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The wind rolls off the water, surfing the crashing waves and dancing up her skirt. The shiver twists up her spine and she shoves the fabric in between her legs, some poor attempt at keeping herself warm. (Keeping herself comfortable—impossible with the shortness of the dress all Lobster Tank waitresses are forced into. Not very professional, she thinks with disdain, tugging it down as far as she possibly can.)
She could just go home, put on sweatpants and lie in front of the TV ‘til she passes out. But to retreat into the studio above the garage, pass the Thompsons eating through their front window, or try and maneuver around the daughter rushing from the house to get in her ugly boyfriend’s car, would rub salt into the wound of her patheticism. She’d rather stay here, behind The Tank with her shitty beer.
She cracks it open and takes a long swig. It’s warm—hours on end of sitting at the bottom of a bag can do that—and she scrunches her nose up at the flat taste. Desperate enough to finish, she leans back against the wood panels of the building and shuts her eyes, holding her breath on her next sip.
Lindsey would tell her to go home. Would tell her to get rid of the beers in the fridge before she gets tired of them, before she moves onto something else. (I promise not to drink any alcohol. One of the things she swore before they sent her out onto the street.) (But god, she gets it. Drugs are bad! A drink after a long day of forcing a plastic smile for the prissiest of fucking pricks isn’t going to kill her. And honestly, who gives a shit if it does!) (Lindsey and her performatively caring bullshit can suck it.)
The sound of movement in the gravel startles her eyes open. Expecting someone with the trash, she’s surprised to look up and find a woman—put-together in her long shorts and matching blazer. Her eyes brush over Carol’s body before nodding her head. “Hey.”
She glances around, over her shoulder, but there’s no one else. So she nods back. “Hey.”
She watches her set down the suitcase in her hand and fish a box of cigarettes from the blazer’s pocket. The flame from the lighter is as hypnotic as a swinging watch; she reaches the box out toward Carol and she shakes her head, throwing back another swig of the beer.
“You work here?” the woman asks, taking a drag and gesturing toward the restaurant. A step toward her and Carol decides she’s as young as her. A few years older, maybe.
“Yeah.”
“What’s that?”
Carol looks at her fingers wrapped around the can, and then back at the woman. “It’s a bomb. What the hell do you think it is?”
She expects the woman’s face to fall, for her expression to deflate and for her to step back like she’s in the presence of a wild animal. Something vicious and rabid, foaming at the mouth.
Instead, her face cracks into a grin, smoke curling up from the corner. “Can I have a sip?”
Carol frowns, blinking in hopes that she’ll open her eyes and this mysterious woman will disappear. (Taking along with her all the unwanted twisting of her heart, the pounding pressure in her chest and the thoughts she’s never been particularly swell at taming.) But still, she stands there, and she can’t for the life of her form the word no in her mouth.
“Sure.” She reaches it out and jolts at the brush of her fingers, ghosting over her knuckles as she takes it, holding her cigarette aside to bring the can to her mouth. The minute it touches her lips she pulls it away, brow drawn together in disgust.
“Oh, it tastes like shit.”
Carol rips it back from her hand, holding it close to her chest like something precious. “What, your parents never taught you it’s fucking rude to borrow someone’s alcohol and shit on it? Have some manners for god’s sake.”
“I thought you got it inside.” She’s laughing, and Carol hates her. She hates her pretty mouth, and the long dark hair framing her face. She hates the way the cigarette sits so easily between her fingers, and the glimmer of amusement in her eyes when she looks at her. (She hates the fluttering of her heart in her ribcage, and that she can’t stop staring. That she wants to take the cigarette, just to feel her fingers. Just to wrap her lips around the same place.) (She hates her, because you don’t just talk to strangers and awaken all the feelings they’ve been swallowing for years.)
“I serve it, not drink it,” she mutters, and downs the last of it just so she can crush the can inside her fist.
The woman nods and pushes her hair back, tucking it behind her ear. “We gotta get you something good. You wanna go inside?”
Her brow furrows, thrown by the request. But she’s quick to shake her head. “They won’t serve me.”
“Then let’s go somewhere else.”
She blinks again, this time in an attempt to wake herself up. Yet, she continues to stand there, and it occurs to her perhaps this woman has confused her for someone else. But she’s already picking her suitcase back up, and Carol’s feet are moving, following along as she heads around the corner.
“You’re not gonna ask how old I am?” she questions, eyes flicking around the parking lot.
She shrugs. “I don’t give a shit.”
She rushes to keep up, feet slapping across the pavement. “Why are you doing this? Are you gonna drug me? I’m not opposed, I just wanna know.”
Again, she starts to laugh, rotating her suitcase from one hand to the other. She pauses, and Carol is grateful to take a deep breath. “You’re not opposed to me drugging you?”
“I mean, I’ve had worse days.”
That makes her laugh, too, and this time Carol is able to name the rush of warmth in her chest as pride. “Well, sorry to disappoint. No drugging. Just borrowing your company, if you don’t mind.”
She considers turning around. I do mind, and off to the garage she goes. But looking at her, she thinks it would be impossible to move her feet in any direction other than hers.
“Shouldn’t you be on some frat guy’s boat?”
“No, he’s not a frat guy. But he did try and get in my pants at lunch, and I didn’t quite feel comfortable getting on a boat with him after that.”
