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AJ spends the next week in Drift’s bed.
She slept the first day full; the second she dragged her way through a heavy haze, her vision blurry and her stomach rolling in the sporadic minutes she could bear to keep her eyes open. She only truly regained full consciousness on the third day, when she was awake for a grand total of an hour and a half. When her weary eyes meet the walls of Drift’s bedroom and not the infirmary, she was halfway certain she was dead and this was her purgatory. Especially when she saw Drift herself, beaming at her. Her panic was only soothed by the appearance of Nurse Violet, who was not a particularly strong candidate for ‘figures that would visit her in the afterlife’, and the sharp sensation of searing pain tearing at her skin. Ah, real life.
Drift spent the entire time staring at her, to which AJ gifted her grunts and slow blinks at an attempt to parlay what the hell was going on. When Drift only responded with her own strange melody of anguish, her brain decided that silent communication wasn’t her current forte, and she fell back asleep.
(In her dreams, she’s somewhere dark and cold. Soil coats her teeth.
Something always brings her back, however. Something comforting, something light. She lifts her head above water, and savours the air in her lungs.
It makes her think of her vision. It makes her think of a dream she had when she was dying, of Drift bending down and kissing her again).
Drift sleeps by her side every night. She doesn’t know what that means.
By day five, she can hold a conversation. Badly, but a conversation regardless. People come to visit her. They buzz around the small room, speak in hushed tones. She finds herself repeating short and empty reassurances over and over again just to stop the annoying hum and spare her weeping vocal coords. Telling people that actually, her entire body feels like it’s been rearranged and roasted over an open flame will only serve to worsen the ache. That’s what she tells herself. Like a mantra, AJ claws at whatever she can find that resembles bravado in her sorry state.
It tends to fall apart when she sees Magpie, Amber and Gracie.
It falls completely when its her and Drift alone.
They don’t talk at all, anyways, so it’s not like she needs to do much in the way of facades.
Drift just keeps staring at her. She wants to say something, AJ can tell; she’s got that look in her eye, that raised brow, and she paces back and forth relentlessly. Her Open book, so very obvious. She wishes she could lurch forward and force her to engage in what will very clearly be an extraordinarily easy conversation about AJ’s little stunt and all its associated tensions, but she’s pretty sure that will make all her organs fall out. So instead she plays dead fish and watches the show, propped up against Drift’s cream pillows.
By the end of the week her patience wears thin. Something is happening that she is not tuned into. Drift won’t talk to her, but she very clearly wants to. AJ is never going to be the one to start the conversation, so they are stuck in a stalemate. They sleep in the same bed. She’s holding her hand. Sometimes, she catches Drift’s hand hovering over her head, finger reaching out. It reminds her of Ghostie.
(Ghostie hasn’t come to visit her. She doesn’t know what that means either).
Confusion makes her head pulse and ache. At this point, she’ll take swallowing her pride a smudge if gets Drift to open her fucking mouth and stop occupying her thoughts more than usual. She’s got shit to do, like be in a normal amount of pain and not think about her exes.
Moreover, on day seven, her throat finally doesn’t feel like sandpaper, so she goes all-in for the attack.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Drift, who is lying at her side, startles. “Jesus, man, you scared the shit out of me.”
“What,” AJ coughs. “What is going on. What is happening.”
Drift looks at her, perplexed. “You… got shot?”
“Yes, I know that. I’m,” AJ pauses, swallows the late afternoon air. “Drift, I’m in your bed.”
Drift stills, and sighs, dragging her hands down her face.
“Okay. No, I get it. Are we doing this, then?”
AJ isn’t sure what ‘this’ exactly refers to, but whatever, it’s fine. She nods.
“Okay. Okay. Why the fuck did you do that?”
Never mind, it’s not fine.
Drift doesn’t stop, though. “I was thinking about everything, a lot. About you getting shot, about the fact that someone wanted to do it in the first place, the fact that I’m pretty sure I was the target. But I can’t,” She sucks in a breath. “I can’t stop thinking about you deciding that the best thing you could do was get fucking shot. For me. Like, what I am supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to just, not think about it? After everything you did to me? AJ, why the fuck would you do that?”
AJ has no idea why she did that. Well, she does, but she can’t say that out loud. So she doesn’t.
(Her eyes focus for just a moment. It’s like a fog has lifted. Her viewpoint is obscured by someone’s tearstained face. She forms into the freckled face of her beloved).
