by Tara Wimble
Amy bites on her own amusement as Laurel jokingly says ‘good morning’ to Hope, who is listening in on Janice while she’s calling her. “At least have the decency to not be giving her googly eyes. I know it’s hard.”
“I can tell her you called but-” Laurel rounds out. “She probably won’t be back until later. By then I’d assume you’d be on your way back here too. That’s if you’re still coming to Amy’s game tonight.”
There’s a short curse and that tells her that Janice’s forgotten completely about Amy’s game. “I’ll forgive you, just get your butt back here once your woman-”
A protest.
Laurel jokes. “Okay, lover.”
An embarrassed protest.
Amy smirks. “Girlfriend?”
Janice settles.
“As soon as your girlfriend lets you get out of that bed.” Laurel spies the clock on the wall, just turning six am, and wonders just how long they’ve all been up for. “Okay. Have a safe trip back. Love you both. Yeah, I said both. Bye!”
Amy takes a drink of her orange juice before putting the glass down with a smile. “Well, that was exciting.”
Laurel shrugs. “Eh, it’s no playoff deciding game.”
But inside there’s no denying the thrill, even if she’s bad at hiding it while crunching through her toast.
***
THEIR bikes are leaning against Janice’s empty bed. She hadn’t questioned anything about bringing them inside when they’d come back from the long ride but waking up and spotting the unslept in sheets through the spokes of the tires, she wonders where Janice is. Or where Janice has been in her life for a long time now.
It seems odd to be thinking about Janice right now when Robin’s body is warm against the space behind her. When opening her eyes should have brought the fading stars from the night before back instead of the dusty specks of her bike. But then again, the most important moments can often come at the least likely times. Going to bed with Robin last night and waking up to thoughts that aren’t of what they did last night is throwing her a bit.
Mostly because thinking about Janice after sex isn’t something she thought she’d ever do.
It triggers a small giggle that she stifles so not to wake Robin up.
Back to Robin, she thinks. Her body doesn’t need to go back. It’s bathed in a warmth of being draped under blankets and a body for the long night.
She was ready for this. Moving their relationship forward. It seemed like such a natural progression. Such a far stretch away from having Robin kiss her only to run away. They’re here now. In the present and clinging onto each other.
It only makes her worry about what Robin’s answer to Lexie’s question will be. To drop out or not to?
Lexie knows what she wants Robin to say. Selfishly she wants her to stay with her and struggle through it just so they’re not separated but if that means Robin isn’t happy-
Hasn’t she been trying to see that happen? Happiness. Not just for her or for the both of them but Robin. It was about making her feel comfortable, about testing the waters those first few times, and becoming the friends that led them further. To here.
If college isn’t making Robin happy or as fulfilled as something else might, Lexie can’t try to convince her to stay, not just for her.
Maybe it won’t end the way she thinks it will. This fleeting moment might not be the only one. Waking up to the sun streaming through the blinds and Robin’s arm high on her- oh, that’s an interesting place to grab.
“Robin-”
“I’m feeling breakfast.” Robin mumbles out of her sleeping stupor.
“Actually.” Lexie taps Robin’s hand. “You’re feeling my boob.”
There’s a pause and a testing grab. Lexie laughs and Robin’s grinning face lifts from the pillow behind her. “That too.”
“Good morning.”
Robin’s eyes soften. Brushing her nose against Lexie’s cheek before kissing her. “That too.”
Lexie doesn’t look at the bike again or think about Janice until a long while later. When Robin isn’t rolling over her body with that lazy morning grin and postponing breakfast yet again.
***
JANICE feels her bones crack and stretch out as she pulls her arms over her head. Her back arches off the bed, not snapping back into bliss without a gratified moan.
Hope lays on her side, to her left, watching her with a stifled grin. Janice collapses onto the bed, the way she did many a time last night, and instantly turns back into the embrace she’d left from Hope to call Laurel.
“Everything good?”
“Good?” Janice is on a high. There’s no word for the height that she’s looking down from. “That’s an understatement.”
“That’s an ego.” Hope scratches Janice’s lower back.
“You didn’t mind.”
There’s no shifting on the couch and tip toeing the morning after into the bedroom. The morning has come to them. Wide windows and white sheets curling around them. They’d woken early together and the first words out of Hope’s mouth had been a blissful compliment.
Janice’s had been a blushing reply and a bashful pause.
Hope had only laughed when she’d said she needed to call Laurel, first thinking that their reunion had been that groundbreaking, before jokingly being offended when Janice said that wasn’t it.
She wasn’t far from it though. If Hope hadn’t been laying on the bed next to her, watching, as she called Laurel, she might have slipped a few more details to her best friend. But with Hope there giving her that knowing look- she couldn’t give the game away completely. Her body did that enough.
There was no point in getting dressed again yet, not with Hope tracing her fingers over Janice’s back and drawing her into kisses that are slowly making up for their time apart. It’s an indulging time. Sure, she has classes and responsibilities in the next few days that will wear on the vividness of this memory.
She just doesn’t care right now.
She’s just happy to be here.
