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therealslimshakespeare · 8 months ago

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Dear John || Something Borrowed

Masters of the Air fanfiction

Summary: Upon the sudden stop of all their correspondence, Miss Lana Tierney finds herself bereft of her pen pal John Egan’s support -not however, without him first having made a heavy declaration and entrusted her with a precious bit of himself. Battling Tinsel Town’s awful labyrinth of censors, agents, and an ever disloyal mother, Lana seeks to find John, and having once found him, to remind him of his promise to try. Meanwhile in Stalag Luft III, Major Gale Cleven may loiter at his incriminating radio longer than strictly necessary in hopes of hearing a voice that would bring his best friend a shred of hope.

My many thanks to: Christi and Ashley for endless amounts of encouragement and advice and enrichment of the plot, y’all are invaluable darlings and precious friends. To Bri who has been the brains and requests behind the concept and the beating heart behind giving Bucky a love of a lifetime

Warnings: 18+ disturbing content. Not so much war focused but rather Hollywood in the 40’s which can be horribly gruesome itself. We are happily ripping off Lana Turner’s real story for much of this, and so in this chapter you will find mentions of certain harrowing abuses she endured. Such as: brief references to a forced, studio-required abortion, bugging of a woman’s room, arranged engagements, drugging, hinted sexual exploitation, willing current sexual favors in return for a role, Bucky going a little nuts as a POW, Lana’s mother being the worst, John Huston making a cameo that will probably make you wanna punch the guy. It’s ok, the real fella deserved it. Go ahead. Again, nothing explicit, didn’t wanna get all yucky but these themes are prevalent in here in passing.

Word count: a whopping 8k

Character name reminder: Julie Jean Turner goes by the Hollywood alias of “Lana Tierney”

Lana lay abed and stewed. She was past grief, or perhaps it was easier explained that Grief and her sisters, Denial and Betrayal, were more of Julie Jean Turner’s privilege. Miss Lana Tierney, academy hopeful and box office gold, had little left but rage and the moist silk of her pillow pressed to her burning cheek.

“What an awful few days it’s been.” she’d allowed herself to say a few weeks back.

The Julie Jean of that week didn’t know the meaning of the word.

Life was bad enough then, back when he called, but his voice cured everything from her terrible week. Vincent and the engagement and the studios, all of it. But then came a letter, one written awfully like a goodbye, and another one after it but all of them were little provisions for if he were to go down.

Scribbled hours before going up.

“I love you, I know it’s a lot to spring on a gal who’s just doing her bit and keeping me happy but I do. It’s an awful type of love, Julie, very tight fisted and I think I only love you because you love me so well in your way. I don’t think that’s the sort of love to do anybody any good, but I’d regret not saying it, beginners can’t be haughty. Here I wanted to stick my toe in and you gobbled the whole leg, and I love you. I love you for it. I love you.”

She’d rubbed over his signature, not a bit of cursive in that scrawled -John- a million times.

And then, just like that, just like what had happened to her friends and a million women across the world- his letters simply stopped. Julie Jean learned elsewhere he’d been shot down for weeks by the time she’d gotten the last one. It was hard to have finally heard his voice and known of his purpose, but now? -a dead silence that had a voice and face and love attached to it. It was agony of a sort she’d never known and was made worse by the loneliness in her secrecy of not being able to mourn it aloud.

She moaned into the mess of her pillowcase and ignored Bertha's fifth knock of the afternoon. Who’d recognize the glamorous Miss Tierney now? Pitiful and tear streaked and pale from blood loss. She still lay on a chucks pad the studio nurse had rolled her onto, a feeble trickle still seeping between her legs. Curled on her side with eyes glinting at the afternoon sun, she seethed at one more thing taken from her.

Lana could hardly stand it. But she had to try. She’d made John promise he would. They’d promised each other, and somehow she hadn’t any doubts that wherever he was, he was trying.

“Miss Tierney?” That was Herbert’s voice and Jean rolled her eyes at the predictability of this household. After not answering Delores they sent in Bertha and upon not answering Bertha here was Herbert and if she didn’t answer him, her mother might manage to rouse herself and drive over.

“Come in Herb, if you must.” she groaned, hand outstretched and patting blindly for a cigarette on her nightstand.

Her old driver came in with an unusually light step, it bespoke a sympathy for her plight that Jean would have preferred a thousand times never to read on his usually persnickety face. “How are you holding up after -“ he stood awkwardly at the foot of her bed as Jean rummaged and when she sat back with cigarette and holder in hand, she found him looking down at her with such concern she nearly threw the lamp at him. “Tonsillitis, huh?” he hummed sympathetically.

“Oh yes, nasty bout.” she lied merrily, the ache in her violated womb protested her move to sit up. “They had to take them clean out.” it was the only printable explanation for her ailment.

“Yeah.” Herb had been a renowned stuntman before he’d been demoted to driver, and before stuntman he’d been a soldier in the trenches and before that he’d been a clerk. If anyone knew about coat hangers and poor girls held down to be kept forever virginal and ever in use, Herb knew. Herb had warned her even, told her what a sick racket they ran here in Tinsel Town. Much good it did her, she was in too deep before she knew she had so much as stuck her toe in.

Rather like Bucky in love, apparently, and that thought made her madly blink away a stupid rush of tears.

“What’s that?” she pointed at the parcel she just now noticed was tucked under his arm.

“Oh, this? Chocolates. Here, my lighter miss?” Whatever was under Herbert’s arm wasn’t shaped like any chocolates she knew and Jean was about to give him a talking to for being insipid when her mood was so poor but then she saw him press a warning finger to his lips. He walked around the side of her bed and indeed pulled out a lighter, metal and rude and no doubt a relic of the first war, and flicked it for her to light up. Bending down he smelled of tobacco himself when he took the unprecedented liberty of whispering in her ear: “They bugged the room during your operation, Miss. Must be careful. Especially if you want to keep your gift.”

He pulled away and looked down at her sorrowfully before quietly laying the dirty brown package atop her pristine sheets. Mother had them changed after the bloodbath of the…operation. They were spotless before and now they were sooty. That pleased her.

Jean forgot to look away from him. She was startled and upset by the news but she didn’t doubt it. They’d probably bugged the phone ages ago, god knows they’d stop at next to nothing and she did so want to keep something for herself. If she couldn’t have a baby, her baby, then she’d keep a parcel, damn them all. Then a cold feeling of dread filled her and she thought to grab at her books and look for the hidden letters.

Gone. Mother. It must’ve been mother, it was her sort of thing to have rifled through Lana’s things while she was being operated on and found them and took them and-

The rage spurred her to look down at what Herb brought her, cigarette forgotten between her quivering lips. She expected it to be from him, a little pep up. Perhaps a doll or a stuffed animal to cheer her. But no, this parcel in its plain brown wrapping had come from afar, smudged and delayed a million times judging by its redirected stamps -and she’d know that writing from anywhere.

Her Johnny.

Julie Jean’s little gasp let slip the cigarette from her mouth but not before Herb caught it from singeing the sheets. He was quicker than anyone gave the old man credit for, banged up head or not. “Thought that might cheer you.” he grinned in that begrudging way of his, as if he were cross at the joy made manifest on his face.

“I’m scared.” she admitted in a whisper, hands hovering over the brown twine strings. Whatever was inside was squishy and giving. And whatever it was, John had sent it before he’d been shot down. But still, somehow it felt like a gift from him on this, the worst day of her life. Like he was sending some comfort even from hell on earth and without a clue of her own dispair. Herb seemed to read it the same way, and that’s how Jean knew she wasn’t being a delusional, hysterical wreck, if that crusty old sod knew its significance in coming today, then it was plain as the irregular nose on his face.

“Scared of chocolate?” His tease covered a strong reminder for her to watch her words.

“Mm, yes, what if there’s raspberry filled ones?” she whispered back. “You know how I can’t abide raspberries.”

“Guess you’ll just have to be brave and see.” he nudged her.

Nodding her head solemnly, Jean tugged apart the twine that had kept John Egan’s package together for an entire transcontinental delivery. It fell away with a crinkling sound and she found folded upon it, without a bit of fuss or wrapping, the oddest piece of cloth. Almost a patchwork of pale leather and a zipper and -Jean’s throat closed as her hand descended and felt along the soft fluff of a sheepskin collar.

He didn’t. He didn’t send her his jacket? Surely —

Herb made a noncommittal noise beside her which sounded awfully like some touched sorta gasp at the sight, but as it was Herb and he had a tobacco wad where he should have had a heart, so he must’ve been coming down with the same cold that landed Lana in tonsil surgery.

Hands shaky and heart hammering, Jean reached in and pulled the garment out, a tiny little note fluttered out. Someone else’s penmanship. “To the care of Jean Turner, until it can be retrieved by Major Egan.”

“Oh god.” she felt like sobbing before pressing her face into the sweat fumed plushness of it. “Johnny. Johnny. Johnny.” she kept his name buried in his jacket, secret like his gift and his love and his comfort and her desires. Eyes and mouth muffled into the darkness of something that was his. She felt Herb’s gentle hand pat on her head and the following click of the latch as he went out.

“Mister Vincent called to say there’s dinner and photographs scheduled for tonight, Miss Tierney.” he informed her levelly before he left and her ears were not so buried in Air Force Shearling she couldn’t hear of her doom. “There’s been some speculations -they want to smooth it over. Bertha was trying to pass it on.”

Bertha wanted to wipe off whatever remaining blood was on her and primp all signs of coercion off her devastated face, that’s what Bertha was here for. Jean vaguely wondered if her mother’s clenching hand print still lingered on her cheeks, she rubbed John’s jacket against the soreness of her mouth, muffling her sobs the way her mother’s hand had stifled her screams of pain only hours ago.

Back to work, asap, it would seem. -Bleed down your nylons dear, it’ll be alright, so long as they see a happy face and a lucky new couple.

Vincent. She wasn’t sure how she’d face him, the weekend getaway and his little “test drive” of her had been bad enough, the fact he hadn’t the brains to prevent it from having consequences or the spine to stand up for the life of the child he made- oh, she wondered how she’d manage to down her asparagus in the face of it all. Acting, she presumed, a true talent that had suddenly become a personality since -since? -she wasn’t sure when.

Beside her for months now, stacked beneath the pile of new Runyon books she’d taken out of the library, had been a pile of letters that didn’t have a bit of acting in them. Raw and true and terrible and wanton, each of John Egan’s thoughts tumbled off their confining pages and into her heart in mirrored response to her own. Now mother had them.

Jean wondered where all her own letters to him were, now that he was gone and someone else was in his bunk.

Funny to think of that, the most honest account of herself was most likely moldering in the bottom of some MIA airman’s footlocker.

It was all a bit self indulgent, she admitted even as she stripped out of her bloody gown and down to her bare skin, but she had lost plenty and she needed him: so she slipped him on, soft wool caressing her and stopping the shivers of shock that had wracked her all morning. It smelled so manly and sweaty and terribly real she about swooned at the sensation of having a bit of him next to her. Now she’d seen him -all those darling candid photos in repayment for hers- and she’d heard him -oh that awful, wonderful telephone call right before he disappeared- and now she was smelling him.

Jean would have to bathe and take a handful of aspirin and cinch in her girdle and kiss her fiancée tonight, but for a brief hour she layed in bed naked as a baby with her gift wrapped around her like swaddling clothes.

Vincent came later with the car, one of his father’s for certain, and eyed her choice of outerwear with a sour mouth. Fleece and chiffon was an odd mix but Lana always had been a trendsetter and it was early November, even if it was Los Angeles. Of course, for her the jacket was John, and so she wore him like armor -and if she was wearing it, they couldn’t take it without her knowing.

“I’m cold.” she answered Vin’s unspoken question sharply on the ride over, “I’ve just had tonsil surgery, you may recall?”

“It stinks.” he huffed back, his nose presumptuously nuzzling under her curls and very near the sweat soaked fleece, “Smells like a barnyard.”

What it smelled like was a red blooded American man’s honest days work killing Nazis. But Vincent and his pale hands and arranged medical exemptions weren’t likely to know what that smelled like, so Lana felt compelled to give him a pass. “It’s for the war effort,” she sighed, “we must all make sacrifices. Mr. Warner told me it would be grand press to wear it.”

She’d never spoken to Mr. Warner about much else but weather and her tits, but growing ever more desperate as these days went on, Lana thought perhaps she’d pay him a visit.

“Great press?” Vincent seethed, charmingly one track focused, “The press should be about our engagement! Not the war!”

“Be a realest, dahling,” she soothed, “nothing, not even the great scion of a prestigious family such as yours is half as fascinating right now as ball bearings and top turret production in Greenfield. If we want them to print about our engagement, it’s got to have something to do with the general war, see?“

“Ah, ah I see.” Vincent swallowed her lie well enough, still perturbed at the fracturing of his beloved media attention but consoled that Lana was not aspiring to make him a fool.

Oh how foolish that was of him, Lana hummed to herself as they pulled up to the restaurant, perhaps not tonight or in a week's time. No, for now she was down and out and no doubt about it, but eventually, she’d scramble on top, she had to or she’d be offed eventually by it all. She knew that now, it was plain with each aching step on wobbly legs and each smile of her crimped, anemic face, Vincent’s pliable hand more vice than support on her elbow as she stepped out under Chasens’ green awning.

There was conversation and photographs all through dinner, her agent and a Warner Brothers executive kindly gracing the table with heavy, stilted and very implied conversation. Lana might’ve breathed better in her booth had they held an actual gun to her head and told her to finish her parsnips that way. They were very happy she had recovered from the tonsillitis so well, they were very eager to see her on set bright and early tomorrow, they were very eager that any doubt about how in love she was with the respectable Vincent be ameliorated -a very big word to say with a mouthful of steak- and very hopeful that Lana wouldn’t get any ideas about a repeat of the War Bond tour. Yes the last one had been very effective and the government was pleased, but too much exposure to common crowds had a tendency to lessen the goddess effect, she must be let out to the pubic sparingly, and they in turn must not feel entitled to her in any way.

Such as…reaching out through the post, for example, much less expecting to be answered with anything less standardized than what Bertha might write twenty times over in her name in an afternoon.

“I just want to do my part.” Lana demurred.

“Oh honey, you’ve done your part, and now you’ve got a new part. Make a wish.” And there before her was brought out a cake slice with much fanfare, icing making a pretty little drizzle of words -“speedy recovery Lana, love from everyone at Warner Brothers Studio.”

She’d seen actresses carried out plastered to the four winds on sedative from slices just like this one, chivalrously poured into a waiting backseat of a producer or studio head, taken back to be put to bed. God knows what else happened in those beds. Her nausea returned fourfold and it wasn’t acting when she gasped a need to go to the powder room.

Instead she dashed to the phone, the one in the cubby near the toilets, trying resolutely to ignore the spying eyes of waiters and curious waves of famous guests passing by.

“Pick up, Herb, pick up.” she begged, listening to it ring and ring, then suddenly felt a horrid fear at the realization she’d left the jacket slung over her chair at the booth, with Vincent. “Herb please, please.” she moaned, stomping one well shod foot against the marble floor.

“Hallo?”

“Herb, oh Herb!” Lana gushed urgently on hearing him pick up, “You must come pick me up, they’re onto me with the letters and they’ve brought out cake and- bring a car, Vincent brought his father’s-“

“-Thank yeeew, Herbert, that will be all.” Mother’s affected transatlantic sent shivers down Lana’s spine right as she felt the cold clasp of her rings around her wrist, receiver wrenched effectively from her nerveless hand, “This is a family matter, your services are not required.”

“Mommy dearest.” Lana felt her lips trembling in a odd way that fought against the creeping numbness, “What a pleasant surprise.”

“Would that I could say the same, Lana.” Mother reproved, “To abandon your fiancé without thought? And to find you calling on Herbert, like this were some otiresome fundraiser from which you may carelessly abscond -really. Your behavior is nothing but deplorable lately, I hardly know you. The cost, Lana, think of the cost of it all, this recklessness.”

“Who told you?”

“That you weren’t appreciative of the cake?” Mother smiled shyly, “Alfonso.”

The owner, of course, when he couldn’t get a hand up Lana herself he had become quite partial to mother, loyal to an opulent degree. She suspected that cake more than ever, the phone, too. God there was no getting out of this town, this place, this life.

“Alfonso says you’re distracted,” mother went on, “pale and sniffing some jacket? What has gotten into you?”

“Vincent.” Lana joked miserably and if half of Hollywood wasn’t sat so near, she’s rather sure her mother might’ve struck her.

“You’re going to go back out there, and you’re going to smile for the pictures, and you’re going to like it.” Mother laid out the case, the plan and the rest of her life, “And when we go home you’ll be getting a piece of my mind.”

“Oh really mother,” Lana sighed heavily, “I couldn’t take the last piece.”

The pinch on her arm was familiar of when Lana was a child and refused to sing in yet another talent show - the fifth that weekend. “Your fault for falling ill, now we must make up for lost time.” they were gliding back to the table arm in arm with Lana’s pale skin pinched between mother’s manicure, “Smile, darling, smile and wave.” as they wove between one starry guest and another.

Mother’s gait stalled for one fraction of a moment upon coming up to the table and seeing the bizarre article of clothing hanging over Lana’s chair. “Works better than a mink.” Lana proclaimed quite loudly, giddy enough to attract most male attention around who craned their necks to watch her shimmy it on for a try-on, much to Mother’s feigned amusement. She shimmied in the fleece, chiffon doing little to hide the jiggle of her derrière beneath the jacket’s hem and the flash of a bulb cracked significantly amongst the dinner chatter.

“It’s much too large for you -the sleeves, the shoulders-“

“That’s because it’s a genuine article mother!” Lana preened, satisfied to have caught the eye of the one she wanted as he sat in his booth.

