Archive of Our Own

“No way, is that Shelby Goodkind?”

Shelby never thought she’d hear that voice ever again in a place that wasn’t her dreams, but a double take and a dramatic spin round later, she finds out that it is that voice—the one from her dreams.

“Toni? Toni Shalifoe?” She can’t help the grin that spreads across her face, and it only widens when she instinctively pulls the shorter girl in for a hug. “I can’t believe it’s really you!”

The pleasantries make it sound like a pleasant high school reunion.

They pull back to get a good look at each other: it seems life hasn’t touched either of them since high school, but to be fair, it has only been one year since graduation. Toni’s hair is plaited into two neat braids, the way she’d always had them during basketball games, and there’s a speck of dried pink paint on her cheek.

One year ago, Shelby would’ve wiped it away with her thumb.

Instead, she just watches as Toni’s eyes dart everywhere, trying to take Shelby in. Shelby wonders if she looks older, if she doesn’t look as pretty as she did during her pageant days, worn down by stress, but the way Toni looks at her hasn’t changed—that reverent type of warm gaze that still makes Shelby feel like she’s melting to this day—so she immediately feels like even if she has changed, it’s clearly not for the worse.

She knows deep down that she’s just being picky—she’s still young as ever, and stress can’t age you that much in three-hundred-and-sixty-five days—but the pageant regimes, and the push to plastic surgery she’d faced from the second it was legal for her to get it, is still somewhat ingrained in her.

But, as if there wasn’t a year of silence between them, Toni’s bright brown eyes still make all her insecurities fall away.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. There’s meant to be tears, and yelling, or maybe cold shoulders and hard glares instead. Toni’s meant to slap her in the face. They’re not meant to pretend like everything’s normal.

“I’ve missed you,” Toni breathes, and it’s all Shelby wants to hear.

“You could’ve called.” Shelby knows why that’s such a bad response, and so does Toni—because how could’ve Toni called her? Besides, she had called Shelby, just once, but she doesn’t need to know that she remembers that.

“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

Toni’s response is so shy and so without hesitation that Shelby’s heart breaks all over again; the pain is still as fresh as it was twelve months ago.

She doesn’t want her silence to be misinterpreted, so quietly Shelby admits, “I was scared.”

“I know.”

It’s all too much too soon, and Toni is Toni so she knows—she just knows everything about Shelby’s mind, takes her cues like they’re her own instincts, and so casually suggests they sit at one of the airport cafés while waiting for boarding. She realises that they’re on the same flight with a glance to the boarding pass clutched in Shelby’s fingers, which are unusually un-manicured—something which Toni debates on whether it is actually unusual because in one year old habits can die, and it makes her realise that maybe Shelby’s a different person now—and that while old habits do in fact die hard, her habit of loving Shelby Goodkind is still alive.

So it’s all casual, shallow conversations about college and Shelby’s dog walking business and Toni’s art (she doesn’t tell her but Shelby knows she had an exhibition recently, which Shelby definitely didn’t attend in secret, the one where she absolutely did not avoid the opening and closing dates of to minimise the risk of running into the artist).

When she tells her, “I’ve always loved your paintings”, the conversation dips in a way that means that it’s no longer shallow at all, not until Toni briefly thanks her and swims back to the shallow end—because ‘always’ is an adverb of frequency, a very high frequency, and if you take off one word and one letter from that sentence it becomes too honest, because Shelby has always loved Toni; Shelby still loves Toni in all ways you can love the one person who showed you how it feels to be true to yourself.

Toni was one of her best friends during high school. They hardly talked outside of class; they had different friend groups and hobbies, but they shared biology and chemistry classes and happened to be lab partners for both every single year, so somehow they eventually spilled all their secrets to each other over bunsen burners and in hushed voices during a particularly boring lecture about homeostasis. They had hardly ever hung out outside of meeting up for projects—until they did because Shelby’s parents were out of town for the weekend, and going from not even having each other’s social medias to having a sleepover at the very end of senior year made total sense.

===

One year ago.

Shelby made the mistake of letting them share a bed. Shelby made the mistake of turning to face her, which led to a kiss, and then two, and then three hundred. Shelby made the mistake of waking up with almost no clothes, and most of her bare skin pressed against Toni’s.

They hadn’t done that, yet somehow it felt to Shelby—who was very inexperienced at the time—that nothing could ever be more intimate than that. (Once she’d gained experience with all the wrong girls—all wrong because they weren’t her—that thesis was proved). And Toni, who had gone there before that night, had still thought the exact same thing although Shelby wasn’t aware of it.

“Good morning,” mumbled Toni. Her voice was deeper and more gravelly than usual, and Shelby fell in love with the sound immediately.

Two thoughts crossed her mind: One, that she wanted to wake up to that sound every day of her life; two, that she wanted to wake up with Toni’s bare legs tangled in hers every day of her life.

Essentially, she wants Toni.

The realisation didn’t scare her, because she’d already felt it for such a long time. The difference was that now her dreams had materialised in front of her.

“You okay, Shell?”

The nickname sent a warm chill down her spine. Toni had come up with it because Shelby offhandedly mentioned how much she loved going to the beach on a field trip. (Toni wasn’t supposed to go because nobody had signed her permission slip, but Shelby forged her a signature because, “You’ve never seen the ocean? I’m making you go see it, everyone deserves to. Especially you.”)

“I’m okay, are you?”

Toni ran her fingers through Shelby’s hair before tucking a yellow strand behind her ear. “Couldn't be better.”

There had only been one week of senior year left, which was very hectic for the both of them, but somewhere around the moment that Shelby kissed her goodbye the next morning, Shelby knew she never wanted to be kissed by anyone but her.

===

So it was texting every day and night of summer, no meetings because they were always busy or out of state—until college started and work got in the way, and Shelby knew the distance between Texas and California was too wide, so she texted an I’m sorry, Toni. I can’t do this to you, and never responded to Toni’s pleas to come back.

