Ride the night rail

Four years, me and Eden had been friends. As platonic as friendships between two bisexual young women of loose morals could be. She called herself pansexual, but I'm not sure I could tell you the difference. It didn't look like it changed anything about the way we conducted ourselves. Now we were sitting on the train out to the address Rania had given us. The easy conversation that always flowed between us had dried up. Zip. Squelch. A riverbed in a drought. Every few minutes one of us would comment on the ads above our heads or the sights we could see through the dark outside the window, when the rail ventured aboveground.

The backlash hit me at the worst time.

"Shit," I groaned, doubling over in my seat. I pressed my hands against my eyes like I could gouge them out. Fuck, this seemed like it was over. What the fuck brought this—

"Babe?" Eden's hand on my shoulder. She leans in to look me in the eye, but I can't look back at her. It's too

"Gah," I say.

"Oh my God, babe, okay, one second, let me find a first aid–"

"No! I'm okay, I'm okay!"

Despite my protests, the pain was getting worse, not better. There was something inside my skull. It didn't feel like synapses misfiring, neurons, fuck it, I don't know, I'm not a neuroscientist, it just fucking hurts, and then...

Your friend needs you. This is where you are. Not anywhere else, not anywhen. The train. There are florescent lights over your head. Under your butt there's a crappy felt-kinda-fabric seat. It's the same as any other day. Look at Eden. She's worried about you. You show up at her door off your rocker, pass out in her bed, eat an entire (well, a half) chicken in five seconds, and then start rattling off phone calls and text messages to strangers she's never met.

And at the end of the line was Rania. When I blinked I could see that picture burned into my eyelids. Neither of us had the guts to look at it again, because then we might have to admit what we were expecting would happen when we got off the train. What happened to our confidence? Neither of us were anxious or virginal. And it wasn't new information I was confronted with in that conversation. I'd seen it last night. That much I could remember.

"I'm fine," I said breathlessly. And forced my back to straighten out. My palms pressed against the seat to remind me it was there. I was there.

"Maybe we should go back home," Eden said.

To hers, or mine? Either way I didn't like the idea. "We have to talk to Rania," I said. Talk. I doubted there would be a lot of talking going on.

The stops slipped past. I kept a count in my head, and we were getting very close to the one nearest Rania's place. The speaker blared an indecipherable announcement. I took that to mean the moment of truth had arrived.

Me and Eden stepped off the train into the crisp night air of late autumn. "Let me just double check her address," I said.

"Good idea," said Eden, with unusual coldness.