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“Zoey… Zoe! ZOE!”
The shadows faded slowly transforming into the faces of Rumi and Mira. Mira was almost on top of Zoey, her hand gripping her shoulder, probably from shaking her awake. The expression of bottomless worry her girlfriend wore didn’t change after Zoey opened her eyes, but it went unnoticed as all of Zoey’s attention was on Rumi.
As soon as her eyes landed on Rumi, she gently got Mira out of her way and reached for Rumi. Zoey got her face in her hands and started desperately looking for wounds, for any sign of pain, any sign that her nightmare was real. Naturally, there weren’t any even after she examined the rest of her body. It could only be a dream if she had woken up in her bed, but she had to make sure, maybe that way she could get rid of the images the dream had put in her mind.
“Rumi!” Zoey tried, she really did, but tears started to pour and her voice cracked. She hid her face in Rumi’s shoulder, she could probably feel her tears on her skin but at least that way Zoey wouldn’t have to look her in her eyes “Ru…”
“Hey Zoey. I’m here I’m fine.” Rumi’s words were calming but Zoey noticed how stiff she went for a second under her touch before relaxing “Don’t you cry, okay?”
“It’s okay, darling, it was just a nightmare.”
Mira approached them, slowly, carefully, as if her girls were some kind of scared animal she was afraid to scare away and one wrong move could mean losing them forever.
By that point, Zoey had turned into a bawling mess, too caught up trying to breath properly through the sobs to form coherent sentences. All Mira and Rumi could do was hold Zoey close and offer soothing words, hoping it would be enough.
“You were gone…” her voice was now able to come out intelligible, but she was still shaking and sniffling between words “We lost you and it was all our fault for not being there.”
Just as Zoey expected, Rumi tensed just from the allusion of that night, she always got uncomfortable even if that day was mentioned in passing. Even so, Rumi tried to act like she wasn’t affected, smothering whatever emotion she could be feeling to comfort Zoey.
“Yes, but it was a dream. It didn’t really happen.” Zoey didn’t know if Rumi said it to calm her or to convince herself of that.
“But it was our fault. We didn’t accept her, we didn’t even let her explain herself. And because of that she had to face them alone.”
“Well… I lied to you for years, it’s not like your reaction was unreasonable.”
Zoey wasn’t going to take none of it. She wasn’t going to let Rumi blame herself for anything that happened that day, or any day before that; not after all she had risked so everyone was safe —her childhood, her dreams, her well being, hell, she could have…
“You could’ve died.”
“She didn’t.”
Mira hadn’t really talked in all that time, but her response was immediately delivered with a tone that left no room for discussion. It surprised them both —her girlfriend was harsh sometimes, but never with them—, but when Zoey looked at her she knew the reason why. The flicker of fear that the mere mention of Rumi dying sparked in Mira wasn’t easily switched off.
“But we can’t look past it.” Zoey lifted herself and took some distance from Rumi, though not enough let go, she couldn’t let go yet “I can’t.”
Zoey looked at both of them but she came empty-handed, Rumi was looking down, like the sheets were the most interesting thing in that moment, meanwhile, Mira was looking into the distance, her jaw locked and her lips pressed into a thin line. Zoey was about to lose hope; if they hadn’t talked about it yet —always finding excuses to put it off another day, another week, another month— it would never happen. Still, she had to try one last time.
“Please.” Zoey took Mira’s hand on her own and took Rumi’s chin with her other hand; not with enough force to make her look up, but enough to get both their attention “You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to, but please, I can’t keep bottling things up.”
Mira still had her jaw closed tight, and her hand trembled inside of Zoey’s, but she gave one firm squeeze. At her other side, Rumi took one big breath and exhaled slowly, her shoulders lowering and her grip loosening a little. She rose her head, meeting Zoey’s eyes and both gave a small nod.
“You don’t have to. We’re here, we don’t have to keep going through things alone.”
“You were dreaming about that night, right?”
Again Rumi and that tiresome habit of speaking as if nothing bothered her. Like she could fool Zoey —or Mira— into thinking the events of that night hadn’t affected her at all, like she thought they hadn’t noticed she had kept her long sleeves even if they now knew what was beneath them.
Sometimes Zoey felt the need to scream at her, to tell her that it was no use to try and lie to them, that it hurt them, to please just trust them. She did none of that, of course, it would be of no use and she didn’t want Rumi to distance herself even more. So, instead of doing that, she answered.
“We didn’t wake up. You sang but we were still under their spell and you had to fight them alone and they… They… I know it’s not real but every time I wake up I remember how close we got to losing you for real.”
“I know, but it was my fault. I didn’t tell you girls about my demon part and then it got revealed in the worst moment. I just…“ Rumi’s perfect mask cracked for a second as she found herself unable to continue that phrase “I was so afraid you would get mad at me.”
“We are not mad-”
“I am mad.”
