Chapter Text
Oona first meets Ramona when she’s 10.
Oona and her mum are busy unloading their belongings into their new ‘home’ on lake Muskoka when an older gentleman approaches them with a girl around Oona’s age in tow.
Ramona is quiet and reserved while her grandad makes a big show of introducing himself to Oona, Mapel and their mum, and invites them all round to his island one evening to meet the Muskoka family.
She thinks Ramona might hate her at first which is why she’s so drawn to her. She’s used to people loving her quick wit and cheeky attitude but Ramona seems immune to all her charm.
She learns Ramona likes sailing and begs her mum for lessons. Her mum relents after a week, probably due to the guilt of upending their lives to follow a man across the globe again, and that’s how Oona finds herself out on the lake under Joe’s watchful eye.
He sends her off in a canoe to start, which she manages to capsize every 5 minutes and eventually Joe has to send Ramona out with her too because she was becoming a ‘safety hazard’
After 30 minutes she manages to finally make Ramona laugh; it brings her so much joy that she decides then and there that she wants spend the rest of her life making Ramona laugh.
They grow up together. Ramona tries to teach her to sail, but gives up pretty quickly and instead seems happy enough to be her personal sailor.
Oona helps Ramona when she gets her first period and has no one else to talk to about it.
Ramona helps look after Maple whenever their mum disappears.
Oona helps Ramona when Gordon starts getting sick.
When Ramona comes back after disappearing for a year she doesn’t get angry, just tells her she’s missed her; when Ramona finds out she has a whole other family, she encourages her to connect with them, even if it means leaving her behind again.
Ramona comes back every summer and Oona visits New York with Maple every Christmas.
When they both get into the University of Toronto, they share a dorm, because, duh, they’re best friends.
Life is simple. Life is good.
It’s two weeks before they’re due to travel back to Sterling Point for the summer that Oona decides to ruin everything.
“Stacey Mallory is going to be there this summer” Oona states tentatively while they’re smoking on their balcony one evening “Rory has invited her as his plus one. They’ll probably be running round like it’s their honeymoon”
“Bummer”
Oona glares at her and grabs the cigarette from hand.
“Thanks babe, glad I have your sympathy” she snarks out “She dumped me for him like 2 minutes after we left New York.”
“I did try and warn you about her. So did Maple. And Sully. And..”
“I thought she was my future wife” Oona interjects quickly which draws a chuckle for Ramona.
Oona passes the cigarette back and takes a deep breath.
“I think we should date”
Ramona starts choking on the inhale she’d just pulled and doubles over.
Oona mumbles out a quick “fuck” and runs to grab a bottle of water from their fridge.
She passes it to Ramona and starts slapping her back unhelpfully. “Shit babe, are you good?”
“Yeah, yeah, fuck” Ramona sputters while trying to catch her breath again. “Sorry it just sounded like you said you think we should date”
“I did” Oona says, as if it was a completely normal thing to blurt out on Saturday evening
“Dude have you secretly gotten high without me or something?”
“Like fake dating I mean.” She quickly adds “I don’t want her to think I’ve been moping about without her. I want her to know I’ve moved on”
“Wow, way to make a girl feel special”
Ramona ignores the glare Oona sends her and continues “Muskoka is a big place, you probably won’t even see her”
Oona sighs and start worrying her lip between her teeth. “You know Rory and Connor are best friends. And he’s gotten weirdly close with Ellis these past couple years too. He’ll probably drag her to all our parties and you know he’s the designated driver for all our trips.”
Ramona looks over at her and sees a rare sign of vulnerability on her face.
The thing is, Oona cares more than any other person she’s met. She might hide it well beneath layers of sarcasm and wit but she feels rejection strongly, and Ramona knows how much courage it took her to finally try a relationship rather than settle for her 2 week flings.
She was there when Oona got the text from Stacey Mallory saying they should break up 2 days after they left New York.
She was there when Oona started going on dates with a new girl nearly every night and responding to all of Ramona’s worrying with a quick “I’m fine, it is what it is”
She was there when Rory and Stacey Mallory hard launched their relationship on Instagram, and Oona finally cracked and spent the night crying, asking Ramona why she was never enough, why everyone always left her when they found someone better.
She loves Oona. She’s her best friend and she would do anything for her, especially when Oona looks so dejected. It’s probably a terrible idea but Ramona just stubs out the end of the cigarette and sighs out “Fine, let’s do it” The dread she feels is partially alleviated by the beaming smile Oona gives her.