Sunlight streaks across their shared bedsheets. It creeps off their faces with every passing minute, until their features are captured in cool shadow tones. In the lower light, AJ can see the lines of stress ripped across Drift’s face, war wounds of her never-ending storm.
(“…Hi…Open book…”
Drift leans forward and kisses her).
Drift lies there, gazing at her. Waiting for an answer, a sign of life. AJ can’t give her what she wants, can’t untangle the sensitivities of her nature. They are ugly and revealing, and make her feel sick.
(It wasn’t real. She knows that. It was her brain’s way of coping. But she selfishly steeps in it, lets it wash over her all the same.
She pretends, for a moment, that Drift is really that girl kissing her. That she’s not mad at her, that she doesn’t hate her).
“Dunno.” She finally manages to slur something out.
“You. Dunno.”
“Yep.”
Drift shuts her eyes, squeeze her mouth shut. Goes through every stage of grief in about a minute from AJ’s guess. Then she groans, so deep and loud it makes AJ’s ears ring.
“Alright. Okay. Cool. This is how we’re doing it, huh? Sure, fine.”
Drift rolls onto her back, stares up at the ceiling with careful consideration. AJ watched the way she thinks, the way she nibbles at her lip, her eyes flickering as she sorts through each option weighing on her. They lie like that for what feels like hours, Drift looking up, thoughts circling around her head, AJ watching it all in silent revelry. Then, slowly, she rolls back, grabs back AJ’s gaze with conviction. AJ gulps.
“Two lies. One truth.”
“What?”
Drift shuffles, tucking her free hand beneath her river of caramel-toned curls. She rubs softly at AJ’s thumb, searches her face with eyes amber and solemn.
“You don’t want to be vulnerable with me. I know that now,” Drift sighs. “But I need you to be vulnerable with me, AJ. So, two lies, one truth. Lie to me over and over, then give me a little bit of honesty.”
A chill runs rapid down AJ’s spine. She resists the urge to shiver.
The afternoon light in Drift’s room is beginning to shift, the panels of hot white summer light that drench the tips of the bed-frame in shades of ivory dance and fade as early evening starts to give chase. Soon, the two will lie in complete shadow, two bodies tucked away as the world mellows.
Despite it all, AJ feels exposed, stood underneath a beaming spotlight, shoved centre stage without a single rehearsal or even a line read. Drift is staring at her, nursing her pale hand and waiting, waiting for a sign, a signal, her cue.
Lie to me over and over, then give me a little bit of honesty.
Could it really be that simple? Could she divulge the mechanisms of her soul, bare fruit from all her rotten branches? One truth, encapsulated within her favourite art of deception. Would the words ever leave her mouth?
But can she really say no?
There’s an arrow in an office, in her chest, that reminds her that the road of no return has long since been taken.
“…Okay.”
Drift gasps, then smiles softly.
“I’ll go first.”
It starts of slow, at first. Lies so absurd it makes them giggle. Truths light, statements that bleed into fables. Drift tells her about falling out of a tree and breaking her ankle the day before a winter’s banquet. AJ tells her about sneaking into a gallery opening in some city to the east to steal a glimpse at an artwork once thought lost to time.
“My father was furious. I thought he would never forgive me.” (He didn’t. Her mother made him apologise. She could tell he was lying).
“I couldn’t afford the tickets. So I thought, hey, no one will mind if I go look a bit at night, right?” (She got caught within ten minutes. She spent the next day in a cold, wet jail cell, content with the memory of an oil painted sky, deep indigos and plum).
Slowly yet surely, their confessions turn serious as the afternoon draws closer to the finish line. Drift tells her about how she slapped a suitor when he asked for her hand within the hour of their first meeting. How her mother just stared at her, with a look so mournful she was convinced she must have broken some sacred rule, ruined their kingdom forever.
(Deep down, they both know that she wasn’t far off the mark. Girls like them, with wants like them, break sacred rules inscribed into their bodies every day).
In return, AJ tells of her pain. Watches the way Drift pales, her eyes widening. Notices how her hand loosens, how she bites down hard at lips. AJ smiles, swallows salt. “It’s okay, Drift. I’m… Working through it.”
Drift sniffs. “That’s so unfair.”
“Me and fairness aren’t exactly close.”
Drift stills, stares at her. Moves to pull away.
AJ interlocks their fingers, pushes herself through the ripples of pain to move closer into Drift’s orbit, feel her body heat.