They hadn’t even dated, yet, the pain it brought made the biology major in Shelby’s brain fret over whether her heartstrings would break from the emotional distress.

So seeing Toni approach her at the airport so casually had made her mind spin—was Toni over it? Shelby wants her to be over it; she doesn’t want Toni to hurt as much as she did, as much as she still does, because no day goes by without the thought of warm smiles and brown eyes hanging heavy and painful in her mind. She knows in protecting Toni she only hurt her, and that the logic of “it’ll be better in the long run” had long since run out, because if Toni still felt a fraction of the pain she did then it definitely wasn’t worth it at all—and it just makes it worse when Toni’s hand purposefully brushes against hers as she moves to collect a napkin from a dispenser.

“I’m sorry,” is what Shelby blurts out.

“You should be,” is what Toni jokes back to diffuse the tension, a genuine laugh below sad eyes, and Shelby hates how perfectly Toni reads her because she finds herself laughing too.

Toni is not meant to be acting like this right now. If anything, this scares Shelby more than if Toni were to physically fight her at the check-in (not that she would, Toni may be a hothead but she’s not violent towards anyone, especially not those she loves—if she even still loves Shelby), because she doesn’t want Toni to rush back to her like nothing happened. If they’re going to be something again they have to do it properly, think about it clearly.

But that’s wishful thinking; there’s no reason for Toni to want her back in her life.

Or maybe, she realises, the most probable option is that Toni is shutting down: she’s pretending like nothing bad happened so that she can’t relive the hurt. This is a friendly hello and goodbye, a friendly catch up, then they’re both off on their separate ways again. 

Then there’s an announcement over the loudspeaker: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Flight AA0217 to Boston has been delayed by four hours due to—

Shelby doesn't process the rest of the announcement. All she knows is that it scares her because four hours with the girl she’s been in love with for years but left sounds like torture, and it relieves her because a four hours delay is the threshold for refunds and she wants every single minute possible with Toni. It’s a bit of an oxymoron.

There’s a heavy silence until Toni breaks it with an awkward, “That’s a long time to wait.”

The double meaning of her words don’t fly over anyone’s heads, which is how they both end up laughing loudly and helplessly, Toni clapping her hands the way she does whenever she laughs, and Shelby pressing a hand to her mouth to try and contain herself.

“I still love you,” is what they both want to say, and it’s what neither of them can.

So instead, Shelby rambles: “I was trying to protect you, you know. I knew I was going to hurt you, the distance was going to hurt you, and I didn’t want to lock you down during college when you should’ve been out having fun. Because I’m sure it wasn’t a secret, how much I wanted”—(read: want)—“to be with you, but we couldn’t be and I didn’t even know if you felt that way so I’m sorry if you didn’t and this is just me stating the obvious. I’m sorry, and I’m glad to see we’re both doing well and that now you get closure.”

One year might’ve been one week, considering the fresh intensity of Shelby’s feelings, the way they haven’t faded and still fuel her panic when she says that.

Toni just smiles with an unreadable expression, says, “I know,” and then, casually, “Why are you going to Massachusetts?”

Shelby kind of wants to shake her, kind of wants to kiss her, kind of wants to kick herself for being so forward about feelings Toni clearly doesn’t share anymore.

Toni just doesn’t want to cry in front of someone whose feelings are in the past.

Shelby and Toni are both idiots.

===

Five years ago

“You’re going to end up doing this whole project yourself, y’know,” fourteen-year-old (“Almost fifteen,” she’d insisted, but Shelby reminded her that April was basically six months away) Toni mumbled through a mouthful of Takis from her place on Shelby’s light pink bean bag. She was there for their first science project together, something about something—she wasn’t paying attention, science wasn’t her favourite subject.

“Can you not get crumbs everywhere?” Shelby snapped, shooting a glare at her. “My daddy’s gonna get mad if he finds out we’ve been eatin’ those types of snacks.”

Toni raised  an eyebrow. “We? You keep declining every time I offer you one.”

“They look disgustin’.”

“Have you ever even tried one?”

“No, don’t need to.”

That made her get up—because who’s never tried Takis? They’re the best snack in the world, in her opinion, it should be mandatory for everyone to try them at least once. “Here, have one,” Toni offered, holding one out.

Shelby stared at it for a good moment, weighing up the pros and cons, and then, “Screw it.” Her face scrunched up at just how spicy it was, which made Toni laugh. “Eugh, they’re gross!”

“C’mon, try another one.” Toni handed her the entire packet.

Ordinarily, she would’ve never done something like this. But for some reason, the fire in Toni’s eyes made her own ones catch—and just like that, her hand was in the packet, digging out an entire fistful of the long red chips, before it shoved them all into her mouth.

Big. Mistake.

There were tears streaming down her face as Toni rushed her to the en-suite in her bedroom, half from how spicy it was, half from laughter. She forced herself to swallow it down—which was also stupid, she should’ve just spit them out—before having to submerge her entire head in the sink.

Her hands were stained red, so she had to scrub at them hard to get rid of the bright colour. All the while Toni was stood next to her, laughing her ass off.

It stung her eyes and tongue and entire face, but it was the freest Shelby had felt in the fourteen (“fifteen on October twenty-third, don’t forget Toni!”) years of her life thus far.

“You’re such a dumbass,” Toni choked out through her uncontrollable laughter. “Maybe I do like you.”

Shelby’s cheeks flushed as red as her snack dust stained hands, so she splashed it a bit more with cold water—just for good measure, obviously. “Yeah, well, I don’t like these Taki thingies though.”

After letting out a dramatic sigh, Toni clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth. “Guess I don’t like you after all.”

A wet towel was chucked onto her face. “I’ve basically done the whole project for us, you better.”

“Okay, okay.” Toni grimaced as the towel fell to her lap. “Maybe I do like you,” she said, beaming. “Maybe.” Toni Shalifoe was not a person who beamed, she was a scowler and proud of it—but Shelby’s eyes were green and bright, so how could she not beam around her?

