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I have to assert myself—I won't let her play me like I am a fucking puppet.
Ava sat on the floor outside the bathroom, smoking. She was wired, humming with anger. I have to stand my ground. I'm here doing her a favor, she owes me—big time—not the other way around. Deep breath, go out there, and put her in her place. You're not a helpless little girl, you're a brave woman who can advocate for herself and won't let anyone steamroll her.
"You know what?" Ava said, stepping out of the bathroom and pulling the door shut behind her. She gripped her book tightly in her hands. "I've decided I'm sleeping in the bed."
"You dragged me here against my will. I am not going to tolerate sleeping in a bathtub just because you feel uncomfortable having me next to you."
"I like uncomfortable. It's fun. And ultimately, you know what? There's nothing you can do about it. Absolutely nothing." She stared deep into Deborah's eyes. Try me. I fucking dare you.
She closed the distance to the bed—where Deborah was lying down—in two, three sharp, deliberate steps. Just enough to loom over her, like looking down from a sudden, towering height.
Deborah stared back, mouth slightly agape, entirely speechless. After a few seconds of dead silence, eyes locked between them - Ava's were dark, abyssal, invincible- she gave a slight, mocking nod. Thought so.
She walked around the bed, pulled back the covers on her side, fluffed the pillows against the headboard, and leaned back. She opened her book and started reading.
Deborah was right beside her, head turned, still staring in mute shock. Ava looked at her. First at her eyes, then at her open mouth. After a couple seconds, slowly and steadily, she said, "You know, when you decide to do theater, the production doesn't always have an intermission." She paused. The room was dead quiet, except for their breathing.
"The door might have closed behind us, but the show is still running."
Ava reached out, her hand hovering near Deborah's face, holding her gaze. She placed two fingers under Deborah's chin and gently, slowly, pushed her jaw shut. "Sweet dreams, my love" she said, with a microscopic, loaded tilt on her head. She was calling the shots now, and she knew it. No one needed to tell her. She felt it deep inside. Then she put her glasses on, opened her book, and went back to reading.
Deborah stared blankly at her own book. She didn't know how to respond to this. How do you flip the script on this kind of ambush? She hadn't prepared for a mutiny. Not from Ava. Shell-shocked, she snapped her book shut, rolled over, clicked off her lamp, and pulled the covers up. She stared at the bathroom door Ava had just walked out of like an actor emerging in the third act of a rehearsed production to deliver the ultimate plot twist. Her eyes were wide, her breathing shallow. How was she supposed to sleep? How could she move forward after such a blatant challenge to her authority? How could she win her authority back? How do you win a lost battle against an opponent... Opponent? God, if only, she thought. If only Ava actually could beat her, at everything. To lose every fight—to have no walls left, no pretenses. If only she could relieve her of the frozen fortress that was her heart. Her mind played a vicious game of ping-pong: the desperate need to reclaim her lost ground, against the deep exhaustion of wanting to lose everything to a stronger rival. The space between asserting absolute dominance, and finally letting someone defeat her. Mercilessly. Completely. Letting someone else carry the crushing weight of her existence.
A soft sound snapped her out of it... what was that? Was Ava... crying? Was she imagining it? Barely twenty minutes had passed. She tuned in to the space behind her back. Yes. Ava was weeping, softly, almost imperceptibly. Deborah turned around. Ava was reading, tears streaming down her face. Something on the book had broken her.
"What are you reading?" Deborah asked, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
Ava wiped her cheeks, her voice trembling. "It's the fifth time I've read this book, nodding. It just... it touches me so deeply every time. Right to the core. It's a love story, but it manages the question of whether we can actually change as people, and if so, how that happens."
"'How does a person's life finally change?'" Ava read aloud to herself—a question that had been rattling in her skull, now offered to Deborah.
"And I'm starting to think that this is maybe the most important question of our time," she said, turning to face her. She took a deep breath. "Not the economy, not the elections, the growth metrics, the algorithms. But whether a human being can still alter their internal laws before they completely fossilize inside their own fear."
"Because most people don't actually live. They just manage themselves. Like exhausted clerks of some invisible internal bureaucracy that watches them constantly. Careful how you speak. Careful how you look. Careful what you say. Careful, or you'll be rejected. Careful, or you won't be loved. Careful, or they'll see the real you. And so, slowly, you learn to exist the way animals raised in a cage exist: even when the door swings open, they're too terrified to leave. You shrink yourself to fit the family, the society, the school, the small town, the masculinity, the femininity, the religion, the 'normalcy'. To fit your job," she said, giving Deborah a pointed look.
"And then the most terrifying thing happens," Ava continued, tears still fresh. "You learn to fear yourself. You are trained to view the truth of your own self as dangerous."
"We live in a society that mass-produces exhausted people with excellent coping skills. Highly functional, but completely shattered inside. People who can pull fourteen-hour days, manage endless apps, churn out content, pose for photos, talk constantly—but can't stand five minutes of silence alone with themselves. Five minutes, Deborah."
"Because in the silence, you start to hear that old kid who learned to hide. You come face to face with your own truth."
"Real change is practically a tragedy, she continues. Because for a person to truly change, the entire survival mechanism they've relied on has to collapse. And that is unbearable."
"That's why so many people are terrified of change. Not because they can't change, but because they understand, even subconsciously, that they will have to mourn the entire identity they've worn up to this point. And that is the abyss."
"Discovering that a massive chunk of your life wasn't freedom at all, but a survival strategy. That your choices were made to avoid losing approval. That your relationships were built on terror. That your ideals were just defense mechanisms. That your 'strengths' were just highly organized forms of panic."
