Archive of Our Own ^beta

---

The story must begin somewhere.

Deborah Vance’s hand is being crushed by her daughters one, and although she suspected it would happen in this tense, miraculous moment, she’s shocked by her offspring’s strength.

Well, not really.

DJ had always been strong.

Had fought her way to sobriety – or some DJ-defined version of it – twenty years ago and had maintained a drug-free lifestyle after decades of substance abuse. And although Deborah knew she drank still, and had offered her opinion on the matter – unwanted, as it usually was – she hadn’t been terribly surprised when she’d learned DJ had gone cold turkey to fall—

“Why the fuck did you let me do this?!” DJ yells at her.

Deborah winces inwardly, cursing at whoever decided her daughter’s labor should come on a week and a half early, so suddenly the epidural was useless.

She’s going to sue some—

Her daughter expels a pained wordless sound, and she refocuses.

Damn her fingers.

“Because it’s worth it, honey.”

“I need one more push, DJ,” a female voice says.

It’s the doctor, between her daughter’s legs.

Aidan is right beside her. “You got this, babe.”

“I can’t do it, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.” She steels herself against the ache in her hand. Against her baby girl in so much pain. “Look at me.”

DJ’s eyes come back to her. “Mom—”

“Sssh, listen to me. You have one more moment of pain before that beautiful baby boy is here. But you’ve got to give it all you have, okay? You’re a Vance. I know you can do this. You’re the strongest person I know.”

Her daughter is crying in pain and her own eyes are threatening it as well, but...

It won’t do.

She swallows and blinks it away.

Her daughter needs her.

She glances down at the doctor, who takes her cue. “DJ, on the count of three I want you to push as hard as—”

“Fucking hurry up!” DJ shouts.

Aidan yells out a lightning quick one, two, three, and then her hand is being squished, but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t, because her squawking baby girl is brave and strong and Deborah has always, always, always loved her, but never so much all at once.

Her grandson is loud when he comes screaming into the world, Aidan cutting the cord, and Deborah memorizes it all.

She will never forget it.

---

Her fingers can move.

But they’re painful.

Bruised.

Maybe a little swollen.

She does it still, brushing at fine red hair, her grandson asleep in her arms.

Six pound two.

11:10pm, December 1^st.

Aidan Jonathan Gregg Damas Jnr.

His father is sleeping on the couch on the other side of the room, his mother thankfully resting in between nurse checks.

“You lucked out with those two,” she whispers to him.

The room is darkened except for the low lights on the wall behind the bed.

Enough to see him in the early morning hours.

She’d watched Aidan bathe him an hour ago with the assistance of a nurse, her grandson unamused and letting them all know.

“Gonna be a little firecracker, aren’t you?”

She smooths his hair, fingers aching as they slip around his ear.

Her mind turns in on itself once more, recalling a warm night in LA less than a year ago, longer red hair tickling her fingertips as she’d brushed it away.

A tear slipping down a cheek.

Ava.

Climbing her own mountain now, according to Jimmy’s weekly reports.

She feels it every time she tunes into her show, hearing her voice and humor underneath the jokes. Each time she googles her name, and a new interview or article pops up.

Nine months and twelve days without her.

She shouldn’t know that.

Shouldn’t still be clinging to the thought of her gone, miles away and living…

Living in the spotlight, no longer in her shadow.

An act of kindness, which had hurt more than she thought it would.

She knows why.

Deborah focuses in on AJ, caressing his temple with care.

Ava’s face ghosts there in between.

“You look like your father, but you look like her too,” she whispers. “Maybe one day your mommy and daddy can take you to meet her.”

He sleeps on, none the wiser.

“So you can see what I saw.”

She knows why.

Her fingers ache and her chest aches just as—

“Did you tell her?”

She startles in her chair, eyes snapping to DJ, awake and peering at her, like…

She knows why.

Deborah looks down at her grandson to check he isn’t disturbed, worry gripping her insides as...

She swallows and relaxes her jaw, before looking up as effortlessly as possible, as if it means nothing that her daughter has caught her talking so openly about a girl long gone.

“It’s just his red hair that’s reminding me of—”

“Answer my question, Mom.”

Her daughter’s gaze is unwavering, because of course it is.

She’s a Vance, strong and stubborn.

“Did you tell her?”

It’s softer now, and she knows its DJ offering her some compassion.

Some space for this.

She knows why.

Love.

“No.” She lets the word permeate the air around her, before, “I didn’t realize it until I got home and her boots were by the door. Her oat milk in the fridge. The whole house felt different.”

“Mom…” Gentle and sympathetic. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She exhales heavily. “And say what? I have feelings for a woman who’s a third of my age? That my life feels like a Joni Mitchell lyric?” She looks down at AJ. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve got a different person to love now.”

“No.”

The word lifts her head up. “What do you mean no?”

“She made you better. You think the two of us would’ve made it through my IVF shit and the pregnancy without her input changing your show so I could understand you better? Hell no. I would’ve had Aidan’s mom here instead.”

The admission stings, but she knows there’s no malice behind it. It’s not the point.

“You were on autopilot for years until Ava came along. And...”

Her daughter trails off.

“What?”

“Can to you put AJ in his cot and come closer?”

Deborah drops her eyes to him and sighs.

Sorry buddy. Your mom means business now.

She stands carefully, slowly making her way around the bed to the fiberglass cot. Holds her breath as she places him in it, pausing in anticipation of him waking up.

He stays under and she is grateful.

He is safely wrapped up in baby blue.

His birth has brought up this...

Emotion, stuck inside her.

Usually buried so far down she can pretend it isn’t there.

A feeling lacing around memories of a tiny DJ in hospital pink.

Of Ava in her hospital gown, inexplicably new and bright and laughing.

She turns back and gives her daughter her best smile, not really looking at her. Settles on the side of the bed, her good hand moving to tuck the blanket around—

“Leave it, Mom, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

She smooths it down as she pulls her hands back to her lap, looking up finally to her daughter’s tired but direct gaze.

“I need you to listen to me, because I’m gonna say something that I need you to hear, okay?”

Her heart picks up its pace.

She nods.

“You’re back on autopilot,” DJ tells her. “Sometimes I see you at night when you don’t know I’m there, drinking and staring at your phone. Staring at the empty spot beside you, like you know someone should be there. Like you really fucking miss her. And I hate that that’s a thing I’ve known for a while now and never called you out on, because living together has been good, you know? We’ve been good. I didn’t want to focus on the bad. I couldn’t with AJ on the way. But we can’t just be it for you. We can’t fill the space where Ava should be.”

The words bring the emotion up into her throat, tightening it.

Deborah finds DJ’s hand with her left, squeezing it, using her pain as a marker.

Her vision blurs.

“Jesus, Mom—don’t cry.”

She presses her good fingers into her eyelids one after the other, feeling the moisture leak. “They’re for you and your little boy. That’s all.”

DJ sighs heavily and she knows she isn’t fooling her.

Blue eyes know.

“I’m okay,” she states, trying again. Her voice is shaky.

“No, you’re not. Your fingers are broken, and—"

“They’re just bruised. Maybe to the bone but they’re fine.” She wiggles them against DJ’s skin and grits her teeth. “All good.”

“Mom.”

“I’ll ice them when we get home.” She clears her throat. “I’m all right.”

She waves her right hand for the joke, but her daughter doesn’t react.

“You haven’t been alright since Ava stayed in LA.”

Along with strength and stubbornness is DJ's seriousness.

Deborah blinks repeatedly to clear her vision, holding her chin up.

So her daughter can see.

It’s nothing.

It’s nothing.

Except it’s...

It doesn’t matter anyway.

“I made the decision to let her go so she’d have the opportunity to further her career, and I have to deal with that.” Deborah straightens her spine. “I’ll be better from now on. I’ll let it go. I’ll let...”

Nine months and twelve days.

She hasn’t managed it yet.

When she’s busy, flying to Philly and back, or at an MGM-sponsored event for something, or the grand opening of a burger or ice cream place, she can pretend. She can make believe it belongs in the past.

But three nights a week, she walks out to a cheering crowd to crack her first joke, and still looks to stage right as if she’ll find Ava standing there, nodding her approval.

She drinks scotch in her office and remembers all the different kinds of laughter the girl had, the absence of them loud in her ears.

Reads her texts and feels her fingers twitch, wanting to reply.

Falls asleep sometimes in the room Ava chose to stay in, hand reaching across the empty—

She feels her wrist tapped gently, pulling her from her thoughts.

Her daughter is poised to say something, and Deborah knows the conversation is far from over.

“The night of my wedding, Ava told me I needed to cut you some slack. That you were just trying to protect me, in your own fucked up way.”

She had been. “I was. And I was wrong about Aidan.”

“See? This is what I’m talking about. The old you would’ve never admitted that. Not in a million fucking years. I want this version of you. The one that's open with me—that doesn’t hide away. I want that Deborah Vance to tell Ava how she feels, because she fucking deserves it after the shit she’s been through.”

There’s moisture in her daughter’s eyes suddenly, and Deborah squeezes her hand.

Damn the pain.

“There’s no need for you to be upset, sweetheart. I’m...listening. And I’m here.”

“I know...I just...” DJ sniffles and wipes at her face, eyes drifting to a spot behind her.

AJ’s cot.

“He needs to have everything, you know? Like, that starts with us, right?”

It does.

Deborah nods.

She’s keenly aware of her past mistakes and her lack of care toward her only daughter. How their complicated past might affect the future of the newest member of their family.

She’d rather die than hurt him the way she’d inevitably hurt his mother.

The idea that she could get this wrong all over again...

She should’ve never...

But she can’t.

She can’t change it.

All she can offer is...

Transparency.

“I wish I could take it all back—start over with you.”

Fact upon fact upon...

“You deserved a better mother than me.”

Hard truth.

An extraordinary few hours devolving her completely.

She blinks away the fresh tears, holding in her breath to avoid the sob threatening to—

“No—Mom,” her daughter’s voice is pleading. “Don’t say that. I love you, and yeah, you fucked up—a lot...”

DJ huffs out a watery laugh, and Deborah lets go of the sob as a sharp exhale, finding the brief moment of humor instead.

“But I would’ve never walked outta NA and seen Aidan in the parking lot, all sweaty after his gym sesh. Or been a goddamn resilient bitch through two failed IVF treatments. Not without everything happening the way it did. I spent decades wishing differently, but it’s just wasted energy, right?”

It’s rhetorical, and poignant, and remarkably right.

“When did my daughter get so wise?” she asks, feeling the ache ease behind her ribs.

“I wanna say nine months ago, but I think meeting a certain redhead kinda helped.”

Aidan.

Kind, sweet, sleeping Aidan.

Deborah swallows the last of her emotions. “Don’t you just love how we’re awake in the middle of the night after you pushed his son out of your vagina, and he’s dead to the world?”

DJ grins. “I mean, I’ll probably give him shit for it tomorrow—well, later on today, but…he’s here. And I’m better for it.”

Silence follows the sentence, and they both know why.

“She asks after you, you know. Every call. Each time she texts.”

Deborah says nothing.

Simply misses the girl.

“She’s not dating anyone. Seems pretty gung-ho about making sure I know that.”

“Good. She needs to concentrate on that script of hers and her show.”

“Come on, Mom.” DJ rolls her eyes and pulls back her hands to try and shuffle herself in place. Her face pinches. “It’s obvious she’s waiting for you. Has been for a year.”

“Nine months and twelve days,” she quickly corrects, before she notices blue eyes widening.

“You’re counting it?”

“Of course I am.”

It must be more abrupt that she intends, because her daughter mutters a Jesus Christ under her breath.

She’s still fidgeting.

Clearly uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Other than its Evil Dead 5 down here” –DJ waves at her lap— “and my mother counts her heartbreak in her head like a psycho? Nothing at all.”

The sarcasm rankles.

“What else was I supposed to do? Disrupt her life? Divide my time up between LA and being here for you during your—”

“Nope, you are not using me as an excuse for your gutlessness. You have absolutely no one to blame for this but yourself. You can pretend it was for me or for Ava’s career, some self-sacrificing bullshit you built up in your head, but you bolted. You’re terrified of getting hurt again, the way Dad and Aunt Kathy and your parents’ deaths hurt you.”

