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Kate turns the faucet, the stream of water echoing when it hits the slams against the inside of the kettle, loud as it fills to the top. Once it’s full, she turns and steps across the kitchen, setting it down atop one of the burners on the stove. She turns the dial up to the highest it can go.
“Tea?”
She startles, looking over to see Juliet, standing in the living room. Her hair is wet from the shower, sticking to the thin material of her robe. She’s eyeing Kate with no particular expression. Simple curiosity would probably describe it best.
She looks away. She’s found that she can’t look at Juliet for long periods of time. “Yeah. Hope that’s okay.”
“Sure. If you don’t mind, could you put on enough water for me?”
She nods. She already had been, though it hadn’t been intended for her. It was a precaution. Maybe she’d spill some. She likes to prepare for the worst.
Juliet picks her book up from the coffee table and pulls out one of the chairs at the kitchen table. She doesn’t flip the page open; her eyes remain on Kate. She can feel them aimed at the side of her head while she watches the steam rise from the kettle.
Juliet belongs among the vastness of space and the depth of the ocean, things humans know so little about. She’s just as mysterious. Kate has just as little an understanding of her as she does what she’d find if she swam out into the water and went as far down as she could go.
They’ve been living together for a month now, ever since their two weeks were up and it was determined they could stay with the Dharma Initiative. She thinks a lot about the decision she made that day. She wonders often why she stayed. (Something itches inside her, the bottoms of her feet burning against the ground, an invisible force tugging her forward, urging her to run as far as she can. There’s nothing for her here. Not anymore.) (But something holds her down. Something keeps her here. It stands just out of sight, nameless and faceless.)
Dharma rules indicate same sex housing, the only exception being made for couples. So Horace sent her and Juliet to a house across the grass from the one where Sawyer, Jin, and Miles are living.
She yearns to return there often. Sawyer doesn’t raise so many questions in her head. She understands him; she’s never this confused.
The kettle whistles. She turns off the stove.
Juliet always uses the yellow mug, so she lifts it off the hook, followed by the brown one she’s claimed as her own. She pours the water out into the mugs and then drops a tea bag into each one. The box showed up in the pantry a few days ago, clearly Juliet’s doing. Lemon flavored herbal tea, Dharma branded with the logo large on the box, like everything here.
“I hope lemon is okay,” Juliet says suddenly. When Kate looks at her over her shoulder, she adds, “They have other kinds. For next time.”
She shakes her head. She tries to smile but it doesn’t come out quite right. “Don’t worry about it. Lemon’s my favorite, actually.”
She never drank that much tea—she’d relied heavily on coffee in high school and that always seemed to be the better option. But it was when she was living with Kevin that she tried something new, testing out different flavors. She always found herself coming back to the lemon one. It was sweet; it reminded her of a cookie almost. This one might be different, but she can only imagine it’ll be similar enough to scratch that itch.
“Really? It’s my favorite too.”
Kate looks at her again. That seems fitting; she can’t explain why. “What do you want in yours?”
“I can do it,” she says, and before Kate can argue she’s getting up from the table and heading toward the fridge. “My mom used to make it for me when I was sick. With a little honey. It’s nice on your throat.”
Kate nods wordlessly. She thinks about her own mom, so hands off that she believes she knows how to raise a child better than she does. Did. When she was sick, she never told her. She wouldn’t have done anything useful, even if she had. There was no tea with honey for her.
Juliet hands her the milk when she’s done with it, and then opens the cabinet and pulls out the sugar. Without even being aware of it, Kate copies what she does, making hers the exact same way.
She puts the milk away when she’s done, watching Juliet take a sip. Her eyes slip shut. “Mmm. Thank you.”
Kate doesn’t know what to say. She just boiled the water.
Juliet wraps her hands around the bottom of the mug as she takes it to the table, curling her legs up on the chair. The robe rides up and Kate can’t help staring, her eyes trailing up the long, pale expanse of her thigh. It looks smooth, and she flexes her fingers, attempting to shake off the odd urge she gets to touch the skin.
She takes her own mug and sips it. The tea is hot, scalding the roof of her mouth as she quickly swallows it down. Juliet watches her, almost expectantly.
“It’s different than the one I used to drink,” she says, “but it’s still good.”
She nods, understanding.
Kate carries it over, sitting across from her at the table. She avoids her gaze. She sips slowly on the warm drink until it begins to cool. It is sweet, the citrus flavor not too tart at all.
“What other kinds did they have?” she asks, trying to fill the silence.
A soft smile pulls on Juliet’s lips. “Raspberry, mint, earl grey. Some others. They had this hibiscus one, which is what my sister used to drink. It’s awful. It tastes like nothing.”
Kate’s mouth quirks up in a rare smile. “We won’t be trying that one, then.”
“Yeah.” Juliet nods, and then shifts in her seat, sitting up straight. She looks down into the surface of her tea.
“Nice that we both like the same one, though, huh? Not a lot we have in common.” A month of living together and she still doesn’t know her. Not really. She isn’t sure whose fault it is—Juliet’s for being closed off or hers for not looking. (She’d never admit it, but Juliet reminds her of Jack in all these ways she doesn’t want to dwell on. It hurts. She knows there’s no good in poking an already aching wound.) (He isn’t here to fix it.)
When she looks up at her there’s a smile on her face, but there’s something distant in her eyes. It’s different, and only after she speaks does she peg it as sadness. It comes out like a joke, but it isn’t. “How can you hate someone who likes the same kind of tea as you?”
She’s smiling at her, like she’s waiting for her to confirm the truth she’s searching for.
She recalls the flames of anger that had sparked in her chest, watching her with Jack. Watching her kiss him, watching him smile at her words, watching them laugh.
That fire has been out for a long time. She hadn’t even realized, and when she looks now all she sees is ash.
When she looks across the table she sees Juliet who shot the man with a gun at her head in the jungle during one of the flashes and saved her life. She sees Juliet who never gets exasperated when Kate gets confused yet again at the motor pool, who carefully explains things time and time again. She sees Juliet who folds her laundry without asking and who tried to make a cake on Miles’ birthday last week (burning the first attempt and having to try again) and asked Kate what kind she liked so she’d remember for hers in June and who sings in the shower just loud enough to be heard outside the door.
“I don’t hate you,” she says, and it’s completely and utterly true.
Juliet tilts her head, and Kate can feel the soft smile she wears, more real now, so deep in her flipping stomach.
( There , that flutter, the thing she tries to restrain and the reason she can’t hold her gaze.)
“Well, that’s nice,” she says, and takes a sip of her tea.
Yeah, Kate thinks, sipping on the same drink. She supposes it is.