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The feeling of her sneakers - beat up beyond recognition but too expensive to replace - hitting the ground makes PJ nauseous. That’s partially due to the fact that she fucking does not run (at least not when she’s not being told to), but mostly it’s just that she doesn’t know how to untangle the swell of emotions in the pit of her stomach, so she labels the unease as something akin to sickness and lets it lie.
She’s on the running track at school, lit only by one floodlight that’s only supposed to be on during track meets, but it broke a few months ago and has been stubbornly casting fluorescent light across the track since. Strictly speaking, she’s not… technically allowed to be here so late, but one of the big chain link gates surrounding the track doesn’t actually lock, so really, it’s not her fault that this public high school has shitty infrastructure.
Take it up with the government or whoever does your budgets, assholes.
Fleece lines the inside of her hoodie, and she’s wearing warm sweatpants, but her nose is numbing with cold. The grass she’s tracking circles around is already coated in frost, and it occurs to her that she is running out of time. Once the first snow of the season hits the ground, her current coping mechanism (quite literally running from her problems) crosses the line from vaguely unhealthy to ‘I’m going to slip on the ice and die’.
She always thought that processing trauma was supposed to happen on her own timeline, but no, of course not. PJ Walker might be the only girl on Earth who has a ticking clock on her own fucking… healing journey, or whatever a yoga instructor who thinks they’re a licensed therapist would call it.
Her eyes are trained on the bright red ground under her where she can feel the soles of her shoes going warm with friction - no doubt wearing thin under her feet - and her earbuds are blaring music loud enough to raise concern for her eardrums. So it’s really only natural that, when she’s forced to an abrupt stop by the realization that someone else is fucking standing in front of her on the track, the first thought is, Oh, this is how I die.
PJ jumps at the sight of a pair of sneakers nearly toe-to-toe with her own, shrieking, “Jesus fuck!”
She doubles over with her hands on her knees and breathes hard, her lungs protesting against her sudden choice to become a casual (not very casual) jogger (sprinter). She’s stuck in the limbo of fight or flight - her body angling hard for ‘freeze’ while her brain screams at her that she literally knows how to fight - when her potential murderer’s hands appear in her field of vision, splayed out the way you do when you’re trying to calm a wild animal.
PJ tears out her earbuds just in time to hear them say, “…me.”
She doesn’t look up, head spinning with her sudden skid to a halt, but she manages to catch her breath long enough to choke out, “What…?”
The person crouches down into her field of view, saying, “I said it’s just me.”
After a few seconds dedicated to uncrossing her eyes (she’s aware that running full-tilt around the track every night isn’t her wisest idea, but it’s the only thing she can do to give herself time to think without spiraling into the repercussions of manslaughter), the person comes into focus.
“Hazel? Fuck, you scared me!”
Hazel Callahan crouches in front of her, and for whatever reason, all PJ can think is, Fuck, she’s hot. She’s wearing a shiny, expensive-looking black coat and her various injuries from the game have faded into the shadow of what was once a black eye and a long, thin scar across her eyebrow.
PJ tries to figure out where the scar came from - It’s too long to be from a punch, but could something have happened when she totally fucking brained that dude with his own helmet? Or Sylvie’s sword, maybe? When the fuck did Sylvie even get a sword? Answer: unclear. The details of that whole night are frayed around the edges at best - and realizes belatedly that Hazel’s peering warily at her like she’s on death’s doorstep.
“I didn’t mean to,” she says, eyes wide with concern and confusion. “I just- you were running like someone was chasing you, and obviously no one was, but I figured I should still make sure you’re… okay.”
It is exceedingly clear that she does not think PJ is okay. Just to prove that she is, at the very least, physically intact, she pushes herself up to a stand and throws her arms in the air. “What, a girl can’t go for a run?”
Hazel stands too. “It’s 11 pm on a Tuesday.”
“I, um-” PJ splutters. “Yeah. This is, like, my ideal time for a jog.”
“…It’s below freezing.”
“What do you think the running is for?”
“You don’t run, PJ.”
That may well be true, but it feels fucking rude. She gestures to the track around them. “Um, clearly I do.”
She frowns. “You’re being weird.”
“You’re being weird, freak.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, PJ snaps her mouth shut and blinks, helpless to what she’s already said.
Hazel recovers quickly, though, saying, “You always think I’m being weird.”
