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Laura feels no pain as Audrey stitches her arm back onto her body, just as she’d felt no pain when it fell off. The only sensation at all is a faint pull, a kind of tugging as Audrey’s meticulous stitches slowly connect the ragged stump of her arm back to her shoulder, to its rightful place.
(Although, technically, she supposes that the true rightful place for her arm, for all of her, is ten feet under the ground, back in the plush coffin where she was supposed to molder away until her skin sloughed off her bones and her skeleton crumbled into dust.)
For awhile, she watches Audrey work in silence. If Laura didn’t witness it for herself, she wouldn’t believe that mere minutes ago, Audrey was basically pissing herself in fear, screaming her throat raw before dissolving into tears more rage than anything else. Now, she’s perfectly composed, mouth a straight line, face not betraying a single emotion. Her careful fingers accurately guide her needle through Laura’s purple flesh, sew it up just like it’s one of the over-stuffed pillows or other craft projects cluttering her home.
(Laura had always hated most of those stupid things, found them cheesy and a waste of time, not to mention money, but she could never find it in herself to fault Audrey for dedicating so much of her time to them.
At least she was dedicated to something.
That was more than Laura had ever been able to say about herself.)
“Audrey,” she says, treading carefully for the time being, “I am sorry about Robbie. Really. I feel horrible about what happened.” Audrey has always been a touch receptive person, overwhelmingly so at times, so Laura momentarily releases her hold on her torn-off arm (which immediately sags) and raises her hand, intent on resting it on Audrey’s bare forearm, or maybe the knob of her wrist.
Before she can make it that far, Audrey drops her grip on her needle and takes two stumbling steps backwards.
“Put your hand back on your fucking arm,” she snaps. After a moment of simply staring at her, Laura sighs and does what Audrey asks, wraps her intact hand around her other wrist and presses her arm back up until it’s no longer sagging against the stitches. Only then does Audrey come back. She picks up her needle and returns to the task at hand, fingertips just barely skimming Laura’s shoulder.
After that kind of reaction, Laura is sure that, if Audrey could somehow do this without touching her at all, she would.
“Fuck your feelings,” Audrey says, tugging sharply on the needle, which makes Laura’s arm settle more firmly against her shoulder. Warm spittle flies from her mouth and hits Laura’s cheek. “Don’t say you’re sorry. Have you ever been sorry for anything in your entire life?” It’s almost certainly a rhetorical question, but it gets Laura thinking anyways.
Even before the whole fucking mess with Robbie, the mess that got her killed, she did a lot of stupid things in her life. Before Shadow, with the exception of Audrey and a handful of other friends, she never let people get close. As soon as it looked like they might be heading in that direction, she did something to make sure they fucked off and left her alone. Robbie was just the newest person in a long line of people she’d screwed over and used for her own purposes, used because she hoped that they might be able to fill some part of the giant gaping hole in her chest and, when they weren’t able to, she’d tossed them aside.
And she was never sorry for it. Never apologized, because what was the point? Being sorry, asking for forgiveness, meant that they would just stick around, when all she wanted was for them to leave.
Even now, with Audrey standing right in front of her, tear tracks stained onto her cheeks, Laura isn’t sure if she’s sorry. She’s more annoyed than anything, annoyed that Audrey had to find out about her and Robbie, that things had to be complicated when they could have been so fucking simple.
If fucking Robbie had just been willing to leave well enough alone, if he hadn’t gotten some idea in his head of them running off together, if he hadn’t thought that she would really leave Shadow for him of all people, Laura wouldn’t be rotting, wouldn’t be shitting out embalming fluid and coughing up graveyard dirt. Audrey would still be her friend, and Shadow would be by her side, and things would be good.
If anything, the only thing she can say she’s sorry for is making Audrey cry. Audrey was never a good looking crier.
“I don’t think I have been,” she says, turning her head so she can look at Audrey. “Sorry, I mean. For anything, really.”
