Laurel Melody Parker, November 18th, 2018, Laurel, Montana
Laurel stood in the changing room of the Yankowski compound's indoor pool; because of course they had an indoor pool, because of course there was a marble-floored room with fancy light fixtures and a stack of fluffy white towels. She stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror mounted on the back of the door.
The swimsuit was black. One piece. High-necked, long-sleeved, the kind of coverage designed for modesty or competitive swimming or, in Laurel's case, the desperate need to hide as much skin as possible while still technically being in swimwear. Ana had bought it for her last week, tossing it into a shopping basket with a casual "you'll need this eventually, I've got to get you to swim at my house" that Laurel hadn't put much thought into until tonight.
She turned slightly. The fabric clung. Three weeks on estradiol and the changes were subtle, imperceptible to anyone who wasn't mapping her body with the obsessive precision of someone reclaiming territory, but Laurel could feel them. The faintest softening of her skin. The beginning of something beneath her chest, tender and new, that the compression of the swimsuit flattened into invisibility but that she knew was there.
She looked at herself and thought: progress. Her hair was damp at the ends from the shower she'd taken before changing, auburn strands darkening to rust where the water touched them.
She exhaled. Pulled the towel over her shoulders and opened the changing room door.
The pool was ridiculous. She'd known it would be, everything in this house was ridiculous, scaled to impress donors and intimidate visitors. But knowing didn't prepare her for the reality of an Olympic-length indoor pool with underwater lighting that turned the water a luminous, alien blue. The ceiling was glass, or partially glass, and through it Laurel could see the November sky, star-filled and black, pressing down on her.
It was nine-thirty at night. It was also twelve degrees outside. And Laurel was about to go swimming because Ana Yankowski had asked her to, and apparently that was enough now.
The invitation had come via text at seven, while Laurel was lying on her bed in Derrick's house, staring at the ceiling and trying to not look at her phone. Not looking at the messages from Dani and from Jess, both of which sat unread with increasing desperation bleeding through even the preview text. She wasn't exactly busy. She was lying in the dark listening to her father watch football downstairs and trying to convince herself that the hollow, scraped-out feeling in her chest was contentment rather than avoidance.
Ana had a way of making things happen. She didn't ask; she arranged. She didn't invite; she conscripted. And Laurel, who should have been stronger, who should have been smart enough to recognize when she was being managed, had climbed into the Uber that appeared outside Derrick's house twenty minutes later and let herself be delivered to the Yankowski compound like a package.
Because the alternative was lying in the dark and thinking about Dani and Jess.
Which she wasn't doing. She was absolutely, categorically, not doing that.
"Finally." Ana's voice bounced off the cavernous tile. She was already submerged, elbows hooked over the pool’s far edge, blonde hair slicked back. "I was starting to think you drowned in the changing room."
"I was having a moment," Laurel said, clutching the towel tighter around her shoulders.
Ana pushed off the wall, gliding backward through the luminous blue. "A moment. Right. Well, bring your moment into the pool. The water's perfect."
Laurel dropped her towel on the nearest lounge chair and walked to the edge.
The pool was heated. She could feel the warmth radiating off the surface. Ana had set up the evening with characteristic precision: two towels laid out, a cooler next to one of the chairs containing what appeared to be a six-pack of some craft beer Laurel couldn't pronounce, and a Bluetooth speaker playing something low and atmospheric from Phoebe Bridgers.
Laurel sat on the edge. Dangled her legs in. The warmth was immediate and extraordinary, not hot like a hot tub, but heated enough that there was no shock of cold.
"Okay, this actually feels incredible," Laurel admitted, the tension in her shoulders dissolving into the warmth.
"Obviously," Ana said, treading water. "I don't invite people over to suffer. I have a reputation to maintain."
"You're insufferable."
"And you're welcome." Ana flashed a grin, bright and entirely unapologetic.
She lowered herself in. The water rose to her chest, and the warmth enveloped her entirely, and for a moment, she wasn't worried about her appearance, and she just felt the water encompassing her. The cold that had been living in her bones since October. The tension in her shoulders from the last year of stress. The low-grade nausea of existing in her father's house.
All of it released into the blue.
She let herself go under. Held her breath. Opened her eyes to the distorted world of chlorine blue, the underwater lights turning everything ethereal. She could see Ana's legs, pale and kicking lazily ten feet away.
When she surfaced, gasping, Ana was watching her with an expression between amusement and satisfaction.
They swam for a while. Laps and floating and the occasional childish splashing. Ana was a strong swimmer, of course she was, with the compact efficiency of someone who'd had lessons since childhood. Laurel was messier, her strokes longer and less precise, but the water didn't care about precision. The water just held her.
Ana's phone buzzed from the chair by the pool. Then again. Then a third time in rapid succession.
"You going to answer that?" Laurel asked, floating on her back, staring up at the glass ceiling and the void beyond it.
"Nope."
"It could be important."
"It's not." Ana didn't even glance at the chair. "It's either my mother's assistant having a scheduling aneurysm, or it's Jake, trying to funnel another pathetic apology to Lis through me."
"Is your sister okay?"
"She's barricaded in her room. They'll fight, he'll harass her until she feels bad, she'll go back. It's their whole toxic loop." The casualness in Ana's voice was practiced, but paper-thin. "Anyway. It's just us tonight. Lis said she might come down later, but I doubt it."
Laurel righted herself in the water, treading, and found Ana watching her. The underwater lights cast rippling blue patterns across Ana's face, making her look like something from a dream.
"What?" Laurel asked, suddenly self-conscious.
"You're pouting."
"I am absolutely not pouting."
"Laurel, your lip is literally doing the thing." Ana swam closer, closing the distance between them. "That tragic, kicked-puppy thing. What gives? You're drinking craft beer in a heated pool with a cheerleader while it's twelve degrees outside. Objectively speaking, this is the peak of your month."
Laurel sank lower, letting the water hit her chin. "Nothing is wrong."
"Right. Total paradise," Ana deadpanned. She floated closer, her voice dropping its teasing edge for something sharper. "Is it because Dani and Jess are fucking?"
The word hit the acoustics of the pool room like a gunshot, echoing once before dying against the tile. Laurel flinched—a violent, full-body flinch she instantly hated herself for.
"No," Laurel shot back, way too fast. "It's not that."
Ana tilted her head, giving Laurel that clinical, dissecting look. "If it's not that, then why have you been dodging them like they're contagious?"
"I'm not dodging them."
"Laurel."
Laurel kicked her legs, churning the water beneath the surface. She did not want to do this here. Not in the eerie blue light of the Yankowski pool with Ana's neon-red bikini burning in her peripheral vision like a warning sign.
"I'm not dodging them," Laurel muttered, staring at the water. "Maybe I just really wanted to go swimming with a cheerleader."
Ana's smile crept in slow and entirely too knowing. "Cute deflection. I'll allow it. For now." She pushed off the wall, floating backward with a grace that was almost irritating. "Beer?"
"Yeah."
They climbed out—Laurel wrapping her towel around her shoulders immediately, Ana seemingly unbothered by the temperature differential—and Ana cracked two cans from the cooler. Something amber and local, the label handwritten. It tasted putrid, but it was beer, what had she expected.
They sat on the pool's edge, legs dangling in the warm water, drinking. The speaker still filling the entire room. Ana hummed along, her wet hair dripping onto the tile behind her.
