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In the months after Victoria’s 21st, after the drunken kiss with Trinity, after the beginnings of…whatever this is, they’ve gotten into the habit of driving around aimlessly after a tough shift. There’s something soothing to it. Maybe the motion of the car mimics the rocking of a cradle. Or it’s like when you’re running at a full sprint, and have to jog for a second to ease out of it.
Victoria doesn’t remember the last time she ran. She loved running as a kid, loved challenging her cousins to races. Every time the Olympics come around, she makes a point to watch the sprinters. Her mother signed her up for tennis.
She tries not to think about the particular humiliation of waiting for Trinity after shift, of dilly-dallying in the locker room once she’s been dismissed, about scrolling on her phone as she leans against the building by the parking lot, eyes flicking upwards at the sounds of incoming sirens before she remembers that’s not her responsibility anymore. She knows people talk. Not even Trinity’s temper can stave off The Pitt’s impressive gossip chain.
It’s just that…this is delicate. Not secret, or at least not explicitly. Trinity’s sweet, she’s learning, much sweeter than anyone knows. She hates to show it, so Victoria tries not to comment, but she catalogs the instances where it slips through–when she offered to help put together furniture for her new apartment, when she grabs her coffee from the break room, the way they haven’t even had sex yet because Trinity’s so concerned about moving at her pace.
(Victoria actually wouldn’t mind if she was less sweet about that last point. There’s only so much satisfaction she can derive from her own fingers.)
But Trinity is slippery, and Victoria knows that if this is going anywhere at all, she needs to sit tight and let her set the pace. There are moments–moments like right now, where she’s waiting on her ride home like a kid–where she understands Trinity’s hesitations about the chasm between their experiences. But then they’ll emerge together from the trauma room, thrumming with adrenaline after saving a life, and none of that matters. She appreciates Trinity’s caution. It’s why she feels safe with her. She understands why she’s threading their rope through a million fail-safes and drawing up escape plans. Just in case, she’ll say. Sometimes, Victoria isn’t sure whose benefit it’s really for.
Victoria is ready. Ready for more. Ready to be real, to have someone see her for real. Not her IQ or her resume or her TikTok account. Just…the way she is in her bedroom alone, when no one’s watching.
She hears the whoosh of the hospital doors. “Ready, Crash?” Trinity smiles, rounding the corner swinging her keys around her finger.
“God, yes,” Victoria says, kicking off the wall. Trinity bitches about her charts as they walk to her car. It’s a trusty red thing that is in desperate need of a car wash, which boasts an “I brake for lesbians,” bumper sticker. Louise, Trinity introduced her the first time Victoria was a passenger in her. Named after a movie she hasn’t seen yet that Trinity insists is a classic.
Whitaker is at the farm tonight, so they’re alone. Victoria’s heart thrums as she anticipates the culmination of their ritual. She kicks an empty soda can out of the way so she can set her bag on the floor. Her tinted chapstick is lost somewhere in the mess where she dropped it last week. Her half-finished peach iced tea is still in the door cup holder. “That last code was fucking brutal,” she says as they pulls out of the parking lot.
“Yeah,” Trinity sighs, running a hand through her hair. She shakes her head. “I really hope she pulls through surgery, but–” They go silent, sitting with it. It’s nice, Victoria is learning, to have someone to sit in it with.
“Dinner?” Victoria asks. “My treat.” She just got her payout from the creator fund. Money is uncomfortable for her, sticky, with her parents still paying for school and her apartment and giving her pocket change. She would never say that, because she knows how lucky she is, even if something about being so tethered to them makes her stomach twist in discomfort. Next year, she assures herself, it’ll all be different. When she matches and starts residency it’ll all be different.
“Tori,” Trinity scoffs, “Don’t worry about that.” It’s a nickname reserved for when they’re alone.
“I’m not worrying. Just let me do something nice for you, okay? Especially if you still won’t let me get you back for gas money.”
Trinity narrows her eyes. “We’ll see.” She’s stubborn, but Victoria knows she can wear her down.
Instead of pressing the point, she unzips her backpack and swallows as she pulls out the purple CD jewel case, still in its plastic wrap. Guts.
There’s some overlap in their music tastes (mostly Chappell Roan and boygenius, although Trinity prefers Julien Baker's solo stuff), but they usually listen to Trinity's music–post-shift playlists of rock songs with fast drums and bass you feel deep in your chest and girls screaming; the kind of stuff that makes Victoria feel both very out-of-the-loop to have never heard, but cool to be sitting here and sort of enjoying–fuzzy, as it comes through the bluetooth adapter, and then relegated to CDs after that breaks.
