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“Geez,” is all Toni can say after a moment of silence.
“I know,” is all Shelby can say in return.
“So that’s why you’re like that.”
“Excuse me?” Shelby turns to look at Toni, finally, steadily rising into a sitting position, ready to argue up something fierce—but Toni’s smiling, eyes alight.
“You’re so easy,” she teases.
Shelby feels all the fight deflate out of her. She’s back to lying on the ground before either of them can blink. “Shoulda known you were just trying to get a rise outta me.”
Toni frowns at her. “Sorry. Not funny as I thought it would be.”
“Clearly.”
“Shelbs,” Toni saying to her, but Shelby isn’t looking at her anymore. Her entire life, retrospectively, feels depressing as shit, and the sky—blue, cloudless—feels as empty and infinite as the feeling in her stomach.
“Shelbs,” Toni says again, closer this time. “Shelby, look at me.”
Shelby looks. Toni’s closer than she expected, and she’s got that furrowed brow worried smile mix that looks so deeply unpractised on her. It makes her look more constipated than concerned, really. It’s enough to make Shelby smile.
Relief breaks out onto Toni’s expression. Then, with certain gravity: “You know I didn’t mean it like—like you’re a fucked-up person, right? Because you’re not. They’re the fucked-up ones—your dad, your mom, your church, whatever. Fucked-up for making you feel like there’s anything wrong with you.”
It’s the kindness in her tone, fierce and determined, that really rocks Shelby. She can’t help it. She leans over to kiss her.
Toni’s smiling as she pulls away. Shelby’s pretty sure she’s smiling, too.
“I didn’t mean to make you so worried,” Shelby reassures. “I was just… thinking. Maybe you’re right.”
“What? No—”
“Not about me being ‘fucked-up’. Well. Maybe I am fucked-up a little.”
“Shelby—”
“Toni.” Shelby interrupts. “Let me finish.”
Toni struggles for a second, before quieting. Shelby gives her another peck as a thank you.
“My life has made me the way I am, you’re right about that. And my dad—” and she has to pause for a second, voice trembling, “—bein’ a conversion therapist or whoever is another fine layer to the bullshit pie life has decided to cook up for me. I mean.”
Shelby turns onto her side, facing Toni. They’re close enough that their knees are touching. “Come on. Repressed le—homosexual in a Christian family? In the south, no less? That’s just the cream on the cob, now. Shitty, cheatin’ boyfriend? Bein’ in love with my best friend? Laundry list, Toni. Laundry fuckin’ list. Who wouldn’t be left a little ‘fucked-up’ from that?”
Toni’s smiling again, just a little, because it’s funny—it is. The irony, mostly. The painful irony. But she senses Shelby’s not finished, so she gives a little encouraging nod. It makes Shelby want to kiss her again. So she does.
“I guess I am a little like that. Sometimes I feel like I’m fightin’ a million different versions of myself all at once, all of them tryin’ to take a hold of me. The pageant queen, the perfect Christian daughter. The perfect Christian girl, really—respectful, chaste, submissive. And then there’s who I was with Becca. A little bit of a troublemaker, gossipy. But happier, and maybe sometimes freer.”
Shelby sighs, closing her eyes, and feels a great stab of hurt across chest. “I miss her so much, Toni.”
Toni huddles in closer, placing a warm hand on her cheek. “I know. I can tell. She seemed like a great person.”
“She was. She was amazing. Tortured, sometimes, but kind and loving and loyal. Better than I deserved, for the way I treated her in the end.” Shelby leans into Toni’s touch. “I kissed her first. I don’t remember if I mentioned that when I was tellin’ you, but I did. And, Christ, dear Lord. I spent so much time blamin’ her, believin’ my own lies. That’s who I am too, you know. A liar. Desperate. A manipulator.” A brief pause. “So, so fuckin’ scared. A coward.”
Toni’s hand moves across her cheek to the back of her head, tilting Shelby’s head downwards to press it against her collarbone, sharp and comforting. Shelby’s sure she’s crying by now, but Toni doesn’t say anything about it, just strokes the hair at the bottom of her skull.
