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Natalie is high.
At least, Lottie thinks she is. She’s never been high herself, but there’s something so loose about Natalie’s features, an unbridled calmness so rarely seen within the girl.
Her pupils are blown, a telltale sign. She’s smiling a lot and it isn’t until now that Lottie realizes how seldom she sees the image. She wonders if it’s a mirage, a dream, seeing Natalie do anything but sulk.
Her small frame curls against the bold body of a pickup truck, looking down towards her shoes as she kicks the dirt beneath her soles. Lottie watches in fascination from the keg a few feet away, leaning her weight onto her right leg and cradling a nearly empty cup in her hand.
Lottie has no interest in getting high. Besides, her head already has a no vacancy sign, constantly swollen and busy with intangible shadows. She has no room for purposeful visions, no allowance for an accidental trip that sends her into another episode , as her father so lovingly calls it.
She does, however, have a seemingly innate interest in Natalie. In her rather newfound discovery — at least one she begins to willingly acknowledge — Lottie finds she can’t pull her eyes away. She watches Nat curiously, watches as the blonde smiles to herself and closes her eyes, tipping her head back towards the bed of the truck and breathing in the night. Lottie watches as Natalie floats and she finds herself far too uninterested in the bustling party around her.
The noises are a dull throbbing in Lottie’s ears and the passing partygoers are nothing but a blur. She doesn’t hear when Jackie calls her name, asking for a refill, or feel when Van slides beside her and nudges her arm, trying to get her attention.
“What’s got you so distracted?” Van asks with a half-drunken smile. It’s one that curls up awkwardly on one side, loopy and free.
“Nothing,” Lottie responds with a tight smile, tearing her eyes away from Natalie and swirling the remaining contents of her cup.
“That doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
Van smirks, raising her eyebrows. She elbows Lottie again, this time with far more precision, drawing a wince from the taller girl.
“ I mean you’ve been staring at Natalie for the past ten minutes. What’s with you?”
Lottie frowns before bringing the lip of her cup to the softness of her tongue, downing her drink in a long sip.
“Woah, okay,” Van laughs, putting her hands up in surrender. “Nevermind, sorry I asked.”
“It’s nothing,” Lottie chides, sending Van a harsher look than she intended.
Van, ever the social prowess, picks up on Lottie’s cue without hesitation. She refills her own drink and then moves the nozzle over the mouth of Lottie’s cup. She presses her thumb against the nozzle as she speaks, low and private.
“Natalie lives pretty far from here, you know,” she says, removing pressure from the spout of beer, halting it in its tracks before setting it back against the metal roof of the keg. “I don’t think her… friends …are in any shape to drive her home.”
Lottie, now with a full cup, furrows her brow and eyes Van cautiously. Van does nothing but smirk, taking a sip of her drink and turning on her heel.
“Just think about it, Lot!” she shouts behind her, heading off towards the treeline to regroup with the other straggling teammates.
Lottie does think about it. She thinks about it longer than she would like.
She takes a big swig of her drink, eyes watering as it sinks down.
She brings her attention back towards Natalie, who is now sitting on the ground with her knees pulled up to her chest, and Lottie does nothing but think.
She thinks about her dad’s car parked in the grass, a black Audi A4 with a lonely passenger seat. She thinks about the full gas tank and her rare lack of curfew. She thinks about how she told her mother she would be at Shauna’s tonight, leaning over the kitchen island while she grabbed her medication. She thinks about the clamshell phone tucked into the pocket of her miniskirt, able to call her parents and pass along a feasible lie about one thing or another if needed.
She thinks about Natalie, walking home in the dark, high and delirious, alone at night. A heavy stone sinks in her stomach at the image.
Perhaps against her better judgment, she pours out what’s left of her drink and sets the empty cup atop the keg before setting off towards Natalie, who is still sitting against the dirt with her eyes closed.
She doesn’t seem to hear Lottie approach, paying no mind to the shadow that covers her face with the girl’s impressive height.
“Is this seat taken?” Lottie asks, pointing to the empty patch of grass next to Natalie.