Shelby hummed and took a step towards Toni when she stood up. “Good. I guess I like you too.” 

===

“I’m transferring colleges.” Because I don’t want to be anywhere near my parents anymore is what she doesn’t say. “What about you?”

Toni grins, reading between the lines. “Me too, actually. Not the parents thing, I’ll miss Bernice, but you know. She’s in Minnesota anyway so it’s not like it makes much of a difference, LA or Boston.”

And there’s no fucking way that this is happening, absolutely no way, so it’s actually kind of a relief when they realise they’re not going to the same university. Until Toni decides to check the map to see that there isn’t even twenty minutes between the two.

It’s the fact that Toni checked, as if it means—

“I could visit you.”

It sounds so casual yet so much like a question and it’s once again said so shyly that Shelby finds herself clinging to the idea that fate is giving her a second chance. So she says, “I’m not sure you would want that.”

“I would.” I do.

Toni excuses herself and gets another coffee, leaving Shelby to try to conjure up one coherent thought in her blank mind (spoiler alert: she can’t) and returns with two pastries, one of which she places in front of Shelby. It’s an almond croissant. Shelby likes almond croissants. Shelby has never told Toni that she likes almond croissants. But then again, seeing as they’re always sold out at the café near her old dorm room, it seems most people like almond croissants. Toni also likes almond croissants because she has one for herself too.

“These were the last two almond croissants left.”

Almond croissants don’t sound real anymore in Shelby’s inner monologue.

They eat their almond croissants in silence; Toni finishes way before she does, having scoffed it down in a somewhat graceful manner, but Shelby definitely doesn’t notice this because Shelby definitely isn’t constantly stealing glances at the girl next to her, nor is she wondering why she still remembers the placement of each and every mole on her face and neck. She tries to cool the heat that flushes over her entire body at the memory of how soft the skin there is, the way it feels—felt—under her lips.

Because she’s not thinking about any of that at all. Definitely most certainly most definitely absolutely not. That’s what she tells herself as she pries her eyes away from Toni for the hundredth time.

Shelby’s so fucked and she knows it, because Toni’s sitting here being nice to her and saying things that she can interpret as meaning that she wants some sort of reconciliation at minimum, all after she messaged her one year ago saying ‘I can’t do this’, all after she hurt her like that.

She still remembers the texts Toni left her, almost as accurately as she remembers the way her heart broke at every word. Well, the pain felt isn’t hard to remember, seeing as she still feels it every day as freshly as the first. There was one in particular that she thought of the most:

I really loved you Shelby. Fuck, you were one of my best friends. Why can’t we at least be friends? I just want you in whatever way I can have you, even if we’re just acquaintances. Please Shelby. Let me just be your friend. I need you. Jesus Christ. I love you.

Shelby’s unsent response was I’d give anything to have you in my life in any way possible. But I can’t do that to you. She couldn’t have given Toni any false hope, she knew that the first part would’ve had Toni ringing and ringing her, begging for her to take that chance. She couldn’t do that to her, couldn’t take the chance of hurting her more. Maybe, she thought, if Toni waited it out then time would take the pain away. 

That text hurt almost as badly as the last one:

I get it. I really do hope that you enjoy life in college. Genuinely, I mean it. You deserve something good after everything you’ve been through. Just don’t let yourself go back to the person you’re not. I’ll be here when you come around.

Shelby truly believes she wasn’t and still isn’t deserving of Toni’s kindness. All she gave was radio silence in return for being shown love—true love for Shelby’s true self, something she never thought she’d get.

Somehow, she still believes that there’s a reason that the universe put them both on the same flight for the same reason. It’s a second chance. She wants to take it, to reach out and grasp it with both hands, but she’s still unsure if it’s what Toni wants.

Maybe she can do what she does best and give her some icebreakers, but that’s dumb because she had all of high school for that. There isn’t much about Toni she doesn’t know, except for things that may have cropped up in the last year at college.

So she asks her about her roommate, who turns out to be an ambivert named Leah who loves to read, and she’s asked about her favourite dogs from regular customers, so it’s all casual again with smiles and fleeting glances.

It’s almost like high school.

Shelby can still remember the way she looked forward to science lessons every day, the green of biology and the red of chemistry on her colour-coded timetable always appearing particularly inviting. 

She remembers introducing herself to her with a, “Hi! I’m Shelby Goodkind, from Texas, nice to meet you. I just moved here with my family. What’s your name?”

She remembers the grunt of Toni’s name in response, the way brown eyes glared at her outstretched hand before reluctantly taking it in her own calloused one.

She’d talked her ear off all lesson about Texas and how excited she was to be in Minnesota despite its cold weather, and Toni listened intently to every last word. Normally she wouldn’t, she just wanted to get her head down and coast through lessons just enough to pass.

But then Shelby’s warm drawl and soft voice and shimmering eyes refused to leave Toni’s mind, and eventually she just let it be.

Shelby had never believed in love at first sight until she heard Toni speak in that low, gravelly voice of hers. Maybe it was love at first… hearing? At first sound? She’d debated that a lot in her head throughout the years. 

They agree to go to the gate the second it’s announced, and for some dumb reason Shelby offers to take Toni’s duffel bag for her.

“I can just put it on top of my cabin bag, it’s easier that way.”

Toni says no, Shelby insists, Toni says yes. But then she apprehensively takes it back the very second that they reach the seats in the waiting room. She also sits a seat away from Shelby, which leaves her wondering if she said or did anything wrong in the time between the almond croissant and now.

Shelby wants to go back to the point in time where her mind kept repeating the name of the pastry instead of trying to dissect why Toni, the girl she loves and hurt, is sat one seat away from her. Because, really, Toni should be several rows away. She shouldn’t even be here—which she, Shelby doesn’t know.

“How’s your family?” Toni asks casually.

And it bites, sends a weird sickening pang from her chest to her stomach, because Toni knows what she’s talking about when she asks that.

“I don’t talk to them anymore,” is blunt enough.

Toni almost wants to say good, Shelby can tell, but instead she says, “Are you happier?”

