Chapter Text
Martha's mind always wandered to better times in the worst of situations. It wasn't different now: acting as if she wasn't troubled beyond belief, acting as if she would see another sunrise with her beloved Karen.
Karen, Karen, Karen.
Martha could recall the first time she managed to invite Karen to the shoebox she called a dorm room. It seemed like a century ago now. She couldn’t recall what she'd said exactly to get her there. To study? To gossip? It must have been something enticing to invite Karen over.
It wasn't long after they first met, after that incident with Karen being chased by her chemistry teacher of all people. Absurd. Intriguing. Martha couldn't help but approach with a bottle of water after Karen had been caught and the issue had been resolved. Karen's grin was bright, her laughter carried by the wind through the edges of the quadrangle where Martha stood and watched. Everyone around was cackling. It was a damn hoot. But Martha remained silent. Electrifying—that's what Martha would have called it if she had the nerve. But it sounded too head over heels. Lovey-dovey.
And lovey-dovey was the last thing Martha wanted to be. To any man. Especially to a woman.
Even then, Karen standing at her door, books held to her chest as she asked to come in? Simple and clean yet seeming fresh out of a magazine? Martha's stomach stirred. Suddenly she thought the neat room she'd kept looked like a pigsty and she the pig. When Karen entered, Martha clutched tight on the doorknob as she closed the door, and the damn thing could have fallen off. When Martha apologized for the mess (stacks of papers confined to her one and only desk), Karen just laughed and shook her head.
“It's alright,” Karen said. “The dorm I share with this one girl–oh, it's even worse! My side, anyway…”
Martha doubted it (and she found her doubts to be correct later on—that place was spotless).
The heat that shot throughout Martha's face—it was how all these books and movies and everything described crushes on boys. The same heat she swore she’d with girls over the years, one she usually ignored. But not now. It didn't make sense. God, she should've been over crushes by now! She was seventeen, for Christ's sake. Genders aside, crushes were something to be left behind in high school. To Martha, anyway.
Yet this heat persisted. And the more it did, Martha had simply sworn it was a sensation spurned on by a great friendship. It made sense to her: they were two girls attached to the hip. They were two girls that knew they were in each other’s futures. They were two girls that had great plans—maybe they’d start a business, or even run a school together. Anything that could keep them close. Martha and Karen didn’t need to say the truth out loud: the both of them knew they’d be in each other’s lives for as long as it was possible. And it was just friendship.
Though there was an incident where Martha—for a moment—swore there was something more. It was a memory that would always wax and wane in the corners of her mind. It was during an outing right before their graduation: a visit to a cheap motel, a bus ride away from the miserable space they called their dormitories. It was an excuse to lounge around, not do chores, and be able to exist in peace before their schooling days were behind them.
The room hadn't anything special to it: cream walls, two beds with orange sheets and a carpet to match. Some chairs, a vanity, a painting of flowers that didn't inspire much emotion. Not even a television. Plain as could be but did it matter? What mattered now was that the real world wouldn’t exist for now. Everyone they knew was to be tossed aside, everything beyond this corner was not to be noticed. Let the existential crises wait another time.
It was late in the night or maybe it might have been early morning. For the first time in her life, Karen shut off her mind and swam without a care. Even when Martha had tapped out, she kept going, swimming for hours while Martha returned to their room. Now she was still in her robe from a shower, mindlessly wringing her hair dry with a towel by the vanity.
Martha had already changed into her nightgown. She pretended she was utterly enamored with a book she bought on the way to this cheap corner of paradise. Some trashy pulp thing she sometimes indulged in, often hated herself for liking them. But the truth was she couldn't stop her brief glimpses of Karen. The words she read were mere distractions. Meaningless symbols.
Even earlier, she couldn't stop staring out the window of their room while Karen swam. She was breathing heavy, heart thumping out of her chest at the way that swimsuit clung to Karen's usually unseen form. Lithe. It was difficult to look away with the sheer grace with which Karen swam. It was like she was one with the waves.
At times, Martha swore she was going mad. Karen always took over her mind with too much ease.
“Is something wrong?” Karen asked, and Martha snapped out of her trance. Karen turned around, the towel now tossed aside. A mix of concern and curiosity on Karen's face as she continued: “You've been staring.”
Staring. Great.
Martha let out a cough. She shook her head, hoping her awkward giggles obscured what ran through her mind rather than enhance it. “Sorry, I think the–” Karen sat up, and Martha saw a glimpse of her collarbone from the shifting robe. She rushed to stare down at her lap, at the book there, sure now that her cheeks were tinged pink. “I haven't exercised that much in a while.” She shook her head and prayed she didn't seem like such a fool. “I think I'm just tired.”