Nat opens her eyes, a fluttering, drowsy motion, and looks up to Lottie with a foolish grin. It’s the kind of look that’s a conundrum: Natalie, all badass and leather jackets and fishnets, sending Lottie a dopey smile with nothing but teeth. Lottie’s heart thumps a peculiar rhythm in the cavern of her chest, watching as Natalie shakes her head.
“Nope,” she says, her lips popping around the ‘P’ , holding out a hand and gesturing for Lottie to join her against the cool skin of the Earth.
Lottie doesn’t normally do this kind of thing. She’s wearing one of her better outfits, the one the boys know her for. Her skirt is light pink and just barely covers the swell of her thighs, and her matching jacket was tagged as a fortune at TJ Maxx — not that she paid for it anyway, but the sentiment is still there.
Normally, Lottie would think better, would do better than lowering herself into the dirt and messing up her clothes. Tonight, however, is no normal night. They’re two days away from leaving for Nationals, and Lottie is two days away from leaving her parents for a week. She’s two days away from conditional freedom and she’s never felt this high.
Besides, it’s clearly no normal night for Natalie either, if her inability to remain fully upright is anything to go by. Lottie wonders if parallel abnormality might do them both some good.
Smoothing down the fur of her cropped jacket, she slowly sinks beside the girl and holds onto the hem of her skirt so as to not flash anyone on the way down.
Comfortable, as comfortable as she can be leaning against a truck tire, Lottie finds her shoulder a mere hairpin away from Natalie’s.
She swallows hard and picks at the skin around her fingernails.
“What are you doing here?” Natalie asks suddenly, her voice beginning to clear up. The haziness around her eyes is beginning to wear off, replaced by a flume of red exhaustion that tints her pale skin. Lottie’s fingers buzz as the roots bleed from her incessant, nervous nagging.
Why am I so nervous?
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are you sitting with me? I think Shauna went that way,” Natalie says, pointing towards the tree line where a second, smaller bonfire has started.
Lottie shrugs. “I don’t know, you just looked like you might want the company.”
Natalie smirks, huffs a laugh and stretches her legs out in front of her, dragging her heels along the dirt and making a crunching sound as she lays them flat.
“That’s…nice. I guess.”
“You guess?”
Natalie nods. “You just don’t look the type.”
Lottie, puzzled, raises an eyebrow and turns her head towards Nat. There’s a high-pitched whooping sound coming from one of the kegs but Lottie ignores it, blots it out from her periphery with ease, in favor of Natalie.
“The type?” she chuckles, “to do what?”
“You know,” Natalie gestures between them with a grin, “to sit with a burnout. To give a shit.”
Lottie swallows. She plays with a blade of grass in her right hand, the one farthest from Natalie’s reach. Her curls slink into her eyes but she doesn’t push them away.
Natalie isn’t entirely wrong. Until now, their communication has been stunted at best. They see each other in the hallways and chat briefly in the locker room before practice, but their interactions are few and far between. Their groups don’t exactly make it a habit to mingle, so the only time they see each other without constraints is at parties.
Parties like this. Parties where Lottie feels no pressure and every bit of it all at once. Parties where she feels like Atlas and Icarus all the same.
In total truthfulness, she does care. She does care about Natalie, the same way she cares about the rest of the team. At least, that’s what she tries to convince herself; that it’s the same.
Still, she can’t seem to stop her gaze from lingering a few seconds too long when Natalie passes her locker on the way to pre-calc, or how she practically has to hand deliver a cease and desist to her heart that pounds incessantly — and loudly — whenever Natalie brushes by her after practice, half-naked in the locker room.
She does care about Natalie, she just tends to care more about who’s watching.
It’s a lesson instilled by her father, heir to the Matthews fortune, the Jersey Giant and the hard-ass. She learned to take great care to maintain her image, learned who to hang around, learned who to invite in. If her dad knew where she was, who she was sitting beside, he’d have an aneurysm. Lottie has never felt freer.
“I do give a shit,” Lottie finally says, “I care about you, Nat.”
“Whatever you say, princess.”
Lottie rolls her eyes. She briefly regrets sitting down, allowing herself privacy with the gristly girl at her side, hardened by her unforgiving youth. Briefly.