The answer should be yes, but it isn’t—because sure, she got rid of the oppressive pageant regimes and cut ties with the father who believes she’s going to hell for her love, but she never had the opportunity to take advantage of it, save for random hookups with closeted sorority girls looking for a final chance to express themselves before being married off to a man the minute their degree finished. Shelby wanted to shake them all, tell them to run while they could, but she also wanted to be shaken herself and be told the exact same thing.

Eventually she got herself to listen, hence the boarding pass in hand right now. Is it running away when she’s running to something? And why the hell has fate assigned Toni as her running mate?

The reply is one-worded but heavy: “Yes.”

“Then good. I’m glad.”

Some silence passes, and it’s so quiet yet so deafening.

“I had a gallery exhibition a few months ago,” Toni says lightly, desperate to keep the casual conversation because it’s something, and she doesn’t want to come off too strong by being too physically close to Shelby, because they still need to cross the year between them—get the metaphorical space out of the way before closing the physical.

“I know,” Shelby blurts out, and it’s so dumb because she’s exposing the fact that she’s been keeping up with Toni for the last year, yet it’s so clever because it’s evidence that she never stopped caring. So, she decides she may as well add, “I went.”

Then Toni says, “I know”, and the look on Shelby’s face is so horror-stricken that Toni just laughs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t actually know that.”

She’s still laughing and it still warms Shelby’s heart the way it did since the very first day they met.

There’s too much of that metaphorical and physical space for her to lean in and kiss her, but God does she want to.

“Remember when you used to get mad at me for always drawing in class?” Toni asks with a grin.

“I wasn’t mad,” Shelby responds, amused. “I just wanted you to get good grades.”

“And I did, all while perfecting my craft.”

She’s still the same cocky girl that Shelby fell head over heels for, and it’s evident in what she says, how she says it—the way she has that same shit-eating grin that hasn’t changed for years.

Toni never hid her confidence, especially not in her talents; Shelby got to witness to that whenever she’d be passed drawings in class. Shelby would always ask, “What’s this?” and Toni would reply with, “It’s a gift.” It became a little routine between them.

Shelby still has all of them. In fact, they’re all in her suitcase right now.

It started with a crude drawing of the male genitalia—or ‘private parts’, as Shelby so chastely named it. Then it was a test tube, because that’s what was on the desk in front of them, then a lab desk, then a pencil case that looked a lot like Shelby’s with its flowery print pattern and three separate sections. Sometimes it was flowers or trees, sometimes it was whole entire landscapes. Sometimes they had little messages on the back, starting with “This class is so boring” and ending with “You have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen, someday I’ll paint them properly with every shade of green and gold I can find”. Sometimes the drawings were of a girl that looked a little too much like Shelby. She never thought it was her—well, realistically yes, she knew Toni was drawing portraits of her—but the drawings were too pretty to be her, at least in her mind.

But that’s how Toni saw her back then: pretty, good-hearted—beautiful, even. That’s how Toni still sees her—but it’s not evident in her eyes because she has to keep looking away from Shelby every so often, has keep reminding herself that Shelby hurt her, that she gave up on their friendship and didn’t try to contact her for a year, and she wonders if it wasn’t for this flight to Boston if she would’ve ever get the chance to talk to Shelby Goodkind ever again.

That scenario is quickly deemed unrealistic when Shelby says, “I’ve been building up the courage to call you for a year.”

A bittersweet pang floods Toni’s chest. “You could’ve called,” she repeats.

“I was scared.”

They’re back to square one, and Toni’s done with it.

“So scared you couldn’t even just be my friend?”

“How could I just be your friend?” Shelby sounds desperate, but she keeps her voice and its volume under control. “Toni, you were- you’re literally, God I don’t know, you’re you. I had a stupid crush on you forever that never faded, then you and we ended up how we did on my bed and how was I meant to try to keep you when we were so many states apart? I didn’t want to hurt you.”

This makes something snap and break in Toni.

“You did,” she bites back, but the waver in her voice means it doesn’t sound harsh, just frustrated and somewhat defeated. “Shelby, I cried every single fucking night for months. Marty had to stop me from booking plane tickets to your state so many times. The timezones were only two hours apart, our schedules wouldn’t have been that different. We have modern fucking technology, we could’ve called and facetimed, I could’ve got a job to save up for trips all the time.” There’s a tear slipping down her cheek now, so she frustratedly wipes it away. “We could’ve been friends. I would’ve taken any part of you that you were willing to give me. But you didn’t even let me say goodbye like I never fucking mattered to you, because I never mattered to you.”

Her voice cracks, and it makes Shelby realise that she’s got her own burning tears streaming down her face. She opens her mouth to speak, but Toni excuses herself to the toilet and doesn’t return for ten minutes, and Shelby is left wiping away her own tears even though it’s like mopping up the tide.

===

Five months ago

Shelby’s phone rang. It was three in the morning for her, which meant it was one for Toni.

She tried to not curse herself internally for the fact that she still hadn’t stopped measuring time that way, but then her heart dropped when she saw the name on the screen: it was Toni’s, with its pink heart and blue arrow through it.

It took a second to decide on whether to answer or hang up.

“Hello?” she barely whispered.

“I’m in so much pain.” The sound of Toni’s voice and the words she said made Shelby’s chest tighten. “Everything hurts, Shelby, everything hurts without you.” Toni sounded sluggish and out of it; there was no way she was sober at that moment.

“Are you drunk?”

She could tell that Toni was shaking her head on the other side, and knew that Toni was in fact drunk despite her denying it. “No. It’s not fun without you, nothing’s fun anymore. I need you back, please. If I ask nicely will you come back? Will you- will you fly here and come get me? Will you?”

There was no way Shelby would’ve been able to stop herself from crying. It was evident in her voice as she spoke quietly and shakily, “Toni, where are you? Are you safe?”

“I’m in my dorm. I need to go home, can you come pick me up please? I can’t drive like this. I-I don’t even have a car.”

