Chapter Text
“She’s my sister,” Waverly says, carefully cutting the crusts off a peanut butter and jelly. “And you’re my…” she trails off.
Nicole, leaning a hip against the counter, raises an eyebrow. “Girlfriend?”
Waverly rolls her eyes. “That’s not it,” she says, answering Nicole’s unspoken question. Maybe it was rocky at the start, but she’s solid now. They’re solid now. “You know I love you.”
Nicole leans closer to steal a kiss, Waverly’s surprised-slack mouth, then the eager curl of her tongue. “Doesn’t get old, though,” she murmurs against Waverly’s lips. “Hearing you say it.”
Waverly’s hand sneaks into her hair, tugging her a little closer. “You’re my best baby,” she sing-songs, and kisses Nicole’s smile. “I just meant girlfriend feels a little…” she trails off, her smile turning rueful. “Feels like we worked hard to get here, that’s all. Feels like a little more than girlfriend.”
Nicole tucks an errant curl behind Waverly’s ear. “I know. I’m teasing.” She checks her phone. “And I gotta go to work.”
“And you’re hanging out with Wynonna after her shift,” Waverly reminds her, bagging the sandwich and handing it over.
“Yes,” Nicole says, only very slightly muttered. She reaches around Waverly to snag a piece of crust off the plate on the counter, nibbling on it while she takes her hat off the hook and settles it onto her head. “Me and Wynonna.”
//
Nicole waffles at her desk, straightening her mug of pencils and fidgeting with the strap of her duffel.
“I know,” Wynonna says, walking through the door with her hands spread. “You can hardly control your enthusiasm.”
Nicole forces a cheery smile. “I just need to change.”
She ducks into the locker room, and Wynonna nudges the door open a crack with her foot to talk to her through it. “I’m thinking liquor.”
Nicole, tugging a t-shirt over her head and buttoning her jeans before packing her uniform away, thinks that sounds like the best idea Wynonna’s ever had in her presence. “Not Shorty’s,” she says, sitting down to do up the laces of her shoes.
Wynonna makes a noise of agreement. “I know a place.”
“I’m sure you do,” Nicole mutters to her boots.
Wynonna takes her to a dive bar, which is almost exactly what Nicole expected. But the prices aren’t high, and the beer’s not warm, and Wynonna isn’t so bad. “I hear you’re in law enforcement.”
Wynonna snorts. “Of a sort.”
Nicole raises a questioning eyebrow.
Wynonna waves a hand. “Not important. Let’s talk… sports?”
Nicole blinks. “You watch sports?”
“No,” Wynonna admits. “But I could bullshit through it, probably?”
Nicole takes a long drink of beer. “Is it awkward? Me at your homestead all the time.”
“It’s Waverly’s, too,” Wynonna says, with a shrug. “More hers than mine, even.”
Nicole nods. She taps her fingernails on the table, watches the bubbles rise up in her beer. “So,” she says, and fails to come up with anything more. “I arrested Frank Duly last week,” she says, the first thought to occur to her.
“Frankie Dee,” Wynonna says, grinning. “Wait, let me guess it.” She pauses, dramatically. “Indecent exposure at a public pool.”
Nicole’s mouth falls very slightly open. “How’d you know that?”
“He did the same thing every summer from grades four through ten. You’d think he’d get more self-conscious as he got older, especially since--” she makes a gesture with two fingers. “You know.”
“I don’t,” Nicole says, but she’s fighting a smile. “Okay, how about this one: Louise Gossamer.”
Wynonna hums thoughtfully. “Misdemeanor or felony?”
“Felony.”
Wynonna whistles. “Way to go Louise. Alright, I’m going with… DUI with a suspended license.”
“Possession with intent to distribute.”
Wynonna gasps. “No.” Nicole nods, and Wynonna takes a long drag of her beer. “Ah, Louise, you’ve come so far from co-captain of the cheer squad.” She slaps the table. “Okay Haught, double or nothing. Hit me again.”
//
Nicole isn’t sure how she’s gotten herself into her current situation. She remembers drinking with Wynonna at the bar, and she remembers walking down the road with open containers while Wynonna told her to live a little and laughed delightedly when Nicole didn’t put up as much of a fight as Wynonna thought she would. She definitely remembers cutting across the Anderson Ranch cornfield, because it was spooky as all hell.