Oona texts Maple straight away. They figure she’d be the one person to question the facade the most considering Oona never went more than 2 weeks without visiting her at Sully’s house or bringing her down to Toronto for the weekend, and the supposed change in their relationship status had never been mentioned before. All they get back is a quick “Finally! Took you guys long enough.” text back.
Ramona texts Annie “heads up, Oona and I are dating” as well and it’s about 10 seconds before Annie is on FaceTime demanding to know all the details. Ramona brushes off the questions, using exam season as an excuse to why she’s too busy to tell her anything, and promises to answer all her questions when they see each other in 2 weeks. She hangs up as soon as possible, but not before Annie manages to shout “See! I knew you guys had a vibe” which makes Ramona blush furiously.
Oona just smirks, kisses her head and tells her “Easy peasy babe. Everyone already believes us” Ramona ignores the way that makes her feel.
They drive up to Muskoka 2 weeks after they agreed to “date” for the summer. It’s just them and the moon.
“What’s our story then?” Ramona asks fingers drumming on the wheel of Gordon’s old car.
“Well, me and Stacey Mallory broke up just before new years so it’s got to be a respectable amount of time after that”
“You mean we can’t just say it was 5 days after she dumped you, like the actual amount of time it took you to date someone else?”
“Shut up” Oona glares at her “Valentines day? You had just broken up with Pam”
“You know her name was Sam-“
“And we spend the day together and realised we were meant to be and fell madly in love” Oona finishes, completely ignoring Ramonas interjection.
She’s got her legs up on the dashboard and is smiling at Ramona like she’s just solved world hunger.
“Sounds kind of cheesy”
“It sounds romantic”
“And when have I ever been into romance?”
“Since you fell in love with your childhood best friend!” Oona exclaims “it’s perfect”
Ramona just sighs and lights up a cigarette. She figures it’ll be easier to just follow Oona’s lead on this.
“We’ve been together 2 months then. Why haven’t we told anyone?”
Oona thinks for a bit. “Maybe we just didn’t want to get everyone involved so early? Like it was new and we wanted to make sure it would work before everyone got invested”
“You message the group chat after every first date to tell everyone you’re in love…”
“Which I haven’t done for over 3 months! Mona, babe, I’m getting a lot of push back here. We can call this off if you want. We can just tell everyone we were joking”
“No it’s fine I just” Ramona looks at her. “It’s weird right? Like what about the physical stuff”
Oona just arches a brow at her
“Like do we hold hands, do we cuddle?”
“Mona, we do all that already”
“And what about kissing?” She blushes as she asks.
Oona just chuckles “you were never into PDA with Cam-“
“-Sam”
“So we just go with that. And I mean, if it feels right just go for it I guess” she shrugs as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. Like she hasn’t just set off a bunch of butterflies in Ramona stomach.
They pull up to some traffic lights near Barrie. Ramona looks over at Oona, tries to find some sort of uncertainty in her face. Oona just looks over and smiles.
“How do you even know when to stop at these” she teases “like how do you know which one is red?”
“Red is at the top”
“Green is at the top though”
Ramona laughs “Like I would ever trust your driving knowledge”
Oona fakes stabbing herself in the heart “I’ve gotten better.”
“You hit a plant pot the last time we went to visit Maple”
“Only gently, I recovered quickly”
“You screamed because you thought it was a child”
“It was a very solid plant pot”
They look at each other and burst out laughing. Oona grabs one of her hands pulls it gently to make Ramona look at her.
“Hey, we can do this okay? If it gets weird we’ll just stage a fake breakup. We can make it super dramatic and shit, and then we’ll go back to being best friends again”
They’re close now. Ramona searches green eyes for any sign of doubt. Any sign that Oona feels like her, like they’re hand in hand on top of a cliff about to do something they can’t come back from but she can’t find any.
A car behind them honks loudly and they both jump apart; see the light has turned green.
Ramona puts the car in drive and starts to move off while Oona rolls down the window and shouts behind her “She’s colourblind! She thought red was at the bottom!”
Ramona grabs her arm and pulls her back inside. The burst into giggles. Oona looks so happy, so carefree in this moment. She grabs Ramona’s hand and plants a kiss on the back of it.
If it makes Oona happier, she can do this. They can do this.