Go home with Lara

Things aren’t perfect, but it feels good to go home. You don’t mind America particularly, but it’s been a long, stressful summer. It’s a long two flights back, but at least they’re relaxing. Lara seems very at home on planes, and that must be because she travels so much. Her passport is completely full of stamps. Yours has like six.

Lara doesn’t make a big deal about it, and she dresses like lesbian hiker most of the time, so it’s easy not to notice that she’s rich. You notice that when a car picks you at the airport. You feel like you should make fun of her for having a Jag, but you don’t.

Her house is a huge, country mansion on a sprawling estate in Surrey.

“Winston has the week off,” Lara says, looking bored as she gazes out the window at the house as you approach. “There’s no one to cook for us.” Who’s Winston? Her butler? “I’ll order something.”

The house is big and kind of lonely without anyone around, but pretty spectacular. It’s full of fancy, old stuff, like an art museum. There’s suits of armor and swords.

You’re badly jetlagged, but it’s only about 6PM. You and Lara eat dinner together on a sofa with a tablet propped up, showing the latest FUTA stuff. There’s Riley and the captains doing their tour, and highlights from the season. Riley is… OK at this, when she talks. She says all the right things, but she’s not as confident as she could be. To you, that’s cute. To FUTA, they probably wish she was a bit saucier.

Thinking about that annoys you.

“You miss her?” Lara asks, using chopsticks to eat from her takeout box.

“Not right at this moment I don’t,” you say.

“Oh. What a pity,” Lara says.

“Shut it. I’m a married woman.”

That makes Lara **** on her food trying not to laugh, but you’re not really being funny. You’re still grumpy.

You could be with Riley right now on your own sofa at home without your family there. That would be romantic as hell.

“Why didn’t you bring Sam?” you ask her. You know that Lara hooked up with Sam, a girl on Pink Team, several times over the course of the season. You never got the vibe that they were very serious, but if Lara’s that thirsty, why not? Sam seemed nice enough to you, if a bit clingy.

“I travel all the time, Beth.”

“I know. I was there,” you reply. Over the years at school, Lara was constantly gone, and coming back all covered in bruises and stuff.

“It’s not easy to keep a relationship healthy when you aren’t around,” Lara says, sounding uncharacteristically serious. “I know how she feels.” She looks at Riley on the screen, who is blushing and waving to fans.

“I need a shower,” Lara says, standing up. “I’m afraid we’re very poor and have to conserve water. There’s only the one shower, and it’s very small. We’ll have to share it.”

You don’t even have the energy to retort to that. “You’re an idiot,” you say.

“You were the one snoring on the plane.”

“I don’t snore.”

“That’s why I was surprised,” she says. “I didn’t hear you snore after I melted you into a puddle of pure, distilled pleasure the other night. So it really startled me,” she goes on, keeping her face straight.

You throw a pillow at her, and she leaves. You roll your eyes and curl up on the sofa with the tablet. Riley’s posing with fans for photographs in the video. She jumps suddenly with a squeak, looking accusingly at the woman posing with her, who obviously just pinched her bottom. You bitterly put the tablet down. Looks like Riley’s having plenty of fun.