But she doesn’t remember agreeing to this. “Wynonna,” she hisses, even as she continues to follow the other woman up the side of a hill, towards a fence.
“It’s time to make a real Purgatory native out of you,” Wynonna says, draining the rest of her bottle and tossing it away into the dark with a heavy clink of glass on gravel. “It’s a coming of age tradition.” She puts one hand on the top of the fence, about chest high, then raises a challenging eyebrow. “Unless you think you can’t handle hopping an itty-bitty fence.”
Nicole feels her lip curl back in response, her innate competitiveness kicking in. She sets her own nearly empty beer bottle to the side, trying to make a mental note so she can get it on their way out. Wynonna tips over the fence with a grunt, landing on her feet. Nicole braces one boot on the lowest wooden slat with a grimace. “I thought cow tipping was a myth.”
“Oh it’s real,” Wynonna says cheerfully, offering a helpful hand. Nicole casts her a withering look, Wynonna withdrawing with an easy shrug. “And it’s hilarious.”
“It’s illegal,” Nicole mutters, one leg slung over the fence. “And we’re trashed.”
“Buzzed,” Wynonna counters. “Trashed is when you can’t stand up anymore.”
“It’s really not,” Nicole says, and then, alarmingly, wobbles. She suddenly thinks she’s a lot drunker than she thought she was, and also, the ground is moving towards her face. And then: a pain, sharp and stabbing, radiating out from her chest. A heart attack, she thinks, panicked, and then she’s looking up the sky, Wynonna’s face against the stars.
“--icole,” Wynonna is saying, worried lines around her eyes. “Hey. You with me?”
“Ow,” Nicole moans. “What--” she struggles upright, Wynonna supporting her, and tries to take stock. She’s made it to the other side of the fence, she realizes, when a cow walks by and casts a faintly judgemental look at her. Her arm is aching, starting to go numb, and her chest is still radiating agony. “Did I have a heart attack?”
“No,” Wynonna says, less mockingly than Nicole thinks she should. She thinks she must look bad, to make Wynonna coddle her so. “You fell.”
“I fell,” Nicole groans. No one is ever going to let her live this down. “I fell climbing a four foot fence.”
“You were trashed,” Wynonna says, her hand patting Nicole’s shoulder comfortingly.
“Buzzed,” Nicole corrects mournfully, and then: “Ow. I think I need a doctor.”
“Are you sure?” Wynonna asks, nervous. “You don’t think you could… walk it off?”
Nicole retches, dry heaving to the side. “Walk it off? My arm is hanging off!”
Wynonna tries to gingerly move Nicole’s arm, wincing when it makes Nicole groan in pain. “Waverly’s going to kill me,” she says with a sigh. “The ER it is. I’ll go call a ride.”
“I can walk,” Nicole protests. She twitches her fingers and bites back a yelp. “No, you’re right.” She wobbles to her feet, Wynonna supporting her, and immediately sags under the effort of taking one step.
“Shit,” Wynonna says. She eases Nicole back to the ground. “Stay here, okay? I’m going to go get help.”
“Waverly’s going to kill us,” Nicole says bleakly. “We were supposed to have dinner and make small talk.”
“Please,” Wynonna mutters, shrugging off her coat and slinging it around Nicole’s shoulders. “You’re going to get babied and coddled and hand-fed chicken soup. I’m going to get the business end of her shotgun.”
“Not if I die,” Nicole says, on her back again, staring at the sky. She can smell cow shit. “I’m going to die in a cow field.”
“Drunk Nicole is very melodramatic,” Wynonna says, leaning down to pat Nicole’s shoulder. “I’ll be back.”
//
Nicole wakes up and the sky is moving. No, she realizes, she’s moving. She’s upright, squished into a crackly upholstered chair. The jarring has woken her, the smell and the rumble of the motor. She blinks, trying to focus and orient herself.
“Hey,” Wynonna says, “you’re awake. I was worried.”
“I’m in a tractor,” Nicole says, with dawning horror. “You’re driving us in a tractor on the road.”
“It was all I could find,” Wynonna says, patting the handle of a screwdriver in the ignition.
Nicole moans in agony that’s unrelated to her injury. “We’re riding in a stolen tractor on a public road.”
“A freeway,” Wynonna says cheerfully. “Embrace your inner outlaw.”