She shoots Carol a gaze she can feel in the pit of her stomach. Some sort of solidarity, some sort of x-ray vision, as if she can look right at Carol and see inside her, all the things she’s kept so carefully hidden. She’s more naked than she already was, and that’s saying something.
“Right.” She clears her throat, looking ahead at the sidewalk. “So, what? You’re . . . some sort of vagabond now? I gotta tell you, don’t think the Cape Cod residents are gonna be very welcoming to you and your suitcase of wonders.”
“You’re funny, you know that?”
It brings a grin to her face, mouth stretched across her cheeks. “I doubt anyone would agree, but thanks.”
“What’s your deal, then, comedian?” the woman asks, raising a brow.
Her deal. God, what is her deal? Is there any version of her deal that she’d be able to explain to this gorgeous fucking stranger? She finds it hard to believe. She struggles to even form an idea of the words that would have to take shape in her mouth. Difficult to imagine, to acknowledge, to allow to exist in her mind. How could they ever be spoken?
So, she shrugs. “I’m Carol.”
And the woman seems to get a kick out of this too, laughing in the back of her throat, in the depths of Carol’s chest. “Well, I’m Helen. It’s nice to meet you.”
They stand on rather steady ground, now, she thinks. Shared names and a shared trust in one another’s safety. She doubts the woman has plans to kill her, sure there’s only clothes in that case. (Though the idea of being her victim is eerily pleasant. She’d rather die by Helen’s hand than her own.)
“Here,” she says, as they come up to a bar, voices and music pouring from the windows, loud enough she can already feel it vibrating inside her bones. “I hate sports bars, but the drinks are great.”
“You’ve been?”
She glances back at her, lip curling up into a sly smile. “I’ve probably been to every bar on the Cape, Sweetheart. Let me show you the way.”
Like an angel—or a demon, a temptation designed specifically for her—she turns on her heel and steps toward the door, holding it wide open. Carol hurries inside, skin flushing at the sudden heat. The air is thick, overwhelmed by all the bodies stuffed between its walls. She believes that this is what hell truly is—shoved between two damp guys at a bartop, ears throbbing at the noise of their shouting atop the blaring of the sports game on TV. Too loud and too crowded, but Helen’s hand ghosts against the small of her back as she nears, and it’s as if she’s been hypnotized.
“Find a seat,” she says, leaning in close toward her ear. A chill slithers down her spine, tingling down her limbs, at the softness of her breath. “I’ll bring you something good.”
Her lungs burn, opening her mouth and struggling to form a response, struggling to even gasp at the air surrounding her. She manages a nod and stumbles away, spotting an empty hightop in the corner and slipping into one of the seats.
Her head spins, eyes trailing across the room to the bartop, catching on the curve of Helen’s back as she leans forward toward the bartender. Staring a moment too long, with no one to notice. Yet, the eyes are everywhere, and she’s quick to turn her attention toward the game.
She’s weak. The fatal flaw that’s been chasing her down since the day she was born. (Since the day she lit that cigarette in sixth grade. Since the day she tasted Erin under the bleachers.)
Helen joins her quickly, sliding a drink across the table and watching her with eager eyes. “Try it.”
What strength does she have to say no? She brings the glass to her mouth and tips it back, sighing at the liquor running down her throat.
“Bourbon?” she tries, when she’s done, and Helen beams.
“You know your drinks.”
“Thanks for pretending that’s something to be proud of.”
She sips her own drink slower. The kind of awareness her mother used to be ashamed she lacked. “I do think it’s impressive. Especially since you’re . . . nineteen?”
“Twenty.”
“My apologies,” she teases, and Carol’s frown softens. Pathetically pliable in her atmosphere. “Are you in school?”
And then she’s back, weighed down by the heaviness of reality, gravity pinning her to the chair. She rolls the drink past her tongue and shrugs, staring at the wood panels on the floor. “Not anymore.”
“Got it.”
Carol’s face burns. What a mess, sitting here in her uniform, just slutty enough to show off every fucking mistake she wears like a canvas of tattoos. She downs the last of the drink, not doing herself any favors, and slides her finger around the rim. “And what are you, Summa Cum Laude at Harvard?”
The bitterness doesn’t phase her, if she notices it at all. “BU. And I won’t know ‘til I graduate, but my GPA is high, I’ll give you that.”
“How fucking fantastic is that, huh? Lemme guess. You’re already applying to law school.”
“You really should stop guessing, you aren’t very good at it.” Carol almost wishes her mouth was pulled taut in a scowl. It would be easier than the amusement twinkling in her eyes. It would feel less condescending than the way she smiles, as if Carol is a child throwing a fit. “I’m studying public relations, actually.”
“And what the hell are you going to do with that?”
“Go into publishing, probably.”
And she perks up at that. Like a dog to the sound of food dropping in the bowl. “Really?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Nothing.” She’s let far too much slip already. This will remain in her safe, locked up with every desire that’s ever pulsed beneath her skin. (The scribbled words in the notebook shoved beneath the t-shirts in her dresser belong to no one but her. Never will they be anything more.)
A quiet settles between them, then. (Already run out of things to say.) Carol’s head runs wild with ways to fill the silence. A thousand conversation starters—jokes and comments on the patrons filling the space around them, unprompted stories and questions about her life. But it’s all too much, too unnecessary, and she’s sure Helen is sick of her voice already.