That is, until Natalie’s body becomes weightless. She loses her energy, her fight dissipating from her bones, and she slumps heavily into Lottie’s side. Whatever makeshift animosity that had momentarily fizzled between them has evaporated in a fine mist.
Nat rests her head against Lottie’s shoulder, craning her neck to reach the height, and closes her eyes.
Lottie stills. She doesn’t freeze out of uncomfortability as she would have thought. No, she freezes out of something else entirely. Nerves, maybe. Thick-winged butterflies in the valley of her stomach, crawling into her throat, choking on the sweet smell of booze and cigarettes.
As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, her heart stumbles into the soles of her feet. As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, she doesn’t push Natalie off of her.
Instead, she embraces it boldly, a rare maneuver, resting her cheek against the top of Natalie’s head, her breath skipping at the contented hum it elicits from the girl beneath her.
She allows herself this moment of comfort only briefly. Lottie is suddenly all too aware of the eyes around them, the number of pairs, the ears and the laughs and the unrestricted AOL access. She curses herself for her cowardice, but she lifts her head from Natalie’s anyway, urging the blonde back into an upright position so as to not draw any unwanted attention.
Her shoulder is cold where Natalie abandoned it. Her stomach coils foreignly in her desire to warm it again.
“Do you have a ride home?” she asks, trying to get Natalie’s fading attention.
Natalie, exhausted in her comedown, shakes her head.
“No, my friends were going to but I think they might be too faded.”
Lottie nods her understanding before scanning the area around them. Her eyes collide with Van’s, a blessing and a curse all the same.
Van’s gaze shifts between Lottie and Natalie and she wiggles her eyebrows teasingly. Lottie rolls her eyes before leaning her lips down to Natalie’s ear, making sure she can hear over the thumping of distant music and buzzed jabbering.
“I need to go talk to Van, I’ll be right back.”
Natalie hums her understanding and leans back against the truck tire, resting the back of her head against worn rubber with a delirious smile.
Lottie folds her legs beneath her and pushes herself to her feet. She dusts off her bare skin before taking off towards Van, who is leaning against the trunk of a thick dogwood, the white flowers above her the picture of ironic innocence. Funny.
“How’s it going?” Van teases with a smile, taking her attention away from Taissa — who is, as usual, fighting with Shauna again — and moving it towards Lottie instead.
“Shove it, Palmer. Listen, I’m going to take Nat home, if my dad calls can you tell him I’m at Shauna’s?”
Van’s wicked smile settles into something more knowing, something gentler and less antagonizing. Lottie doesn’t have the energy to delve too deep into its depths, so she ignores the way Van’s eyes light up with something familiar.
“Yeah, of course. Get her home safe.”
“Will do.”
Lottie returns to Natalie with a quick pace, ignoring the feeling of Van’s eyes boring into the length of her spine as she moves.
This time, Natalie looks up when Lottie approaches.
“You ready?”
“For what?”
Lottie smiles, holding out a hand, open-palmed and waiting.
“I’m taking you home.”
Natalie arches her brow, her mouth left slightly ajar, her features stoic and serious. She hesitates near Lottie’s hand, unsure, not wrapping the full weight of her hand around Lottie’s.
“Uh, thanks. Yeah, thank you.”
“No problem,” Lottie replies honestly, hoisting Natalie to her shaky feet. She doesn’t let go of Natalie’s hand, and she’s surprised when Nat doesn’t let go of hers either. She swallows her heartbeat.
“Are you okay to walk?” Lottie asks, concerned, eyeing the way Natalie seems to sway on her feet as though she’s on the bow of a capsizing boat.
“Yeah, yeah I’m good. Used to it.”
Lottie doesn’t address the last remark. Something inside of her burns privately, though, screaming out. She tries not to envision Natalie, shaking and bow-legged, stumbling home after numbing the hurricane in her mind.
Lottie wonders if they’re not all that different in the end, the two of them. What an odd pair. What an anomaly.
“My car’s this way,” she says assuringly, pointing towards a small group of parked cars on the outskirts of the populated clearing. Natalie nods and lets herself be guided, still not letting go of Lottie’s hand.