“I’m going to get fired. I’m going to get fired and die.”
“Maybe you’ll die first,” Wynonna suggests, still entirely too tickled by the situation.
“I’ll have died on your watch,” Nicole says, and Wynonna grimaces.
“You’re right handed, right? Waverly’s definitely going to kill me.”
Nicole makes a squawking noise at the implication and Wynonna winces. “Sorry! I get inappropriate when I’m anxious.”
“What,” Nicole snipes, “are you anxious all the time?”
“Well,” Wynonna mutters. Her hands flex on the wheel.
Nicole feels the flush of chagrin. “I didn’t mean…” she starts, and trails off.
“It’s this town,” Wynonna says quietly, her eyes fixed on the dark road, her voice just above the rumble of the old, creaky engine. “Not that I wasn’t still a fuck-up when I left, but… this town, I don’t know.”
They’re silent for a moment, the lights of the hospital getting closer and closer. “I was supposed to keep you in check,” Nicole says, after an awkward clearing of her throat. “I’m sure Waverly will kill me first.”
“And I won’t be far behind.” Wynonna pulls off the freeway with a rumble of gas and oily smoke. “Just a few minutes to the hospital. Don’t pass out again, okay?”
Nicole wiggles her fingers and bites back a whimper. “Think it’s the elbow?”
“Collarbone, if I had to guess.”
“Desk jockey,” Nicole says, in a dark prediction. She sighs. “Did you call Waverly?”
“I was thinking,” Wynonna starts, and ignores Nicole’s snort. “I was thinking it’d sound better, coming from the girlfriend.”
“No way,” Nicole says. “The girl without the broken bone gets to make the notification.”
Wynonna sighs.
//
Nicole doesn’t think her reputation will ever recover from being pulled out of the cab of a tractor in the ambulance bay of the hospital. The doctor helping her onto a gurney raises an eyebrow at Wynonna’s hovering. “Earp,” he greets. “I seem to remember a very similar circumstance after a certain junior prom.”
Nicole looks at Wynonna accusingly.
Wynonna chuckles nervously. “I better, uh, go park my tractor. Or return it to its rightful owner before he wakes up. Later!”
The doctor pats Nicole’s arm as they wheel her through the sliding doors, cool latex on her heated skin. “Let me guess: Old man Jordin’s cows again?”
Nicole sighs.
//
“Clavicle fracture,” her doctor declares, almost two hours later. He tucks her x-ray into a folder. “Sling, physical therapy, rest. No need for surgery, and you’ll be back to tipping cows in about three months.”
“I didn’t tip a cow,” Nicole says, because it’s important to her that people know that. “I have never tipped a cow.”
“Mmhm.” Her doctor scribbles something on a notepad. “You’ll get some good stuff for the collarbone, but I’m going to have a nurse bring you some mild painkillers and an IV to take the edge off and chase your hangover away.”
The curtain rustles. Wynonna sticks her head in. “Hey. What’s the verdict?”
“Fractured collarbone,” Nicole says, watching disinterestedly as a nurse inserts an IV line into her elbow.
“Shit,” Wynonna agrees. “Waverly’s on her way.”
“Shit,” Nicole echoes. She leans towards the nurse. “Can you knock me out?”
The nurse smiles. Pats the inside of her elbow, around the clear tape securing the IV. “Take your medicine, deputy. All of it.”
//
Waverly bursts through the curtain. “Is it too much to ask,” she starts, and then catches sight of Nicole in the bed, her arm in a sling and looking bruised up and tired. “Oh, baby,” she says, switching immediately into fussy concern, bustling to Nicole’s side and smoothing the thin sheet over her legs. “Are you okay?”
Nicole tries to look as pathetic as possible. “Kinda hurts,” she says from under half-lowered eyelids.
Wynonna snorts from the side, an immediate mistake as Waverly turns on her. “You!”
Wynonna holds her hands out. “Hey,” she says, “I stole a tractor to get her here!”
“That doesn’t help,” Waverly snaps. “What happened?”
“I fell off a fence,” Nicole confesses, leaning her head back against the thin pillows.
“And down a hill,” Wynonna says, which Nicole hadn’t realized. Explains the scrapes and bruises down her side and on her elbows. “She’s hardy, though,” Wynonna continues. “Only passed out the once.”