The truth.

Plain and simple.

She knows it. Has known it for a very long time.

If it was anyone else telling me this, I’d have their fucking head.

But its DJ, in a hospital bed, mere hours after giving birth. On edge and in discomfort, the early morning hour stripping away the last of her courtesy.

Exposed wires sparking at each other.

No one else would dare.

Except…

One other.

Picking apart the defense system she’d built up to keep her heart safe.

Pushing her to do better, be better.

Never letting her quit.

But she’d given up anyway, telling herself Ava was mistaken, that she’d somehow blurred the lines between their work and something else. Misread their closeness, or the signals as romantic.

That it was one-sided.

She’d let her go so she could make something of herself, spread her wings.

But the selfless move had meant she could avoid what was beginning.

The slow, warming spread through her body each time the girl was near.

A heartbeat quickened.

A shiver up her spine at a cheeky grin, at an endearing smile.

Ava hadn’t been mistaken, just quicker to the punchline.

You’re pushing me away because you’re afraid had been dangerously accurate.

She’d jumped ship to quell the panic rising in her chest, at the thought of someone getting so close they might...

Be the ruin of her again.

Not after Frank and Kathy.

Not after controlling most of the narrative with Marty.

And not after…

Losing her world as a little girl.

A selfish act disguised as a selfless one.

And it had hit her less than twenty-four hours later, closing her front door and simply looking down to see what had caught her eye.

The chimney sweep boots, neatly set against the wall behind one of the flowerpot statues.

Where they belonged.

Where she wanted them to always be.

They’d been gone the next morning, sent express with the rest of Ava’s belongings.

Marcus’s doing, while Damien stayed out of her hair and Josefina gave her the cold shoulder.

And then she’d had a home filled with her daughter and son-in-law’s vivid energy, and all their extra stuff.

Distracting herself with—

“Mom, Mom.”

She finds her daughter staring back, sitting forward on the bed.

“What, what?”

“You full on looked like Titus Andromedon having a face journey.”

She hasn’t got the foggiest. “Who?”

“Its this character from—you know what? Never mind. Can you fix my pillows for me?”

Deborah stands and moves forward, adjusting them behind her daughter. It takes them a few moments to get it right.

She wonders if it’s deliberate. A way for the conversation to calm.

A subject change and a much needed refocus.

She can work with it.

“The doctor stitched me up pretty badly after your watermelon head got stuck. Could’ve sued.”

“Surely it was more like a bowling ball.” DJ’s tone is softer now; almost amused.

She can make the effort too. “Nope. You came out a little pointy. Not quite Coneheads, but certainly noticeable for the first few weeks.”

“Oh, so that’s why you didn’t breastfeed me.”

A joke and the truth, all mixed into one.

Ava’s words on the bus come back to her:

You sure that perky breast joke won’t bother DJ? It’s a little...pointed.

She chuckles a little and sits back down on the side of the bed, hand finding her daughter’s blanket-covered thigh.

Thinks of Ava’s laughter at her own joke, bursting forth as they’d laid on her bed.

Her warmth for Ava there by then.

She focuses on DJ and sees her daughter watching her. “What?”

“I just...I want you to be happy. I want you to let yourself be that for once. Let yourself be loved by that girl, because I see it in her eyes when she FaceTime’s me. She loves you too. I wanna know AJ’s loved by his granny for his sake, not because he’s a replacement for the love of her life.”

The last words catch Deborah off guard.

Alongside her daughter’s strength, stubbornness and seriousness is her sincerity.

Right down to the heart of it.

But...

If she believes her daughter’s words, if she believes Ava is that, is the love of her life, then she’ll...

Have the potential to get hurt.

And want it all.

No matter the cost to Ava.

“I take up too much space.”

She pulls her hand away, back to her lap, to—

“Then make room for her, Mom. You’ve had a nearly nine-month trial run. I know you can do it for real.”

Deborah looks away, down at her fingers, inspecting the red. Recalling a time when she’d shied away from earnest words, stoned and much, much too vulnerable.

In need of an ice pack still.

In need of Ava.

In need of...

“Come on now,” she says to her daughter, standing up. “You should get some rest.”

She can see DJ knows she’s changing the subject, but its late and—

“Only if you lie beside me.”

She starts to protest, but her daughter is already shifting across, and she will not let her discomfort be in vain.

Not anymore.

She lies on her side, DJ reaching to drag her arm over her baby-free belly, the gesture pulling the emotion to the surface again.

No more now.

She asks her daughter if she’s comfortable instead.

“This lochia tsunami ain’t fun, but I guess that’s the compromise for motherhood. You’re probably gonna get told off by the nurses for lying all over me but fuck that. I want my mom.”

Of all the things to hear…

“I don’t think I’ve heard you say that in forty years.”

“You’re losing it,” DJ tells her, closing her eyes. “I’m thirty-eight.”

“Of course you are.”

She watches as a grin appears, then disappears from her daughter’s face.

Her beautiful, beautiful girl.

A head turns her way, blue eyes there, and she holds them.

“You have a son,” she whispers.

“You have a grandchild,” DJ returns softly.

“He’s a ginger,” she deadpans.

“Oh please, they’re our favorite kinda people.”

She hums a positive note into the air. “You’re not freaked out with...everything?”

“If you mean being a parent, yeah, I’m fucking terrified.” DJ blinks heavily, refocusing her attention. “But if you’re talking about Ava and you, then no. I knew she was super important to you when you called me from Boston that day.”

“That was last year.”

“Yeah, Mom.” DJ yawns, and adds, “For someone so quick-witted you sure took your time catching on.”

The truth.

Something she won’t ever live down.

She might be too late anyway.

“Do I have a shot, Deej?” It’s out before she realizes her daughter’s eyes are closed.

“Yeah,” is the quiet answer after a long moment. “She’s wide open.”

No further joke comes from her, where a dirty one would be.

Deborah knows if she stays quiet her daughter will get some more rest.

She mouths an I love you to her.

Knows she’s too wired with feelings to drift off any time soon.

---

She sleeps fitfully.

Watches as the nurses come in to do their checks, helping DJ to change.

Steps into the bathroom when its time for DJ to breastfeed a fussing AJ. Hears her daughter and Aidan’s voices along with the nurse as she washes her face once, twice, three times, breathing through her guilt. Brushing foundation across her cheeks without looking herself in the eye.

Rocks the newborn back to sleep in the hallway so her family can as well.

A measure done to erase her track record.

As if it could ever be that simple.

She thinks of limited moments of her own making, mistakes made and solely her own.

Mistakes she won’t ever undo.

Mind going to Ava once more, because she’d never learned how to stop making them.

Antagonizing her.

Not giving an inch.

Walls up, on guard.

A slap.

Throwing things at her.

Forcing her to wallow in self-hatred.

Suing her to make a point.

But...

They dissolve as she recalls their better moments, conversations had, jokes shared.

Honesty in hazel eyes those last few months.

A language spoken and understood.

The ache to be near her, with her, just as strong as it had been that first night without her, looking at her Royère pair, knowing Ava was her match.

Stumbled upon, found, and lost.

She watches the horizon go from a murky haze to a brimming yellow, the day beginning for this city of hers, two hundred and seventy miles from where her love belongs.

Her fingers ache.

They are definitely bigger than her right ones.

She should’ve iced them.

The thought slips away as she hears a sound from the couch.

Aidan is awake.

“Hey Mom. How you doing?” He settles beside her at the window.

She smiles softly at him, before returning her gaze to the cloudless sky. “Been a long night.”

“Yeah. Think I’m gonna have some more of them when we get home.”

“You will. But you’ll be alright.”

He lets out an amused sound. “Of course. I’m a Vance now.”

She laughs lightly, the statement warming her.

Lets her mind drift back to the moment his opponents blood had splattered across her face.

The jubilation she’d felt in the moment.

An encouraging feat that had lifted her—

“Deborah, can you look at me, please.”

Her name on Aidan’s lips jars her back to reality, so foreign between them she thinks her blood stops moving completely.

He’s never looked so serious in all the time she’s known him.

“In the spirit of you giving me the pep talk to end all pep talks so I could thump Padalecki’s ass, I’m gonna return the favor now.”

“Aidan, I don’t know—"

He holds a flat palm up to her lips, so close it shocks her to silence.

This boy’s lost his—

“I woke up last night and heard your conversation with Deej. Now, there isn’t much that would stop me from going to my wife while she’s in pain, but I knew she’d kill me if I interrupted what sounded like a much-needed talk. So,” he takes a breath and sighs it out, the hint of a grin there. “Here’s the thing: we’re two weeks out from Christmas. You’ve RSVP’d to multiple parties all the way through to Mr Newton’s New Year’s bash, and I know you’re hands on when it comes to your caterers for the big day. Things are gonna get crazy busy and you’re gonna slip on your celebrity face and attend every party, because that’s who you are, while helping DJ and I out with AJ, because that’s also who you are. You’re a good person, and an improving mother, and you’ll be a damn good grandmother. I’ll make sure of it. And just as sure as the sun comes up and goes down every day, DJ will make sure of it too. I fucking love that woman.”

True.

All—

“Now—where does Ava fit into all of that? Because surely she’ll be flying to Boston in the next two weeks. Might not fly out ‘til January. Are you going to wait that long to see her? To tell her you love her? Be as open with her as you were with Deej last night? Do you trust yourself not to change your mind during this insane month? Get in your own head about it? Or are you going to be a goddamn Vance and go home, get eight hours, and go see your girl?”

It’s…

Alarmingly on point, and—

Her chest is burning—

“Breathe, Mom. Breathe.”

His hand finds her back as she inhales quickly, relief coming to her lungs, before a sudden thought latches on:

Ten months and twelve days.

It could be ten months and…

No.

She turns around toward the hospital bed and—

DJ is awake and looking back already.

Aware of everything.

“He’s right, Mom. You gotta take your shot now.”

She knows it.

But the timing’s all wrong.

She heads across the room to her daughter, stopping by AJ’s cot and looking down at him. Looking at DJ. “You just gave birth.”

Deborah waits for a response.

Strength, stubbornness, seriousness and sincerity all come together in her girl’s eyes.

“And if you don’t go by nightfall, you’ll never go.”

Versions of each other in simpatico.

Open and truthful with one another.

One more honest fact to go:

“I love you, baby.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

---

DJ makes her call Ronnie.

He drives her home, quietly humming to the songs on the radio, Deborah certain he can sense her need for solitude.

She yawns throughout the car ride, uncomfortable in her slept in clothes.

She will not sleep until her head hits her pillow.

Or the mattress at least.

She fails this simple task, waking with no memory of the last ten minutes of the ride.

If she’s to see Ava, she’ll need some rest.

When she tells her team she’s going to LA, ice pack on her fingers, Josefina is the first to ask.

“To see Ava?”

She nods.

Good is the answer. A joyous slap of a leg comes with it.

Damien is Damien, prepared to organize everything like the good employee he is, but nonplussed by the news.

Marcus hangs back after the two of them head off to their assigned tasks. He holds her gaze from the office couch as she sits forward in the far seat, fingers half numb.

The quiet lasts so long she starts to wonder if he’s going to argue against this.

The thought solidifies her determination to follow it through.

He’s already cleared her schedule for the weekend because of DJ’s early labor.

But Aidan had been right.

She’s about to get busy.

“I know I had my reservations about Ava when the two of you first started working together, but...things change, don’t they?”

Deborah knows what he’s hinting at.

She’s certain he and Josefina know her feelings toward Ava have deepened immeasurably in the absence of her.

“They do.” She says it softly, hearing the reverence in her voice.

“You sure you don’t want me to organize the jet?”

It would be easier.

But something inside is telling her she needs to preoccupy herself with a task so she doesn’t get too in her head about it all.

“I’m sure.”

She stands and he mirrors the move, taking the remaining steps toward her.

“Congrats again on AJ, Deb.”

He lifts his arms out for a hug, and she sets the ice pack dishcloth combo on the coffee table before stepping into his hold gratefully.

She holds him for a long time.

“If you ever wanna talk about the qu...” She hears him interrupt himself. “About it all, I’m here, okay? Anytime.”

Almost a word.

