Work Text:
The first time it happened was outside a club. It was only twenty minutes after Elizabeth, with something between a grimace and a smile, asked Lydia whether she happened to know Will’s sister and Georgiana pretended she hadn’t spent several months Instagram-stalking her ex-something’s pretty new girlfriend. She was exactly the same as she looked in her photos, all glowy cheekbones and blind confidence, standing even taller than Georgiana in clear platform heels. Her bandage dress was stretched asymmetrically off her shoulders in a calculatedly careless fashion, like the two bleached strands of hair that framed her face. Even in the low light of the club, even halfway drunk already, she looked radiant. Georgiana could imagine the story post already: the blurry focus, Lydia’s laughing face, a drink in each hand. Maybe the girl next to her would take it. Maybe Georgiana would. But that was a thought for another moment.
A feeling between floating and throbbing had entered Georgiana’s head all of three sips into her peach soda and prosecco and only worsened at the beat drop that sent the place into a frenzy. Dancing felt almost as impossible as talking, especially with Elizabeth’s younger sisters. The pair of them were at home under the bright, flashing lights, all loose limbs and coy smiles, too lost in their own frenetic vitality to notice the shy, awkward girl slip away from the group and into the cool evening air.
The door didn’t close behind her. Someone had followed her out. Lydia, face shining with perspiration and silvery highlighter, flashed Georgiana a lipgloss smile. Georgiana waited for her to speak, to explain why she had come out. A moment ago, she had been wedged between pretty girls and pretty boys, dancing like she was born to do it. She’d been having the best time of any of them. But as she took her place beside Georgiana, Lydia was silent. She didn’t even meet her eyes. Then, after rifling through her bag a moment, she produced the much-anticipated explanation for her company: a bright purple vape pen. Embarrassed at having assumed herself so important as to draw Lydia out on her own merit, Georgiana averted her eyes, and they stood together in silence for some minutes without acknowledging each other.
Lydia broke first: “So,” she said, puffing a ring of lemon sherbet vape smoke into the too-small space between them, “d’you still want to fuck my boyfriend, then? Or have you got over that?”
“I’m sorry?”
“George. He told me you were, like, weirdly into him when you were at school. And you’re—” Lydia gave Georgiana a once-over, as if to underscore her point— “clearly not the type to let shit go.”
“I, er, don’t know that I’d say weirdly— I mean, he, erm, you know, asked me— But I’m not, anyway. It’s been years. So you don’t have to worry.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Right,” said Georgiana. “Sorry.”
After a few more seconds of silence, the metal door swung open. A stranger with a mullet and a frown stepped out and lit up, and Georgiana shuffled her way back into the club, unsure of whether Lydia would follow.
It had continued like that for months, in pubs and at parties and even when she spotted her on the tube back home: If Lydia noticed Georgiana alone, she wouldn’t stay that way for long. That was how it was against waist-high iron gates that pressed into the smalls of their backs and rough brick walls that scratched their denim jackets, on bus-stop benches barely better than standing, and leaning out of swung-open windows. Lydia joined her every time, sometimes chatty and sometimes sullen, but always there and always glittering.
For the first few months of it, Georgiana had been too afraid to ask why. She’d figured that Lydia had every reason to resent her, and that whatever her reasoning was, it would have something to do with that. She almost always mentioned George, anyway—the only thing other than Elizabeth they had in common—and when she did, it was with an expectant, belligerent look. Ready for the fight that Georgiana lacked the stomach for.
She tried anyway, eventually. It was the height of summer, two days after Lydia’s nineteenth birthday, and Lydia had insisted on her dropping by for pre-drinks before they went out. It was meant, she said, to be something small. From Lydia’s description, Georgiana hadn’t expected more than a handful of guests, but there were more people crammed into their tiny kitchen than Georgiana had friends. The scene was overwhelming. Empty bottles cluttered every surface, and what little conversation could carry on among them was half-incoherent in the noise. The heat of all their bodies, forced close together up on the fourth floor, didn’t take long to grow suffocating. Georgiana wasn’t even the first of the group to seek relief outside. Lydia had let them all go without anything more than a wave, and Georgiana had every intention of slipping out in the same style, until heavy footsteps followed after her on the stairs.
