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Fiddle’s is just as familiar to Dina as every other half-decent spot in town, from the wooden booths to the view of the street outside, to the permanent fry-grease-and-coffee smell that’s seeped into every inch of the place. It’s mundane. Almost unremarkable, really.
And then there’s Syd. Her face is familiar to Dina, sure, practically burned into the backs of her eyelids, but sometimes her smile and excited-laugh (the one where her mouth opens all the way up) feels like it’s too much for a place like Fiddle’s. For a place like their town.
It’s like that now, as they sit across from each other. Like, an eye-opening moment of how pretty Syd is, even in the sweater that she’s worn for pretty much a month straight.
To distract from it, she starts to tell Syd about Brad, how he’d complimented her in pretty much the most underhanded way possible. Just like the newfound attention, it was nice at first. But then she thought about it, and it felt kind of… insulting? Boobs and straight teeth don’t make someone a whole new person. If that was all it took for these people to be interested in her, then they weren’t actually interested in her. At least, not the real her.
Syd, though? She’d been there through stick-thin and crooked-teethed. So she was there for what was underneath, all of it, always.
After years of being Syd’s friend, Dina can anticipate how their conversation will go. Syd will make fun of Brad, Dina’ll pretend to protest and eventually laugh along, and then they’ll split their fries and talk about something else. Probably. Sometimes it goes a bit deeper, discussions on actual personalities and friendships and whether or not to believe gossip, but usually it’s surface-level jabs.
And then Dina feels it. A rush of nervousness, heavy and sick in her stomach, and a bitter undercurrent of jealousy, burning a hole through her throat. Syd looks a lot like she’s trying, and failing, to conceal how she feels. And then there’s anticipation, like Dina’s hanging on for something and she doesn’t quite know what, like she’s overflowing with emotion and can’t quite parse through it.
That’s when she realizes. They aren’t her emotions that she’s cycling through; they’re Syd’s.
She’s felt it before, but only recently; annoyance from her mom when she doesn’t do her chores, disappointment from teachers when she does poorly on an assignment, longing from guys when she flirts back with them. But nothing this strong. And nothing so natural that she couldn’t tell it wasn’t coming from her at first.
Syd’s emotions just feel… at home in her body.
That’s interesting. So Dina, against her better judgement, continues. Like picking at a scab and knowing it’ll scar, sort of. “He’s sort of sweet, you know?”
Syd makes a face like ‘are you serious right now? I won’t say it out loud but really, are you fucking serious?’ and it’s so crystal clear that Dina can almost hear it in her voice. And then she realizes that that is what she’s thinking, or at least what she’s feeling, and it’s getting more intense the more Dina talks.
She puts on her best dreamy smile and says, “And then… he asked me to homecoming.”
Syd lets out a nervous laugh. It’s supposed to be a normal one, probably, but it comes out disbelieving, and if it weren’t for the strong rush of confusion and heightened jealousy Dina would probably read too far into it. Instead, she mirrors the laugh, and decides to just… lie.
It’s awful, she knows, but she’s never felt this close to figuring out what’s happening to her before, never been able to hold on to someone’s emotions for this long, nor feel them so strongly. Plus, Syd looks even prettier when she’s in disbelief. That’s probably awful, too.
Syd is just blinking at her, trying to stifle the emotions, but it isn’t working. Dina can feel it.
“Wait… and you accepted?” Syd asks, like this whole thing is some big joke, and it kind of is, except for it doesn’t feel like one. Dina hates that she’s almost excited over the jealousy that’s growing in her stomach, ugly and spitting like an ignored child, acting out for attention.
“No,” she says, and in the miniscule moment it takes for her to spit out the rest of her sentence, a burst of hope balloons so wide in her chest that she almost stops there, “I told him to take his washboard abs and chiseled jawline and get out of my face.”
Syd’s mouth just sort of… hangs open for a second, like she’s shut down, and all of the emotion leaves Dina’s body and leaves her feeling empty with just her own. It’s almost hard to disentangle her feelings from whatever residue is left from Syd’s, because she feels a nervousness too, not unlike Syd’s, and a broad, underlying confusion that hadn’t left the whole time, like she was missing something important but didn’t know what.