Lottie fights the urge to rip it away, forces it to stay in place, valuing Natalie’s vertical stability over high school gossip for the first time in her life. It feels good, to ignore the fire of self consciousness in her marrow, to put blinders on and find that the world becomes blurry, all except for Natalie.
She squeezes Nat’s hand and her stomach flutters when she feels pressure in return.
They walk towards the cars, the light from the fire drifting, swallowed by dusk. Thankfully, Lottie remembers where she parked, so her falters are kept to a minimum. Natalie does nothing but follow Lottie’s lead with negligible discussion, letting herself be dragged into the darkness by a girl she hardly knows. Something about that exhibition of inherent trust, the kind that comes out when vastly exposed and fragile, makes Lottie dizzy.
As she has the entire night, she brushes it aside, choosing not to indulge in its meaning any further. Her only focus is getting Natalie home safe.
They approach her father’s car, sleek and reflective against the full-bellied moon, and Lottie fishes her keys from the inside pocket of her coat.
She lets go of Nat’s hand to dig around, and if she had heard a sharp exhale at the loss, she ignores it in stride.
She finally finds the keys and takes them out, baring their teeth and sliding them into the maw of the door handle, letting the jagged edges beckon a clicking sound from inside the driver’s door. The lock pops and Lottie settles inside, unlocking the passenger door and waiting for Natalie to crawl in, slow but accomplished.
The blonde makes it into the seat, leaning back against the headrest with a sigh, fumbling loosely for the seatbelt before dragging it across her chest. It squeals against the leather of her jacket and Lottie starts the car.
Nat is clearly exhausted, the high crashing down with a vengeance. Lottie has never seen her this way, so docile, so domesticated. It’s nice in a peculiar way, how Natalie becomes happier, open, more agreeable. Her hard exterior falls apart and she’s now left with her warm insides, the same ones that let her smile and fall willingly into Lottie’s comforting shoulder. The same ones that make Lottie’s heart soar.
Lottie grins to herself as she throws the car into reverse.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” Natalie asks as Lottie takes a right out of the clearing.
Huh . Lottie isn’t entirely sure she does. She can’t remember ever being to Natalie’s house, let alone near that side of town. Still, something pulls at her, yanks at her, drags her into taking another right past a nearby stop sign.
“Not really. Want to point me in the right direction?”
She briefly turns to look at Nat with a smile, one that is quickly reciprocated. Natalie laughs softly to herself, shaking her head.
“Well, you got lucky back there, Matthews. Just follow this road straight down.”
Lottie refocuses her attention through the windshield, flipping on her brights to see down the desolate one-lane shrouded by dark trees. She follows the pulse of yellow with her eyes, watching as the centerline buzzes past, trying to focus on anything other than the bleach-blonde nearly falling asleep beside her.
Around seven miles deep is when Lottie finds herself at a red light. She slows the car to a stop and Natalie stirs awake, her focus coming back, scanning across their surroundings calmly.
“Straight through the light and then your first left.”
Lottie nods, gripping the steering wheel. She releases the brake when green illuminates the front seat and they’re off again, edging closer to Natalie’s corner of the world.
She takes her first left and finds herself on a partially paved road, scuffed with dirt. Dandelions grow along the sides and long grasses sway in the evening breeze.
There are no lights here, Lottie realizes. There are no street lamps, no running cars, no light pollution from the city. You can see the stars out here, something Lottie hasn’t been able to see since she was young.
“It’s this one,” Natalie murmurs, her voice quieter now. She points to a gray single wide on their right, one with no car in the driveway.
She looks suddenly sober.
Lottie pulls in and shuts the engine off. A dog barks in the distance.
“Thanks,” Natalie says, averting eye contact, “for the ride and everything.”
“It’s no problem. I’m sorry your friends kind of bailed,” Lottie says, trying desperately to make her smile less sad — and failing miserably. Nat opens the door and the lights inside the car come on.
“It’s cool, it happens. I’ll see you Monday,” Natalie smiles. It doesn’t move, like it’s plastered to her lips; like it’s sewn into her being.
Lottie feels frozen against the driver’s seat. She smiles back, watching with bated breath as Natalie unbuckles, stretches a leg over the threshold, and exits the car. She closes the door softly, softer than Lottie had anticipated, and the light shuts off again.
