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It takes five years for it to happen, for Regina to crack open and make a mistake and for everything she has heavily worked on to break in pieces.
Before that, she has learnt how to move easily, swiftly, around Janis. In between the Spring Fling in their junior year, and the mistake that ruins everything, they almost act like friends, as a very loose definition of the word. They’re cordial to each other, inquire about present projects and ignore each other’s partners, minimizing their implications as if they barely exist, no. For anyone who doesn’t know them, they almost seem like old high school classmates who happened to share a group. As long as no one scrolls far enough in their social media accounts to find videos of a bus hitting Regina, Janis just steps away from her.
And that’s fine, that’s most likely how their life was supposed to turn out to be, the happiest they can be around each other is by mildly ignoring the implications, the way they had transformed each other’s lives. Janis’s distrustfulness of her friends, Regina’s back pain and multitude of scars. To pretend that life hadn’t thrown on them things that most other teenagers don’t live through.
They introduce each other, every now and then when they have to, as my friend. Janis will tell one of her girlfriends that the person texting her at three in the morning is my friend, Regina and explain how she’s in Paris and has recently seen a piece Janis sold to a private alternative museum, except that her name is incorrectly written down as Janice and it makes her think of French class. And Regina says, sorry, I’m friends with the artist, her name is Janis, with an S at the end to someone in the gallery, hoping for them to correct the mistake.
It’s easy to throw the word so lightly.
(Because really, what are they? Friends, turned enemies, turned friends, with too many unsolved problems between themselves? What do you call something you’ve never spoken about? First heartbreak that maybe shouldn’t even be called so? How to explain to someone who hasn’t known them what it means the name of the other falling through their lips?
Where does the story start, with the Spring Fling, with the bus, with Cady Heron, with a burned backpack, with a bottle, with a plushie?)
Regina doesn’t tell it to her high school friends, no, she briefly speaks about it with her group from college, and they all chuckle and say something on the line of about time. She would be offended about it, would probably claim that it’s an unfair thing to say, but no, the truth has been obvious even for her own eyes, as much as she would’ve gladly pretend she hasn’t noticed.
She’s a lesbian, and it brings a chill down her broken spine, half terrifying, half exciting.
It’s not as if it is a complete surprise, but she has tried for so long to ignore it. To kiss Kyle, to kiss Aaron, to kiss any guy who might make her feel something, that at some point she might’ve even fooled herself, but no. She would get drunk, pretend that it was the sole reason why she was kissing girls inside the bar, why she was brushing their hair and having intense friendships that always ended up in heartbreak.
(And that she knows where the story starts. Janis.)
It’s liberating to say out loud, I’m a lesbian, although it always comes with a little, muttered I think first. She’s forever scared that she’s just trying too hard, that maybe she’ll get the life her mother planned for her, white fence, two kids, a dog and a husband. Except that it never sounded like something she would like to do, until she switched a husband for a wife and life seemed bright again, a positive outcome that she would desire.
But it means that somehow there’s this now secret about her, something she will have to slowly say to everyone in her life, to inform, and surely it shouldn’t be complicated. She has been the token straight in way too many of her groups, and even if she wasn’t, most people she would hang out with are open minded, but it’s different when it applies to her, when it comes to her saying the words, and fear the rejection that might come with it.
(She thinks she would deserve it, after what she did to Janis, as some sort of karmatic payment. But it doesn’t happen, and it both: calms her down and heightens her anxiety.)
They don’t get together often, not anymore, as they’ve scattered around the country.
Janis left for New York without looking back, Cady moved to Boston hoping for the best, Karen decided that Miami would be a good fit, Gretchen liked the cold weather of Seattle, Damian stayed in Chicago and Regina chose Los Angeles.
Aaron was probably in Massachusetts, but Regina tries not to keep track of him. A certain guilt that gnaws with the wrong choices of her teenage years.
But Thanksgiving is usually the only time of the year that finds them all in Evanston. Christmas and New Year are more complicated dates, with some of them traveling to see family or simply for the joy of beginning the year somewhere different, and the summer usually finds a few of them caught up in something else, a summer class when they were in university, or a project that can’t be postergated for a quick trip to their hometown.
So, Thanksgiving it is, the one moment a year that they all see each other, the six of them. Every now and then seven, if Aaron decides to join.
