It began with a scene between lovers. The girls, that is: between Tegan and Francesca, who for all working purposes, are more lovers perhaps than either shall ever be with a man. But Teg and Fran, it seems, have always been, though their meeting was actually fairly recent and not very noteworthy in anything except as the beginning for it all. However, starting with their meeting would be boring, cliché, as obnoxious as listening for the thousandth time to the story of how Mr. and Mrs. Blythe met on the Swiss Alps during winter break their senior and freshmen year of college, respectively, and he tripped and she was caught up in the crash, and the two fell in love sipping hot wine by the fireside.

So before the scene of Tegan and Fran on the bed, giggling and whispering like nine-year-old girls in twenty-year-old bodies, smiling at each other and now and then kissing the other’s cheek in a romantic way -- only erotic to the literary and psychological fiends who think that underlying every story is a truth about incest and lesbian erotica – Actually after this scene was to be a dinner, in which Tegan was invited to supper with Mr. and Mrs. Blythe and their other children. But this never actually happened. The love affair couldn’t be so bluntly put.

Instead, the meetings were to be organic, less contrived. Nina was to see Tegan dancing because that was the pulse of her love, the river of a nonerotic lust flowing through her veins as she watched Tegan bend and twirl, leap and bow around perhaps an empty dance studio in the late afternoon, warm sunlight filtering through high windows, dust drifting gracefully through the beams. Nina would see her dance and be able to think of nothing else except Tegan and her grace, and from there would arise an infatuation so easily labeled as adolescent confusion and admiration as to appear cliché. Of course, the dilemma with this beginning is that Nina was wrong in her assumptions that Tegan was a dancer at all. She never had been, and due to two left feet, never would be able to do more than the Macarena and stumble through a few slow wedding waltzes.

Regardless, before all that, James needed to be introduced. Not to Tegan, but to the story, because upon further reflection, it was realized that unlike his younger sisters, Jamie had no right to whatever were his affections for that American chit Tegan. And unlike Francesca and Nina, who perhaps can lay the blame for their emotions on their simply being women, Jamie was in a far different world – the world of men that, despite this being the 21st century in London and all, was still at least verbally declaring itself estrogen free. Besides, if it was Jamie’s affections that were to be the true cause of strife in the Blythe family, it was utterly important that James-Before-Tegan be introduced, in order to determine what effect, if any, Tegan had on his personage.

The problem in beginning with James, however, aside from the fact that it left out poor Charlie entirely, was that in many ways, there was no James before Tegan. That’s not to be plastered across some Hallmark card, that: I was nothing before you. It’s not a romantic exaggeration to be sketched onto a plain white card and tucked in amidst a dozen red roses. Tegan much preferred yellow wildflowers. It’s simply a statement of a fact, that before Tegan hit him in the balls, so to speak, James was in danger of dying alone in his guest-ridden apartment. Perhaps his dog would have licked the face of his cold corpse. But otherwise, James used plastic bags, left the lights on, and didn’t care if Camilla became queen or not.

Until he met Kat, who showed him just how sexy it was to go green, and told him all the reasons Camilla should not be queen, at which point he cared all the way into the bedroom.

But irrelevant.

With the acceptance that no good beginning existed . . . the show must go on with only a palatable beginning. A Thursday, date unimportant, late enough in the morning that sleepy traffic and clumsy stumbling footsteps on the pavement floated in through the sheer pink curtains on a breeze bearing just the faintest hint of a chill. Outside sunglasses hid the eyes of a dozen businessmen and –women off to work, earbuds and Bluetooth keeping them safe from any accidental communication with a stranger, but only the warmest pale glow managed to glide through the curtains and wrap around the sleeping form half buried beneath the white comforter.

“The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” slowly wound its way into the figure’s ear, joined soon by a few honks from outside the window, a twittering bird, and shiteous French rap sneaking beneath the door. As the sounds became increasingly obvious, Tegan at last recognized the ring tone of her cell, followed by an animated and desperate search for her phone in the folds of the sheets. Finally, crawling on her hands and knees, she managed to pry it from the pocket of her jeans, discarded in a pile by the door. On what will, for dramatic effect, be deemed the last chance ring, Tegan managed to flip it open,

“Yes?”

“Well good morning, beloved.”

