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“Don’t say it,” Noelle says quietly.
Kris turns to look at her, eyebrows raised. Noelle avoids their gaze by looking up, but ends up watching Susie again, which is exactly what she wanted to avoid.
Susie’s swinging the bat recklessly, and she’s got one of the PE jerseys they’re forced to wear for softball on over her sports bra. Her hair is pulled up messy under a baseball cap, and sweat sticks strands of it on her neck.
“I’m not that messed up,” Noelle says to them, trying for jokey but missing by a mile. “I’m messed up, but not that messed up.”
They chew the inside of their cheek and pull their knees up to their chest on the bleachers, gaze flickering between Susie on the field and Noelle next to them listlessly.
“They aren’t even that alike.” Noelle isn’t sure if she’s telling Kris or herself. “I like Susie for plenty of other reasons.”
Kris looks up at that, with a ‘you admitting that, now?’ sort of expression. It’s funny how she can tell more about what they think from their face than anything they say lately. Nothing they’ve been saying has seemed like them much at all.
“Oh come on.” She hits them lightly, admonishing. “I know you knew I like her. You know me, Kris, no matter how embarrassing it is.”
They smile lightly at this, pleased.
“And Freud was stupid anyways. That thing about horses was crazy.” She twitches her nose. “I don’t like Susie because she reminds me of Dess. I don’t.”
“Good,” they say, very quietly. “She’s herself. Not anyone else. Like that about her.”
They’re both quiet for a moment, watching Susie hit a softball at Berdly. He squawks, and she laughs. It’s a bright, rough kind of sound. A familiar sound, even though Noelle hasn’t heard her laugh before.
“But they’re so much alike,” Noelle murmurs.
“Maybe you’re just seeing what you wanna see,” Kris murmurs. “They’re…alike, a lot, yeah in some ways. But not, in a lotta others. So are you and me.”
“Dess tried to scare me all the time. Susie scares me too. But they were both fun scary.”
“She won’t scare you anymore, when you know her.” They stand up, stretch their arms over their head. “You still gonna like her, then?”
Noelle looks at the flash of skin below Kris’ sweater that appears briefly as their arms are lifted. “I don’t know.”
They laugh. “You’re always thinking too much. She’s also super hot. Maybe it’s simple as that.”
Noelle laughs too. “I’d like to think I'm a little more complicated than that, Kris.”
They hum, and grin. “Wouldn’t we all.”
The conversation is done there. They run over to Susie on the field, punch her on the shoulder and pull her down by the ponytail to whisper something in her ear.
A little more complicated, she thinks as she watches them run off together, Susie tugging Kris by their locked hands. Yes, that it is.