Hope doesn’t say it with words, but Janice feels it. Distance drove them in the same direction. Finally back to each other.
They might not say how happy they are to be back here where it all really began but words do come. Reassuring and open once again.
“You never had to worry about me, you know?” Janice murmurs. “I’m not saying that to make you feel bad or anything.”
Hope brushes her thumb over Janice’s collar bone. “I know.”
“It’s just, I meant what I said to you the last time we were here. That you didn’t have to feel like you were-” Janice grins just a bit. “-corrupting me or anything.”
Hope eases up and laughs. Morning hits her good side. Bringing everything to wonderful color once more. “Oh really?”
“I’ve only ever been with two other girls.” Janice’s statement is so out of the blue that Hope asks her to repeat it. “Before you.”
“Oh.” She’s not sure if Janice wants her to share the same information or if this is some sort of moment they’re having. She’s buzzing a little too much on the high of last night and the emotions that are still running through her. Janice is here, lying in her arms after a night of making up, starting to open up to her again.
“No guys.” Janice murmurs against her chest. “I figured it out pretty young.”
Young once again. Hope has mostly gotten over what they talked about but every now and then Hope will be hit with Janice’s youth and an itch ripples through her. She feels old in comparison and the more Janice talks, so innocently, about the girls she’s been with, the more Hope’s head feels heavier on the pillow. She’s seen hundreds more mornings like this, with more faces than Janice can count, and thinking about it now feels wrong for the first time.
It doesn’t matter anymore. She’s here.
Janice’s eyes flutter. “It’s a shame I couldn’t have a few other things figured out like that.”
“You don’t have to have
everything figured out.” Hope smoothes back the hair from her forehead. “It just means that the mistakes you make feel ten times worse. Leave a little give for yourself. Fall a few times before you tell everyone you can fly.”
Janice smiles. “Speaking from experience?”
“A short marriage. Men and women before that.” Hope speaks honestly. She can only remember a few names, like Lotta, the rest seem so unimportant right now. But again, she doesn’t want to remind herself of the gap between them anymore than she wants to leave this bed. “A lot of falling. A lot of picking myself back up.”
Janice worms her hand over her body and touches the scar on her shoulder. Hope repeats herself. “A lot of picking myself back up.”
“You think I should pick myself back up then?”
“I think you should let it all go.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“I think, if you sit up and realize where we are right now-” Hope starts to smirk. “-and how you got here and what we did last night-”
Janice covers her face laughing.
“That you’ll realize you’re better at it than you think.”
Janice’s hand stays over her face.
“This is about your friend, isn’t it?”
Janice nods.
“What happened?”
“Honestly?” Janice’s sigh drifts towards the ceiling. “I don’t really know anymore.”
There’s a starting point, Hope knows, but Janice seems to have lost track of it somewhere along the way. She listens to her voice her thoughts and her timeline, piecing it all together as it comes.
“It was because she confronted you.” Janice mutters. “Because she took away my voice and my chance after I’d just brokered something with you. It was like she shattered it.”
Janice turns on the pillow to face her again. “And she almost punched you.”
Hope scoffs. “Please. She would have broken her nose on the hood of the car.”
Janice’s eyes widen. “You would have arrested her?”
“No. Vianne would have.” Hope’s smile dies on her face.
There’s a shift in her mind and with Janice’s body. Hope can imagine Vianne getting in the middle of that confrontation, like she almost had, and taking Lexie down on her behalf. Now she’s-
Janice surprises her and crawls over her body, between her legs, actually straddling her.
It’s a position that makes her nerves catch in her throat. That vulnerability, the flash back to the last time Janice had tried this comes at her full force but she takes her own advice.
Let’s it go.
Janice isn’t the girl that she thought she was. They’re more than they were and now she can have this. She can do this.
Janice leans down and presses a kiss to her lips. “Sorry.”
Mentioning Vianne only reminds her that this advice is sound. Hope pushes her palms over Janice’s thighs.
“If you’re worried that one mistake is going to define you then you obviously haven’t made enough of them.” She rolls onto her side and Janice falls onto her back. With Hope staring at her, she shies away. “I find that apologizing usually works well. I’m still seeing how well.”
Janice bites her lip not believing her.
“If you think that she’s not going to listen to you, just remember that she was the one who ran at me.” Hope reminds her. “If she didn’t care then she wouldn’t have risked me shoving her in the back of my squad car.”
If Janice has taken anything from her- other than her affection- it’s that mistakes can be forgotten and life can move on for the better. It just means being stronger than the thing that’s getting you down.
“I can come with you if you want.”
“No.” Janice shakes her head. “You’re right. Letting it all go. Just gotta-”
“Figure it out?” Hope helps.
“That.” Janice closes her eyes. “Just gotta figure out how to do it all.”
Hope can see the weight of it flicker over her face as she lies there. “Don’t worry about it just yet.” Not here, not now, not with her. The time will come soon enough but their morning here is slowly fading into the goodbye in the afternoon.
And Hope isn’t done with having her here, close to her, just yet.
She presses her hips down until Janice’s eyes open.
