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Allison was drunk, the room was spinning, and the only steady thing around her was Renee. She didn’t deserve this, being the only sober one in a room full of idiots. Kevin and Dan and Nicky had already passed out. Matt had gone looking for more snacks, Aaron and Katelyn had left within the first hour, and Andrew and Neil had disappeared to do something stupid a while ago. It was just them.
The room was spinning, and Renee appeared above her, glowing and smiling like an angel. She was gorgeous. Perfect. Soft. God, her lap was so soft. Allison couldn’t remember ever being comfier. She could have stayed there forever, probably, if Renee would let her.
“Are you alright?” Renee asked, her voice so, so gentle.
“Perfect,” Allison whispered, heart fluttering along with her eyelashes.
She reached up and ran a hand through Renee’s hair, amazed by the silkiness of it even after all of her color treatments. Renee laughed, trying to be quiet, and Allison’s heart sang.
“Reneeeee,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Renee.” It tickled her tongue. “Renee, Renee, Renee.”
Renee laughed again and stroked Allison’s hair right back, and even with her goalie’s callouses, Allison was in heaven. Those hardworking hands were taking care of her. She was safe here, in this warm little world adjacent to reality and a few drinks south of remembering.
“Yes, Allison?”
“Do you think good things can happen to us? After all the bad things?” The words came out before she could stop them. Too much to drink and not enough to occupy herself. It was so easy to go into dark places when the bubbles in the champagne wore off.
Renee paused, taking the question seriously, and Allison wondered if she’d fucked up. But then Renee fiddled with her necklace and smiled that gentle angel smile, not quite at Allison, but not quite not at Allison either. She’d take it.
“I have to believe they can. We still have each other, and we can support one another through the difficult times.” She probably meant the team, but in that moment, the world narrowed down to the two of them and Allison shivered. Two was a lonely number. In that instant, though, her heart had never been more full.
But there were too many cracks in that piece of shit, and it hadn’t been watertight in a long, long time.
“I still miss him,” she said, suddenly having to look away from Renee’s steely eyes and hide something she’d unwillingly exposed in herself. “I hate it, I hate him for making me- for- for leaving-”
“I know,” Renee said, solemn and not at all judgemental. That almost hurt worse than the monsters treating it like a joke, or the others carefully sidestepping the past and barreling forward like the future was all that mattered. He wasn’t perfect, but he was real, and hers, and now he was gone. He’d been gone for a while now.
It still hurt.
“It’s going to hurt for a long time,” Renee continued, and for a second Allison almost worried she was some kind of mind-reader. Fuck, that would be dangerous. But she’d been there, maybe not there-there, but she’d been hurt before. She was no stranger to being cut open and left to bleed out. Glass shards probably still rattled in her chest too.
“But you’ll survive. You’re a survivor. And he lives on in your memory.”
“Yeah?”
Renee’s hands felt cool against her too-warm skin, and her halo cast both of them in safe, orange light.
“Yeah.”
***
The bruises from Andrew’s stranglehold were still slightly visible when Allison bought her new car. She’d covered them up with makeup for her public appearances, straining to appear effortlessly above the disaster despite all that had happened in such a short time, but she hadn’t bothered to reapply her makeup following her post-practice shower. She was tired and strung out and the total farce of their lives poked its head in with homework on top of everything else. What a fucking joke. Living better was supposed to be the best revenge, but she still wanted to do something violent. A fox was a fox, after all, and it was no secret that she had a habit of lashing out.
The soft noise Renee made behind her was proof enough that they’d been spotted, but Allison whirled around anyway. She’d had enough of playing stupid games and going along with people and tiptoeing around the monsters. She wasn’t going to deal with this too. She wasn’t delicate or weak or fragile and if she had to break someone else to prove it, then that was just how things had to be done around here.
“Something to say?” Her throat still hurt. God, it was almost funny.
“Oh- I- I wasn’t trying to-” Renee’s voice was soft, and it made Allison want to yell even more. All of this softness was a joke. None of them were soft. None of them deserved soft. It was just insulting to pretend they did.
“No, I know you were staring. How ugly, right?”
“Allison-”
“But I earned them fair and square, right? Being terrorized in my own home, for giving that five-foot-nothing asshole what he deserved?” Allison was close to yelling now, and she felt the rawness as she swallowed and held her ground anyway. It felt good, in a brutal, aching kind of way.
“Andrew-”
“Can kiss my ass!” Her voice threatened to break, and she held on as long as she could. “But he gave me back to you, right? What kind of cryptic fucking bullshit is that?”