She contemplates the possibility of getting her to buy her another drink, decides she’s reached the pinnacle of selfishness for considering at all, and finally is interrupted by Helen’s voice, talking loud over the noise.
“Are you cold?”
“Huh?”
She leans in closer. “Are you cold in that little outfit of yours? I mean, I’m freezing my ass off just looking at you.”
Carol looks down at herself, the skirt riding up to reveal her thighs. She tugs the fabric down and forces a smile. “You’d think working in customer service would be punishment enough, but no. They gotta put you through this humiliation ritual.”
She chuckles. “Do you need pants?”
“Is there a fairy godmother floating around I don’t know about?”
“Yeah, me.” And she’s already picking her suitcase up from the ground, her charity like a strike in the heart.
She shakes her head. “Put that away. I’m not taking your pants.”
Her brow draws together, looking at her over the top of the case. “Why not? I’m not using them.”
“I . . . it’s just . . .”
“Here.” She emerges with a pair of wind pants, nylon crinkling as they unravel. It feels like something she’d see on the TV, the punchline in a sitcom. But her smile is genuine, and the offer is real.
“You can’t be serious.”
“What, why? They’re actually really warm.”
Carol leans back in her seat, staring at the woman and her hands and weighing her options. She makes the mistake of meeting her eyes, the urging gaze, and it’s pathetic. How easy she complies.
“Fine,” she mutters, grabbing them and getting to her feet. She clumsily shoves her shoes inside, stumbling forward as she pulls them up her legs, loud enough she’s sure everyone in the bar has turned to stare at her chaos.
She stands tall—as tall as she can, really, as this woman’s height has made her feel so small—and puts her hands on her hips.
“You want a top, too?” she asks, brow raised in amusement.
“No, I’m fine. Just—” She grunts and grabs the dress, struggling to pull it up over her head. The weight of the audience—no matter if their eyes are turned on her or not—is like a crashing wave, drowning her in shame. She can only look at the ground once she’s up again, in nothing but the thin tank top she had on beneath the dress and the borrowed pants.
“Do a spin,” Helen teases, and she isn’t sure what to do with the anger that ripples under her skin.
“Ha ha. I’m glad I can be a great big joke for you.”
She stares a moment, her expression sobering at the sound of Carol’s bitterness, before reaching back into the suitcase like fucking Mary Poppins.
“Try this,” she offers, shoving a blazer in her direction. Her eyes roll back and her tongue is heavy with an insult. But she’s already taking it, like a pleasing child and a mother insisting on a jacket before braving the winter beyond the front door.
“I look like a fucking idiot.” The blazer too long, sleeves hanging past her fingertips, with shoulders so wide, before she even gets to the atrocity of the pants. Like Helen’s Barbie doll, dressed up in something hideous and tossed in a corner.
She’s smiling at her, and it isn’t a joke. It’s so real that it twists in the bottom of Carol’s stomach and makes her throat tighten, swallowing down the urge to vomit.
“I think it works. In its own . . . strange way.”
“Yeah, of course you do. What’s next, you gonna convince everyone in here to point and laugh?”
Her brow, furrowed slightly at the comment. “Why would I do that?”
God, maybe because that’s all anyone’s ever done. Grabbed onto the weak spot she made the mistake of revealing and waved her around in front of a crowd, begging for humiliation. No one has ever looked at her and seen worth. Her Barbie came out of the box with a defect—they were never going to play with her anyway.
Why would I do that? And Carol doesn’t understand when all she can wonder is why she hasn’t already.
“You know what? Let’s get out of here,” she says, then, before Carol can slip any deeper into the abyss. “It’s too loud.”
She nods, unsure how to step out of this now. Not under her spell. Not wearing her clothes.
Helen takes the dress from her hand and shoves it into her suitcase—trapping her here, Carol thinks, as she watches her tug the zipper around.
But if she’s caged, it’s her own fault, because she makes no argument, trailing behind Helen toward the door like a dog on a leash.
“There’s a great place near her,” she’s saying once they’re outside, and Carol doesn’t question the direction they head in, “it’s calmer.” She grunts, dragging her feet along the sidewalk, and it draws Helen’s eyes toward her. They hover there a moment before musing, “I can’t tell if you’re actually annoyed by me or if this is just your attitude with everyone.”
Her face flushes hot at the callout. The power no one has ever held to look right through her, translucent skin, given to this haughty stranger.
“Does it matter?” she mutters.
“Well, you’re here. So I assume it’s the latter.”
“Why are you here, huh?”
Helen’s brow lifts. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re dragging me along. Giving me your clothes. Paying for my drinks. People don’t just do that.”
“Maybe I’m nicer than most people.”
“Yeah, well I didn’t ask for this.”
She stops then, looking at her so carefully. The way you look at a crossword once you’ve finished with all the clues answered off the top of your head. Searching for something. Finally, “Would you like me to go?”
Carol pales. “What?”
“If you’re so bothered by my presence here, would you like me to leave?”
The directness of her words, as if the outcome doesn’t matter to her at all, slaps her across the face. She opens her mouth, but the air is too slippery to grasp. And the thought, now, of walking away—-of going home with the heaviness of her thoughts—is too cumbersome to bear.
“I . . . no, just . . . no.”
Helen smiles, not victorious or condescending. Satisfied, maybe. Or simply relieved. (Like, perhaps, it mattered more than she let on.) “Great, it’s settled.”