She misses the presence of Syd’s emotions so she prods more, like a tongue on a hurt tooth, “Yeah. Of course I said yes.”
She makes a mental note to tell Brad that she changed her mind, if she plans on taking it that far.
Her mouth kind of opens and closes for a second, like she’s trying to figure out what to say but can’t place what she feels, and Dina wishes she could know exactly what was coursing through her body at the moment. Then, it hits, and she’s filled with a sick sense of clarity and an anger that warms her from the tips of her fingers to her toes.
“Uh, oh my God, you had sex with him, didn’t you?” Syd says, like it is 100% true, and Dina cycles through the entire five stages of grief with her in a brief amount of time, her face acting on autopilot and deciding to act like yes, she totally lost her virginity to Brad.
It is then that she realizes she is completely fucked. And that maybe Syd is too.
The autopilot carries her through the rest of the conversation, while the rational- and apparently no longer in control- part of her brain screams about how wrong this is, about how she shouldn’t lie, especially when she doesn’t even know why she’s lying. Or what’s happening to her. Or if she’s going really, certifiably crazy, which is what seems to be happening, honestly.
Sane-Dina tunes back in at around the same time she says, “Oh, come on, there’s gotta be someone you sort of like. Just a little.”
Then it’s all longing, and confusion, and still that jealousy, simmering, simmering, just under the surface, like skin under a fresh sunburn, that hasn’t peeled away yet. It hits Dina before it hits Syd, because she’s never been very in touch with her emotions, aside from anger and maybe annoyance, but Dina has always known how to read her. Syd isn’t upset because she’ll lose time with Dina to Brad, or because she doesn’t like him.
Syd is jealous because she likes Dina.
-
With a clear purpose in mind, Dina is able to trick herself into believing she’s not a totally horrible person for doing what she’s doing. And as long as she doesn’t think too long or hard about it, she can continue with the plan. Which, for the record, is mostly lying to get a reaction out of Syd, and then trying to parse through her emotions.
This leaves a surprisingly small amount of time for Dina to consider her own emotions, because even when she’s away from Syd, she mostly feels the lack of her feelings. And for her, it’s all about getting Syd to unpack all of the emotional baggage she has lying around herself, layers so deep that Dina aches with it even after unloading the burden.
She can’t imagine that’s healthy for Syd. No wonder she’s been acting so weird lately.
It’s with this resolution that she manages to act disinterested when Syd comes up to her in the locker room, unfairly pretty in her plain white shirt, eyes sparkling despite the shyness that fills Dina up with butterflies. And it’s with this resolution that Dina turns down spending time with Syd, which has been both really hard and really incredible as of late, even when she pulls her stupid sweater over her stupid head and still looks unfairly pretty. Dina’s pretty sure the ‘she’s so pretty’ feeling is just her own, but really, she can’t be sure.
It feels like every day she becomes less sure.
On autopilot, with Less-Sane-Dina in charge again, she carries through the conversation only dimly aware of Syd’s growing discomfort, the need to cry and scream and rage and rage and rage until all of the confusing emotions are gone and replaced with a familiar dull anger, until she pulls on Brad’s coat, the one she just had to bat her eyelashes to get.
She should probably feel bad for manipulating Brad like that, but again, it didn’t really feel like it was her that was doing it. Plus, he’s kind of a dick.
“It’s just… that jacket,” Syd stares at Dina like she’s wearing a BRAD IS MY NEW TOP PRIORITY shirt, with a tattoo of his name across her forehead for good measure. This worry, this insecurity, makes Dina feel so ashamed that she rushes through the conversation and leaves. She’d wanted to feel the jealousy, right? The confirmation?
When she gets far away, it hits that the nausea wasn’t all Syd’s.
-
They’re back at Fiddle’s. Same booths, same view, same smell. But it’s not the same Syd. When she walked through the door she trailed something in with her, like an amalgamation of emotions so strung through each other, tangled like a box of Christmas lights, that they created something new entirely.
