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The world is a place full of cruel ironies, if you ask Chloe. The kind of shit that’s so awful yet poetic that it manages to bring a smile to your face in spite of it all. They taste bitter all the same, that doesn’t change, but when your mouth curls at that bitterness the shape it takes is a grin instead of a grimace.
One such irony is how on a perfect night like this—laying in a truck bed, under a blanket, gazing up at the stars, with Rachel fucking Amber—her mind is still stuck on a person that’s miles away. A person that has completely forgotten about her. Who’s living it up in Seattle, having escaped Arcadia Bay, Oregon without even trying.
Chloe still remembers all the sleepovers. The late nights where they’d sit in her room late at night, her TV muted with the PS2 still hooked up to it, holding their breath every time the house creaked or groaned, whispering about the nothings that seem like everything when you’re that young. She remembers how Max would fall asleep first every time they watched a movie, her head usually ending up on her shoulder or lap somewhere along the way. She remembers those simpler times.
When getting no sleep was a purposeful act of rebellion rather than the norm. Before the scars on her arms stopped being from skateboarding accidents. When she would’ve balked at the idea of feeling most at ease surrounded by piles of twisted metal and rotted wood. Times where she didn’t dread going home, waking up each morning, sitting down at the dinner table.
Memories of those simpler times are all Chloe’s brain wants to give her today. Rachel knows it, because her fingers have stopped tracing the inky thorns of her sleeve and drift further down. They coil around her own, gently squeezing, and Chloe angles her head to look at her. She’s smiling in that way only Rachel can, an invitation and a question all at once.
“Stars not that interesting tonight?”
It’s not hard to read between the lines, know that stars means the rising star under the blanket instead of those pinpricks of light in the night sky. Chloe’s cheeks color as she realizes how many times she’s let the conversation between them trail off so far. How she’s focusing on then instead of now.
That lack of focus is why, instead of saying anything that can salvage the night she’s already fucked up, she says: “I mean, as far as stars go, I’ve seen better.”
Nice one, me.
Rachel huffs a quiet laugh, the half-hearted response to a similarly lame joke. “Stargazing suddenly too mainstream for Arcadia Bay’s punk extraordinaire? Or is that the secret science nerd talking?”
Chloe tries to roll with the punch. “Are you calling me a nerd?”
“Mhm, not really. A real nerd wouldn’t shut up about whatever’s really on her mind.”
She utterly fails. Her heart, already a few beats too quick to be considered resting, because of the whole blanket situation, picks up the pace at that comment. She’s always thought loudly, broadcasted how she’s felt to the whole world, but before Rachel it was like the world was deaf to what she was putting out. Whereas Rachel is completely tuned into her station.
Sometimes it’s nice to be heard like that. Right now? It’s really, really fucking with her.
“It’s just—
I’m thinking about the girl I used to have a crush on. Maybe still have a crush on. I don’t know, I didn’t recognise how I felt about her until I met you and felt all of it all over again. Hold on Rachel, let me see how much further I can put my foot into my mouth, you might wanna get the The Guinness Book of World Records on the line!
—my brain’s being shitty today. I keep thinking about…” Max. “My dad. When he was still around.”
She glances back at Rachel and her expression is unreadable. The smile’s gone, replaced with something attentive, sympathetic. But there’s an unabashed curiosity too there. An unspoken “yes, and?”
They’ve not spoken about William much. Rachel knows the short version—car crash, Max leaving, weeks of emptiness, months of anger, stepdouche—but Chloe’s never told her about the man himself. If all her brain has today is memories, she can at least regale Rachel with them. Make this night something other than her spacing out the whole time.
“You would’ve liked him. He… He always knew what to say to make things better. Even if that meant not saying anything. You know? He never tried to be someone he wasn’t, or act like he knew something he didn’t.”
“Yeah. He sounds great.” Rachel nods. Her eyes move from Chloe’s face, down to their linked hands. Her voice is quieter as she continues. “Not like mine. Real.”
Chloe tightens her grip minutely and when Rachel looks back up she’s smiling, even if it looks kind of forced. Her other hand reaches out and brushes a lock of hair away from Chloe’s eye. She lingers there, caressing the cheek on that side with her knuckles, and that smile suddenly looks a lot more sincere. “Tell me more about him.”
“He loved country music. I always used to tease him for it, say that was why he married mom, because of—”
“The accent?”
“Yep.” Chloe grins at the memory of his faux-offense. Her eyes prickle, so she blinks a few times. Hard. Rachel doesn’t need to see her cry and she doesn’t want to ruin the moment. “He never denied it, either.”
Rachel hums. “I don’t know, Chlo, I think your old man might’ve been onto something there.”
“Gross! That’s my mom you’re talking about.” Chloe snickers.
“Actually.” The smile on Rachel’s face shifts into the textbook definition of a shit-eating grin, her upturned lips flashing brilliant teeth. “You have a bit of that southern twang yourself, missy.”
