A drippy day at the Surfside Café with Kev and Rei

It was a gloomy, drippy day at the coffee shop by the beach, so there was no trouble getting a table at the window for a late lunch.

Kevin and Rei had tried to make a go of surfing on an off day, but had quit around noon.

Rei laughed. "So we were free early."

"Wind was from the wrong side," Kevin explained. "Started with an okay break, but the wind shifted and the break just went away." He shook his head. "Left me out there on my board like a guy standing in the rain with his dick in his hand."

"So what does that make me?" Rei asked.

"You could still get it up, babe," Kevin said. "I couldn't catch a wave, and you were still riding."

"It was a crummy break," Rei said. "But I have a low center of gravity."

She and Kevin were the shortest and tallest in Stuart's surf crew, and an odd couple in other ways. Her black hair in a velvet-short side buzz was a contrast for his red locks, and his milky, freckled skin was ghostly pale next to her compact golden contours.

"Did Gary tell you how we got together?" Rei said. "Me and Kev? Well..."

Rei told the story of how she'd been drunk and full of angry fuck energy after a bad breakup. "I mean, so angry that I just grabbed the first non-dyke who wouldn't screw me over, you know?"

Bernie's cheeks colored. Gary had been her first guy after a bad breakup with her girlfriend Habiba. It hadn't been an impulse like Rei's, exactly.

"But what the fuck, I grab the guy raised by two lesbians and he's actually got game, you know?" She holds both hands up in front of her mouth, the webs of her thumbs outlining a vulva shape. Rei wiggles her tongue tip up and down between her hands and rolls her eyes up to show the whites. "Not gonna give THAT up just because the drama bitch wants me back." Rei spreads her hands wide. "I mean, what a world. Right?"

Gary looked over at Bernie. Her jaw was tense and her lips were twitching.

Then Bernie burst out in a loud peal of laughter, nodding at Rei.

Gary looked round, worried at the noise, but the café was at the slowest hour of a slow day. The two single customers on stools at the counter weren't bothered.

"I know, right?" Rei said. "Right? He rings your bell. Fuck. Disaster lesbians one and two, we can't even stick to the basic script."

"It's less problematic these days? To be bi?" Bernie said. "I mean, you can still be a disaster bisexual but that's not automatic like it used to be."

Rei laughed. "What if I want to be a disaster?"

Kevin snorted. "You are the most non-disaster person in Stu's surf crew," he said.

"I'm just there for you, babe," Rei said. "And before you say Sharon and Debbie, they're just showing off for Stuart or for their boyfriends. They're okay as party favors, but never dates."

Gary managed to pull Bernie aside before they left the café. "What do you think of Rei?" he asked.