“Fran?” Tegan leaned against the wall and rubbed at her eyes, her brain trying to catch up with the flurry of activity.

“Yes, Fran. Just called to ask what you’re wearing right now.”

“Uh—“

“Because my guess is, not much, seeing as I’m sitting on your bed right now and you aren’t in it.”

Tegan couldn’t tell through the receiver if Fran was being silly or annoyed; it was often difficult to tell even in person. But instead of asking and earning a stern lecture on how she wasn’t on birth control, Tegan rose and began dressing, pulling on her clothes as she pulled them from the floor.

“There’s really no fooling you, is there?” she joked, then stopped to consider that she had awoken alone in this strange bed. There wasn’t a bathroom or even a mirror in the bedroom, so Tegan cracked the door open.

“Teg, you have class in—“

“Shit, Frannie, I think he’s making breakfast.”

“Well if this is that French guy – King Louis or Napoleon or whatever – you should at least get breakfast out of it. He’s probably a fabulous cook.” There, Tegan could hear it now. The stern tone lurking just beneath Fran’s voice. For someone not too known for her own acts of maturity and responsibility, her disappointment with anyone else was made known through a dull throbbing ache she inflicted with disapproving looks and a certain tenseness in her words.

Tegan closed the door and fell back onto the bed to hiss, “Nooooo, no, I can’t eat with him Fran. Eating breakfast with a guy denotes the start of something, and I don’t want to start—“

“Slag!” Fran gasped. “Honestly! You just wanted to bang him and bounce? That’s not like you at—“

“No, there was wine and then—“

The door swung open and the most beautiful black man Tegan had ever seen stepped through, his broad hands holding a tray of the most decadent homemade breakfast Tegan had ever seen. She promptly snapped the phone shut, subconsciously hearing the angry huff Fran gave at being hung up on.

“Ah, you are awake!” he grinned, his teeth standing out against his dark skin like delicate pearls on display in a velvet case. Completely bald, the top of his head nearly grazed the door frame; his muscle-hardened frame seemed to fill the doorway, though he certainly wouldn’t be considered a big man. Solid, strong, muscular, but still thin, almost delicate in the length of his arms and legs.

Tegan eyed him up and down; the wine was only partially to blame; but still she forced a smile and explained bluntly, “I have to go.”

“Ah, but I made you breakfast,” he rebutted, setting the tray beside her on the bed as though this overruled her need to depart. Certainly no American girl living in Britain could say no to a French breakfast.

This meant Tegan had to think fast. She had been going to explain to Fran what she had already explained to Fran concerning this beautiful Andre: he was captivatingly beautiful, masculine enough to lust for but feminine enough to be compassionate and alluring. He made her feel beautiful. He stared into her eyes when she spoke, seeming to hang onto every minute sound that came through her lips. He spoke with the dead sexiest French accent, but a subtle enough one so that she didn’t have to work to understand him. They hadn’t been on a solo date, per se, always surrounded by the company of his friends, but he still managed to give her his undivided attention. He was as charming and sincere as he was divine and deep. He was a footballer in France – ie, not a dancer or an actor, which was more than she could say for any of her previous boys.

If Tegan had been looking for a serious relationship, he would be ideal. But she had enough on her plate with work and classes and rehearsals. And really, he was too good to be true; he was probably a big fake, just pretending to be some charming deep Frenchman to trick Tegan using her own preconceived notions. Which didn’t really matter because she surely wasn’t buying into it. At all. Also another reason she wasn’t wanting to start a serious relationship with this man. Plus he usually lived in France. He and some friends were only in London for a short while to take a break, and then he would be headed back to France. She didn’t actually know how soon or for how long . . . But she really wasn’t wanting anything serious right now, she just liked being around him because he was beautiful and because of how he made her feel.

But that breakfast did look awfully good.

“Well . . . okay, but only for like ten minutes, and then I really need to get going,” Tegan sighed, sitting back further on the mattress and pulling up one of the mugs. He grinned and gently caressed her face, then leaned in to passionately tell her lips how glad he was she had stayed.

When Tegan swung open the door at her own studio apartment, Fran was there, sitting on her bed, Maximus Aurelius trapped tightly in her arms.

Waving Max’s paw at Tegan, Fran explained, “Maximus Aurelius is not pleased.”