And then they’re walking again, and Carol has learned better than to comment.
Helen’s the one to fill the silence, then, quiet as if explaining to herself. “I was having a shitty night, you know? Just thought it’d be better spent with the cute waitress than by myself.”
Her stomach contorts then, tied into some inflatable dog. She stares at the concrete. “Don’t call me that.”
“What, waitress?”
“I’m not a fucking baby. Or a dog.”
Helen nods. “Got it. Does pretty work better?”
And Carol glares at her this time, a warning, because her lip is trembling and she isn’t sure what would come rolling out if she opened her mouth. She isn’t sure she wants to know.
But Helen doesn’t take the hint. Her eyes trail down Carol’s body in a way that crawls up her skin, and finally back to her face just to drawl an all-too alluring, “You do look handsome in that blazer.”
She sucks in a breath, so sharp it stings the back of her throat. Her body a furnace, burning from the inside out, so hot she’s sure her skin is a concerning shade of red. (Handsome.) (With the blazer. With the hair she chopped so dangerously short last month in the bathroom.) (Handsome, and she’s glowing like one of the gleaming stars painting the sky above her head.)
(Handsome.) (Something she is not, something she is unable to be.)
“Shut up,” she manages, weaker than she’d like but sharp enough for Helen to listen. She’s desperate for it, hungry to hear her praise.
But Helen is . . . her. And Carol is a fuck up. She’s abnormal. She’s a goddamn blip in the world’s record of perfect people. And Helen is far too close to all the things she craves, far too ready to hand her everything she can’t have. It’s like an open flame being lit right before her moth eyes.
(Or Carol is reaching.) (It’s impossible that Helen is of the same defective line she is.) (Pretty girls aren’t . . . like that. That’s what her mother told her. What Jude at camp had repeated. What she knows is true.)
(Helen, even in her suit, even looking at her like that, even calling her handsome and pretty and cute, is far too good to ever stoop to Carol’s lows. She would be wrong to ever think of her so poorly.)
“Here we go, it’s right down this block,” Helen says, like nothing’s happened at all. She was right—this place is calmer, higher-class. So much so that Carol is sure everyone inside can smell her the minute she walks in. A nose for those who don’t belong.
But Helen remains unphased, tugging her into a round, plush cushioned booth in the corner and leaving her there, floating off toward the bar. When she returns, she’s carrying two colorful drinks, obnoxiously blue, and Carol scrunches up her nose.
“Jesus christ,” she mutters. “What is this, a magic potion?”
“What? It’s good.” She nudges it toward her, sliding into the booth, far closer than Carol’s breath is able to remain stable with. “Just try it.”
She does, half-heartedly clinking her glass against Helen’s and bringing the rim to her lips. It’s an intense rush, just the first sip. So sweet she squints her eyes, forcing it down her throat. The sour comes after, like a surprise kick after reeling from the punch. She hardly even notices the liquor.
Helen drinks it like it’s nothing. “Your guess.”
“Vodka,” she coughs, and Helen grins.
“We have a winner, folks,” she announces in an exaggeratedly deep voice, and Carol struggles to tamper a smile, turning away and chugging a long sip of the sugar rush.
A live band stands far on the other end of the room, churning out a lethargic tune. The kind of melody that weighs on her, breaking a yawn from her chest.
“So,” Helen says, leaning back against the cushion. “What else do I get to know about you?”
Carol gazes at her over the glass. “What do you want to know?”
She shrugs. “Anything.”
“I’m not very interesting.”
“I doubt that’s true.”
She meets her eyes, then, and the curiosity is so potent. The way she’s sure a budding astronomer would stare up at the stars. (Or, she thinks, the way a budding astronomer would stare at a planetarium, only to descend upon its doors and discover them closed. Peek inside the window and find it empty, dust collecting on the tile floors.)
What does she have to tell her? What does she have to show for her twenty sorry years?
“What brought you here?” Helen finally asks, urging her on. “Did you grow up on the Cape?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Virginia.”
“Oh, nice. I’ve driven through, it seems beautiful.”
That draws a huff from her throat, almost a laugh. “Sure.”
She recalls—with bile rising in her throat—her mother driving her home. Six weeks in that place, and she hardly felt like a person. Like she was existing just outside of her body. Stripped of all that made her human. Back over the state line, and she’d stared at the welcome sign. Virginia is for lovers, it said, and it wasn’t in her to be angry then. Not yet. Only to think, numbly, that it was a lie.
“What brought you here, then?” Helen asks, and Carol doesn’t want to talk about herself anymore. Doesn’t want to think about all the things that have turned her into what she is.
“Somewhere to escape,” she sighs, the best she can do. The most she manages to admit. Can’t run her mind over the last month of sophomore year. The phone call, and the return to eerie silence. The dirt and the money and what it all went to. (A summer spent with her feet off the ground. Days all blurred together into something only made out by the muted sense of peril that surrounded it.) Can’t actualize the reality of being losing consciousness in a DC metro (something she’d been told, not something she recalls) and waking up to the fluorescence of hospital lights.
She escaped, and it doesn’t matter what she escaped from. It can’t matter. (It’s all that matters.)
“You’re right about that. Certainly what it felt like for me.” She sips slowly on her drink, and Carol waits. Watches her. “My grandparents lived here. I grew up in Maine, and I spent every summer here.”
