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Mal is good now, and she reminds herself this over and over and over, because a good person would not lean over and kiss Evie, beauty notwithstanding, because she is dating someone else.
And, maybe, because she is a woman. Mal doesn't know where the so-called "good" people of Auradon stand on sapphic love; the one time she mentioned a sapphic couple to Fairy Godmother, she made that awkward attempt at sympathy barely disguising scorn, the same reaction she has when Mal talks about her parents. So, yes. Maybe, since Mal is good, she should not want to fuck her female friend.
Although she can't help but think that most of the people of Auradon aren't as "good" as they pretend, and perhaps no one is. What is good? Who decides? How can anyone be good, when they're trying to follow rules that aren't always clear, rules that they didn't get to write?
She uses this dramatic monologue in her head to hide her anger at Evie's new boyfriend, Sam, who abandoned her in the middle of a party. Anger isn't good.
Sam isn't as bad as many of the others. It's all relative, of course. Mal keeps an itemized list in her head of every boy Evie so much as talked to, both on the Isle and in Auradon, cataloguing every way that Evie has been mistreated, every time Evie's heart got broken. She doesn't know what she deserves, so she lets herself get hurt again and again, not knowing that there's something better out there, waiting for her to take it.
Sam isn't as bad, because his betrayal ends like this: Mal and Evie squished together in an abandoned stairwell, listening to the pounding music beneath them, giggling together.
Mal saw Evie alone, instead of with her date, and she knows Evie well enough to have recognized that dismal expression, the one that Evie dons when even she can't condone this level of mistreatment, and even if the boy doesn't know it yet, things between them are over. Mal made it her mission to rescue Evie and make her smile again, and she succeeded. She always does.
"She was batting her eyelashes like this is a cartoon," Evie is saying, in between breathless peals of laughter, "'Please Sam, notice me Sam'-" raising the pitch of her voice to imitate this faceless girl that swept Sam away from her for "one dance," which turned into two then three then four, "'I can't think of anyone cooler than you, Sam!'"
"Idiot," Mal says, "if she looked closer, she'd find someone cooler than Sam right next to him!"
Evie snorts and brushes it off, like she does every time. Mal is never joking.
"I'll curse her for you," Mal says. "Or him. Or whoever you like." She would be bad again, for Evie. She'd be anything Evie wants her to be.
"No, no, it's fine. I'll break up with him in the morning." Mal knows how this story goes. Evie will break up with him, and forgive him, all too quickly, because Evie's kind and generous and graceful and everything Mal wants to be.
The difference between Mal and Evie is that Mal is good because every day she wakes up and makes a conscious decision to try to do right by herself and the people she loves, and Evie is good because she finds it difficult to be bad. Maybe Evie's version of good is more impressive, or maybe Mal's is. Mal can't tell, because she knows she's biased in Evie's favor.
"I should take a break from boys," Evie says, and Mal agrees, like she did three weeks ago, the night before Evie started texting Sam. This time is different, though, because this time Evie looks at Mal and asks, "What's it like to be with a girl?"
All of the air gets sucked out of the stairwell, getting absorbed into the stones, and Mal spends an eternity in the space in between two heartbeats, because for the first time since she fell for Evie, she hopes.
She could spend forever in love with Evie without saying a word. It's enough, to be her best friend, to be able to catch her when she falls, to see her smile every day. Mal can be good and stay in her place.
But if Evie gives her a chance to be selfish and lustful and proud, she will grab it with both hands.
"My last relationship wasn't a good example," Mal says, with impressive control over her tone, not yet clueing Evie in on how much this matters to her. "She and I only dated for a week." It could never work, not when queer relationships were pushed under the rug in Auradon, not when Mal was head over heels for someone else. Evie is among the very small collection of people that know Mal's queer, and she's always so good about it, and sometimes Mal wants her to react otherwise. To act like Mal being sapphic is earthshattering information, like it is for Mal, now that she knows that maybe, maybe, Evie is, too.
Evie shrugs. "That's a week longer than I've spent with a girl. But I- I think about it." She chews on the inside of her cheek for a while, then asks in a rush, "Is that bad?"
"No," Mal says with a certainty that she doesn't feel. Nothing about Evie could be bad. "And I'll fuck up anyone who tells you otherwise."
Evie smiles, and sort of leans in, then retreats. "Could you… I don't know. Show me?"
"Yes," Mal breathes, even though she's not quite sure what Evie's asking of her. "I'll show you- anything. I've only done, um, above the waist, over the bra stuff with girls. But we can figure it out together. Or figure out what it's like to be in a relationship with a girl. I'll- whatever you want. Anything."
By the time Mal manages to shut herself up, Evie's eyes are blown wide, downright astonished by how much Mal would give her, how easy it is for Mal to promise her everything. She thinks too little of herself, and Mal wants to remedy that, night by night, day by day, if Evie will let her.
When Evie leans in again, it isn't followed by a rapid retreat, and they meet in the middle. It's awkward, and Mal can't melt into it because of how high her adrenaline is running, and Evie seems unsure of what she's doing, and it's the best kiss Mal has ever experienced.
Evie breaks the kiss, and looks down to where the music is still playing, muffled by the several walls in between them and the party, and Mal knows she's thinking of Sam, because it's easy for her to think of others.
"Is this bad?" Evie asks, even as her hand automatically reaches for Mal's, intertwining their fingers like they've been together forever, like they've already promised each other their lives, like Evie feels this, too. Mal would treat her right. Will treat her right.
Mal could write essays about good and bad and the impossibility of extricating one from the other, but she feels dizzy with glee, and can only manage to say, "Who cares?"
Evie agrees with this conclusion, if the way she pins Mal against the wall with renewed confidence is anything to go by.