“Baby, you are home.” She didn’t mean for the nickname to slip out, but it was something they’d always called each other when one of them needed comforting. This was one of those situations, Shelby figured.

Toni choked out, “Not without you.”

An audible sob escaped Shelby’s throat.

“Shelby, please. I’m begging you, please come get me. I’ll move to Texas for you. Just take me with you.”

“You’re drunk, you don’t know what you want.”

“I want you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes I do!”

“Stop it! You’re drunk, Toni, okay?” Her voice softened, “Drink some water and go to sleep.” She heard Toni cry on the other side of the line, and her heart broke for her. “Please baby, can you do that for me?”

“Sure. I’d do anything you’d ask me to. Good to know you’d never do anything for me.”

The line went dead.

Shelby didn’t get any sleep that night. All she could do was sob and clutch her phone to her chest, digging her fingers in until they cramped. The pain in her joints was incomparable to that in her chest, and it took hours for her breathing to become remotely even—but even then, it never returned to normal.

That was the night she booked a flight to California.

=

She never ended up using that plane ticket. 

Toni had posted a picture of herself, smiling widely next to one of her new best friends, Rachel, after winning a basketball competition. Shelby couldn’t take that kind of happiness away from her. She couldn’t put her through timezone differences and plane journeys and road trips, all for a girl who was still too unsure of herself to believe that any relationship she had wouldn’t blow up.

But she didn’t know that every few weeks, Toni would check the flights to Texas and pray to a God she didn’t believe in for a couple hundred dollars to fall into her bank account so that she could fly out to Shelby. Not that Shelby wanted her there, she’d think, as if Shelby wasn’t praying for her to arrive at her doorstep, every single day. 

===

When Shelby, who’s breathing shallowly in a panic, finally catches sight of her, she’s got puffy and red eyes to match her parted lips. Toni sits on the row over this time, on the seats facing away from Shelby.

It kind of very much breaks her heart.

Shelby debates going over to her and begging for her to come back despite the silent treatment she gave her for a year, debates ignoring her all together—but that’s not an option she ever wanted or wants to take—until she realises there’s a few minutes until the boarding call and she still has all of Toni’s things, including the boarding pass.

Toni doesn’t look too pleased when Shelby awkwardly shoved the slip of hard paper in front of her face.

“You can’t leave without a boardin’ pass,” she says, and it’s that stupidly endearing drawl that makes Toni allow her eyes to flicker up at the golden green above her.

She stands up, expecting Shelby to move back, but she doesn’t. Toni looks at her a little confused, mind visibly spinning from the feeling of warm breath so near her own lips, that she jumps back slightly, allowing Toni some room.

Then she blurts it out.

“I feel like the universe is giving me a second chance with you, and I want to take it. But I understand if you don’t. And yes, Toni, you do matter to me, you always have, and I will never forgive myself for ever making you believe that I didn’t care about you when you’re the one person I care about the most in this stupid world.” Her voice wavered at the end and though she sounded rushed and nervous, it was still confident. She gives herself a mental pat on the back; see? It wasn’t that hard.

The sound of the boarding call sounds over the speakers, which makes Toni reach out to take her pass from Shelby, who panics at the lack of response because fuck, this is it isn’t it, but Toni’s fingers linger a little too long over her palm, and somehow that’s the most reassuring thing Shelby has received all day.

Attention passengers. Flight AA0217 to Boston is now boarding—

“I sent you a letter,” Shelby rushes out, because at this point she’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain. “Telling you that I’m moving. I thought a text was too impersonal—ironic, I know—but was too scared to call.” When Toni doesn't say anything, just stares, Shelby  guess you won’t be getting that letter now though, considering the one way flight and all.” 

There’s a beat.

Then, tentatively, “What did you say in it? 

“I said that if you were ever by some chance in Boston, you’d always have a place to stay.” She pauses again, deliberating wether or not to carry on, but past her had already dug her into a hole so deep that there was no harm in trying to fill it back up again, even if it was just like adding water to the ocean. “And that if you ever wanted to try again, I’d want to see you, but that I’d understand if you wanted nothing to do with me… If you do want nothing to do with me.”

Another beat.

Another pause.

There seems to be a lot of those in Shelby’s life. Toni, on the contrary, has had the fast forward button on her life being held down the entire time; she grew up too fast, felt pain too soon, and all Shelby did was add to it. Except, she also took most of it away. The problem is, how is Toni to find a balance? If she had a scale and placed the pain that Shelby has brought her and the pain she has taken from her, which side would be the most weighted? 

She has a feeling that she might already know the answer.

“I got the letter,” Toni confesses.

Shelby’s heart leaps up to her throat and beyond. “What?”

“I never read it,” she rushes out, “it’s in my carry-on. I- I was going to read it on the plane. I wanted to wait until I was at least up in the air so then I wouldn’t be able to change my mind about going to Boston because… well, it’s the best place for me and lately I’ve been learning to put myself first.”

There’s a mixture of emotions in Toni’s voice, Shelby can tell them all: the sadness, nostalgia, regret, hopefulness. She knows that Toni deserves everything good in her life. She knows that Toni deserves to have everyone put her first, Toni herself included; Toni has spent too long with people not prioritising her, and it’s not right. Shelby knows that although she tried to put her first, she failed. She wasn’t even putting herself first, it was the expectations that were the most important thing.

But not anymore.

She hopes it’s clear in her eyes.

“I’m going to read it,” Toni says quietly. “And then we can…see where we go from there?”

Shelby nods and says nothing except, “Okay.” She wants this to all be under Toni’s control, it should be Toni who has the final say, because Shelby doesn’t feel like she deserves to tell or even ask Toni to stay, although she’s pretty sure her heart would break if Toni said she would never want to see her again. She’d understand, though, if that were the case. 

“Have a safe flight,” Shelby tells her, reaching out her hand instinctively to rub her arm. Toni does the exact same thing so their hands end up meeting awkwardly in the middle and so then instead of moving them away like normal people the two of them actually shake hands like they’re in some meeting pencilled into their schedule by God or the devil. 