“How nice.” It snaps from her lips, a bitter rubber band, but even she knows the cruelty is unnecessary. How perfect her fucking life was, she thinks, like she had anything to escape from. And even she knows the assumptions are ignorant. That pretty houses can hold so much shit inside them. That pretty smiles aren’t always unburdened.
“So, Virginia girl. What’s your dream?”
She coughs on the last of the drink. “What?
Helen just smiles. “What do you want to do with your life?”
“Wait tables at The Tank.”
“Ha ha.” She tilts her head a little, hair falling forward. “Seriously.”
Carol inhales deeply through her nose, lips pressing together. “Helen, you might find it interesting to know that some people don’t have dreams. Some people don’t get to live these great lives I’m sure you and everyone you know have been preparing for since birth.”
Her punches never seem to land. Helen’s face is far too calm. She’s far too quiet.
It takes her so long before she finally speaks. “I know that. I just don’t think you’re one of those people.”
“You’re wrong.” She tilts back the glass, even though it’s empty, and wishes desperately she had the nerve to go buy her own.
“Sure.” Helen tips back her own drink, the last of it sliding past her lips. “I respect you maintaining your privacy, but I hope you don’t actually believe that.”
It’s infuriating, how she talks as if she knows her so well.
She shoves the glass forward. “Another round?”
But Helen’s brow furrows. “We could go to this party. This girl I know, she invited me when she heard I was coming down but I told her I couldn’t go. Figured I can, now. If you want.”
“What kind of party?” She’s expecting a gala. She’s expecting a group of people sitting around a room sipping wine and discussing the state of the world.
Helen shrugs. “I don’t know, it’s a house party.”
“Ok. Sure, I guess.”
And with that, they’re off. Carol kicks at the ground with her shoes, gripping onto the ends of the blazer’s sleeves with her fingertips. She’s grateful for the quiet, even if it feels like something she should fill.
In her head, she rewinds the imagined scene. Stepping into a packed living room and freezing as every pair of eyes snaps toward her, flaming with judgement. Her pants crinkle as she walks and she can only see it as reality. Helen’s friends. The people who live in the house, and not above the garage.
Helen lights a cigarette, tilting her the box yet again. She shakes her head and loses herself in the smell, wafting in her direction.
“You’re wearing shorts,” Carol says, when the thoughts grow enough to press against her skull. “Aren’t you cold?”
Helen glances down, as if she’d forgotten. “I’m fine. I like to be cold.”
She scoffs at that. “Helps that they’re practically pants. Past your damn knees.”
“They are not past my knees, they stop right at them.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Helen laughs, and Carol feels the ends of her mouth lift subconsciously. A curse, the spell this woman has put over her.
“How far is this place?” she mutters, later, after the walking has continued long past a simple stroll.
“Not far. Just a couple blocks, I think.”
Carol scoffs. “You think.”
“I know. Better?”
And then, soon enough, they’re turning a corner and Carol can hear the music emanating from the walls. A noise complaint in the making.
Her head pounds once they’re through the door, enough to have her eyes shutting, wincing at the way it rattles her bones. Helen opens the coat closet and shoves her suitcase inside, and then gently grabs her bicep, sparks shooting up her arm. Like an electric surge, waking her up as she pulls her deeper inside.
The kitchen is a buffet of alcohol, and Carol is quick to drift toward the island, grabbing a beer and cracking it open. She’s aware of Helen’s empty hands. Empty, at least, until she grabs at her again, clinging onto the blazer and tugging her in the other direction.
“Helen!” someone shrieks, and suddenly another girl is there, glitter on her eyelids and a leather jacket hanging from her shoulders. “Oh my god, you came.”
“I came,” she says, and then the girl is kissing her on the cheek, so close to her mouth that Carol’s throat tightens, clogging everything that threatens to come up.
The girl’s eyes drift past her, narrowing when they fall on Carol. She turns away, chugging the beer and calculating what it would take to disappear. To run.
But Helen is talking, then. “Margot, this is Carol. Carol, this is my friend Margot.”
“You brought your girlfriend, fun,” Margot comments, with a bitter undertone that stabs itself into Carol’s ribs.
“I’m not—that’s not—” she’s stuttering, so quickly the words hardly stand on their own, her face too flushed to feel.
“Calm it, we just met.”
“That hasn’t stopped you before.”
“Funny.”
Carol’s mind is spinning, each thought like the blade of a fan. (Your girlfriend.) (It hasn’t stopped you before.) (So casual, how they speak of it, that she’s almost sure it can’t be what she thinks. Surely, it’s some joke. Code. Surely, she has misunderstood.)
“I thought you were busy tonight,” the girl says, and Helen shrugs.
“It’s a long story. I’ll call you sometime.”
“I’m right here.”
“Yeah, but I wanna dance.” And with that, she’s dragging Carol again. Her loyal pet. She turns to look at her in the living room, a softness in her expression. “Sorry about that. I think she still hates me.”
“I thought you were friends.”
Helen’s mouth twitches at that. “It’s easier than someone I didn’t really date, so didn’t break up with, but supposedly cheated on, which resulted in more drama than I have ever asked for, and who’s still trying to get back with me for god knows what reason.”
She smiles, as if Carol’s lungs aren’t on fire.
(She she she.)
(Margot, with her long hair and her pink lips.)