“No I don’t,” she scoffs immediately. Most of the time, she’s up to her eyes in envy for this girl. Her mouth apparently wants to really get the point across, because she doesn’t have time to stop herself before she’s repeating, softer, “No I don’t.”
Unconvinced as she may be (and she looks very unconvinced), Hazel just clicks her tongue quietly and says, “C’mon, your nose is gonna freeze off.”
It’s not until Hazel’s already turned on her heel to lead her back toward the unlocked chain link gate that PJ manages to call out after her, “I didn’t finish my run!”
“Come on,” Hazel insists, turning around and walking backward until PJ folds under her watery gaze and breaks into half a jog until she catches up.
They fall into step side-by-side, and it’s quiet for a long time before she asks, “Wait, where are we going?”
“My house,” Hazel says, like it’s nothing short of goddamn obvious.
PJ’s footsteps falter. “Um, I’m actually just gonna…” She gestures with a thumb over her shoulder. “Go home.”
Hazel catches her by the wrist before she manages to get the hell out of dodge. “I’m not letting you walk four miles in the dark in this weather.”
“How do you know how far away my house is?”
For whatever reason, that’s the thing that makes Hazel look at PJ like she’s something completely unknowable. Like, for the first time in her life, she’s written in a language not even Hazel Callahan speaks. “What the hell’s wrong with you right now?”
She has half a mind to be offended, because what kind of fucking question is that? Instead, she shrugs haplessly and says, “Oh, lots. Lots.”
“What, are you drunk?”
“I fucking wish.”
Hazel tightens her grip on her wrist and starts pulling her along the sidewalk. “When we get to mine, I’ll drive you home if you want. Or you can stay the night and use my - what do you call it? - my ‘fuck-off fancy’ shower? Either way, you’re stuck with me for the time being.”
PJ suddenly finds herself very grateful for the weather, because the bright red consequence of cold on her face is indistinguishable from her blush. “Okay,” she says, fighting hard against the stupid, probably deliriously exhausted part of herself that threatens to blind her to reality. “Yeah, okay.”
Hazel nods decisively, letting go of her wrist because she can apparently tell that PJ isn’t going to make another break for it. “Good.”
“Hey, what are you doing out here?”
“Needed some fresh air,” she says vaguely. “I was going for a walk.”
PJ laughs. “Fucking hypocrite-”
“-A walk,” she emphasizes. “At a normal, non-concerning pace and at a normal, non-concerning distance from my house.”
“Okay, I’m a little offended now. It is not concerning to go for a run, Hazy.” The nickname slips out of her mouth unbidden, and she immediately kind of wants to kill herself about it.
Hazel’s head quirks to the side like she caught the slip, but she doesn’t comment on it. “Listen, it’s… okay, it’s a little concerning for you to go for a run. But mostly it’s the fact that it only took me, like, a couple of minutes to get from the sidewalk to the track, and you almost did two full fucking laps in that time.”
“Well, I was gunning for the world record,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest in what she hopes reads as an attempt to hide from the cold. Even that’s less pathetic than this defensive, stupid, I have to protect my heart instinct she’s had her whole life.
Well. Not her whole life. Just since-
“The world record is, like, 45 seconds,” Hazel says, looking up from her phone where she’s apparently just looked it up. “I can’t divide fractions, but I think you got pretty close.”
“You can’t divide fractions?”
“Um, I can’t even divide three-digit numbers.”
“You just fucking multiply by the reciprocal!”
Hazel looks affronted. “Fucking no one knows what that means, PJ!”
“Actually, everyone does.”
For the rest of the walk, PJ threatens her with fraction worksheets, and by the time they’re making their way up the long, rich-people driveway to the Callahans’ house, she’s actually kind of considering it. Maybe she could throw in some negatives or an exponent to really fuck with her. The idea of a square root crosses her mind, but she doesn’t want to give her a heart attack.
She’s got enough blood on her hands as it is.
The Callahan mansion has never occurred to her as particularly warm. The walls are all this depressing shade of what PJ calls Bourgeoisie Beige, any sound made echoes through the hollow rooms of the house, and Mrs. Callahan insists on all the lightbulbs being so cool-toned they’re almost blue - a stark contrast to the warm yellow glow PJ’s house is always bathed in. But today, the marble tile radiates warmth under her feet - is the fucking floor heated? - and the way the warm air immediately soothes her nearly frostbitten nose almost compensates for how empty the house is.
