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Bonnie wanted with all of her heart, Linda noticed. She wanted her family to understand, wanted Jaime to understand the strain she'd been carrying all of her life. She wanted to be warm. She wanted to be loved.
That's why she left Cedar Hills. That's why she wanted Jaime to leave Cedar Hills, Linda to leave Cedar Hills.
But now, they were in the worst part of Cedar Hills. Linda didn't mind it or the cold right now though, because she'd always thought Bonnie was so cool in a way that made her tremble, and now she was getting to get to know her in a way that she'd never had a chance to before. Blaming it on the cold, Linda tried to shake away thoughts of huddling up to Bonnie more. She briefly wondered if her breath would fog up in the air if she breathed out hard, but it wasn't that cold.
“How’s it going with your band? I really wanna see you play some shows!” Linda asked, suddenly remembering that time she saw Bonnie playing and how taken she was with her own music. She was so beautiful like that. Music really was her element. After that, she always listened out for the baseline in rock songs and imagined it was Bonnie playing.
“Oh, donezo… broked-up… kaput,” Bonnie admitted, and Linda felt a pang through her heart. She shifted and her knee was touching Linda’s thigh.
“I'm sorry,” Linda said, either for asking or for the band breaking up. Or both.
“S’alright,” Bonnie reassured. Linda couldn't tell how true that was. “Bands, y’know? I started a band to get girls but I made the grave error of dating a girl in my own band.”
Linda’s heart thumped in her chest. She’d always deep down suspected that Bonnie might like girls. It wasn't very subtle, even though Linda didn't know much about— lesbians? When they were younger teens, Bonnie covered her room in magazine cutouts of rockstar women, all precisely cut out to be without their male band members. In the past, she'd mainly chalked it up to Bonnie wanting to be like them.
New York had made Bonnie so open. Linda didn't know if she was jealous.
“Oh?” Linda responded, the only thing she could say without being weird, and she worried that saying nothing might make her seem judgemental. It's probably what Bonnie was expecting from Linda, who was still a Cedar Hills girl to her core.
“She was cool, but,” Bonnie said, looking down at her knees. It took Linda a moment to realise that she was fidgeting again, and she willed herself to stop. “Once she found out my trip back home was… indefinite… she and the band pretty much moved on without me.”
Linda couldn't believe they did that to her: Bonnie was the founding member! She understood why they kept playing, but surely they could at least leave an open invitation for her to come back at any time? And that girlfriend… Linda couldn't imagine ditching Bonnie so easily.
Before she could overthink it too much, Linda put her hand on Bonnie’s thigh— Bonnie’s elbow was touching her forearm— hopefully reassuringly. The pad of her thumb rested on Bonnie’s warm skin where it was exposed by the rip in her jeans. Then, she told her:
“You deserved better than that.”
Now looking at Linda like she's never really seen her before, Bonnie gave her a barely-there smile. “Yeah. I think so too.”
After a moment, Bonnie placed her hand over Linda’s and it was pleasantly warm just like her thigh. Linda’s insides warmed too, her heart in nervous anticipation for something. Bonnie’s hand squeezed hers, her ring glinting in the light, so Linda looked back up at her face again. That’s when Bonnie shifted a little closer to her, leaning in just enough for it to mean something, watching her invitingly through her dark lashes.
Linda could have easily just brushed this off. Bonnie was giving her the space to pretend it never happened. Linda probably should have done that. She didn't.
Instead she moved in, close enough to almost taste the liquor on Bonnie's breath. Nerves held her still. It was as if she was toeing the line of something life-altering and terrifying. Bonnie waited, still giving her plausible deniability. When Linda exhaled, it wavered on the way out.
Guitar-callused fingertips traced their way up Linda’s cheek, light enough that it was not-quite ticklish. They brushed around the curve of her ear as if tucking back an invisible piece of hair, then the palm settled on her cheek. When Bonnie pressed their foreheads together, Linda could feel her hair and was suddenly aware of Bonnie wearing men’s cologne. Bonnie was a bit like the opposite version of David Bowie or something, Linda thought: he was the only person she really knew who wore things from the opposite gender like that. It really suited Bonnie, though. She always stood out from a crowd.
Linda worried that her forehead was sweaty, but even if it was there was no movement from either of them for a quiet few seconds. She quickly realised that Bonnie was never going to cross the line they'd been toeing. Linda didn't know if she was afraid that she was going to get screamed at, if that's happened to her before, or if she was afraid that Linda was going to get upset and tell Jaime, or if Bonnie was just nervous, just like her. Linda swallowed. Bonnie was leaving the choice up to her entirely and it was now or possibly never. She didn't want it to be never.
When Linda kissed her, Bonnie made this little surprised sound from her throat, as if she truly had not been expecting it to happen. Linda didn't know what to do with her lips— she'd even barely kissed a boy before— but Bonnie was soft and slow in her reciprocation as if she didn't want to break her. She paused to catch her breath but then Bonnie was kissing her again, a little more insistently but still nowhere near aggressive. Linda tried to keep up, feeling dizzy and her skin tingling like electricity.
Bonnie pulled back, probably able to tell that Linda was overwhelmed— she almost protested because it was a good overwhelm but then Bonnie shot her a conspiratorial smile. Linda gave her one back, and although she was sure it looked a lot less cool and more dopey, she didn't care.
“You've got—” Bonnie reached out and pushed her thumb along Linda’s lips. Linda’s lips automatically parted a little. Her heart felt like it was going to burst. When Bonnie was done, her thumb came away lightly stained with black. “There y’go.”
Linda blinked at her. The worry-free bubble Linda was floating in burst when she thought thank God Bonnie wiped that off, what if the others saw? Withdrawing her hand, she fidgeted with her hair nervously for a moment, and rocked forwards into standing. “Maybe we should go find everybody else,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Bonnie said, standing up too. Her gaze was an unrelenting thing.“I was… just starting to warm up.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said, light-headed, and tore away from Bonnie's gaze. They could talk again later, Linda had thought, somewhere even more private where no-one would have any chance of seeing or hearing them.
Later in life, the hopeless fantasies about what it could have been like between them if they had another day, and another, and another, stuck with her. But that fateful evening— where everything else had to change too— would always be their first and last kiss.