A red flush goes over Shelby’s face and Toni bursts into laughter; it’s music to Shelby’s ears, and then she’s laughing too because this is so stupid, they’re both so stupid that it’s ridiculous.

“Nice to meet you too,” Shelby says with a grin. 

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

She rolls her eyes at Toni’s teasing, a smile still plastered on her face. “Alright, let’s go, we don’t wanna miss our flight.”

===

They’re sitting several rows away from each other on the airplane, because destiny isn’t kind enough to sit them side by side as if they’re in some romcom. It certainly wasn’t kind when it kept them apart for one year, but fate clearly had some mercy in bringing them back together, one way or another.

Shelby’s always glancing back at Toni; both of them are on the aisle seat of their row, Shelby on the left and Toni on the right. There’s a sleeping man next to the brunette and Shelby can’t help but to unreasonably think, “You have no idea how lucky you are to be sitting next to her.”

She thinks of all the people who have unknowingly sat beside Toni, who have served her at a restaurant or scanned her groceries at the checkout till, who smiled at her after she held the door open for them. She’s jealous of every single one of them—except she’s not, because they were next to the most incredible person and yet never took the opportunity to talk to her.

Shelby used to thank God for making their science teachers sit them next to each other.

She still does.

Now she’s kind of thanking Him for not seating them next to each other on this plane; Toni needs space and time to think, she can’t do that clearly with Shelby right by her side, it’d be too much all at once.

Toni keeps stealing glances at Shelby. They often catch each other staring, then they smile shyly as they look away. It feels a lot like what they used to do during those science classes back in high school; all that’s missing is a bunsen burner.

When the plane took off, she prayed for a safe flight. Now that it’s cruising, she’s saying a prayer for Toni. A thanks for bringing her here. A thanks for another chance.

Distancing herself from her family also meant distancing herself from religion, but Shelby still attended church during the important holidays and would try to pray at least weekly. Two decades of being told to thank the man in the sky, it’s a hard habit to break. She doesn’t want to break it, there was just a lot of healing she had to do first.

A lot of healing.

She glances over the sleeping passenger next to her out of the window. There’s a sunset: a beautiful mixture of oranges and purples, highlighting the clouds pink. It looks so unreal it might as well be one of Toni’s paintings, like the one she did of the lake near her house of the sun rising over it, which had hung in her gallery exhibition beside a painting of golden green eyes.

===

Three and a half years ago

Shelby’s parents were staying out late that Friday evening. Toni and Shelby had finished their project early because Toni actually decided to help by doing more than just reading off information from textbooks, which was what she usually did.

“Do you wanna go for a walk?” she asked, head hanging off the side of the bed. 

“Um, sure thing.” Shelby’s response sounded more like a question. They’d never gone on walks before, it was sort of uncharted territory.

Her heart sped up at the prospect of going out with Toni as the short brunette grinned and ran off downstairs to grab her trainers. Shelby had only recently accepted that she had a massive crush on her, but that wasn’t to say that it had only just started. After some long, hard nights of thinking, she’d realised she couldn’t deny it anymore, at least not to herself.

There was no way she would ever confess her feelings to Toni. Ever.

That right there was the root of all of the future issues: being afraid to admit things, afraid to act on her words when she eventually spoke them. The fear of accepting any reciprocation because she believed she didn’t deserve it, that she couldn’t have it, couldn’t be loved the way she loved others—the way she loves Toni.

But, at the age of sixteen, she didn’t know it. She just knew that she had a crush on Toni.

So she skipped downstairs, grabbed her sneakers, hopped into her car—a shiny blue vehicle with leather seats and ten air conditioning settings—and off they went.

Toni gave her directions down some country paths until they arrived at a lake. It was relatively big, a deep murky green colour with aquatic plants growing everywhere, tiny pond skaters going about their days around the little ducks that swam in the middle.

It turned out that a walk with Toni involved not that much walking and a lot of lying on damp grass and looking at the sky, which was grey and miserable with clouds.

The ground, however, was far from cold and miserable.

“I didn’t realise it’d be so cloudy, I wanted us to watch the sunset,” Toni admitted shyly, a faint blush creeping up on her cheeks.

Shelby’s blush blazed with full force across her entire face as she said, “We can watch it together for the rest of our lives.”

Toni’s eyes widened, and suddenly Shelby was hyperaware of the connotations of what she’d just said, so she quickly deflected, “I love the smell of wet grass.”

“You’re such a nerd,” Toni laughed.

“Don't you?” 

She glanced around at the surrounding fields and forest, propping herself up on her elbow to gaze across the lake at the further expanse of grass that was brightened by dew.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice,” she agreed.

They stayed there for a little while longer in silence, both of them training their eyes to stick to the sky instead of anywhere else—ie. each other—and listening to the sounds of birds and the wind and occasional insect that would fly into their faces.

When Shelby dropped Toni off home, she somehow plucked up the courage to suggest, “We should do this together again sometime, when the clouds are a little clearer.”

Toni flashed her a grin. “We can do that for the rest of our lives.”

And then she was off, and Shelby never quite managed to rein in the butterflies from that.

===

It’s a relatively short domestic flight which means that there’s no substantial food offered in-flight, just light snacks and drinks—but at least it’s all complimentary due to the ridiculously long delay, so Shelby takes advantage of it and eats a ton of salted peanuts.

They’re nice snacks. Also, she was never allowed to eat them salted before; roasted nuts were considered a treat, a one-off, but anything with “excessive” salt was banned in the Goodkind house. Ever since cutting ties with her parents, she’s been letting herself have the things she could never have before, and it’s freeing, really.

Freedom used to be a rare feeling for her, one she’d only get when she was with Toni. Now, she feels it most of the time. She’s not sure she would’ve ever got to this point without her. Maybe, she feels, she should tell her that. 