Almost.
“Here, I’ll hang up your hoodie,” Hazel offers, extending a hand.
PJ tries her very best to avoid it, but her head gets stuck in the neckline as she strips off the hoodie. “Thanks,” she says absently, hands coming up to pull her hair out of its ponytail. Frizzy curls fall over her shoulders, and she frantically attempts to smooth it out where she’s sure it’s sticking up from the friction of her battle with her hoodie.
“You’re making it worse,” Hazel laughs.
And then Hazel’s hands are in her hair, untangling and combing through it with an ease that makes her stomach flip.
So here’s the thing: even a month later, even with everything else she’s dealing with, that stupid fucking distraction kiss is still on her mind. And PJ’s not stupid (except for when she super totally is); she knows her feelings for Hazel are sort of steadily tiptoeing across the line drawn in the sand between platonic and romantic. But Hazel scares her.
Where her crush on Brittany made her feel like she could (and was fucking hell-bent in her mission to) do anything, this… whatever the fuck she feels with Hazel paralyzes her. She can’t even think around this girl - let alone, like, look her in the eye and act like a normal person.
“I just want you to know that I know that this is a trap to get me to stay,” she says, refusing to meet Hazel’s eye.
“But you’re letting it happen?”
PJ coughs. “I… am humoring you.”
Hazel raises an eyebrow. Fuck. “Don’t,” she says, her voice all soft and genuine in a way that makes PJ a little nauseous. “If you want to go home, I’ll drive you. We can go right now. Or…”
OR?????
She tries not to look as nauseous with anticipation as she feels. It almost certainly doesn’t work. “Or?”
With a shrug, she says, “Or you can stay. I haven’t eaten dinner, so I’ll probably make something, and we can… I don’t know, we can do whatever you want.”
Whatever I want, her brain repeats deliriously, and she has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning. Fucking play hard to get, PJ. You can do this. You are so cool and normal and you are going to be so cool and normal right now.
“Dinner.”
Fuck.
Hazel frowns. “Sorry?”
“Um, what… are you making? For dinner.”
“Oh! Uh, I don’t know. Soup?”
PJ blinks. “Soup?” she repeats incredulously.
“Yes? Is that weird? It’s October.”
“No!” she hastens to say. “No, it’s…” She decides to shut the fuck up, and they lapse into stilted silence.
Hazel clicks her tongue. “So… you’re staying?”
PJ nods. “For soup.”
She doesn’t say anything else, a little afraid of what’s going to spill out of her mouth. Yes. Yes, I’m staying. Ideally forever. Or maybe not, like, forever. Not that forever is off the table. It is totally, 100% on the table. But only if you want that. Or alternatively, I’ll shut the fuck up and we can just never talk about this again. Either way is cool. One way is… significantly cooler, but it’s super totally up to you.
This crush-or-whatever-the-fuck is getting fucking out of hand.
“Right,” Hazel says, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’re being weird.”
“So you’ve said.”
“Yeah, well it’s really starting to freak me out.”
PJ digs deep into herself for an acceptable answer and comes up empty-handed. “Fuckin’… sorry to hear that, I guess,” she deadpans.
“Don’t be,” Hazel says, wide-eyed and genuine to the point that she feels a little bit bad for being sarcastic to this girl who has never once understood sarcasm. “Just tell me what’s wrong so I can help.”
For a moment, PJ tries to really picture it: some kind of universe where she’s actually brave enough to be genuine. To be vulnerable. Even the concept makes panic well up in her throat. She plasters on what must be the single most fabricated smile Hazel has ever seen. “What kind of soup are you making?” she asks, bright in that false, neon-yellow highlighter way. “Is it tomato? ‘Cause if there’s any soup out there that’s, like, orgasm-worthy, it’s probably tomato. Tomato soup fucks.”
Hazel’s face falls, and PJ’s heart follows suit. “I don’t know,” she says quietly, and it’s all too clear that she’s not talking about goddamn soup.
—
As it turns out, there’s fucking nothing to make dinner with. To make matters worse, apparently, soup is the only thing Hazel actually knows how to cook.