Powerful and dark and lecherous, The Jack Huston stared at her unabashedly over the haze of his cigarette, his own date forgotten, taking in the way the man’s coat dwarfed her little body in a pantomime of covering her physically, masculine leather and zipper in stark contrast to baby soft skin swelling out of her neckline. She knew that look well, one of a man sizing her up for how she’d look beneath him.

Lana smirked at him significantly, squeezing the material around her dreamily and created a significantly more substantial amount of decollage for him to view upon doing so. “Lana, sit down for god’s sake.” Mother was hissing and Lana saw Huston laugh at it, she rolled her eyes and dramatically shrugged, seating herself as asked but refusing to break eye contact with him until he raised his glass in a toast to her brazenness.

“Lana, photographers! Come now! Chin up, smile, smile darling.”

There were so many flashbulbs here it was obnoxious to not only Lana’s throbbing eyes but the other patrons, still a hard launch of a stilted, lab grown relationship was hardly an oddity in Hollywood or its most favored eating spots, and so it was endured.

“Doll, open up,” Vincent cajoled in Lana’s ear, hand kneading her waist and nose pressed to her hair, “practice for the wedding.”

It looked quite humorous if a little uncouth in the papers next day, Lana’s gasping and amused indulgence of her green boy fiancé as he playfully stuffed her mouth with cake in that pitiful tradition of marital provocation.

“Look at my dearest daughter, tonsil surgery yesterday and already, so eager, can’t be kept from dinner with her darling fiancé!”

The world grew fuzzy as Lana did her best to keep the wad of cake in her gums until she could spit the most of it out. “Tell your studio i want compensation for having to share press with the war effort.” Vin was complaining to the executive and Lana felt her world swim, only one single, dire hope remaining -Herb.

She gripped the edges of the jacket tighter and tried to focus. Mother was being called away, taking her leave with a photographed kiss to Lana’s clammy temple -some business with Aunt Lu and that promised check for her swimming pool. Lana had put in a lot of swimming pools for a lot of relatives, she was beginning to lose track between the pools and the houses and the cars and the wardrobes and always -“it’s family, Lana, they depend on you. Chin up, smile, smile darling, smile for the cameras, there’s my golden girl, box office magic.”

“Lana it’s very important you understand the role of an engaged woman-“ the executive was very insistent and Lana was very tired and very fuzzy feeling, which apparently Vincent could sense as his hands began to grow courageous in his petting, “-it’s a fine balance between respectability and attainability. The studio has worked so hard to give you this life, made enormous sacrifices so you could have a chance at this career, created an expertly crafted persona for you -if you were to jeopardize it all in any way, by inviting speculation about yourself or your lackluster roots-“

Lana was about ready to stand up and scream “I’m Julie Jean Turner from Broken Arrow Oklahoma!” and watch the deflated disinterest cover her audience like snow, it would ruin the effect -she wanted them to care that her life was a lie, but as soon as she told the truth, they’d lose all interest either way. Fame was funny like that.

“Mr Vincent,” Alfonso was most solicitous as well as perispring when he hurried over to her fiancé’s side, “there’s been an incident, your car, sir! The windows, they are smashed! And there appear to be eggs?”

Lana wasn’t sure she successfully suppressed the bubbling little laugh that flitted out of her leaden chest at Vincent’s deathly white pallor. There were two of him in her fractured, drug impaired vision and he acted like looney twins, scrambling up from the table in a flurry of hands and pomade, tux tails flapping like a frightened bird. “It’s my father’s car you idiot! Where was the doorman? Where?”

“Ooooh daddy’s gonna be mad.” Lana cooed to herself, amused at how this failure of a son couldn’t land a deal or a car or his own, only a troublesome actress who was in dire love with a man she’d never met.

Dear Herb, the eggs were such a nice touch.

The executive was waving off the cameras, this part of the night hardly suitable to be recorded. “Stewart, phone call for you.” A commanding, sonorous voice beside her sent goose flesh popping along Lana’s arms beneath the jacket, Jack Huston and his cologne suddenly pervading the place like an ominous deity casting its shadow over the now almost empty table.

“Mr. Huston.” Lana simpered sweetly when Stewart had left and it was just them alone with his hand on the back of her chair, thumbing at the lamb skin. There were two of Huston too, in her vision, and Lana gulped in trepidation of having to please both.

“Miss Tierney,” he replied, grinning a little too wide for her to focus, “you know what you look like you need?”

“What’s that, Mr. Huston?”

“Call me Jack.”

“What’s that Jack?” she tittered, happily courting ruin.

“A nightcap.” Jack declared and was extending a large palm for her before she could second guess. It was the choice of a lion over a wolf here in Hollywood, and Lana had such plans for Mr. Huston. But, like most things, Lana’s plans must wait until Mr. Huston’s plans for her had been satisfactorily met.

Of all the backseats to be poured into in Hollywood, Huston’s was rather plush and smelled nice and had a clinking little bar in the console, well stocked and vintage. Better yet, the car wasn’t his father’s, it was his. As was his mind and his time and his appetite. Lana could only dream of having that sort of brash freedom, for now she must attach herself to those who did if she so much as wanted a taste.

“So what’s with the jacket?” Mr. Huston had the liberty to be casual on a ride back to his house with a much desired starlet, after all, he had a slam dunk assurance she wasn’t going to say no on arrival.

“It belongs to a man who loves me.” she slurred earnestly.

“Pilot?”

“Yes. He writes the sweetest, filthiest things.”

“To you?”

“Only to me.” she whispered with drunken vehemence.

“I bet he does.” Huston laughed.

Mr. Huston enjoyed ribbons: tying them around her, to be specific but of all the novel and varied ways to be satisfactory it wasn’t so bad, and when he lay next to her afterwards as the drug began to take her fully under, Lana was pleased by the heavy arm around her waist. He didn't care about the tonsillitis. Bucky’s jacket hung carefully over the armchair in her line of sight, Jack had been nice about that, too.

Yes she could make some use of Huston and his ribbons and his new army uniform and his government contracts.

————————————————-

“I was insensible.” Lana maintained the following day at a meeting with Mother and Stewart and a slew of concerned agents and executives who were pleased enough by the engaged cake smashing photographs, less so by the discreet vandalizing of their blonde product by John Huston. “I don’t know what you put in that cake but it did the trick and I was as aghast as you upon waking up where I woke up.”

“And the jacket?” Mother had her priorities straight, troublesome memorabilia first, dear daughter’s virtue second.

“Shoot, I think Huston has it.” Lana whimpered, “I was in such a state, such a rush to leave-“

“Well that was a very unfortunate oversight, Lana.”

“I know.”

“He could use it against us.” Mother fretted.

“He’d make a fool of himself if he did,” Stewart shined best when full of his self-bloated importance and meetings such as these were essential fuel for that importance, “it would look like he took a pilot to bed.”

“Stewart, she’s all over the nation’s morning paper’s wearing the horrid thing!” Mother snapped and while she herself was admittedly awful most times, Lana never doubted she was shrewd, far more than Stewart and all the men in the room she jockeyed for lead with. “In fact Lana, this has really brought to a head a growing issue. Your restlessness, your ingratitude, it’s become insufferable and now it jeparadizes everything. I am speaking of the coat but also of the letters. Oh yes, I know all about those.”

A wise performance required Lana to play the frightened and shocked little miscreant and so she did, wide doe eyes looking beseechingly penitent and horrified in the face of having been caught doing a single independent thing. “Oh mother-“

“They are bad enough with their filth and their familiarity,” mother cut her off, “but to have written to him in your old name! Lana, the carelessness! It’s a mercy he’s dead, think of the presumptuous attitude he would have adopted had he returned. Unthinkable!”

“Dead?” Lana felt her throat close up, wishing desperately to be back in his jacket again, regretting most harshly her high-priced scheming of last night. All of it had been for him, and he was dead.

“Quite dead.” Mother was irritated by her crestfallen state but not so much as to prevent her crowing over little Lana’s misstep. “And now I am burdened with the necessity of tracking down his effects, getting your side of the correspondence back, think of the unpleasantness of contacting his family! Conversations with dead servicemen's families are always so tedious. You do recall what a bore it was for me to have to carry-on with them on your tour. And all of this to get back your filthy, perverse break of discretion.”

“Were they to get out they’d ruin your reputation.” Stewart put in the obvious, “They’d reveal your plain and common upbringing, your drab name and worse, you would be known to be a horny, hungry young woman.”

Lana stared at him across from his desk, that adrift feeling of aloneness taking over her, such as she’d only felt a few times in her life, like when her mother left her on her first studio couch for an audition, despite her pleas to stay. “Yes,” she agreed faintly, “it would be a terrible thing for an object of desire to appear willing. Or wanting, at all capable of their own needs. It would really ruin the shine of it all, I see.”

“Lana!”

“Oh mother, really, pimped out all my life -all for it to be ruined by the suggestion I might like it!”

“It’s worse than all that.” Stewart insisted gravely, immune to female objections and tantrums, “I’ve been contacted this morning by one of the branches of our government dealing with espionage and information,” -no wonder he was feeling so very important today- “and they’re concerned that the German Air Force is aware of your correspondence with Major Agen-“

“It’s Egan, actually.”

“-Agen and a tapped phone call as well, they have concerns, Lana, about the Germans using this connection as leverage on him, now they have him in their camps, under their thumb, at their mercy.”

Lana’s fractured world slid together again like a suctioned mosaic, one focal point of reason being clear. “He’s a prisoner of war.” she knew just the right inquisitive tone to encourage Stewart to keep blabbing.

“Yes.” Stewart was very grave and very important about being privy to this information, and Mother let out a fuming little cluck of her tongue at his fumble.

“So, he’s a prisoner.” she smirked triumphantly at Mother and was not corrected for once. “Not dead.”

“Good as dead.” Mother clarified.

Lana still smiled, she could work with “good as.”

———————————————-

“Jack?” Lana had timed her delicate attack most carefully, waiting until Huston was relaxed but not asleep, dressing but not in a hurry, happy but not restless, and most importantly, not remotely tired of her.

“What doll?” Jack had a broad back and nice hands, sometimes Lana imagined they were rather like Egan’s, or maybe that’s what she told herself to keep the tears at bay long enough for each amorous performance to conclude, “Your mother bitchin’ about me again?”

“Well,” she shied away into the bedding, “to be honest, yes.”

“Little rebel.” he praised her on his way to sling on his suspenders, apparently he was going out tonight, she felt a clench of panic in her gut at the need to throw her pitch before he left or hushed her.

“Jack I’ve been thinking.” She began again.

“Not what you’re payed for, doll.”

“No, true.” Lana was used to laughing at that same joke told by a couple dozen different men, “But is that skit competition still on? The one for the CBS slot?”

“Yeah, few more days left, why?”

“Anything promising yet?” Lana ventured carefully, Jack was so very busy with all these government contracts for documentaries and proganada shows, and ever since then he’d had a very short fuse, fussy over his stalled artistic dreams. Not that he didn’t care about the war, he did in fact, and that’s why Lana liked him if she liked him at all. But he liked it the way a movie maker does, he wanted to tell stories and he wanted to be somebody important, and if he wasn’t going to be shot at he damn sure would be known to hang about the guys who were.

He was off to the Pacific to film some Marines mucking about on some godforsaken Atoll in a month or more. She had to make her move.

In the meantime, he was to organize a broadcast. Lana bad learned that from the grapevine at Warner’s, Betty D. dropping as much over her three carrots at lunch.

“I was wondering why we haven’t got ourselves an anecdote to Axis Sally.” Lana chose to be blunt, Jack was different from other men, he liked her babified act as much as the next man, but he’d belted her too for ‘playing dumb’. Since then she’d said her mind, as much as she dared and he called her idiotic often, but she’d not been belted again. “Our boys keep listening to that trash, and the housewives too, just to hear reports on the missing and the prisoners.”

“They listen ‘cause she’s sexy and funny.” Jack informed her with a pointed look.

“That too.” Lana contemplated the sheets before her, “But can’t we be funny and sexy too? Instead of demoralizing we could be happy! And we’d not have reports on prisoners but we could give them clues and hope, in case anyone's listening in.”

“Listening in.” Jack had stopped his halfhearted listening to her, wheeling suddenly with cuff links partway hanging, “You mean in camps?”

“Camps. Resistance. Wherever.”

“They don’t let them have radios, ya know.” Huston pointed out, but it wasn’t said in argument, he was pondering too.

“You know they still manage.” Lana smiled softly and he smiled back.

“Ok, what’s the pitch?” He sighed and sat himself down again on the side of the bed, evening plans abandoned for the moment.

Lana’s heart swelled with hope and the delicious feeling of being taken seriously. Even if she was lying in his bed with hair a mess and dignity mighty rumpled. “Perhaps we could tack onto Fred Allen’s spot? Hasn’t he got a vacancy? A variety show? A skit? I don’t know, but we could have repeat actors and we could have guest stars. And it could- it could be a girl-“

“-Allied Sally.” Huston joked and Lana genuinely snickered at that.

“Something like that.” She agreed, chagrined at the need for a catchy, corney radio name, “And she could be waiting for her sweetheart, sending him messages and well wishes and jokes and -Oh! The score! The scores on everything! Baseball! Jack!”

“Calm down, calm down, it’s decent.” Jack hushed her, waving her giddy self back down as she warmed to her topic, “And you could be her.” he stated the obvious.

“Don’t you think I’d manage it well?” She cajoled, cocking her shoulder in her best pantomime of a coquette. “Aren’t I funny and sexy, Mr. Huston?”

“Hmph,” he scratched his cheek and stared at her as if summing up the likelihood of this working, “needs another angle. Beyond skits.”

“Alright. Like what?”

Huston secured his cuff links, smile broadening as his mind began to whirl, “Letters.” he stated and Lana’s heart froze, “Love letters, we gotta keep it sexy, you said so yourself. There’s nothing so funny as a redacted letter being read out over the censors. The constant beeps alone will get laughs, give it the right inflection in between and you’ll have a game on your hands with the listeners guessing and filling in.”

“Letters.” Lana mumbled in agreement, numb at the brilliance of it and filled with horror at the idea of monetizing what John Egan had given her -connection, love, devotion, grit, humor. But this broadcast, it might be the only way to keep in any sort of contact with him. At what cost? Would he care at all for her after it? Would he think she used him up for a little business inspiration? Oh she couldn’t bear it, yet worse, she couldn’t bear life as Vincent’s wife, locked in for another ten years at Warner’s under mother’s thumb. “It’s brilliant.”

“Almost uncanny how likely a story it is.” Huston grunted as he pulled on a shoe, sending her a sly look that broke her a heart a little more, “Nothing so powerful as a tale based on a real thing, Lana.” he reminded forcefully.

The letters, the blackmail her mother hung over her, all of it dealt with if this pitch became a reality. It would all fade into a myth. And with it all the realness John had brought her. “Yes, I said -it’s brilliant.”

“Yeah, well, easy does it for now.” He cautioned, “Gotta sort your mother and let that contract expire gently. I’ll pitch it myself. See what CBS can wrangle up. Don’t get your hopes up and keep that jacket safe, it’ll be invaluable when we get you a storyline for it.”

“Right.”

“Well go on, tell mommy dearest.” he goaded, nodding to the phone.

“Oh they wouldn’t be approving.” Lana disagreed, referring to the whole pack of them, her mother and her lawyers and her agents.

“Why not? Sounds like great business. Solves all the scandal too.”

“Something like this part-“ Lana demurred, “-wouldn’t suit my image, mother says.”

Jack barked out a rough laugh, plopped back down on the bed and tugging the sheets from her clutches. “Your mother does realize you’re walking wank material, right? That’s your image.”

“Yes,” Lana sighed, “but…unwilling, she says. That’s the crucial part.”

“Oh. Yeah, well,” Jack eyed her up, “you do make a great impression of a scared lamb in bed.”

“They’re concerned it’ll make me too independent. Like the War Bond tour,” she gave a wistful smile, “I kissed so many boys my lips swelled right up. It was grand.”

“Now Lana,” Huston cautioned, “I’m not on any crusade to liberate you, myself.”

“Oh I know!” She was quick to assure, ever the obliging little lady, “And I don’t want to be. Not from you or the studio-“

“-just from mother dearest?” he nodded knowingly, not knowing the half of it.

“Yes.” she pretended great relief at his perception.

“Huh, well, good. Because this idea would have a contract of its own, and it would be long if I’m any judge of the longevity of the project. You’ll be locked in for years.”

“But it’ll be my choice.” She reaffirmed, and this time she meant it.

“And you’ll look willing.” Jack grinned and she grinned back, compulsively like a child mimicking their threat. “Might take some practice though, to make you look willing. Get over here, doll.”

———————————————-

Major Gale Cleven was appreciative of the dangers of listening to the radio in camp, it was one of those necessary and crucial risks that required responsible stewardship and utmost care. It wasn’t a flippant pastime and it wasn’t a recreation, but then again, neither was it strictly business. Like much of their lives as prisoners of war, he and his fellow soldiers toed a strict line between honoring their captors’ jurisdictions while also thwarting their imposed restrictions at every possible juncture.

Sometimes one should listen to the radio because that is what free men did, and Gale Cleven tried by any means possible- letters, books, calculus or his frigid metal headset- to stay free in his mind, to comport himself with the same surety as his free counterpart.

Otherwise, you lived like a ghost in your own body. And that was no good for oneself or those around you. As everyone who shared a bunk and combine with John Egan was quickly learning. The immediate joy of reuniting with him, the fear of losing him to his wounds, the relief of his recovery, it had all leveled out at the end like a anticlimactic ride on a rollercoaster, skidding to a plateau where he was neither well enough to be exempt from Gale’s concern, nor ill enough to warrant the patience required to put up with his rabid moods. Always restless, being kept in the glamorized equivalent of a dog run was hardly fitting for his nature. It was hard on everyone, but Gale wasn’t such a relativist as to assume John Egan had it the same as everyone. Some folks required more miles and more sky to keep them sane, and Bucky was one of those.