Almost a way to label...

She’s been thinking about it for months now, her mind drifting back to the conversation Ava had initiated on that goddamn cruise. What it meant to suddenly have to think about these things, to consider her sexuality as nuanced and not so regimented to a gender, as she’d believed it once was.

But she can’t hold onto Marcus forever, so she lets him go.

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

A neutral statement.

“You better go get some sleep, Deb.”

“Thank you for...understanding. Will you make sure Barry has his—”

“Heartworm tablet.” He nods, the smallest of movements. “Will you say hello to her for me?”

She can do that.

But for now, she has one task.

Rest.

---

Her bedroom blinds have been lowered by one of the maids, the lights low, her pajamas laid out on the bed.

God, they’re quick.

It’s Josefina’s doing, and she thanks the woman silently in her head.

Hopes that the lingering resentment from the woman will be a thing of the past now.

She toes her flats off, leaving them there as she pops the buttons of her blouse, coordination slipping as the heaviness suddenly hits her.

She is a grandmother.

She is...

She is...

Unable to get a button loose.

She rips at the material, watching as it flies away across the carpet, her skin exposed.

Thinks suddenly of Ava in the basement, her own top open, phone held high for the money shot.

How she’d touched herself to that memory for weeks in the aftermath of letting Ava go, trying to understand how her mind was suddenly into it now after decades of imagining men.

How her body suddenly came alive to the thought of Ava’s mouth there instead of her own fingers.

How wet she was each time.

Deborah sighs softly.

Not now.

She readies herself for bed, dragging herself forward with years of experience.

Years of routine ingrained in her.

She lays her head down and feels...

Changed, somehow.

Well, not somehow.

Its obvious when it had occurred.

DJ was right.

Aidan was right.

Her own heart and mind knew as well.

A nondescript July day, suddenly bursting with color and fire and Ava right there in the middle of it, muttering a profanity she took objection to.

A button pusher in chimney sweep boots, worming her way inside.

“You goddamn idiot,” Deborah says quietly, closing her eyes.

To herself, for sure.

But maybe a little to Ava as well, for being the catalyst and not even knowing it.

She loves her.

She loves her.

The thought stays with her until—

---

She jars awake to noise by her ear, fumbling with her hand towards it, catching her fingers on the mattress and hissing.

Someone’s phone, beeping loudly.

She finds the right button, shutting the infernal sound off.

Three familiar faces appear on the lock screen.

Josefina’s kids.

Deborah notes the time above their heads.

She’s slept six hours.

Knows she’ll be alright once she has a coffee.

She suspects Josefina knows exactly that.

It’s confirmed when she slides out from under the blankets and finds her small carryon by the corner of the couch.

A note on top of it.

I’ve packed for four days, your holiday toiletries included. Find something comfortable to wear for the drive.

See me before you go and bring my phone with you.

It’s thoughtful and kind, and Deborah takes a second to close her eyes and be grateful, letting the knowledge of her family behind her drive her forward.

---

She gets as far as having a shower and putting a little makeup on, bathrobe secure around her, her extraordinary closet suddenly overwhelming, with absolutely nothing to wear.

Nothing that will...

Her eyes drift down to her bottom drawer, filled with...

All her flannel.

She thinks back to the night of the cancelled run-through, needing something to keep her hands and mind occupied while her chest ached.

Lied to, again.

Someone different, but still just the same old hollowed feeling.

There’s no need to dredge it up again though.

No pretense this time round.

No slamming down of a cleaver to intimidate, to expel her anger at the girl.

None of it is left.

All that’s there is love.

A baseline.

Underneath the glitz and glamour is her heart and this very fact.

Deborah opens the drawer and finds the flannel she wore, green, red and blue, amongst the rest of her simple clothes.

Yes.

Her baseline.

As close as she gets to little Debbie Brandt.

She dresses carefully, slipping on a pair of black slacks and a grey undershirt, before pulling that flannel around herself.

She feels strong in it. Assured somehow.

Perhaps it’s the fact she knows she’s finally doing the right thing for herself.

She looks like herself in the mirror.

Nine months and twelve days coming to a close.

It’ll be dark by the time she gets to LA.

She’ll surely get stuck in the traffic.

But she’s going.

Deborah squares her shoulders and meets her gaze one last time.

You’ve got this.

You’re a Vance.

She slips her leopard print loafers on for the reminder.

---

DJ and their two Aidan’s are home, safe in her kitchen with Josefina cooking and some of the maids cooing over AJ in his car seat on the counter.

They scramble when she appears and she smiles to herself.

Before she has time to dwell on her intimidation skills, she’s being handed a cup of coffee, and a Tupperware container that is cool to the touch.

“I’ve packed you lunch—its finger food you can eat on the way,” Josefina says, “but you need to stop and rest in Barstow, get yourself a—wait—”

The woman heads back toward the dishwasher.

A whole lot of steam escapes as she finds what she’s—

It’s her blue reusable cup.

“Get yourself a refill,” Josefina continues, running the item under the sink tap.

“You really need to go now Mom, you’re gonna hit the traffic whatever you do, but...”

She hears the sound of the soda machine as she focuses in on her daughter. “Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

DJ nods. “I got Josefina cooking me a big lunch, which” – she sniffs – “is starting to burn, Aidan—”

“Got it babe.” He rushes to the stove and stirs, as the three of them converse over the food, Deborah momentarily forgotten.

She knows they’ll be okay.

She gulps down the rest of her coffee.

Admires her grandson as Aidan tapes her three fingers together.

Lets her daughter feed her a few mouthfuls of her iron-rich stir-fry.

Tells them she’ll call as soon as she gets there.

DJ hugs her the longest and Deborah soaks in every bit of her love. Be brave is whispered in her ear just before she’s let go of.

Damien hands her the car keys.

“There’s a full tank. Burt checked it over before cleaning it like you wanted. You’re good to go.”

It’s so alarmingly blue.

She thinks of that photo of Ava, still in the glovebox where the redhead had shoved it that terrible day.

Marcus puts her case in the trunk and Josefina sets up her drink and snacks as she presses the engine button.

She can do this.

She still looks at DJ.

Her daughter nods gently. “Tell Ava she owes me a drink for this.”

Deborah reaches for her hand against the car frame to squeeze it. “I love you, honey.”

“Love you too—now go.”

---

She stops just before the gates of her property.

Wonders what she’d be doing if she hadn’t thought of that alt to Ava’s tweet. Hadn’t thought of tearing down her driveway to prove she was better at comedy and better in life.

She opens the glove box and pulls out the printout.

Ava is gloomy in blue, burdened by the weight of the email, so obvious in hindsight she wonders how she ever missed it.

The entire lot of it, good and bad.

You goddamn idiot.

Her fingers twinge as she folds the photo, setting it inside her dashboard where she’ll be able to see it.

She will never let Ava feel like that again.

She will be honest with her and communicate her feelings.

She has nearly five hours to figure the words out.

Deborah finds the Spotify playlist Ava showed her how to make.

Songs added to it in the last nine months, old favorites suddenly renewed and attached to thoughts of the girl.

She presses play and isn’t surprised when a familiar Disney tune begins.

It’s enough indeed.

---

She sips her diet coke slowly as the miles go by.

Nibbles at Josefina’s grapes and carrot sticks.

Ava stays in the periphery of her mind, fixed there by each song, Elton, Linda, Billy, Phil, Garfunkel and Whitney all playing their part.

She drives through Jean and Primm. Memories mix, antagonistic Ava with her resulting sunburn morphing into the version who’d stood proudly by as she’d gotten a congregation of truckers laughing, free of charge.

That quiet satisfaction had dissolved in the shadow of Baker’s ridiculously oversized thermometer, Ava’s eyes wet when she’d come back from scattering her father’s ashes.

Stop the bus, stop the bus no longer a request but a burden.

Deborah had reached for her hand on instinct, to comfort her then, no zinger on her tongue. The two of them simply standing there together in solidarity.

She catches sight of it miles away.

Decides it can take the place of Barstow.

She parks where the bus had stopped and gets out, looking up at the kitschy thing, only four of the numbered gauges lit up.

Colder now.

She thinks...

No.

She knows the thought had first occurred to her here.

What it could be like to have that hand to hold in the future.

The joke had come from Ava then:

Started scattering my dad’s ashes at the Grand Canyon and dropped the last of him off at the world’s tallest thermometer. Figured I’d fail to live up to my potential one last time.

She’d laughed and the girls face had brightened considerably at the sound, the two of them riffing off each other well into the ride to Harvard, CA.

Oh look—you can tell people you went here for your five seconds of college education.

Her quip had led Ava into a rant about student loan forgiveness, Deborah unsurprised and pointedly rolling her eyes.

Distracted from the tenderness and warmth of their moment. From that thought.

Preoccupied by all those rejections. By a tree house that no one needed anymore. The show and the material and that hideous dressing room redesign.

Jimmy telling her she’d succeeded, that people wanted her once more.

Burgundy dress and turning on the glam.

But mostly by that imperative.

That sole need for Ava to have space to grow.

To be better than Deborah at this.

A world away from their fiery first meeting.

Deborah stares up at the monument a few years older than Ava, blown over by the high winds at one point, and built stronger as a result.

Left to time and chance, obsolete, a relic of the past.

But brought back to life in the last few years by a woman who saw something worthy there, something worth celebrating.

Deborah leans back into the car for her reusable cup, bringing it out and up to the sky in a silent thanks.

“Stupid thing,” she says softly.

She grabs her purse and locks her car.

It’s time for a refill.

---

She sees them as soon as she steps into the gift shop, Christmas decorations all over the place.

Knows at once she wants to give one to Ava.

Can already see the mystified look in hazel eyes.

The older lady, starstruck behind the counter, asks for an autograph and Deborah turns her smile up, obliging. They commiserate about her fingers. Share a laugh as the till is opened.

She’s so utterly sweet Deborah drops the rest of her cash in the tip jar when the woman’s back is turned.

She’ll get Marcus to donate a little more when she gets home.

Make sure this silly place sees a few more years.

Renewed a little while longer.

---

The soda is good and the music plays on.

Elton sings about colliding stars and unobstructed sunshine, and Deborah feels it slowly sinking in, the fact that she’s on the way to her one.

The one she needed all along.

She thinks she might be nervous.

Yes.

Not quite the pre-show jitters before her special, but something out of the ordinary.

Something that could potentially nauseate her.

What a great sight that would be on the 15:

The infamous and equally beautiful Deborah Vance vomiting up her carrot sticks.

Of course you threw your looks in there, Ava’s voice sounds in her head.

Well, when you pay good money for them...

She expels a breath across her teeth, light.

Glances down at the photo of the girl, before fixing her eyes ahead on the curve of the highway.

She wonders if the tone would be the same. The level of sarcasm in the words.

The depth of recognition.

Ava knowing her just so, and in all the correct ways.

She wonders if nine and a half months have changed the girl, the way it’s changed her.

The Variety article had spoken of a likeability to Ava both on set and in her writing. That it was this undercurrent of personable comedy that had made the two Ava-penned episodes of Backward Bastards the most talked about this year.

She’d obviously buckled down and grown enough to be given the opportunity.

I’m like the bird lady in Home Alone 2—I kinda just do my own thing despite all the shit. I’m a homebody. If anybody wants me to write for them that’s where I am!

DJ had implied as much.

Likeability and seriousness.

Maybe Ava would be less likely to offer up an unfiltered observation, but Deborah can’t imagine her so stuck in the mud that the true Ava wouldn’t shine through.

The one that had pushed her.

The one that had peeled back the layers of—

The song changes and it’s...

Cher.

God.

Deborah laughs to herself as the image of the singer comes to mind.

Leaving nothing to the imagination.

Maybe, just maybe...

She can admit, at least to herself, and certainly despite the many, many jokes she’d made at the woman’s expense, that she’d secretly admired her. Admired the balls it took to wear that barely there outfit and be immortalized forever in it.

And perhaps...

She’d been a little...

Turned on isn’t the right term for it.

But she’d noticed.

Can distinctly remember watching the video and her eyes dropping to that skimpy black V and all that it suggested.

She’d noticed and she’d turned it on its head, into a running joke that had lasted well into the 90’s.