“Come on,” Helen says, and Carol is drowning. “Dance with me.”
She’s moving to the music like she’s never once doubted her residence in her body. Like she’s never once doubted her body’s place in a room. In this world. The beat pounds and her body sways with the rhythm. The way the wind leads the waves.
“Put that down,” she says, grabbing the can from her grip and moving past her like a breeze, setting it upon a side table and returning to her quickly.
She grabs her hands now, and fuck it. It isn’t just her lungs. Her entire body is lit up in flames. She swallows in an attempt to unclog her throat and waddles uncomfortably to the music.
Squeezing her hands, tugging her closer, and Carol foolishly begs the world to let everything else dissipate. To leave her here, with Helen. Just the two of them, alone. Foolishly, she begs for this to be something it’s okay to want.
“Loosen up,” Helen says, loud over the music, shimmying her shoulders in some sort of example.
But Carol can’t do that. She can’t let go; her body has been locked in fear for too long.
It’s a weak attempt, little jumps and a poorly mimicked back and forth of her shoulders, but Helen beams and pride glows in her chest. She can get better. Let her come back. Let her try again. Let her learn, for her.
The song changes though, such a drastic shift that the entire room deflates in a groan. Someone shouts, asking about the DJ, and Helen stares at the ceiling with an exasperated look on her face.
“What is this, prom?” she jokes, slow song drifting from somewhere. Carol doesn’t have the heart to tell her she wouldn’t know, since she never showed up at hers.
“What a party,” she attempts to tease, but it doesn’t quite land.
Helen pulls her closer with her hands, and Carol’s breath stutters.
“Do you have a boyfriend, Carol?”
A shallow inhale. “Uh. No.”
Never.
Destined to live alone in every day of hers that remains.
But Helen is smiling. “Great.”
It happens so quick. A strike of lightning. A house burnt down before anyone smelled the smoke.
She leans in and puts her mouth on hers. Hardly a kiss, not yet. A toe dropped into the deep end, testing the waters.
But it’s enough.
It’s enough for her to stiffen, paralyzed. To set the siren off, ringing in every crook of her body.
(For her to remember the shadows of the empty bleachers above her head. The taste of the weed and how it morphed on Erin’s lips. The shape of her mouth when she leaped, leaned in and grabbed her.) (For her to remember knowing, so innately, that it was right.) (Before they could tell her it wasn’t.)
She snaps back, staring up at Helen, eyes blown wide and breath puffing in and out. The moth, flying out of the lantern. (She’s so beautiful.) (And Carol can’t believe that.)
“What?” Helen asks, brow furrowing. “I’m sorry, did I . . .”
The words drift right past her, nothing heard apart from the pounding of blood in her ears. (And her mother’s voice. There’s something wrong with you, Carol, but they’ll fix it.) (Damned. Unfixable. Forced a smile and agreed and bottled up every desire she dare held.) (Yes, I do want to be able to join my friends and family in eternal life with God.)
“Hey, are you okay?”
Carol heaves in, and out, and it only occurs to her she’s shaking when Helen’s jarringly sturdy hands grab onto her shoulders.
She collapses against her, and it’s the weakest she’s ever been. Temptation snagged around her throat, tightening as she buries her face in Helen’s shoulder. As her arms tighten around her.
Perhaps, if she remains here in the darkness, she’ll never have to emerge. She can stay in the haze of her perfume and doesn’t have to face its wrongness.
(A rubber band around her wrist, worn for almost two years after she left that place, snapped at the thoughts she couldn’t have. A gaze left too long on Lauren Sheriden in gym. A stifled urge to rewind the scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High where Phoebe Cates gets out of the pool.)
(She needs it now. Again. Needs to snap it over and over until she pulls away. Until she leaves. Until she forgets Helen's existence. Needs to cut her whole damn hand off.)
“Would you feel better if we got out of here?” Helen asks, softly against her head.
Carol nods, and allows Helen to shift away, putting a tight arm around her and pushing through people toward the door. She stops by the closet, grabbing her suitcase in her empty hand and ushering her out the rest of the way through the door.
Even outside, on the empty sidewalk, it feels as if the world is closing in on her. Heavy walls pressing down. She needs another drink. She’s not quite drunk enough to float. Just drunk enough for everything to matter too much.
“Sit,” Helen says, getting down onto the front step and patting the concrete beside her. Carol watches her pull the cigarette box from her pocket, lighting it as she waits.
She could take it, put it in her mouth, and taste her again. (Perhaps the only way how to.)
She looks at her again, raising a brow, and Carol settles onto the ground beside her.
“You feeling better?” Helen asks.
Carol shrugs. No, not particularly, but that isn’t fair. It’s no one’s fault but her own.
“I’m sorry,” she adds, puffing smoke into the air. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”
With that, her ribs cave inward. Assumed what? That she was different. That she was a fucking dyke. (That she wanted things she shouldn’t.) (Things Helen wants. Things Helen is so comfortable in wanting.)
Trapped inside of her is a desperate scream. You were right, she wants to tell her. You were right, and you’re the only person who’s seen it and didn’t look at me like I’m a monster.
But she can’t admit it. Can’t voice the words.
“It’s not . . . don’t . . . just—it’s not that. Don’t say sorry,” she mutters, scratching her nail against the pavement until it hits her fingertip and starts to sting.