It had tipped Gale into a habit that could no longer be qualified as strictly informative, nor could he defend it as necessary where he to get caught. It was undoubtedly poor stewardship to spend an extra half hour listening to the inane comedy of a BBC guest production. But he had started it to cheer Brady when Glenn Miller’s band was on, and it had done such good for him and Bucky as they crowded ‘round, that Gale had since stayed alert for any other such ‘triviality’ that might be of use.

If the Colonel walked in and demanded an explanation for this extra bit of carelessness, Cleven thought he might make a decent defense about waiting for Ed Murrow to come on, broadcasting for CBS from London, always with a decent take on what was happening in the war. The motivation of Murrow often having stars on his program was completely erroneous.

Or so Gale swore to himself for the tenth time as Demarco kept watch and he himself painstakingly tuned the dials and bent his ear to sort the static.

There was music and the typical overlap of voices for awhile until he honed it down, British and American accents floating in, obnoxiously layered all on top of each other still, yet this time intentional. He must’ve hit a variety show. He gave himself two minutes, that much he’d allow and if the thing he’d been waiting for in secret for months did not occur,

he’d move right on or pack up for the night.

“I’m not sure about no boy writing you letters!” a man’s voice crackled through, comedically irate.

The next voice was girlish, smooth despite the poor frequency and made the hair of Gale’s arms stand on end from universal male appreciation and a gut wrenching sense of recognition: “Well I don’t know any more about it, paw paw, except that he loves me and I love him!”

“Yeah?” -Gale thought perhaps that was Bob Hope’s voice, play acting as the fuming father figure, “Yeah, then tell me, dear daughter, what sorta fella calls the girl he loves: Acorn! Huh?”

Gale’s eyes bugged from his head, glassy and shocked and Crank rushed over in solidarity, terribly sure the whole continent of North America had just been reported as broken off into the sea. “What is it Buck?”

“Crank!” Gale croaked, “Go! Go get Egan, tell him his girl’s on the radio and to get his ass in here, goooo!”

“Egan’s got a girl?” Benny was bewildered.

“Acorn!” Brady and Gale yelled in unison.

“But that’s Lana Tierney.” Crank pointed over the spunk wall, or as it was called in more noble moments of higher aspiration, the Wall of Hopes and Dreams, where Lana and Rita smiled tantalizingly and warm from their crinkled posters, down on the men’s bunks.

“Yes, Acorn. Go!”

Gale held his breath and listened harder, trying to gauge how far into the sketch he had caught them, wishing them to linger, as if by sheer willpower alone he could make her stay on until Bucky got there.

Fuck -acorn? Why would she use that? She had to be out of her mind to dare a thing like that, had to be just to get his attention, right? Surely? Had to be out of her mind, Gale decided, which was just another diagnosis for love. And that gave him pause.

“What’s your feller anyway? He a squirrel?” Bob Hope was pressing the issue right as Bucky burst in with a flurry of flapping overcoat and steaming breath.

“Get in here, come on, get over here.” Gale stood up and pointed to his vacated seat, shoving Bucky down for good measure and crouching to press the headpiece to his ear, wanting to share it for some idiotic reason, as if like a parent he could cut the cord if something sad or risky came on.

“Maybe he is,” Lana was breathily defending, “and we’ll live happily ever after in our tree. And there’s nothing you or Jerry can do to stop us!”

“Shit.” Egan breathed out reverently like he’d been punched real and good and an epiphany on life was brewing beneath his shuttering smile. “Holy hell it -it is her. It’s acorn.”

“On a show called ‘Dear Acorn’, Bucky.” Brady chimed in, face as lit up for Egan’s current happiness as if it were his own.

“So what’re you twos gonna live on, huh?” Bob Hope crackled through “Love and nuts?”

“Oh well dunno, I do so love my nuts.” Lana rejoined.

“Jesus!” Gale pulled away from the headset like it had personally accosted him for a tumble in the sheets.

“Acorn.”

“Yeah paw paw?”

“You’re nuts.”

“About him I am.”

“Uhuh.”

“And there’s nothing you or Jerry can-“

“-can do about it, I know, acorn.”

“Pinky promise!” Lana chirped a couple thousand miles away, and John Egan obeyed her once more with a raised hand and a crooked finger.

That night at roll call they had something to whisper about, and for once it wasn’t half cooked schemes to climb the barbed wire or try smothering the commandant in his sleep. Instead Bucky was rocking back and forth joyfully on his heels in the bitter night air, trying hard to keep his grin in check as the spotlight swooped over, choosing the intermediate bits of darkness to nag Gale for any bits he’d missed.

“I sent for ya right away, Bucky.” Gale insisted in a gentle whisper out the side of his mouth, “They were just starting to joke about letters being written to an acorn.”

“Can you believe it?” Egan hissed, almost demented in his sudden good cheer, “She’s that proud of me, built a whole damn show on it. Fuck, it makes a man wanna fight a dozen wars.”

Gale eyed him up carefully, the inside of Bucky’s head a foreign place even to him, but if his friend was hopeful and generous enough not to mind his intellectual (or rather, lack of intellect) property being capitalized on for the war effort, then Gale wasn’t about to sow seeds of doubt. “She’s somethin’ else.” he agreed nebulously, and meant it, “Bombs Away Betty, huh?”

“Showing partiality to one branch of the armed services, Buck.” John was back to grinning, “She must’ve liked the jacket.”

Hope you enjoined, thank y’all for all the screams and thoughts you’ve sent through my asks, the comments and reblogs too, I treasure each.

If you’d like to be tagged in my MOTA writings, drop a note below. 💋

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#masters of the air #mota #mota fanfic #john Egan #Bucky Egan #gale cleven #john egan x oc #john x acorn #Julie Jean Turner #mota spoilers #masters of the air fanfiction #john egan fanfiction #Callum Turner

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ragingstillness · 5 months ago

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The Boys thoughts 4x5:

Homelander’s conversation with Ryan: felt realistic to his character but also yikes (as always). Acknowledgement of his manipulation of Ryan +1 Acknowledgement of his own trauma +1 Equivalence of his experience as a deeply privileged white man to slavery -100

Ryan getting the PA to slap the Snyder parody: one of those delightful moments that The Boys does so well where I feel both positive and negative emotions about it. Do I think the Snyder dude deserved to be slapped by his PA? Absolutely. Do I think it’s a good thing that Ryan thinks the ultimate penance is receiving corporal punishment? No I don’t. I do like that Ryan actually let the victim do the punishment and receive the apology rather than white knighting about it. And of course I am deeply aware of how ironic it is that Homelander is helping Ryan stand up for sexual harassment victims when Homelander raped Ryan’s mom in a similar power imbalance situation.

Genuinely feel sad for Ashley that she lost her Ben Shapiro parody submissive (at least partially because I found it hilarious), but she got him back and that felt very earned.

I knew that Ashley and A-Train did more to Homelander’s apartment! Haha I can’t wait to find out what it is.

Man no one is having a great time or talking about it this episode.

Always happy to see more Esposito, love him as the ultimate traitor. Just betraying everyone left and right.

Not super fond of how they’re making it seem like Annie was wrong morally for beating up Firecracker. For falling for it? Sure. For reacting with anger? No.

Big fan of the V-ed up animals. Hysterical and very fun.

“Do you even know who Annie is anymore?” Um has more time passed that they’re showing? Because didn’t Annie decide to use the Starlight name again like two episodes ago?

I like that we got to see Hughie solve a bad situation on his own this time. He’s really coming into his own. Also, I like that we got another chance to say goodbye to his dad. Still sus that Hughie’s mom knows what V is.

Finally we got to see some of Simon Pegg’s comedic chops too. Him spinning around inside that guy had me laughing like nothing else.

Butcher taking that scientist captive? Honestly that doesn’t feel so much like a return to the dark side as just something his character would always be willing to do. Lest we forget he kidnapped Translucent, tortured him, pumped him for information, and would have killed him if Hughie didn’t get there first. I do feel like he’s relying less on other people which is a backslide from his character development but true to where his character was in the first season too.

Not a lot of sister sage the episode, glad to see she saw through firecracker’s fake inclusion attitude. I do feel like she’s growing closer and closer to dropping Homelander as an ally, something I suspected she would do from the minute they teamed up.

No Colin but I’m sure that’s gonna bite them in the ass.

What are the rules of Victoria’s headpopping? We saw her do it a little but there were many more opportunities. Does she need to charge up? Line of sight? Eye contact?

I agree that Victoria turned her daughter into a monster but only because she taught her not to value human lives and also because she turned her into some version of Parasyte: The Maxim.

Not a fan of Frenchie turning himself in. That’s not going to do anything, now they’re gonna have to break him out, and this show’s morality was never black and white enough that it could look at his actions and be like “you finally did the right thing”

Man when they all meet up with Hughie again he’s gonna have some stories to tell.

Side note: I am utterly amazed that now the secret of Compound V is out that no other country is sending like every spy in their arsenal to steal some. Considering how easily Hughie and the Boys can get it, it isn’t very difficult. Take one look at the nuclear arms race and tell me that every country in the world wouldn’t be quietly declaring all out war on Vought to get their hands on some.

#the boys spoilers #the boys season 4 #the boys tv #the boys #the boys amazon #the boys meta

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princesssarisa · 1 year ago

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Character Ask: The Ashleys (Recess)

Favorite thing about them: They're funny characters who serve as the catalysts for some good plots, and sometimes (though rarely) they share moments of sincere friendship with T.J. and the gang.

Least favorite thing about them: Well, they're a catty clique of mean girls who sometimes do nasty things, like forcing Spinelli to join their club just because her first name is Ashley too, or entering her in a beauty contest as a prank.

Three things I have in common with them:

*I've grown up in relative wealth and privilege.

*I like pretty, bright-colored clothes.

*I liked to jump rope and play with dolls at their age.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

*I was never part of a snooty clique in school.

*I've never had plastic surgery.

*I don't have a little brother or sister, as they all do. (Each Ashley, lest we forget, has a 2nd grader brother named Tyler and a kindergartener sister named Brittany, and they're all best friends too.)

Favorite line:

From "First Name Ashley," when Ashley A. tells the others that they have to make Spinelli one of them:

"What choice to we have, Ashleys? I mean, if we let her go around being her crude, disgusting Spinelli self, the name Ashley will be ruined forever. No longer will it stand for beauty and specialness! Soon other girls will be considered cooler than us, and if we're not careful, by the time we're in junior high, our first dates will be with guys named Paul or Joe!"

From the same episode, also Ashley A., when the rest of the school hounds them into letting Spinelli go:

"I hate it when I don't get my way!"

From "The Pest," when everyone is teasing Gretchen about Jeffrey's crush on her:

Ashley T.: "Hey Gretchen, where's lover boy?"

Ashley B.: "Hey Gretchen, how's Mr. Grundler?"

Ashley A.: "Hey Gretchen... what's it like?"

And of course their catchphrase:

"Ooh, scandalous!"

brOTP: Each other.

OTP: Some "acceptable boys" in their future.

nOTP: Gus or Mikey (too nice for them), Randall (the opposite), or, God forbid, Principal Prickly.

Random headcanon:

(1) Their mothers are all named Susan, and were a clique of their own when they were in school.

(2) The show's inconsistency about which 4th grade classroom they're in (i.e. in "The Great Can Drive" it's a plot point that they're in Miss Furley's class, but in other episodes they're in Miss Grotke's class with the main gang) can be explained. They're mainly in Miss Furley's class, but they join Miss Grotke's class for certain subjects, like history. I took part in that type of class-swapping when I was in elementary school; I'm sure it's common.

Unpopular opinion: I don't think it's nonsensical or bad writing that in "Outcast Ashley," the other Ashleys kick Ashley A. out of the gang for not wearing purple on Purple Day, even though she's their leader. Ashlely A. probably isn't their appointed leader, but just the most forceful personality of the group, and if they can be petty and mean enough to kick her out just because she forgot to wear purple on the anniversary of the day they met, then they can be ridiculous enough to do it even though she leads most of their schemes.

Song I associate with them: The show's theme song, even though they don't even appear in it – I just can't think of a better choice.

youtube

Favorite picture of them:

#character ask #recess #the ashleys #ask game #fictional characters #fictional character ask

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dwellordream · 3 months ago

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Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll. Thriller/crime drama. In the aftermath of a brutal double killing at a sorority house in Tallahassee, Florida, Pamela Schumacher- nicknamed ‘Pam Perfect’- by her murdered best friend- is lost to a vortex of grief and rage. The police are convinced the killer is one victim’s abusive boyfriend, but Pamela knows better. Yet even after the true perpetrator is arrested, the media frenzy quickly becomes about the tragedy of a handsome, vulnerable white man driven to kill out of loneliness and rage, while his victims are painted as shallow and attention-seeking.

All You Have to Do Is Call by Kerri Maher. Historical fiction/drama. Before the legalization of abortion, when a woman in Chicago needs help with an unwanted pregnancy, she calls Jane. ‘Jane’ is a volunteer network of hundreds of women who risk social ostracism and arrest to perform illegal abortions. Jane’s founder, Veronica, is struggling with a wanted (but high risk) pregnancy of her own, as she tries to balance her covert work with Jane and her duties to her own family. Her best friend, Patty, is vocally against abortion-until her own sister shows up at her doorstep, desperate and scared. And Margaret, one of Jane’s newest young volunteers, begins to question her relationship with an older divorced man when he tries to use his wife’s support of Jane to secure full custody of their daughter.

Prima Facie by Suzie Miller. Realistic fiction. Tessa has always prided herself on her pragmatism and ruthlessness as a barrister, and strives to conceal her working class background from her more privileged colleagues. But one night she is raped by a fellow barrister- and finds herself on the witness stand, subjected to the same probing questions and assumptions she once dealt out as a defense attorney.

Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan. Realistic fiction. An unnamed narrator falls madly in love with a charismatic but cruel young writer. When he tires of her, she is willing to do anything- no matter how humiliating or manipulative- to regain his affection. And when they finally reunite, their relationship spirals down a sickening rabbit hole of deception, addiction, and violence.

The Mountain Between Us by Charles Martin. Romance/thriller. After being stranded by a blizzard in Salt Lake City, two adventurous young professionals agree to share a small chartered plane to try to beat the storm. Ashley is racing towards her wedding, while Ben has a surgery to perform. When the plane goes down in a mountainous wilderness, Ashley and Ben must rely on each other to make it out alive.

Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk. Realistic fiction/romance. Coming of age in 1930s America, Marjorie Morgenstern is intelligent, beautiful, and Jewish. While Marjorie has little need for what she sees as her parents’ senseless superstition and old fashioned ways, she does have a burning desire to be famous- to be an actress on Broadway. Spanning six years, from 1933 to 1939, Marjorie’s quest takes her across two continents and revolves around one man- the passionate, impulsive Noel Airman- who like Marjorie, has rejected his Jewish identity in order to achieve mainstream success. As she ages from a romantic teenager to a young woman confronted with the reality of an increasingly dangerous world, Marjorie must decide what her ‘American dream’ looks like- and at what cost.

The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya. Realistic fiction/drama. Neela Devaki, a struggling indie singer, is baffled and wary when one of her songs is covered by a popular YouTuber, Rukmini. To her shock, Rukmini’s cover goes viral, rocketing her from YouTube videos to opening for a renowned pop star’s concert tours. While Rukmini hopes to befriend Neela, Neela cannot quite let go of the resentment and bitterness of seeing another artist rise to success on the back of her song- while her own career still languishes. One night, she makes a seemingly innocuous subtweet- and changes both their lives forever.

The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones. Sci fi. In a future ravaged by deadly disease- most of them carried by ticks- what was once America is now a collection of ‘Zones’ behind the Salt Line- a ring of high walls and scorched earth. Wealthy thrill-seekers can pay to venture out on guided expeditions beyond the Salt Line- a chance to experience the natural beauty of a ravaged world, if they are willing to risk their lives for it. One expedition goes very wrong, placing a group of tourists in the hands of a desperate community of survivors, who are willing to do whatever it takes to secure their own future.

Books Recs of 2024

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. Mystery/fantasy centered around Din, a young assistant investigator assigned to help an eccentric and infamous detective, Ana Dolabra, solve a series of murders. Din is an engraver, his brain altered so he has a photographic memory. However, no one is quite sure how he got his current position, since he failed every single one of his final exams except the combat portion. Ana is an exceedingly odd woman who refuses to go to any crime scene in person and often performs mad science experiments in her spare time. As Din struggles to keep up with the case, which revolves around a bioweapon being unleashed on a series of the empire's best engineers, he also worries what will happen when Ana finally uncovers his secrets.

Highfire by Eoin Colfer. Urban fantasy (very comedic fantasy) about a dragon called Vern (short for Wyvern), who teams up with a juvenile delinquent named Squib (real name Everett Moreau) to take down a corrupt sheriff who is plaguing the Lousiana bayou. Vern is a very small (seven feet long) dragon who is the last of his kind (as far as he knows). When he is spotted by a local troubled teen, his first instinct is to hunt Squib down and kill him, but he quickly realizes the two of them have a common enemy- the murderous sheriff who is running drugs through their territory.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi. Magical realism about a romantic-minded art historian who is swept off his feet by a mysterious and charming heiress. After a whirlwind courtship, the happy couple return to her childhood home; a Gothic manor on a lonely island. The more time our narrator spends around his wife's past, the more questions are raised- increasingly sinister ones about who she is and what exactly she is capable of. Once upon a time, she was best friends with an equally odd and dreamy little girl named Indigo. But no one has seen Indigo for many years now- and the Flower Bride may be behind her disappearance.