“You can still touch me. It’s okay.”
Drift grimaces as a small, strangled noise leaves her lips. AJ grins. “Freak.”
“Wha— I didn’t even say anything!”
AJ laughs, and immediately regrets it as her ribs groan in agony. She chokes back a gasp and lets it smother into a whimper. Drift’s face drops.
“I’m good, I’m good. Your turn.”
And so they continue, exchanging truths like playing cards, getting deeper into each other’s skins, into each other’s pasts. And AJ — she tries. She is honest. She follows the rules of the game.
(But she knows of other games too. Of barters and shoulder aches.
Some truths bear teeth too sharp to be approached).
And all too soon, the game is ending. AJ can taste its closing in the air, bittersweet. Her bones feel heavy. Sleep is singing siren songs in her ears.
“I have one more,” Drift murmurs. The room is now engulfed in marigold, each blossoming flower and dark shelf soaked in warm honey. It makes everything feel less real, like a memory far away in her mind, something captured in sepia, tea-stained and yearning. “It’s important. I need you to know this.”
AJ finds herself already missing this moment, Drift pressed close to her skin, whispering softly. They are a beautiful picture, two girls with tear-stained cheeks, breathless from sorrow and desire.
(And she knows too, that she will miss this moment for her lack of dedication. For the things she didn’t say, couldn’t say. Where this could have gone. The wounds that remain open. Knowing with a startling clarity how deep the poison runs in her veins, how long and dark her road has been.
How frightening and saddening a bed-time story she has become).
Drift steadies her breath. AJ finds herself following in suite. She can feel electricity racing through the floorboards, sharp and alert. Feel the way gold waits to turn to silver, sun dip into moonlight. Their moonlight.
And then she speaks.
“I am a baker’s daughter.”
One lie.
“I was born in Ashford.”
Two lies.
AJ holds her breath. One truth. One final truth, the last that will hang in the room, linger and caress. She’s been waiting for it. The final note, the closing of the symphony, the curtain call.
“I love you.”
What?
No, no. That can’t be it. The note rings out of tune. It echoes and shudders. AJ shudders.
“That’s cheating,” AJ retorts. Her stomach churns and hurts, caught in a sudden vice grip. A weight spreads across her chest, across her whole body. “That— You told three lies. You’re cheating.”
“I didn’t.”
“You— You broke the rules to your game. You’re lying. Stop it.”
Drift smiles sadly. “I’m not lying, AJ.”
“But you’re mad at me.” Her voice is small.
“I am,” Drift states. “I’m really mad at you.”
“But—“
“And I still love you.”
AJ is shaking, shaking so hard she feels like an earthquake. Some great calamity, some monster tearing down castles and holding porcelain princesses with terrible taste in women between their claws. Drift is shushing her, running her hands along her bare arms, her face contorted with concern. But AJ can’t stop. Can’t stop the horror erupting from within her, ripping at her skin with a sickening need to be seen, to be wanted, to be loved. She wants this, so badly.
She just doesn’t deserve it.
“You don’t love me,” She gasps, her eyes hot. “You don’t— You hate me. You hate me, Drift. Don’t do this to me. Please, Open book, please don’t do this to me.”
And she’s crying again, and the air smells like lavender, and her mouth tastes like blood, and she’s not there, she’s in the foyer, she’s in the crypt, she’s falling off the cliffside, she’s cold, she’s not whole, she’s hollow, shattering, a bag of half-dead bones decaying on Drift’s silken sheets, buried beneath the ash and the dirt and drowning, dragged deeper and deeper, she’s dying, she’s dead, she’s been dead all along, her fingers uncrossed and her auditorium decrepit.
“AJ.”
“You hate me, that’s the truth. That’s you being honest. I ruined what we had and now you will never love me. You hate me. You hate me—“
“I love you, AJ,” Drift repeats, her own eyes pooling with tears. AJ wants to look away, hide away from the glisten of Drift’s face, but if she turns her face she’ll be enveloped in the soft touch of familiar bedsheets that still smell like her, and that’s worse. So much worse. To have to face how every spot in this room that does not belong to her has become engraved in her body, her soul; she’s never known a place to call a creature comfort, and now it’s all over her, capturing her in its careful embrace. She’s unravelled. She’s trapped. She’s home. “That’s my one truth. I love you.”
“Stop it.”
“No.”
“Stop.”
“I’m not going to stop.”