She holds the cigarette between her fingers and looks at her for a long time. What feels like forever. Like she’s decoding a puzzle behind her eyes.
“Was I right, then?” she asks, finally.
And Carol looks at her. Looks at her so hard, as the walls squeeze her so tight she thinks she’s going to pop. It’s the most she can manage before turning away. Before gasping for air she can’t manage to grasp.
“Carol.”
She can’t look at her.
Until she’s reached over, gentle fingers on her jaw turning her head until she’s meeting her gaze. Until she can’t escape.
“It isn’t something you have to be ashamed of.”
With that, she shatters.
Everything she’s shoved down for so long, kept stuffed inside her chest like a dresser drawer filled to the max, leaving it closed for fear of it bursting, comes undone. Ruptures, shooting through her body. More emotion than she’s allowed to overwhelm her in so long, a pressure in her head, behind her eyes.
“Then why is everyone ashamed?” she exhales, voice tender and broken.
Helen’s face softens. “That’s their problem. It isn’t yours.”
The tears startle her, welled up in her eyes. She turns away, blinking rapidly in an attempt to smother them, jamming the drawer closed again.
Helen sticks the cigarette out between her fingers and this time, Carol throws aside her good intentions and self-discipline to take it, putting it between her lips. The rush rubs her throat raw.
She takes it back before she can take another hit, huffing out a frustrated puff of smoke.
“Carol.”
“What?”
She looks at her, and is struck by the way the moon’s reflection shines on her skin. Ethereal. Hair a sort of blue.
Her eyes dip down to her lips.
They skirt, then, around the street. Searching. As if her mother is going to pop out from behind a tree, catch her by the ear and drag her away.
“It’s just us,” Helen assures, pressing the burnt end of the cigarette into the cement.
Carol looks back at her.
(It isn’t something you have to be ashamed of.)
(No rubber band to snap. No one to see. No one to judge.)
(Nothing is ever going to fix her. She’s accepted that, hasn’t she? Does it hurt to give in to the disease if she’ll never be cured of it?)
Before she can talk herself out of it, before she can run her mind over the reality too thoroughly, she lunges forward, grabbing onto her face and crashing into her mouth.
God, she’s been starving for years, she thinks, one taste and she’s devouring her. Forty days and forty nights and she’s finally free. Cold water in her parched throat, sucking on her bottom lip.
(How is this wrong?) (How can this be the thing that corrupts her? Something so sweet shouldn’t have the power to turn unholy.)
By the time they come apart, she’s never felt so out of breath, panting, staring at the swollen sight of Helen’s pink lips. She wipes her mouth with the heel of her palm and saliva pools beneath Carol’s tongue, heat surging through her.
(Nothing she could ever do would be enough to repent for this.) (She’s already going to hell; she can allow herself to want it.)
“Nice, huh?” Helen asks, straightening her clothes. “You ever kissed a girl before?”
So straightforward it startles her, like a clap right beside her ear. Has she? No answer feels right to encompass the truth.
“Yeah.” She shrugs. She touched Erin’s lips with her own and that has to count, even if it hardly lasted three seconds.
“Was I the best, though?” A wicked, teasing smile, and Carol’s insides get caught up in a tight knot.
“Shut up,” she mutters, ears gone red at her laughter.
“You want me to walk you home?” she asks, once she’s calmed, and despite the kindness in it, something feels dirty.
“No thanks.”
Helen nods. “I could probably come up with another place. Lemme think about where we are.”
“We don’t have to go to a bar,” Carol says, though now she’s craving a drink more than anything. “I don’t care where.”
Helen’s brow lifts at that. “What? You got shitty roommates?”
“Shitty landlord. I don’t wanna deal with those assholes. ‘Sides, I’m not allowed to have guests.”
“And you’re planning on having a guest?”
Her face flames. “No, I—I didn’t—”
“Relax, I’m messing with you.” She grins, and it hardly calms the shame inflated in her chest. (But it’s nice to see.) “I have to find a hotel or something. If anywhere will even take me.”
Carol runs through her mind, searching for a solution, something to hand over and win her pride with. What she finds has rough edges, but it’s a solution nonetheless.
“Your friend has a boat, right?”
She glances at her. “Yeah?”
“And you know what it looks like?”
“Sure.”
Carol pushes herself up to her feet. “Great. Let’s go.”
“Wait, go where?” Helen gets up behind her, scrambling to grab her suitcase and rush after her. To be in control, for once, finally, makes Carol feel like she’s flying.
“We’ll sleep there. On the boat,” she tells her, so matter-of-factly that she could never argue.
Her eyes widen, though. “Carol, I don’t . . . they’re going sailing in the morning.”
She shrugs. “So? We’ll get up early.”
“I mean . . .” She watches as her resolve begins to crumble. “It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.”
“Exactly.”
They’re immersed in quiet then, walking the empty streets. Carol’s skin itches with the dirt of what she’s done. She can live with the grime. She has to. (Even if it’s suffocating. Even if she’s sure she’ll never get clean, no matter how much she scrubs.)
Her mother once told her she’d never seen someone so susceptible to the devil’s temptations. It feels too good to be true, that Helen is anything but. Planted behind the restaurant with her pretty smile and her shining eyes, drawing Carol into the flames.
But, god, maybe she’s been destined for that punishment since the day she was born. Helen has to be the least of her worries.