Renee held her ground. The parking lot was empty to the point of echoing, and maybe Dan had trusted the two of them to get home alright or had been too busy corralling more nonsense to worry about the rest of her pack. It didn’t matter. Nothing fucking mattered.
“They’re under his protection, and the rest of you are under mine.” Renee didn’t fold her arms, didn’t go defensive. She just waited. That was even more infuriating.
“I don’t need anyone’s protection! I especially don’t need his, and I wouldn’t need any from him if he didn’t run around like this was some kind of mafia! We’re playing college exy! Jesus!”
“I won’t stand by his methods, but I think there’s a lot more going on here than any of us know.” Allison tried to make a dismissive noise and Renee interrupted her, her tone still even and strong, not betraying the iron-strong something that laid behind her eyes. “Allison, I don’t protect you because I think you can’t protect yourself. I protect you because I care about you, like I care about the others, and I work very hard to prevent more of what happened to you. I won’t try to justify what he did, but Andrew works very hard to do the same for the people he cares about.”
Leave it to Renee to take the satisfaction out of yelling. What the hell was she supposed to say to that? Everything fell flat compared to the ringing question of how exactly Renee cared about her.
“I’m sorry about your car,” Renee said, finally breaking the silence after her monologue. “Are you going to be able to replace it?”
“Of course I am,” Allison snapped, the venom still finding its way out. Something told her that Renee understood and wouldn’t take it personally, and that made her feel a little strange. And maybe it was that weird lashing thing inside her making stupid decisions or some kind of attempt to make it up to her, but Allison unlocked the doors of her rental and looked Renee right in her unpredictable eyes.
“Want to come buy it with me?”
Fuck homework. Fuck Andrew. Fuck the Ravens and their stupid fans and the sketchy shit rotting underneath, and fuck everything that kept holding her back. This shitty year had no end in sight and things kept getting worse, but what was she supposed to do, let it destroy her? She’d overcome before and she’d overcome again, head held high and heels even higher.
No one, not anyone, was allowed to ruin her life.
It was late for the dealership to be open, but a bit of a bribe and the flash of what else she had to offer let them onto the lot to peruse the expensive cars at their leisure. They sat prettily on the lot like lazy models, ready to flash in the spotlight and prove their worth on the runway.
“Which one do you want to try?”
Allison had honestly expected Renee to go a little weak in the knees when she saw the price tags, but to her credit, the look on her face was entirely hungry. Maybe it was the thrill of retail therapy or the golden shine of the setting sun, but cupid’s arrow struck Allison’s broken heart and stuck there comically where she’d been certain nothing would ever find purchase to stick again.
“Could I drive?” Renee’s excitement was infectious and the threat of being carried away was so brilliant Allison was already ready to surrender.
“Absolutely.”
Another fat stack of bills and a popped button on her shirt won them the keys and the convertible to themselves. It was a brilliant season for driving and Allison was delighted to find out that Renee, tightly contained and dedicated to self-improvement, was a hell of a driver. The wind whipped through their hair and stole away their elated laughter, leaving a dozen more arrows Robin-hooded in the wake.
Allison ordered the car Renee chose in bright, perfect pink.
***
“Can you believe we’re fucking graduating?” After all of these years, it was still hard to fit all three of them at the counter to get ready. Allison’s pristine, iron-fresh curls bounced as she put Renee’s face on for her, pleased beyond words that she’d finally been allowed to.
“Just in general, or because you skipped half of your classes this semester?”
Dan’s hair was shorter than it had been since high school, but it had never looked better, and Allison was standing by that. Dan plucked irritably at her eyebrows while watching Renee’s reflection fidget.
“I had to make up for practice eating all of my time somewhere. It’s not like it mattered.” She adjusted the clips she’d held Renee’s bangs up with and gave Dan a stern look right back. “God, orange still doesn’t match anything.”
“Doesn’t rhyme with anything either,” Renee hummed, and smiled when Dan stopped plucking to cover a snort at the terrible joke.
“You could just leave them,” Allison said, pointedly ignoring the dumb crack, her voice getting lost under the loud music and running water and some kind of disaster that was probably happening in the hallway. Whatever. The underclassmen weren’t their responsibility today.
“What, and get my diploma looking like a bear?”
“Bears are cute.” Renee’s eyebrows had probably never been plucked, but Allison respectfully left them alone after the fifth time she was chastised.