Lottie is left alone. She’s left with the ghost of someone, the smell of cologne, the imprint of their weight in the air. She watches as Natalie walks up the drive to the front door, her hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket.
Something aches. It feels like a bruise, tender and deep, and Lottie can barely stomach it. She watches as Natalie leaves, gets farther away, and the feeling swells into something unbearable.
Tonight is the night for peculiarities. Lottie embraces it with a quick inhale.
She opens the door and pulls herself into a standing position in the jaw of the driver’s side, resting one hand around the window and the other flat on the hood of her father’s car. The light illuminates her in the blackness and she breathes in the chilled air around her.
“Wait,” she calls, though her voice doesn’t need to claim any territory; the neighborhood is silent around them. She swears she can hear Nat’s heartbeat from the porch.
Natalie turns around with her hand frozen on the door handle. She looks back towards Lottie with a furrowed brow, an expression Lottie can barely make out.
“What?”
“I just-” Lottie starts, unsure of what to say. Unsure of why she stopped Natalie at all. “Have a good night.”
Natalie nods, but doesn’t move. Neither of them do. Frozen in time, victims of unsaid sentiments, they simply look blankly at one another for seconds far too uncomfortable to bear.
Nat fiddles nervously with the door handle and Lottie drums her fingers against the top of the car.
“Would you want to stay the night?” Natalie asks, her voice quieter. She averts her gaze, her feet far more interesting, and something inside Lottie urges it back up, pleads for it to meet her own again.
“I- yeah, yeah I would. If that’s okay?”
Natalie shrugs. “My parents are out of town for the weekend.”
The interpretation is unsaid, but it makes Lottie smile regardless. My parents are out, so what I say goes. I said it’s okay. Lottie shuts the door and locks the car behind her.
The gravel of the driveway crunches beneath her heels and Lottie feels intensely overdressed for the first time tonight. It makes her blush, her cheeks burning under Natalie’s gaze, who watches as she walks up the drive to the front porch.
Natalie opens the screen door for Lottie, letting her in first. It’s a movement of consideration, something small, something conventional and unremarkable, but Lottie’s heart picks up its pace as she slides past the smaller girl into the unlit entryway.
Natalie follows suit, closing the door behind her and turning on the light. Her fingers ghost over the switch to her right for a moment, spooked, as if she wants to turn it back off. As if she wants to hide herself away from Lottie’s inquisitive gaze.
Lottie can’t help it; she looks. She scans the living room as Natalie watches her with an unreadable expression.
She takes in the space. It’s small, but more open than she could have guessed. There’s an olive green couch to the right, resting against the eastern wall, with a few loose clothes sprawled across its cushions. An afghan hangs across the back of it, tan and burgundy.
The fridge to the left is the same color as the couch, with black handles and pictures of young Natalie hung up with magnets. Lottie tries to avert her gaze, but can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of her lips at the brief image.
The TV across from them is severely outdated, with antennas sticking out of the top and tinfoil wrapped around the base. The screen is dark, but in the reflection of the light it spits out a concave picture of the two of them, side by side in the doorway. Lottie is mesmerized by it for a moment until she’s interrupted by a clearing throat.
“My- uh, my room is this way,” Natalie says, low and shy, pointing down the hall with her right hand before heading in that direction. Lottie follows her without question, however determined to return to the kitchen to examine the baby pictures further.
Once inside Natalie’s room, there’s even more to take in. Lottie drinks it in stride, devouring every piece of Nat’s puzzle, learning about her through utter silence.
There’s a feminism poster just beside the door and a navy blue stereo on the dresser beneath the window. Cassettes litter the top of it, mingling with dark clothes and unmatched socks, and Lottie peers over at what the girl was listening to.
“It’s Nirvana,” Natalie remarks, pulling a few loose shirts off of her comforter to clear her bed. “You listen?”
Lottie shakes her head and watches as Natalie moves about her room, tidying in the face of an impromptu sleepover. Lottie wonders how many the girl has had. She wonders if they’re both tied at zero.
“They’re on the radio sometimes,” Lottie says, playing with the turquoise beads of a dreamcatcher laying against the dresser.