“My brave baby,” Waverly coos, kissing Nicole’s eyebrow. Nicole shoots a smug look at Wynonna, then yelps as Waverly smacks her uninjured side. “You are in so much trouble.”
“You’re so pretty,” Nicole tries, “and I love you so much.”
Waverly rolls her eyes. “I’m going to get the paperwork to get you out of here,” she says, leaning to give Nicole a soft kiss. “Get you home and take care of you.”
“Nurse Waverly,” Nicole says, not without a healthy helping of appreciation.
Waverly winks. “Good girls who take their medicine on time get lollipop rewards.”
Wynonna makes a fake retching noise. Waverly kisses Nicole again, flicker quick, and leaves with a last lingering touch to Nicole’s wrist. Nicole watches her go, besotted, then tries to twitch her fingers and groans. “I think I might hate you,” she says conversationally to Wynonna.
Wynonna shrugs, leaned against the wall and tapping away on her phone. “Then you really are a local now.”
Nicole is right on the verge of asking Wynonna to go see what’s taking Waverly so long when a hand pokes through the curtain; a voice calls out: “Knock, knock?”
Wynonna flicks her gaze up, assesses the interloper, and deems her nonthreatening. She goes back to her phone.
Meanwhile, Nicole’s breathing has sped up, her eyes gone wide. She sputters something, uncertain, and then hisses: “Wynonna.”
“Hi,” Shae Pressman says, in a pretty calm tone for the way it’s shaking Nicole’s life apart. “It is you.”
“Wynonna.”
Wynonna steps up to her bedside, her phone chiming with a jovial tune, not looking up. “What?”
I’m hallucinating my ex-wife, is what’s on the tip of Nicole’s tongue. “Why is she here,” is what comes out.
“Hurtful,” Shae says. “I’m, uh, in town. And I was touring the hospital--it doesn’t matter. I saw your name on the intake charts, that’s all. I didn’t even know this was where you’d moved.”
Wynonna finally catches on that there’s something afoot, tucking her phone away and looking between the two of them with a furrow between her eyes. “And who are you, exactly?”
Shae sticks out her hand. “Dr. Shae Pressman, I’m visiting from--”
“I don’t care,” Wynonna interrupts, stepping forward and forcing Shae back a step, sliding in between her and the edge of Nicole’s bed. “Why are you here, in this room?”
Shae’s eyes flash, her shoulders setting. “I came to check on my wife.”
Wynonna chokes on nothing. “Your wife?”
Shae immediately looks contrite. “No, I didn’t mean,” she says, overlapping neatly with Nicole’s “No--that’s not--”
“She,” Nicole starts, and falters.
Wynonna turns to stare at her. “Is she your wife, Haught?”
Back to Haught, Nicole thinks glumly. Right when they were maybe… she leans her head back against the pillows and swallows. “Yeah. She’s my wife.”
“Jesus,” Wynonna says. Then she shakes it off. “Listen,” she says to Shae. “I get you two got shit to sort, but it doesn’t seem like my friend wants you here.”
Nicole lifts her head up, surprised. My friend?
“We aren’t together,” Shae says, after a pause, catching Nicole’s response to Wynonna’s remark. “I hope I haven’t come between any new relationships she’s formed.”
“Well a wife throws a wrench into the mix,” Wynonna snipes, crossing her arms over her chest.
Shae looks Wynonna up and down: her general attitude, the mud on her boots, the grease on her hands. “I heard the doctors talk about you,” she says, an edge in her tone. “Wynonna Earp.”
Wynonna bristles. “I haven’t heard anybody talk about you, lady, so let’s not judge books by their hearsay.”
“Not who I thought you’d go for as a rebound,” Shae says to Nicole.
Wynonna blinks. “What?”
“We’re not together,” Nicole says shortly, cutting through the misunderstanding.
“What? Oh!” Wynonna’s eyes go wide, then narrow in offense. “Hey. I’m a great rebound.”
“I don’t want you here,” Nicole says, shorter than maybe she would have normally. She’s in pain and the last thing she needs is Shae to still be here when--
Waverly arrives, with a clipboard and a peppy smile. “Okay, so---” she takes in the scene. “Is everything okay?”
“Um,” Nicole says. Her good hand twitches towards Wynonna’s sleeve, who neatly dodges the grasp.