Excitement, maybe. A lot of confusion, as per usual. And a really, really sharp sense of false hope, the kind that pulls despair, and a bit of self-loathing, along with it. Dina feels so sick with it that she wonders how Syd is still standing upright, and doubles down on her ‘get Syd to be honest with herself’ goal.
Syd sits down. She’s wearing a different sweater. A different smile. “I lost my p-card.”
“What?” Dina says, wishing for autopilot, because she doesn’t know how to deal with this, and the flood of emotion in her chest is so strong that it forces Syd’s almost all the way out.
“I,” she starts out normal volume, then glances around and lowers her voice to a whisper, “fuckedStanleyBarber?”
It comes out like a question. Dina tries so hard to reign in her emotion that she almost short-circuits and just leaves.
“Fucked Stanley Barber? You fucked ,” she pauses for a second and then spits out his name, because seriously, “ Stanley. Barber. ”
Something like disbelief wells up in her chest, and it feels like Syd, but it also feels like her. And then a hot sense of shame, and a will to ignore it, comes up too, and they are so in sync it’s almost scary, feeling and repressing and feeling and repressing.
What if Dina was wrong? If Syd didn’t like her, and she couldn’t feel her emotions, and it was just wishful thinking or some kind of distraction from everything that had been happening to her lately, the strange new body she was inhabiting, the strange new place in life she was inhabiting, trying to throw something stable out of whack?
And then Syd looks at her like she’s seeking her stamp of approval even if she doesn’t realize it and Dina knows. She knows. So when Syd continues hyping up Stan’s incredible sexual prowess, unsure of herself, she basks in that ‘I’m lying, I’m lying, I’m lying’ guilt that radiates from Syd, so strong that she’d be able to tell even without whatever is happening to her.
With perfect timing, Dina’s mom texts her, and she pretends it’s Brad, because one more second of ‘Syd and Stanley Barber Having Sex’ talk would probably render her useless for the rest of the day, maybe even week. And neither of them needed that.
Not when they were both about to collapse under the weight of their thoughts, the unsaid and unravelled.
As soon as she mentions Brad, Syd’s demeanor changes, going from sheepish to jealous in a moment, a fierce anger and dislike surfacing and tinging everything else with red. She really doesn’t like him. It makes it both harder and easier to do this. To lie. No, to act .
Brad is like leverage, almost. Syd doesn’t want to lose her to Brad, even though she knows, or should know, that platonically nothing would change. But romantically? Dina would be out of the game. Syd doesn’t want that to happen, and she doesn’t know why she doesn’t, she just knows it.
Dina needs to make her realize why.
So Dina takes a chance, and brings up Ricky Berry’s birthday party. She plays it like she doesn’t want to go (partially true) because she wants to take care of Brad (entirely not true), and that’s enough to make Syd suggest that they go together, anxiety and hope mixing in Dina’s chest. She can tell it isn’t just Syd’s, though it’s getting harder and harder to tell their feelings apart.
-
Then they’re in Dina’s room together, getting ready for the party, which feels surreal to both of them. Dina’s been digging through her closet for what feels like hours, and she can feel Syd getting restless, trying hard not to stare or to fidget too much. She’s distracted, Dina can tell, which is pretty much the usual. She’s spiralling, though, over something Dina can’t place, and even though she can literally feel her emotions she’s never felt so out of the loop.
In a desperate bid to distract her, Dina asks for fashion advice, and when that doesn’t work, she campaigns to use Syd as a life-size doll. To her surprise, Syd agrees, despite the amount of anxiety that floods her system. It goes: put on revealing shirt, zip up hoodie, grab makeup, organize makeup, sit down. And then they’re face to face, and nearly knee to knee, and Syd’s smiling a new kind of smile.
Shy, hopeful, and a little terrified. Dina brushes blush over her freckles and tries not to stare into her eyes, focusing on Syd’s building anticipation instead of whatever is growing in her own chest. She’s so vulnerable and pliant that it hurts, a lot, overwhelming enough for Dina to blurt out, “I’m sorry.”