“Frannie-Fran-Fran,” Tegan sighed, tossing her purse against the wall. “Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“You’re disappointed,” Tegan teased. Crossing the short distance across the room to the bed, she tackled Fran backwards, tickling her in the sides so that Fran had no choice but to laugh and squirm away.

Lying side by side, Francesca insisted pointedly, “I’m not disappointed. I just think that if you really don’t want anything more than a screw with him, you shouldn’t be leading him on.”

“How do you know that’s not all he wanted with me?”

“That’s never all anyone wants with you. You aren’t a one-night shack-up kind of bird.”

“Well, that’s true. . . but I don’t know. Maybe I like him more than I think I do.”

“You don’t.”

Tegan laughed, her smile big enough to make her eyes squint, “How do you know what I think?”

“Please, Tegan. I think . . . you’re infatuated because he’s beautiful – or so you say. Not having seen said Frenchman, I can’t tell you what I think about him. Besides, men have wisened up because they know we’ve wisened up. He wouldn’t be going to such lengths to impress you if he just wanted to get you between the sheets. He would just get you pissed.”

“Which he did.”

“I know that’s not true, either, because you’re not that kind of girl, either. Be honest, were you so fagged?”

Tegan thought back to the evening. She and Andre and two of his closest friends with their girlfriends had gone to dinner where there had been wine, but then they had gone dancing without further alcohol for several hours, which had been a good period of sobering up entirely. She then returned with Andre to his apartment to consume more wine, but she had certainly been entirely sober when she accepted the invitation to come up, fully knowing what that would lead to if she agreed.

“You’re having to think about it. You weren’t pissed.”

“Well, I mean, we got pissed! After we were in the apartment already,” Tegan admitted sheepishly.

Fran was silent for a moment, letting what Tegan had hoped would get a laugh float around the quiet room for a moment. Max leapt onto the bed, having chased a dust bunny across the floor.

Finally, though, she pressed, “So do you like him, then? I mean, would you want to see him regularly?”

“You sound like you’re talking about my doctor!” Tegan laughed, but shook her head, “I told you, no. I mean, the sex was . . . pretty damn good.” Fran laughed and gave Tegan a shove, nearly pushing her off the bed.

“It’s just that . . . you know, friends with benefit type arrangements are dangerous. Someone always gets hurt, and I don’t want it to be you. I’m just looking out for you.”

Tegan smiled and pushed herself up on one arm to give Fran a light kiss on the forehead, “I know, Frannie. And I appreciate it. But don’t worry about me. I’m not getting myself into anything. I don’t have to ever see him again if I don’t want to. And besides, he’s probably heading back to France again soon anyways.”

“That’s maybe for the best,” Fran agreed. Then, pushing herself up from the bed, she suggested, “But really, you should shower and get ready because you’ve got class in an hour and you reek of sex.” Tegan stuck her tongue out, then skipped off to the bathroom, stripping her shirt and skirt off as she went. Fran had already begun bustling around the room, getting Tegan’s bag together for her, only because if Tegan was late, Fran would be late. She heard the shower through the cracked bathroom door and smelled the tangerine of Tegan’s shampoo that she had bought in Madrid just a few weeks before. Maximus Aurelius’ bowl was empty and Fran filled this, then suddenly remembered and called through the crack once the water had stopped,

“Oh by the way, it’s my little sister’s birthday Friday.”

“Yeah? How old is she again?”

“She’ll be sixteen. Anyways, I invited her to go clubbing with us, if that’s okay? I wouldn’t normally, but it being her birthday and all . . . I mean, what do you get for a sixteen-year-old?”

“I don’t know,” Tegan shrugged, emerging from the bathroom in a fluffy blue towel. “Jewelry or a purse or something? I don’t know. You rich kids have everything already anyways.”

“Right. Well, she can be a bother sometimes, but she’s not so bad. It’s just for one night, you know? I’m sure she’ll love it, getting to go with us big girls.”

“Don’t talk about her like she’s three, though! I can’t imagine anyone liking that. But yeah, bring her, I don’t mind. The more the merrier, I say.”

“Right. Well, we’ll see. We’ll have fun either way.”

And thus was lit the candle that would burn Rome to the ground.

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