PJ kicks into problem-solving mode automatically, a childhood habit whose fingerprints are still tattooed into the surface of her skin. She grabs whatever she can find, expertly avoiding anything expired or particularly suspicious (she always thought rich people were supposed to have, like, fridges full of kale and foie gras or whatever the fuck). It’s not until she’s standing at the stove, breaking up the ground beef in a stainless steel pan, that she realizes what she’s doing.
This recipe - leftover casserole, her mom calls it - was the first meal she ever learned to make all by herself. When she was a little kid and her mom was raising her on nothing but student loans with no help at all from her dad, they could spend less than ten dollars and eat this meal for three nights in a row. It’s not exactly the greatest or most gourmet recipe of the century, but it’s still her favorite. And now she’s making her favorite, least impressive, cheapest dinner for the single richest person she’s ever met.
She’s never been ashamed of being poor. Well, not with Hazel, anyway. When they were in elementary school, Hazel and Josie were the only people who never made fun of her for wearing too-tight shoes or borrowing all her school supplies from her teachers.
But when Hazel asks what she’s making, she just shrugs and lets the lie fall off her tongue. “I don’t know,” she says, training her eyes on the stove so Hazel won’t see the look on her face. “It’s nothing, just… all the stuff you had on hand.”
She hums where she’s sitting on the kitchen counter, clearly unconvinced. “Then how d’you know how to make it?” she asks. It’s clear that she’s just curious, but that stupid defensive instinct hits PJ in full force.
“I’m cooking shit and putting it in a fucking casserole dish, Hazel. It’s not exactly rocket science.”
“Oh.” Her voice is so small that PJ’s chest actually, physically hurts.
She exhales through her nose and makes her admission in one breath. “My mom taught me. It’s called leftover casserole and it’s one of my favorite foods but it’s not very fancy and I was afraid you’d think it’s stupid ‘cause you’re used to, like, rich-people food.”
Hazel blinks at her owlishly. “I don’t think it’s stupid.”
“Yeah, I know you don’t,” PJ sighs.
“Oh. Then…?”
“I don’t know. You freak me out.”
“What?” Hazel asks, sounding so completely shocked that it genuinely makes PJ rethink what she just said to make sure it wasn’t a lie. “Why?”
All this fucking vulnerability is really getting to her. “Because,” she says, eyes zeroed in on the wall in front of her as she waves a hand aimlessly. “You’re all… You’re so cool and you don’t even try.”
Hazel goes very quiet for a very uncomfortable amount of time. “I try, like, really hard, actually.”
PJ doesn’t know how she’s supposed to respond to that. But apparently, she’s on some kind of bullshit being-nice-to-Hazel streak, so she says, “Yeah, well you don’t have to.” It comes out belligerent, like she’s being nice out of spite, or something.
“I don’t?”
She huffs, throwing her hands in the air as she turns to face Hazel. “Yeah, Hazel, you’re… People like you. I like you!”
Hazel slides off the counter to stand in front of her. “No, you don’t. You, like, hate me.”
The sheer absurdity of the statement forces a laugh out of PJ. “Oh, come on.”
“What?”
“I don’t hate you, Hazel. You’re-” Hazel’s face brightens, and that stupid, ruinous thing that PJ does hate rears its ugly head. “You’re… fine,” she dismisses, rolling her eyes.
“Hey, why do you do that?”
“Do what?” PJ asks, glancing over at her. But she knows well enough what Hazel means.
“You- I don’t know, you… shut down, or something, whenever you want to say something nice.”
“Okay, I don’t shut down. I just don’t actually have anything, like, nice to say. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of a bitch.” Hazel’s face falls, and for the first time, PJ really, really thinks that maybe she’s getting sick of lying. But she’s so far out of practice with telling the truth that all she can say is, “Sorry, that’s- that’s all bullshit. I’m- the truth is…”
“What?” Hazel asks, wide-eyed and expectant and genuine, and PJ doesn’t know what to say.
Because the truth is that there is something rotten inside of her. Everything tastes like dirt and she is sure that this is what it feels like to decay and she’s trying to kill off the rotten thing but she can’t get her hands on it. She’s clawing for it and there’s dirt under her nails but the rot is too deep to cut out and she is too far gone to get back.
But she’s not going to fucking say that to Hazel. She settles for something a little less violent.