“Let me guess,” Natalie laughs, straightening her blankets with mindless hands, “ Smells Like Teen Spirit ?”
Lottie smirks and bows her head. They both know the answer.
“We’ll change that soon,” Natalie promises.
With the bed empty — and the floor tidier — the bedroom looks bigger than it was. There’s color everywhere, splashes of pink and blue and green, shades and vibrancy that Lottie didn’t expect; Natalie is full of surprises, it seems.
“You can take the bed.”
Natalie gestures towards the now-made mattress before shrugging off her jacket, hanging it over the back of a nearby desk chair, leaving her in a black Metallica tank that fits snug beneath her armpits.
“No way, it’s your house. You take it.”
Natalie scoffs, but smiles anyway. “Real considerate, Lot, but you’re kind of the guest in this situation.”
There’s something that overtakes Lottie.
It has no name, but it’s bigger than she is. It’s confidence unmatched, boldness personified, the swelling in her chest growing heavier by the second. She barely has time to breathe before she speaks aloud.
“We could sleep together,” she remarks, the wings of hope fluttering against the edges of her words. “In the bed, I mean.”
Natalie doesn’t respond for some time, seemingly considering her — albeit very few — options. Before Lottie has time to be self-conscious of her implication, Natalie succumbs to the idea, nodding her head.
“Yeah, sure. It’s big enough. Let me just get changed,” she says, agreeable, walking closer to Lottie to slide into the wooden dresser by the door and pulling the top drawer open.
She smiles to herself as she reaches inside before pulling out a fist full of a t-shirt and sweatpants. She hands them to Lottie silently.
“Nirvana? Really?”
“What? I said we were gonna have to change that soon.”
Lottie smiles teasingly. “I thought you meant have a listening party, not repping their merch before I know their top 5.”
Natalie laughs, a joyous thing, melodic and smokey on the exhale. Lottie can’t help herself; she laughs too.
She laughs too, and it’s the first time it’s real. She laughs, and it’s the first time she’s honest.
“Bathroom’s down the hall,” Natalie says through her breathy chuckles. Lottie takes the clothes in the girl’s hand before retreating from the bedroom and making her way towards the bathroom.
Once inside, she has a chance to breathe. Self-inflicted asphyxiation leaves her in a shallow exhale. Her nerves have begun to settle and feeling returns to her fingers in static.
She faces herself in the mirror, rusted around the edges. Lottie rests her hands against either side of the porcelain sink, listening to the gentle drip of loose water patter against the drain. She listens to the way her heart matches its rhythm.
She’s never had a sleepover before, especially not with a girl she feels so strangely attuned to. There’s something unnamed that swirls inside her, has been since the party, and Lottie realizes that it isn’t unnamed — she just simply doesn’t want to name it.
The slender watch on her wrist is uncomfortable now, a nervous heat creating a patch of dewy skin beneath the metal band. She strips it from her arm in a fluid motion before reaching down to untie her shoes, toeing them off and sliding the watch into the mouth of one for safekeeping — her outfit hadn’t called for a purse, and practicality hadn’t dawned on her until this moment.
One by one, she strips in Natalie Scatorccio’s bathroom, folding her pleated skirt and her pink top into a neat pile. She redresses slower, taking in the new texture.
The pants are too short on her. With the height difference, the black sweats only go down to mid-calf, cinching around the swell of taut muscle found there.
The t-shirt is smaller too, though not bad. The sleeves fit well and the collar doesn’t go too high, but it turns into a low-level crop top on Lottie’s elongated abdomen, showing an inch or so of tanned skin and exposing her navel to the chill of the bathroom. Still, it’ll do.
They smell like Natalie, she thinks. She can’t help it, embracing the smell of laundry soap and knockoff Calvin Klein. She breathes a heavy sigh before gathering her discarded clothes into her arms and opening the door, returning to Natalie’s room in her new outfit.
Natalie smiles, bites her knuckles to hide her teeth. She’s lounging on the bed in an oversized tee and linen shorts, propped up on one elbow with her free hand.
“Don’t you dare laugh,” Lottie threatens, though they both know it’s empty.
Which is exactly why Natalie does laugh, and she laughs so freely that Lottie can’t bring herself to care. Instead, she twirls in a dramatic circle, showing off her ensemble and dragging more throaty laughter from Natalie’s lips.