“Hey!” Lydia called after her. “All right?”
“Yeah. All right?”
“Yeah. But here, hey, wait up. I’ve got—” Lydia didn’t finish the sentence, but she had caught up with Georgiana on the landing and taken her by the wrist and deposited a cold amber bottle into her hand, slippery with condensation. “For the road,” Lydia said. “If you’re going.”
In place of thanks came the question she’d been biting back for months: “Why do you always follow me out here?”
“I can leave you alone, if you want.”
“No,” said Georgiana, surprising herself. “I just want to know— You’re not— You’re not like me. You’re comfortable, being around everyone.”
“Well, I like you. Not much more to it, is there?”
It was almost worse, in its way, than being hated by her. Georgiana felt, with a rare kind of certainty, that she deserved resentment. It was the consequence she had been avoiding ever since it went off. And she was dodging it even then, even from the one person most capable of giving it to her. So, Georgiana descended the rest of the stairs and stepped out into the damp summer air, still holding a beer and the only answer she had. Lydia liked her. That was all.
Careening toward her now, swaying to Shostakovich just out of time, was Lydia once more. The dancefloor had treated her with its usual kindness; she returned from it with messy hair, smudged eyeliner, and a glass of champagne in each hand. Not for the first time, Georgiana saw herself in Lydia, or what she might have been, in another life—what she might have been if she were bolder, more interesting, less inhibited. The brilliancy of celebration had flooded every corner of the room, and Lydia only shone more brightly in its stream. Georgiana had seen her in her element before—not just at clubs or parties, but even in the quiet of her bedroom, sweeping iridescent shadow across her eyelids. She recognized the glow from those same moments, overtaking every expression, every gesture, until Lydia was more gleam than girl, but never had she been so struck by her as now. It was maybe the first time she had really allowed herself to look, without lowering her eyes before there was a chance of her being caught. Georgiana watched Lydia now with unwavering, unconcealed attention, and she knew: Lydia was more than a force of nature. She was energy itself. Georgiana would never be like that. She would never be anything close.
And then she was beside her. Glittering, incandescent Lydia, who moved like the world was hers to swallow whole, stretched her long limbs across two unoccupied seats and extended a glass of champagne to Georgiana, who hadn’t yet finished her first. They had moved past direct confrontation sometime between Georgiana’s return from Paris and Elizabeth’s most recent birthday, and, if they were not yet friends, Lydia’s declaration the summer before had settled them into something like a confederacy. Still, there was a little strangeness to the warmth Georgiana felt at Lydia’s choosing not merely to chase after her once she had already fled, but to sit with her when she might have been dancing with anyone in the room. Not knowing how else to express this unfamiliar sense of appreciation, she accepted the champagne, half-raised the glass in acknowledgment, and took a tentative sip.
“D’you know,” said Lydia soon after, “they wouldn’t even let George come? Jane and Charlie came together—well, I s’pose Charlie’s the best man and that, but you know what I mean. It’s like, if Jane can bring her husband, I don’t see why I shouldn’t bring George.”
Their unsteady alliance was not quite so fragile as to prevent Georgiana from questioning the logic of this complaint. In as impartial a tone she could manage, she said, “You don’t see how your boyfriend is different than a husband?”
“Well, he’s not my boyfriend anymore, for starters. But he was when they sent the invitations, you know? But, anyway, it’s not just that, is it? Reckon Cat and Mary would’ve got plus-ones, too, if Lizzy didn’t think I’d catch on. I mean,” (with a pointed look across the room), “Caro Bingley got one. Lizzy doesn’t even like her.”
“Has he— Erm, has George asked you to—?”