Chlorine by Jade Song. Horror/magical realism. Since childhood, Ren's entire identity has been wrapped up in swimming. If she can be strong enough, fast enough, special enough, success is sure to come her way. As the end of high school approaches, Ren's passion for swimming becomes less about her future, and more about past legends of mermaids and sirens dragging sailors into the deep. School, friends, and her parents' expectations all fall away- Ren will make her home in the water, no matter what she has to do.

We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride & Jo Piazza. Realistic fiction. Jen and Riley have been best friends for as long as they can remember, despite their vastly different childhoods. Riley is from a middle class Black family; Jen was raised by an impoverished white single mother. After twenty years of doing almost everything together, their lives are at a crossroads- Riley is a news anchor about to take Philadelphia by storm, while Jen is expecting her first child with her police officer husband. When Jen's husband is involved in the murder of a Black teenage boy by a fellow officer, Riley finds herself expected to cover the story- and Jen finds herself expected to answer for her husband's actions- and her own beliefs about what racism looks like.

Queenpin by Megan Abbott. Crime thriller/noir. Our nameless heroine lives a mousy existence working as a bookkeeper for a rundown local night club, but her life is turned upside down when the infamous Gloria Denton, a gun moll and smuggler, takes her under her wing. Gloria transforms her young protege from a timid girl to a sophisticated, cunning woman capable of handling gangsters, conmen, thieves, and bookies, but when she falls for the wrong man, her relationship with Gloria is strained, and they must decide just how far they can trust one another.

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen. Historical fiction. Based on the real life trial of Katharina Kepler, mother of the famed Johannes Kepler, Imperial Mathematician to the Holy Roman Empire. Katharina is a busybody, a domineering and devilishly clever woman with a particular talent for healing. She is also a fiercely loyal mother to her adult children, but when an old neighborhood grudge flares into accusations of poison and witchcraft, Katharina is determined not to meekly confess and beg pardon. The more she lashes out at her neighbors and the authorities, the more charges begin to pile up against her- despite her son's desperate attempts to save her from torture and execution.

Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott. Crime thriller/noir. Based on a real life murder case in 1931 Phoenix Arizona. Naive and sheltered Marion Seeley is deposited in Phoenix by her disgraced doctor husband, who is forced to take a job with a mining company in South America after his medical license is revoked. Marion befriends the vivacious Louise and Ginny, two fellow nurses, who introduce her to the underground party scene in Phoenix. Politicians and businessmen flock to the secret parties held by them, and it's a quick way to make money on the side. Drawn in by the luxury and thrills, Marion falls in love with Joe Lanigan, a powerful local politician, but as their affair intensifies, her friendship with the other women fractures, culminating in a gruesome crime.

#recommendations #literature

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judediangelo75 · 4 years ago

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Kiss the Girl, Winger

Inspiration strikes yet again, thanks to Disney! Lol, if you don’t know “Kiss the Girl”, allow me to help.

-Disney movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrRbB-qUJfY

-Ashley Tisdale version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68-xSRHgxy0

I’m literally winging this so bear with me.

MC friend: David Willows ( @that-scouse-wizard ) (David is basically Judith’s best friend at this point, expect to see him OFTEN lol)

-----------------------

Talbott has no bloody idea how he got dragged into this situation.

But yet here he was.

Sitting with David and Diego on the Training Grounds. He was originally hanging out with David, training.

Judith and David had taken upon themselves to train their partners, especially since they were the main ones going into a dangerous profession.

Diego came to do some training himself and now they were taking a “break”.

By “break”, Talbott means talking about relationships and such. Talbott did his best not to look too uncomfortable, but it wasn’t working.

“I take that your relationships are going well,” Diego asked with an easygoing smile. Diego was too much of a “go with the flow” type of guy. Talbott can’t see him settling down with any one any time soon.

“Of course! I’m with the Most Powerful Witch at Hogwarts, what more can a lad ask for,” David chuckled. Diego turned his gaze to Talbott, waiting for a response.

Talbott gave a simple nod.

“You sure there’s no lass that’s caught your eye, Caplan,” David asked. Diego let out a boasting laugh.

“Afraid not, friend. Diego Caplan isn’t so easy to be tied down. It’s fun to flirt and kiss any beautiful witch I want with no strings attached. Sample every flavor there is,” Diego smirked. David rolled his eyes.

“Whatever you say, Diego. Being intimate with single person is pretty damn special in my opinion. There’s something indescribable whenever I kiss Mer. Doesn’t help she tastes sweet too. C’mon Talbott back me up here,” David argued.

Talbott felt his face flush out of embarrassment and looked away. David and Diego glanced at each other before looking toward the silent Ravenclaw.

“Tal, you good there mate,” David asked. Diego tried to lighten the mood.

“Surely Judith isn’t a bad kisser, is she?” David sent a small glare at the Hufflepuff duelist.

Talbott mumbled something under his breath.

“Come again, friend,” Diego said. Talbott fidgeted before sighing.

“I never kissed Judith before.”

Silence.

“How?!” David and Diego exclaimed.

“You two have been together for quite awhile now. Longer than David and Merula. How haven’t you kissed her,” Diego asked.

“Exactly! Judith has to be one of the most affectionate witches I know. And she’s head over heels in love you. How,” David stressed. The stoic Ravenclaw crossed his arms over his chest, face flushed red.

“I just never kissed her before...” Talbott wasn’t going to admit that he was too shy to do so.

David wasn’t wrong, Judith was indeed affectionate. It felt strange to be showered with attention and affection, but Talbott wasn’t complaining. He found it sweet.

And Judith did try to kiss him once.

He ended up jerking away out of reflex and confusion. He could still remember the slight hurt reflecting in her gold eyes before she offered a shy smile and an apology.

She never tried again afterwards. And he cursed himself for it.

Because it wasn’t like he didn’t want to kiss her. Gods know how bloody curious he was to know what’s it like.

How her full lips will feel against his.

What flavor chapstick she uses.

How it will feel melting against her as he allows himself indulge in the intimate act.

Will there be sparks?

Will it feel like his heart will race out of his chest?

Would he crave for more once they pull away?

So many thoughts invade his mind whenever he catches himself looking at his girlfriend’s lips.

Don’t get him started if she was wearing her signature deep red lipstick-

“TALBOTT!” Talbott was thrusted out of his thoughts and turned his attention back on the two Hufflepuff wizards sitting next to him.

“You guys said something,” he asked. David pinched the bridge of his nose and Diego shook his head.

“Kiss the girl, Winger,” they both demanded. Talbott blushed and glared.

“Before you say how we have no right orderin’ you around, while you are right, we can tell you want to. You were bitin’ your lip and scrunchin’ your brows as if you were imaging it. While all power to you, I much rather you not fantasize about my sister in my presence,” David said.

“As if you don’t kiss Merula whenever Judith and I are around,” Talbott huffed.

“Don’t change the subject! You want that experience. Just go for it,” David argued.

“Besides it’s not like she doesn’t know how to kiss. Andre was her first-OW!” David smacked Diego hard. He noticed the uncertainty that flashed in the Ravenclaw’s red eyes.

David knew Talbott was a bit insecure about himself, even though Judith had the biggest crush on him ever since they first met. He was there when Judith admitted that she fancied him when they were learning the Memory Charm with Professor Flitwick.

Judith may thought Andre was handsome, but she would never see him more than a friend.

Talbott had trouble believing that at the beginning.

Any mention of Andre and Judith in the same sentence would make him shut down.

And Diego was certainly not helping.

“Talbott, you know full damn well Judith only see Andre as a friend. Tonks was my first kiss and we’re just friends. If she really liked him, she would be with him. But she’s not. She’s with you, and literally sees no one else,” David said, staring the silent Ravenclaw dead in his eyes.

Talbott let out a shaky breath.

“You’re right... I just don’t want to disappoint her...” Diego snorted, earning a glare from both boys.

“Talbott, my friend. Are we talking about the same Judith? She values everything you do. You don’t have to do much to make her smile. I highly doubt you can disappoint her,” Diego said, watching their glares lessen.

Talbott coughed, trying to ignore the warmth in his cheeks.

“You two make fair points,” he mumbled. David smirked.

“So kiss the girl, Winger...”

----------------------

“This is a lovely day for a date, Talbott,” Judith chuckled as they walked along the shore of the Black Lake.

It was late in the afternoon, the sun was setting along the horizon. Talbott had taken them out to Hogsmeade, revisiting their first date spot. Madam Puddifoot had giggled seeing the pair again, serving them some cake and tea.

Lucky for him, conversation came easier this time around and there was no one there to crash their date. Talbott always enjoyed the sight of his little bird smiling sweetly at him.

Afterwards, they flew back to Hogwarts. Well, not before a few games of tag and chase along the way.

Eventually they reached their current destination, waling along the shore while holding hands.

They sat in comfortable silence on the boardwalk on the Boathouse, overlooking the water. Talbott kept stealing glances at his serene girlfriend, whose eyes were closed.

Her hair was mostly down, the sides being pulled back to reveal her face. Her face was makeup free, revealing her natural beauty.

Judith’s attire was rather simple. A short yellow dress with white flowers and white sandals. Her accessories were small gold hoop earrings and the key necklace he gifted her on Valentine’s Day.

‘Dear Gods, she’s so perfect that it hurts...’ he thought, drinking in the sight of the Hufflepuff witch being bathed in the sun’s loving warmth. A breeze gently pasted them, the sweet scent of coconuts and cocoa butter greeted the young’s wizard’s nose.

He felt dizzy with delight as he scoot closer to her. He knew he could have anything he could want from the Hufflepuff witch. His gaze fell to her full lips and he bit his lip.

“You’re staring...” Talbott flinched at the sudden sound of her voice. Gold eyes slowly opened, locking with his red ones.

“Something on your mind, my love,” Judith asked, delicately running her fingertips along the line of his sharp jawline. Talbott shivered at the barely there touch, leaning into it for a more solid sensation.

“Um...” Talbott felt the familiar sense of panic starting to creep into his mind. His heart began to race as he felt his palms turn a bit clammy.

Can he really do this?

Judith frowned at this, cupping his face in her hands so he can look at her.

“Hey, hey... it’s okay, Talbott. Talk to me,” she whispered. Her breath fanned over his lips, causing his heart to lurch in his chest. He can smell the faint sweetness of the cake she had earlier at the tea shop.

“I... I-I... I want to kiss you... Is that alright,” Talbott whispered breathlessly. He mentally slapped his forehead.

‘What the HELL was that, Winger?! Most wizards would’ve just went for it! Even those who do ask would’ve been much more smoother than that! Bloody hell, can the Giant Squid just grab me and pull me below. Ugh, this is so bloody-”

“Of course you can, Talbott.” Talbott was abrupted pulled out his self-berating thoughts at the simple sentence. Judith did her best not to giggle at the surprised and slightly lost expression on her boyfriend’s face.

“A-are you serious,” he asked, still feeling slightly panicked. Judith leaned in to press a gentle kiss to his cheek, which helped calm him a bit.

“Of course, bird boy. I was waiting for you to ask or make a move for awhile now,” she said.

“B-but I never kissed anyone before,” he blurted out. Judith’s eyebrows furrowed at this.

“I’m failing to see how that’s a problem...” Talbott sighed and looked away, feeling his face burn.

“I don’t want to disappoint you if I’m not good enough. I know this isn’t your first. Andre had that privilege,” he mumbled. Judith turned his head back so she can meet his gaze.

“Hey... just because this isn’t my first doesn’t mean this wouldn’t be special to me. And to be honest... I didn’t feel much from that kiss. You’re the only one I really imagined doing this with,” Judith whispered. Talbott slowly relaxed at her admission, wrapping his arms around her waist to bring her closer.

“I love you, little bird,” he said softly, angling his head so he wouldn’t bump into her nose. Judith giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck, mimicking his actions.

“I love you too, bird boy... kiss me, please...”

Talbott couldn’t ignore that soft request even if he tried.

He allowed himself to lean the rest of way.

He kept the contact light, testing the waters. Barely there brushes that teased him more than he expected.

These went on for a few fleeting moments until one of them decided they wanted more. Lips gently parted and locked, seeking a sweeter taste.

The taste of vanilla and cake registered in his mind, causing Talbott leaned in more for the delicious combination.

Talbott sighed through his nose.

If he knew kissing his girlfriend meant being sent to heaven, he would’ve let Judith kiss him that day.

Her lips were just as soft as they looked. Plush and warm against his own.

The taste of her vanilla chapstick had him craving for more.

He never felt more at peace, giving into his little bird and this enchanting kiss.

He never wanted this to-

Her lips were gone.

A soft whine escaped the back of his throat as he blindly chased after her. A soft laugh snapped out of it as he opened his eyes to find the teasing glint in those gold eyes.

“That good huh,” Judith chuckled. Talbott grumbled, looking away. Judith outright laughed at her boyfriend’s disgruntled state.

“I’m just teasing... come here,” she giggled, pressing another kiss to his lips. Talbott perked up a bit, squeezing her closer.

He could get used to this...

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queenbeyondthewalll · 3 years ago

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WHAT is the formaldyhyde incident why did that lead to you not being allwoed to drink water

Oh god okay. @pixievivi also prev tagged me asking what was going on in my school so. In the junior high wing of my grade K-9 school there was for some reason a science lab which had several jars of like. I assume pig organs. I say assume because honestly the only time I remember going in there for anything other than the Formaldehyde Incident and the surrounding events was my little sister doing a play about time travel of some sort. It was adorable. The Formaldehyde Incident was not.

Obviously the (pig??) organs would have been in formaldehyde or something like that. They were in, like… jam jars. With those screw on lids. This was a stupid way to store things around 11-15 year olds.

One day, when we were doing for some reason group projects on how chocolate is harvested by slave children in South America, my group got the privilege of working in the science lab. The only other girl in my group was named Ashley— who I only really remember a few things about; she was very popular, lactose intolerant, once ate a jar of dollarama slime, and did end up having to go home this one day— was sitting on the science lab counter talking about how best to get the message of Free Trade chocolate being good across. She absent mindedly picked up a jar of (pig????) organs that had been unscrewed by horrible gremlin children one too many times and, apparently, not tightened properly at least once, and began turning it around in her hands.

She did end up turning it upside down and dumping formaldehyde and one (PIG????????) eyeball all over herself. We tried valiantly to disguise that, which was… impossible. Formaldehyde that’s been soaking in (hopefully pig but honestly I don’t know, it could have been the organs of children or something, I don’t know) organs and stirred at by terrible 12 year olds for years has an odour that cannot be disguised by mostly broken water faucets dabbed at with toilet paper. A teacher caught us and sent Ashley home to not be covered in formaldehyde, which honestly was one of the smarter health decisions I ever saw made in that school. Due to the sneaking around I’m not… totally 100% sure she believed that it was an accident. Anyways, water bottles were outlawed very soon afterwards. No proof it was connected, but either way as the junior high hallway didn’t have, like… working water fountains we could no longer drink water in school.

I did end up keeping a can of coke in my locker.

#ask #I don’t think I’ve been asked about that school since the ‘how I learned how to theoretically make meth’ thing so this was fun #or maybe the thing where one child hit another with a crowbar over french vs english supremacy #either way #fucking weird elementary school

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snowbunnywatching · 4 years ago

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The Sins of Her Forefathers

It was Friday night. A young couple was walking down the street, having just seen a movie together. The girl had her blonde hair in ponytail, while the man wore a short-sleeved shirt that showed off the tattoos on his muscular black arms.

Ashley and Darryl had met as a consequence of the country’s new “Racial Justice” laws, designed to compensate for years of discrimination against African-Americans at the hands of white Americans. The laws required colleges to admit an equal number of white and Black students, and Ashley’s roommate had happened to be Darryl’s sister.

***

Ever since the “Racial Justice” laws had been passed, interracial couples like Darryl and Ashley had become more common. The laws included a “reparations tax” levied only on Americans of Caucasian descent. The tax was steep, resulting in white Americans paying European-level taxes, and the revenue was spent giving African-Americans a sizable tax cut.

The laws also included a variety of measures for increasing the social contact between races, and the resulting comparison between Black and white men tended to favor the former. In addition to their natural beauty and superior physique, Black men would usually have a higher income than their white counterparts, making them more attractive as long-term romantic partners.

The laws had left a large percentage of the white male population without a realistic chance of attracting a female partner, while white girls dating Black men saw themselves being invited to restaurants their reparations-taxed income prevented them from frequenting on their own.

***

The men approached Darryl and Ashley as they were walking down an alley.

“What do we have here? A dumb monkey and his little mud diver.”

Ashley’s eyes widened and she pressed herself against Darryl, seeking the comfort of his strong body. He gently pulled her behind him, inserting himself between her and the men.

“Why don’t the two of you go home before anyone gets hurt,” he said calmly.

“Oh, someone’s getting hurt alright,” one of the men said. With a sharp click he opened a switchblade.

Ashley could feel Darryl’s body tense up through his shirt, getting ready for the confrontation.

What happened next happened fast.

The man with the knife lunged at them, stabbing at Darryl with an overhand motion. Darryl countered, blocking the man’s forearm with his own. With his other hand he delivered a precise strike at the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe. He dropped the knife and dropped to his knees while grasping his throat.

The other man attacked seconds later. He landed a blow against the side of Darryl’s face, making him grunt in pain.

Darryl spun around, lifting his leg as if to kick his attacker in the midriff. The man attempted to counter, leaning over slightly and putting his arms down to catch Darryl’s foot. At the last second Darryl lifted his leg a little higher, hitting the face of the man who was now leaning into the kick.

The man collapsed as a rag doll.

“Let’s go,” was all Darryl said, leading Ashley away from the two incapacitated attackers.

***

“Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that just happened.”

Ashley was holding an ice pack against Darryl’s cheekbone, trying to prevent it from swelling. They were at his apartment, with him sitting on the edge of his platform bed and her kneeling on the floor between his legs.

