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She didn’t need the text to remember the day Deborah Ocean got out on parole.
Lou hadn’t marked the date on her calendar, hadn’t kept a count of the passing days in her head—but the knowledge had pressed sorely between her eyes the moment her eyes opened that morning, enduring as a dull ache that, try as she might, wouldn’t quite disappear as she barked orders over crates of watered-down vodka and that goddamn Judge Judy rerun.
So she’d ignored it, just like she’d ignored all the little things that had reminded her of Debbie over the past five years, eight months, and twelve days—but hey, Lou certainly wasn’t counting. She had her own life now: a club to run, booze to rebottle, cash to collect—everything had fallen under her thumb, an easy, predictable routine that brings in a steady flow of success. Lou’d learned how to minimize her risks and play her game alone, and she tells herself that she’s content.
She tells herself that the only reason she named her club Oceanside is because it’s literally sitting on the edge of the Atlantic. She tells herself that business is good, and she’s happy with the only adrenaline rushes in her life coming from breaking up drunken fights, trailing her fingertips through the wavering flame of her lighter, and two A.M., 100 mph motorcycle rides on dark, winding roads. She tells herself that she isn’t bored.
She tells herself, very sternly, when she inevitably succumbs to brief flashes of truth and sits on the beach for a smoke as she stares into the ocean, that she’s done playing with fire, because fire left her crying desperate tears of rage in a courtroom almost six years ago and she can still taste the salt.
Lou has told herself all this since Debbie’s contact in her phone changed permanently to “Jailbird,” but Lou can’t lie to herself about the way her heart beats a little bit faster when she reads the message spelling out trouble in neon light.
Lou might be done playing with fire, but fire sure as hell isn’t done with her. And Lou doesn’t think she’s all that upset about it.
Every revolution of her van’s wheels grinds her carefully built up resolve to gravel, and by the time she’s parked out by the cemetery, engine idling because you never let the getaway car go cold and old habits die hard, there’s nothing left but bursting happiness that her girl is finally back, and Lou can’t hide the grin on her face as she honks impatiently.
Debbie’s hair is rough from prison and hotel shampoo under Lou’s fingers, but she smells like expensive perfume and little heists gone right, and she’s here, laughing and smiling in Lou’s van, and Lou realizes as she pulls out onto the rain-soaked road that this is the way things will always be: no matter what she tells herself, she’ll always come back for Debbie.
She knows that she’s in for whatever job has been simmering to perfection in Debbie Ocean’s jailed brain the second Debbie mentions lunch at Veselka, but it’s more fun to make Debbie work for her agreement, so Lou plays at being the voice of caution, teasing mercilessly until Debbie’s exasperatedly waving a forkful of pierogi in her face.
Still, Lou resists, and there’s a note of real in her hesitation. Debbie’s eyes refuse to relent from across the table, glinting with excitement and conviction—it feels like old times, and Lou can already feel the phantom high of success sweeping over her body, because God, it’s been such a long time and she’s so unspeakably bored—but Debbie knows that, knew that Lou wouldn’t be able to say no to such a genius plan, wouldn’t be able to say no to her.
The pierogi impaled on Debbie’s fork bobs in Lou’s peripheral vision, but Lou doesn’t budge. She remembers the Fight, the things she’d screamed before storming out and roaring away on her bike, how empty she’d felt when it felt like Debbie had chosen Claude over her, even if Debbie hadn’t realized it. Together every step of the way, she’d said, before she went and trusted an asshole who’d slammed her in jail for half a decade. Lou remembers that the last text she’d gotten from the woman sitting across from her was the date of her trial, and the numb, frozen fury that had filled her veins as she stared at Claude Becker from a seat in the back of the courtroom.
But it’s been five years, and Debbie’s the one who had asked her to meet up at the cemetery, Debbie who’s got the plan for the mother of all heists, and Debbie who wants her help. Finally, Debbie is choosing Lou. It’s a petty satisfaction and Lou knows that it won’t last, not if she keeps using it to silence all the alarms in her head, but it feels too good not to revel in.
So when Debbie pokes her fork at Lou again and coaxes, “Open,” Lou listens. Maybe, just maybe, this means she can stop chasing after the past—or running away from it. The forkful of pierogi blooms bittersweet into years of sitting here with Debbie and planning jobs, and as she chews, Lou admits to herself what she’s always known.
“Not bad,” she says with a shrug through her mouthful of memories and bad decisions, and Debbie breaks into a grin. Just like old times, Lou thinks wistfully to herself as she steals another bite. She can’t stop the smirk that curves up the corner of her mouth or the familiar, heady rush of adrenaline as the conversation turns to building a crew. Here we go again.
She should have known.
She should have known from the beginning that this was never just about Debbie and Lou, never even about the thrill of the job. Even after this long, even after Debbie had spoon-fed her that bullshit about closure wrapped up in a tiny little button and a toothbrush shank, it all boiled down to fucking Claude Becker. Just like old times.
Lou knows that Tammy’s watching her from the corner of her eye as she storms out to the parking lot, knows that Nine-Ball and Constance are exchanging glances while Amita pretends to be engrossed in whatever’s on her phone and Rose peers out wide-eyed from the cloud of black tulle and wispy rose-gold space buns she seems to perpetually exist in.
Lou knows full well that she looks like she’s about to murder Debbie, or at least break a few bones, and she’s glad for it.
When she levels the fierce steel in her eyes at Debbie, blue turned nearly grey with ire, she doesn’t expect her best friend to back down easy. But she’s not ready for her to blatantly lie, either.