Her mind drifts to the basement. Ava shifting to smile awkwardly up at her, to cover her state of undress.

Feeling the uptick of her heart in response.

She tsks.

Men, Cher, and Ava.

That’s her orientation.

Never a conscious choice.

But the facts, anyway.

---

The songs repeat once more as the sun retreats in the distance.

She’s ten minutes south of Cajon when the traffic slows to a crawl, Can You Feel The Love Tonight beginning a third time before she realizes she’s done with the songs.

She flicks through the radio stations as she approaches an accident, emergency lights flashing in the dusk.

Two cars badly damaged.

She turns down the volume, the outside world bleeding in.

Thinks of Sunshine Valley Road and being left to wake up to a nightmare.

Too young for her parents to be taken away.

Deborah sits in her memories as they all merge into the single slow lane, as she sticks to it while everyone else, in a hurry or annoyed, races off.

She will get there in one piece.

She thinks of AJ’s soft red hair and tiny fingers.

Ava’s counterpart color, longer now in photos and interviews.

A silent reminder of time passing.

Too much of it in between them.

But the miles are shrinking now, at least.

Her navigation keeps adjusting the time she has left, but she’s here.

Westward across LA, sure to be delayed by the endless vehicular chaos of Friday night.

She might as well pee again.

---

There’s a Del Taco and a Jack In The Box and a McDonalds.

She chooses the latter. Slips her sunglasses back on and makes a beeline for the restrooms, emergency Purell and wipes in her handbag.

She’ll tell Ava she caught some venereal disease from a toilet seat on her way back to her.

Listen to a ranting monologue about her privilege and snobbery.

Because passionate Ava is one of her favorite versions of her.

No, I think you should say it because it’s the truth and it might be nice to finally fucking say it out loud. You owe yourself that.

She sits in her car for a few moments, suddenly aware of just how much she has to say to the girl.

How nice it’ll be to…

“I love you, Ava.”

Say it out loud.

“I don’t know when, or how, or why, but I do.”

A statement to the sealed air around her, but freeing, nonetheless.

She can do one better.

“I want you.”

One better than—

A car horn startles her, and she realizes she’s taking up precious space in the busy car park.

Old Deborah would’ve balked at moving an inch.

But things are different.

She’s…

Willing.

Has been practicing it for a while now.

Her home to DJ and Aidan, and AJ now.

Down time for Marcus, to pursue a life outside of her.

Josefina and her well-founded rancor.

She draws her seat belt around her, turns her car on and eases out.

Watches them drive into the spot in her rear view.

As simple as that.

She must yield, if she wants Ava.

If she loves her.

If.

She shakes her head and expels a breath through her nose as she circles the car park once, twice, three times.

She wants Ava and she loves Ava.

No if involved.

The woman is imperative for her betterment.

She can do this.

She joins the drive-thru queue to prove it to herself.

---

Dipping too-salty fries into her Oreo McFlurry isn’t how she envisioned the last leg of her journey, but it feels right.

A new experience after so much denial.

She’ll have to get the car professionally cleaned after all this…

Sticky crumbness.

The van in front of her creeps forward and she does too.

“You’re paying for this, Ava Daniels.”

Maybe now Kiki can get the car.

Ava not so bottled up in blue memory.

Ava nearly in the present time.

Nearly back in her life.

---

Someone is playing heavy rock music in their car, the singer screaming most of the words.

Someone else is playing Lady Gaga.

She focuses in on these two facts in the stop and start, queasy from the sugar and grease overload, her body not used to it.

She should’ve had an edible first.

Should’ve flown.

Well, she’d only be on the other side of town, working her way to her destination from LAX, new and unknown chauffeur bothering her with small talk.

Her own voice in her head is enough.

Antsy.

She’s just antsy and nervous.

Trying to quell the fear of the girl inside her, hurt by grief and tragedy.

The teenager taking it, so her sister didn’t suffer the same.

The renewed young woman damaged by betrayal.

Three of them inside her chest, behind an impenetrable wall of concrete her ego had maintained.

Covered in chip marks over the years.

DJ at it the longest, destroyed by the continuous effort and nearly lost.

Albert and Neil long gone.

Marty with his rejected proposal and their back and forth.

Cracks spackled over when they’d gotten too deep.

But Ava had taken a goddamn hammer to her repairs, striking at the weak spots with humor and heart and a never-ending determination.

Deborah unaware of it until that first betrayal of trust. Hurt as badly as the moment she’d discovered DJ behind the tabloid photos.

She’d known then, looking at her reflection in her dressing room mirror.

The girl was important to her.

And she’d met it with coldness. Indignation and regression.

Panic disguised as outrage.

If she doesn’t get rid of this nervousness, it’ll turn into panic.

There’s only one thing for it.

“Hey Siri…”

Her car pings.

“Call Kiki.”

She lets it do its thing, grateful that Marcus convinced her to get it retrofitted.

And tinted.

“Hello, beautiful grandmother! I just got like fifty photos from DJ, he’s so freaking cute!”

It’s the energy she needs, Deborah feeling herself relax as she talks about DJ’s labor and bathing her grandson.

She keeps an eye on the BMW ahead of her as they reminisce about Luna’s birth.

“I can’t believe she’s four and a half, like stop growing kid. But like, don’t because you’re so beautiful anyway. It’s annoying and awesome at the same time. I’m gonna snot cry every birthday, I swear.”

“Well, good thing it was just me that night.”

Kiki is silent for a beat too long, before, “Yeah. Lucky me.”

The statement hangs there between them.

Ava had RSVP’d first to Luna’s party and she’d…

Delayed her answer so much Kiki had suggested an alternative.

Dinner and cake during the week on the little girls’ actual birthday.

One present turning into three, to alleviate her guilt.

One solitary text from the redhead that Saturday:

Message received loud and clear, D.

No contact for three weeks, until a string of texts and a voicemail in the middle of the night:

Heya D-deb. How you doin’? Just a lil Joey Tribb-tribbyani for ya there. I fucking am so high right now, dude, like more than the…you know the space thingy in the—

“You there, Deb?”

“Yeah, just...driving.” She flicks her pinkie along the fraying end of the piece of tape she’s been fiddling with.

“You mean you managed to pull yourself away from your grandsons gorgeous face?”

She thinks of AJ, so small.

Ava on the rooftop, small as well.

She needs to tell her friend.

“I did. I’m in LA, on my way to fix what I broke.”

There are a few seconds of silence, then Kiki says, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

There’s a hint of tempered down hope in her voice.

Deborah’s heart warms. “Yes.”

Now. Properly. Out loud.

“I love her. I don’t know when it happened or how or much of anything really, I just know I do, and it’s...been a long time since I’ve felt this way.” She feels the tears prickling the corners of her eyes. “Like I might—like this is all I’ve wanted my entire life. To be understood and seen. She saw me. The real one. And I freaked out and ran, but I’m so fucking tired, Kiki. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t let another day go by without telling her.”

“Okay, okay. Can you just give me like, twenty seconds, and then I’m with you...”

“Of course.”

She hears the phone get placed down and then some shuffling.

Must be cooking some—

She hears the sound first, then registers what it is.

Kiki is screaming into something, muffling the volume and pitch, but not the excitement.

It loosens something in her chest.

A tear slips down her cheek.

Another person understands where she’s coming from. Someone close to her has seen it too.

She counts away the seconds in her head as her friend screams some more.

“Okay, I’m good now,” Kiki says calmly, only slightly out of breath. “Sometimes you just need twenty seconds, you know?”

“Or nine months and twelve days.”

Kiki hums. “That too. Also, it’s hella romantic you know it down to the day.”

She huffs. “DJ said Ava’s been waiting for me to catch up.”

“Correcto—that beautiful cabbage patch kid couldn’t be more in love with you. It’s kind of nauseating.”

Deborah laughs, brushing at her cheek with her good hand. “I had a McFlurry and fries because Ava said they were good together, but now I’m feeling ill. Or nervous.”

“Well, little taco girl, it can be both. This is a huge step for you. There’s bound to be some push back from your body, emotionally and physically. Where are you right now?”

She looks at her navigation screen. “On the 210, in Upland.”

Kiki groans down the line. “Should’ve taken the 18 into Antelope Valley, Deb.”

She has no idea where that was. “What I should’ve done was let my driver worry about it while I had a breakdown in the backseat.”

“Babe, there’s no need for one of those. Ava’s gonna cream her pants when she sees you.”

The visual makes her snort. She grabs her cup and takes a sip of mostly melted ice, catching a glimpse of her flannel. “I’m not exactly dressed for the Oscars.”

“Oh, please—you could dress up as a Cheeto like Katy Perry did that one time and Ava would still give you heart eyes. What are you wearing, anyway?”

“A flannel shirt and black pants.”

Kiki’s laugh is loud and then a little further away, like she’s pulled the phone from her mouth to continue laughing.

Deborah knows what’s amusing her. “Maybe I need to stop in at my side mansion and get my chainsaw, really sweeten the stereotype. I already know how to use it.”

Kiki’s laughter quietens. “Was that the day you had a leaf in your hair?”

Yes. “You know about that?”

“Yeah—Ava was…” Kiki pauses briefly, before, “Waxing rhapsodic about you something fierce that night. Nearly called her out on it too, but I wasn’t sure if she’d…connected her feelings that night to an overall picture. That came later.”

Its further proof Ava will be...

Accepting of her surprise visit.

“She has feelings for me,” Deborah states, even though she’s...

Known it this entire time.

“Yep,” Kiki says, popping the P. “And you do too. I wasn’t sure if you were ever going to have an Ava-based rainbow epiphany, tee bee hach, but I’m glad you have. Everyone deserves to find their person.”

Ava is that.

And it’s...

She changes course with, “Well I would find her if I wasn’t jammed in this traffic tighter than a straight boy’s ass at a gay bar.”

“Oh my God, Deborah.” Kiki still laughs, even though she can hear her trying not to.

“What? It’s at the expense of the straight guy, not the gay community.”

“You know, now that you’re a member of the—wait, sorry, do you consider yourself to be a...”

An open-ended question from her friend, expecting an answer.

“Homosapien?” she asks, finding the funny side.

Kiki laughs. “Yeah, that.”

“I don’t know. Did you get the warm fuzzies the first time you saw Cher in that body stocking?”

Kiki giggles. “Yeah—but so did a lot of gay men and straight women. And all those sea men there that night. Maybe it’s a proper gauge for homosapienism, maybe not.”

“I told her I liked men. Insinuated it was cut and dry with me, and...” Deborah exhales loudly. “I feel like I lied to her. Like it was just another excuse to keep her from getting too close.”

A red Chevy wants to merge in front of her and she lets—

“You’re allowed to protect yourself after everything you’ve been through.”

“That’s the thing though, Kik—I don’t have the conscious thought to do it sometimes. I didn’t that night on the boat. Maybe I purposely drove into gridlock to delay this again. To avoid having my heart broken again.”

“But what about all the things you did today to get stuck there? You drove for hours and said goodbye to DJ and your grandson, the day after his birth. Surely that’s a sign you’re ready for this, that it’s that important to you. Plus, there’s no way in the Dolly Parton is going to heaven universe Ava could or would fathom breaking your heart. That girl has four Michael Bolton songs on a playlist dedicated to you. She’s head over boots, babe.”

Deborah takes in the words, a little relief finding her.

Kiki never fails.

“I’m ready for this and I’m not ready at all,” she admits.

“Then tell her you’re scared—just make sure you tell her all the other things I know you wanna say.”

“Okay.”

Deborah breathes in and out a few times through her nose, refocusing on the end point in her mind.

Ava.

The two of them together.

Making space for her to fit.

One other thing there with these three.

“She made me a mix tape?”

---

The name of it comes up on her screen as the music begins:

{d}

A familiar piano opening, Billy aiming right for her heart.

But it’s not him.

The name on the screen is Fyfe Dangerfield.

Unknown.

She hides like a child but she’s always a woman to me cracking something deep within her, though she’s heard it a thousand times.

Never from Ava though.

The cars in front of her begin to move, a little more space for the steadiness of a crawl.

It’s progress.

Deborah flicks her pinkie against the remedy for DJ’s strength, a reminder of what she has at home waiting for her.