Audrey snorts. The sound is loud and wet, like she’s about to cry again.
“At least death made you honest,” she remarks, momentarily grasping Laura’s shoulder as she pulls the thread through a spot near Laura’s armpit. “I guess that’s more than you can say about most people.” Once the needle is through, she ties the thread into a knot. Without looking behind her, she grabs a small pair of scissors from her craft table and snips the excess thread. While she puts her supplies away, Laura tests her newly-attached arm. There’s a bit of delay, a lag, between when she tells her fingers to move and when they actually do, but it doesn’t feel like her arm is going to fall off again anytime soon, which she supposes is about as much as she can ask for, given the circumstances.
“You know,” she says, looking at Audrey’s back as she carefully returns everything to its place, “it didn’t have to be Robbie. It could have been you, just as easily, if you’d been the one to pick up the phone. If you’d been the one to come over and deal with the fucking cat.” In another life, where Laura was actually alive, still living and breathing and not purple and cold all over, she never would have admitted such a thing to Audrey, just like she never would have willingly told her about fucking Robbie.
But she’s already been more honest today than she was her entire life. There’s no point in curbing her honesty at this point.
Audrey freezes, hands hovering in midair, fingers still wrapped around the handle of the scissors. The line of her shoulders goes stiff, and for a moment, it doesn’t even look like she breathes. Eventually, the scissors fall from her fingers and clatter on the counter, the sound as loud as a gunshot in the otherwise silent house, and Audrey turns around, slowly. Her eyes are glimmering again, but the set of her mouth, the way it’s twisted, looks more like a snarl than anything, like she’s thinking about screaming or maybe tearing Laura’s throat out with her teeth.
“The boat on that sailed about ten years ago,” she says, throat bobbing as she presumably swallows around a lump in it. “But before that...” She trails off as a tear escapes her eye, tracking down her cheek. She wipes it off before it reaches the hinge of her jaw, leaving behind a vivid red scratch mark from her nail, and clears her throat loudly, wetly. Crossing the room to stand in front of Laura, she reaches out and takes Laura’s hands tightly. The pressure would probably be painful if Laura’s nerves still worked, but as is, she actually appreciates it.
The harder the pressure, the more she can actually feel it.
After another moment, Audrey raises their intertwined hands until they’re at face level. Her face scrunches up like she’s just done a tequila shot and, before Laura can ask what her problem is, she presses her lips to the back of Laura’s hand.
For just a second, the surrounding nerves seem to feebly spark with life, but the feeling is gone almost as soon as it arrived, leaving behind a faint imprint in the shade of Audrey’s lipstick.
“I hope you find Shadow,” Audrey says, lowering their hands again. “I really do, Laura. I hope that when you find him, you drop to your knees and beg him for forgiveness, and I hope that he throws you away like the piece of shit you are.” She slides her fingers away from Laura’s but doesn’t step away just yet. “You were never good enough for him. Do you know that?”
Laura does know that. She’s known that for a long time.
But instead of saying that, she retorts, “Would I have been good enough for you, ten years ago? If I’d asked?”
For a long time, Audrey doesn’t answer. Her mouth grows tight, almost purses, and her fingers curl into fists at her sides. Her eyes are sparkling not only with tears, but with some other emotion that Laura can’t quite decipher. It could be rage, but it could just as easily be sadness.
It could also just be pure and utter hatred.
When Audrey does eventually speak again, Laura isn’t surprised by what she says.
“Fuck you, Laura.”
With that, she turns around and leaves the room, pulling the door shut behind her hard enough for the supplies and containers dotting the room’s counters to rattle. Laura sighs and, flexing her fingers, hops off the counter and follows in Audrey’s footsteps.
She has a feeling that in a few seconds, when she asks if she can borrow Audrey’s car, Audrey is just going to repeat her last words.
Laura supposes that she probably deserves it.