“And terrifying, like you, Dan.” Allison stopped playing with eye shadow to make a clawing bear-gesture, and Dan laughed.
“I just want it all in order. There’s going to be a lot of pictures-”
“For your scrapbooks, or the magazines that finally get to announce where you’re signing?”
Dan just grinned.
“I really think you guys should continue in exy too,” she said, finally putting down the tweezers to start getting ready. Years in show business had shortened her makeup time by a dramatic margin, but she still liked plenty of room to get ready. “The three of us could conquer the world.”
“And I fully plan to, baby, but not in that uniform. Maybe for celebrity charity events.” Allison licked the eye pencil and held Renee by the chin. “Don’t fidget.”
“I know you mean well, Dan, but I’m really excited to join the Peace Corps. I get to help people, and travel, and learn new things-” She hissed and pulled away, and Allison swore.
“Whatever,” Dan said, a touch wistful and a heap proud. “But I’m going to miss your sweet asses.”
“No fucking kidding,” Allison murmured, turning the ugly line Renee’s flinch had made into angel wings. “Everything is going to be different.”
“Good different, right?” Dan put her hands down and turned to look her girls in the eyes properly. “And we’re going to stay in touch?”
“Of course,” Renee said, all smiles.
“Yeah,” Allison added. And maybe it was just her, but it sounded a little flat. “Promise.”
***
It was easy to make excuses. Life after college was busy. She had a career, one she got for herself, thank-you-very-much, and before long she was looking at starting her own design business, and why the hell not? She just didn’t have time to follow up with people that weren’t bringing her coffee or working on projects with her. So maybe a year or two slipped away and her friendships ran a little dry beyond Facebook interactions, but so what? That was adulthood, wasn’t it? And Dan was off being a superstar and Renee was off in the jungle saving orphans, probably falling for some cute perfect Christian-rock youth-minister looking skeez and making two point four babies with him-
She just didn’t have time, that was all.
She didn’t really date, either. Dating required time and effort outside of the workplace, and she’d been burned before. Not that she wanted to admit it, but the scars were still there, and it was easy to imagine someone getting close enough to poke at them and ruining everything. Casual sex was easier. Names and faces blended into the background of Paris, Milan, New York...
It was enough. It was a living.
And then the first letter arrived.
It wasn’t long, written on hotel stationery and signed with a cheesy, loopy, familiar signature. Haven’t heard from you in a while. Missed you. Wanted to know how things were going.
Please write back.
It took Allison embarrassingly long to figure out how to respond. Letters? In this day and age? She could write an email in a second, but a letter seemed more permanent. Something about writing any sentiment on paper made it a lot more real, and real was not something she tended to deal with.
She bought a whole package of designer stationery for the first reply, spending her lunch break rewording and crossing out and crumpling before getting to an embarrassing Fine-how-are-you. It was pitiful. She tried again. Her business, her hope for the future, her tight schedule. How nice it was to hear from Renee. Yes, how long it had been. And maybe...maybe...a bit of hope.
The next letter appeared soon after she sent her reply, and the next reply came easier, and before long, strangely enough, it became some kind of normal. It was somehow more intimate than texting, as weird as that feeling was to put into words, and even when Renee came back to the states, they kept it up. And soon, or not so soon at all, with that excruciating wait between each one, it was the first place Renee made it clear what kind of relationship she really wanted to have with Allison.
And Allison felt the world stop around her.
Maybe it wasn’t the first place. Maybe she had missed a dozen, a hundred hints. Renee had never had a boyfriend in college, but she was halfway to a nun anyway...but then there was her hair, and what kind of straight person dyed their hair like that? She was religious, but so was Nicky, and that was pretty obvious. Allison and Renee and Dan spent all of those years together in the same room, and maybe it had seemed like normal roommate-ally-friend-teammate stuff, or maybe Allison had been convinced she was projecting and shoved it a million miles out of reach, but each group cuddle-turned double-cuddle on the couch, each affirming comment about one another’s appearances blended together in a swirl of a million question marks that left Allison’s heart throbbing. There was a difference between kindness and flirtation, and maybe neither of them had known enough about either to tell the two apart. She remembered Renee’s illuminated face, in the dorm, at the car lot, in the goal, in the locker room, in classrooms and hallways and Dan’s snapshots and everywhere else and that iron-soft smile unlocked something in her chest and tilted the universe on an axis she hadn’t been aware of, or had just been ignoring like it would eventually go away.