Listens as one song melds into the next, and the next, and the next.

I wanna be near you all day. Whatever I do, I spiral down to you. She changes the weather in my world. On my mattress, killing hours, trying not to call you. Too long I’ve tried to fight it, I won’t let you go. I don’t wanna fall in love if you don’t wanna try. I feel it in my body, know it in my mind, oh I’m going to love you for a long time. And how can I blame you when I built my world around the hope that one day, we’d be so much more than friends?

Michael’s stint draws the emotion up once more.

The two slices of tape dampen, cold.

It’s just...

A love letter in musical form.

Ava’s.

The flow of the road is steady now, progressing and halting, longer moments in between.

More than a few cars beep her as she stares at Ava’s photo, the outside world gone.

Inconsequential to the beating of her heart.

Ava’s love and affection is underneath each change of melody, each carefully chosen word.

So, tell me how you feel, always known for me, it’s you.

Oh, Ava...

---

There’s another car accident, a simple fender bender this time, the result of impatience and ill-care.

She’d thank the universe for safely getting her this far, but she’s had beef with it for sixty years.

Although...

She supposes it had given her Ava.

A bolt out of the blue.

Maybe the universe knew it owed her.

Deborah tsks to herself.

The redhead’s turned her into a complete sap.

She feels this fact even more so when she spots the first sign for Los Feliz Boulevard.

She’s almost there.

Almost with Ava.

She’ll need another break to freshen up, stretch her legs, text DJ.

The potato ice cream overload is no longer.

It’s just nerves now.

A flutter in her stomach.

Because Ava and her are on the same page now. She can hear Ava’s longing in the music, mirroring her own. What she needs. What she wants.

Deborah knows she’s wanted.

It’s shining brighter than all those pepper shakers she has.

A beacon on a Friday night.

She can...

She can believe in it.

---

The song starts and Deborah knows immediately what it is.

Celine this time, instead of Aretha.

Her mind going to the only positive memory she has of that goddamn disaster cruise.

She’d caught glimpses of Ava singing along at the bar, her ego latching onto the attention all those lesbians had given her, like she was the second coming of Melissa Etheridge.

It had felt good.

And then she’d…

Royally fucked it.

She scrolls to pause it, determined to forget the whole thing.

But she’s tired just enough from the drive and the slowness of it all to feel it sinking into her as irritation, anger.

Because she knows.

She knows she should’ve yielded, right when the joke didn’t land.

She should’ve changed course and left that woman alone. Gone back to her rehearsed material and let it go.

But the ol’ ego couldn’t have that, could it?

Ava had come down from her molly high with a delayed panic attack that she’d left Damien to deal with while she’d shut herself up in her room.

Seething at the injustice of it all.

A hundred percent her fault now that she’s across the country and enough time has passed for perspective.

Now that’s she’s...

Changed a little.

Deborah inhales a long and deep breath and then exhales, letting the anger go with the air.

It won’t do tonight.

Ava had obviously included the song for a reason. Felt that it warranted inclusion, despite the debacle the song would surely remind her of.

There for its own sake, she realizes.

She turns it back on and starts it again.

Lyrics known by her heart for years.

Ava reaching across space and time still, Celine the voice and the redhead the conductor.

Deborah hears and feels it from the girl’s perspective and feels and hears it from her own.

She starts singing along, low at first, letting Celine do the work, enunciating as she always does. Feels it expand up into her chest, her volume increasing as the words wash over her.

The feel of Ava’s hand in the shadow of that thermometer comes back to her.

Those hazel eyes on a rooftop.

All the times Ava made her laugh.

There’s no way she can remember them all.

Each instance making her feel good.

All she wants is time to return the favor.

Because Ava makes her sing to cheesy love songs in the car, even though she can’t possibly hold a candle to Ms. Dion.

Because Ava pushed and pushed and she pushed right back, falling off her worn out, failing pedestal into this…

New life of hers.

A better one.

Because Ava softly explored, found worth in her story, in her circumstances.

In her.

All she wants is to be in Ava’s presence, because she doesn’t think she’s ever felt more alive than when Ava is near.

Deborah wants to be close to her.

I wanna be wherever you are.

“I want that as well,” she says to the image she has of Ava in her mind, Celine reiterating it.

Words and melody breaking free from that night in front of strangers, to one sole occupant.

Changed.

---

She plays it another four times, letting it envelop her completely.

As Celine is hitting the money note again, the thought comes.

Once the song finishes again, she asks Siri to play it.

Her speakers filter in the beginning chords of Only One Road, Celine joining in once more to confess everything Deborah knows at this point.

Everything inside her.

Los Feliz, then west, then the street up to Ava’s avenue.

One heart to guide her there.

Deborah chuckles to herself.

One bladder to halt her progress, more like.

---

She washes her face in the Gelson’s bathroom, noting her reddened eyes and tired skin in the mirror, the drive visible in her features.

She’d been recognized as she’d walked in, and she’ll have to put her armor on again or decline photos.

Deborah Vance wins over Debbie Brandt this time.

She knows Ava wouldn’t care if she were barefaced.

But the tabloids...

Three separate people catch her as she’s leaving, one of them with a bouquet of sunflowers, Gelson’s price tag still attached. It’s sweet nonetheless, and she takes a picture with them when asked.

Deborah gets back into her car, flowers and Ava’s gift on the passenger seat.

She rings DJ.

“Hey, Mom.” Aidan’s voice is soft. “Deej is asleep, it’s just me and the little guy. Let me get the video going.”

Deborah pulls the phone from her ear, a sleeping AJ appearing on screen.

Her heart melts.

“Oh, don’t you dare make me cry when I just reapplied my makeup,” she says quietly.

Aidan’s face appears, and she can tell he’s moving away. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Have you seen Ava?”

“Not yet, just stopped to stretch my legs and call you guys.”

“Glad you made it. You nervous?”

She knows the answer. “A little.”

A lot.

“You need another pep talk?” he laughs, “because I’m gonna have to charge you for another.”

She shakes her head. “I’m good. Celine Dion’s been giving me one from the 90s.”

“Oh, I love her.”

She can see Aidan is telling the truth, and she laughs sweetly, touched by his openness.

“An MMA fighting cheese ball is what you are.”

He grins and nods, and she laughs some more.

“Thanks for getting me here, Aidan.”

He tilts his head and the mischief in his eyes settles into something serious. “I owed you one. For the fight and letting us stay with you.” There’s a pause, before, “But mostly for putting DJ in this world.”

He looks so incredibly sincere that the emotion…

She will not cry. She will not.

“Oh, shush. I’m going to be sick from all this cheese.”

She can see he knows she’s deflecting.

“Go get your lactose-free girl, Deborah.”

---

Her heart is beating wildly as she drives down the street.

Ava is so close she can taste it.

Well, that’s probably the spear mints in her mouth.

But the point is, Ava is nearly...

She can see one of the cream garage doors on the other side of the intersection.

Deborah stops breathing as she turns the car into Ava’s avenue, eyes finding the wooden security gate that Jimmy mentioned months ago.

Enough room for street parking on one side.

Not that there’s space anywhere.

She rolls the car around the dead end and back down, letting a sigh out.

LA.

---

She parks halfway down the street she came up on, right in someone’s spot.

Maybe Kiki won’t be getting it after all.

Maybe it won’t be here in the morning.

Maybe she’s focusing on something external to keep herself from freaking out in the silence of her car.

Music turned off now.

Maybe the simple thought of that is—

“Oh, for fucks sake, just get on with it already.”

She slips her handbag strap over her shoulder, grabs the plastic bag with Ava’s present in it, the flowers, and locks her car.

If it gets stolen, then so be it.

---

Her hands are sweaty as she walks north along the footpath, the sound of cars off in the distance, someone’s dog barking a street or two over.

It’s certainly not the worst part of LA, but it’s...

Lived in.

She snorts.

She’ll have to tell Ava that one.

Soon.

A football field away.

---

She really is going to throw up her potato ice cream carrot stick combo.

She’d take those nerves before her My Bad special any day over this.

Her heart is hammering away, and...

Come on.

You are not going to see Ava after nine months and twelve days with vomit breath.

You’re Deborah goddamn fucking Vance and you’re going to knock on that girl’s door and tell her the world has been duller without her in it. That you’re in love with her and you’re willing to work out a schedule that suits you both, that you want to find the time to see her, be with her, spend as much time as you both can together.

Because it doesn’t work without her.

Deborah reaches the curb and checks both ways.

Wandering in and out of streetlights at eight thirty pm on a Friday night in the chilly LA air.

Fingers sore and dull ache in her back.

She knows why.

---

There’s an intercom on the security gate.

Deborah takes a few breaths in and out, trying to steady herself.

The girl, the teenager and the young woman are bearing witness as Deborah steps up and offers her faith to fate.

To a press of a button.

The intercom crackles, and a familiar voice says, “Is that my Postmates?”

“Y-y-yes,” Deborah stutters.

Ava.

Ava, Ava, Ava, Ava—

The gate unlocks and swings outward and Deborah elbows it open, escaping behind it and up the steps toward the—

Opening red door, Ava framed in it.

Baby blue t-shirt and jeans.

Her hair tied back.

Warmth and light surrounding her.

Deborah's heart stops as she nearly falters the step onto the porch, as eyes widen in—

“D.”

And it’s like the world shifts half an inch to the left, realigning itself properly for the first time since a rooftop and a sad—

“What are you—didn’t DJ have—you’re not my sushi.”

Deborah smiles.

Now.

Tell her now.

“I guess Deej texted you. He’s so beautiful, Ava, so goddamn beautiful with ten fingers and ten toes and a shock of red hair like yours. He broke my heart the second I saw him. And I spent the night holding him off and on and your face was there every time. You were there in my thoughts, like you have been for the last nine months and twelve days, and I had to come here to tell you that I know the punchline now. I know I love you in a romantic way, and I don’t know if that means I’m queer or if you and Cher are the only women that get me hot under the collar, but I want to try. I want to make space for you because—”

Ava is suddenly moving toward her, six feet gone in—

A hand around her neck pulls and then she’s being kissed, Deborah moaning and opening her mouth to sink into it, teeth and lips and tongue, dropping the flowers to fumble a way around a waist, just barely remembering something is breakable.

But she’s—

She’s—

Made it.

Ava’s mouth tastes like coffee and passion and possibility, and she devours it all, wanting it and wanting connection and wanting Ava, Ava, Ava...

It lasts hours, seconds, an indeterminate amount of time, all concept of it, all thought replaced with sensory sweetness.

Her pulse a rhythm in her ears.

Her nerve endings sparking renewal.

Her bones fragmenting and solidifying into something stronger, something that will outlast her life itself.

She knows why, and how and when and what.

Ava.

Fingers slip up into her hair, against her scalp, as the immediate ferocity of their kiss makes way for something gentler.

Tender.

An exploration of one another.

A breath by one of them, and then the other, in tandem. Drawing back, drawing in, Ava leading, Deb taking the reins.

Grazing lips, just to be close, to say I’m here.

I’m not going anywhere.

Not willing to part. To come back down from this.

Languishing in each other, slow lips, slow everything.

Soft pecks.

And then—

Somehow—

A joint decision to—

Deborah opens her eyes and finds hazel ones staring back.

Two arms encircle her.

“Hi,” the redhead whispers.

“Hey,” Deborah replies softly.

“Am I dreaming?”

Deborah shakes her head. “If you are, then I am too.”

Ava pecks her lips lightly and grins. “Feels real.”

Deborah pecks Ava’s lips and chuckles. “And very nice.”

“Apart from whatever is jabbing me in the butt.”

Shit.

Deborah pulls her arm away and up, Ava’s boxed gift swaying in the plastic bag. “Sorry. This is for you.”

“Wait, what? I thought there were...”

They both look down at the sunflowers on the concrete.

Deborah bends to pick them up. “These are more of a housewarming gift—from a fan of—”

“Holy fuck, what happened to your fingers?”

Ava grabs the flowers and tucks them into her elbow, holding Deb’s hand up to inspect it.

“That would be DJ during her last push.”

“They look terrible, D.”

“That’s how bruises work, dear.” She softens her voice and continues, “Maybe I could finally get that ice pack you promised me last year.”

