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Later, when Taissa asks who the fuck came up with this idea, they’ll lie and say it was Natalie.
“What if you pierced my ears?” Lottie says, biting into an apple.
Natalie laughs. They’re drinking fancy rosé on Lottie’s back porch, half-drunk in the hot afternoon sun. Jackie and Shauna are in Nantucket, because the Taylors go every 4th of July and Shauna is basically Jackie’s left rib. She doesn't know where Tai is—probably SAT prep or some shit. Van would know. Lottie’s mom is in Tokyo, or so she thinks—Lot can't keep track of her. She’s sort of like Nat and Van in that sense, except she’s got a maid to keep her fridge full instead of a mom to clean up after.
“Sure, Princess,” Natalie drawls out, “I can do that for you.”
Lottie chews and swallows. “I’m serious.”
“Really?” Natalie raises her eyebrows.
Lottie nods, gesturing with her apple. It matches the shape of her face. Natalie can't help but snicker.
“I’m sorry,” Van interrupts, laughing. She has her feet in Lottie’s pool, her hair fanned out across the deck and a pair of Lottie’s sunglasses over her eyes. “What about that story makes you want Nat to pierce your ears?”
Natalie fakes offense. “Excuse you!”
“She didn’t do the piercing,” Lottie says, “she got pierced. Big difference there.”
“Yeah!” Natalie shows Van the fresh wound again, dangling from her ear. It hurts, a bit, because Gil kind of fucked up the angle of the needle, but Nat doesn't care all that much.
“Hmm,” Van says. The baby seals on her shirt scrunch up their smiles as she sits up. “I mean, yeah, fair.”
“And I wouldn’t leave Lot with an infection,” Nat adds. She glances over at the brunette and flashes her confidence. “I know the right way to do it.”
Lottie starts standing up. Her yellow bathing suit clings to her hips, riding up just enough that Natalie can see the inner slope of her thigh.
“Uh,” Natalie smirks, a bit baffled. "Now?”
“Yeah, I mean, what else are we doing?” Lottie waves her hand across the empty backyard, where the summer heat has started to dull the green grass yellow. A single floatie duck lays on its side, shipwrecked at the edge of the pool. Natalie turns back to Lottie, whose eyes twinkle. “Better here than going to Claire’s.”
“You know,” Van says, “I have been wanting to do my cartilage.”
Natalie’s eyes are too stuck on Lottie’s sly smile to even spare Van a glance. She shrugs and lets out a chuckle.
“Well, alrighty, then.”
For some reason, they decide to do Van’s first.
“I wanna watch,” Lottie says. She sits on the counter while Van fills a pot with water and Natalie scrambles through her backpack for three safety pins. Lottie wasn’t sure where the pans or the first aid kit were, so it took some sleuthing to gather the supplies. “Besides, you’re doing just one.”
Natalie shrugs at Van. “Cool with you?”
“Sure,” Van nods, turning on the stovetop. Natalie drops the pins into the water and watches as Lottie swing her legs back and forth. She's so tall that her feet just barely skim the ground.
Natalie bites her lip and grabs a bag of ice from the fridge.
“Here,” she hands it to Van. “Hold a cube up to your ear.”
They set up in the nearest bathroom: ice, a towel, rubbing alcohol, the cork from their first wine bottle. Lottie opens another when she realizes they have to wait for the pins to boil. (“Oh, really?” “Yeah, Princess, that’s how you avoid infection.”) They pass the bottle around, taking slow sips. Liz Phair plays on the radio. Despite standing over the fancy vent blasting cool air through Lottie’s kitchen, Natalie feels warm. Two melting ice cubes and sweat bathe Van’s collar a dark green. Lottie looks unbothered, chewing on a piece of ice. Natalie watches her take long licks as water drips down her fingers.
“Alright,” Natalie says a solid five minutes later. “Let’s go.”
She makes Van sit on the toilet seat and puts Lottie to work.
“You’re gonna clean off her ear, and I’m going to sanitize the pin.”
Lottie frowns, pouting. “Well, didn’t you just do that?”
“We’re doing this right, so yeah,” Natalie wets two cotton balls with rubbing alcohol, “we’re sanitizing again.”
Lottie rolls her eyes, and Natalie has to stop herself from gritting her teeth at the sight of her dark lashes brushing against her cheeks. She leans over Van, her long curls hiding the redhead’s face. Natalie washes her hands and watches Lottie’s boobs slip ever so slightly from their tight position beneath her bikini top.