And she apologizes more, never really elaborating, skirting around the issue. And even her apology feels like a ‘tell me what’s going on, tell me how you feel, I don’t want to have to pry and manipulate, I want your trust, even if I don’t deserve it’, which wrenches her open and leaves Syd’s emotions leaking out.
Autopilot-Dina keeps spewing bullshit and then says, “How long have I known you? And you seriously never talk about boys.”
Syd’s emotions kinda go ‘shit, oh shit, oh shit,’ without ever touching on anything concrete, and then it’s just vague guilt and panic and, “Well, now I have.”
“Anything else earth-shattering you wanna tell me?” Dina tries, because fuck it, edging around it obviously isn’t helping, and if Syd doesn’t admit it soon- admit everything she’s been keeping from herself soon- Dina might go crazy. Nuts. Full-blown psycho.
Again, Syd’s mouth kind of… shakes with the force of holding something back, trying to find the right words to say, and from the guilt and frustration and deliberation Dina’s feeling it’s hard for her, so when she stutters out something about yeah, needing to talk, Dina doesn’t really hold it against her.
A rush of emotion so intense Dina almost blacks out, and Syd finishes with, “I think there might, uh, be something wrong with me.”
She can’t feel that way anymore, because it’s splitting her open, the combined force of their emotions, and the thought of Syd thinking her crush is something wrong with her, or the thought of it being something else, something more serious, that she’s admitted to herself and been struggling with all alone… So, shamefully, she plays it off as if she hasn’t also been feeling like there might be something wrong with her.
Like she doesn’t know there’s something wrong with her.
Before she registers the passage of time, she’s brushing cherry chapstick over Syd’s lips, a flood of resignation and affection and longing so deep in her stomach she takes the emotions on as her own, and with the force of it she whispers, “Amazing.”
-
They’re standing outside of the party, and Syd’s social anxiety melts into a different kind of nerves when Dina takes her hand. Her hoodie is still zipped up over Dina’s tank top, and she feels a weird little rush at the thought of Syd in her clothes, the most confidently-her emotion she’s had in hours. And then they go in.
After the initial terror, and the feeling of not belonging, Syd relaxes into Dina’s personal space and does her weird, jerky dance-adjacent thing, happiness lighting her up for the first time in what feels like forever. There are about a million other people in the room, yet Dina can’t feel a thing from any of them. They aren’t even blips on her radar. Syd’s close enough to smell like her own laundry detergent and cherries and a little bit like weed, which is interesting, and definitely opens up a new can of worms.
A beer pong win carries this feeling over, adoration when they look at each other, pride when they score, and that subtle joy buzzing through it all.
“You’re fucking incredible,” Syd yells into her beer, nodding along to her own statement. “The perfect partner.”
The other team had only gotten two of their cups, but Syd had drank both of them, and it seemed like she was really feeling it. That didn’t stop the rush of ‘did I really just say that? And is it really that true?’ from hitting Dina like ten shots at once.
They float through pizza, enough beer to be comfortably light-headed, and foosball against girls that Syd would’ve never talked to otherwise, all with a surprisingly pleasant baseline emotion. Something in the air feels charged, but she ignores it in favor of a good night.
And somewhere in there there’s Stan, and Syd’s awkwardness around him, her unsurety, the way she curls in on herself when he’s around like she doesn’t want to be who she is. And that confusion is back, loud and clear, bold and highlighted and underlined.
There’s Brad, too, and to keep up her lie Dina disappears with him for a little bit, and she’s so, so happy that Syd can’t feel her emotions, because all she wants to do is ignore the boys and dance with Syd. And play beer pong with Syd. And learn all about Syd, every facet of her mind, and what the hell has been going on with her lately. She doesn’t miss the pang of disappointment and anger that spikes up, up, up her chest and through her throat until it hurts to breathe when she turns to leave, and the lost, lonely sadness that settles in Syd’s chest when she’s gone.
When Dina’s done pretending to care about Brad, she heads out in search of Syd, but there’s no sign of her, not even in the corners where she’d usually lurk. Stan isn’t anywhere to be found, either, and Dina hopes she hasn’t misread everything fatally, that they aren’t hooking up in some bathroom or unused bedroom.