"You know," Ana said after a comfortable silence, "you don't have to tell me anything. That's not what tonight is. I just noticed you seemed…" She gestured vaguely with her beer can. "Dim. Dimmer than usual."
"Gee, thanks."
"Dimmer than your usual baseline of brooding angst. Like something specific was bothering you, rather than the general existential dread you carry around like a purse."
Laurel took a long drink. The beer was easier on the second sip. "They're together. Dani and Jess. Like, together-together."
"Duh."
Laurel pushed through the comment. "So that should be enough. I figured it out. I don't need them to sit me down and have a conversation about it. They're two adults who like each other. They don't need my permission to—" She stopped herself. Heard the bitter edge in her own voice and reeled it back. "It's fine. I'm happy for them."
Ana let the silence stretch out over the water. "Are you?"
"Yes."
"Okay.”
"I am."
"I said okay, Laurel."
The problem was that she was. That was the worst part. She was happy for them—genuinely, achingly, completely happy that two people she loved had found comfort in each other in this frozen hellscape. She was happy that Jess had someone who matched her intensity, someone whose recklessness balanced Jess's tendency toward self-sacrifice. She was happy that Dani wasn't alone anymore, wasn't drinking herself stupid in that tiny apartment with only Sam's dry commentary for company.
She was happy for them, and she also thought about them constantly. Both of them. Separately and together. In ways that made her face hot and her chest tight and her hands shake when she was alone at night in Derrick's house, staring at the ceiling, wondering when wanting became a thing she was allowed to do again.
The estradiol was doing something. Cracking open the numbness that conversion therapy had sealed over her emotional core like concrete. Feelings were returning with the force and subtlety of a flood. Desire. Want. The physical ache of being near someone and not touching them. It was all back, all of it, roaring through her nervous system like electricity through a wire that had been dead for a year and was now live and sparking.
And she couldn't say it. She wouldn't say it. Because Dani had already been through enough, had driven two thousand miles to find her, had moved her entire life to this godforsaken town, and the last thing she needed was Laurel complicating things with desire when Laurel couldn't even be a real person yet. And Jess—Jess had carried her through the darkest months of her life, had held her while she cried, had bought her hormones, so generously—and Jess deserved someone who could love her uncomplicated and whole, not the half-alive reconstruction project that Laurel currently was.
They didn't need her permission. They hadn't asked for it. Dani hadn't asked permission before sleeping with Ana either, and Jess was only just a friend—Jess had always been just a friend, except for the parts where she didn't feel like just a friend, except for the parts where Jess's hand lingered on Laurel's waist or where Jess's eyes tracked her across a room with an attention that was more than platonic.
Ugh.
But Laurel had never said anything. Had never staked a claim or voiced a want. Because the wanting felt selfish. Because she felt unworthy of it. Because who was she to ask for anything from anyone when she couldn't even exist in public as herself?
"The thing about being happy for people," Ana said, as if reading the entire spiral right off Laurel's face, "is that it doesn't actually make you feel less alone. You can be thrilled for someone and still wish it was you. Those aren't contradictions."
"Is Ana Yankowski seriously trying to give me relationship advice?"
"I've been trying to give you life advice. You just weren't listening." Ana finished her beer and reached for another. "Want to race? Loser does a dare."
The pivot was deliberate, merciful, and Laurel took it with gratitude. They raced. Laurel lost—badly—and the dare was to down her drink. They drank more and continued swimming.
Hours passed. The beer softened everything. The water stayed warm. The music cycled through artists Laurel wouldn't have expected Ana to know, and the incongruity of it, the bitchy cheerleader with the indie playlist, had stopped being surprising and started being something else. Something that felt dangerously close to knowing her.
They were floating, both of them, on their backs, staring up at the glass ceiling and the dark beyond it.
"Can I tell you something?" Ana asked. Her voice was different now. The sharp, operational edge was gone, washed out by the beer and the bizarre intimacy of the moment.
"Yeah."
"I'm really fucking lonely in this house."
Laurel turned her head. Ana was staring straight up, and from this angle, in the shifting light, she looked tired. Not the tactical genius who'd engineered an entire social ecosystem to protect herself. Just a girl. Seventeen and tired and floating in a pool on a Sunday night.
"My mom is barely here," Ana continued. "She's in Helena three weeks out of four. Or DC. She's always somewhere that isn't here. And when she is here, it's worse, because then I have to be on. I have to perform. But at least when she's here there's someone in the house in the morning, you know?"
Laurel didn't say anything. She let the silence hold space.
"My dad…" Ana's voice tightened, then released. "My dad is my dad. He's around. He's always around."
The weight of those words settled into the water between them. "Lis and I are always fighting now. About Jake. About whether she should leave him. About whether I'm allowed to have opinions about her life when I—" She stopped. "We used to be so close. We used to be in each other's rooms all the time. And now she's either with him, or she's in her room crying about him, or she's here fighting with me about him. I just... I miss her."
"That's not your fault."
"I know it's not my fault. It doesn't make it less shitty." Ana turned her head, and their eyes met across the surface of the water. "And the only person I used to lean on. The one person who actually knew me, who sat with me and let me be something other than this." She gestured vaguely at herself, her body, her house. "Jess. And I had to—I did what I did. I know why I did it. I'd probably do it again if I'm being honest. But it doesn't change the fact that after I did it, I had nobody."
"You have people now," Laurel said softly.
"Do I?"
"You have me. Apparently."
A tired, frayed smile touched Ana's mouth. "Right. I have my fake boyfriend, who is actually a girl, who is actually way too good for any of this."
"I'm not too good for anything."
"Shut up, yes you are," Ana said, her voice quiet. "Stay the night. Please. I just... I don't want to be alone in this house tonight."
Laurel looked at her. The girl who had manipulated her and protected her in equal measure. The girl who was, underneath every layer of strategy and armor, just lonely and seventeen and asking her not to leave.
"Okay," Laurel said. "Yeah. I'll stay."
Ana's shoulders released a tension Laurel hadn't even noticed she was carrying. "Good. Thank you. We'll order some food maybe, Lis might come down if she smells food."
They were climbing out of the pool, towels wrapped around their bodies, when the door to the pool room opened and a voice filled the space—
Laurel felt the cold rush of air from the rest of the house hit the back of her neck before she registered the voice. The voice came before her brain did.
"Girls? You in here?"
Jared Yankowski.
Six-two of him, in a half-buttoned dress shirt and dark slacks, with his sleeves pushed up his forearms and his hair pushed back like a man who had just been running his hands through it. He had Ana's coloring, or Ana had his — the same dark eyes, the same line of the jaw that on Ana looked elegant and on him looked like something else. He smelled like aftershave. From across the pool. Like he wore it, deliberately, in quantity, so a room would smell like him before he was in it.
Ana had told her once, in the confessional tone of a girl who'd practiced a sentence enough times to have sanded it down into a fact, that her dad was extremely charismatic. Laurel had absorbed that piece of information at the time without entirely understanding it. Standing in the pool now, ten feet from him, with the door swinging shut behind him and his eyes cataloguing the scene, she understood.
Ana had gone still in the water beside her.
"Daddy. I thought you had Elks." Ana said through a perfectly performed smile.
"Cancelled. Henderson's wife's in the hospital." Jared was smiling. He had a smile like he had been told once that his smile was his best feature and had decided to make sure it was. "Saw the lights. Thought I'd come say hi to my girls."