“Okay, okay, I’m done I promise. I just…I had no idea I was that short.”
Lottie shrugs. “Hey, it works, right?”
She fingers at the loose hem of her borrowed shirt absentmindedly, scanning Natalie’s posters illuminated by the buzzing overhead light.
“You can keep it,” Natalie says from the bed, getting beneath the covers before gesturing towards Lottie with a loose hand, pointing towards the taller girl’s abdomen.
“I can’t,” Lottie refuses politely, shaking her head, “it’s yours.”
Natalie shrugs. “Looks better on you.”
She nods her head towards the light switch, a silent ask for a reasonable favor. Lottie runs her fingers over the edge, flipping off the light with a deep inhale.
She’s nervous. In the dark, she finds herself vibrating. Natalie’s features are illuminated by the moon cascading through the open window, but the sharp line of her jaw makes Lottie’s stomach tumble even more. She wonders if pitch black would be better. She wonders if it would be worse.
Ignoring the racing thoughts in her head, Lottie makes her way across the room before finding herself against the side of the bed. She leans her thighs against its straight edge for a brief moment before Natalie pulls back the covers.
“Get in,” the girl says, and the empty void before her makes Lottie crave sleep. After tonight, after unnamed ghosts traverse through the boney halls of her insides, she’s ready for rest.
Lottie gets in, burrowing beneath the blanket and laying her head against one of Natalie’s pillows.
They both lay on their backs, hands crossed over their stomachs, facing the ceiling and saying nothing in the dark. Lottie can hear the faint breeze of Natalie’s breath, the seldom crackle of cars approaching a dirt road, the howls of something monstrous.
She isn’t sure if the latter is coming from inside or out.
“Thank you again,” Natalie whispers, turning her head towards Lottie.
“For what?”
“For everything. All of it. Bringing me home and sitting with me and stuff. Not a lot of people would do that.”
Lottie cranes her neck to meet Natalie’s warm eyes, darkened by the yawning night, and smiles.
“Of course,” she agrees in a whisper of her own. “Thanks for letting me stay the night.”
Natalie hums her consent, dropping her gaze to Lottie’s shoulder, eyes trailing along a worn hole in the shirt sleeve. Lottie resists the urge to pick at her nails under the weight.
“Did you mean it?” Natalie finally breaks, her voice near silent.
“Did I mean what?”
Natalie sighs and takes a heavy pause, pregnant with something unspoken. Swollen with something left unsaid for far too long.
“When you said you cared about me. Did you mean it?”
Lottie turns onto her side, shuffling beneath the covers and folding her hands together, laying them beneath the pressure of her head. She’s desperate to meet Natalie’s gaze, but the blonde doesn’t raise her eyes.
“I did,” she says. She’s truthful. She hopes Nat can feel the way it beats from her chest, the way her flayed honesty drips from her tongue. “I do.”
Natalie nods, turning onto her side to mirror Lottie in near-perfect tandem. Still, she doesn’t look up; she doesn’t confront Lottie head-on, unusual for her.
“I do too, you know. Care about you. I’m just…I’m bad at all this,” she says, moving her hand to gesture between them, “this friend stuff. I’ve never really had any.”
Lottie smiles sadly. It’s not the pitying kind, but the knowing one. The kind that comes out with bleeding empathy, the kind Lottie gives when she meets kin. What an unusual place to find it, she thinks; right under her nose the entire time.
“Me neither,” she admits quietly.
Natalie’s eyes raise at this remark, though they move out of shock. She props herself up on her elbow with a slight motion, blonde hair drifting into her eye line. Lottie resists the burn in her hand that urges her to tuck it away.
“Wait, what?” Natalie’s voice is low but laced with confusion. “I don’t believe that. You’re…you’re Lottie fucking Matthews, everyone in Jersey knows you.”
“They don’t know me, though. They just know of me. Nobody really likes me like that, they just like what I can give them.”
There’s silence that sits heavy between them. Side by side, facing one another, heavy heads on twin pillows beneath the cover of darkness, there’s nothing else said. Lottie wonders if she had overshared, overstepped, overgeneralized. She wonders if she gave too much of herself away. She fights the desire to turn back over and fall asleep, urge morning to come faster so she can run.
