Each chew of each bite of Trinity’s hot dog made her uncomfortable.

She sat at the table in the following configuration: Dot at the window seat in the bench booth, herself next to her best friend, Harlan across from Dot, and Victoria across from her. Victoria, who had shut off her mind so easily in the busy airport. Victoria, who seemed to take amusement, or satisfaction, or something or another every time Trinity displayed even a modicum of agreeability.

It happened again when Trinity ordered her food. It’s not like there was much on the menu to order, and she didn’t want anything all too complicated. Her options were simple. Hot dog, plain. Hot dog, ketchup. Hot dog, mustard. Hot dog, relish. Hot dog, some permutation of the aforementioned condiments.

“I’d like a hot dog with just mustard on it,” Harlan had decided. “It won’t be as bad for the heartburn. What are you getting, Trinity?”

Trinity had been the only person, then, who hadn’t verbalized her order yet. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

She wouldn’t have been able to say for sure, but she thought she’d felt Victoria’s hand behind her graze her lower back in some sort of approval.

And then she ate that very hot dog across from Victoria, who ate her own — ketchup, mustard, relish, bacon bits. The menu didn’t even mention bacon bits and she managed to get them — without looking at it once. She kept her dark eyes trained on Trinity, who shrank beneath their watch.

Harlan, on the other hand, wouldn’t look directly at Trinity. She wondered if he was upset she poached his order, or maybe if he was still rattled by Dot’s antics on the drive. It was neither the time nor the place to ask, where it would be so obvious and could cause strife to Dot or Victoria to inquire about, so Trinity did not.

“Do you like watching people eat?” she instead asked Victoria, when she could turtle herself no further into her shoulders.

“I enjoy watching people wither when I look at them. It’s cute. You’re still thinking about our handshake.”

Trinity rose, turning her face away. “I need to go to the washroom.”

She walked just about as quickly as she had in the airport when she first saw Harlan in the crowd. She pushed past the bathroom door with her shoulder, letting it swing shut behind her. She stopped at the sink.

Her loose black sweater looked washed out in the white lights. So did her pale eyes. She stood in front of the overly-polished mirrors and scowled.

Trinity reached for the nearest paper towel dispenser and pulled a few flimsy sheets out, tearing them in a manner that deviated from their intended zigzag perforations. She waved her hand beneath the sensor on the faucet — the same hand Harlan had held in the car — until a narrow, cold stream of water flowed out. She flicked the paper towels beneath the stream quickly, just enough to make them a little more than damp, then padded them against her face.

Get it together, she thought to herself, you knew Victoria was a bit intense this whole time.

But… intense about graphic novel volumes. Collectibles. Printing errors. Not about exercising the tricks of her profession out of nowhere and staring laser holes through self-conscious eaters. Maybe it took a bit of an absolute weirdo to have the specific demeanor Victoria did that made Trinity interested in being her friend in the first place, despite her losing the bidding war.

She balled up the paper towels and tossed them into the garbage bin behind her, throwing them over her shoulder. They missed by more than Trinity would have liked to admit, and she sighed in relief that there were no cameras allowed in the washroom, so no one could see her absolute epic fail.

Trinity leaned against the counter. She needed to talk to someone outside of the situation. There was a whole real world out there, after all, beyond the confines of the strange aberration in experience her trip to the airport kicked off. She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her black skinny jeans and texted Marsh.

Trinity: Hey. How’d your exam go?

Marsh: Either I killed it or it killed me.

Trinity: You’ve got this!

Trinity: I’ve seen Harlan and Victoria

Trinity: like in real life

Marsh: No way. Let me just rot in my envy over here for a minute why don’t you

Trinity: I don’t know how much there is to envy. Victoria’s weird

Marsh: … and water is wet.

Mid-text, Trinity heard steps toward the washroom. She put her phone back in her pocket and turned back toward the sink.

“There you are.” Victoria swung the door open and held it with a lithe arm.

“V-Victoria. Hi.”

“I want to talk to you outside.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me on this one. Not every conversation needs to be had with the whole room, if you know what I mean.”

Trinity did know. It was why she stepped out to text with Marsh instead of questioning her circumstances any more than she did at the table.

She followed Victoria out of the washroom and into the hallway with four doors. One door was the one she just left, the ladies’ room, one was the mens’ room, and the third was the gender neutral washroom. Trinity scolded herself internally for not having used that one, as it was one-at-a-time use with a heavy locking door rather than the multi-stalled setup of the others, but she wouldn’t have wanted to lock herself in there and prevent someone who needed it from using it. Even though if she had, she wouldn’t be following Victoria to the fourth door.

The back door that led outside.

Trinity prayed at least some of the staff members, at least one, would be out on a smoke break, but with the declining rate of smokers, that wasn’t as likely as it would have been in the past.

Victoria pushed the long grey bar on the door, and the latch opened. The door gave away to a grey expanse of fog. Nothing out of the usual for the area. Misty rain had started since the group arrived at the hot dog place.

“After you.”

Trinity stepped outside of the building. When Victoria joined her, the door shut with a click.