Gretchen prepares way too much food, which leaves Karen to help her take everything from her house to Regina’s, who often hosts. Cady takes care of the non-alcoholic beverages, and Janis buys enough booze to last them until New Years if they so desire. Damian always gets a free out of jail card by pretending to be in charge of organizing, which most of the time ends up in him asking Regina to borrow one of Kylie’s board games and make up rules until it makes no sense.
(Regina thinks it’s way more than she deserves, after being a bitch to most of the group for a handful of years, which makes her book an appointment with her therapist every year, to try and ignore how much she hates herself.)
She thinks she has matured out of some of her worst traits.
Matured, being a word she prefers over thinking how she got hit by a bus after noticing that none of her friends actually liked her personality, and instead pulled up with her shit for the sake of loving her without caring how toxic it was for everyone involved. It’s okay, she thinks, she has some sort of self awareness and years of therapy that helps her realize what happened.
(It doesn’t take away the self depreciation, or the fact that she sometimes feels the need in the middle of the night to apologize again to each and everyone involved, but it’s better than it was before, than the incapacity to admit her own wrongdoings without feeling like the world might as well end.)
Some things still linger in the corner of her brain, habits are hard to break and all that, and she hasn’t gone on a crazy diet in a while, but that doesn’t mean she eats without thinking. In so many ways she feels almost broken, pieces of a puzzle that have outgrown each other and will never really fit, as if she has to always try, try more and try harder to actually be a better person, as tiring as it might be.
But despite it all, she knows she’s happier. She knows she had the chance to change just in time, before it became the point of no return.
The night she screws it up, is the same night she’s hosting their Friendsgiving for the sixth year in a row.
Gretchen and Karen arrive first, and it’s all a dance of where to put which food and what goes in the fridge and what can sit in the corner until it’s time to move it to the table. Kylie, now a teenager, which makes Regina feel so old, hangs around Karen asking for some makeup tips and asking how the beaches are in Florida, and Regina would be lying if she said that it didn’t make her feel a little hurt how lame her sister seemed to think she is, and how cool Karen is in her eyes.
It’s nice to see her friends though, the ones who know the worst of her, the absolutely worst, and still chose her.
Then Cady shows up as she always does, and it’s ironic how they always follow the same order, as if still in high school. First the plastics, then Cady, and lastly Janis and Damian, him carrying most of the liquor as they collectively kick Kylie back into her room. They all talk over each other, chaotically not quite hearing what the other is telling, but knowing each other too much to really care about it.
Cady explains that her on-again and off-again relationship with Aaron is in an off-again, to which Regina answers with a sad smile and a concerned look. She knows her shadow has impacted in too many of her friends' fights, a lot of them spurring from the trust issues she had left him with, but Cady mutters it is not your fault, as she always does since Regina told her the same at the Spring Fling. Damian talks about his play, a workshop of some old movie turned musical they all promised to try to attend, as he gushed about one of the actors who he’s having a situationship with.
And Karen asks Regina if she has any news, to which she says, no, my girlfriend broke up with me, so and with an exaggerated gesture, winking at Cady she finished yay for being single!
Half of her friends told her it was a bad idea before it happened, but Regina wouldn’t listen.
Some habits die hard and walking straight into danger hasn’t changed. Luckily, this time it wasn’t a school bus, but her first girlfriend and their first breakup and suddenly all the songs made sense about how sad breaking up actually is. And whatever bullshit she had been thinking for years, that maybe she’ll be forever cold and uncaring dissolved when Kate broke up with her, claiming that she was always too focused on her career, that she would forever prioritize staying home finishing reports over getting dinner, that she never chose her.
And it absolutely sucked.
Regina tried her best, to do any promise under the sun, to say she’ll take time off and they can even make a little trip, just the two of them and go somewhere fun where work won’t bother. But there was no way she could convince her, no matter how hard she tried. So, before coming to Evanston, she had spent the past three weeks half moping around, half feeling all the pent up anger and teenage angst that she didn’t know were still inside her.
And now she’s with her friends, and she believes that somehow dropping the bomb on all of them wasn’t the way to go.
No one says anything for a second, and then Cady raises her glass and says cheers. And they’re all back to talk as if nothing has happened, except for Janis. She’s quieter than normal, a little bit more reserved than how she was when the night started, and it makes Regina’s heart beat faster with anxiety.
