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Ava loved wearing Beatrice’s sweaters.
And jackets.
And shirts.
Really anything of Beatrice’s that she could get her hands on.
They all smelt like Beatrice, a combination of cinnamon and fancy wood that Beatrice kept telling her was sandalwood, and sometimes, sometimes, a hint of the vanilla body wash they shared.
Scents were something that were new to Ava after she died as well – at St Michael’s, she got used to the smell of a stale room, of dust, of the bad food Sister Frances force fed her. She got used to the overwhelming, sickening floral smell of her perfume, and she got used to the smell of her own body that let her know when it was time to pester Sister Frances into getting her a shower. She got used to the lack of smell of the soap Sister Frances used to bathe her with, and the alcoholic smell of the disinfectant Sister Frances would use on the days she didn’t think Ava was deserving of something as simple as soap.
When Diego arrived, she eventually got used to the smell of the rain – he was actually able to get up to open the window in their room, and the nuns liked him much more than Ava, so they never told him to shut it. It didn’t rain a lot, but when it did their room smelt fresh and it soon became one of Ava’s favourite scents.
Ava still loved the smell of rain, and she couldn’t wait to actually experience it (it still hasn’t rained once since they’ve been in Switzerland), but now the smell of Beatrice’s clothes was her favourite scent, and by extension of that, Beatrice. Just, the smell of Beatrice.
And so Ava would wear Beatrice’s sweaters as often as possible. Beatrice would laugh when she came home from a shift and saw Ava curled up on the couch, nose tucked into her blue sweater. One time Ava wore her grey sweater that had a zipper at the top so that you could open up the collar, and Beatrice told her to keep it – Ava was ecstatic, but then eventually it started to smell less and less like Beatrice, so Ava gave it back to her and asked her to wear it again so that it could “recharge,” in a sense.
Right now, Ava was wearing a jacket she convinced Beatrice to buy a few weeks ago. A dark green bomber jacket from the thrift store down the street, she had watched Beatrice linger on it and even pull the hanger out briefly to look at it more. She knew she wouldn’t buy it for herself, so Ava went back the next day and bought it with the tip money she had made the day before.
Beatrice loved it. It was the one jacket Ava tried not to steal too much, because while it didn’t seem like Beatrice really cared for the other sweaters and shirts Ava wore, she did like this one.
She was wearing it now because they were walking home from their shift together, and it was colder than Ava thought it would be when she made the decision to leave the house that afternoon, without a jacket for later. Beatrice caught her shivering and took off her jacket to drape it over Ava’s shoulders and then help her put her arms through the sleeves, her hands gentle and eyes caring. She rubbed her hands up and down Ava’s forearms briefly, smiling as she tried to warm her up, and Ava could do nothing but smile back. The jacket didn’t smell as strongly of Beatrice as some of her other clothes did, but the subtlety was still nice.
“You’re not cold?” Ava asked as they continued to walk down the main street. They walked slowly, shoulders pressed together, admiring the lights and the sounds and the smells coming from everywhere. As new as it was to Ava, she knew it was new to Beatrice to – she had never got to experience any of this either.
“No,” Beatrice reassured, shaking her head and turning to look at Ava. “I did tell you to bring a jacket.”
Ava frowned briefly and crossed her arms over her chest. “Mark said it was meant to be warm today.”
“Mark?”
“The weather man.”
“I thought his name was Martin?”
“Maybe I misheard,” Ava said, chuckling a little. “But I got the ‘m’ right, and he does seem like a Mark, right?”
Beatrice squinted her eyes playfully. “You’re right. Martin doesn’t quite suit him.”
Ava loved nights like this, when Beatrice would entertain her and play along. They were usually the same nights that Ava found herself unable to look away from Beatrice, unable to take her eyes off of her. She smiled more, laughed more, touched more, lived more.
Around a week ago, on one of these same nights, Ava walked into the kitchen while Beatrice was cooking dinner. She was standing at the stove, cooking something in a pan, and singing under her breath. At best, Ava had heard her humming before, but never singing like that, even as quiet as it was. She had a nice voice, and Ava didn’t know why she thought Beatrice wouldn’t have a nice voice, but she was pleasantly surprised. And then, the best part was that when Ava made her presence known by knocking softly on the counter, Beatrice didn’t stop – she turned around, smiled at Ava with the tiniest hint of a blush on her cheeks, and then kept singing, this time with a little sway of movement in her legs and hips.
“I don’t know the song,” Ava had laughed when Beatrice pointed a kitchen utensil at her as a makeshift microphone.
“You can’t dance, you can’t sing,” Beatrice sighed overdramatically, using a spatula to flip the tortilla in the pan over.
“Hey!” Ava laughed.
She remembered jumping off the counter then, and taking a risk by reaching forward and loosely holding onto the bottom of Beatrice’s sweater.
“12 years immobile, I think you can cut me a little slack.”
Beatrice smiled teasingly at her, “You’ve had plenty of time to catch up. You could learn to waltz, at least.”
Ava didn’t know how to explain it, but she kind of loved it when Beatrice let her talk lightly about her paralysis. She knew how traumatic it was, she didn’t need anyone to explain that to her, but she didn’t always want to be treated with pity, either. She hated pity. Beatrice didn’t often give that to her, she gave her empathy – or sympathy, Ava could never remember which one was which – and the space to deal with it as she needed.