Ava rolls her eyes. “I was a little preoccupied trying not to die on that Seven Graces bathroom floor, but sure.”

---

The place is warm.

There’s a blue couch and a desk in the far corner.

But she’s being pulled toward a set of stairs and if she doesn’t pay attention then...

A split level. Dining area.

Kitchen.

The place is charming enough, but...

“Lived in,” she says out loud, and Ava turns her way curiously. “Your place—its lived in.”

“Well, not really my place since I’m renting” –Ava opens the top door of her fridge— “but it’s close to everything, and work’s not that far either so...I like it.”

A frozen bag of peas is produced, Deborah holding them to her fingers while Ava turns the fridge jug into a vase for the sunflowers.

“Good to see you’re still drinking water, although I don’t recommend that.” She points to the grit already floating from the stems.

“I still use that bottle I bought on the tour, even though it tastes hella plasticky now.”

“My reusable cup’s in the car.”

Deborah knows what they’re saying to one another:

I miss that time we had together enough to hold onto something of it.

“Where did you park?”

Deborah tilts her head in the general direction. “Up the street. What are my chances of seeing it again?”

“There’s crime everywhere,” Ava says in that millennial, matter-of-fact way Deborah has somehow missed.

Lord.

“Plus, it’s not like you can’t afford another twenty of them.” Ava reaches for her gift on the kitchen bench. “Can I open this now?”

Deborah nods.

Ava pulls the nondescript box from the plastic, setting it down in front of her, before lifting the lid and pulling it out.

She sees it register on Ava’s face, the perplexity with the heartache.

A snow globe from a town in the goddamn desert.

Where Ava left the last bit of her father.

“D, this is...”

Deborah knows which fact the girl focuses on by her sudden smile.

“...so stupid. I love it.”

Ava turns it upside down, sets it right and watches the flakes of white sprinkle themselves around the tiny thermometer.

“I needed a refill and a break, so I stopped off there—saw the globes and knew you’d find it moronic.”

“And ironic.” Ava laughs quickly. “And iconic.”

“But not as much as me, right?”

Ava smiles. “Nothing outshines Deborah—”

Something buzzes.

“Yes! Sushi, here I come.”

Deborah laughs.

Ava moves backward through the space like she’s coordinated. Like she’s taken this path a thousand times. “Looks like you’re second fiddle to raw fish for the next twenty minutes, D.”

“Darn—just when I was about to ask you to go steady with me.”

Ava catches her heel on a chair and stumbles a little, regaining her balance and smiling. “You didn’t see that.”

“Right. Like when I didn’t see you nude texting your ex in my basement.”

Ava finger guns her and says, “All part of my seduction,” before turning and descending the stairs.

“It isn’t working!” Deborah yells after her, laughing to herself.

You’re full of shit! is the reply.

Indeed.

---

There’s a moment of confusion when Ava meets her at the foot of the stairs, hands full of her takeout and Deborah with plates, glasses, and the only bottle of something close to drinkable tucked under her arm.

“I can set the table, D—I don’t have place mats or fancy silverware but—”

“Actually, after that drive I just want something soft to sit on, so the couch is good.”

Ava looks a little shocked. “You sure? I swear I can park my slob tendencies for the night.”

“You have a stain of something on your t-shirt, so I doubt that.”

Ava looks down at it. “I think you’ll find these are yellow stars, not mustard stains.”

Deborah follows her gaze and squints.

She’s right.

And now she’s staring at Ava’s chest, in direct contradiction to their conversation moments ago.

Words scrawled there on the blue, clearer now that she’s closer and there’s adequate light for her eyes.

Eat the rich

but spare

Dolly Parton

Kiki’s pep talk comes back to her, and she chuckles to herself at the coincidence.

“Glad my boobs inspire your humor as well as my comic intellect.”

She laughs harder and Ava stills, her face changing to...

Something akin to...

Wonderment.

Hazel eyes are bright with it.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she tells the girl.

She watches as Ava comprehends it.

But there’s a change in those features, a darkening of those eyes, something occurring to the redhead as Deborah looks on.

“Ava?”

She doesn’t get an answer.

The takeout bags are set on the floor, the girl already moving into Deborah’s space to...

Kiss her, teeth and nose pressing in, mouth pursed on hers.

Held there, unmoving.

It’s nothing like the one before.

This is...

Ava pulls back and it’s there in her eyes.

Fear.

“I loved you, and you left me alone on a rooftop.”

A fact.

One she won’t ever undo.

“I know. And I’m so sorry.”

She hears the echo of it from last September.

Can’t quite catch her breath right—

“I went from hearing your laugh every day in person to silence. A court date cancelled. No replies to any of my texts. Not even a polite convo over Luna’s birthday cake. You ghosted me, like I was...” Ava pauses, her eyes watering. “Like I was nothing.”

“No.”

The word is out of her mouth before she fully knows—

She sets everything in her hands on the fourth stair before taking Ava’s, pulling it to her chest.

Fingers still cold from the...

It’s seeping in now and she won’t let it.

She manages a breath and aches all the same.

“I went silent because you were everything, Ava. You are everything.”

A tear spills down the redhead’s cheek, then down the opposite one. “One day I won’t hear you laugh. I’ll be sixty-five and you’ll be gone and there’ll just be silence. I know what that feels like, and I don’t e-ever w-want—”

She lets out a sob and Deborah wraps her arms around her, drawing her close.

“I’m here, you sweet girl.” She kisses hair. “I’m here. I’m here.”

She says it a few more times as the collar of her flannel dampens, as she hurts for this wonderful woman in her arms.

It strengthens her resolve to stay.

But she needs to take this from Ava now.

Before she can put it into practice, she needs to use her words.

“I love you, Ava Daniels. I swear I'll make that night up to you. Treat you the way I should have. I got scared and I—I found a reason to push you away and it was a mistake. One of the worst I’ve ever made. But I’m going to fix it now, with my words and with my actions, if you let me. I wanna be with you. I want a relationship. And I know there’ll be times we’ll be in two different cities, because I want you to stay in LA and keep climbing your mountain, but I can meet you halfway. I can fly in, and you can fly out and we’ll make it work. You and I are going to have thirty-eight incredible years together, if you want that. Longer if I lay off the McDonalds ice-cream fries.”

Ava looks up at her, disbelieving, still crying. “Y-you didn’t.”

“I did. I also got the clap from one of their toilet seats, so if you ever wanna show off just how much I love you to these LA people, give me a yell and I’ll photocopy my STD results to hand out around town.”

Ava breaths out her grief. “Y-you could just—submit a b-blind item to Deux Moi to save time?”

“Due-what?”

Ava lets out a watery chuckle and Deb draws her good hand up to brush those tears away.

Gentle skin on skin.

Understanding between them now.

She lets Ava settle slowly, continuing her ministrations until the flow has stemmed.

“Can I tell you about it tomorrow?” Ava asks.

A simple request.

But it feels like a start. Like it weighs so much more than the sentence itself.

A version of I wanna be with you too.

Deborah swallows the lump in her throat. “I’d love that.”

A promise.

For their life together.

“How about we eat that sushi of yours” –Deborah tucks a flyaway hair behind Ava’s ear— “and you can tell me how you know a guy called Michael Bolton.”

Ava’s mouth opens in surprise, before, “Kiki.”

Deborah nods. “I strong-armed her into it so don’t be too hard on her. I liked the songs. Kind of helped me see things from your perspective. Even the Celine cover.”

Ava ducks her head, embarrassed.

Deborah falls in love with her all over again.

“Especially Celine,” she whispers, leaning forward to kiss the girl's hairline.

A minute shift happens then.

Deborah feels her skin prickle with it.

The warmth and proximity of Ava. The love she has for her. The steadying of their relationship now that Deborah’s used her words. Now that she’s chosen to face the indelible fact of where her heart’s been for months.

It all culminates.

Quickens that re-found heart of hers. Ignites something forgotten, something extinguished.

Desire.

Different to her stranger in Kansas.

He’d been unfamiliar; a strange, thrilling entity she’d taken in for the night.

An ego boost.

Ava is something else entirely.

She belongs here in Deborah’s arms.

At the cusp of—

Hazel eyes look up and look back at her, and she knows the redhead sees it.

Deborah smooths her hand down Ava’s back, leaving it low enough for suggestion.

“Look at you, making the first move.”

“Is that okay?”

Ava nods. “I’m all about consent enthusiasm, you know. So, I’m gonna check in now: do you want me to make you feel like a natural woman?”

Deborah tsks but says yes anyway.

“Just one yes, or a million times yes?”

She fights the eye roll, but it’s difficult. “You’ve got the chance to take inspiration from that t-shirt of yours and you’re still trying to be funny?”

Fierceness comes back to Ava’s face. “Have you found the off button to your humor? Because I still haven’t found mine. That U2 dude was right about something. And besides—it’s the best thing about me.”

“The best thing about you is your couch—as in take me there.”

“Oh, I’ll take you there,” Ava says, wiggling her eyebrows.

Deborah can’t help it. She giggles. “All the people in the world and I got stuck with you.”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure Cher’s still single if—”

Deborah doesn’t wait.

She kisses Ava, tasting the remnants of salt, and slides her hand lower.

---

They make out on the couch for a long time.

She feels like a goddamn teenager, thrilled by Ava’s body above hers, the simple press of it and presence of it heavenly.

Her skin tingling with anticipation, even though they’re still fully clothed.

Ava’s tongue licking at hers and making her think of...

Other places Ava might...

She moans into their kiss, deepening it, flickers of her dreams and real life converging.

The gentle caress of fingers to her ribs, just below her bra.

Ava slipping over the swell of her breast, to press in. Her nipple responding, perking up against the fabric in between.

Deborah sinks into the couch pillow, drawing away from that wonderful mouth.

Eyes are wide above her.

Just as affected.

A flash of doubt appears as a hand lifts, stretching her undershirt and flannel. “Is that okay?”

Deborah nods and leans up to kiss her lightly.

The hand returns.

She thinks of Ava in the basement, bare skin, all too brief.

She wants to tell her.

Needs to.

“I saw you, and I...” She isn’t sure where she’s going, but... “I joked about your tits on the bus to all those people, and then...two nights after I came home from LA, I had a sex dream about you. And seeing you with your top open suddenly got reframed. It turned me on.”

She surprises Ava with the admission.

“I was grieving for the loss of you,” she continues, “and my mind filled in a solution to that loneliness. I woke up with your name on my lips and a hand in my pajama bottoms. Spent weeks trying to find pleasure in picturing Marty, picturing Jason, fucking them in my mind as I touched myself to try and be half as turned on as I was in that dream. To the memory of you in the basement.”

She hears Ava breathe, the sound stuttery and shallow.

“What was I doing in your dream?”

She steadies herself. “You kissed your way down my body—slipped my pajamas off and put your mouth on me.”

Deborah feels Ava’s hips sink into her, searching for that deliciousness.

“You buried yourself in me and—”

Ava moans unexpectedly, and Deborah throbs.

She sees heat in eyes when they open. The quick appearance of mischief in her smile.

“The night before DJ’s birthday-slash-engagement-slash-wedding, I had one about you.”

Deborah inhales.

“We were in my hotel bed, and you kissed me. It was soft and warm and then housekeeping woke me. But it felt like a morning after. Like we’d...”

The thought of Ava being affected the way she’d been all those weeks is...

Very appealing.

She remembers how different Ava had looked that night, shoulders bare, with a full face on.

But she’d been distracted, her mind on a million different things, and hadn’t yet...

Seen Ava.

So much time wasted, when—

“Deb?”

She comes back to the present, finding Ava peering at her with deep concentration.

“Sorry.”

“You okay?”

She nods and reaches her hand up to brush at Ava’s ear. “I don’t think I saw how pretty you were that night.”

Ava’s lips turn up at the edges before her head turns to kiss Deborah’s palm.

Remarkable with her care of her.

Deborah’s wall cracks a little more.

She directs that cheek back in her direction with the tips of her fingers, thumb settling on the curve of Ava’s bottom lip. Running across the expanse of it.

“I love you,” Ava says.

And then she’s taking Deborah’s thumb into her mouth, just past her fingernail, out again, and then further in.