“It was my fault. I might not have been in the car with her, I might not have told her to do it. Not in actual words. But it was my fault, and I knew.”
Toni doesn’t say anything, just wraps her arms around Shelby’s head tighter, squeezing her closer, almost painfully so. Shelby’s nose gets squished against Toni’s chest, and she has to start breathing through her mouth. But she doesn’t move. She doesn’t ask Toni to move. They stay like that.
“Fuck, Shelby,” Toni grits out, in that ragged, rough voice of hers. “Fuck, Shelby. Fuck.”
“That person, Toni,” Shelby’s saying against her chest, clinging onto Toni’s warmth. “That’s the side that’s winnin’ all the battles. You should hate me. Maybe I ain’t goin’ to hell for being a homosexual, if you’re right. It doesn’t matter. I already know I’m goin’ to hell for what I did to Becca. Clear and simple.”
“Shelbs.” Toni places a fierce kiss on the top of her head and abruptly wrenches away. Shelby’s almost startled by the sudden sunlight, but then Toni’s got her eyes directly on hers. Her expression almost makes Shelby want to smile, even though there are still-drying tears on her face. “I don’t know if what I’m going to say to you is gonna be any good, but you’re gonna listen to me, okay? Like, really fucking listen.”
Shelby pauses tentatively, then nods.
“I know you’ve done some pretty fucked up shit. I have too. But the world isn’t like how your parents tell you it is. Morality doesn’t have any clearly defined lines. It’s impossible. You did bad shit, but you were trying to save yourself too. You were desperately trying to stay afloat in a world that was trying to make you drown. I mean, I’m like that all the fucking time. And maybe that kind of selfishness should be punished, but who gives a shit. You’re trying to make it; I’m trying to make it. Isn’t that enough? Shouldn’t that be enough for us, for your parents? For fucking God, even? How can I hate you for that?”
It takes a while for Shelby to really mince over Toni’s words. It’s impossible to believe that anything she did to Becca was short of completely selfish. And Shelby knows, God, she knows, selfishness is not a good thing. Giving and loving, never wanting and needing—that’s what’s good. But, and Shelby knows, she knows, that kind of giving would’ve been impossible. Not where she was, not in the position that she was in. That kind of giving would’ve meant sacrificing everything. Everything.
Fear took things too far. She didn’t need to bring up Becca’s step-brother, she didn’t need to lie. Didn’t need to implode so close that it caught Becca in the blast, too. But she needed to stay afloat. Nothing Shelby did in that moment was justified; she knows that completely. But she realises now that anything different might have killed her.
It’s not forgiving herself. She probably never will. But it’s something. Something like grabbing a floating piece of driftwood to catch her breath.
Shelby didn’t even realise she had closed her eyes until she opens them. She smiles slightly, eyes tracing around Toni’s concerned look.
Toni’s hands are on her face again. Her thumb smooths over an eyebrow. “You still with me, Goodkind?”
“Yes,” she says, leaning into Toni’s touch once again. “I’m here.”
Shelby smiles, turns her head to press a kiss to Toni’s palm. Settles more comfortably on her side. “I have a question, actually.”
“Mm. Shoot.”
The question isn’t a question so much as a confirmation. She asks it anyway.
“I’m selfish. Ain’t I?”
Toni doesn’t pause much when she says, “Yes.” She does, however, consider something before continuing to speak. “I haven’t told you about Regan yet, have I?”
The expression on Toni’s face isn’t really one that Shelby has seen before. Pained, so much so that it’s twisting in on itself. She’s biting her lip so hard it just might draw blood. Vulnerability is such a shitty thing, Shelby thinks, as she reaches out to grab Toni’s wrist, where her hand is still on her face. Stripping back our layers. Rummaging around in our fears.
But needed. So deeply, deeply worth it.
“No, you haven’t,” Shelby answers.
So Toni tells her. Everything.
“Geez,” Shelby says.
Toni blinks at her, then bursts out laughing. “Oh my god. You’re such an asshole.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist.”
