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They don’t talk about the kiss.
Grace isn’t sure what it means—she’s never kissed someone before, but she can’t help but follow Steph’s lead. Steph’s kissed far more people than Grace, she’s sure of it. And she doesn’t mean that in any sort of derogatory way! It’s just— Well, it’s true, and she must know what she’s doing.
So, apparently people don’t talk about kisses after they do it. That’s fine. Grace Chasity can handle that, just like she can handle everything else that’s happened these past few months.
What’s kissing your pretty best friend after surviving the vicious slaughter of a ghost of your own creation?
Except, well, Grace has never had a best friend before either. Steph had confirmed—with her usual amused smile, a hum in her voice combined with the sleepy rasp—that they were, in fact, best friends.
“Of course we are, dork,” she’d mumbled, face still half—pressed into Grace’s pillow and her long hair a messy, dark halo around her head. Grace had stared down at her, felt something she didn’t have a name to put to. Her tongue had flicked out, wetting her dry lips—her head pounding from their odd concoction they’d drunk at the party the night before—as she pushed herself up further to sit. “I’ve… I think you’re probably the best friend I’ve ever had.”
“Really?” Grace had questioned—wide-eyed and a little surprised. Stephanie Lauter could be friends with anyone, even now, and she was choosing Grace. That had to mean something. “You really think that?”
“No one gets me like you,” Steph answered easily, her hand reaching out to brush against the bare skin of Grace’s knee—back of her hand brushing against the pale blue fabric of her sleep shorts. “No one could. It’s me and you, Chastity.”
“Me and you,” she repeated with a slow nod, swallowing as Steph’s thumb drew delicate patterns across the bumps of her knee. Watching as the pad of her thumb slid across the pink bandaid sitting there from a nasty fall of her bike a few days prior, and Grace had to resist the urge to… To touch Steph, as well. “Me and you…”
It really was just the two of them most of the time. Grace had discovered the way she thought about Stephanie for most of their lives had been wrong, that it had hardly been as perfect a picture as Grace had believed when they first met years ago. Though, she supposes with a wry smile, her family ended up being pretty far from perfect when you took a closer look as well.
Her dad had helped Steph sell her old home, and so on a Tuesday night before school starts up again from winter break, Steph and Grace are tasked with clearing the place. It’s huge, far larger than Grace’s house for sure. She’s a little in awe as she wanders through the dusty rooms—wonders what it must have been like for Steph, to grow up in a place as cold and extravagant as this.
It’s all sleek corners and large windows, modern in a way Grace couldn’t help but compared to those sci-fi movies her mom would watch with her when she was much smaller.
“There’s no photos,” Grace points out, voice quiet as she glances around Steph’s abandoned bedroom.
It makes sense—she can see all different parts of her friend here. The thick curtains kept out any and all light, the poster covered walls—movies and bands and people Grace couldn’t begin to know—and her huge bed. Grace thinks she wouldn’t mind sharing a bed with Steph so much if they slept in here instead.
Because, yes, though they don’t talk about the kiss, somehow they’d silently agreed Steph should move from her spot on Grace’s bedroom floor to her tiny bed.
Her fingers pry a CD from a shelf, flipping it over, as if it would mean anything to her. Grace has only recently begun listening to music beyond the Christian rock and camp songs her dad played in his car—and Steph had been her guide through that.
“You really like Weezer, huh?” Steph had asked, giggling to herself as Grace nodded her head along to the strange song playing loud and violent from Steph’s grainy phone speaker. “You’re such an enigma, Grace.”
“What?” Steph questioned from where she was in the closet. That’s right, Steph’s closet was large enough that she could stand inside it. Grace still finds herself a little breathless at that discovery. To think Steph has a home as big and expensive as this, and she’s happily giving it up to live with Grace and her mom. It’s still hard for Grace to wrap her head around it.
“Your house, there’s no family photos,” Grace clarifies, having noticed it as she followed Steph through each of the rooms downstairs.
