did not handle that well.” Priscilla’s pretty mouth was set in a frown, and she cracked a knuckle on her good hand.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, because I was mid-thirties and admitting for the first time out loud that I’m bisexual, but he did not take it well in the slightest.” It was a relief to say that out loud.

“That absolute wanker.” Priscilla snorted. “You’re far too good for him, Agatha.”

“He asked if it was a phase, and then he asked if this meant I wanted to have a threesome. I shut that down, of course, but he only ever saw the admission as either a threat to his sexuality or a way to consider objectifying me.”

“Fucking men,” Priscilla said from between gritted teeth.

“It’s what I’ve been doing all these years, and I must admit I like it, when they’re not total assholes. But…” She blushed, taking a long drink.

“But?”

“I wish I spent more time fucking women too.”