Never looking away.

Deborah’s hips definitely jut up to find something.

Not enough.

“Hope you’re as good at sex as my fantasy version of you.”

Ava smiles around a mouthful and Deborah knows why.

She’s about to be devoured.

---

“The flannel is kinda doing it for me,” Ava says against her collarbone, open mouthing her skin.

“Really?”

“Duh. I once saw you wielding a knife in that thing, it’s hot as fuck.”

“It was a cleaver, and I can leave it on, if you—I really just want out of my bra.”

“Of course, I got you.”

She gets pulled up and undressed, Ava straddling her, Deborah kissing her around garments and knowing she wants to try this position sometime soon.

Ava looks dumbstruck when her chest is finally bare.

“Guessing you’re a boob girl?”

Ava wakes up and laughs to herself. “They’re glorious.”

Deborah loves this silly fool.

She helps herself back into her flannel as she lets Ava look, warmth low in her belly as she lies back down, unbuttoned.

“Take that blue off,” she says firmly.

Ava drags it up and away, and Deborah sees a black bra.

Definitely new.

“What happened to your eighth-grade atrocities?”

“Gotta grow up sometime.”

She thinks she might be a boob girl as—

Ava kisses her squarely on the mouth and she forgets whatever it...

---

Her body is thrumming.

Kisses speckled across her collarbone, in the expanse of her chest, freckles mapped and memorized.

Nipples taken in, one by one, by a very capable mouth. Fingers and hands gentle, palming, kneading, delightful.

A lot of time spent there.

She communicates her appreciation, breathy murmurs and whispered declarations of love, Ava revelling in it, Deborah realizing somewhere in the back of her mind the girl needs that.

Needs to be—

Teeth bite at her nipple and she inhales her surprise, feeling it at the apex of her legs.

She is wet.

Hips searching still.

Ava laughs softly, slipping her thigh between...

Deborah grinds up into it and moans. “Jesus fuck, Ava...”

Then it’s removed, Deborah barely managing not to whine.

Barely.

Eyes find hers and it’s a wicked look, full of cockiness.

Deborah snaps her bra in response.

“Oh my god, are you twelve?”

“Are you a clit tease?”

“It’s called foreplay, Deborah. I doubt Marty would’ve known the word, but surely your Memphis meathead showed you a thing or two.”

Deborah laughs mockingly. “That photo in my car is blue, Ava, not green.”

“You think I’m jealous of Marty Ghilain?”

A burst of laughter follows the sentence, so hearty Deborah can’t help but join in too.

God, she’s missed this.

“I love you,” Ava says suddenly, her laughter dying off. “I love your laugh, and your fire and you giving me shit. I—I love that you tried fries with a sundae—”

“Oreo McFlurry—”

“—for me, and I love that you always have to correct me, even when it’s just ice cream.”

“Well, inaccuracy is the devil’s true handiwork. Alongside lesbianism and witchcraft.”

Ava cackles. “We’re two from three tonight.”

Deborah reaches for the redhead’s neck and guides her up, kissing her softly. “An argument could be made for the witchcraft, since this all feels...”

She hesitates with the m word, because she’s Deborah fucking Vance and she’s been reduced to saccharine sentimentality by a Dolly Parton t-shirt wearing chimney sweep of an extraordinary woman.

And it must show, somehow, because Ava chuckles under her breath, and lets her off the hook with a kiss.

Deborah deepens it, grateful Ava knows her so well.

---

Her belly is sucked and nibbled at, teeth scraping there, instructed not to leave a mark on visible skin but Deborah letting her have her way now.

She feels her pants unbuttoned and unzipped as Ava mouths her skin, wet trails somehow burning.

Ava slips from her to pull the fabric down, taking her underwear with it.

Fingers come back, soft on her ankles.

Hazel eyes snap back to her gaze.

“You okay, D?”

She’s practically naked and...

Confusion hits her. “Wait, are you okay?”

Ava’s brow knots. “You’re trembling.”

Oh.

Oh.

She hadn’t even...

“It’s just...a lot, I suppose.”

Her first time with a woman.

With Ava.

With all these feelings—

“We can stop, if you want.”

Ava moves her hands from her body and Deborah can’t—

She can’t be without her anymore.

“Come back to me,” she says, holding out her bruised fingers for Ava to take.

And despite the months in between, the silence, the hurt, the weight of absence that Deborah has caused and will need to make amends for, Ava meets her halfway.

Ava takes her hand carefully and settles in between her legs and licks a pathway to salvation for her.

Deborah Vance lets herself be led there, allowing it all; every soft sigh; every deep moan; every shudder and iteration of Ava’s name spilling from her lips and from her soul.

A hand curling around a loose ponytail of red as Ava slips inside her.

The other one safe and warm in Ava’s, right at the edge of her flannel.

Deborah melting back to her baseline on the way to the top of her mountain, Ava her guide.

Her only one.

Her...

Hazel eyes tilt up and look at her, and she holds them, panting, trying to convey just how good Ava is at this, how remarkable she is.

She needs words but language seems far too difficult now, too inadequate for what she wants to say.

So she grips that hair a little tighter, and lifts her hips a little more.

Listens to Ava’s sucking, tasting, delving of her pussy, as fingers reach, expand, orchestrate a symphony from her.

So fucking good.

She moans.

Sees Ava’s eyes crinkle with acknowledgement, with enjoyment, with need.

It’s never been like this.

Never in fifty-five years of...

There’s a connection now.

It means something.

Ava means the world to her.

Ava knows what she’s doing.

Ava knows her.

Ava, Ava, Ava...

It’s building now, the coil tightening in her, Deborah tilting her head back to cry out as a particular wave of pleasure rolls over her.

Fuck...

She feels incredible.

Ava’s tongue is swirling around, against, flicking her clit, and it’s sinful how tethered she is to that moving muscle, how absolutely feral she is for it.

Never trust a man to do a woman’s job...

She huffs out an amused breath in among her labored ones.

Ava is working those fingers against her sweet spot, quicker, stronger into her, and it’s...

Maybe she does believe in heaven.

In something greater, better, purer than...

She knows with steadfast certainty she has faith in this, at least.

Faith in Ava.

Another spark of pleasure races through her and she cries out again.

Ava is grinning with her eyes and it’s so fucking disgustingly beautiful she falls head over heels once more.

Her woman.

Her love.

Her beginning at seventy-one.

She wants it now.

Now will suffice.

“More,” she croaks out, feeling Ava obey.

Grinding up into that mouth, legs trembling again, different than before...

It’s rolling through her regularly now, her voice in the air, begging, moaning, eyes closed, muscles straining, nothing but her hand gripping Ava’s head, holding her right there, right there, right—

Wound tighter and tighter, and—

Tongue, tongue, tongue—

Deborah hits her peak, and then she’s hurtling through a bunch of curses and Ava’s name and seeing stars, and this love—

Wave after wave of bliss, as her body shudders in response, her walls pulsating, tingling, shrinking to enclose—

Ava.

Still working her fingers and mouth, still going, still loving Deborah in this ecstasy, this exultation, this building up once more to—

To—

To—

To—

To—

She cries out again, and again, body shaking with divine release, Ava’s name there and Ava there and—

Reprieve.

Sweet, sweet respite as her body comes down, as she tries to find her breath, as she tingles in the after—

Something touches her thigh, and its sticky.

Deborah peels her eyes open to see, sucking in air.

Ava is looking at her between her collapsed legs, and—

She’s moving in a rhythm, forward and back, and—

Deborah realizes she’s searching for her own pleasure in the friction.

She sits up quickly, body aching, the move jarring Ava from her trance, forcing her to move as well.

“Take your jeans off. Let me—”

“You don’t have—”

“Take them off now.”

The look she gets is blazing.

That position.

She wants that position she’d thought about before.

Ava stands on wobbly legs at the edge of the couch and Deborah reaches to steady her at the waist, putting her feet on the floor.

There’s a sheen of sweat on Ava’s skin and Deborah wants to lick it all up.

Wants to taste the glistening of herself still on the redhead’s chin.

She wants to return the favor.

But she’s far too—

The flannel is discarded as a pair of jeans and a flash of black are thrown away.

She can smell Ava’s arousal and it’s energizing, even as her muscles ache.

Deborah slips her hands around Ava’s back and unclasps her bra, saying, “I think I’m a boob girl too.”

Ava whimpers and sinks forward into her embrace, Deborah kissing the space between them, licking skin, feeling the heat radiating from—

“Sit back so I can kneel.”

Deborah does as she’s told and Ava straddles her, knees by her hips, already rocking into her, searching—

She draws her hand between them and finds Ava’s stubble, slipping her thumb into a wet divot in search of a clitoris.

The girl bucks into her and cries out, Deborah kissing the sound from her lips, tasting herself.

Works at that clit as Ava grinds into her.

A validating achievement.

Right up there with 2,500 shows.

With a comedy special sold out in—

Ava moans.

Deborah can do one better.

She finds a nipple with her mouth and sucks it in, mirroring Ava’s technique from before with her tongue.

The soreness of her body is simple background noise to Ava’s panting, Ava everywhere, Ava’s pleasure her only goal, her only—

Her only—

Hands are gripping at her back, in her hair, and it spurs her on, Ava wet and slick and riding her—

She draws up to find hazel eyes. “Is it always this good?”

Ava nods and cries out her name and Deborah finds another gear, another speed for this marvelous—

“Keep going, I’m so close, baby, I’m so close, use your teeth, use your teeth, D...”

She bites just enough on a nipple for Ava to lose her rhythm, bucking with wild abandon, panting harder, quicker, moaning her name, moaning—

And then—

Ava lets out a series of grunts as she climaxes, Deborah feeling her body shake, before slumping forward against her, boneless.

She stills her thumb and feels the ache in her wrist begin as she wraps it around a waist.

Inhales oxygen with Ava, basking in the proximity of her after being without.

It’s...

She blinks away the tears before they begin and kisses a clammy shoulder instead.

A rudimentary ice pack for her aches and a quiet cry when she’s alone will be her recovery.

Right now, though, Ava’s the one recovering, and humming her satisfaction.

She knows their first time has gone well.

Knows it’s the best sex she’s ever had.

A twenty-six-year-old woman ate you up like you were white truffle.

She laughs quietly to herself.

Isn’t terribly surprised when Ava draws back to give her a questioning look.

It’s time.

Time to give her shit.

“You reminded me of that Marty sex joke,” she breathes in, “Nearly stopped mid-bite.”

She sees it dawn on Ava, her flushed post-sex skin absolutely hiding a blush.

It’s quickly replaced by a squaring of shoulders. A leveling stare. “Of course the fabulous and equally hilarious Deborah Vance would leave a girl with blue beans.”

“You and your blue things.”

“Says you with your car and reusable cup. Neither of which you’ve gotten rid of.” Ava wipes her hand against the skin of her hip. “Kiki’s been waiting six months already.”

“Well, it’s probably getting stolen as we speak so I’ll just buy her a new one alongside mine. Maybe red this time.”

“Oh god, please don’t get red—ugh. You’re already rich as fuck, don’t look like you’re having a midlife crisis too.”

“That’s what you’re for, sweetheart.”

Ava rolls her eyes as she breathes, and Deborah loves her for it.

Kisses her softly.

Ava reaches up to pull her hair loose. “The LED ceiling option they have is pretty cool though. If you’re in the mood to try something different.”

Deborah helps smooth it down. Almost gets a strand stuck in her finger tape. “Let me guess, you also want a proper back seat so we can fuck under the proverbial stars?”

Ava grins and looks down at their naked bodies. “One fuck at a time, D.”

“Oh, this is continuing? You’ll have to forgive me, I’m a sixty-one-year-old woman who drove for nearly six hours to” –she air quotes with her fingers— “eat sushi with the love of her life. My days of fucking all night are over.”

“First of all, you’re seventy-one, and secondly, we both know you never had those days. Every guy after Frank was a two-pump patsy.”

Deborah snorts. “Oh, you can include him in that. But not Memphis meathead. He at least got me somewhere. Had the added bonus of having roommates.”

Ava laughs, “The horror.”

“One of them was sitting on my coat.”

“Double horror.”