But it was there, on paper. Not just pen pals or roommates or college friends. Renee liked her. Renee loved her. Renee wanted to meet up again, wanted to know if Allison felt the same, wanted to know for sure, wouldn’t hold it against her, as if Allison hadn’t been head over heels for far, far too long to justify.
That response would have fit on a postcard:
Yes!
***
Dating Renee was like nothing Allison had ever experienced. She’d lived with Renee before, but having the full force of mom-friend Renee and goalie-Renee on her back was an entirely separate thing from romance-Renee. Sure, there was some of the same stuff. Cheesy things, happy things that were fully unironic and honestly...better that way. Singing songs in the car and driving too fast and sharing cheese fries when they shouldn’t. But now Allison had Renee all to herself, and that gave her different window of details that made Renee a little bit more of a fully realized person in her head. Just with little floating hearts around her name.
Actually dating was not something Allison had a lot of experience with, and she didn’t really know how to go about it. Dating Seth had been more like fighting a cat than dating tended to go on the soap operas she liked to make fun of or the rom-coms she’d dragged countless victims through. One was sexy and sort of risky-thrilling, off was vicious, and it wasn’t great, but there was a nasty sort of bone-deep satisfaction through it that had made it worth it. Until it wasn’t anymore. Her boyfriends before Seth, all the way to before she’d given her parents the finger and chosen her own life, had been an unpleasant mix of perfect-parent-pleasers and the exact opposite, for shock value or spite or some mixture of both.
But Renee wasn’t like any of them. Actually, she was sort of both and neither in the same breath. Allison’s parents weren’t religious, but Renee certainly was a “good girl”, but she was also a girl, and also a fox with the background to prove it, and the knives that didn’t match her hair made her a serious contender for a third box entirely. But maybe the really different thing about being with Renee was that Allison didn’t give a fuck who thought what about her. Being with Renee was for Allison, and Allison alone, and something about that felt really, really good.
And then there was the date part of dating Renee. Allison hadn’t been on a lot of “real” dates. A few movies here and there, a lot of bars. Some dorky dances or house parties or gimmicky requirement things that teenagers drooled over, yeah, but in the Actual Romance Movie Date category, she was seriously lacking. So nothing stopped her from pulling out all of the stops and spending as much money as she pleased on wooing Renee, seriously this time. They went shopping in New York. They kissed on the balcony of the Eiffel Tower. They went on carriage rides and attended musicals and balls and concerts and fancy dinners at fancy restaurants before spending evenings at fancy hotels and still, somehow, each and every one of the dates that Renee planned were better. It killed Allison. Well, it was extremely hot to bring out her competitive side, yeah, but it was also infuriating that what Allison lavished her Discover card on, Renee beat with an afternoon and thirty bucks. How the fuck did she do it? A goddamn home-cooked picnic in Central Park? Designing their own stationery after a trip to the craft store? Making cookies, honest to god Christmas cookies, at Stephanie’s house and sharing the weirdest, happiest holiday Allison had ever had? It wasn’t fair! It was so fucking endearing and frustrating Allison was falling to her death in love. And fuck her if Renee wasn’t falling too. The love notes and the packed lunches and the sweet, sweet, meticulously planned dates were hard evidence enough for Allison’s skeptical heart.
And soon dating turned into habit and habit turned into living and living turned into potential and potential threatened to become home and home was a terrifying, tantalizing concept that neither of them wanted to turn down. Allison’s new business was succeeding beyond any dream and both of them were living and loving and making a world for themselves like they’d never been offered before and the subject came about, as it often does, as an innocuous conversation that bloomed into something much bigger.
What if, just...what if...they got married? New York was a fantastic place to grow Allison’s business and the hub of Renee’s charity organization. They were both adults, and family didn’t have to factor into it, but Stephanie had loved Allison since Court days. They had been together for a while now, longer than any of their longest relationships put together, and Allison would have bet on worse odds. The two of them just belonged together. Was there even an argument against it?
Allison threw out the possibility of a courthouse marriage. Shotgun wedding, perfect for the union of a something-broken-something-grown family like theirs, but Renee wanted to get married in a church, if that was alright, and Allison still wasn’t sold on a loving power higher than Renee, but she did understand some of what that meant, and fuck, why not. But a real wedding had to have a real proposal, and that they took as a challenge. What a shame that her only competition knew just how weak to cheesy romance Allison really was.