“I’ll bring your car around,” she says to Waverly. She shoots Nicole a hard look; escapes with a rustle of her coat against the curtain.
Shae offers her hand again. “Dr. Pressman, visiting from Calgary General.”
“Waverly Earp,” Waverly says, shaking her hand.
“Earp,” Shae repeats. “The younger, I see. Unless there are three Earps running around?”
Nicole flinches.
Waverly’s frown deepens. “I’m sorry, I thought I just spoke to Nicole’s doctor?” she crosses to Nicole’s side, taking Nicole's hand in her own. “Is something wrong with her x-ray?”
Shae falters, taking in the dynamic. Nicole meets her gaze head on, squeezing Waverly’s fingers. “Shae is… an old friend.”
Waverly’s countenance changes, brightening, making Nicole wince. “Nicole never talks about her old friends! Are you here to visit?”
“I was,” Shae admits. “I mean, I’m here on work, but--I.” She looks hurt. “You didn’t tell anyone about me?” she asks Nicole. “About us?”
“Us?” Waverly repeats. “Nicole, what--”
“I’m her wife,” Shae interrupts.
Nicole sees the second Waverly processes the words. Her flinch, and the hurt that ripples over her face. Feels Waverly’s hand slip out of hers.
//
Waverly is in the bathroom when Wynonna finds her. She hears the door bang open, sees Wynonna’s boots walk by under the crack of the stall door, pause, and come back. “Waves?”
Waverly wipes hurriedly at her eyes. “Yeah,” she says, clearing her throat. “I’m here.”
“Hey,” Wynonna says, her voice carefully gentled. “So… that was news.” She coughs. “Surprising?”
Waverly stands, jerking the stall door open. “Of course it was surprising! You think I knew Nicole was married?”
Wynonna is holding her hands up in surrender. “I know, I know, sorry. Sorry! This is weird.”
“So weird.” Waverly crosses her arms over her chest, huddling into herself. “Nicole’s never even talked about other girls she’s dated. Married. Married. To a gorgeous, smart lady doctor who probably never forgets how much sugar she likes in her coffee, and whose house probably doesn’t have weird mutant rats in the barn, and--”
“Hey. Hey!” Wynonna touches her shoulder gingerly, then more firmly when Waverly doesn’t flinch away. She guides Waverly into a half embrace, Waverly’s face tucked against Wynonna’s shoulder. “She’s not better than you. We’ll figure it out. I promise. I have eyes, Waverly. Nicole loves you.”
“Okay,” Waverly mumbles into the leather of Wynonna’s jacket. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Stands straighter on her own two feet. “Okay.” She rubs at her eyes. “I’m going to go see her.”
She hesitates outside of Nicole’s room, then exhales once, sharp. “Get to it, Earp.”
She pushes the door open, and the first thing she sees is two pairs of feet under the curtain drawn around Nicole’s bed. Nicole’s boots, and sensible heels. “--were good then, weren’t we?” Nicole’s voice, soft and fond, and it makes Waverly’s heart still in her chest.
“We were,” Shae says, and her shoes move a little closer to Nicole’s boots.
Waverly clears her throat. The curtain pulls back, Nicole’s wide eyes. “Waverly!” she blurts. “Hey, I--”
“I can give you a ride,” Waverly interrupts. “If you want, I mean. I could wait, if you needed…” she trails off. “To do something else.”
“No,” Nicole says quickly, grabbing for her jacket and standing with a wince, her jacket half draped over her shoulders and hanging awkwardly across her sling. “No, I’m ready. Let’s go.”
“Waverly,” Nicole starts, once they’ve exited the hospital and they’re making their way to Waverly’s car. “I--”
“Your jacket,” Waverly interrupts. She stops just short of the car, her hip bumping against the trunk as she turns to fuss with Nicole’s jacket, careful of her injury. “Take your pills.”
“With food,” Nicole says, obediently turning with Waverly’s gentle, but insistent, fingers so she can adjust the way her jacket hangs over her shoulders. “I’ll take them at--at home?” Her voice goes up, suddenly uncertain.
“Of course,” Waverly says, too fast after a too long pause. “Of course I’m taking you to the homestead. You’ll need someone to look after you.” She tries a smile as Nicole turns to face her. “Me, right?”
“You,” Nicole says, after a beat. “Of course, you.”