There hadn’t been much Steph wanted to take with her before they got people in to clear and toss everything else. Grace had been a little excited at the prospect of seeing a baby Stephanie Lauter in photos, the same way she’d blushed and protested as her mom got out the Chasity Photo Album a few days after Steph started talking with them, even showing off the completely embarrassing bath photos. It was sad, to see there weren’t any at all. Except, well, there were photos in Steph’s room.
Polaroid shots—they remind Grace of the type her mom has in the basement, the ones from when her parents were in high school. They’re pictures of Steph with people Grace hardly knows, even now. Her old friends, even Max. They don’t count, though. The Steph in those photos isn’t too different to the one standing in this very room with Grace.
Except… Maybe less sad.
“I… I’m sorry,” is what she finds herself saying, unsure of what she’s even apologizing for but somehow also finding that those words feel right.
“It’s okay,” Steph says, and she does actually sound like it is okay. “I took the only photo worth keeping from this place a while back—when I thought I’d never come back here.” Her fingers fidget with the sleeve of a flannel shirt on a hanger, dancing along the frayed cuff. “Me and my mom,” she continues with a small smile that Grace can only slightly see, staring at Steph’s profile from across the room. “I cut my dad out the photo, thought I might regret it someday but…” Steph shrugs then, at last looking at Grace, a smile on her face. “I don’t regret it yet. I’ll show you the picture when we’re home—I left it somewhere in our room.”
Home. Our room.
Grace’s stomach flips at those words, and she nods, biting away the silly smile pulling at her lips as she busies herself in the rest of Steph’s belongings.
It turns out there isn’t much in her room that Steph wants to take either, a few clothes she’d been missing and that’s it. Still, Grace insists she carries the heaviest box to the car—after all, Steph is still her guest, and her mother raised her correctly. Though, the look Steph gives her when she glances back, sliding the box full of clothes into the back seat of Steph’s brand new car… It doesn’t help with the odd feeling in her stomach, and Grace swallows, pulling a smile as she shuts the door and flits back towards her friend.
They stop at Miss Retros for milkshakes—
“We should have gotten fries,” Steph laments as they drive aimlessly through Hatchetfield, the sun starting to set, “they taste so good dipped into a chocolate milkshake.”
“What? Steph—! No!”
—and end up at the eclectic collection of stores just far enough away to not count as downtown anymore.
“We should get you a good wig,” Steph says as she glides along on a shopping cart, Grace struggling to keep up with her as they wander through the aisle of Party City. She blinks, staring at all the strange masks and costumes lining the shelves. “Or a hat, I think you’d rock a nice hat, Grace.”
“We could get matching hats,” Grace suggests with a grin, running her fingers through the plastic-feeling hairs of a bright orange wig, rounding the corner to keep up with Steph as she wheels away. “Or not—! I don’t mind.”
“Nah, I like the matching idea.”
Steph jumps down from the cart, parking it in front of a wide array of skeleton costumes. The sight makes Grace a little queasy, takes her back to the Waylon Place, and her eyes find Steph quickly—hoping to forget about it quickly. Thankfully, Stephanie always knows how to be a perfect distraction, even unintentionally.
“Would your mom mind if we came back with 200 blue plastic cups?” she questions, pulling a box slightly off the shelf and wiggling her brows. “Because these are on sale for five dollars.”
“Stop that,” Grace scolds, struggling to hold a laugh as she lightly shoves Steph—moving past her to get a better look at the hats sitting on the opposite shelf. Her hands find a little headband with deer antlers on, and cannot resist the urge to put it on. “How about this one?” she asks, wiggling her head back and forth—preening under Steph’s analytical gaze, posing with a hand under her chin in the way she’s seen Steph do when taking photos. It feels silly. “Deer are cute!”
“And so are you,” Steph says, plucking the antlers from her head and tossing them back onto the shelf, “but no, there’s gotta be something better. Let's keep looking.”