The rest of the flight is spent reading, although she doesn’t get very far as she keeps sneaking glances to Toni, who keeps doing the same herself. It’s reminiscent of the times back in science class, when the two girls would steal glances at each other. 

Despite feeling extremely vulnerable from the last couple of hours, Shelby still feels light and carefree as she pops a peanut into her mouth—Toni seems to have that effect on her—but then she notices Toni reach into the backpack at her feet and retrieve a sheet of paper.

Fuck, Shelby thinks. It’s the letter.

She has a copy of it in her notes app on her phone, backed up too just in case anything were to happen to it. She wasn’t going to let a mistake from the postal service take this away from her. 

So, to torture herself, she pulls it up on her phone, lowers the brightness enough so that only she can read it—a habit ingrained in her from a young age—and reads it along with Toni.

= 

Dear Toni,

I love you. I always have.

I wish I could take it all back. I wish I’d been brave enough to stay with you. You make me brave, Toni, you’re the only reason that I’m okay with who I am. All I want to do now is to stay with you, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Maybe it’s selfish of me to send you this as if I even expect anything in return, but I don’t. I don’t expect anything from you. I just hope someday you’ll understand, even though I’m not sure even I understand why I did what I did.  

Even the beginning of this darn letter is all me. It’s always about me, Toni, that’s how I’ve been brought up. Except it was never about me, not the pageants, not the church, not anything in my life. There isn’t a part of my life that even has me in it, the real me. Apart from everything with you. 

You’re the only place I’ve ever felt at home. You’re my favourite person, my favourite sight, my favourite smell. I listen to that playlist you made for me at the end of tenth grade every single day. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I dance, but every single time I think of you. You’re my only thought every night, you know? It’s been that way since I met you.

I wish I could somehow show you how badly I wanted to reach out for all of this year, but every time I did I’d trick myself into thinking you're better off without me. And maybe you are, but I know that I’m not. I’m only better with you. You’re the most loving, most funny, most beautiful person in this universe, inside and out. Sometimes, when my faith begins to waver, I always think of you and how perfect you are and it makes me realise that God has to exist, because there has to be a reason why you’re so perfect.

I’m moving to Boston for college. My number is still the same, call me, or email me on [email protected]. I’ll leave my new address at the end of the letter too, if you ever need a place to stay here, or if you want to pop by to say hello. I’ll bake you those cookies of mine you that love, the ones where I make smiley faces out of chocolate chips. I haven’t made those for ages and I’d really like to again. Please say hello.

People say that if you love someone you should let them go, so I did, I let you go. But the reality is, you didn't go, I left. And this is me running right back asking you if I can stay.

I love you, Toni. I always will.

Yours,

Shelby 

=

She doesn’t realise that there are tears in her eyes until she reads her own name at the bottom. Quickly, she wipes them away and stares at the ceiling, willing the tears to simply retreat back into her eyes and never spill.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Toni speed walk down the aisle to the toilet. It fills her heart with a type of scared she’s never felt before, despite having felt many different types of fear throughout her whole life.

Time hardly moves until, after what seems like hours, Toni emerges from the tiny cramped bathroom. Her baby hairs are wet and the edges of her hair are damp, her face shiny as if she has just splashed it with water. There’s no redness in her eyes but they’re foggy and her eyelashes seem longer and her lips are redder, something Shelby knows means that Toni has been crying. 

Toni doesn’t look at anyone as she hurriedly takes her seat, but Shelby can hear her voice when she says, “Oh, thank you,” to the man next to her. She remembers his face from walking past and knows he’s accompanying a little girl with the prettiest braids she’d ever seen with pink beads at the ends. 

Shelby had always been the one with the skill of befriending just about any stranger ever, but Toni had always been incredible with kids. She can imagine her with the little girl during the flight, offering her snacks and sacrificing her phone to let her play video games during the flight so that the dad could catch a break and do his own thing.

She’s proven right when she hears the girl giggle, asking Toni to show her how to pass a particular difficult level of the game she doesn’t quite catch the name of. A smile subconsciously spreads across her face, and Shelby temporarily forgets everything except for Toni’s kind soul, the one she doesn’t believe she’s deserving of. 

When the plane touches down, Shelby claps, and Toni rolls her eyes because who the heck does that? Shelby doesn’t even have to look at her to know the eye roll happened, it’s expected. She just smiles at herself and goes for the seatbelt, unbuckles it, and then stands to retrieve her overhead luggage. 

They’re separated as they get off the plane but Shelby is pleasantly surprised to find a pair of sparkling brown eyes smiling up at her from the bottom of the stairs.

“Hi,” she greets, breathless from lugging the carry-on down the steps. She’s made the mistake of putting all of her textbooks in there instead of in her suitcase (the girl’s got a lot of clothes, they probably wouldn’t have fit anyway).

Toni doesn’t say anything, but puts her duffel bag on top of Shelby’s carry-on trolley before taking the handle from her and silently pushing it along the tarmac, Shelby striding along beside her. 

All things considered, it’s quite a comfortable silence.

They wait for their suitcases side by side, no words exchanged between them. Toni’s arrives first, a massive red thing more than half her height, which she struggles to take off of the conveyor belt. Shelby rushes to help her, and Toni silently accepts the aid because, honestly, if she didn’t, the suitcase would be there by the time the next flight’s luggage was ready to be picked up. 

Then Shelby’s arrives and they both make their way to the arrivals gate. 

Families are greeting each other, couples are reuniting, businesspeople are hurrying to their chauffeurs, but Toni and Shelby are greeted only by each other. 

It’s kind of nice.

“Um, where are you going then?” Toni asks, finally breaking the silence. 

Shelby lets out a nervous laugh. “I honestly don’t know, I don’t have a cab or hotel or anythin’ booked. I was just hopin’ to hail one and then find somewhere to sleep until my contract starts.”

The brunette shakes her head. “Not surprised.”

A silence falls over them, this time a slightly awkward one because they know it’s time to separate but neither of them want to part.

Maybe Toni should say something. Maybe she can.