"Lis is upstairs," Ana said. "She came over. Her and Jake—"
"Oh, is she now?"
"She's in her room."
"Jake having a moment?"
"Something like that."
"I'll go up in a bit." His eyes had moved off Ana. They had moved onto Laurel. "Now who's this. I don't think I've had the pleasure."
"Daddy, this is… " Ana's voice did something microscopic, a hairline crack she covered immediately. "This is Montana. From school. He's, uh, we're hanging out tonight."
Laurel had been Montana with hair down and lip gloss before. Several times. It had become, of all things, routine. The trick was to drop the shoulders, not to hunch them, which made the suspicion worse — to drop them, and drop the chin, and let the voice find a lower register, and fold the body into the kind of mid-shoulder slouch every teenage boy in America defaulted to. This was harder in a swimsuit, in water, with no clothing to hide inside, and harder still because Jared Yankowski was looking at her in a way that made her want to climb out of her own skin.
He was looking at her face.
He was looking at her face and he was looking at her with the cataloguing, appraising, lingering kind of look that men gave girls. Specifically. Not gave teenage acquaintances of their daughters. He was looking at her with a slow sweep that ended on her mouth, and held there a beat too long, and then traveled down, then back up to her eyes.
Laurel felt her skin try to crawl backwards off her bones.
"Montana!" Jared said, crossing the poolroom. He extended his hand. "Great to finally meet you. Ana's told us a lot." Laurel shook his hand. His grip was firm, too firm, she thought, or maybe she was imagining it. His palm was dry and warm.
"Thank you for having me, sir," Laurel said. The words came out steady, rehearsed.
"Sir," Jared repeated, looking pleased. "I like that. Manners. You don't see that enough anymore." He released Laurel's hand but didn't step back, staying close enough that Laurel could Smell his cologne-something woodsy and expensive. His eyes swept over Laurel with an attentiveness that felt less like assessment and more like... inventory.
"Look at you," Jared said, almost to himself. His gaze lingered on Laurel's hair-the long auburn strands that she hadn't cut, that Derrick complained about constantly. "Ana didn't mention you had such pretty hair.”
The compliment landed wrong. Like a hand on the small of her back that stayed a beat too long. Laurel felt her shoulders tighten.
"Thank you," she managed.
"Reminds me of one of those old paintings." Jared tilted his head, studying her. "Pre-Raphaelite. You know those? Beautiful boys with all that red hair and those delicate features." He smiled again-wide, warm, entirely too interested. "You're a good-looking kid, Montana. Bet you get those kind of compliments a lot though huh?”
“Umm no sir.”
"Well. Now somebody has." He took a step closer. He stopped at the edge of the pool. He was still smiling. "You go to school with Ana, huh? I don't think I've seen you at any of the games."
"I'm— I'm in band," Laurel said. "Color guard."
"Color guard." He said it the way Derrick said it. "Now that's a thing. Ana, you didn't tell me you were friends with one of the guard kids."
"He's new," Ana said, smooth as glass. "He moved in over the summer. I try not to talk to them much because of—”
"Ah." Jared crouched down. He was still smiling. He was smiling at Laurel the way men smiled at women they intended to talk into a bad idea. From above her, in the water, he loomed. "Well, Montana, listen. Any friend of Ana's. We do a Thanksgiving here every year, the whole family, it's a thing, my wife, she's a senator, you'd hate her on principle but she sets a hell of a table. You should come. Bring an appetite. We'd love to have you."
"I— "
"Daddy, his dad does Thanksgiving."
"His dad can come too. Always room."
"His dad— "
"It's an invitation, baby. He can take it or leave it. Right, Montana?" Jared's eyes hadn't left her face. "Right?"
"Right," Laurel said. "Yes sir. Thank you, sir."
"Atta boy."
His eyes finally tracked off her, and onto Ana, and Laurel felt the absence of his attention the way a body feels the lifting of a weight.
"That a new suit, baby girl?"
Ana's chin lifted half an inch. "It's not new."
"It's new. I have not seen you in red. You don't wear red." Jared laughed, low, conspiratorial, an I see you laugh. "You buy a new suit just to get in the pool with this kid? Come on. Daddy can tell. You trying to impress this Montana boy, that what's going on here?"
"Daddy."
"What. He's a good-looking kid. You got eyes. I've got eyes. He's got those eyes. Hey." He looked back at Laurel and winked. He winked. "Treat my girl right, huh?"
"Y-yes sir," Laurel said. Her voice sounded like it was coming from another room.
"All right." He slapped his palms onto his thighs and stood back up. "I'm going to go say hi to Lis. You kids have fun. Don't drown. Don't drink too much of that piss water." He nodded at the beers. "Ana, tell your sister I'll be up in twenty."
"Mhm."
"Twenty, baby."
"Mhm."
He left.
The door closed behind him, and the latch clicked, and Laurel realized she had been holding her breath in the way you hold your breath in a horror movie when the killer is on the other side of a closet door. She let it out. It came out shaky. Her hands were shaking under the water, fine little trembles, the body coming down off something.
Ana did not move.
Laurel looked over at her. Ana was staring at the door. Her expression was perfectly blank, perfectly composed, which Laurel was beginning to learn was Ana's tell, the more catastrophic the feeling, the less emotion she showed on her face.
"Ana."
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah."
"Ana."
"I said yeah." Ana turned, finally. "Are you?"
"I… yeah. I think so."
"He looked at you, Laurel."
"I know."
Ana made a small, terrible sound, almost a laugh, almost not.
"Ana, hey." Laurel reached out under the water and touched Ana's wrist. Gently. "Hey. It's okay."
Ana yanked her arm back "It's really not, though. I want to go upstairs," she said. "I want to be done in this room."
"Yeah." Laurel pushed off the wall. "Yeah, let's go."
They walked through the darkened corridors of the compound in silence. The house was massive and labyrinthine, hallways branching off in directions Laurel couldn't track. Family photos lined the walls—Olivia shaking hands with congressmen, the family at a ski lodge, Ana and Felisity as children in matching Christmas pajamas. The images were curated, polished, the visual architecture of a family that existed primarily as a campaign prop.
Ana's room was exactly as she'd imagined it. White furniture. Pale blue walls. Canopy bed. The corkboard above the desk held a cheer schedule and a Yankowski campaign pin, and the room smelled like something floral and likely expensive. It was pristine and cold and felt less like a teenager's bedroom than a display model in a furniture store.
"Bathroom's through there if you want to rinse the chlorine off," Ana said, crossing to her dresser. "I have extra clothes you can sleep in. I'll grab—"
She pulled her swimsuit strap down.
Laurel's entire body went rigid.
Ana peeled the red swimsuit off her shoulders, then down, casually, the way someone undresses when they've been doing it in front of other girls their whole life—locker rooms, cheer practice, sleepovers. She stepped out of it, kicked it toward the hamper, and stood there naked for exactly as long as it took to pull a oversized t-shirt from the drawer.
Laurel was staring at the wall. The wall was very interesting. She had never been so fascinated by the pale blue paint and the texture of the plaster and the way the overhead light created a subtle shadow near the crown molding.
Ana laughed.
The sound was bright and clear and entirely at Laurel's expense.
"Oh my god." Ana pulled the shirt over her head, her voice muffled momentarily by fabric. "Oh, right. I forgot." Her head popped through the neckhole and she was grinning—the shark grin, the one with teeth. "You're not used to changing with the girls."