“I feel like there’s something… fucked up in me. It’s like, when my- it’s like at some point I dyed my hair the wrong color because I thought it would be better like that but it’s not and it’s all wrong and I keep trying to get rid of it but it won’t come out and it’s getting all over everything and I’m so sick of ruining everything I touch.”
Hazel is quiet for a long time. Then, suddenly, “I don’t think you’re ruining anything.”
“Oh, you will,” she promises. “Just give it time.”
“I have time.”
It makes PJ want to scream. How could someone like Hazel Callahan ever look at her and see something worth waiting out?
But something in her has really latched onto this whole let’s-be-a-better-person thing, so she just exhales and says, “You shouldn’t waste it on me.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re a waste of time, either.”
“Yeah, okay. What do you think, Hazel?” she asks, fed up with the pressure of having someone believe in her.
“I think I loved you back when we were kids and you were the nicest person I’d ever met, and I love you just as much now. And I think I’ve waited, like, a decade for you to let people love you, so I don’t mind waiting a little longer.”
One night when she was younger - she couldn’t have been more than seven years old - PJ was tasked with making dinner by herself. Well, no one actually tasked her with it, but her mom was working late and her dad was passed out on the couch, so she connected the dots in her head and decided that she’d have to feed herself. Even standing all the way on her tiptoes, the box of Kraft mac and cheese in the cabinets was still just a few inches out of reach. So she pulled a chair over from the kitchen table (quietly, so as not to wake her dad) and lined it up with the counter like a stepstool.
Clambering up onto the counter was a practiced maneuver for her by then, so she had the blue cardboard box in her hands in no time at all. But she must have put her foot too close to the edge of the chair on her way down, because it buckled and fell out from under her. She hit the ground hard, landing on her back as the wind was knocked out of her. For a long time, she just lay there, knowing she needed to get up, unable to even move, and inexplicably focused in on the mess the Kraft mac and cheese had made when it fell to the floor and burst open. She knew she was supposed to be catching her breath, but all she could think about was that she couldn’t remember where she put the dustpan the last time she’d used it.
Déjà vu.
Hazel looks at her like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like it was the only answer that ever even crossed her mind. Like she means it. It is, approximately, the most bizarre thing PJ has ever experienced.
And she should be catching her breath, wrapping her mind around this world-altering information, but all she does is turn and reach out with an almost numb arm to turn off the stove.
Her hand shakes, and it takes a few tries, but once she’s certain there’s no danger of burning down the most expensive house in town, she turns back to Hazel.
“You love me?” she repeats dumbly.
Hazel flushes, looking like she’s going to take it back. “I- well, I did kiss you. At the game.”
Now, somehow, PJ has the upper hand. “No, I kissed you. You love me?”
“You’re, like, one of my best-”
“-Yeah, for sure. The feeling is mutual. You love me?”
“I don’t kn-”
“-Hazel!” she interrupts, grabbing her by the wrists and standing a little too close to have any real hope of turning back now. “This isn’t a trap. I want you to say yes. I really want you to say yes. Do you love me?”
Hazel takes a deep breath, then nods quickly. Her words come out on an exhale. “Yes, I- yes, I love you. I always have.”
PJ feels something crack in her chest, shivery anticipation folding under the glow-stick-snap of something sudden and bright. Holy fucking shit, Josie was right about this whole being-in-love thing. Don’t think about Josie right now. Kiss Hazel, you idiot.
“Um, can I…?”
Hazel leans in closer, but she stops a breath away. “You didn’t ask last time,” she points out, and PJ can’t tell if this is, like, a retroactive scolding, or something.
“I was halfway between throwing up and pissing my pants last time,” she responds, not even knowing what question she’s answering.
“…Oh?”
“I’m sorry I’m so weird,” PJ says. And fuck if that’s not the weirdest possible thing to ever fucking say. Jesus Christ, PJ. Get it together.
Hazel shakes her head, doe-eyed as ever. “Don’t apologize.”
“But I’m trying to be a better person-”
“-For fuck’s sake.” Hazel grabs her face and pulls her into a kiss which is still a little aggressive, but must be at least thirty fucking thousand times gentler than their first kiss.
PJ’s still holding her wrists, and for some reason, that’s the detail that gets to her. “Now who didn’t ask for permission?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Y’know, you’re gonna have to let me finish dinner.”
“You’re holding my hands.”
“Um, you’re holding my face.”
Neither of them lets go.