AJ hiccups. Pain ripples through her body. Stubborn golden light continues to flood the room, washing everything in its sight with its undying determination to shine. AJ yearns for its departure, wants to creep into the chill of night, moments where this vulnerability feels earned, secrets shared under the discreet eyes of starlight to be left unspoken in the daybreak. She wants to leave this pretty memory. This soft world, its kindness, its warmth.
But it’s still light out. Darkness takes its sweet time. The world is gold and genial, and here, Drift loves her. Here, in the light.
“…You love me.”
Drift snickers, grinning wildly. “Yes, AJ. I do.”
“You… You love me, and you mean it.” Every word feels like a mountain climb.
“That’s the game, isn’t it?”
“…Oh.”
Drift loves her. Actually, genuinely, loves her. Drift loves her. Drift loves her. She loves this horrible monster, this earthquake, this emerald poison curled up in her arms. She knows AJ, knows the depth of her feeble existence, the shaking of her hands. She knows her fear, her horror, her power, she knows what she will do when backed into a corner, when faced with danger, when faced with happiness. Drift knows her ability to destroy, to bury. Sees her decay, her venom, her sickly cowardice.
Sees it all laid bare and loves her anyways.
(Why?)
“I haven’t told you everything,” AJ is panicking, leaping backwards, hiding back behind her cage bars.
(Why?)
“There are things about me you don’t know still. Things I should have told you and I didn’t.”
(Why, Drift, why?)
“Okay.”
“What— What do you mean okay?” AJ barks. “Don’t you understand? You tried to help me, you gave me an out, and I still didn’t take it! I’m still hiding stuff from you!”
(Get angry with me. Please, just be angry. Don’t give me this.
The words circle around her mind like a hungry murder.
Don’t love me. I want it. I don’t know what to do with it).
Drift scoffs. “You don’t think I realised that? I knew this entire time you wouldn’t just be completely open with me in one night, AJ, that’s not how you work. And it sucks. I want you to just talk to me. I wish you would just talk to me. But guess what, asshole? I knew that, I know that, and I. Still. Love you!”
AJ gaps at her. Her mind is full of static. Her chest feels tight.
“Now say it back.”
What?
“What?”
“Say it back. Say you love me.”
AJ blinks. Blinks again. Waits to see her vision shift, for this wild and unyielding dream to end. Waits to be in her own bed, in the infirmary, in hell.
All she sees is Drift. Drift, asking her to tell her that she loves her the same.
“This is also the important thing. You almost died. I could… I could have lost you. So please, let’s cut the bullshit. We don’t… We can’t go back to what we were before. Not until I know for certain you are ready to need me, to be honest with me. But… give me this. Let me hold onto it for a while. Tell me you love me, AJ.”
And AJ—
AJ—
She—
(Explodes. Breaks into a million pieces. Is remade in the span of a wing beat. No one has ever asked for this before. No one has ever wanted for this before. To want her love, eternal and unconditional. To hold it tight, hold it close to their chest. Press it against their heart, feel it eager against their flesh, memorise its scent, taste its earnestness. AJ has known countless pretty girls who have wanted her lust, her like, her want. Known a shallow sense of longing, tangled in sheets and sweat, nipping at raw skin and leaving imprints and claw marks. Always leaving, never staying. Always fickle, fleeting. Liabilities, chances, games in the night.
No one has ever looked at her and wanted something fragile and true. One truth, one bit of honesty.
Fuck.
Fuck).
The thing is — it’s really not hard to find the words. They’ve been anticipating the limelight for longer than AJ would really like it admit. For eons, nonetheless, they’ve shown sharp teeth similar to many of her torturous thoughts. Now, they seem to retreat, retract back their cruelty and ask for their freedom, for her freedom.
She holds the words in her teeth for a moment. Bites at them like the pit of a peach, lavishes in the way it fills her mouth with the taste of late afternoons bleeding into early evenings, trickles down her tongue and settles lightly in her core. She’ll keep it there, hold it like a promise, and wait until it grows into her own peach tree. One day, she’ll reach up and take its bounty in her grasp, and she will split it exactly in half.
This is me, Drift, it will say. The me I give to you in its entirety.
This pit, this remains; they won’t change everything yet. They won’t rectify what has been done, won’t erase what has been said, what has been left unsaid.
But they are sweet, and nice. A sepia filled bedroom. A memory. A dream.
AJ swallows and opens her mouth. The road is still long. The end is just a little more in sight.
“I love you, Drift.”