"I'm going to look at this wall forever," Laurel said.
"It's just a body, Laurel."
"It's your body. Specifically."
"And?"
"And I have eyes."
"So use them."
"Ana."
"I'm kidding. I'm kidding." She was pulling on shorts now, Laurel could tell from the rustling. "You can turn around. I'm decent."
Laurel turned. Ana was in an oversized Laurel High Cheer t-shirt and sleep shorts, her wet hair twisted up in a towel. She looked disarmingly normal. Young and scrubbed clean and wearing no armor at all.
She tossed Laurel a folded t-shirt and a pair of shorts. "Change in the bathroom if you need to. Or here. I promise I won't look." She mimed covering her eyes, then peeked between her fingers. "Maybe."
"You're the worst person I've ever met."
"You just met my dad. Set the bar higher."
Laurel changed in the bathroom. When she came back out, Ana had put on a movie—something with muted colors and subtitles—and was arranged in bed against a fortress of pillows. She patted the space beside her.
"Come on. I won't bite."
Laurel climbed in. The bed was enormous—king-sized, with sheets that felt like they cost more than Derrick's truck—and she positioned herself as far from Ana as the mattress allowed, pressing her back against the opposite edge.
Ana snorted. "You're going to fall off."
"I'm fine."
"You're acting like I'm contagious.”
"You might be.”
They watched the movie. Laurel had no idea what was happening on screen, something French, something about women in a house by the sea, something that was probably meaningful if she could focus on anything other than the presence of Ana Yankowski in a t-shirt and shorts and nothing else and the memory of her pulling that red swimsuit off like it was nothing.
Thirty minutes passed. The movie was quiet and amber-lit. Ana had turned off the overhead, leaving only the glow of the TV and a small bedside lamp. The compound was silent around them. No footsteps, no voices, just the distant tick of the heating system and the wind pressing against the windows.
Ana migrated.
It wasn't sudden. It was gradual, the way a cat claims territory, an inch at a time, so slow you don't notice until you're already surrounded. First her legs shifted, pointing toward Laurel rather than the TV. Then her body turned, settling onto her side. Then her head was on Laurel's shoulder, blonde hair smelling like chlorine and shampoo, her body curving against Laurel's side with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this a thousand times with a thousand people and thought nothing of it.
Except she hadn't. Laurel knew she hadn't. Ana Yankowski did not cuddle. Ana Yankowski maintained strategic distance, calculated proximity for effect, weaponized physical contact. Every touch she'd delivered in the last month had been for an audience, for a purpose, for someone else's benefit.
There was no audience here.
"Ana," Laurel said. Her voice was quiet, careful, the word landing in the dark between them like a question.
"Hmm."
"What are you doing?"
"Watching a movie."
"You're on me."
"I'm next to you."
"You're on me. Your head is on my shoulder. Your hand is on my—" She looked down. Ana's hand was resting on Laurel's forearm, her fingers light, her thumb tracing an absent, circular pattern against the soft skin of Laurel's inner wrist.
"Relax," Ana murmured. The word was warm against Laurel's collarbone.
"Ana."
"Laurel." She tilted her head up, and from this angle, in the blue light of the television, her dark eyes were unguarded. Open. "Relax. Okay? I'm not going to kiss you. There's not going to be another kiss. Not unless you want one. Remember?" Her thumb continued its slow circle on Laurel's wrist. "It's just girls cuddling. Who cares?"
Laurel stared at her. At the earnest, careful expression on Ana's face. At the way she'd phrased it, not unless you want one, like the door was open but the choice was Laurel's, like for once in their entire dynamic the power was being deliberately handed over.
"I know what you're doing," Laurel said.
"What am I doing?"
"You're keeping me here so I don't think about them."
"And is that working?"
The honest answer was yes. The honest answer was that for the last four hours, she hadn't thought about Dani's hands or Jess's eyes or the way they probably fit together, the way they probably kissed each other in Dani's tiny apartment while Laurel sat in the dark and pretended she didn't care. For four hours, she'd been here, in the warm water and the blue light and the orbit of Ana's attention, and the ache in her chest had quieted. Not disappeared. But quieted.
"It's just sleeping," Ana said. "In a bed. With a friend. Girls do this all the time."
"We're not—"
"We're something." Ana settled her head back against Laurel's shoulder, closing her eyes. "I don't know what we are. But we're something. And I'm tired. And you're warm. And this house is too big for one person."
Laurel exhaled. She let her arm relax. Let Ana settle against her. Let her own hand come to rest, tentatively, on Ana's shoulder.
"If you try anything," Laurel said, "I'm leaving."
"I'm not going to try anything."
"Good."
"Good."
"Your heartbeat is really fast," Ana observed.
"Watch the movie."
Ana smiled against Laurel's shoulder. Laurel could feel it, the curve of lips against fabric. And she stared at the ceiling, at the pale blue paint above her, and listened to her own traitorous heart hammering against her ribs, and thought about nothing. About no one. About the warmth of another body beside hers and the strange, terrifying comfort of being held by someone who was absolutely, categorically, definitely not safe.
Daniela Rivera, November 20th, 2018, Laurel, Montana
The Payton house looked worse at night.
Dani stood on the sidewalk across the street, hands shoved deep in the pockets of her jacket, and stared at it. The orange-red brick, the green trim, the absurd American flag on the porch snapping in the wind like a warning. She'd driven past this house a dozen times since moving to Laurel. Had slowed her Saturn to a crawl outside it, had imagined Laurel somewhere inside, behind those brick walls, in a room Dani had never seen. Had hated the house the way you hate a jail when someone you love is locked in it.
She'd never gone in.
Nobody went in. Jess was the only one. Jess, with her weaponized politeness and her ability to charm Derrick Payton into thinking she was just a nice girl from school picking up her friend for a project. Jess, who could walk through any door and make the people on the other side feel like they'd invited her. Dani couldn't do that. Dani didn't have the polish or the patience or the suburban camouflage. Dani looked exactly like what she was, a punk girl from California with a lip ring and the kind of energy that made men like Derrick Payton reach for their guns.
But Derrick wasn't here.
She'd waited. Watched the beat-up truck pull out of the driveway ten minutes ago, headlights cutting through the dark as it turned south toward the highway and the detention center where he worked the night shift. She'd sat in her Saturn with the engine off and the heater dying and her breath fogging the windshield, watching the red taillights disappear around the corner, and she'd thought: now or never.
Because Laurel was avoiding her. Dani knew why.
She wasn't stupid. She wasn't oblivious. She knew that Laurel had figured something out about her and Jess—the hookups, the staying over, the thing that had become something Dani couldn't name yet, something warm and complicated and real that she hadn't expected and didn't know how to properly maintain. Jess hadn't told Laurel directly, they'd both tried and failed, but Laurel was observant. And Laurel was now treating Dani like a stranger.
The plan was simple. Walk up. Knock. Rip the band-aid off. Say: I know you know. I know you're pulling away. I need you to tell me to my face if this changes things between us, because I can't live in the silence. I can't survive another disappearance from you.
Simple. Direct. The Dani Rivera approach hit the problem head-on, no strategy, no chess moves, no Yankowski bullshit. Just two people in a room being honest.
She crossed the street.