She hadn’t meant for it to happen.
They were the best of friends, of course they were.
And then she spinned a bottle and she has never stopped thinking why her. Why did destiny, God, or whatever, made it land on Janis. Would their lives have turned differently if it didn’t? Would they still be friends if it hadn’t happened? If it was Gretchen, if it was Karen, how would that change everything?
But it sounds so easy, to pin the blame on the things she could never control, to pretend that it was a part of a bigger plan of an entity she’s not even sure exists. No, the problem was what she did, how she reacted, the things she said, whatever motivated her to try and do her worst.
She knows that she’ll never forgive herself. For the years that they missed, for the broken friendship that will surely never be the same, for everything she did and all the times she stood by, letting others do her dirty work.
(And seeing Janis so quiet, surely doesn’t help.)
At some point Janis walks to the kitchen, as they are too used to doing after spending most of their time at Regina’s house during senior year, and her telling everyone to pretend it was their house, as she’s not getting up each time they want something, let alone with her back aches. Against her best judgment, Regina follows after her, carefully pretending as if it is all so natural and casual, and not that she needs to talk to her.
And that is, how, for the first time in years, the tension in the air between Janis and Regina feels as if it can be cut by a knife.
Janis's hands are both trying to open a bottle of vodka, ignoring the beer she was already drinking, while Regina’s hands sit on the corner of the marble, absorbing the cold of it. They don’t look at each other like old friends who talk once in a while.
(They almost look like an old marriage, like the unasked question of what happened to us?)
Regina doesn’t remember much between the crash and senior year, even the summer was spent in a drugged haze of sleeping pills and pain pills and stomach aches out of how nauseous it sometimes made her feel. She doesn’t even know if she ever apologized, if she left out the word vomit of how terribly sorry she was for what she did.
All she knows is that, by the time her conscience was coming back, Janis and her existed in this cordial, not too close, not too far peace that she liked to habit.
She had missed her. If Regina had to be totally honest, she had missed her, forgotten how close they used to be, the way she would always have something witty to say, a sarcastic remark to everything. She missed how little she would pull with her bullshit, how much she took her out of her comfort zone.
And when they were almost friends, real, truly friends, and Regina was looking forward to her texts, waiting for the next one to arrive so she wouldn’t look desperate double texting, school was over. And they moved on.
(And it was like a story left untold.)
“Are you okay?” Regina asks, and when she gets no answers, she questions, “is this because I’m a bitch?”
“This is more self awareness than what you have had in a couple of years.”
“You know what I mean.”
Silence again, and then, “yes, I know.”
Regina stares at her, sees the warmth of brown eyes, the makeup around that has toned down with the years, but is still remarkably and unmistakable Janis’s. And she thinks, God, obviously everyone knows, as if it is such an easy thing to admit, as if she hasn’t fought against it for half of her life.
“Did you ever-” Janis starts, before closing her mouth and opening it again, in a sign of confusion mixed with the smallest hurt, “did you ever love me?”
“We were best friends.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She purses her lips, contemplating on what she’s about to say, before admitting, “yes, I think so.”
She takes a few steps closer, letting most of her weight sit on the counter, as Janis is in front of her, barely moving. Something that might look like shock, or closer to her reaction when the bus hit Regina, is plastered on her face, unchanging.
“You know, I’ve been telling myself for years that it never happened. That I’ve fooled myself, that you were always straight, that you never felt the same way. Maybe, I was the problem.”
“Are you saying that I am the problem?”
“No! No, you’re not.”
“I sort of was, though. I am.”
“Regina…”
“It’s true, I ruined, I don’t know how many years of your life.”
“You changed, you really did. And you know, each time we see each other I think, what if, and the answer is always stop, it was never going to happen. But it could’ve, right? If I wasn’t me, if it was a better girl, it could’ve.”
“No, Janis,” Regina says, taking a deep breath, “you were always perfect. You are perfect.”
“Am I? Really?”
And it is all Regina needs, to finally ruin their whole peace. She pushes herself forward, carefully cupping Janis’s face with her hand, letting herself be pushed against the corner by Janis, and staring lovingly at her eyes before doing it again, as if they were back at a middle school party and the bottle just spinned pointing at her,
She kisses her, hungrily, longingly, having thought about it over and over the past ten years, without ever thinking it would happen again.