“How can anyone be so... so prejudiced and narrow-minded?” she blurted out.

“Is this news to you?” he said with a shrug. “It’s not the first time I’ve been jumped by racist whitetrash.”

“No, I... I mean, I knew that people like that existed, it was just that...” she trailed off.

“It was just that it wasn’t happening to you,” he finished her sentence.

She looked down, nodding silently.

“Being with you has really opened my eyes to all the shit white people have put you through. I can’t believe that for all these years I had this easy life where the worst thing that could happen was the barista messing up my order.”

She could feel her eyes burning, like she wanted to cry but wouldn’t allow herself to feel the tenderness any man would show a crying woman. This wasn’t about her.

She wanted to say sorry. Sorry for having led such a privileged life while others suffered. Sorry for having so eagerly enjoyed the benefits of a white-dominated society while showing so little interest in who paid for it all. Sorry for all the rotten things people like herself had done to people like Darryl.

She wanted to say sorry for being white.

He put his hand under her chin and lifted her head, letting her meet his gaze.

“It’s okay,” he said, understanding all that could never be said between them.

He kissed her and she kissed him back, eagerly opening her mouth to taste him and to feel at one with him.

He slowly broke the kiss and looked at her with a mischievous look in his eyes.

“What do you say we make this evening end on a high note?”

***

She was lying on her stomach while he was on top of her. He was inside her, filling her up like no man before him ever had. She could feel his weight on her, pressing her into the mattress.

He was thrusting into her, hitting her in places that made her toes curl. With each thrust his weight pushed the air out of her, causing her to moan uncontrollably.

She loved how this made her feel. The sex was great, but there was another factor: She was being pleasured by a Black man. No, scratch that: She was being taken by a Black man.

A century ago a Black man could have been hanged for even holding hands with a white girl. But here she was, letting herself be used like a toy by him.

It felt great, like they were undoing generations of injustice with each thrust.

Darryl hooked his arm around her neck, holding her tight. She could feel how strong he was, and for a moment she thought about how easy it would be for him to really hurt her. But that thought soon left her again. She felt safe with him, safe from the backwards forces that still existed in the world.

The climax was overpowering, stronger even than the usual fireworks-worthy endings Darryl gave her. She clutched the sheets in her hands as every nerve ending inside her exploded in a bright-hot crescendo.

***

He was lying on his back, while she was lying on top of him, resting her head against his chest. The apartment was silent once again, and she could hear his heart pounding, strong and steady.

She closed her eyes, feeling the afterglow of their lovemaking.

But now she also felt something else. She could feel tears pressing against her eyelids. And this time she wouldn’t deny herself feeling his tenderness.

#blacked #blackonwhite #interracial #racial justice #white guilt #story

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revisitedgrunt · 5 years ago

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Motherland: Fort Salem. Episode 1x05: Bellweather Season.

Being completely honest with y'all, this episode ruined me. It's taken me a while and several rewatches to sort out my thoughts and feelings. Now I want to talk about it. I'm going to go scene by scene, so this isn't a rambling stream of consciousness. This will be very long and image heavy.

I find the Unit's dynamics interesting. We've seen them get closer and work together better, but Raelle and Abigail both have strong personalities, and very different life experiences. One wrong word can immediately start a fight. Abigail uses the phrase “the community that matters”, which is incredibly elitist. Raelle, rightly, takes offence and ends up storming out.

The first Raylla scene of the episode. Scylla combines some minor manipulation, which is an attempt to get invited to the wedding with, in my opinion, a real story about her past. I believe everything Scylla has told us about her past. Porter confirmed that her parents died, and in the last two episodes we've seen Scylla start to open up with Raelle. They talk about running away, and less than five minutes into the episode, we get this.

I may, or may not, have let out this really unflattering squeal. Part of me is still amazed by this relationship. Every week I think we've hit the limit on how awesome it can get, and every week I'm proven wrong.

Raelle making a bird skull charm for Scylla is so sweet. I think Scylla's linking spell is going to be very important in the episodes to come. I do wonder if the mark is permanent. I hope not, just for the fact that Scylla permanently marking Raelle, without her permission, is not a nice thing to do.

We get another kiss and Raelle cups Scylla's chin again, which I am a big fan of.

You can see Scylla smiling when she enters her room. She genuinely likes spending time with Raelle. With the way she caresses the bird skull, we can see she's really touched by Raelle's gift.

We're then reminded that the Spree is a terrible organisation, when they threaten Scylla again. I'll probably talk more about the Spree later.

Scylla pretending to be a waitress was smart. However, the smarter play would have been to stay undercover until it was closer to 6pm, as she would have avoided unwanted attention. How much of this was a mistake on her part, and how much was it wanting to spend time with her girlfriend?

I love the lingering fire effect in the hair. It's such a cool detail.

Scylla's adorable little “Hi!” added 10 years to my life.

Raelle being super excited to see Scylla and the banter about the “corsage” was very cute. Raelle proves, once again, that she's a great girlfriend by introducing Scylla to the Bellweathers.

We get more confirmation that Abigail doesn't like Scylla, calling her “Another shitbird.” I believe her antagonism towards Scylla is because she thinks she's a distraction. Abigail thinks if Scylla wasn't around, Raelle would be more invested and involved in the Unit. However, we know this isn't the case, if it wasn't for Scylla, Raelle wouldn't be trying at all. Abigail should be thanking Scylla.

I love world building so I thought the wedding was really interesting. We find out that weddings are a contract that lasts for five years, which explains Abigail's different fathers. I think families like the Bellweathers think this is a way to strengthen their bloodline. The women can have several babies with different fathers, which helps expand the family. I think civilian weddings are still for life. Raelle's mom and dad were still together when Willa died.

What makes a believable relationship for me, is the small things. Not great declarations of love, but how they stand next to each other, how comfortable they seem together, how they look at each other and when they reach for each other. This was a great example of that.

I thought the scenes of Abigail trying to corral her unit were hilarious. She's desperately trying to make a good impression, and they unintentionally embarrass her every time. Scylla's “They have lobster.” and Tally's gasp gave me a good laugh.

Our first scene of Raylla dancing. When I saw the pictures I thought it would be a one and done deal. I should know by now that Motherland: Fort Salem always goes the extra mile when it comes to their wlw couple.

Raelle putting a protective arm in front of Scylla, starting down Anacostia and telling her “She goes where I go. Scylla's my girlfriend.” Just... wow. That was hot. And to illustrate the point, she gives Scylla a long, lingering kiss.

Anacostia v Scylla, round 2. I think Anacostia is incredibly cool, but I'm always gonna have Scylla's back. Scylla tries to protect Raelle and takes the heat for their relationship. Seeing her sass Anacostia was pretty amusing. Then she immediately grabs some drinks.

I'm not sure why Anacostia has a problem with Scylla. Is it the same reason as Abigail, or something different? Is Scylla not a good cadet? Does Anacostia think Scylla will hinder Raelle's performance? Scylla was right though, Raelle did start trying because of her. We also know Raelle is almost always boosted because she's having sex with Scylla.

Jessica Sutton's expressions this episode were perfection.

Every Raylla scene warms my cold, dead heart. How cute are they about the “girlfriend part”! And Scylla dancing Raelle onto the dance floor! And the way Scylla keeps eye contact with Raelle! I just can't!

Look at the smile Scylla gives Raelle!!!

This is a pretty upbeat song and you can see the other dancers energetically dancing. But Raylla are just slow dancing, wanting to be as close to each other as they can. You can also see Raelle has this soft smile on her face. The amount of care and detail Taylor and Amalia put into their scenes together, never fails to amaze me. It's so obvious they want to make this relationship as believable as possible.

Gerit got engaged before Baltane, went to the festival thinking he'd hook up with a girl and give her a power boost, and fell in love. He really does try to tell Tally he's engaged. I just feel sad for the both of them. I'm not really into heterosexual ships, but they were cute. I wonder if this is the end, or if Gerit will break off his engagement. Seeing Tally cry hurt, a lot.

Abigail gets smacked in the face with her privilege. For how different the universe of Motherland is to our own, some things are still very much the same. The rich and powerful will get all the opportunities, whether they deserve them or not. I do respect Abigail for wanting to make it on her own merits and not coast on her name.

I really admire Raelle's courage. She's a first year cadet, but she marches up to General Petra Bellweather and demands answers about her mom. She doesn't get them. Like any good politician, Petra deflects and heaps praise on both Willa and Raelle. It takes the fight out of Raelle, but made me even more angry.

Ashley and Bernadette did a really good job conveying Abigail and Charvel's relationship in the time they were given. They are cousins, but you see they are close and I got a sibling vibe from them. With the advice Charvel gave Abigail throughout the episode, she came across as an older sister. This makes me wonder if Abigail does have actual siblings. Given what we know of the Bellweathers, it would surprise me if Petra only had one child.

Scylla does a really bad job of checking the bathroom.

It's telling to me that Scylla tells the balloon “I need to know she will be safe, once I get her there. Should I wait with her?” I've always believed Scylla had genuine feelings for Raelle, and this is more confirmation. The balloon is clearly not a Raylla shipper.

Tally sees the balloon, and Scylla's cover is blown. I did not expect this to happen so early in the season, or for it to happen this way. Motherland keeps me guessing.

With 5 minutes left to get Raelle to the extraction point, Scylla sees a downhearted Raelle. She makes a half-hearted attempt to complete her mission, but there's no conviction there. She doesn't want to do it. When Raelle asks if they can dance instead, Scylla could have tried to convince Raelle to go for a walk, she didn't. She chose to dance with her. Scylla was scared, Scylla knew she was going fail her mission. She had to make a choice, The Spree or Raelle. She chose Raelle.

Tally telling Anacostia about Scylla was smart. I briefly thought that she might tell Raelle, but that would not have gone well, and doing it at the wedding would not have been the right time. Now Scylla's number one fan has a legitimate reason to not like her.

And now we get to the scene that killed me. I'm not gonna lie, I cried. I don't really get emotional about TV shows, but I've really come to love Raylla and this hit me hard. As soon as that song started playing, I knew I was in trouble. I started to choke up when Scylla remembered the times she'd spent with Raelle. My eyes started to water when I saw how scared she was she'd missed the deadline. When she told Raelle she loved her, I totally lost it. Raelle's smile was the last punch to the heart. I was a complete mess by the end of this scene. We leave the scene with Scylla looking incredibly sad.

This was Scylla saying goodbye to Raelle. She knows she can't stay at Fort Salem, she knows the Spree will come for her. If she doesn't run, she's as good as dead. I really hope that this episode alleviated any doubts anyone still had about Scylla. It is now absolutely clear that she loves Raelle.

Fortunately the next scene was much more upbeat and light hearted. Joking, we find out Charvel has been murdered, brutally. Most of her throat has been cut out. The effects were excellent and very gory. Abigail is ambushed by two Spree members and we see that they can nullify a witches abilities, when Abigail tries to Windstrike them and nothing happens.

Things go from bad to worse.

I'm not sure if this was always the plan, or a backup in case Scylla failed. My opinion was this was always the plan, and was set up to distract people so they wouldn't realise Raelle and Scylla had disappeared.

The witches summon a tornado and disable the balloons. The tornado looked pretty big and I thought back to the witch in episode 1 who was controlling 6 tornadoes at once. That seemed pretty powerful at the time, but I remember them being small, so I assume if they combine their power, they can summon bigger tornados.

Petra finds Abigail just in time to stop her daughter getting murdered.

During a well choreographed fight scene, we are reminded that these women are soldiers. Even without “the work” they are trained in hand to hand combat. We see both Abigail and Petra are good fighters. Abigail has a very badass moment here, after getting stabbed, she pulls out the knife and uses it on her attacker.

The Spree members set themselves on fire, so they can't be questioned, which is par for the course for fanatics. I had expressed sympathy for the Spree before. I said their cause was just as they were trying to liberate witches. I even understood them killing civilians, the civilian Government is the body forcing them to join the army, or be hunted. However, it now seems the Spree are equally terrible towards other witches. They brutally murder Charvel, a fellow witch and threaten Scylla's life if she doesn't do exactly what they say. At this point I say screw the army and the Spree, I want the Unit and Scylla to form a third faction.

In all the confusion, Scylla disappears. I think we’re meant to believe that she ran, but I think it’s more likely Anacostia grabbed her, as she is noticeable absent during the Spree attack. I think Scylla is probably in some secret dungeon at Fort Salem, and we'll get to see just what that mark she put on Raelle actually does.

The episode ends with the Unit comforting each other.

It's interesting that in some way, each member of the Unit experienced a loss this episode. Abigail lost her cousin, Tally lost her first love and some of her innocence, and Raelle lost the girl she's fallen madly in love with. Hopefully they'll continue to support each other as they heal.

The sheer amount of Raylla in this episode was unbelievable. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say their scenes from this single episode, would probably cover 6 episodes on any other show, if we’re lucky. I'll keep saying it, I have never seen a show give a wlw couple this amount of time, care and respect.

It seems like we may not see them together for a while. I'm OK with that. We've had so much content over the last five episodes, more than I have seen in any other show. And remember, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Imagine the amazing scene we'll get when they reunite. Taylor and Amalia will knock that out of the park.

I thought this was the best episode so far, and one of the best hours of TV I've ever seen. This had the perfect mix of world building, humor, sadness, tenseness, action and romance. This show is such a gift and I can never thank the cast and crew enough for it.

#motherland fort salem #motherland: fort salem #raelle collar #scylla ramshorn #raylla #abigail bellweather #tally craven #anacostia quartermaine

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rockislandadultreads · 3 years ago

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New Psychological Fiction: Thrillers & Mysteries

The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell

They are the families considered worthy of a listing in the exclusive Green Book—a discriminative diary created by the niece of Edith Roosevelt’s social secretary. Their aristocratic bloodlines are woven into the very fabric of Washington—generation after generation. Their old money and manner lurk through the cobblestone streets of Georgetown, Kalorama, and Capitol Hill. They only socialize within their inner circle, turning a blind eye to those who come and go on the political merry-go-round. These parents and their children live in gilded existences of power and privilege. But what they have failed to understand is that the world is changing. And when the family of one of their own is held hostage and brutally murdered, everything about their legacy is called into question. They’re called The Cave Dwellers.

The Push by Ashley Audrain

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter–she doesn’t behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son Sam is born–and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews

Florence Darrow is a small-town striver who believes that she's destined to become a celebrated writer. When she stumbles into the opportunity to become the assistant to "Maud Dixon," a celebrated-but anonymous-novelist (think: Elena Ferrante), she believes that the universe is finally providing her big chance. The arrangement feels idyllic; Helen can be prickly, but she is full of pointed wisdom on both writing and living. She even invites Florence along on a research trip to Morocco, where her new novel is set. Florence has never been out of the country before; maybe, she imagines, she'll finally have something exciting to write about herself. But when Florence wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car crash, and Helen is dead, she begins to imagine what it might be like to 'upgrade' into not only Helen's life, but also that of Helen's bestselling pseudonym, Maud Dixon...

The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon

Be careful what you wish for. When social worker Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister, Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax arrives at the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property. And as she dives deeper into the research herself, she discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she could have ever imagined. In 1929, thirty-seven-year-old newlywed Ethel Monroe hopes desperately for a baby. In an effort to distract her, her husband whisks her away on a trip to Vermont, where a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the Northeast. Once there, Ethel learns that the water is rumored to grant wishes, never suspecting that the spring takes in equal measure to what it gives.

#new books #fiction #thrillers #thriller #mystery #mysteries #mystery books #scary #thrilling #psychological fiction #adult fiction #to read #tbr #currently reading #book recs #library #booklr #book list

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curlyhairedbibliophile · 4 years ago

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The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed || ARC Review

Synopsis | Los Angeles, 1992 Ashley Bennett and her friends are living the charmed life. It’s the end of senior year and they’re spending more time at the beach than in the classroom. They can already feel the sunny days and endless possibilities of summer. Everything changes one afternoon in April, when four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death. Suddenly, Ashley’s not just one of the girls. She’s one of the black kids. As violent protests engulf LA and the city burns, Ashley tries to continue on as if life were normal. Even as her self-destructive sister gets dangerously involved in the riots. Even as the model black family façade her wealthy and prominent parents have built starts to crumble. Even as her best friends help spread a rumor that could completely derail the future of her classmate and fellow black kid, LaShawn Johnson. With her world splintering around her, Ashley, along with the rest of LA, is left to question who is the us? And who is the them?

REVIEW

*Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Hear Our Voices Book Tours for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes included may change in final publication.*

“When you go out there in the world, you’re not just you, Ashley,” my grandmother Opal said one summer while she braided my hair into four long strands that she embellished with yellow ribbons, “you’re all of us, your family, black folks. You have to be better than those white kids around you. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.”

From the moment I saw this cover in connection to historical fiction set in 1992 I knew this was something I not only wanted to read, but HAD to read. I’m always slightly hesitant when it comes to reading titles based on familiar events that feel close to home as someone that absorbs book as a means to escape the world, but I make exceptions when something feels too important to pass up. The Black Kids was definitely one of those cases. I had already formed a connection based on the little information I knew that I owed it to myself to see this through to the end – no matter how triggering I thought it could get.

We have to walk around being perfect all the time just to be seen as human. Don’t you ever get tired of being a symbol? Don’t you ever just want to be human?

This was a very relevant story that I wish was solely a matter of fiction and not something that continues to go on even to this day. I was only 4 at the time of the Rodney King riots, but his is usually the first name that comes to mind when I think of police brutality outside of the more recent occurrences that continue to grow. It both saddened and angered me that all it would take was a switch of the names and locations and this could have easily been another current event or trending topic on social media. For example, I had to fight with my brain to not substitute Rodney King for George Floyd or Latasha Harlins for Breonna Taylor (SIDE NOTE: It’s still mind-boggling to me that her killers are still freely roaming the streets – fix that NOW!! 😡) So much of the characters’ actions and emotions brought to mind events that have taken place just within the last few months that I had to keep reminding myself of the time period. This is where it was the most enkindling for me, as I connected with so much of the raw emotion on the page.