“Think you could teach me?” Ava asked, tone light but slightly hesitant, silently hoping and wishing that Beatrice would say yes.
“Mmm,” Beatrice said, and Ava was worried for a second that she would say no. “One day. We’ll make the time for it.”
It felt like tonight could be another one of those nights. Maybe when they got home, Beatrice could make dinner and Ava could turn on the radio and she could convince Beatrice to teach her how to dance, and smile at her enough that she would start to sing along to whatever song was on the radio, or just hum if she didn’t know the words. Maybe Beatrice would let Ava sit on the counter and hold up spoons of food up to her mouth as she cooked, so that Ava could let her know how it tasted. Maybe Beatrice would fix the collar on her jacket that Ava was wearing, maybe she would tell her she would look nice, and-
“What’s that smell?” Ava asked all of a sudden, looking around as if she could find where the sweet, chocolatey smell was coming from.
“What smell?” Beatrice asked.
“That, it smells… like chocolate, it smells nice. It reminds me of- it kind of reminds me of my mom, but I can’t… I can’t remember enough. I don’t know,” Ava said slowly, trying to figure it out as she spoke.
Beatrice looked at her so tenderly then, and as Ava said earlier, she hated pity, but she loved whatever it was that Beatrice treated her with. It wasn’t pity, but something else that achieved what people thought pity would.
“I can kind of smell it.”
“It’s like a chocolate dessert, right?”
“That’s what it smells like,” Beatrice agreed with her.
They turned down the street their apartment was on.
“It smells like these cupcakes my mom used to make on my birthdays. They were Brazilian, I think.”
Beatrice squeezed her hand. “When we get home, you can use the laptop to see if you can find what they might be while I make dinner, if you’d like?”
Ava turned to look at Beatrice, smiling at her and squeezing her hand back. “Yeah?”
Beatrice nodded.
“Okay,” Ava sighed, trying to figure out how she felt right now. She always hated when she couldn’t remember something about her mom or her life before St Michael’s; it always felt like she was just within reach of remembering, but could never get there. She told Beatrice about it when she woke up from a nightmare one night a couple weeks after they first arrived in Switzerland – it was about the car crash, and she gave Beatrice a crash course on how she ended up a paraplegic at St Michael’s while she held her in her arms and ran her through breathing exercises to get her to calm down. Beatrice brushed the knots out of her hair with her fingers and filled up a glass of water for Ava when Ava got changed out of her sweat soaked pajamas. When they laid down on the bed again, Beatrice opened her arms and let Ava seek out anything she needed from her – Ava would die on the hill that it was the night things changed between them, the night when they got more comfortable with each other.
—
“Brigadeiro,” Ava called out to Beatrice, craning her head over the edge of the couch so she could see her in the kitchen.
“Pardon?” Beatrice called back.
“I’m pretty sure that’s what I smelt, what reminded me of my mom. Brigadeiros, they’re- they’re a Brazilian desert. They kind of look like cupcakes, well, more like chocolate balls, but still. They’re covered in sprinkles, they look really nice.”
“Would you like to try and make them one day?” Beatrice asked, walking into the living room and standing next to the couch, looking at the laptop over Ava’s shoulder.
Ava could feel the puffs of Beatrice’s breath against the back of her ear. “Really?”
“Yeah, they do look nice, and- forgive me if I’m wrong or overstepping, but I felt like this could potentially mean a lot to you. It’s something that reminds you of your mother, and that’s- that’s important. If you want to make them, I’d love to help you.”
Ava pushed the laptop off her lap to the cushion on her right, and turned slowly to look at Beatrice.
She could see worry start to flood Beatrice’s face, and then quickly threw her arms around Beatrice’s shoulders before she could apologise or take back her words.
“Ava!” Beatrice yelped, laughing as she placed her hands down on the armrest of the couch to keep herself from falling forward.
“Thank you,” Ava mumbled into her sternum, over and over. “Thank you.”
“Oh,” Beatrice said shakily, still laughing a little, as she put a steady hand on Ava’s back. “You’re welcome, Ava.”
“It does mean a lot,” Ava admitted.
Beatrice tapped Ava’s arm gently to get her to let go of her so she could pull away. When she was standing upright she tucked Ava’s hair behind her ears and then squeezed her shoulders gently.
“We can try tomorrow, if you want,” Beatrice offered.
“We don’t have time, do we?”
Beatrice sucked her bottom lip into her mouth for a brief moment before releasing it. “One day off training won’t hurt us. We can go grocery shopping in the morning, and spend the rest of the day cooking, unless you want to do something else?”
“Of course not,” Ava said excitedly, beaming. “Are you sure?”
Beatrice nodded, smiling.
“Okay, then!” Ava said excitedly again, laughing a little now too. “I’ll look at what we need to get for it and then we can… we can make it! Tomorrow! And, since we’re not training, maybe we could watch a movie tonight?”
Ava knew it was a long shot, that it was already almost 11pm and they still hadn’t eaten dinner and they both had long shifts today so Beatrice was probably tired, so she was pleasantly surprised when Beatrice agreed.
“Just make room for me on the couch and let me share the blanket with you.”
“I always share!”
Beatrice raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, well, just tell me if I’m pulling it over on my side too much and I’ll give some back.”
Beatrice laughed. “Dinner will be ready soon.”
Ava smiled and nodded. “Thanks. I’ll close the laptop and then come and join you.”