Mira had been suspiciously quiet until then. It’s not like her words had surprised Zoey —they had talked about this before, alone late at night— but she didn’t expect her to say it now. On the other hand, Mira wasn’t a person known for biting her tongue.
“Mira! Now is not the time!”
“No, you wanted to talk, let’s talk.” her voice trembled “I’m mad that you take your life so lightly. You never thought that by closing the Honmoon you could be dragged with them? You never thought that we would never know it? That we would believe you just abandoned us? You know how afraid I am that some morning I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone?”
At that moment Mira’s voice broke, tears started to flow, unforgiving, not caring about how much Mira was trying to hold them back. Still, her girlfriend was nothing if not determined; she would keep talking through the tears, she would be heard.
“I am so mad at you for being so careless but I’m even more mad at ourselves for letting you down.”
“I’m sorry I-”
“I don’t want you to be sorry, I want you to talk to us, I want you to take your life seriously, I want you to care about yourself.” Rumi wasn’t answering, she looked drifting away from the conversation, so Mira changed tactics “I can’t lose you, we can’t lose you.”
It broke Zoey’s heart hearing her girlfriend begging like that, begging for something like that; but it broke her more hearing Rumi’s answer.
“I know it would be hard, but you have each other, you would learn to live like that eventually and-”
“Are you really so fucking dense?” Zoey couldn’t believe it “We wouldn’t be fine, we can’t be fine without you.”
“But-”
“No! You listen to me because I can’t listen to that anymore. You are part of us, losing you would mean losing ourselves. Don’t you get it? We love you, more than we love this job, more than we love this life, more than we love anything else. Nothing matters if you’re not with us.”
“I love you too, but-”
“No.” Mira intervened, like she knew Rumi hadn’t really got it “We love you. Like love love you.”
“Oh.”
Mira let out a light chuckle.
“Yeah, oh.”
“So shut it with that self depreciating junk and don’t you dare to say we could keep living like nothing happened because losing you would be like losing our hearts.”
Rumi stayed silent, it didn’t look like a bad silence, though, more like a reflecting one. Still, Zoey panicked about it, scared they had jumped the gun too soon when things weren’t well settled yet.
“You don’t have to say anything about it, it’s just… You were saying all those things about how you don’t matter and it just came out.”
“Yeah, we wanted to do this some better time, maybe buy you some flowers.”
After that, everything fell quiet for a while, their breaths the only thing filling the silence. They remained on each other’s space, no one giving signs of wanting to move to go back to their respective rooms, too caught up in their own thoughts to notice that what they should do. Or at least that was the case until Mira broke the silence again.
“I know we said you didn’t have to answer, but maybe a little clue about it would be nice.”
“Mira!”
“What? We just confessed, I’m nervous.”
Zoey couldn’t believe Mira had just said that. They were supposed to let her take her time, not rush her to answer, Rumi never answered well when she felt pressured. She was about to shut up her unfiltered girlfriend —maybe with a pillow to the face, that should shut her up— when she heard a small laugh. As she turned she found Rumi smiling tenderly at them.
“Is there any way I couldn’t be in love with you?”
Zoey released the pillow she had grabbed and Mira slowly dropped the hands she had put up to defend herself from Zoey, both afraid that moving too fast would scare Rumi off, or worse, make her change her mind.
“So that’s a yes?” Mira said cautiously.
“Zoe, Mira, I’ve always loved you. Actually, I assumed you knew, I thought it was obvious. I just didn’t think it would be fair to tell you having that secret behind. Or that you would want to be with me once you knew.”
Zoey and Mira both smiled soft smiles, of course that’s what troubled Rumi. Luckily it had an easy fix.
“Well, now you know we want to.”
“I still don’t believe it.”
“Well, we have the rest of our lives to prove it to you.”
This time, the silence that fell between them wasn’t as charged as before. This time, if they didn’t move from the bed it didn’t felt it was for lack of thought, but because they didn’t want to go yet. And wouldn’t it be a shame if they had to get up now that they were all nice and warm there?
“Can you stay here for the night?”
“If you want us to.” Rumi, always the hesitant one.
“She was the one to ask, come here.”
On the other hand, Mira didn’t need to be asked twice. She had already set up inside Zoey’s bed and was making gestures to Rumi and Zoey to follow suit. They ended up with Rumi between them with the pretext of her being near them both if they had a similar nightmare —they both knew the other main reason was because otherwise they would fight about who cuddled with Rumi.
“We should plan a date for tomorrow, our first real date the three of us.”
“It’s four in the morning, tomorrow all I’ll do is sleep.”
Zoey shot her puppy eyes at Mira, which shouldn’t have worked giving the room was pitch dark; however, her girlfriend was so weak for them she didn’t even need to see them to be defeated, just the knowledge that they were there.
“We’ll decide in the morning.”
Zoey decided to take that grumble for the sign of victory that it was, and if it made her now new girlfriend laugh and snuggle more into them… well, maybe she would do it more often.