(She’s fooling herself, but it’s the only way to keep walking.)
“I’m shocked they don’t have a gate or something,” Helen says once they get to the docks, stepping in front of Carol to lead her toward the boat.
“Not like they have to worry about anyone sneaking onto boats that don’t belong to them.”
Helen shoots her an unamused gaze over her shoulder, but her mouth tugs into a smile right before she turns. “It’s this one.”
“You wanna get on?” Carol’s hands rest on her hips, brow furrowed as she stares at the boat, floating peacefully beside the dock.
Helen turns to her. “This was your plan, not mine.”
She huffs a breath but steps forward to the end of the deck, toes hanging off the edge as she awkwardly hauls herself onto the deck. Helen tosses the suitcase up once she’s standing, following suit and climbing aboard.
“Isn’t it thrilling?” Helen teases, heading across the deck to the cabin opening. Carol pushes follows, climbing inside and doing a spin, taking it in. Lots of wood with plenty of blue details—a round couch around a table beside a small kitchen, storage cabinets, and down the short hall a small bedroom with a door to what she assumes to be a bathroom.
“Don’t mess the sheets up too much,” Helen tells her, already opening her suitcase. “I know we can make the bed, but I don’t want it to be obvious.”
“Sure.” She sneaks past her into the bedroom, running her palm over the smooth, floral sheets. Tiny blue flowers pinpricking the white fabric.
The sound of movement behind her, and she turns, eyes falling on the mirror—aimed right at the inside of the bathroom Helen stands in, capturing a sliver of her body. Carol stares, dangerously captivated as she pries her shirt from her body, breath caught in her throat at the sight of bare skin.
“I hate to tell you, but I don’t have any extra pajamas,” Helen calls to her, and the sound of her voice breaks the spell, Carol turning away and struggling to tame the red of her face.
“It’s fine,” she manages, hands shaking as she drops the blazer from her shoulders. She looks down at her body, considering what lies beneath the pants. Her briefs aren’t as revealing as they could be, but still the thought of lying beside Helen with only their thin material makes her shiver.
(The thought of lying beside Helen makes her chest so tight it hurts.)
“I should probably ask what your intentions are here,” Helen says, coming out of the bathroom in a matching set of striped pajamas. So put together she feels like a doll. Something unreal.
Carol struggles to speak. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean, sneaking onto a boat to spend the night? It feels like you’re asking to fuck, which is fine with me, but—”
“No,” she snaps, her body pulled taut. “No, that’s not . . . I mean, not because you—I just—”
“Hey, relax.” Helen’s expression cracks into a smile. “I’m not saying we have to. I was just asking.”
She’s unable to meet her eyes. (Thinking about how she looks beneath those pajamas. Thinking about how she’d sound if she slipped her hand under the fabric.) “I’m tired.”
“Yeah, of course.” She gets onto the bed, then, and that’s that. Even if Carol’s heart is still bounding. She pats the space beside her and cocks her head to the side. “Come on. I’m not gonna bite.”
“Maybe I do.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
And god, Carol doesn’t stand a chance, surrendering and crawling onto the small bed. She can smell her perfume so strongly, the floral scent that makes her head spin, so close she can feel the heat emanating from beneath her skin.
“Hi,” Helen teases, right by her face.
“Hi.” Carol’s well aware of how her expression probably looks. Wide eyes, something nervous. A deer in headlights.
“Thanks for keeping me company tonight,” she says, and Carol manages a weak nod. “Maybe we can do it again tomorrow.”
“Sure,” she breathes, hardly audible.
Helen grins and leans forward, pressing a kiss to her cheek (right beside the corner of her mouth), and leaving her frozen as she turns and lies down. A short circuit, something unwell inside her body. (But she knows that already, so she lies down too.)
With her head on the pillow, her heart begins to slow its pace. And as her body regulates, she finds herself enveloped in the strangest calm. A kind of peace so unfamiliar, one she’s never quite known. It’s as if, here, every one of those heavy thoughts always clanging around her skull, bruising the meat of her brain, has gone still. Gone invisible, as if they were never there at all.
It’s as if, with Helen, none of it matters. (She doesn’t need heaven. She doesn’t think it could be better than this.)
As the serenity washes over her, she’s struck by the sudden instinct to write. What, she isn’t sure. But her brain begins to spin with the idea of words. Beautiful words that could somehow encapsulate a piece of this night. This feeling. (Of Helen, and her rough-edged gentleness.)
“Helen,” she says, voice meeker than she wishes it was.
“Hm?”
“I want to be a writer.”
Quiet, for a moment, and suddenly she thinks that she shouldn’t have said anything at all. But then she turns, just enough so Carol can see her face.
“That’s your dream?” She nods, and Helen smiles. “That’s a good one. I think you’d be great.”
She scoffs. “You haven’t read anything I’ve written.”
“Yeah, but I can tell.”
Her ears are hot with the praise, riding the high of her words even after she turns back around. Happy enough to move past the voices in her head, informing her of the wrongness she’s enacting when she reaches a tentative hand forward and rests it on Helen's shoulder.
And when, after a moment, she allows herself to move closer. Hand sliding from her shoulder, down around her body. Close enough to rest her forehead against the space between her shoulder blades.
Helen puts her hand over Carol’s, and she thinks it’s ok.
For the first time in her life, she thinks maybe she’s ok.