“Van,” Nat says, picking up the needle. The tip glimmers like nickel, like the barbed wire behind her mom’s trailer, like the sterling silver fridge in Lottie’s kitchen. “You ready?”
She glances over quickly to catch Van’s nod.
“Okay, you remove the ice," she explains as she finishes sanitizing, "and Lottie’s going to hand you the cork, yeah? You hold it there while I stick you. Should only take a second.”
Natalie moves fast, her hands twitching at the thought of Lottie instead of Van laid out, exposing her tan soft lobe for Nat's needle. It’s only after she’s starting to poke through Van’s ear that she realizes the redhead is whiter than a ghost. So white, she's almost green.
Fuck.
Van has two piercings in each ear lobe and is tougher than most people she knows, but neither is an excuse for Natalie forgetting that her childhood best friend has never done very well with blood.
“Shit,” she says as Van’s eyes roll into the back of her head.
“Um, hi, Mr. Turner…" Lottie's voice trembles on the phone, "is Taissa home yet?”
She's pissed.
“What the fuck happened?”
Natalie ushers Taissa inside, feeling the shame that must be visible on her face. “Look, Tai, it was just an experiment—”
“We just thought it would be easier,” Lottie says from down the hallway, “and Van wanted—”
“Where is she?”
Van is as pale as the bathroom tile, shaking like a leaf. The second she came to, she started hyperventilating. Luckily, Natalie had already forced Mrs. Matthews’ sterling silver hoop through the hole the needle made, or Van probably would've puked. After a second of shock, Lottie started to rub Van’s back awkwardly, which helped to calm the other girl a little. But Lottie’s not the person to call in a panic, and Nat’s not the person to rub someone’s back for longer than ten seconds. It took them less than ten seconds more to decide to call Taissa, who now takes Van by the shoulders, scanning her face for blood.
She shakes her head. “You dumbasses.”
“Sorry,” Van bites out between heavy breaths. She looks ill. Natalie's stomach pangs with guilt.
“Hush,” Taissa runs a hand over Van's hair. “Are you lightheaded?” She glances over at the door before Van can answer. “Go get her a glass of water.”
Lottie’s quick to follow orders, leaving Nat behind without a second glance. Once she’s gone Taissa takes Van’s face in her hands. Natalie’s always surprised by how soft Tai's face gets when she looks at Van.
“Are you okay? Or am I taking you to the ER?”
“No,” Van pants out. “I’m fine—”
“You’re bleeding, Van, you are not fine—”
“No, I—” She struggles for words. “No, no ER—”
“Okay, okay,” Tai says, stroking Van’s cheeks with her thumbs. “No ER. Deep breaths, baby. No more passing out.”
Natalie doesn’t know if Tai just doesn’t realize she’s still standing there or if she simply doesn’t care.
“Did you just get freaked out?” Tai murmurs. She lets her fingers fall to Van’s neck, tsking as she feels for her pulse.
Van nods. She swallows and grips Tai’s left hand hard. Natalie sees Tai squeeze back.
“For the record,” she starts, slowly, “Van wanted to do it—”
“Shut,” Taissa closes her eyes briefly, her voice positively dripping with anger, “the fuck up, Natalie.”
“Tai,” Van gasps. “It’s—it’s not—”
Taissa frowns at Van's wheezing, momentarily distracted from her own anger.
“Alright, shh,” she soothes. She pats Van's shoulder. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Taissa coaxes Van to drink one glass of water and then orders Lottie back to the kitchen for another. She inspects the hasty bandage Natalie placed over the top of Van’s ear. She gets Van to close her eyes so she can change it, gently peeling the bloodied gauze away before replacing it with fresh cotton. She waits until Van has some color in her cheeks before instructing Natalie to go start her car.
“Do you think,” Lottie says hesitantly, “maybe, um, Van should lay down, first—”
“She’ll lay down at my house,” Taissa says as she wraps an arm around Van’s shoulders. “Far away from you idiots.”
Once Van is reclining in Tai's passenger seat, the door locked firmly behind her so she can’t hear, Taissa lets it all out.
“What the absolute fuck were you two thinking?” Taissa snarls. Lottie flinches, and Natalie blinks. “First of all, piercing her fucking ear in your goddamn guest bathroom? Her cartilage? She could’ve—she still could get an infection. For fuck’s sake, did either of you think for a single goddamn second that maybe this isn't exactly a sterile environment?”