The porch steps creaked under her Docs. The flag whipped overhead like a gunshot and she flinched, hating herself for flinching. The doorbell was one of those old-fashioned ones—actual brass, probably original to the house, and she pressed it and heard the chime echo inside and stood there with her heart in her throat and her speech rehearsed and her hands trembling in her jacket pockets.
Footsteps. Light. Quick. The sound of someone descending stairs.
The door opened.
Laurel stood in the doorway in an oversized Paramore t-shirt and black leggings, her auburn hair loose around her shoulders, slightly damp at the ends like she'd showered recently. No makeup. Her feet were bare on the hardwood, and she was holding a mug of something that steamed in the cold air rushing through the open door.
She looked soft. That was the word that hit Dani first and hardest, soft. The three weeks of estradiol were doing something visible now. Her skin was almost luminous in the warm hallway light, and there was a looseness to her posture that Dani hadn't seen since California. Like she'd been relaxed, alone, comfortable in her own space for the first time in hours, and then opened the door to find a ghost on her porch.
Laurel's brown eyes went wide. The mug tilted in her hand, tea sloshing dangerously close to the rim.
"Dani?"
"Hey."
"What are you—how did you—is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine. I just—" The speech. The rehearsed speech. The direct, honest, band-aid approach. It was right there, loaded and ready, and Dani opened her mouth to deliver it and what came out instead was, "Can I come in?"
Laurel blinked. Looked over Dani's shoulder at the dark, empty street. Looked back at Dani's face, at whatever was written there, the cold and the need and the fourteen days of avoidance and stepped aside.
"Yeah. Yeah, come in."
Dani crossed the threshold and the plan evaporated.
Because the Payton house was nothing like she'd imagined. In her head, it had been a dungeon. A bunker. Gray walls and locked doors and the oppressive weight of Derrick's presence soaked into every surface. She'd imagined it cold, unwelcoming, and hostile. A house that hated the girl inside it.
The reality was worse, somehow, because it was mundane. The hallway was narrow, the paint slightly scuffed at the edges, a coat rack holding Derrick's Carhartt jacket beside a pair of ratty boots. The living room to the left was exactly what she'd pictured, TV, recliner, beer bottles on the side table, the staleness of a space inhabited by a man who didn't clean up after himself. But there were also photos on the walls. A young Derrick in a wrestling singlet. A family photo, Derrick, April, and a child who couldn't have been more than five, auburn-haired and huge-eyed, wearing a tiny button-up and clip-on tie.
Laurel. Before California. Before everything.
Dani looked away from the photo fast. Looked at Laurel instead, who was watching her take in the space with an expression caught between embarrassment and defiance as if saying that yes, this is where I live, yes, it's terrible, no, I don't want your pity.
"Sorry about the mess," Laurel said. "He doesn't really—I mean, I clean my room but the rest of the house is—"
"It's fine, babe." Dani said.
The nickname landed between them. Laurel's throat moved.
"Do you want tea?" she asked. Deflecting. Classic Laurel deflection, offer hospitality to avoid the thing that needed saying. "I just made some. The kettle's still hot."
"Sure."
Dani followed her into the kitchen. Linoleum floor, scarred wood table, a window over the sink showing the dark backyard and, beyond it, the faint silhouette of mountains. Laurel moved through the space with the efficiency of someone who'd memorized every inch of a room they hated. She reached for a mug without looking, filled it without asking what Dani wanted, adding honey because she remembered. She remembered from California, from the apartment with the yellow walls, from mornings when April would make coffee and Dani would sit at the counter and Laurel would put the kettle on and add honey to Dani's cup without being asked.
Dani took the mug. Their fingers touched on the ceramic. Neither of them commented on it.
"Come upstairs?" Laurel said. Not quite a question. Not quite a command. Somewhere in between, tinged with vulnerability, like she was offering something she'd never offered before and wasn't sure it would be accepted.
"Yeah."
She followed Laurel up the narrow staircase, past the second-floor landing, to a closed door at the end of the hall. Laurel paused with her hand on the knob.
"It's not—I mean, it's not much. And it's—"
"Laurel."
"Yeah?"
"Open the door."
She opened the door.
The room hit Dani like a body blow. Not because it was sad, though it was, the smallness of it, the dated wood-paneled walls, the single window showing the cold dark—but because it was Laurel. Every inch of it. The punk band posters papering the walls, her own influence, the color guard equipment propped in the corner, the bookshelf overflowing with fantasy novels, the dim lighting giving the space an eerie feel.
She noticed the heavy oak dresser beside the door had scuff marks on the floor in front of it, from being dragged, repeatedly, to barricade the entrance.
Dani's heart cracked.
And then she saw it. On the desk, beside a half-finished English essay sat a leather-bound journal. Beside it, propped against the desk lamp, a photograph.
April.
Dani set her mug on the bookshelf and crossed the room without thinking. Her hand reached out and her fingers found the photograph, tracing the edge of the frame. April Parker, thirty-six forever, with her big sunglasses pushed up on her head and her auburn hair and her grin, God, that grin, wide and bright and aimed at whoever was holding the camera with the full force of a woman who loved without reservation.
Dani's thumb ran across the glass. Over April's face. Over the smile that had greeted her at the door of that apartment in Marisol Heights on the worst night of her life. This is your home now, sweetheart, this is your home, and hadn't asked for anything in return except that Dani stay and be loved.
"How are you doing?" Dani asked, still looking at the photograph. Her voice came out rough, lower than she intended. "Like, actually. Not the deflection answer. Not the 'I'm fine' answer. How are you really doing?"
Laurel had settled on the edge of her bed, knees drawn up, mug cradled in both hands. She watched Dani with the photograph and her expression was unguarded in a way Dani hadn't seen in weeks.
"I don't know," Laurel said quietly. “Some days are better. The hormones help. My friends in Guard help. Having people helps. But I still live here. And he still—" She gestured vaguely at the door, at the dresser, at the whole architecture of her life. "It's still this."
Dani nodded. Her eyes moved to the journal. She didn't touch it, but her hand hovered over the leather cover, the worn binding, the faint impression of April's handwriting visible through the edges of the pages.
"We never really talk about her," Dani said. "You and me. We talk about everything else, the dysphoria, Derrick, the legal shit, the plan. But we never talk about April."
Laurel's grip tightened on her mug. "I know."
"I think about her every day."
"I know." Laurel's voice was barely audible. "Me too."
Silence. The heater ticked in the wall. Outside, the wind pressed against the window.
"You can look at it," Laurel said. "The journal. If you want."
Dani turned. "Are you sure?"
"She was like a mother to you too, Dani. She would have wanted you to see it." Laurel set her mug on the nightstand, both hands wrapping around her own knees. "I haven't read the whole thing yet. I've been going slow. A few pages at a time. Because it still—" Her jaw worked. "It still hurts. Reading her voice. Knowing she's not at the end of it."
Dani picked up the journal. The leather was soft, warm from the desk lamp. She opened it carefully, reverently, the way you open something fragile. She flipped through slowly. She skimmed the contents, flip the book over and looked at the cover.
"Oh hun..."
The words came out broken. She pressed her palm flat against the journal… Her vision blurred. She blinked and felt the wetness on her lashes, the heat in her throat.
She closed the journal gently and set it back on the desk. Turned toward the window. Her hands were shaking.