Victoria doesn't own any other CDs. She thinks her parents probably still have the ones from her childhood somewhere in storage, but she's not sure. Her strongest memories of music have always come from her phone, first from wired earbuds (purple), and then from the airpods she got for her 13th birthday. "I got you something," she says, nervous. “You know how I said it’s practically a criminal offense that you don’t listen to Olivia Rodrigo?” Trinity's so much deeper than she thought. Kinder, too. But she still isn't quite sure which face of hers she'll get. If what she says will accidentally push her buttons.
But Trinity is delighted, even if she makes a half-hearted jab about tween girl pop, and Victoria fumbles to unwrap the CD and feed it into the player. Trinity keeps her eyes on the road but a smile creeps onto her tired features as the first chorus hits, and she reaches over to turn the volume up several notches. Victoria relaxes then, reaching up to pull her hair out of its ponytail, and nodding along to the music.
Forgive, and I forget. I know my age, and I act like it!
At work, she has to be everything. But here, in this car shuttling through the same streets of Pittsburgh she grew up with, here with Trinity, she can be stupid and messy and carefree. She feels the talons of her shift easing their grip.
Trinity actually likes the album. Maybe Victoria shouldn’t be surprised, but there’s something about playing it for the girl she likes that feels weirdly vulnerable. More than kissing. More than bodies. Today they stood in Trauma 2 and swapped rounds of compressions, pressing down over and over, feeling ribs buckle under their touch. Something like that, maybe.
Trinity sings along to the singles she knows when they come on, encouraging Victoria to do the same. She’s so into it, that she hands Victoria’s card to the worker at the drive through window without protest.
As the sun sets over the city, they drive. Aimless movement. Forward-facing. Victoria flips down her sun visor to protect from the glare. She unwraps Trinity’s burger and holds her diet coke so she can drink from the straw. She wipes her greasy fingers on her scrub pants and revels in the fact that she’s here. That, for whatever reason, Trinity enjoys her company.
It’s dark by the time they make their way back to Trinity’s apartment. They find street parking pretty easily, but Trinity makes no move to get out of the car. They sit in silence as the album continues to play, fingers brushing as they reach for the last of the french fries in the paper bag, still staring forward even though they're parked and could really feasibly be looking at each other. Like, Trinity's kissed her, but she won't even look at her.
"The Grudge" swirls around them, the pounding piano and sweeping vocals threading through Victoria's chest, squeezing at her heart in the same way they do when she's alone in her bedroom.
And I want to be tough, but I want to scream / How could anyone do the things you did so easily?
The lyric sits heavy. The pressure, the unrelenting pressure from everyone–the world, her mother, her attendings–is just. So much. But it always lifts its hold a little when she's able to put words to it like this. She hears Trinity's breath hitch next to her, but when Victoria looks over, she's looking away, out the window. She might be crying, she realizes with a jolt. Stammering platitudes threaten to spill from her mouth, but she tamps them down. Trinity doesn't do well with that kind of concern, the kind of concern Victoria sort of wishes someone would extend to her, although she's not sure if she'd even be able to accept it if they did.
This is why she's so drawn to Trinity. She's loud and mean and brave, but, underneath, she thinks they might be the same. It just took her a while to understand, to see the marks her ghosts have left on her.
When the record finishes (They all say that it gets better, it gets better / But what if I don't?), they sit in silence for another moment. Victoria's heart pounds. She knows she should say something, but she's not quite sure what. She doesn’t know how to ask Trinity to open up to her without sending her running.
Thankfully, Trinity clears her throat, breaking. "Whew!" she smirks, wiping inconspicuously at her eyes. "That girl sure knows how to write a song."
Victoria smiles. Before Trinity can make a move to get out of the car, Victoria leans across the console and pulls her into a kiss. She tastes salt that she’s pretty sure isn’t from the fries, but doesn't comment. Not yet. She will be patient and she will learn when to push. Maybe this was the start of that. The pushing. The opening. Maybe she’ll need to start buying more CDs: the rest of Olivia’s and Taylor Swift’s Midnights and Conan Grey’s Superache and aespa’s Armageddon.
When they get inside, blinking at the bright hallway lights of Trinity's apartment building, there's a new energy between them, even though nothing's really changed. It's softer. Settled.