“You better tell me this is not what I think it is.”
“What?”
Lou had known that Debbie was never one to forgive and forget—hell, neither was she. But this was something else; this was risking everything for all of them, and Debbie’s casual, shrugging audacity makes her want to scream.
“Really? Claude Becker?”
“That wasn’t me.”
“We’re gonna get caught.”
“Stop it. We aren’t going to get caug—”
“He’s going to get us busted!”
Lou can feel her voice rising as her blood pumps into a frenzy. Her head is spinning with livid, gaping hurt and how dangerously close this conversation inches to the Fight with every passing moment. Her fingers are twitching, and Debbie’s close enough to punch. Or kiss.
Lou isn’t sure which she’d rather do, and Debbie’s glassy, calm denial isn’t helping the scathing indecision boiling in Lou’s throat.
“You don’t run a job in a job!” she hisses, staring down into Debbie’s eyes as if she can imprint her words in the other woman’s brain by sheer willpower.
Debbie scoffs. “It’s not going to matter.”
“Why do you always do this? Why does there always have to be an asterisk?” Lou knows she’s nagging, but she also knows that Debbie isn’t listening. Not really—and besides, Lou’s asking about more than just the job, not that she expects Debbie to know that. Hell, Debbie won’t even look her in the eye, doesn’t even gratify her question with anything other than a shrug.
“You frame him, I walk.”
Lou’s dead serious when she says it, and it shows. Debbie pauses, searching Lou’s face before she finds something Lou wasn’t aware was there. A soft half-smile touches Debbie’s lips before she turns away again and tells the ocean,
“This isn’t like last time.”
Debbie isn’t a bad liar—she’s a very good one, in fact, but Lou’s known Debbie for far too long to buy her false sincerity. Consternation pulls Lou’s mouth into an quasi-formed ‘o’ before her anger catches up to her hurt and Lou has to twist her fists into the slippery material of her bomber jacket to stop herself from seizing Debbie by the shoulders.
“This is just like last time,” Lou spits, voice dropping until she feels smoke and gravel rasping in her throat. She turns sharply, fully intending to stalk back inside, slam back one or two of her good scotch, and walk away just like she promised, before Debbie can see that she’s not just squinting because of the sun.
“Stop it, Lou. Lou!”
The hot gloss of tears stings as Lou ignores Debbie’s calls and keeps walking, every fibre of her body taut. What had she expected? That Debbie would just miraculously emerge from prison as if the man who had put her there didn’t exist? That her sentence would act as a reset button so Lou could sidle back in and they could go back to where they’d left off, before the Fight, before Claude Becker and his stupid art schemes?
“Lou.”
Lou should have known better, but she can’t bring herself to jerk her arm away when Debbie catches her wrist. The rocks under her feet come into hyper-focus, then Lou’s staring intently at the glitter of sun over the ocean in excruciating clarity because she would rather look at literally anything other than Debbie’s face right now—she can’t see the plea in Debbie’s brown eyes, can’t see the way that her mouth quirks when she knows she’s about to win Lou back over.
“He sent me to jail. You have no idea what that’s like!”
Oh, she was angry now. And she had a point. Lou’s eyes snap to the sky for an instant before she forces herself to meet Debbie’s gaze. This is how things always end up.
“Yeah.” Lou can feel her jaw trembling, but she keeps her voice steady. Surrender with dignity and all that. “Well, he’s gonna do it again.”
“No,” Debbie shakes her head, that familiar determination settling back over her bones like iron. “No, he isn’t.”
And just like that, Lou’s fire goes out—she’s still furious, but there’s a curious, numb resignation hollowing out her ribs as she lets herself believe Debbie one more time. It feels good, to let someone else lie to you instead of doing it all yourself.
So Lou lets Debbie lead her back inside, paints on her signature smirk before she crosses the threshold, and is just a tad too harsh to Tammy when she catches Lou’s eye and raises a concerned eyebrow from across the room. This is how things will always be.
Lou can scream and kick and fight and lie to herself all she wants, but at the end of the day, she’ll always come back to Debbie. Debbie is home. Infuriating, stubborn, calculating, but home, and this is their world. Together.
It’s both a comfort and a curse when Lou realizes that as much as she hates the insecurity and overthinking that Debbie’s existence so often plunges her into (to make matters worse, it’s never Debbie’s decision to do so), the way she makes her feel in literally every other way imaginable is so, so worth it. They’re partners, for better and for worse, and Lou wouldn’t give that up for the world.
This is how things will always be, Lou thinks later, as she watches Debbie in her element, explaining the heist. She doesn’t look down at the flame dancing beside her thumb as she whirls the lighter in a smooth circle over and over again, and her other hand doesn’t move from where it’s draped over her knee. She doesn’t need the flickering, almost-biting kiss of the flame. Debbie’s back, and Debbie needs Lou just as much as Lou needs her, even if what she needs her for is closure that just can’t be achieved by a whittled toothbrush and some snapped threads.
It’s imperfect and Lou doesn’t think she’ll ever stop wishing for Debbie to just be hers, no asterisk involved, but then again, neither of them have ever fit neatly into a box of “perfect”. Maybe the way things will always be is how they’re meant to be.
Just maybe, Lou thinks to herself with a slanted grin as she tucks her lighter away in her blazer pocket, they can be happy and chaotic and imperfect together.
Watching Debbie’s eyes glitter with well-planned mischief, Lou tells herself that they can. And for the first time in nearly six years, she believes it.