Waverly makes her a peanut butter sandwich, a glass of milk to wash down her medication. “I’ll go to the grocery store tomorrow,” she says, surveying the fridge with a disappointed frown. “Get… salad or something. Something healthy.”
“Something hearty,” Nicole suggests, ever hopeful. “Something with gluten.”
Waverly smiles despite herself. “Something healthy,” she says, and then relents: “but glutenous.”
“I’m tired,” Nicole admits, after they’ve shuffled up the stairs and Waverly is helping her change into the biggest button-up Waverly could find in Wynonna’s closet. “But… we need to talk.”
Waverly kneels to ease Nicole’s boots off, strip her socks away. Her stomach flips. “Later. I gotta go in tonight, get things set up for Champ to run it tomorrow.”
Nicole is quiet for a moment. “Later,” she agrees. Her hand clenches on Waverly’s shoulder, then eases. “Hey,” she says quietly, “I love you.”
Waverly tucks the blanket around her; kisses her, closed mouth. Looks away. “I love you, too.”
//
It’s almost eight in the morning by the time she gets back, with pastries from the bakery Nicole likes and a headache threatening to turn into a migraine. Nicole is still asleep, but she stirs as Waverly comes into her room, head lifting up off the pillow and her hair all in her eyes, bleary and blinking. “Waves?” she croaks, and then groans. “Ow.”
Waverly checks the time, pops the lids off two of Nicole’s orange bottles and taps out the pills onto her palm. “Sit up,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed with a glass of water. “I brought bear claws.”
Nicole swallows. “I like bear claws,” she mumbles. Winces as she moves again. “I like codeine. This shirt smells like Dolls.”
Waverly snorts. “C’mon. I have those wet wipes, and we’ll braid your hair back. Tackle showering tomorrow.”
Nicole waits until they’re at the kitchen counter, their faces cleaned, their teeth brushed, Nicole’s sling readjusted and her hair combed. “Waverly.”
Waverly suddenly becomes fascinated with the coffee machine, stopping it mid-gurgle and emptying it out into the sink. “Didn’t add enough grounds,” she mutters, taking the freshly filled filter out and dumping it into the trash can.
“About Shae,” Nicole says.
Waverly shuts the cupboard firmly, then starts digging in the drawer for a new filter. “We should try that holiday coffee Gus gave me for Christmas. It has like, cinnamon and vanilla and cloves, or something…”
“We met in Vegas.” Waverly goes still at Nicole’s statement, the scoop buried in a coffee can, the faucet dripping into the empty sink. “At a Britney concert,” Nicole adds with a snort. “We were drunk, we got married, we went rock climbing, we realized we shouldn’t stay married.”
“But you did,” Waverly says, her voice coming out odd and strangled. “You did stay married.”
“Waverly--”
The front door bangs open. “Hey!” Wynonna says, barging into the kitchen and drawing up short. “Uhh. The… station… needs Nicole. Nedley! Needs Nicole. Right now. C’mon.” She grabs Nicole by her uninjured arm.
“Wynonna,” Nicole sputters, tripping with the momentum.
“No,” Waverly says, “you should go. If they need you, I mean you should--I’m tired anyway. I’m just. Gonna shower and sleep a little.” She clears her throat. “Yeah. You should go.”
Nicole grabs the doorjamb, Wynonna hauling on her belt. Her eyes search Waverly’s face. “We’ll… talk later?”
“Yeah,” Waverly says. “I’ll make dinner?”
“Okay,” Nicole says quietly. She starts to say something else, but physics wins out, her grip slipping and Wynonna dragging her to the door. “I need shoes!” she protests, and then the door shuts behind them.
Waverly looks at the coffee filter in her hands, filled to the brim with far too many coffee beans, unground. “Fuck,” she says, and dumps it into the garbage.
She cleans up a little bit, waffling around downstairs before she sighs and heads up to her room. Nicole’s extra uniform hanging on the hook on the closet door, Nicole’s towel across the bedpost, a strand of red hair on Waverly’s pillow. And Nicole’s phone, forgotten on the nightstand, face down. It buzzes with a message.
Waverly stands next to it, then flips it over to stare at its dark screen. “I’m not that person,” she insists to no one. “I’m not doing that.” She turns it back over, then jumps at it rings, dropping it to the floor. “Shit!” She scoops it up, fumbling at the screen. “Um,” she says into the mouthpiece.