Toni kisses her. Pulls away as her smile begins to fade.
“My anger. It’s such a big part of me. I can’t control it. Control doesn’t fucking exist, Shelbs. It doesn’t. Especially not for a teenage girl. Teenage girls don’t get a goddamn scrap of anything, except the pain of not getting anything. Shit. And you know what the real kicker fucking was? Realising how selfish my anger is. This huge, massive fucking chunk of me. Just straight up selfish and ugly.”
Toni pauses. “I meant what I said to you. We do what we do because we need to stay alive. I’m never going to fucking apologise for keeping myself alive, not after all the shit life has put me through. But god, it’s fucking ugly. And every time it happens, every time I let my anger out the door or some shit, and then the dust settles, it’s like I’m looking at this really ugly thing that fills me with shame. And then the shame makes me angrier. Rinse and repeat.”
Shelby grasps onto Toni’s wrist tighter, gently prodding her thumbnail into her skin. The frustrated look that was beginning to twist into Toni’s expression begins to fade, replaced by complete and utter nothingness. Bone-tired nothingness.
“I think about that night in the carpark with Regan all the time. I knew. I knew that if I just left those guys alone, we would’ve been better for it. I mean, those guys might have really hurt us, you know? There was just one of me against three of them because I’m pretty sure Regan had never thrown a punch in her life. I would’ve gotten into a fight with those guys, but then what? They break my nose? They give me a black eye? Dislocate my shoulder? And then what about Regan? And fucking still, I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t. I wanted to fucking murder them, even after they left. Even though I knew, rationally, that I was probably the one that would’ve gotten murdered. Why? Why did I think like that? Why do I still think like that?”
Toni breathes in, shaking and teeming with the aftershocks of passion. Shelby’s still silent. All the questions feel rhetorical, and it’s not like Shelby would have an answer for her anyway. The grip Toni has on the underside of her jaw, fingertips curling at the hairs at the base of her skull, has gotten stronger and stronger, but not enough to hurt. Like Toni’s searching for a lifeline, almost.
“Regan knew better than I did in that moment. I could’ve gotten us really badly hurt. Killed, even. I could’ve gotten Regan—” Toni swallows, loudly. “She was right to break up with me. I would’ve broken up with me. My anger made me selfish. But my anger, sometimes, was all I had. It was the only thing I could rely on.”
Shelby shakes her head. She has to. “The anger doesn’t have to be the only thing you have anymore,” she whispers, encouraging. “It can be different. I know it can.”
“You can hope for the both of us, Shelbs,” Toni says, sardonic. Her mouth crooks into something self-deprecating. “That boat sailed for me a long time ago.”
“I believe it, Toni. I really do. Your anger is a part of you—so what? You’ve got many more parts to ya, let me tell you. All of them connected, one to one to one. Maybe your anger can be your happiness, too. And your happiness can be your sadness, and your sadness your boredom, and so on.” Shelby uses her free hand to trace a pattern from Toni’s heart to her stomach, her bellybutton, shooting all the way up to her shoulder, tracing a horizontal line across her collarbones before tracing down the V shape of her arm against the ground, to the tip of her curled index fingertip. “All of you, you see. All of you. All of it, beautiful. The anger too. Even when it’s ugly, it’s still beautiful. Because it’s you.”
Toni closes her eyes. If she was anyone else Shelby might have thought she looked close to crying.
The air between them falls silent. The silence gives Shelby a second to catalogue everything around them. The sun set a while ago, and they’ve probably been due to head back to camp for an hour or so, though nobody has come looking for them quite yet.
Shelby feels fatigued, in a slothful kind of way, like she’s just had to sit through another one of those sweltering Texan summer nights. Toni doesn’t look much different. But they’re both smiling, ever-so-slightly.
“If you’re selfish, then look at me. We’re both a couple of selfish assholes,” Toni concludes. “Bunch’a dickwads.”
Shelby leans forward to kiss her, and doesn’t keep it short this time. They’ve talked enough already.