How do I tell people I barely know that I’m angry and sad, but also embarrassed? That I feel that anger along my spine, holding up the very shape of me, and in my fingertips like a curled fist. That the sadness is like a dull ache, heavy in the muscles fighting to keep my head up. That I feel ashamed that black people are both the agents and victims of this chaos, and I don’t want to be thought of like that. But I’m also ashamed of myself for thinking I’m somehow better. The shame I feel in my guts, pulsing, spiraling; but also everything feels very far away. I’m black, but my black is different from that of those rioters on TV.

I really appreciated the storytelling vibe with this one. It felt a tad slow at first, but it was nice to live with the characters for a bit and learn their dynamic before the action eased in. The overall tone came across as if recounting a story with an old friend, which made it that much more personal for me. I could definitely sense and connect to Ashley's struggles in the beginning as the only Black girl in her inner circle, in both realizing that life moves differently for her in comparison to her friends and fighting to speak up while also thinking she has to be mindful of the opinions and feelings of those around her. She has her questionable actions, but that made her moves towards growth in the second half that much better. I always love experiencing a character's journey into discovering themselves, and though she might still be finding her footing, I was proud of who Ashley was becoming by the story's end.

"We're here. We're alive, and we got each other. We keep surviving. That's not nothing, right?" Morgan whispers. "Not nothing," Jo whispers back.

All in all, this was such an important and beautifully written read. Though it ended on a hopeful note, the feeling was bittersweet as I look at the lines I was able to connect while reading and realize that there's still so much work to be done. As painful as this was to read at times, it's definitely a conversation that needs to be had - not just for other kids (and adults as well) like Ashley exploring their blackness in connection to the spaces they inhabit, but from a standpoint of understanding for those who have the privilege of walking through the world differently. I look forward to the discussions that take place once this is released and reading more from this author in the future.

Rating | 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Goodreads

#the black kids #christina hammonds reed #lucy ruth cummins #rodney king riots #historical fiction #racism #blackness #arc review #book review #book tours #black authors #black women authors #own voices #booklr #bookblr

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kelyon · 3 years ago

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TMI question about the Lewis family in Golden Rings. I was wondering since who the Lewis family were before the curse, and what about Storybrooke gives them a cursed unhappiness?

So the show didn't give us much about them (including names.) The characters are just narrative foils for Jefferson--the neighbors he has Grace stay with when he goes to Wonderland become Paige's parents in Storybrooke.

I've done away with the karmic torture aspect of the curse (for Jefferson, at least). He doesn't lose Grace because he left her behind, it's just the curse and the curse sucks for everyone.

I did keep from the show the idea that Grace is more or less happy--and the fact that watching her happiness doesn't make life easier for Jefferson. The Lewises have enough privilege to shelter her from most of Storybrooke's hardships. Since Tim and Mia are still only important in their role as Paige's caretakers, we don't know much about them.

But there are some hints at cracks in the facade of middle class suburban paradise. In Chapter 11, Lacey mentions that Tim has a debt to Mr. Gold that he pays extra to keep Mia from knowing about. Maybe business isn't as good as Tim says it is? Maybe Tim has some expensive hobbies that he's making sure stay a secret? (I haven't planned any of this out, but it's all possible.)

Also the fact that Paige is adopted could be considered sad. They've had to deal with infertility, she had to deal with not knowing her birth parents. There could be drama and turmoil there. (As a birth mom, I don't want to cast adoption in any kind of bad light--but there are a lot of emotions on all sides.)

One thing I did put in on purpose is the idea that Tim and Mia were going to adopt Ashley Boyd's baby before Emma convinced Gold to change the deal. So that could also be a sad thing--Paige wanted a little sister, but now that isn't possible.

You never know what's behind the surface of even happy families.

#golden rings #tmi tuesday #on a wednesday

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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We'll Be Lovers for Sure, 2/2 (Scyvie) - Ashley

It’s the final year of sixth form and stress levels are high for Yvie as she balances school work, Uni applications and her “part-time” job in a kids activity centre. However, things only get worse when her boss decides to hire his privately educated, definition of privilege daughter, Scarlet, as their marketing assistant and she rubs Yvie up the completely wrong way. Until, of course, she doesn’t. (Read Part 1 here)

Thanks again to Grapefruit and Ortega for all the help xxx

Throughout her eight years of education, Scarlet had only ever been late twice: once in year five when her Dad’s car had gotten stuck in the snow and they had to push it out of the drive, then again in year twelve when Pearl left her phone in the Urban Outfitters changing rooms on their free and made Scarlet drive her back to get it. It was her ultimate pet hate. Which was why she felt like the biggest dick on the planet standing in the hallway of her sister’s dance school furiously peeking her head through windows at the grand time of seven fifty-two, almost twenty-five minutes after she was due to meet Yvie.

“I’m so so so so sorry, I’ll be there soon xx”

She typed quickly as she paced the halls, no time to think and stress over how many kisses to send or whether she should have added emojis like she normally would have. If Yvie was difficult to read in person, Scarlet had discovered over the past week that she was even harder to understand over text as they’d gone over the plan for their date. A plan that was currently unravelling like a broken cassette tape before her eyes, too far gone to wind back up by the time she found her sister.

“Oooh, you look nice!” Lemon exclaimed as she left the studio, already trailing behind as Scarlet did her best attempt at power walking back to her car.

“You were supposed to be done forty-five minutes ago!” Scarlet could feel her face starting to sweat with stress, worried about how awful her makeup would look by the time she met Yvie. If Yvie was still even there. “I told you to be on time, I have plans!”

“Sorry, rehearsal just ran over and I couldn’t leave. Can I have the AUX?”

Scarlet pressed her foot on the accelerator an ounce more than she normally would, looking frantically in her mirror. “No! And you can tell Dad that I’m never picking you up ever again.”

Before Lemon could start her usual monologue about the hardships of life as a talented dancer the pair were interrupted by the ringing of Scarlet’s phone.

Shit.

“Answer it and put it on speaker.” She snapped to her sister, taking a deep breath before she addressed Yvie. “Hey, I’m so sorry about being late, I’ll be there as quickly as I can, just give me five minutes.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, I’m just gonna head home.”

Scarlet almost slammed the breaks then and there. She knew Yvie so she knew that she wasn’t fine, she was the absolute antithesis of fine. What a way to fuel the hatred train back up again - did they give out trophies for these sorts of things? If they did she certainly deserved one, imagining her pathetic figure made of gold resin, holding a tiny clock and bottle of Coke Zero with the title “Best at Getting Your Crush To Despise You” engraved on a plaque underneath. They could plop it on top of her grave. Or maybe Lemon’s, depending of course on how much her sister would grovel after this.

“No, no, I’m coming.” Scarlet made the executive decision to take a left turn on the roundabout rather than right, heading straight for the centre of town and jabbing Lemon in the ribs with her elbow as she tried to pipe up.

“It’s fine, I’m just leaving the restaurant now. I really don’t feel up for this anymore, it was stupid anyway.”

“Yvie, I’m literally around the corner. Please can you wait?” Scarlet didn’t care how desperate she sounded because that’s exactly what she was, she’d write it on her forehead and scream it from the top of her lungs if she had to (she hoped she didn’t have to but would still take all means necessary if they were required).

“Are you literally around the corner? Is it written in a book word for word? That would be a terrible book, I don’t know who’s reading that.”

Scarlet didn’t know whether Yvie’s sarcasm was a good or bad sign but kept going anyway.

“Well I apologise for my use of the word to the English student in you but I am very close.” Scarlet scanned the street, spotting Yvie’s tall frame and dark hair storming down the road in front of her, pulling off double-denim in a cool and effortless way that no one else could even try to compete with. “In fact, I can literally see you.”

Scarlet pulled up to the curb and hung up, telling Lemon to keep her trap shut for a moment as she waited for Yvie to approach the car, a sense of deja vu filling her at the thought of chasing down a stomping Yvie in her car. God, she must look like a psychopath sometimes.

“Hello.” Yvie peered in the window, looking between the two sisters awkwardly, clearly too cautious to give Scarlet whatever rant she had been planning in her head for the past half an hour in front of her sister. Scarlet was almost grateful for her presence before remembering that she wouldn’t be in such a mess if it weren’t for Lemon in the first place.

“You look beautiful.” She simply stated, the thought coming out of her mouth just as fast as it had popped into her mind in the first place when she saw Yvie’s face; her cheeks glowing with blush and her eyes enhanced by the most meticulously placed false lashes. Scarlet wanted to ask Yvie how she managed to put them on without them popping off or looking stupid like whenever she tried but figured it was a conversation to be saved for when she wasn’t fighting for her right to date. “Get in the back?”

Half expecting Yvie to walk away, Scarlet felt a wave of relief wash over her windscreen when Yvie reached for the handle and plonked herself into Scarlet’s backseat. Explaining why she was late and why her sister was still in the car, Scarlet glanced at Yvie’s face in the rearview mirror as she spoke.

“I didn’t want you to leave so I just came as fast as I could. We can drop this little shit home then go back out?” Scarlet finished, overjoyed when Yvie finally nodded her head and mumbled in agreement.

“Now that that’s over, I have so many questions.” Yvie turned her head to Lemon, placing a hand on the back of her seat. “Has Scarlet always been like this?”

“Excuse me! Like what?” Scarlet squealed in response, pretending to be annoyed but unable to keep the smile off of her face at the return of the Yvie she knew so fondly.

“Yes.” Lemon turned her head to the back. “I have so many stories you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh my god, Scarlet. Can she stay?”

“She most certainly cannot.” Scarlet gave her sister a warning look that told her exactly how much of that grovelling would be necessary if she told even the prologue of an embarrassing childhood story. She would squeeze her sister to a pulp, no pun intended.

At least she wouldn’t have to do her half of the house jobs when she got home that night.

“I like her!” Lemon grinned before facing Yvie again.

“Fantastic.” Scarlet shook her head, listening as her sister and her date/enemy/crush/friend with benefits carried on bonding for the rest of the journey, Yvie nearly shattering the window with her cackle after Lemon told her about the Youtube channel Scarlet had tried to start in year nine. A part of Scarlet’s body warmed at their conversation, an image of Yvie sitting in the spare seat at the dining table for a family meal materialising in her head before she could try and shoo it away (she wasn’t even fully certain that Yvie even liked her as a person yet never mind wanted to become an honorary team member during their games night). However, that certainly didn’t mean she wasn’t happy to see the back of Lemon once they pulled up the house and Yvie made her way to the passenger seat instead.

“Hi.” Yvie turned to face her, the car still parked in front of Scarlet’s gates, not ready to pull away just yet.

“Hello.” Scarlet laughed, breathing every ounce of Yvie in that she hadn’t been able to reach earlier.

“Your sister’s nice. Like a younger version of you, except cool.”

Scarlet shot a pointed look Yvie’s way, something she had done many times in this position, Yvie firing shady comments from her passenger seat whilst she tried her best to keep living her fantasy. Only this time was different, gone was Yvie’s uniform and the guise of a lift home, she was categorically and undeniably there just to spend time with Yvie, to bask in her presence. And Yvie felt…the same? Scarlet didn’t know for sure, but the dark lips on Yvie’s lips told her at least one thing, she had made an effort. And it paid so much more than minimum wage.

“You don’t think I’m cool?” She grinned, ready for whatever read was coming her way.

“The opposite.” Yvie leaned across the centre console, her hand delicate in Scarlet’s freshly curled hair as she pulled her in for a kiss.

Getting herself carried away, it took Scarlet a few minutes to pull away, taking a breath she hadn’t realised she needed.

“So you’re not mad at me anymore?”

“I won’t be if you drive us somewhere with food,” Yvie replied, pouting her lips like a toddler - Scarlet saw how she’d already started to rub off on the other girl, subtle traits sticking to Yvie’s skin like perfume.

“I see how it is!” She turned the keys and set off to drive, pretending to be offended but secretly doing mental cartwheels (or whatever her attempt at a cartwheel would look like) at the thought that Yvie would rather spend time speaking to her than just hooking up in the car. Of course Scarlet really liked the sex, maybe going as far to say she adored it. But it didn’t make her giddy like sitting across Yvie in a secluded booth did, hiding her blush by taking deep dives into her fishbowl every time Yvie made her laugh or said something a tad too flirty than normal (which averaged to around once every two and a half minutes if Scarlet’s awful maths brain was of any use).

“Are you looking forward to moving away next year?” Scarlet had asked her, three drinks and a shared platter of nachos later.

“I told you, I haven’t gotten in yet. You need to stop speaking like it’s definite.” Yvie tapped a finger to Scarlet’s wrist before pointing it back in her face, the contact sending the fizzy bubbles from Scarlet’s drink right into her veins, flowing from her head to the tip of her toes.

“Oh my god, you’re gonna get in.” Scarlet looked into her eyes, grateful for her decision to wear contacts so she could see them, really see them - big brown pools of melted chocolate that glistened under the restaurant lighting.

“That’s easy for you to say, Miss I pay five grand a year for my education. I’m not building my hopes up, I don’t even know anyone black who’s applied nevermind gotten in before.”

Scarlet took the chance to hold her hand, her way of telling Yvie that she deserved it, that she was the hardest worker she knew. She deserved it all, everything and more.

“I don’t know about you,” Scarlet told herself to let go but couldn’t. “But that is not the determined Yvie I know, the one who would call out anyone for not giving one hundred to everything. You’re going, I know you are.”

“Thanks,” Yvie spoke quietly, her voice wavering a little before releasing a cough into her elbow and shaking herself off.

“Say it! You’re going.” Scarlet smiled. “If you don’t I’ll get another drink and get even more annoying. Four drink Scarlet likes to sing, you know?”

“I’m going,” Yvie repeated, giving Scarlet’s hand a tight squeeze. “And yeah, I am looking forward to it. It’s just a shame that I’ll be leaving some things behind.”

And when they had sex that night it was different. Not better. Not worse. Just different. Something extra in every touch, every movement, every look. The way they held each other when it was over, Scarlet curling up and nuzzling her head into Yvie’s chest before she fell asleep. The fact she was still like that once she woke, taking a risk by looking up and planting a quick peck on Yvie’s jawline, a term of endearment they hadn’t quite reached before. Scarlet danced clumsily on the line between friends with benefits and people who were actually dating, hoping that if she fell over to one side that Yvie would catch her. And she did, returning the kiss with another one planted on Scarlet’s forehead, strings tying them together that they didn’t know if they fully wanted yet but couldn’t untangle anymore.

Then other people started to see them too, the strings growing into a thicker rope, pulling them towards each other in one big tug of war.

“I hope you don’t mind but I told the girls from work about us,” Yvie announced from Scarlet’s desk one night, not turning around to look at Scarlet who was completing her own reading cross-legged on the bed.

Scarlet dropped her highlighter with surprise, leaving a pastel pink line on her duvet that she pretended not to notice till later.

“What did you say?”

Scarlet wasn’t a stranger to how Yvie had felt about her, remembering all the times she heard her making digs over the walkie talkies to the other girls when they thought she couldn’t hear. She tried to brush that off now, knowing that Yvie had transparent walls around herself, hidden to the naked eye - luckily Scarlet was confident in herself enough to trust her heart, to know that she wasn’t delusional and that the feelings she could see spilling from Yvie’s pores were real, even if she did tell her mother she was staying at Nina’s house every time she slept over.

“That we have sex?” She added quickly before Yvie could reply, a tiny part of her doubting her thoughts, resulting in one of Yvie’s mighty cartoon villain laughs.

“No, they knew that ages ago.” Yvie swivelled the chair around to give Scarlet a puzzling look. “I mean it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you don’t need two people to clean the disabled

toilet. And it doesn’t take that long.”

“Oh my god, you said we wouldn’t talk about that.” Scarlet felt her skin shiver at how nasty they had been that day, blaming Yvie for wearing new leggings when she had pulled her away near the start of her shift.

“Sorry.” Yvie held her hands up. “But yeah, I’m pretty sure they already knew we were fucking just not…” Yvie paused for a second, pursing her lips as she searched for the right words. “Hanging out, as well.”

“I see.” Scarlet shut her book, already way too distracted to regain focus. “So every time I told Priyanka we were going to Greggs and she asked me to bring her back a sausage roll she was just taking the piss? I’ve told her they’d ran out four times now!”

“You’re an idiot.” Yvie joined Scarlet in pushing the studying aside and slid onto the bed beside her.

“But you love it,” Scarlet replied, her mind too mushy at the news to consider her word choice, noticing how Yvie’s head jolted a touch once it had come out.

“Well, I just thought I’d tell them so it wasn’t awkward if you came to my birthday…Which you don’t have to attend if you don’t want to.” Yvie brought the conversation back on track, speaking matter of factly in a way that Scarlet had just grown to relish in. “But I kind of want you to.”

“Well, it’s a good job that I want to too then, isn’t it?” Scarlet grabbed her phone, trying her best to act coy as she composed a manic all caps message to her group chat, demanding assistance on an urgent, dress buying mission.

***

On Yvie’s tenth birthday she went to the cinema and discovered the magic of mixing sweets and chocolate in the box with the popcorn, something which she still did as a teenager every time she managed to convince Brooke to see the latest horror with her. On her sixteenth she drank cheap cider in the park and had her first real kiss, laughing all the way home while Nina asked one-hundred and one questions as if Yvie was some sort of make out messiah. Although she always brushed it off as something unimportant, Yvie adored the bubbles of excitement that fizzed inside of her every time her birthday rolled around. And her eighteenth was no exception.