She leans away from Rachel’s touch, grimacing. “Ugh. Do not make me think about that.”
Like always, Rachel pounces on the opportunity to tease her further. “That would mean getting your mind off me, and that’s difficult.”
“Shut up.”
Like always, Rachel’s not wrong.
“Gladly. You’re the one who sidetracked us in the first place—“
“Excuse me?”
“—and I wanna hear more about William,” Rachel finishes. Her hand withdraws from Chloe’s face and moves to join her other one on Chloe’s forearm. The expression on her face shifts once again, growing to resemble when Bongo used to sit and stare at her to beg for attention.
“Alright, alright, fine. Anything in particular?”
Rachel begins to idly trace patterns on her skin, a feather light touch that sends chills down her spine. Bit by bit, the tension in her body bleeds away, as she waits for Rachel to speak, but Rachel seems like she’s in no rush. The sensation grounds Chloe, gives her something to focus on, and she tries to picture what those deft fingers are illustrating.
A few moments pass befoe Rachel finally speaks. When she does, her cadence is off, as if the question stumbled out before her brain could catch up, something Chloe is oh so familiar with. It’s strange hearing Rachel’s tone resembling her own in that way. “Would he have liked me?”
It’s a good question. She has to really think about it. It’s also a bad question, because it makes her mind immediately go to the person she’s trying really hard not to think about. William always liked Max, right from the start. And there’s a lot of ways that she and Rachel are alike.
Smartasses. That eye for images and art: a way of looking at the world that makes it seem so much more full, how they fit the pieces together other people wouldn’t, and the way it bleeds into everything they do. Thinking way too highly of her, to the point they’d throw themselves into trouble for the sake of protecting her. It occurs to her that maybe they could’ve been friends, in another life, and it’s a thought she quickly discards.
Her mind drifts back to William again. He let her and Max get away with a lot, really, but he still knew that sometimes they needed to be reined in, something proven by the wine stain on the living room carpet. And the kind of shit her and Rachel do is… Worse than spilled wine, to put it lightly. Something tells her that most of it is stuff he probably wouldn’t approve of if he were still around to care. But the question is would he have approved of Rachel?
Rachel, her angel. The girl who never fails to bring a smile to her face. Who gives her a reason to get up every morning, suffer through each day, keep holding onto the dream they share.
Who saved her life.
Maybe he wouldn’t agree with some of the stuff they do together. But Chloe thinks—hopes—that he would’ve liked her. She knows that regardless, he would’ve respected how much Rachel means to her. That was always his thing: he wasn’t afraid to let her make her own choices.
She wonders a lot about how many of her choices he would’ve agreed with. If he would’ve still been proud of her now. Kicked out of Blackwell before graduation, unemployed, putting every cent she can muster toward a plan to escape the home she’s grown to hate, toking up whenever possible just to try and keep herself sane.
William wasn’t afraid to let her make her own mistakes, either. But he’s long gone now.
“Yeah,” Chloe finally says, her voice thick. It feels like she’s talking around something in her throat. “He—you, you’re the best thing in my life right now. You saved me. He would’ve loved you.”
It hits her then, when Rachel pulls her in for a tight hug, as she silently lets some tears flow while locked in that embrace, that she’ll never know the real answer to Rachel’s question. What she said was a complete fucking guess. He’s gone, has been gone for a while now, and yet there’s still the moments like these where she remembers, where the wound still feels fresh.
She rolls to the side, hand still tangled in Rachel’s, and they lie there for a while afterward, her eyes on the stars and Rachel’s on her. Every so often she glances to the side and is met with a different kind of smile, something softer and loving, and the sight of it warms her to her core.
Once her breath has evened out, Rachel taps her on the arm, presses a chaste kiss to her cheek, and Chloe rolls over to face her again. She gnaws on the inside of her cheek as she looks at Chloe, like she’s internally debating whatever she’s about to do next. It makes her wish she could be in tune with Rachel the same way she is with her, have an insight into what’s going on behind those rich hazel eyes.
Currently, there’s an uncertainty in them that’s plain to see. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Are you happy now?”
It’s the easiest question she’s asked that night. Her brain’s fucked up and loves to make her feel worthless, every happy memory seems faded and distant, home doesn’t feel like home anymore, and right now all of that’s just background noise. Right now she’s surrounded by rusted scrap, lying in a junker she put back together with her own two hands, half-covered by a blanket that smells faintly of jasmine and expensive shampoo, and looking straight at the girl she loves.
Happy is relative. Any other time she’d say she was unhappy, but right now she’s with Rachel. And that puts things into a different perspective, the highs stretch into the sky and the lows fade out of sight as they sink below the horizon.
“Am I with you?”
“Yeah?”
Chloe smirks. “And just like that, there’s your answer.”
The smile on Rachel’s face at those words shines more brilliantly than any star could ever hope to, and the dark in Chloe’s mind doesn’t stand a chance. The kiss that follows it doesn’t taste nearly as sweet, but she’s not about to complain.
For now? She's happy.