"And in the middle of all that wreckage, the greatest revolution is to be able to exist without constantly apologizing for your existence." She stopped and looked at Deborah, her eyes red.
"Because a person doesn't change just through analysis. Not just because they figured out their trauma, their flaws, their fears. Knowledge alone doesn't always save you. People can understand their own darkness with terrifying precision and still let themselves drown in it."
"So what actually changes someone? Maybe... maybe it's the feeling that, even in your most catastrophic internal freefall, you are still worthy of love. When you stop being terrified that if you are completely exposed, you'll stop being loved. When someone's gaze doesn't reduce you to a failure, a utility, or a role."
When you find that love—she looked deep into Deborah's eyes, her voice now the softest it had ever been and you stand at the edge of the cliff, right at the dividing line of before and after, will you take the step?
Ava paused. "It gets me every time," she whispered. She stared out the window to her right, leaving Deborah on her left.
She had no idea that Deborah had just been agonizing over battles and lost territory. One fighting a war, the other talking about surrender and transformation.
Ava took a deep breath. "How are you not asleep yet?" she asked, turning back to look at her.
Deborah had been holding her breath the entire time Ava spoke. It felt like a hand had reached straight through her sternum, grabbed her heart, and was squeezing it as hard as physically possible. The dividing line Ava talked about was right in front of her. She could see it taking shape, vivid and terrifying.
"I need water. I'm thirsty," Deborah blurted out, bolting from the room like a fugitive. Nobody was actually chasing her, but if you asked her, an entire army—every person she had ever known—was panting at her heels, trying to catch her. She had to escape. Slam. The bedroom door shut loudly behind her.
Deborah stood in the kitchen, downing a glass of water in desperate, abyssal gulps. She tried to catch her breath. The line wouldn't fade from her vision. No, she told herself. No, and no again. Never. The panic left her winded. It was impossible. Hammers pounded inside her skull. What had she just said to her? Was she talking about her? How could someone take a spotlight that blindingly bright, cut through the thickest fog, and hit the dead center? Striking a vein, striking the nerve. All Deborah could repeat, over and over, was no. As if the word no could act as a shield against the tsunami of life that hits without asking. You're just sitting on the beach, oblivious on your towel, soaking up the sun, and from the darkest depths of the ocean, a wave rises—so fast, so tall, you know it's going to crush you under its weight. No.
Ava appeared behind her in the kitchen. It was dark, painfully quiet. The fridge hummed a low note. Outside the window, oblivious little night moths fluttered in the dark, completely ignorant of the slaughter happening inside. Wounds were being sliced open, gallons of blood spilling, and there they were, gracefully dancing around fragrant flowers. At the exact moment one person is plummeting, losing their footing entirely, another soul right next to them is just sipping nectar from a delicate petal. Life is like that. Always has been.
"I'm sorry," Ava said. "Did I upset you?" She knew the answer was yes, but she asked anyway. She asked so they could share the pain. The book had helped her build the bridge she needed to reach her. Anger had given her that first violent push—the jagged, stinging fury of being shoved away. You’re going to sleep in the bathtub, Deborah had ordered, a woman who only allowed servants in her orbit, terrified of standing next to real, flesh-and-blood people who actually demonstrate emotions.
She had marched out of that bathroom waving a banner like a general in an ancient arena, ready to tear apart anyone in her path. But once she settled into the bed, caught her breath, and began to read, she realized how profoundly she loved her. Alongside the tears ran deep, steady rivers of affection for this hard, cynical woman. She was telling her, I love you, and Deborah had understood it. She was telling her, I see behind the performance, and I love you anyway. Deborah didn't turn around. She said nothing. She gripped the edge of the sink with both hands, head bowed. What was there to say?
Ava stepped closer and gently stroked her back. They stayed like that in the dead of night, in the quiet kitchen. Together. One with her back turned, the other soothing it, for a long time.
Finally, Deborah took a shuddering breath and turned around. She couldn't meet Ava's eyes; she stared at the floor instead. She had no role left to play. She wasn't an actor in a carefully rehearsed production anymore; she was just herself—and that meant she simply couldn't look up.
Ava looked down at Deborah's bowed head with absolute tenderness. Ava might have been the younger one, but right now, she was the stronger one. Because she was capable of surrender.
She opened her arms and enveloped Deborah completely. An embrace vast enough to hold all of her. So tight it could asphyxiate her. One hand cupped the back of Deborah's head, stroking her hair—her natural, short, slightly thinning hair. Deborah buried her face deep into Ava’s neck pressing into her skin as if using her as a tourniquet for an invisible wound.
"I love you," Ava said, refusing to loosen the suffocating, grounding grip. "I love you so much."
Deborah twitched, trying to pull away, to bolt again.
"Don't say anything. Just listen. Let yourself hear me. Stay put."
"I am not going to leave you. I'm not going anywhere, and I will not betray you. You are my priority in life. I have the sheer strength to carry us both. When you try to flee, I'll drag you back. When you fall, I'll give you my hand. I will put my own back to keep you standing." She said it with an absolute, affirmative certainty. Emphasizing every verb, slow and deliberate.
Deborah was weeping. Ava's neck was soaked. The tears were bleeding through her t-shirt.
"I love you too," Deborah choked out, the words mangled by sobs and snot. She said it so quietly that only an ear tuned to love could have caught it.
Ava relaxed her grip just a fraction, and Deborah's arms finally came up to wrap around her.
"Yeah," Deborah whispered. "I love you." "The truth is life will shallow me whole without you".