“You didn’t have to.” She hugged the photo frame to her chest, smothering her friends’ faces into the dark fabric of her top, knowing fine well that they’d already put some money towards Yvie’s share of their girls trip payments. She had the best friends in the world.

“So you don’t miss us too much at Uni.” Brooke grinned at her.

There was another person she’d disappoint when she failed and didn’t move away, cleaning up ice cream for the rest of her life. Yvie had only been eighteen for nineteen hours and was already feeling the crippling reality of adulthood.

Scarlet must have noticed because she rested a hand on Yvie’s wrist, a simple gesture that wouldn’t have read much to anyone else but Yvie felt under her skin and tissue and down to her bones. With her hair let loose behind her back and a shimmer of gold on her eyes, Yvie couldn’t have hated her one bit.

“You look…nice.” She’d told Scarlet when she walked into her house, a bottle of what Yvie assumed to be champagne in her hand (she couldn’t read the label but figured Scarlet wasn’t one for prosecco).

“Get you! Learning how to compliment.” Scarlet had pulled her into a hug and Yvie saw a supercut of every contact they’d ever made. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Scarlet had probably been right (as much as Yvie hated admitting when she was right). Because every time she’d gone to tell Scarlet how she felt, an arrow of quick wit and insult humour had fired from her tongue, a barrier that forever stopped her from being the weak black girl some people expected her to be. Whatever it was they had it wasn’t perfect, but when Scarlet touched her wrist she was reminded for a second how grateful she was for it. How much she’d grown to need it.

Things only better as the night went on; the girls from work arrived and showered Yvie with love and homemade jager bombs. Priyanka even managed to say hello to Brooke without her eyes falling out of her head and her tongue dropping to the floor, earning herself a pat on the back from Heidi, who was celebrating Yvie’s birthday as if it was her own now that she’d never have to lend her ID out ever again (something that she reminded everyone of at least once every half an hour). Scarlet seemed to be having fun too, bonding with Nina over their shared love of visiting New York at Christmas and their bad dancing skills. It felt normal, almost too normal.

“She’s not as bad as you say she is.” Nina piped up once they were in their Uber, free from Scarlet and her burning ears for at least five minutes.

“She was pouring champagne into Vanjie’s mouth.” Yvie laughed. “Actual champagne!”

“Why did you invite her if you don’t like her so much then?”

Nina knew what she was asking. And Yvie knew the answer. Suddenly she was brought back to that day two years earlier, the kiss she’d shared with a girl from the year above, their legs dangling from the kid’s jungle gym with the whole town below them.

“Is she, like, the one?” Nina had asked, talking at a rate of knots as they walked home.

“I don’t know.” Yvie made an attempt to brush her off. It failed.

“Did you feel butterflies? Like your heart racing and all that stuff.”

“Nah, none of that,” Yvie replied. “It was nice but I didn’t feel any of that crazy stuff.”

She was pretty sure that stuff was made up to boost romance novel sales anyways, but didn’t really fancy tearing her best friend down for the cloud fantasy she was living in.

“Well, she mustn’t be the one for you then.” Nina had linked her arm by that point, using her other hand to shine her phone torch on the ground below. “God, I get butterflies when anyone even looks at me! You’ll find someone who gives them to you soon, don’t worry.”

Yvie didn’t think she would. And if she did she didn’t really think it would be her rich boss’s daughter who played lacrosse and wrote revision notes like she was being tested on her penmanship. Yet there they were, flying around her stomach like they were on acid. She didn’t know when the stupid things had hatched from their cocoons but they certainly had - there wasn’t any turning back.

“Why don’t you tell her?” Brooke snapped Yvie back to reality, apparently not too busy grilling the driver for his life story to join in with the ambush.

Yvie didn’t bother asking what. Or answering her for that matter, instead, shrugging her shoulders in a simple way that utterly contrasted the web of complicated thoughts and debates her brain was sifting through.

“Whatever.” Nina opened the door and released her back into the wild, where the others waited on the pavement and Scarlet gave her a kooky smile that Yvie really really really wished she hated. Only she didn’t, Nina’s words running through her head when she decided that maybe it’d be a good night to just say “fuck it” and let everything spill out.

“Can I talk to you?” Yvie placed a gentle hand on her wrist, her voice hushed under the racket of her drunken friends.

“Oh.” Scarlet raised a brow, Yvie’s sincerity being mistaken for something very different in her head. “Right now? We’re about to go inside!”

“No, I didn’t mean-” Yvie started but found herself interrupted by the great Silky holler that she was now fluent enough to understand meant “Hurry up I need a drink down my neck or I’m gonna start on someone pronto”. Silky didn’t get hangry, she got thangry. And no one liked it when Silky felt thangry.

“Saved by the yell.” Scarlet giggled as they followed in tow, letting her hand fall down and dance across Yvie’s skin ever so slightly. Normally she’d berate her for making such a terrible pun but Yvie was too busy thinking about that hand and that smile and the person behind it.

“Come on.” She felt a tug on her wrist as she entered, following the arm in question to see an eager Priyanka at the other end. “Time to get you absolutely smashed.”

And absolutely smashed Yvie got. If the five shots that Priyanka bought her didn’t do it, then the cocktail pitchers she wouldn’t even remember anyone buying her the next day certainly did (even if she did spill an entire half of one when Silky insisted she jump on her back and pretend to be a human wrecking ball - the bouncers loved that one). One hand in Jaida’s and the other pointed to the ceiling, Yvie could have sworn she touched the sky for a moment as she looked across at all the people who she cared about her having the night of their lives. Brooke playing fake stubborn as Vanessa pouted and begged for her to go up and request their song for the second time that night. Heidi and Priyanka waving to the crowds around them like the absolute idiots they were. Nina, clearly simping over a girl from across the room without any intention of going up to speak to her. But Yvie couldn’t judge - there she was feeling the blood rush through her body that little bit faster the moment Scarlet came back to their group after saying hello to her school friends. Yvie had fallen way too far for any of them to lend a hand. She’d dug the grave and maybe it was time to grab a pillow and a nice book so she could at least lie there in comfort.

Holding two fingers to her mouth and making eye contact, Yvie was on her way outside with Scarlet before she knew it, hand in hand as they pushed their way through the crowds. She wondered if that would ever feel normal, Scarlet’s fingers clasped around hers just like the first time.

“What’s up with you?” Scarlet asked once they found a seat, the air dark and breezy around them. If Yvie had had a jacket she’d have popped it around her back, noticing even in her drunken state that the hairs on Scarlet’s arm were standing up, a tiny chatter in her teeth with every word. “You’re being really nice tonight.”

“It is my birthday.” Yvie laughed, feeling the blush race to her cheeks. God, she was even worse than Nina.

“It’s still weird. It’s unnerving me.”

“Do you want me to be rude to you?” Yvie laughed, even more, opting to place her hands on either side of Scarlet’s arms, rubbing up and down to keep her warm after feeling her body shake.

“If you’re rude to me then you won’t get your present.”

Yvie didn’t know what to think. She’d stalked Scarlet and her friends enough on Instagram to know what birthday presents meant: Swarovski bracelets, Vivienne Westwood earrings and Tiffany necklaces. They did it all and the thought was terrifying.

“I told you not to spend any money on me.” Yvie flashed back to the day she invited Scarlet, highlighting the “no presents just presence” part of the offer.

“I didn’t.” Scarlet leaned in and kissed her cheek, not caring who was around and watching. Yvie would feel the sticky mark from her gloss all night and even the next morning, she wished later that she’d wiped it off then and there before everything came tumbling down and how she looked was the last thing on her mind.

“I’m sure you didn’t.” Yvie rolled her eyes, thinking of how many times she’d watched Scarlet tap down her contactless debit at any opportunity. The smell of the new handbags was basically her opium. But Yvie didn’t care, Scarlet’s weekly shopping trips became a quirk of hers that Yvie found herself starting to love that touch more than she hated. If she didn’t get her place at Uni she could always just stay in that grave she’d dug, it was becoming more and more like home by the second.

“I was gonna tell you later when we’re sober and not in the middle of the smoking area but…” Scarlet grabbed her phone and started scrolling, a childlike grin on her face that was normally only reserved for her giddiest moments.

At first, Yvie didn’t take in what Scarlet was showing her, the writing a bit fuzzy beyond her beer goggles and Scarlet saying far too many words at once for her to process.

“Naomi’s cousin did it and I thought it would help you out but I know how stubborn and busy you are and didn’t want you to have anything more on your plate so I did all the application and stuff for you. There’s a reference from my Dad and one of your essays then you just had to answer some questions about where you live and stuff like that then you got the lower offer…”

She kept talking but Yvie zoned out, her eyes focusing on the words “supported progression” and “increasing diversity”. But then the words blurred even more and Yvie didn’t even realise it was because she was crying until it was too late to fight.

“Hey.” Scarlet wiped away at her cheeks, her hands even colder than before as Yvie felt her body starting to burn. “It’s alright, we’ll talk about it later.”

“You think I need handouts?” Yvie wanted so badly to look at her but couldn’t, screwing her eyes shut instead where nothing was spinning and she couldn’t see the way Scarlet’s face changed before her.

“No, no. You’ve got it wrong. I just saw how stressed you were and knew it would help you. Look Yvie, they lowered your grades. It’s a great opportunity. Let’s just carry on with our night, yeah? I shouldn’t have shown you now.”

And suddenly everything poured out of Yvie’s lips. The time a customer at work had made a complaint about her tone of voice and unnecessary anger. The time a boy in year eight had told her she was pretty for a black girl. Every single time an ignorant white girl thought they were single-handedly destroying racism by picking her for their team in rounders and using her as some sort of diversity token. She felt it all, her eyes still shut so she was speaking to all of them and not just Scarlet.

“You think this is a present? Helping the black girl from the council estate get a lower Uni offer cause she needs a step up to be like everyone else?”

“Yvie, no. That’s not why I did it. I was trying to help.” Yvie could hear her voice breaking but didn’t want to look, couldn’t let herself look.

“I didn’t ask for your help.” She tried to fight it but Yvie didn’t let her, the thought of Scarlet filling those forms in replaying in her mind. She wondered how many boxes she’d checked, how close she was to not being poor enough or not being black enough to get rejected from the scheme. She thought about the people like Scarlet who went to private school and never had to work a day in their lives with their shiny new offers, she wondered if they’d think that was the only reason she got there, she needed a hand up to get to their level.

“I opened so much to you.” Yvie clenched her fists and somehow managed to draw blood. “It might not seem like it but I fucking did Scarlet, I thought you understood.”

“I do, I promise. It’s like those female-only MP spots we talked about, remember? You said they were cool. I’m sorry, I should have spoken to you, come back inside.”

Yvie finally opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t; because Scarlet looked like someone had murdered a puppy right before her and she wanted nothing more to do than to hold her and tell her everything would be okay. But it wasn’t. So she couldn’t. She’d known from the start that they were from different worlds and hated herself at that moment for believing any different. This wasn’t Scarlet’s fault, it was her own.

“I didn’t mean to, Yves. Please don’t hate me.” Scarlet could sense Yvie’s anger, shivering still in her spot as Yvie stood up to leave.

Yvie wanted to laugh. Two hours earlier she’d decided tonight was the night she’d tell Scarlet that she might have accidentally fallen in love with her. Yet there she was, Scarlet’s lip gloss sticky on her cheek with her shoes in her hand, ready to run as far away as she could till the world around her stopped spinning and she wasn’t hurting anymore.

“I really wished I did.”

She didn’t turn around to see Scarlet’s reaction, those five words ringing in her head all the way home and keeping her awake whilst the sky turned into pinks and reds and oranges. They stayed there for months, a thousand other things she could have said mounting in her brain over time all to be pushed aside by those words that followed her. She heard them behind the blaring music when she went to hand in her notice at work, hidden in the muffled cry that Heidi made as they hugged to the future. She saw them in the exam hall that June, written on the bricks in chalk all around before she had the chance to turn over her paper, reminding her of every single thing she’d sacrificed for that moment. They followed her into summer as the sun shone brighter and the nights got longer, there to tease her on the day her biggest dream came true when she opened her envelope and her first thought was that she wanted to tell Scarlet.

That feeling still lingered the week after results day, where most people were still celebrating, rolling into their houses at four in the morning with the childhood friends they’d soon have to take three trains to visit, savouring every last moment of those precious months where they would have absolutely zero responsibilities to their name.

Yvie wished she was one of those people, alternatively finding herself cramped on the bus in a slightly too tight white shirt, ready for her third job interview that month. She wished was chilling in Brooke’s room instead like the rest of her friends were, laughing at their Snapchat stories from the night before and deleting the ones where you could hear their singing a lot louder than they’d realised at the time (although she assumed they were still asleep and hadn’t gotten to that stage of the day yet, as evident in Vanessa’s beautiful rendition of Christina Aguilara that blasted through her headphones and just begged for Yvie to take a screen recording). She flicked through their stories a few more times before Heidi’s name had popped up, wishing her good luck on her interview in their group chat.

“Hope you don’t get it and have to come back here until you go to Uni xxx” Priyanka added, always the loving and supportive friend of the group.

She really missed them. Almost as much as she missed someone else.

“You underestimate my persuasion skills.” Yvie sent back, knowing fine well that she was missing a very important trait that interviewers looked for - actually turning up.

She’d made it to the first one, pacing around the store with her CV in hand, raring to go. Things changed of course when a gaggle of girls with tartan skirts entered to rake through the shelves, the familiar blue of their uniform reminding them of why she was even there in the first place and sending her flying out the door before her name was even called. The second was an even shorter experience, having simply let the bus go past the stop without ringing the bell, an accident on purpose that took her all the way to the other side of town. Yvie had always thought she knew which side of the fight or flight analysis she stood proudly and grounded on, but if the urge to yeet herself off the bus and run home the second the restaurant came into sight wasn’t enough to prove how wrong she’d been then nothing else would.

Third time a charm?

She took one more peek at her phone before making her way through the door, quickly scanning her messages one more time and avoiding the small number one that burst out the corner of the text app. She’d open it when she was ready.

“Yvonne?” A familiar girl asked, raising a thick eyebrow her way.

“Yvie.” She pulled the best fake smile that three years of drama lessons in school had provided her with, praying it was enough to cover the utter disdain that came with hearing her full name, something usually reserved for family members and the front of exam papers. She knew people had worse, she could shorten Yvonne. It wasn’t awful, just not Yvie. And at least her mother never decided to name her after a piece of fruit.

If she didn’t have company she’d have slapped herself against the face for even letting her thoughts slip close to Scarlet again, opting instead to pinch the skin on her hand (there was still a mark from when she’d done the same thing a few days prior, having let even the cereals at the supermarket bring back soft memories of the girl that she fought so hard to keep away from).

“My Dad’ll be out in a minute.” The girl turned on her heel to walk away and Yvie realised why she recognised her, laughing to herself at the thought of working with Nina’s utterly obvious crush from sixth form who didn’t even know she existed. She thought about Brooke and Priyanka and what a funny reverse it would be to have her school friend gushing over her work friend instead of the other way around.

Not that this girl was Priyanka, or this place was the centre. It just wasn’t and Yvie knew already. Maybe she wouldn’t tell Nina about Bob’s sister, after all doing that would only catch her in a lie when she inevitably fucked the whole thing up and didn’t dare admit it. Because admitting that she messed up the interview would only lead to admitting a bigger and scarier thought in Yvie’s head.

She really, really wanted to go back in time. If not then a little bit forward, just so the interview was over and she could return back to the comfort of her bed with the new sheets that she’d bought so she could take her old ones to Uni and not because they reminded her of ginger hair tossed out on her pillow and the infuriating yet adorable noise of Scarlet grinding her teeth in her sleep. Definitely the former.

Only she wasn’t a wizard, not even a bit close like all those kids at Scarlet’s school with their house teams and fancy lessons. So the interview started like normal, Yvie jumping over each hurdle the best she could, stumbling a tad when he asked her about why she wanted to work there and she knew “I broke the heart of my ex-bosses daughter and can no longer show my face there but need money” would not have been a sufficient answer. The next few were okay, her feet gliding over nicely as she rattled off one thing or another about her time management skills and ability to work well under pressure. However, she let her face smack the ground on the final hurdle, the finish line almost in sight.

The dreaded character reference.

Yvie watched as he dropped it from his hands and onto the desk - the first time she’d properly looked at it after asking Brooke to print it and shoving it in her file without so much as a once-over. She tried her best to look back up, to engage and catch the interviewer’s eye like she knew she was supposed to, except her own eyes were glued to a familiar font she’d seen many times before. Her mind flashed to all the time spent reading detailed flashcards on the War of the Roses with Scarlet, shooting questions across the room aggressively like they were in the battle themselves (she was the House of Lancaster, red with danger and passion and Scarlet was York, pure and white as she pulled a face of utter distress at every date she couldn’t remember). She knew that font.

“Your reference is pretty impressive.” He looked back up but Yvie was still staring anyway. “This is from your previous employer?”

“Y-yes.” Yvie spat her words, realising at that moment that the character reference that persuaded her University to give her a lower offer, the reference that was two pages long and signed sincerely from her Scarlet’s dad, was in fact written by a passionate eighteen-year-old with a heart of gold and a strange affinity for using the word “conversely”. A realisation that was only a few months too late. If she’d wanted to go back in time earlier…

“Well, I’m surprised he let you go reading this.” He pointed a finger to a specific paragraph and Yvie let her eyes move along the page, his words background noise to Scarlet’s voice speaking clearly in her head.

“In the time that I have employed Yvie, I have been able to see not only her incredibly high standards concerning every aspect of her life but also the passion, vulnerability and humility behind every decision she makes. Watching Yvie blossom into the resilient and determined woman she is today has brought great pleasure to my eyes, however, even more pleasure has been found in seeing the growth she has encouraged in those around her, constantly bringing a sense of warmth and comfort to her coworkers in the most subtle of ways when she isn’t even trying to.”