But then a man bumps into her, yells at her to watch where she’s going (as if she wasn’t standing right by a seat out of the way, dickhead) and the moment’s gone.

Destiny is sending them a lot of random messages today: ‘look, it’s your high-school-best-friend-slash-ex-kind-of-lover who you haven’t spoken to in a year! But every time you get an opportunity to confess basically everything it gets interrupted. All the damn time.’

And Toni’s kind of sick of it.

“You hurt me.”

It cuts through Shelby’s heart as deeply and sharply as all the other times, but she can’t say she didn’t expect it.

“But,” Toni continues, “I love you. And despite everything I can’t live my life pretending I don’t, especially if we’re going to live ten minutes away from each other instead of twenty-two hours. Hell, even if it was ten days I wouldn’t be able to pretend.”

Shelby’s eyes have never looked so hopeful. She goes to speak, but Toni interrupts her. “You need to know that this doesn’t mean I’m over it, though.” 

Shelby nods. “I’ll do anything to prove it. That I love you, I mean, and that I’m never going to leave you unless you ask me to.”

Toni’s gaze drops to her lips. She still remembers their shape, the taste, the feel. She gulps. “Anything?”

===

Just over a year ago

Both girls were giggling helplessly over the phone. Shelby had her hand over her mouth to stifle the noise, scared she’d wake up her parents; it was two in the morning after all, everyone’s supposed to be asleep. But with Toni’s warm voice on the other side of the line, all gravelly and worn by sleepiness, how could she be the first to end the call, even despite the way her heavy eyelids kept threatening to close?

Toni was halfway through talking about how she was desperately craving a peanut butter sandwich and how she was about to go into the kitchen to get one, when Shelby blurted out her name.

“Toni?”

There was a pause. “Shelby?”

She didn’t give herself time to think about it, or let alone to take a deep breath. Instead, she just let herself say it: “I love you.”

Even across the line, Toni’s smile was perfectly audible. 

“I love you.”

Another pause, and then, “You better.”

They both laughed with each other for another hour, feeling high off the lack of sleep and the rush the other person always managed to give them.

===

There is no hesitation, no looking around to check who might be watching, nothing. Shelby leans in to kiss her cheek; it’s gentle and lingering and there’s so much care in it.

This is Shelby telling her—no, showing her that she still wants her.

Toni’s smiling widely when they pull apart, and there’s a chuckle in her voice as she says, “That’s a good first step.”

Shelby laughs with her. “Baby steps, hey?”

It feels right. It is right.

Toni Shalifoe doesn’t let people walk all over her. If she couldn’t tell how sorry Shelby is, if she couldn’t see how desperate she is for a second chance, she would’ve walked away by now. That doesn’t mean she’s not scared that she’ll get hurt again, she’s terrified—but she also knows that Shelby Goodkind is the owner to the purest heart in the world, she’d never hurt her on purpose, not without external factors. There’s no drop of malice in her. 

Toni’s not letting herself get hurt, she’s allowing herself to be loved—because the most loved she’s ever felt is under Shelby’s gaze. Shelby still has to show her that she wants her back in her life, but given the context, the fact that they’re about to move to the same city and be living right next to each other—that’s a sign, right?

And now Shelby’s free too, that’s also an important contextual factor to consider. Toni’s not stupid, she knows she has to think this through more, consider exactly what she wants, but she has a general idea: Shelby.

“So we’re… friends, then?” Shelby asks tentatively.

“Shelby, how could I ever be your friend?”

Her heart sinks so far into the floor that Shelby’s afraid she’ll never get it back. Still, she’s prepared for this; the chances of Toni wanting her back have always been so slim that she expected this from the beginning. “Oh,” she says in the smallest voice. “I understand.” 

Confusion overtakes Toni’s expression. “What? No, I mean, fuck. Do you think my crush for you faded? Hell, it’s not even a crush, we’re not high schoolers anymore, don’t you know that I still—” 

Shelby blinks. 

“Shelby, I’m still in love with you. How could I have ever stopped?”

Oh. “Oh.”

Toni’s smile is small, but so real. “Yeah… oh.”

“I—” Shelby hesitates, but suddenly it goes from the hardest thing in the world to say to the easiest. “I love you.”

“You better.”

A giggle escapes her and then suddenly it’s a laugh, a light, real laugh that Toni’s sharing with her. Shelby never wants it to end. And maybe it doesn’t have to.

“I don’t want to, like, rush into anything though, I just mean—”

“No, Toni,” Shelby interrupts, “me neither. I just never want to lose you again. I don’t want—I can’t live without you ever again.”

“You won’t,” she reassures her. “I promise.”

She doesn’t know what comes over her but she grasps Toni’s hands and says, “I will do everythin’ in my power to make sure you know that I will never, ever leave you again. Nothin’ you do, nothin’ you ever did is a good enough reason for me to leave, okay? I need you to understand that. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and it’s all on me.”

That’s all that Toni needs to hear, because then Shelby’s watching Toni’s walls crumble right in front of her eyes. All her life Toni had believed the reason people left, the reason she moved around so much, was because of her, because of something she did. Yet somehow, she believes now that nothing she could do would make Shelby turn her back on her. 

“What if I murder someone?” Toni asks teasingly, earning her a shove to the shoulder. 

“I’m tryin’ to be serious, Toni!” Shelby says through a very un-serious smile. “I mean it.”

Her arms drape over Shelby’s shoulders, suitcases ignored on the floor, and she pulls her in for the tightest hug of their lives. 

“Don’t let me go,” Shelby whispers into her neck.

“No, Shelby,” Toni whispers back. “Never.”

After agreeing to split the cost of the twin room at a hotel between both of their colleges (which, unbeknownst to them at the time, will have two single beds that they’ll be pushing together by the third night), they get into a cab, together, laughing their way through trying to shove all of the luggage into the tiny boot. In the backseat, their hands occupy the middle, pinkies overlapping like they’re back in their biology lab in high school, sharing secrets over test tubes and bunsen burners.

They’re running—not away, but to something.

To each other.