She closed her eyes tight for a second. Tired. That was the best excuse she could come up with? She could've said she was spacing out from reading so long, said that Karen had something on her face, anything else…
Then Karen's eyebrows shot up. She stood from her chair, rushed over. The bed creaked as she scooted closer to Martha's side. “Just tired?” she asked with all the doubt in the world injected in both words. It made Martha wince.
“Yes, that must be it–” And Martha froze as the back of Karen's hand pressed against her forehead. Her cheek. Her neck. Her touch lingered for long—much too long—and Martha squirmed where she sat. It reminded her for a moment of sitting down for a checkup at the doctor's office. Those awkward, god-awful things. But this time it wasn't so odd uncomfortable: the touch was tender. Karen's concern glimmered in her eyes. Martha almost wanted to pull away. As much as she wanted to lean into the touch.
This wasn't anything worse than their usual: little hugs, kisses on the cheek. But with how it was one of those nights where Karen filled her thoughts? With how Karen looked at her with so much care in her gaze? Overwhelming wasn't enough of a term for this show of gentleness. “Karen, I'm alright. I swear it.” Her tone was tinged with shame. Though should it have? Her face was so hot that she knew Karen could jump to some other conclusion, that she could fly under the radar, but God. It was too much, too much, too much.
Karen was just a friend. A friend. How could friendship start such embarrassment to crawl through Martha's body, let her veins become home?
“You're warm,” Karen said, frowning. She ruffled Martha's hair, pushed back what clung to her forehead, practically forced Martha to look her way. Her palm rested on the side of Martha's head, and she peered into her eyes. Her mind. Her soul.
For a moment, there was silence as they gazed at one another. Martha couldn't help but quiver as Karen's touch remained. And with how she looked at her, there was a pang of fear in her heart that pounded. If Karen… knew. Of her obsessions. Oddities. Maybe she was just dedicated to trying to see if a friend was getting sick—that was all. Or maybe she could feel this odd love now; she was focused. Too focused. Breathing a little harder.
They looked into each other's eyes for a touch too long. The chill of the night could not deter the fire building up within Karen, stoked without end, provoked without intention. Maybe with. Karen stroked Martha's cheek with her thumb.
Caressed?
Martha—absentminded—clung onto the sheets below as she felt a flutter in her stomach. This couldn't be right, could it? This wasn't natural, was it? Her nails could have pierced the sheets below.
But Karen pulled her hand back, patted the bed as she spoke: “You should sleep now.” She smiled. “We wouldn't want to be pushing it tonight, do we?”
“Right.” Martha cleared her throat. “We don't.”
For a moment, a thought: I could have leaned in.
A twinge. I should have leaned in.
And Martha knew then that sleep was the best option.
There was no conversation after. They were mere utterances of ‘good night’. There was no mention of that touch. As Karen fell asleep without fuss, Martha remained wide awake. Staring at the ceiling, listening to the soft breaths just a bed over while she clung tight to her blanket. The following morning was simply another one, just like any other. And that morning, Martha did wake up sick—trembling and coughing, developed a fever. The rest of their stay was spent with Karen playing nurse and Martha being too exhausted to take it all in.
Yet Martha's flames still burned ever bright.
These were what thoughts ran through her mind as she lay down, knowing she’d let Karen leave the room when she lied about getting rest. When she knew her sleep was going to be something permanent. She clung to her blanket like a lifeline as she stared out the window. She still wondered to that day, to this moment if Karen… knew.
There was Karen walking off. The last time Martha would ever see her.
And Martha's mind still wandered backwards.
Martha was pulled to a different time. It was midterms: her resting on her window sill in her dorm room, trying not to fall asleep as it had become oh so late. Karen was sitting by the desk, tearing her hair out over an essay she should have started eons ago. There was a record player they managed to keep, lowered to its softest as the dreamiest of jazz filled the quaint room. There was the muffled chatter of every other girl in the dorm. And in the middle of it: the both of them wanting to sneak in a drink amidst a study session.
Karen offered to get them something, anything with a sly grin on her face. And as Martha watched her leave, Karen turned back to look up at her through the window. Karen was mouthing something which Martha later learned was her trying to gauge what she wanted to drink (“Gin? Rum? Beer?” she apparently asked in succession). All Martha could do was laugh and shake her head, mouthing back an, “I don’t know” she doubted was understood either. Karen giggled, looked up with her with this look of love. The stars shone in her gentle gaze before she turned around and ran off. She ran off with the promise of a good drink, of a good night—it was all Martha needed to make sure she wouldn't doze off.
It was a simpler time. It was a happier time.
It was a time they could never return to. Even if they tried.