In the past few months, Yvie had cried a total of three times. The first being her birthday, the night she lost the best part of her entire year in one quick visit to the smoking area. The second was results night - happy tears that had absolutely nothing to do with the text she’d pushed away to the top of her screen after reading the first few words. At least that’s what she’d told Brooke and Nina. Nothing to do with the text or the urge she had to run across to Slug and Lettuce as fast as she could and drag Scarlet away from her half-price cocktails just so they could pretend things were how they used to be for one night. She’d also have told her that she was proud of her, whispered it in her ear as they lay intertwined and said it over and over again so Scarlet knew she meant it. Only she didn’t, the words falling off her cheeks and onto the toilet floor instead, where Scarlet wouldn’t have been able to see them even with her glasses on. So it came as no surprise that the third time was Scarlet-related too, the reference turning more and more blurry as she tried to read on, eventually slipping through her fingers and turning into a jumble of black and white she didn’t have the strength to unscramble.

In the most simple of terms, she’d fucked it. Well and truly fucked it. At least she was one hundred per cent sure of that.

“Sorry, I-” Yvie started but couldn’t find the words to finish, pushing her chair back with such force that it dropped to the floor with a painful clang.

Yeah, maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t turned up after all.

“Thanks for your time.” She mumbled, scooping the chair from the ground and swiping the reference from the table in an awkward and clunky motion.

It would have been so easy to blame Scarlet, to be angry about how many years she’d spent being strong and resilient, immune to vulnerability. To be annoyed at how suddenly she’d waltzed in and smashed all that to pieces with a kick of her designer flats. But if there was one thing Yvie had come to realise that year it was that she only ever made things harder for herself. And despite always saying she loved her life how it was, that was something she had to change. Pronto.

***

“I got you a double vodka.” The girl, Gigi, motioned as Scarlet took her seat, not even bothering to apologise for being late. Not that she’d have had an excuse anyway, having spent all morning laying like a dog on her bed and scrolling aimlessly down her phone until she had twenty minutes to go and figured she might as well start getting ready. Oh, how things had changed.

“Thanks.” Scarlet tried her best to conjure up a smile, her throat wavering as she took a sip and imagined it was a nice fruity cocktail instead. Before she probably would have gagged a little at the taste but she was trying to be less dramatic about things. Of course, a ridiculous idea about ‘accidentally’ spilling it then going to order a fishbowl instead crossed her mind but she managed to shoo it away. Gigi had spent good money on that drink and if Scarlet had learnt any lesson that year it was that you should never take a gift for granted.

“Were you at work today?” She asked, placing her hand on the table just close enough that Scarlet’s hand would brush it if she went for another sip.

Scarlet couldn’t deny that she was ravishing, her eyes screamed sex and she had a beauty mark on her right cheek that just proved she was the modern-day incarnation of Marilyn Monroe. Objectively, she was very pretty and Scarlet should have been proud.

Yet she did not move her hand.

“Nah. My sister has a dance recital this evening, had to make sure my day was all clear.”

It was stupid really, organising a date when she knew she had plans later, essentially shutting down any possibility of taking things further. Only Scarlet wasn’t stupid at all, not in the slightest.

She let the small talk go on further, from travels to Uni to work to friends to food then back to Uni again. Scarlet could see the similarities, the expensive taste they both shared and the fact that Gigi too seemed to live life with the neatness and perfection that Scarlet thrived on. If she were to colour in she’d do it perfectly within the edges, even going as far as ripping the page out if she went over the lines. They should have slotted together perfectly. Should have.

“Did I tell you that you’re gorgeous yet?” The comment took Scarlet off guard, slipped casually into the conversation in that clever witty way she’d always wished she could emulate herself. The way the male lead did in movies and the girl would always swoon and decide that was the moment she was in love with him. In the past she would have loved it, her ever-so-slightly inflated ego taking in any compliment she could get and running with it until the cows returned for their pasture.

“Nope.” She took another sip of the drink, surprised at how little was actually gone. “But you don��t need to, I already know.”

“Sorry.” Her date held two hands in the air and stifled and awkward laugh. Scarlet couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t fight back. Tell her to get her head out of her arse or else she’d get even more lost than the time she went to London with Plastique and caught the wrong tube twice in succession. Scarlet really, really wanted her to fight back.

“I guess you must think I am too.” She raised a thick brow in Scarlet’s direction. “Or else you wouldn’t have gotten with me on results day.”

Around sixth form, Scarlet was known for having high standards: rolling her eyes in the common room if there was no peppermint tea left because she simply couldn’t have any of the other flavours, never leaving the house without at least two accessories on and always doing the extra reading on her homework even if she was having the busiest of weeks. Her standards were well past the stratosphere and she was never afraid of being a diva about them.

That being said, results day Scarlet would have gotten with absolutely anyone on that night be they male, female, gorgeous or not. Results day Scarlet’s standards were set somewhere in the Earth’s core, about two-thousand and nine hundred kilometres below the sticky floor of the club she was in. She was desperate to feel something or someone. And Gigi was there at her service.

“I guess.” Scarlet tried her best to be polite, her mind flashing back to that night when she felt Gigi’s red lips on her neck as she tried so hard to feel something. To feel someone. To fuck someone. To fuck Yvie and the “Delivered” that sat below the congratulations message Scarlet had sent her that day. A giant fuck you to the girl who’d she’d grown and blossomed with, who’d left her to wilt in the sun without any water after such a stupid mistake. A stupid mistake that she now understood the weight of in pounds and ounces and any other unit of measurement you could think of.

“You guess, damn.” Gigi took her time coming back, looking at her thighs as if there were secret cue cards hidden under the table that told her how to respond to all of Scarlet’s remarks.

Maybe Scarlet needed someone a little more rough around the edges. Someone who let the pens teeter over the lines and used whatever colours they liked despite logic saying there are no such things as bright purple palm trees.

It would have been so easy to be with someone like Gigi, someone who shared her lifestyle, complimented her and tried her hardest to keep the conversation flowing even when awkwardness took over. But that year Scarlet had tasted difficult, complicated and down-right mind-boggling all wrapped in one dish and it was so much nicer than easy.

Easy was boring.

So she did what any other kinda-shitty human would have done on a first date they weren’t enjoying and texted her best friend under the table to call and collect her as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Naomi had never fully understood the “soon” part and left Scarlet to make painful small talk for a whole thirty minutes before pulling up outside and ringing Scarlet with the most ridiculous of emergencies.

“Seriously? That’s the best you could do?” Scarlet pulled a look of utter disbelief the second the car door was shut.

“Bitch, be grateful. I didn’t have to come rescue you.”

“I am grateful.” Scarlet grabbed her friend’s phone and began to queue songs without thought. “I just thought you’d come up with something better than ‘my dog has diarrhoea’, that’s all.”

“You still left!” Naomi laughed as she revved up the engine. “What was it then? Did she have no good chat? Uglier than you remember?”

“Nah, she was prettier actually.” Scarlet played with the ring on her finger, sliding it up and down so much that her skin turned red.

“Serial killer then?” Naomi paused at some traffic lights and took the opportunity to skip the next selection in Scarlet’s line up. “Sorry, that song is way too depressing.”

“She was nice! Just not for me.” She took the ring off completely, rolling it between her thumb and finger as if the small action would detract from every single thing going on in her brain.

“Oh no.” Naomi pulled a look of horror. “I get it.”

“Get what?” Scarlet squealed as her friend took a sharp left, the opposite direction to her house. “Where are you taking me, an early grave?”

“The abandoning a date with the prettiest girl in town, the sad songs. You’re still hung up on Yvie.”

“I’m not!” Scarlet protested, trying her hardest to be nonchalant but instead sounding like a toddler who’d been accused of stealing extra biscuits at break time. Ever so subtle. “Where are we even going?”

“McDonald’s car park. So you can tell me yet again about how guilty you feel and what an awful mistake you made and how you just want everything to be how it was before because it’s just not fair!” Naomi mimicked Scarlet’s dramatic whine and she couldn’t help but give her credit for how spot-on she was, even if she had had a solid seven years of science lessons and after school shopping trips to practice.

“And then you can tell me that life’s not fair and I just have to accept that Yvie hates me again even though I understand everything now?”

“Exactly!” Naomi made her way into the drive-through, stalling at the first pause and making Scarlet laugh for what felt like the first time in months. “You’d think I’d be an expert at this by now, the number of times I’ve had to drag you here.”

“You would be if life was fair.” Scarlet poked her in the rib, happy to have a friend who knew that she needed cheering up before she even knew herself.

And that’s just what she did, reminding Scarlet about Uni and all the girls who would happily bully her there so she didn’t have to pine for the one who had left her, sliding between deep and lighthearted as they ate their meals so slowly they turned cold.

“I just miss her, Naomi.” Scarlet took the last spoonful of her McFlurry, wishing she didn’t have Lemon’s stupid recital and could have gone round again for a second one. Maybe even a third. “I know she’s a dickhead and you think she doesn’t deserve me. But we were good. Really good.”

“I know.” Naomi planted a kiss on her friend’s forehead, pulling her into the biggest of cuddles before starting the car up again and changing the subject. “So, how many shit dances are you gonna have to sit through tonight before your sister comes on for five minutes?”

“Hmmm. Maybe thirty? I’ll make sure to let you know.”

She was close, opening the program as soon as she sat down that evening to count a whole twenty-seven names before Lemon’s, sending Naomi a quick text with the rolling eyes emoji that had suddenly become her most frequently used (replacing the eyes pouring with tears one of course).

She stopped watching altogether ten dances in, letting her eyes travel around the theatre and play out little scenarios in each balcony or scenario, something about the place just screaming romance when you blocked out the fifteen-year-olds forgetting the moves to the Greatest Showman soundtrack on stage (one performance to Rewrite the Stars stood out in particular, reminding her of the time it played in work and Yvie made a joke about how it could have been them but Scarlet wasn’t suave enough to be the Zac Efron character). After twenty she took a trip to the toilet, topping up her gloss and mascara for absolutely no one to see in the dim lighting.

It was a long night, to say the least, Scarlet eager at the edge of the seat by the time dancer number twenty-seven had taken their ridiculously extra walk off the stage and she heard her bratty baby’s name announced on the speaker. Just because she had no desire to clap for other people’s family didn’t mean she wasn’t a secret stage-sister when it came to watching Lemon, wishing she could pull out her phone and record like the cool mom from Mean Girls.

Only it’s a good job she didn’t because, after not one but two calls of her name, there was no sight of Lemon and her big yellow feather boa that Scarlet had bought specifically for that night.

Tripping over at least four sets of feet on her way, Scarlet clambered over the stalls the best she could, dashing to the backstage area as fast as she could once the next girl’s name was called and her routine started. Crazy thoughts ran through her head, images of Lemon locked in storage closets or being carted off into an ambulance with a cast on her leg flashing up as she ran up to an assistant and asked perhaps too forcefully why her sister was not tapping away on that stage like she should have been.

“There was someone without a ticket asking after her at the front desk, I thought she had come back!”

Scarlet didn’t know if he was speaking to her or his headpiece but she was gone again, her size fives working double-time to go and figure out whether it was her absent parents or Lemon’s stupid airhead friends that have caused her to miss her dance and send the gay intern into a state of existential panic.

Glasses at aid, it didn’t take long to find her, feathers falling from the boa as Lemon shook it in her hands with her words. Maybe Scarlet should have spent a little more money on it after all…

Scarlet shouted for her down the hall, the stage-sister persona now fully developed and realised.

But her sister ignored her, continuing to point her finger in the sassiest of manners that would probably have left her cleaning the pantry for two weeks at home - that ruled out her parents, for sure.

“What are you…” Scarlet started but lost the words once she turned the corner and finally got a sight of who her sister was berating. “Oh.”

“I went to the centre but Jaida said you had the day off to watch Lemon dance,” Yvie spoke simply and clearly.

It seemed crazy seeing her in person after spending so long trying to push her portrait out of her head and convince herself that she didn’t exist. But there she was, real as day, her eyes slightly red and her shirt haphazardly tucked into her trousers. “This is the third place I’ve tried but they wouldn’t let me in.”

For perhaps one of the first times ever in her life, Scarlet couldn’t think of anything to say.

“She had a date today too,” Lemon smirked in Yvie’s direction and Scarlet watched her face drop more than it had the day that she’d planned a walk for the two of them around the botanic gardens only for it to be closed (Scarlet went alone once just before her exams and almost let herself cry thinking about how much Yvie really knew her).

“Lemon!” Scarlet’s mind caught up as she turned to her sister and gave her the black look of death that they had devised as kids to show when they were not playing games.

“What? She can’t just break your heart and then waltz into my dance show with some flowers and it’s alright.”

Scarlet hadn’t even noticed the flowers until then - big, red daisies that Yvie was gripping onto far too tight, her nails thorns pressed into her palm. She wanted to take them just so Yvie would stop, to slip her own hand there instead like they had done so many times.

“She didn’t break my heart Lemon, oh my god.” Scarlet’s face spoke a thousand words she wasn’t saying out loud and they were all synonyms for something starting with fuck and ending with off.

“So you just listened to Lana Del Rey on repeat for weeks with the door shut for fun?”

“Excuse me.” A scary-looking woman with a security badge pinned to her lapel rose her voice over her sister’s. She was now officially Scarlet’s number one hero, Audrey Hepburn being shot down in favour of the godsend who parted the red sea to put an end to the ex-flame vs. sister crisis that Scarlet was trapped in. “This is not the place for arguments, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“She’s meant to be dancing, can she go back in?” Scarlet pulled her best puppy dog eyes and batted her eyelashes praying that the woman would let her. It was, after all, the least she could do given that she was now also ranked above Grace Kelly and Arianna Huffington in the mental list of important women who impacted her life. Quite an honour, if she thought so herself.

“If you leave.” The woman pointed to the door before escorting Scarlet and Yvie outside like two school kids who had to spend their lunchtime standing on the wall for being naughty (not that that had ever actually happened to Scarlet herself as a kid. She imagined it would have happened to Yvie and her blunt tongue though, letting a laugh out at the mental image of the girl aged ten having a huff for missing golden time).

“Ring me when you’re done!” Scarlet shouted to her sister before the doors closed on them and they were released to the night sky that had been a cloudy blue when Scarlet first arrived.

And suddenly she was left alone with Yvie. With the girl who had ignored her texts. Who she’d cried over in McDonald’s car park at least seven times by then. Who she longed for every time she even made eye contact with another girl. Who had left her alone in the smoking area with nothing but the taste of corked champagne in her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Yvie spoke for the first time since she’d first seen her, bending down to sit on the curb. Scarlet didn’t have to think twice about joining her.

“It’s fine, I can’t say that was the most exciting thing to watch, anyway.” She motioned to the theatre behind them, the street lamp lighting up Yvie’s face just enough to see her crack a smile. Scarlet pushed the confusion and the past aside for a moment just to take in that smile.

“Not for that.” She gripped her palm again and this time Scarlet couldn’t stop herself from grabbing her hand to stop her. “For before, for everything. I don’t know who you’re seeing or anything but I just couldn’t go away at the end of this summer without telling you that I’m sorry.”

“I’m not seeing anyone.” Scarlet’s heart was beating fast and all of a sudden she was at the back of the cafe with Yvie again, the rest of the world in 2D as they spun in their own little bubble.

“I’m sorry for abandoning you, for making things harder for myself because I got scared. Scared of stupid things that I knew you never even meant. I just never even knew what I felt myself and once I did then I tried to deny it.”

“I’m sorry too.” For once Scarlet was glad she was wearing her glasses in front of Yvie or else she’d be able to see the tears welling in her eyes that very moment. “For being naive and thinking I knew what was best for you.”

And things carried on that way, Scarlet unable to hide the tears for much longer when Yvie told her that she didn’t have to say sorry, that she didn’t even have to forgive her. She just had to listen and try her best to understand. Yvie spoke about when she was a kid, about the day she realised she was different to all the other girls in her class and the day she lost the ability to tell if she hated something or loved it. She talked about the first time they met, the first time they had sex and the first time she thought fuck I’m in far too deep. About the past few months and how they had been, her words not Scarlet’s, like the “nine circles of hell on steroids’’. About how she read the reference and realised those were probably the nicest things a person had ever said about her, and how awful it felt to realise she’d pushed that person away.

“It was all true, the reference.” Scarlet squeezed her hand when she finished, proud of Yvie for managing to speak so many of her thoughts and feelings into the universe and even prouder of herself for not interrupting even once.

“I really brought a sense of warmth to you?” Yvie chuckled as she regained her composure, raising a brow at Scarlet like she had so many times before. “I think I’m the coldest person I know.”

“God knows how but yes, you did.” Scarlet leant in close. “You do.”

The kiss felt like home and Scarlet tried to thank every single star in the sky she could see for it but was swiftly interrupted by the second kiss. She’d have to get up a diagram of the entire solar system to pay her gratitude for the second kiss.

“See? Warmth.” She whispered into Yvie’s ear.

“You don’t have to forgive me that fast, Scarlet. This isn’t a story, things take time.”

“Well, it’s a good job we have some left to work on that before you go to Uni then isn’t it? Now, do you wanna kiss again or carry on telling me about how painstakingly awful it was getting over me? Either is fine by me.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Yvie teased her. “I could probably do it all over again if I had to.”

“You’d be willing to risk that?”

“For this?” Yvie pulled her into another kiss, this one stronger, making up for the months they’d missed and setting precedent for the few weeks they had left. If there was still an inkling inside of Scarlet that Yvie hated her then that kiss washed it right away with the rain that fell, all the way down the banks and into the river that night. “One hundred per cent.”

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