The thought sends nausea red-hot down her throat, so she stumbles over to the bedrooms, half to check (for peace of mind) and half to maybe lay down (because she feels like she may pass out). Confusion so bone-deep that it renders her weak-kneed spikes through her, and it isn’t her own, and it’s ran through with so many other things she can’t begin to decipher, so she throws herself into a room, shuts the door, and collapses onto the bed.
Guilt consumes her until the door opens, burning through Syd’s spike of emotion, and she feels Syd’s presence like a cool rag to her forehead, and like a punch to the stomach.
“Oh. Hey,” she forces out, because she doesn’t want to be weird, and Syd just collapses next to her.
Syd lays so close that she can feel her body heat, the almost-there pressure of her arm, and thinks, ‘Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? And why do I feel this way? How do I feel?’
And Dina mimics her, or maybe Syd mimics Dina, or maybe there’s just no line between them anymore? The same confusion, need for clarity, feeling of missing something, strings them together. A yearning, aching, tender and hopeful, makes their stomachs ache. And an anger, a jealousy, an annoyance, a vein of guilt and horror and self-loathing, strikes a match and lights them on fire.
If they’ll burn, it’ll be together.
Dina reminds herself that this whole thing was about putting Syd out.
She sniffles, and realizes that she’s actually crying now. Syd feels a worry so intense that it drowns out most of her own guilt, which intensifies the emotion, and they feed off of each other.
“Are you crying because…” Syd looks up, “there’s a dead animal hanging above your head?”
A valiant attempt at humor, at lightening the mood, and it just makes Dina sadder, because here she has an incredible friend that opens up for her and her only, and is vulnerable and feels so much, and she’s been picking apart every feeling she’s had for weeks. Her private feelings. No matter what was going on with Dina, that wasn’t right, and private emotions should remain private.
She’s going to lose Syd. Maybe she deserves it. She can still feel the probing worry rushing over her.
“Okay, talk to me,” Syd, after a moment of silence, glances at Dina like she’s trying to be impassive. Inside, she’s burning with curiosity, and with a need to make things better for Dina, no matter the cost. Dina aches with the love. “What happened?”
“It’s Brad,” Autopilot-Dina sniffles, and she’s kind of right, and she continues, “and it’s you.”
“Me?” Syd asks, laden with fear.
“It was never, like, Brad,” Dina’s getting hysterical now. “Not just Brad. Actually, it was more about you, and probably me, too?”
“Alright, deep breaths, and try again.”
“It was always you.” Realization. Heavy, cold, realization.
The reason their emotions always felt so similar. The confusion, lingering long after Syd was gone. The grasping, the reaching. Not to mention the frantic way Dina tried to prove Syd liked her, in some concrete way, and then frame it as a good thing for Syd. It was never just about her. It was never about Brad at all. It was about Dina.
“Me?”
“You,” Dina says, heavy with the sentiment, and rolls over on her pillow so that she’s facing Syd. An unfamiliar room, an unfamiliar bed, with sheets that don’t smell like her laundry and Syd that does, Syd’s wide eyes and Syd’s familiar hope and confusion, which have carved a home besides Dina’s own. Syd. Syd.
And then it hits her. Syd looks at Dina, really looks at her, and that under-the-surface ready-to-come-up feeling explodes: it’s love. It’s always been love, a raw kind, a scary kind, a kind that comes with baggage and rules and admissions that Syd wasn’t, and isn’t, 100% ready to make.
But it’s love. And Dina knows, because she feels the same way.
“Is it Stan?” Dina asks, selfishly, because she needs the confirmation, and, Autopilot-Dina chimes in, it’d help Syd to clarify out loud, too. “For you, I mean.”
“No,” Syd says, “Fuck, no, it isn’t.”
And then she leans forward, just barely, across the hundred foot divide between the pillows, and her nervousness and excitement and longing meets with Dina’s own, and they become one, and their lips become one, and it’s soft and searching and natural, as if they belong together.
Because they do.