She picked a perfect ring. She bought flowers. She scheduled doves. She talked to celebrities, picked their favorite fountain in the park, burned an ambient track of their most romantic songs…
And then Renee took her to a Trojan’s game and surprised her on the Kiss Cam. It was just a silver band, she softly pointed out, and if Allison wanted a fancier ring, they could pick one out together, but it wasn’t about the ring, it was about a promise, and she wanted to make that promise and keep it forever and Allison interrupted her with the biggest, hardest kiss she could manage with tears ruining her makeup in public. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. They were together, together forever, and the future was so close and real and beautiful that she wanted to reach out and kiss it in front of God and everybody, too.
If she made a dozen frantic phone calls in the bathroom afterwards, it was her business.
***
It required a lot more preparation than either of them could have imagined, but finally, the day came. Their wedding day. Finally, finally Renee had given her full reign to go all out, as long as she didn’t show Renee the price tags (especially on her wedding dress, after she had laughed at Say Yes To The Dress and the fact that people could spend so much on one day when they could use all of it on their honeymoon or buy a new house or save up for something else wonderful and Allison had wanted to grab her by the shoulders and demand she let her spoil the shit out of her, please, because it just felt so right). The church wedding was to be contrasted with a buck wild reception, where they could get insanely drunk and dance the night away under the glittering light of more Swarovski crystals than Renee would probably have approved of. Their honeymoons were ready to go, each destination meticulously planned because Allison hadn’t been able to choose and wanted to show her wife to the world. The flowers were beautiful and dripped off of every horizontal surface. They’d picked the best location, Renee had handpicked the officiant, and all of the most important guests were there.
Dan, Matt, and Wymack were already crying before the ceremony even started. Matt and Dan’s daughter was almost old enough to be the flower girl, and when she stumbled down the carpet, the fashionably late Neil Josten gave her a hand as his not-husband looked on with something that could almost be mistaken for fondness.
No one gave either of them away. They entered together, their contrasting dresses the center of all of their guests’ attention, and together they stood at the altar and looked one another in the eye.
The organ stopped and silence fell. It was probably the first time Allison had been in a church since her grandma had died, and the thought that she didn’t belong there threatened her softly from beneath the pews. But she was with Renee, and she belonged with Renee, and this was the day that they were going to declare that to the whole world.
Allison said her vows first.
“My parents weren’t religious, and I don’t know how I feel about all this, but...I know an angel when I see one. Family isn’t who you’re related to. It’s who you choose. I made one with the foxes, and I want to make a new one with you, Renee. I’ve never met anyone like you, and I’m not about to let you go. I can’t wait...I can’t wait to take on the world with you forever.”
Renee smiled, tears glittering in her perfect eyes, and she responded as she was directed.
“If you think I’m an angel, then you must be Aphrodite herself. I have never known anyone stronger or more beautiful than you. I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on some things, but I recognize what it means for you to be here today and I couldn’t-” She paused, tears beginning to roll down her cheeks. Allison wanted to look away, but she couldn’t, locked into those eyes she’d loved for a long, long time. She reached out and took her hand instead, squeezing hard to give her the strength to continue. There was so much unsaid. She still thought she was a monster who didn’t belong here, a bad person pretending to be a good one. But if Allison did one thing before she died, it would be to prove her terribly, terribly wrong.
“I couldn’t,” Renee finally continued, a little bit softer. A million memories flashed before Allison and her knees felt a little bit weaker. “Be happier that you made this choice. I have a lot of favorite Bible verses, but I think of this one when I think of you.” She took a shaky breath and squeezed back, strong as hell even now. “You’ve probably heard of it. First Corinthians, 13:4-8 : Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” She paused again, looked at their guests, at all of the familiar faces in the crowd that had, some way or another, gotten them to this church together, then looked back at Allison.
“But love...is also strong. Love is terrifying. Love gives you a shot of adrenaline, it calms you down, it picks you up, it stands you up for a fight you’ll always win, no matter what. Love is cruel. Love is tough. Love can be angry, angry for you, angry to protect you, angry at the world for kicking you down. Love can be prideful, when you need it to be. When everything in your life tells you you’re nothing, love can be one hand to help you up, and one hand with a manicured middle finger out. No love is the same, and no love is stronger than one formed in adversity. Every letter, every plane ticket, every bit of your heart you gave me, I now give back to you tenfold. Love is what you make of it, and I can’t wait to build that love together with you, Allison.”
Allison didn’t give a shit about protocol. She didn’t wait to be told to kiss her bride; she dipped her and kissed her before her name could finish leaving Renee’s mouth. This was real. This was theirs. This was their new beginning.
Even with tears streaming down her cheeks, she had never felt more like dancing.