"Do you mind?" she asked, already reaching into her jacket pocket for the pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She was sliding the window open before Laurel could answer, the November cold rushing in like a wall, cutting through the warmth of the room with surgical precision.
"Yes," Laurel said flatly. "I mind. That's going to kill you eventually, you know that, right? Like actually kill you. Dead."
Dani rolled her eyes, lit the cigarette, and took a drag that burned down to her sternum. The smoke curled out the open window into the freezing dark. "Thanks, Mom."
The word landed differently than she'd intended. They both felt it. April's photograph watched from the desk.
Dani reached out with her free hand, the one not holding a cigarette, and found Laurel's. Laurel had moved from the bed to stand beside her at the window, drawn by some gravity Dani didn't need to name. Their fingers interlocked. Laurel's hand was warm from the mug and Dani's was cold from the night air. The temperature differential felt metaphorical. Everything in their relationship felt metaphorical lately.
The cold breeze poured over them both. Laurel shivered but didn't pull away. They stood like that, hand in hand, the window open, Dani smoking and crying and staring at the mountains in the dark. Laurel pressed against her side with her shoulder tucked under Dani's arm and neither of them spoke. They didn't need to. Some griefs were too big for language. Some loves were too deep for explanation. April Parker had saved them both, had built them both, had loved them both with the ferocious completeness of a woman who knew her time was limited—and they had never, in all the months since reuniting, sat together in the quiet of that loss and just felt it.
Dani finished the cigarette. Flicked it out the window. Closed it.
"I have a show I've been watching since I got here," Laurel said, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist. "It's stupid. It's a comfort thing. But I could, if you want I could show you a few episodes?"
Dani wiped her own eyes with her sleeve smearing black eyeliner across the leather.
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, show me."
They settled on Laurel's bed, it was narrow, a twin, barely big enough for two people, which meant their bodies were pressed together by necessity rather than choice, which was easier to accept than admitting they both wanted the proximity. Laurel opened her laptop and pulled up the show—some sitcom about the afterlife, The Good Place, Laurel explained—and they watched.
Two episodes passed. Then three. Laurel's body gradually relaxed against Dani's, the tension in her shoulders unwinding degree by degree until she was leaning fully into Dani's side, her head resting against Dani's collarbone.
It was so reminiscent of California that Dani's chest ached with it. The two of them on April's couch, laptop balanced on their knees, string lights overhead, the sound of the ocean through the open window replaced now by Montana wind and the tick of a heater but the feeling was the same. The warmth. The safety. The small, sacred domesticity of two girls who loved each other existing in the same space without the world trying to tear them apart.
The fourth episode ended. The autoplay countdown began. Dani reached over and paused it.
"Babe."
Laurel shifted. Drew back slightly, enough to look up at Dani's face. Her brown eyes were tired and guarded and beautiful in the blue light of the laptop screen.
"I need to say something," Dani said. "And I need you to let me say the whole thing before you respond. Okay?"
Laurel's jaw tightened. She knew. She already knew what was coming. But she nodded.
"I know you know about me and Jess."
The words landed in the room like a stone in still water. Laurel didn't flinch, didn't look away, but something behind her eyes shuttered.
"I know that's why you've been avoiding us," Dani continued. "I know that's why you've been cancelling plans and spending time with Ana instead of—and I'm not here to make excuses or apologize for it, because I don't think it's something that needs an apology. But I need to know what's happening in your head. Because the silence is killing me. Literally, Laurel. I can't do this again. I can't lose you to silence again."
Laurel pulled her knees up. Made herself small. The defensive geometry of a girl who'd spent too long being cornered.
"I'm not avoiding you," she said.
"Laurel."
"I'm not—" She stopped. Closed her eyes. The lie died in her throat and she let it die, and when she opened her eyes again, they were wet.
"I don't know what my role is anymore," Laurel said. The words came out halting, each one pulled from somewhere deep and painful. "You have Jess. Jess has you. You're—you work. Together. I've seen it. The way you look at each other, the way she lights up when you text her. And that's—I'm happy for you. I am. I swear I am."
"But?"
"But what am I supposed to be now?" Her voice cracked. "I'm not your girlfriend anymore. I can't be. Look at me, Dani. Look at what I am. I nearly died less than a year ago, I never thought I'd make it this far but I can't even go outside as myself. I can't hold your hand in public. I can't give you anything, not dates, not normalcy, not even a body that matches what you—" She pressed her palms against her eyes. "You deserve the Laurel from Marisol Heights. The girl on the rooftop. The girl who danced with you at Homecoming. And I'm never going to be her again. I know that. That girl died, whether it be from Richard, Newport, Mom, or even me.
"That's not—"
"I'm too broken, Dani." The words were raw, final, the confession of someone who'd been rehearsing this in the dark for weeks. "I'm too complicated. I have too much shit. Conversion therapy and suicide attempts and… and dysphoria that makes me not even want to be touched some days. And you and Jess are simple. You make sense together. You don't need to manage her or fix her or wait for her to be a real person. She's already there. She's already whole. And I'm—I'm redundant. In your life. I'm the broken ex-girlfriend from a different life that you drove two thousand miles to save and now that you've seen me you've realized that the version of me you were looking for doesn't exist anymore."
Dani grabbed her gently, firmly, both hands finding Laurel's wrists and pulling them away from her face, holding them between their bodies so Laurel had nowhere to hide.
"Stop," Dani said. Her voice was shaking. "Stop. Okay? Just stop."
Laurel's face was wet. Tears tracking down her cheeks, her nose red, her lips trembling. She looked exactly like she had at fourteen, small and scared and convinced she was unlovable. And Dani felt something in her chest want to detonate.
"I don't want the Laurel from Marisol Heights," Dani said. Every word deliberate. Every syllable a nail driven in. "I want you. This Laurel. The one sitting in this room in this house in this frozen fucking town with punk posters on the walls and a barricade by the door and finally estradiol in her bloodstream. I want the girl sitting in front of me. I want the girl who puts on a sequined bodysuit and makes an entire stadium forget to breathe. I want the mess, Laurel. I want the complicated. I don't need you to be perfect. I don't need you to be healed. I don't need you to be a finished product."
Her grip tightened on Laurel's wrists. Not enough to hurt. Enough to anchor.
"I just need you to be in my life," Dani said, and her voice broke on the last word, cracked open. "I need you to let me love you. Not the ghost of you. Not the memory. You. Right now. Exactly as you are."
"Dani—"
"And if you never want to date me again, if you can't…if that's not what you want… then I will learn to live with that. I swear to God I will. But I will never stop loving you. Do you hear me? Never. Not if you push me away, not if you cancel plans for the rest of your life, not if you spend every night at Ana's house instead of talking to me. I will still be here. I will still be yours. Because that's what I chose when I drove two thousand miles, and I didn't choose it because of who you were in California. I chose it because of who you are to me. Period."
She was crying now. Both of them were. Dani could feel the tears hot on her face and didn't care, couldn't care, because Laurel was looking at her with an expression that was equal parts devastation and disbelief—like she'd been told something impossible, something too good, something that couldn't be real because nothing real had ever been this kind to her.
“B-but… Jess.”