“Oh, fuck no.” Lydia laughed, loud and wild and a little too long. For a moment, she even bared her throat. But when she spoke again, there was something not wholly like laughter in her voice. If it were anyone else, Georgiana might even have called it fear. “Can you imagine?” said Lydia, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Christ. I’m barely nineteen.”
Georgiana could imagine, but she preferred not to. She found distraction in the hem of Lydia’s periwinkle bridesmaid dress, identical to Georgiana’s own. Sprawled out as Lydia was, it had shifted just enough to reveal the edges of three clumsy stick-and-pokes gracing her thigh: a cat’s head, a matchbook, and an indecipherable line of text. The desire to inch the skirt just a hair higher soon proved more distraction than Georgiana had bargained for. If her thoughts began with deciphering that third tattoo (and she was adamant that they had), they didn’t remain there long. From idle curiosity followed interest, and from interest followed what Georgiana would not confess. With a blush and a cough, she forced the subject from her mind and commanded herself to speak: “So when you say he’s not your boyfriend—?”
“Yeah. Split up last week. Blocked him on everything, too, just after. So, that’s that.”
“Oh. Well done, then. Or, erm,” (for it occurred to her then that it may be less a cause for celebration than she had assumed), “I’m sorry to hear it, if you’re unhappy.”
Lydia intoned a cheery “fuck off,” then swapped her empty champagne flute for Georgiana’s. “You’re probably happier than anyone.”
Said so simply, there was no choice but to admit to herself that she was. To Lydia, however, she would not. Georgiana only stared at the glasses on the table. “Does it matter how I feel about it?” she asked.
“You’re the one who brought it up,” said Lydia. “But yeah. I want to know. How you feel, I mean.”
“In that case, I suppose I care more how you feel.”
Lydia laughed again, more quietly than before. It gave Georgiana the courage to look at her, and it didn’t feel like being blinded. “Bit stupid, mostly.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I was hoping you’d tell me I wasn’t, but yeah. I feel like everyone told me it was a shit idea, and I just went on with it. And I still don’t see the problem with it. I mean, if someone says they’re in love with you, you go for it, right? It’s just the way it works. I’d do it again. I probably will do it again. And Mary will tell me I’m being stupid, and, like, Lizzy, she won’t say it, but she’ll think it, and I’ll know that she’s thinking it, even if she doesn’t, and now you will, too, and I’ll just— I’ll keep doing it.”
“Yeah.”
“Not going to tell me I’m not, then?”
“You’re not. But I— I know what it’s like. To feel like you are.”
“Right.” Something in Lydia’s expression flickered, and Georgiana waited for the blaze. Instead, she said simply, “Well, for what it’s worth, you’re not stupid either.”
“Thanks.”
Lydia offered a fleeting, pursed-lipped smile, the kind that might have been awkward on anyone else. It was awkward, or the closest to it Georgiana had seen her. And then, in an instant, it passed. Her expression shifted again, taking on that familiar mischievous gleam, and she narrated the scene with the same brash, captivating energy that was her birthright. She held forth on great-aunts, broken heels, and bathroom hookups in crass expressions and wild gestures without ever stopping for breath. Georgiana hoped she never would. A painful scraping sound broke the spell and drew Will’s eyes toward them from the opposite side of the room. Lydia had shifted her full weight into the chair directly beside Georgiana, which had previously supported only her legs, and was presently sliding it even nearer. When the legs touched, she stopped and, with a final, satisfied smile, rested her head on Georgiana’s shoulder.
They remained in this position for some time, as the yawns punctuating Lydia’s anecdotes grew closer together and her weight on Georgiana’s shoulder heavier. Then, without any more warning than the first notes from a fiddle, she was on her feet, dragging Georgiana up with both hands.
“Come on, then,” she said. Already, she had taken two steps forward. Only her fingertips were still hanging on, her arm now fully outstretched. “You’re dancing with me.”
Georgiana felt herself flush. She would have to say no. She didn’t want to say no. She wanted to dance with her.
In the absence of an answer, Lydia turned back, still grinning.
“Well?”
“I’m dancing with you.”