“I do,” Natalie whispers, her voice heavy and low. She’s looking at Lottie with a kind of weight that makes Lottie’s chest swell and bloom like spring wildflowers. “I like you like that.”
The implication isn’t lost on either of them.
Natalie inhales as if shocked by her own sentiment. Still, she doesn’t take it back. She stands her ground as she stares at Lottie, eyes blown in the dark, traced by the blueness of dusk and warmed by the girl in her bed.
Lottie stares back. She stares back with far less regard for maintaining facades, stares back with less concern for the posterity of her name. For the first time, Lottie stares back as herself. She breathes as herself, moves as herself.
She makes choices as herself.
The choice she makes is spontaneous in theory, but it had been brewing for months. Lottie can feel it deep in her marrow, the relief of acknowledgement; Natalie can as well, it seems.
Their lips collide in a minute fraction of space. Suddenly, Lottie finds herself brushing noses with Natalie, parting her lips, taking Nat’s into her own. In steady succession, she’s pillowed by the taste of Natalie on her tongue, the smell of Natalie consuming her senses, the feeling of Natalie’s warmth blossoming across her fingertips as she finally, finally tucks bleached hair back behind its owner’s left ear.
She isn’t sure who moved first, who leaned forward, who shook the stars in their fist until they all aligned. It doesn’t matter now.
What matters is the way Natalie’s tongue drags along the bottom of Lottie’s lip, how she tastes faintly of Newports and prominently of peach chapstick, the remnants of campfire smoke mixing with sandalwood to make Lottie dizzy enough to flip her axis.
A soft hand curls around the length of her neck, a thumb brushes the underside of her jaw, a choked sound beckons her closer.
They’re chest to chest in an instant. With the shock of genesis out of their system, they’re hungry for something more. Something deeper.
Lottie feels the curve of Natalie’s body perfectly align with hers and she can’t help the contented hum that escapes the back of her throat at the feeling.
She isn’t used to this, this fiery thing that ignites in her chest and burns along her fingertips. She isn’t used to this, this feeling of fragility in her hand, the feeling of something meaningful and good.
Lottie feels as though she had been drowning. She feels as if she had been held under, hearing the echo of her own breath for so long; until Natalie.
Until Natalie. Until fate. Until out of town bonfires and a high she’s never tasted herself and a perfect alignment of confidence and desire.
Now, all Lottie feels is Natalie’s warm breath against her lips, the blonde’s heartbeat settled between them, the hands that turn to claws before settling back into composure.
They pull away, breathless, the first hit of air unshared.
Lottie can’t help the grin that creeps along her mouth. She can’t help the way her lips curl around her teeth, expose her insides, pour them out for the girl next to her in a double bed to see. It’s honest, whatever it is.
“What?” Natalie pokes, brow furrowed and mimicking Lottie’s smile with ease.
“Nothing, I just…I think I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”
Natalie giggles. It’s airy and light and everything that makes Lottie’s stomach fill with soft-winged butterflies.
“That makes two of us.”
“Wait, really?”
Natalie nods with a hum, settling her head against the soft cushion of her pillow, lying on her side and playing with her own fingers nervously.
Without thinking — or without much time to do so — Lottie reaches out and tangles Natalie’s slender hand with her own.
“What, you think you’re the only girl with a crush?” Natalie chides playfully. Lottie could definitely get used to this.
They laugh, a joyous thing, mingling softly in the dark. Lottie’s lips are still buzzing.
Somehow, some way, they fall asleep like that. Hand in hand, as if ivy had tangled their bodies together and refused to let go. Beneath the sheets, they stir and collide, legs slotting between each other, skin touching skin.
Lottie falls asleep while listening to Nat, following the rhythmic tenor of her voice, drowsy at the sound. Natalie discusses Kurt Cobain and Sub Pop with a tenacity and brightness rarely seen; Lottie bursts at the idea of being privy to this side of Nat.
The moon from the open window bathes the image of them now, wrapped in each other, each inhale of one exchanged for the exhale of another.
Lottie has never felt higher.