"Jess is—yes. Jess is something. I care about her. A lot. I don't regret being with her, and I'm not going to pretend I do. But Jess isn't a replacement for you. Nobody is a replacement for you. There is no universe where I stop wanting you because someone else exists. That's not how this works for me." Dani's voice was raw now, the tough-girl armor stripped entirely, leaving nothing but the eighteen-year-old who'd driven two thousand miles in a dying Saturn to find the girl she loved. “The fact that my stupid, reckless decisions—the fact that any of that made you question whether I love you is driving me insane," Dani said. "Because none of it—none of it—was about not wanting you. It was about me being scared and lonely and terrible at dealing with my own shit. It was about me being a mess too, Laurel. I'm not whole either. I'm not fixed. I'm a dropout with a history of setting everything on fire because I'm terrified that if I sit still long enough I'll have to feel how much I miss you."
Laurel made a sound. Small, broken, the sound of a girl who'd been holding a wall up for weeks and just felt it give way.
And Dani caught her.
She pulled Laurel into her chest and held on. Arms wrapped around the girl she loved, tight, encompassing, her chin hooked over Laurel's shoulder, her hands flat against Laurel's back. Laurel's body folded into hers and she was shaking, sobbing, her face pressed into the curve of Dani's neck, the tears soaking through the collar of Dani's t-shirt.
Dani held her and cried with her.
Dani pressed her lips to the top of Laurel's head. Held them there. Breathed in the smell of her shampoo, something cheap and barely fragrant, and rocked her, gently.
Minutes passed. The crying slowed. Laurel's shaking subsided into small tremors, then stillness, then the deep, shuddering breaths of someone surfacing after nearly drowning. She didn't pull away. Dani didn't let go.
"I love you," Laurel whispered into Dani's neck. The words were waterlogged, barely audible, spoken into skin rather than air. "I love you and I'm so scared of losing you to someone easier."
"There's no one easier," Dani said. "There's no one else that replaces you. There's you. There's always been you."
Laurel pulled back just enough to look at Dani's face. Her eyes were swollen, red-rimmed, her nose running. She looked wrecked. She looked beautiful. She looked like the girl Dani had fallen in love with on a school bus in 2014, helping a terrified freshman pick up a spilled backpack. Different and the same. Changed and unchanged. Hers.
"Stay," Laurel said. "Tonight. He doesn't get back until seven."
"If it were up to me," Dani said, brushing a strand of damp hair from Laurel's face, tucking it behind her ear with a gentleness that felt like prayer, "I'd never leave."
Laurel exhaled, a long, shaking breath that took the last of the tension with it. She settled back against the pillows, pulling Dani down with her, rearranging until they fit the way they used to fit: Laurel's back against Dani's chest, Dani's arm around her waist, their legs tangled together under the thin blanket. The laptop had gone dark. The lights overhead cast the room in soft amber, and the punk posters watched from the walls like sentinels, and the photograph of April watched from the desk with her beautiful smile.
"I missed this," Laurel murmured. Her voice was thick with exhaustion, the bone-deep weariness of someone who'd been fighting for months and had finally been given permission to stop. "I missed you."
"I'm here," Dani said. She pressed her lips to the back of Laurel's neck, just once, soft, barely a kiss. A punctuation mark. "I'm not going anywhere."
Laurel's breathing slowed. Deepened. Her body went heavy against Dani's, the gradual surrender of someone falling asleep mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-heartbeat. Her fingers, laced through Dani's where their hands rested on her stomach, loosened but didn't let go.
Dani lay in the dark and listened to Laurel breathe. In. Out. In. Out. The rhythm of a girl alive and safe and held. Outside, the Montana wind battered the house, the same wind that had been trying to freeze Laurel out since October. Inside, the heater ticked and the lights glowed and two girls existed in the small, warm space that April Parker had once used to survive this same house.
If it were up to me, she thought, watching the minutes change on Laurel's alarm clock, I'd burn this house to the ground and carry you out.
Laurel Melody Parker, November 21st, 2018, Laurel, Montana
Dani was gone by 5 AM. She'd set a vibrating alarm on her phone and slipped out of the bed with a quiet grace, pressing a kiss to Laurel's forehead before pulling on her boots and disappearing down the stairs. The front door clicked shut. An engine turned over in the dark. And then silence.
Laurel lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and felt the phantom warmth where Dani had been.
She didn't feel healed. She felt held.
The feeling lasted approximately four hours.
School had been getting more difficult for a few days now. The initial novelty of Ana Yankowski dating ‘Montana Payton’ had worn off, and with it, the protective barrier that novelty created. When people were gossiping about the unlikely couple, they weren't looking at Laurel too closely. But now the relationship was established, boring, and the collective attention of Laurel High had begun to drift back toward its original fixation: that Montana Payton was different.
Different in ways they couldn't articulate but could feel. The way he moved, too fluid, too graceful for a boy. The way his voice occasionally slipped into a register that didn't match his body. The way his hair was getting longer, his skin softer, his frame thinner. The changes were subtle, Laurel monitored them obsessively, but she lived in a small town, and small towns noticed everything.
The whispers had returned. Not the vicious, organized cruelty of Hunter and his crew, but the ambient static of suspicion. Lingering looks in the hallway. Conversations that stopped when she approached. A study hall group who moved their bags off a seat and then "remembered" they were saving it for someone else.
Wednesday morning was gray and bitter. Laurel walked through the main entrance of Laurel High, past the marbled floor patterns, past the glass trophy cases, past the mezzanines where clusters of students gathered before first bell. She had her hood up, headphones in, the armor of invisibility she'd perfected over months of practice. The cashmere sweater was under the hoodie, she couldn't bear to let anyone see the nice things Ana had given her, couldn't bear the questions or the scrutiny today.
She was thinking about Jess. About what she needed to say. About the conversation that had to happen today because Dani's visit had unlocked something, and if Laurel didn't act on it immediately, the door would close again and she'd retreat back into avoidance.
The hallway was crowded between second and third period. Laurel was cutting through the senior corridor toward the stairwell when she heard it.
"Yo, Payton."
She didn't stop. Kept walking, head down, headphones creating a barrier. But the voice followed, louder, cutting through The Distillers blasting in her ears.
"Payton. I'm talking to you."
A hand on her shoulder. She turned.
Hunter Stevens was taller than her by three inches and built like the football player he was—broad, thick-necked, his dark hair buzzed close to his scalp. He had his letterman jacket on, flanked by two guys from the offensive line whose names Laurel had never bothered to learn. His face wore the easy, predatory smirk of someone who knew the hallway cameras were angled away from this stretch.
"Headphones in, huh? Rude." He tugged one of her earbuds out. The gesture was casual, proprietary, the motion of someone who considered other people's space his own. "I said hey."
"Hey, Hunter." Flat. Emotionless. Give him nothing.
"You're looking extra pretty today, Montana." The word pretty landed with deliberate, surgical cruelty—an echo of Jared's voice at the pool that made Laurel's stomach lurch. Hunter's boys snickered. "What's the routine? You wake up early to do your eyebrows? You and Ana share products?"
"I'm going to class."
"Bet Ana loves it though, right? Having a boyfriend who's prettier than she is?" He leaned closer, his breath hot and sour. "Must be confusing for her. What exactly is she dating, Payton? Because from here, I genuinely cannot tell."
The hallway noise swelled and receded around them. Students walked past, glancing, not stopping. The social contract of high school: witness but don't intervene under any circumstances.
Laurel's hands were shaking in her pockets. The instinct, the old, beaten-in instinct was to fold. To say nothing, to walk away, to make herself smaller and hope the predator lost interest.