Lottie opens her mouth. “Actually, Nat, uh, sterilized everything—”
“How?” Tai exclaims. “Is this a hospital? Natalie, did you get board certified in the three days I haven’t seen you?”
“No,” Natalie chokes out, “but—”
“Fucking exactly, so what made you decide to poke a hole through her bone —”
“We thought—” Lottie starts again, “she said she wanted—”
“No, actually, you didn’t think,” Tai cuts her off, wagging her finger at them, “because if you had, you would’ve remembered that she hurled and almost passed out when Shauna broke her nose. Last month.”
Natalie looks at the ground, ashamed. Van had gone green and nearly fainted in Mari’s backyard during the sophomore’s sweet sixteenth. She went pale in freshman year biology, too, after Lottie cut her finger with a dissection knife. Natalie remembers how Van’s freckles had stood out on her paper gray face like Natalie’s feet on the pavement, or Lottie’s bright pink toenails against her skin.
Nat feels bad for a half-second longer before she’s thinking about the red dots she marked on Lottie’s ear lobes, and then the red inside of her mouth, and then the red blood rushing through her veins. Taissa’s reprimands fade to the “wah wah wah” of parents in the Peanuts as Natalie brushes the back of her hand against Lottie’s like they’re the horniest versions of Peppermint Patty and Marcie the world has ever seen.
“So,” Lottie murmurs after Taissa finally drives away, Van sleepy in the seat beside her, “are we—”
“Yep,” Natalie says, turning towards the door.
Natalie straddles Lottie’s lap, holding ice cubes behind the other girl’s ears.
“How long?” Lottie asks. She rests her head against the top of the toilet, a smile dancing over her pretty lips.
“Mmmh,” Natalie squeezes her eyes to guess, “minute more, maybe.”
Nat leans forward ever so slightly so their noses brush. Lottie laughs into her mouth, her breath full of apple and antiseptic and wine. Natalie swears she sees tree rings in her dark eyes.
“Okay,” she mutters, sticking her tongue out so it hovers right before Lottie’s teeth, “I think you’re ready.”
She starts to stand up and Lottie grabs hold of her hips, hard. A pinch sticks between Natalie’s thighs.
“Lot,” she groans, “no.”
“Can’t you?” The ice cube slides down Lottie's shirt, leaving a wet streak over her skin in its wake.
Natalie gulps, then pushes Lottie’s hands away.
“Not if you want them to be even, dumbass.”
Natalie grabs a safety pin and holds it up so it shines in the light. Lottie closes her eyes. Natalie puts the cork in her hand, and Lottie places it behind her left lobe. Natalie lines the needle up with the mark they made in red Sharpie over an hour ago.
“On three?” she whispers, more hesitant this time.
Lottie hums.
“One,” Natalie counts. Lottie inhales. “Two.” Natalie grips the needle between her fingers. Lottie exhales.
Natalie smiles and pushes the needle through.
“Oh!” Lottie gasps. Her eyebrows furrow slightly, a small twitch of pain playing a disappearing act over her nose. Her mouth makes a perfect circle, just wide enough for Natalie’s ring finger to slip through.
Natalie’s knees shake. She ignores them. She clips the safety pin into place. She grabs a cotton ball and reaches to rub it behind Lottie’s ear. The other girl stops her wrist.
“What now?” Lottie whispers softly.
Natalie gently shakes her fingers off. “Well,” she starts, wiping a trail of blood winding down from Lottie’s ear, “you didn’t pass out, so we can let this sit and settle for a second before we put in the stud.”
“Oh,” Lottie grins up at her, “we can, can we?”
Natalie sits in her lap. “Well,” she drapes her arms around Lottie’s neck, “ I thought we could start on the other ear—”
Lottie slides her hand over Natalie’s shoulder and pushes the strap of her swimsuit down before squeezing her left nipple. Hard.
“Or,” Lottie says over Nat’s sharp choke, “we could do that.”
She blinks, and a soft tinge settles over her cheeks in the shade of cake donuts, or an oyster's pearl.
“That,” Natalie pants, hungry, “yeah, or—”
Lottie’s lips interrupt her before she can finish the thought.
(Needless to say, they delay the third piercing of the day for quite some time.)