Ava is enjoying the bit, and it’s...

Kind of unfathomable that she is too.

That they’re sweaty and smelly and in some strange...

Post-sex bubble, where she’s not trying to escape, or hide under a sheet, or put on airs.

It’s just the two of them.

And it’s—

Divine.

Exactly what she wants for the rest of her life.

Do it.

Now.

“Marry me.”

“What?”

“Marry me, Ava.”

“I know what you said, it was more of a what the fuck is going on type of sitch, because we just had sex for the first time and I know I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

Ava looks ready to argue the point and—

“I don’t mean about the sex. You’ve been good for me. To me. We wrote a show together and it helped me reconnect with DJ.” She squeezes Ava’s hip. “My baby girl had a baby, and I was there to see it, because I let the wall be chipped away and didn’t patch it up. I didn’t hide behind it. You hammered at it every day we were together, and I want you to do it again because...it was the closest I got to being myself in years.”

She can see Ava processing her words as she says them, but the girls whole body sags after her last sentence, so much that a forehead meets her nose, and...

Deborah steels her jaw to keep from panicking.

She fails.

Please.

Please don’t let me have ruined—

“I hate that,” Ava suddenly murmurs, eyes closed, unmoving.

Deborah can’t find her words. Can’t think of how to—

“I hate that you’ve spent years feeling like that. Like you aren’t the most profoundly magical human being on the planet.”

A head lifts and hazel eyes meet hers, and she can see it:

Ava’s belief in her words.

Ava’s belief in her.

The panic dissolves.

“You’re the best thing to ever happen to me,” Ava says softly, assuredly.

It steals her breath.

Except the joke comes still, because she can’t help it— “That’s because you’re a fetus.”

“So, I’m a fetus when I offer you my truth but I’m not when I’m hitting your G-spot?”

“Exactly.”

Ava huffs out a note and shakes her head.

Deborah kisses her bottom lip in recompense.

Pulls away before the moment goes.

“What’s the smallest thing in the world?”

“You mean, like a proton?”

“That’s it.” Deborah wraps her arms around Ava and holds her gaze. “Deej is number one, but you’re a proton behind her when it comes to the highlight reel of my life.”

Ava grins like Deborah’s hit the jackpot of compliments. “Yes,” she says.

“I thought you’d like that.”

“No, D. Yes.”

The brightness of Ava’s eyes, the crinkling of them, clicks it into place.

Oh.

“You don’t have to say it right now,” Deborah amends, “I just wanted to make sure you know that I’m committed to this. Committed to us.”

“I know. It’s still a yes.”

“I’ll get rings and hire a goddamn orchestra and spend a ridiculous amount of money on it all, and I’ll propose properly, okay?”

Ava reaches behind her for Deborah’s hands, pulling them around into the space between them. A serious look now. “I don’t need all that. I just need you.”

Deborah can be serious too. She flattens her bruised fingers to Ava’s collarbone. “That’s just too bad, because the fiancé of Deborah Vance will be getting serenaded by Michael Bolton himself.”

Ava snorts. “What, no Celine D, D?”

“Only if you want your ring to go from fifteen carats to four.”

“Don’t you dare get me diamonds. Conflict free or not. I will lose that shit quicker than Will Smith lost his. A simple wedding band will do just fine.”

“Simple wedding band. How boring. I might as well just give you the tape off my fingers.”

“I’m okay with that.”

Ava’s words are spoken simply.

Deborah can tell she means it too.

She looks at her hand. “They’ve got sweat and tears and foundation on them.”

“Don’t forget McDonalds grease.”

“That’s the other hand. The one I touched you with.”

“So, what you’re saying is McDonalds needs to buy the copyrights to the finger-licking good slogan KFC dropped?”

Deborah cackles. “Either that or you really might want to flush out that urinary tract of yours.”

Ava laughs so hard she jostles them on the couch.

Deborah loves her a little more.

She will put a ring on it.

She reaches for that wayward sliver of tape, peeling it back around, feeling the twinge in her fingers as it pulls.

“Don’t hurt...”

Ava doesn’t finish her sentence.

Instead, she helps.

She always has.

The strip comes free from the middle of her fingers, and she takes it from Ava, reaching for her left hand.

Winds it around the woman’s ring finger, where she’ll place one soon.

Covered in remnants of the day.

No longer a crisp white but pure just the same.

“There.” She admires her handiwork. “Just until I don’t buy you that diamond.”

She looks up and hazel eyes are watering.

“Hey now, we don’t need those anymore.” She brushes at Ava’s cheeks when they spill, as her own blossom.

So much for that recovery time of hers.

“I love you,” Ava says in her tears.

“Love you too,” Deborah tells her, swallowing down her emotions before they—

Her bruised fingers are taken by Ava, who picks at the edge of the remaining tape.

“You need one too,” she says, licking at her lip and sniffling.

Deborah watches as she unwinds it from three fingers, painstakingly careful, before she reapplies it to one.

“Finished. Actually—just beginning.”

Two makeshift rings.

For this permanent love.

---

Her car is still there.

Ava double parks her Volvo so they can switch spots, the lesser of two evils.

Deborah puts the blue photo in her center console, content with the real thing.

“Could’ve saved myself a whole lot of trouble if I’d just called you,” she says as Ava’s rolling down her garage door, the Rolls safe behind it.

“True, but would I have this one-of-a-kind ring?” Ava holds her hand up in the moonlight. “No, I don’t think so.”

---

Despite Ava’s protests on the matter, she showers alone, the water pressure terrible but Ava’s body wash soothing her aches.

“The showers free,” she says just as she’s entering the living room, towel drying her hair, her pajamas gentle on her skin.

Ava is on the phone, and she gets a thumbs up.

She tilts her head. Everything okay?

Ava nods, understanding. She mouths work to her.

Deborah wonders if Ava will be wanted on Monday as she finds her container of night creams in her suitcase.

She might as well text DJ.

She finds her phone and her glasses and briefly notes Ava moving off into the kitchen before heading back down the hallway.

The bedroom is small, just like Ava said it was, but the bed is surprisingly made, and it’s—

Her eyes find Ava’s bedside table, and the photo there.

She puts her glasses on, moving toward it, surely mistaken.

But it’s...

It’s her younger self, frozen in time at the Ha Ha Club, microphone in hand.

Stolen from a wall by Ava, just like she’s stolen Deborah’s heart.

She sits on the edge of the bed and holds the frame in her hands as she lets herself have a good cry.

You got there, she tells that young face.

You got it all.

You got her.

Ava shouts her plan to have a quick shower down the hallway and Deborah manages a steady ok, feeling a little better with the endorphin release.

She probably has fifteen minutes before the water goes cold on Ava.

The frame gets put back where it belongs.

Her thoughts turn to DJ and she wipes her face, letting her phone recognize her before sliding her glasses on once more.

Hey sweetheart. I made it here. Ava has

Deborah pauses her finger.

Open and transparent.

She deletes the start of her last line.

Ava kissed me as soon as I arrived. We’re together now. I know we’ll make it work.

She sends the text.

But she has more to say.

Will always have more to say to her baby.

She keeps it simple.

Thanks for the push. Love you xoxo

---

Ava appears ten minutes later, and Deborah laughs under her breath.

Of course.

The girl is wearing her flannel and nothing else, three buttons her only means of modesty.

“You could’ve gotten into bed.”

Deborah sees the shifting of her eyes to the photo frame, and back to her still sitting on Ava’s side.

A further registering of something.

Perhaps her puffy eyes or blotchy skin.

“Are you okay?”

She settles beside Deborah, kinking one leg up so she can face her.

Deborah slides her hand along a bare thigh. “I am. Just needed a moment to decompress.” She changes tack. “You’re in my flannel.”

“It smells like you.”

No pretense at all.

Not a shred of self-consciousness or embarrassment.

Deborah’s going to learn a thing or two from this woman.

“Has anyone ever told you how amazing you are?”

Ava blushes only then, and ducks her head.

Deborah makes a promise to herself to compliment her each day for the rest of her life.

Thirty-eight years and counting.

But for now, she’ll let her off the hook.

“Do you have anywhere to be tomorrow?”

Ava shakes her head. “Just a last meeting on Monday before the holidays. Which I can zoom in on from anywhere, if...”

“You wanna meet AJ?”

“Yeah—if that’s okay.”

“Of course it is.” She squeezes Ava’s thigh. “How about we drive back to Vegas on Sunday and sleep in tomorrow.”

Ava overcompensates with her shock. “The Deborah M Vance still in bed after five fifteen a.m.? You really are lovestruck.”

Deborah takes a chance and wiggles her eyebrows.

Ava snorts. “Please don’t ever do that again, your wrinkles will come back and you’ll have to see Perla.”

“Oh, fuck.” She reaches for her La Mer, opening the lid. “Quick, help me fight the signs of aging.”

“Jeez—two orgasms and you still want more.”

“Well, if you wake up with me at five fifteen tomorrow, I can repay you with a joint round of cardio?”

“We’re talking about morning sex, right? Not walking around Los Feliz?”

Deborah nods and dabs cream on her cheek, nose, and cheek, a little surprised when Ava draws closer and reaches to caress it into her skin.

“Seems only fair I try and outdo your sex dream.”

Ava grins and kisses her, getting cream everywhere.

---

They spend all Saturday making love, talking, and watching SVU.

The snow globe finds its way to a bedside table with a photo frame on it.

Mementos from before and from now on.

---

“I can’t believe you made me buy carrot sticks for the drive—what am I, Amish?”

“They’re better for you than Cheetos, or whatever else your garbage compactor mouth was planning on eating. At least you got to sign that autograph.”

Ava looks very happy about that. “I’m a star, baby!”

“Okay, don’t get a big head, there’s only room for one ego here.”

They reach the car and Deborah pauses as she opens the driver door, looking across the Gelson’s car park toward the traffic lights.

Again. She has to do it again.

“Ava?”

Yeah? comes from the passenger seat.

She drops her head to see the girl looking back, brow furrowed. “Do you think you could get us out of LA in one piece?”

“You want me to drive?”

She nods.

“Okay. But I’m stopping if I see a yellow light.”

She goes to protest but Ava holds up her left hand, makeshift ring visible. “That’s the rule.”

They switch sides and Ava has the gall to adjust the seat and check the mirrors.

“Don’t give me that look—”

“There’s no—”

Ava points at her face. “That one,” but she’s half smiling already, not really upset. “I wanna enjoy driving my woman home so I might as well be comfortable doing that, yes?”

Deborah answers with the biggest sigh she can muster, not upset either.

“Let’s put some music on and appreciate each other’s company, okay? You choose the tunes, looney toon.”

Deborah opens her phone as Ava eases them out of the car spot.

There’s only one thing she wants to hear.

Her playlist for Ava.

The girl notices the title on the infotainment screen as Elton gets into it.

“You know you can edit the title, right? It doesn’t have to be This One. I only named it that so you’d know which one it was.”

“How do I do that?”

Ava’s eyes stay on the road as she talks Deborah through it. “So now you can call it what you want.”

The answer is obvious.

Deborah types in the three letters and saves it.

It changes on the screen and she waits for Ava to have time to look, proud that she’s concentrating.

They stop at a yellow, because of course they do.

She watches as Ava’s head tilts across, seeing eyes widen, before they snap to her.

“You have one too?”

Deborah nods. “They remind me of you. They’ve been reminding me of...what I had and lost.”

Ava reaches for her hand, the bruises purple now. Tape still adorning their fingers, even though the strips have wrinkled.

“You found it again, D. You found me.”

Deborah pulls their hands up and kisses Ava’s fingers. “I did. And I won’t be letting go.”

She holds Ava’s hand off and on as they escape LA, as words and melody surround the girl, the way they’ve surrounded Deborah the last nine months and twelve days.

There are definitely tears involved.

But there’s also a lot of laughs, and Deborah realizes, as she feeds a reluctant Ava another carrot stick, that this just might be what happiness is.

---

When DJ wakes her later on in the week, baby monitor in her hand, Ava singing a silly, made-up song to AJ through its tiny but strong speaker, she’s certain of it.

Happiness.

Seventy-one years in the making.

FIN

deborah's playlist for ava: this one

ava's playlist for deborah: {d}