“Nicole?” Shae asks. And then--well perhaps there was a second there, where Waverly should have said something--but really, before she could, Shae carried on: “I think you were right, earlier, about getting dinner. Does tomorrow work for you?”
“This is Waverly,” Waverly says, far, far too late. “Uh. Nicole forgot her phone.”
“I… see,” Shae says. “Would you pass along the message? Or maybe you can help her call me. Since you’re close enough to share phones.”
“Uh,” Waverly says, wincing. She sits on the bed, hand over her eyes. “Sorry, yes, of course. As soon as she gets home.”
“Oh. You guys live together?”
“No,” Waverly is forced to admit. “No, I mean. Not yet. But she’s staying here. Most of the time! Most of the time, she’s here, and I’m here, and we’re… here together.”
“I see,” Shae says, clearly not seeing. “Well. Thank you.”
“Sure,” Waverly replies, and hangs up the phone. She stays sitting on the bed for a long time.
//
The good thing about being both practically and literally raised by people who own and frequent the local dive bar is that no one blinks an eye when Waverly walks in at eleven in the morning and pours herself three fingers of whiskey.
She’s on her third glass when Gus finds her, sitting on the ground behind the bar on the black rubber mat. “You inherited your daddy’s tolerance,” Gus says, taking the bottle from Waverly’s grasp and clunking it down onto the bartop. “Don’t know yet if that’s a blessing or a curse.”
“Nicole’s going to leave me,” Waverly replies, monotoned.
Gus blinks. “What?”
“Nicole’s going to leave me,” Waverly repeats. “Shae is… god. She’s smart, and she’s pretty, and they’ve got this history. Rock climbing and pop concerts and probably Elvis impersonators, I don’t know.”
“Shae is the wife,” Gus surmises, and Waverly groans.
“Everyone knows? Of course everyone knows.” She reaches a hand up for the whiskey, and Gus moves it further away.
“I don’t know about this doctor,” Gus says. “And I sure don’t know about Elvis impersonators. But that girl is head over heels for you, and even if she wasn’t, you’re not the kinda girl to sit on the floor and cry over things that can’t be changed.”
Waverly sighs. “But what if I want to be the girl who sits on the floor and cries?”
Gun snorts. “Then do it off premises and not during business hours.” She nudges Waverly with her shoe. “Go take a nap and go home to that lady of yours. Work your shit out. Looks unnatural seeing you by yourself, the way you two are joined at the hip.”
Waverly shrugs. “Shoulda seen it coming,” she says, only just a little slurred. “Shoulda… she’s too good for me, you know? Too good for this town.”
Gus sighs. She finds a shot glass under the bar and pours a double.
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to drink anymore.”
“This is for me,” Gus informs her, and drains the glass dry. “You love this girl?”
“I--”
“Don’t think, just answer. You love this girl?”
“Yes,” Waverly says. Like air, like breathing, like too quick heartbeats and stomach butterflies. Like cold toes and messy kisses and whiskey chasers. “I love her.”
Gus shrugs. “Then tell her. That’s all you can do.” She helps Waverly to her feet. “And if she doesn’t love you back even more than that, it wasn’t meant to be.”
//
Her phone ringing wakes her up. “‘Lo,” she mumbles.
“Waverly?”
“Nicole? Nicole!” Waverly sits up, fumbling to check the time. It’s much, much later than she intended it to be, the sun long since gone down. “Sorry, sorry. I went… to visit Gus.”
“Oh,” Nicole says. “We came back, and you weren’t there, so. We waited?”
Waverly gets off the cot in Shorty’s backroom, looking for her shoes. “Sorry, sorry. Uh… Shae called? You probably know that, since you’ve found your phone, but--”
“I know,” Nicole says, cutting her off. “Listen, Waverly, we need to talk.”
Waverly goes still, one foot up and one foot down, a sneaker dangling from her fingers by the laces. She thinks her heart might actually have stopped beating. “We do?”
“Yes. Can you--I mean. I could cook?”
Waverly swallows. “You, uh. You don’t want to go out? That Italian place you like?”
“No. No, there’s.” Nicole stops, starts again. “There’s some things I want to tell you. It’s better in private.”
“Right. No, I’ll come home. You need me to bring something?”