Grace goes through a couple more hats—cat ears, a top hat, even a rainbow cap with a suspender on top, “Like the cartoons, Stephie!” —and even a wig, but still Steph insists they keep looking. That is until the wheels of the cart come to an abrupt, screeching stop, and Grace very nearly walks right into the back of Steph at the suddenness of it.
“Hm,” is all she says, jumping off the back of the cart once more and plucking another option from the shelf. Instead of putting it on Grace this time, though, she plops it on her own head. A bright blue cowboy hat—plastic and cheap and utterly ridiculous. “Hell yeah.” Then, Steph whips around, doing a single finger gun and winking right as Grace, a silly southern drawl to her voice as she says, “howdy, partner!”
Grace has read the bible front to back many times in her life. She’s very confident that there are no mentions of cowboys in the bible—certainly none that look like Steph. Hair wild and messy beneath a plastic hat, flannel loose and flowy of her shoulders, winking at Grace like Grace Chasity is the type of person people wink at and mean it.
But, she thinks that there should be cowboys in the bible. This moment is so important Grace thinks, just this once, she’d be okay with rewriting the whole scripture just so this is never forgotten. So that everyone sees Steph as she is now. Eyes tired and sullen with eye bags, frizzy around the edges under the bright store lights, her usual lipstick missing from her lips, and yet so… So perfect in a way Grace can only compare to that night on New Years eve.
Her chest hitches, the memory of Steph’s lips closed around her thumb slamming into her hard.
“Grace? Are you—?”
Steph’s words are cut off as Grace grips her by the loose fabric of her flannel, pulling her in for a kiss. Uncoordinated and unparsed—their mouths slamming together in a way far more ‘ow that hurt’ than ‘wow this is great.'
But it is great.
Because this whole time Grace has been trying really hard to not bring up the kiss—trying even harder not to kiss Steph again. Now, they’re kissing, and Grace isn’t sure how she managed to wait so long before doing this again.
Hands find her face, cupping her cheeks and slowing the frantic kiss into something sweeter, something that will do Grace’s frantically beating heart some good. Beneath her skin her pulse flickers wild and desperate, hands gripping the green fabric tighter, but she sighs something delicate and easily—humming as Steph smiles against her lips, the tip of Steph’s silly cowboy hat tipping into her forehead.
“Where did that come from?” Steph murmurs against her a moment later, pulling away as far as Grace will let her.
“I…” Her hands find their way under the shirt, brushing the jagged and hand-cut edge of Steph’s cropped t-shirt. Dangerous territory, and Grace settles her hand onto the sides of Steph’s body instead—her eyes dipping down to a small freckle on her neck, nose bumping against Steph’s chin. “The hat suits you.”
At that, Steph laughs, and Grace can’t help but laugh too. They pull further apart, and Grace reaches forward to fix the hat on her head, having jostled it in the sudden kiss.
“Oh!” From the shelf, right beside where the blue hat had been, Steph grabs another. It drops on Grace’s head a second later, and she blinks at Steph, brows furrowed as her friend assesses the hat choice once more—nodding, a proud smile on her lip. “Yeah, this is the one.”
Grace’s hands find the band, and she laughs again—rolling her eyes as far back as they’ll go, getting a glimpse at the halo Steph had unceremoniously put on her.
“You know, I don’t feel as angelic as I used to,” she admits with a small smile, stepping closer to Steph once more. Letting out a soft breath, wanting to kiss her again but unable to find any courage to actually do it.
Steph doesn’t kiss her, but she grabs her hand, tugging her back towards their abandoned cart. “The best part about angels is when they’re naughty, Grace—everyone knows that.”
“Steph!”
“It’s true!”
And Grace will just have to believe her, because she thinks keeping the halo on her head will let her hold onto this moment. Just a little while longer, at least. Before they go home. Before they silently agree that they won’t talk about this kiss either.
Right now it’s just Steph and Grace—and she’s starting to realise those moments between just the two of them are what’s keeping her going through all of this.
It’s me and you.