There was no handle on the outside of the door. It was smooth, completely covered in badly-applied beige paint.

Victoria’s long arms wrapped around Trinity and pulled her in for a kiss.

Trinity groaned into it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been kissed, and she didn’t know what to feel about it. Affronted that she didn’t get a say in the matter. Warm. Desired? Toyed with?

Victoria’s lips moved adeptly, knowingly. They were soft when they needed to be. Firm when they needed to be.

Trinity shoved her arms between herself and Victoria’s torso and pushed her away.

“What the hell?” Her voice split like from a bad microphone.

Victoria watched Trinity with hungry eyes.

“You’re married,” Trinity sputtered. “I’m telling Harlan.”

Victoria stepped toward Trinity slowly, languidly. “Good girl, looking out for your friends. Aren’t I also one of your friends?”

Trinity’s breath hitched. What had Victoria just called her?

And why did she like it?

Victoria ran a hand across the side of Trinity’s face, French tips grazing skin.

“Kiss me again, please,” Trinity begged. “This time I’m asking you to.”

Victoria leaned in, her breath heating Trinity’s lips until Trinity quivered. “Is that all you want? Because that’s not all you’ve been thinking about.”

“You mean… when you hypnotized me.”

Satisfaction filled Victoria’s dark eyes. “I knew you were still thinking about it, my good girl. You responded so well to me in the airport.”

Trinity’s voice faltered. “Do you just… Do you do whatever you want without asking anyone? Is that what you like to do? Because you can’t do that.”

“Hmm. But you seem to enjoy it when I do it to you. Ask me again what you asked me a moment ago.” Victoria brushed her lower lip against Trinity’s, but wouldn’t allow her the satisfaction of another kiss.

“Please.”

“You’re not going to tell my husband, are you? That you begged his wife to kiss you behind the building while he was having his meal?”

“No please,” Trinity insisted. Victoria’s presence and the faint but avoidant touch of her lips were almost more than she could bear.

“You’re not going to tell him that you haven’t been able to stop thinking about me hypnotizing you, as much as you’ve tried not to this entire time?”

“Victoria…”

Victoria chuckled. “Because I wouldn’t mind you telling him that. Wouldn’t that be charming, a good little hypnotized pet so unable to stop herself from talking about how much she wants it. Would you like that, Trinity?”

“Goddamn it, Victoria, stop torturing me.”

Victoria clasped one hand onto Trinity’s right shoulder and the other through her hair and pulled her deep into the passion of her kiss. Trinity didn’t want to think about what the kiss would mean, what it had already meant. For Victoria and Harlan’s marriage. For Victoria’s respect for her autonomy. For trying to have a normal friendship with her new friends, who would leave in a couple of weeks, anyway. All that mattered to her was how good it felt in the moment to give herself over to Victoria’s lips, and how badly she craved to give herself over to Victoria’s words again.

The mist in the air turned to rain, and Victoria pulled away and scowled. “If we stay out here, Harlan will know we were out.”

Trinity whimpered. There was little more she could bring herself to do.

“Another time, good girl. Now let’s go back in and see how our friends are doing, since you worry about them so well.”

The air outside was cold, but Trinity burned with heat, unfulfilled heat, as she followed Victoria obediently to the door near the drive-through, which would make for a more concealed entrance than the main door would.

There would be another chance, she told herself. If Victoria was so insistent upon hypnotizing her, she’d find the time and the opportunity to do it. Hopefully often.

“There you are,” Dot said when the two took their previous positions at the booth. “I wondered if you were okay.”

“I think the hot dog went right through me,” Trinity lied.

“Okay, too much information, I’m still eating.”

And Dot was. The paper trays of three previous hot dogs lay as evidence as to what she had done.

“Sorry.”

“Darling,” said Harlan, leaning toward Victoria, “I think the hot dog took your lipstick off.”

“Did it? It’s so hard to eat and keep it on.” She produced a golden tube of lipstick from the pocket of her deep magenta shirt and applied the dusty rose pigment. It was hardly different from the colour of Victoria’s lips.

Trinity brushed her hand across her own lips and sighed in relief when no lipstick appeared on her fingertips.

“I don’t think you were wearing any before, Trinity. No need to wonder if yours has come off,” said Harlan, noticing the action Trinity took.

“Right. I forgot it this morning. Of course. Thank you.”

Guilt swelled in the cavity of her chest when her eyes met Harlan’s. He had no idea what she did, did he? That she egged on his wife’s infidelity and then begged for more, and had no intentions of stopping the ball that was suddenly in motion? She thought about their conversations. Their dreams. Their late night messages.

How unfortunate it was that betraying one of her best friends had felt so damn good.

“You can use my lipstick,” Victoria offered. “Here, be a dear and put it on. I’d hate to see you go without just because you don’t have yours with you.”

A firm hand gave over the golden lipstick tube to a trembling one. Trinity stared down at the table while she applied the lipstick in a familiar arc, so she wouldn’t meet Harlan’s thoughtful eyes.

And then the idea passed as Trinity realised the alluring Victoria’s lipstick clung to her lips like a promise, or maybe a territorial claim.