“No,” Nicole says, sounding distant, like she’s leaning away from the phone. Waverly can hear someone in the background, female. “--on the phone--” Nicole gets louder again. “Sorry. No. Just yourself.”
“Okay, I love--”
“I’ll see you later, okay?” Nicole interrupts. The call disconnects.
//
Waverly’s mouth tastes like sleep, bitter and dry, whiskey still on the back of her tongue and on the insides of her teeth. Her hair is mussed and tangled, and she couldn’t find her other shoe so she’s half-limping from the height difference between her legs. She takes off the shoe as soon as she’s in the front door, tossing it aside with a disgruntled mutter.
Nicole’s voice floats out from the kitchen. “Waverly?”
“Yeah,” Waverly says, steeling her spine and walking into the kitchen. “Nicole, listen, I--”
“Need to tell you something,” they both say at once.
“Me first,” Nicole says, fumbling at the table for something.
“No,” Waverly says. “No, me first.” Willa first and then Wynonna first and then the ghost of the both of them first, and it’s Waverly’s turn. Waverly and Nicole’s turn. “I know that--that my family’s a mess. And there’s termites in the porch and mice in the barn and I run a fucking dry cleaners and I’ve spent my whole life in this two spotlight shit town and I grew up in a bar. And I eat peanut butter in Chinese food and I was shitty to you after Willa--and honestly, before Willa--but.” She falls silent, out of breath.
“But,” Nicole prods gently, her eyes a little wet.
“I love you,” Waverly says. “I know I should have more than that. That you deserve more than that, more than me. But that’s what I’ve got. I love you.”
“Waverly,” Nicole murmurs. Waverly’s hand is shaking where it’s on the back of a kitchen chair for support, and Nicole’s fingers ease her grip. Their hands together, palm to palm. Fingers overlapped, Nicole’s thumb on the thump of Waverly’s pulse in her wrist. Nicole’s chapped lips against Waverly’s, Waverly’s eyes closing. What number is this kiss, she wonders, out of the blue. Fifty-six or a hundred and ten, it never feels old. When the kiss breaks, Nicole stays close, their lips brushing when she speaks. “My turn now?”
Waverly half-laughs, wiping at her eyes. “Yeah. Your turn now.”
Nicole picks up a manila envelope. “I’m sorry I was short on the phone, earlier. I was… with Shae.”
Waverly rocks. “Oh.”
“No, it’s… you’ll see. Here.”
Waverly takes the envelope. Her fingers slip on the brass tack, the paper rustling sounds too loud in the silent room, the owls in the distance and the creaking of the leaves. And then she gasps because… because they’re divorce papers. Signed by both parties.
“It’s a copy,” Nicole explains. “I rushed the originals to be filed, Nedley helped. Shae hasn’t left yet, because of her work thing, but. Waverly.” She takes the papers from Waverly’s hands and puts them back on the table, then tugs Waverly a little closer. “Shae was fun. She was whirlwind, we were young, we were so drunk.”
“You don’t have to regret it,” Waverly says, swallowing. “I thought about it, and--”
“Shh,” Nicole reminds her. “My turn.” She smoothes Waverly’s hair back behind her ear. “I’m an idiot for not telling you. And an idiot for not filing these papers sooner. But I’m not an idiot who can’t see you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m not saying we get married today or tomorrow or even ever, but. But you’re it for me, Waverly. And I’m sorry I haven’t made you see that.”
“Uh,” Waverly says. “I sort of thought you were maybe asking me here to dump me.”
Nicole blinks. “But it’s your house.”
“I know.” Waverly rolls a shoulder, looking away. “And you--hung up? And Wynonna?”
“I went to see Shae to get the papers signed. And Wynonna… was trying to be helpful.”
“Ah,” Waverly says. She pauses. “Did she, at any point, say ‘bros before hoes’?”
“Repeatedly,” Nicole says. They share a smile. “To be clear, I’m not breaking up with you.”
“I got that,” Waverly says. “C’mere.”
Nicole crowds her up against the counter, then lifts, sliding in between Waverly’s legs, her heels locking in the small of Nicole’s back, Waverly’s long hair falling around their faces. “Hello,” Nicole murmurs. “I love you, did I say?”
“A few times,” Waverly murmurs, pulling Nicole closer. “Tell me again.”