But something from last night made her want to try.
"I'm going to class," Laurel repeated. She put her earbud back in. Turned. Walked.
"Tell Ana I said hey!" Hunter called after her, his laugh following her down the hallway like a hand reaching for the back of her neck.
She didn't run. She walked, spine straight, until she turned the corner and was out of sight, and then she pressed her back against the cinder block wall.
You're okay. You're fine. He's a small, pathetic person and you are leaving this town in a month and a half and you will never see him again.
The breathing helped. The shaking subsided. She pushed off the wall and went to class.
Finding Jess took longer than expected. She wasn't in the band room during lunch, wasn't at her locker during the in-between period, Laurel finally spotted her coming out of the library after fifth period denim jacket over a burgundy sweater, her blonde hair in a ponytail, computer case in hand.
"Hey," Laurel said, falling into step beside her.
"Hey! Oh my God, I've been looking for you. Where were you at lunch?"
"I was... hiding in the bathroom after Hunter Stevens reminded me that I'm visibly not doing a good job at being masculine Montana right now.”
Jess's expression shifted. Her blue eyes scanned Laurel's face with the rapid assessment of someone trained to detect emotional crisis. "Are you okay?"
"I'm okay. I just need to talk to you. Alone."
"Now?"
"Now. Please."
Jess checked the time on her phone. Sixth period started in four minutes. "Stairwell B? No one uses it after the bell."
They walked together through the thinning crowds. Students filtered into classrooms, doors swinging shut, the hallway cacophony reducing to scattered footsteps and the distant echo of a teacher starting roll call. The glass-walled stairwell on the building's east side was their destination, a concrete and metal structure that connected all three floors, used primarily by the art department students heading to the third-floor studios. After the sixth-period bell, it would be empty for at least forty-five minutes.
The bell rang as they pushed through the heavy door. The stairwell was cold, concrete and their footsteps echoed as they descended to the landing between the first and second floors. A window overlooked the practice field, white with frost, the goalposts skeletal against the grey sky.
Jess set her books on the step and turned to face Laurel, leaning against the railing with her arms crossed. Not defensive, just patient. Waiting.
Laurel stood a step above her. The height difference meant they were nearly eye-level, Laurel's brown eyes meeting Jess's blue ones without the usual upward tilt.
"Dani came to my house last night," Laurel said.
Something moved across Jess's face, surprise, then a careful blankness as she processed. "She did?"
"After Derrick left. She knocked on my door. She told me about you and her."
"Laurel, I—"
"Let me talk. Please. I have to get this out before I lose my nerve."
Jess closed her mouth. Nodded.
Laurel gripped the stair railing. The metal was freezing under her palm, a grounding point. She looked at Jess, really looked, and let herself see what she'd been denying for weeks. The way the fluorescent light caught the small scar on Jess's cheek from Sarah's ring. The way her jaw was set with the particular stubbornness that meant she was ready to fight for something. The way she was looking at Laurel with such focused, fearful attention that it hurt.
"I've been avoiding you," Laurel said. "And Dani. And I told myself it was because I didn't want to make things complicated, or because I was giving you space, or because I didn't want to be in the way. And that's what I keep telling myself, putting myself down at every possible moment.”
Jess said nothing. Her hands tightened on the railing behind her.
"But the truth is I was scared. I've been scared since Halloween. Since before Halloween, since I first started feeling things again, and I realized that the feeling I get when you're around, or when Dani is, or when I'm standing between the two of you and the whole world feels survivable, that feeling isn't friendship. It hasn't been friendship in a long time."
Jess's breath caught. Audible in the concrete silence of the stairwell.
"I'm in love with you," Laurel said. The words came out quieter than she intended, but they came out, and once they were in the air, she couldn't take them back, and she didn't want to. "I'm in love with you, Jess. And I'm in love with Dani. And I know that's complicated and messy and probably not how this is supposed to work, and I know I'm a disaster of a person right now but I can't keep pretending that I don't want you. Both of you. I want you both so much it's making me spiral."
Jess was staring at her. Completely still, one hand pressed against her own sternum, her blue eyes wide and luminous in the cold stairwell light.
"And I know that's selfish," Laurel continued, the words coming faster now, tumbling out. "I know you and Dani have something real and I don't want to ruin that. I don't want to be the complicated factor that breaks what you've built. If you tell me that what you have with her is enough, that you don't want me in the middle of it, I'll back off. I'll figure out how to be your friend and only your friend. But I had to say it out loud. I had to stop being a coward about this one thing, because everything else in my life requires me to be a coward and I am so tired, Jess. I am so tired of not saying what I mean."
Her voice cracked on the last word. She pressed her hand over her mouth, the way she always did when the emotions threatened to overwhelm, and looked away, at the frosted window, at the floor, at anywhere that wasn't Jess's face.
Jess was moving, climbing the step between them. And then her hand was on Laurel's jaw, gentle, firm, turning her face back.
"Look at me," Jess said.
Laurel looked.
Jess's eyes were wet. Her mouth was doing the thing it did when she was fighting a smile and losing. She was close, so close that Laurel could smell her perfume and the mint of her gum.
"You absolute idiot," Jess said, with a tenderness that transformed the words into something sacred. "I have been in love with you since you performed in the empty auditorium. And it was initially really confusing for me, but the more I began to be around you the more I felt it.”
"But Dani—"
"Dani knows. Dani has known since the night you reunited with her.”
Laurel's breath left her in a rush. Her hand dropped from her mouth.
Jess's thumb traced Laurel's cheekbone, "We've been trying to have this conversation with you for three weeks. Both of us. Together. And every time we got close, you'd disappear. Leave early, cancel plans, go silent for twelve hours."
"I thought—" Laurel's voice was barely a whisper. "I thought you two didn't need me. I thought I was the complication in something that worked better without me."
"You thought wrong." Jess stepped closer, the remaining distance between them collapsing to nothing. "We want you, Laurel. Not a hypothetical future version of you. This you. Right now. If you'll let us."
The stairwell was silent except for the distant hum of the heating system and the muffled sound of a teacher's voice through the wall. The window framed a grey Montana sky, the practice field frozen and still.
Laurel looked at Jess, at her fierce blue eyes, at the scar on her cheek that she'd gotten defending someone she hadn't even liked, at the hands that had given Laurel her first injection, that had done her makeup in parking lots and changing rooms, that had held her through panic attacks and nightmares.
"I'm scared," Laurel said.
"I know."
"I don't know how to do this."
"Neither do I. Neither does Dani. We'll figure it out as we go. There's no guidebook.”
A sound escaped Laurel's chest, a release of pressure she'd been holding for so long that she'd forgotten what her body felt like without it. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Jess's shoulder, and felt Jess's arms come around her, strong and certain.
"Okay," Laurel said. Into the denim of Jess's jacket. Into the warmth of her body. Into the future. "Okay."
Jess held her tighter. Her chin rested on top of Laurel's head, and Laurel could feel her smile against her hair.
Laurel stared at her. At this impossible girl who'd dismantled her loneliness with such casual certainty. And despite everything, despite Hunter in the hallway, and Jared at the pool, and the cold pressing in from every direction, Laurel felt heat bloom in her chest that she hadn't felt since California.
Hope. Small and fragile and persistent as a weed through concrete.
"We should get to class," Laurel said.
"We should." Jess didn't move.
Laurel moved first, leaned in and kissed her.