Laurel and Lexie can wait.
The morning is theirs.
Chapter 16
LAUREL is leaning against the wall to their block with a grin on her face. It’s only just hitting the afternoon and so her smirk is entirely justified when she spots Janice, spotting her, clambering out of Hope’s car.
“Laurel?” Hope asks. She tosses her keys into her pocket briefly.
Janice nods. “Amy’s game is later so-”
It feels too soon for them to be parting again. The morning stretched out as far as it could but she’s standing, facing Hope, now thinking it wasn’t long enough. “When will I next see you?”
Nothing is sure now. This is as far as Janice imagined. “I might go for a run soon. I’ll let you know.”
“I’d like that.”
Getting back to where they started seems like the best way to move forward. That, and just spending time together.
Under watch, Hope hugs her. It knocks Janice’s cocky grin right off her face and leaves her feeling alright again. Able to prepare herself for the rest of the day. What she’s walking into, more specifically.
“I’ll text you later.” Janice promises.
“I might be at the hospital.” Hope answers. Her lips press against Janice’s forehead. “Visiting Vianne.”
“Send her my-” Janice stumbles over the word love because it’s a word she wants to press into Hope’s palms and not into Vianne’s thoughts. “-best.”
Hope’s laugh breezes through Janice’s hair. “Sure. I’ll send your ‘best’.”
Then her arms are retreating. Hands to keys instead of waists and Hope is dipping back into the car and starting the engine. Janice swoons.
Swooning happens and it’s all kinds of embarrassing because she feels exactly like a schoolgirl with a crush and it feels right. It actually feels fucking right and untainted in anything that has come before this. Even if she can hear Laurel making kissy noises in the background.
“You’re such a pain!”
Laurel rolls her eyes. “Please, you totally missed curfew.”
Janice pushes her way into the building. “I don’t have a curfew.”
“Uh, to me you do. I don’t remember allowing this overnight tryst with Hottie McJustice.”
Janice groans, laughing a little, into her hands as Laurel reminds her just how much she was into Hope at the beginning. Like the energizer bunny reading a book of bad chat up lines.
“Hey! It worked!” She protests. Her feet are guiding her. Her head is in the clouds.
They’re walking towards the next task, the next challenge of ‘letting go’ that she’s dreading, but she’s desperately trying to hold onto this love drunk shot.
“So, details?”
Laurel stalls them going up the stairs and Janice manages to recount her entire day, skimming the details of the night to Laurel’s amusement (“You called me while you were in bed with her. The mystery is gone.”), before they even get to their hall.
“And now?”
Janice’s smile doesn’t dip. “Now, everything. Anything.”
Laurel takes a more cautious route. “I just mean, you didn’t really define anything before and that’s how things fell apart.”
“I’m not taking it for granted this time.” Janice says. “This time hasn’t even started yet, I’m just- I’m happy and I know what we’ve got to work through but we’re starting afresh.”
Laurel turns away from the hard questioning. “It sounds like you got through a lot last night.”
“Yeah, we talked for a while.”
“Oh I meant after all the talking.”
There’s noth
ing in the way of the laughter now. It’s light and loud. Laurel steers them down the hall and the light starts to die. It’s not disappearing entirely but it’s dimming. The closer they get to her room, the more Janice feels a dread in her step.
Laurel notices it written over her face. They pass the kitchen and the other rooms without waiting and Janice takes a deep breath before facing up to her own dorm room.
“Y’know, after all this is over we’ll finally be able to have a look at that apartment you’ve got sorted.”
It takes the wind out of her. “Yeah, you’re not gonna believe it.” Her heart is still on the bottom floor.
Let go. Let go. She chants to herself.
Let go and get on with the rest of it all. Let go for Amy’s game, for Hope, for the apartment, for her friends.
Janice wants to shake everything off.
“I think Robin is in there as well. You guys can use my room if you want to get away and talk. I’ll just clear out.” Laurel states. She’s more concerned than she’s letting on, giving Janice a quick side hug, before knocking on the door herself. It’s not like she has a key or anything.
Footsteps. Quickly.
Janice clenches and unclenches her fists. She’s got an apology on the tip of her tongue. The words she has to say. Letting go and all that jazz.
Lexie opens the door and Janice falters at the sight of her face.
“Hi.”
***
THIS was always going to be awkward. They haven’t spoken more than three words to each other for over a month and it still stings on both sides.
But having Robin refusing to leave the room somehow makes it better.
Not that she’s helping at all.
“Au revoir yo.” Robin has her hands clamped over her ears as she mutters to the posters on the wall. Lexie is staring at her back while Janice chooses whether or not to sit on Lexie’s bed or her roommate’s with Robin.
Lexie’s bike is propped against the wall by the door. Robin’s is strewn on the floor and Janice has to step around it to make it to her own bed.
“What is she doing?” Janice breaks the silence and Lexie’s stare with the question. There’s hurt in Lexie’s eyes that she put there and there’s blame in Janice’s that she knows they both need to get rid of. Time can only heal so much. She’s done Lexie wrong. Lexie has her own regrets.