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theheartofpenelope · 6 years ago

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Simple Things : Chapter twelve

Excerpt - “I demand an appeal,” he muttered as he turned a corner. “You what?!” “Well, isn’t that what they do in your job?” Charlotte snapped her head back. Oh really? Trapped in a car. In traffic. No way for an escape. And he wants to plead his case. Fucking perfect. Tag list: @winterisakiller, @devikafernando, @scorpionchild81, @messy-insomniac-bookgirl, @smutsausage, @hiddlesbitch1 @noplacelikehome77 @wolfsmom1 @meh1217 @dina-bln @lilaeye39 @tinchentitri @fairlightswiftly @nonsensicalobsessions @wolfsmom1 @stmeiou @ink-and-starlight @givemecocoaa @profkmoriarty13 @nikkalia @massivelemon @lotus-eyedindiangoddess @argo-shila @emoietmoi @redfoxwritesstuff @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog @raining-litter @theoneanna @coppercorn-and-cauldron @turniptitaness @shadyskit @memoriesat30 @antyc67 @just-the-hiddles @sheris532 @marggot4 Author’s Notes/Warnings: tags will follow later on Anyway thank you in advance for feedback - would love to know what you think…Also on AO3 through this link Masterlist available through here Bonus: click here for the pinterest moodboard (always updated)

Chapter twelve Wednessday - A chance encounter in London

1. See

Charlotte politely followed the HR consultant as he escorted her into the sleek elevator. He was a middle-aged man who oozed self-confidence, he knew very well what he wanted and what he was looking for. He’d been quite rigid and resolute all throughout the meeting.

She had been a little surprised an HR manager was attending said lengthy meeting, but then again this wàs the Royal London Hospital and this might be a very strict protocol they had to live up to. Breaking it was no doubt sacrilegious in these parts of the country.

The executive directors of the Royal London Hospital had very clearly outlined their ‘vision’ for the hospital to Charlotte, requesting her take on things and requesting a well-documented legal counsel. Truth-be-told Charlotte had expected she was called in for this kind of professional advice. However she was not expecting that her response would be met the way it was…

As she politely but determinedly rejected some of their desiderata, some glances were exchanged on the other side of the table, a few nods and gestures went back and forth which Charlotte found utterly distracting. Where was their protocol now, she mused.

But all became clear when the meeting somehow, very openly, turned into a job-offer towards her. A very generous offer was instantly extended to her; and a temporary assignment to work out a new policy on end-of-life decisions in the Royal London Hospital. The fucking Royal Hospital, her mind has yelled out, the state-of-the-art hospital, globally recognized as a leader in pre-hospital and trauma care. Home to London's Air Ambulance and one of the capital's leading trauma and emergency care centres and hyper-acute stroke centres. And they wanted her…

Charlotte would be allowed to compile a multidisciplinary corps and an assistant would be appointed to her. The extent of the offer dizzied her, yet thrilled her at the same time. It was a dream come true. Well, more than that really…

Things were moving fast for her now. At least that’s how it felt for her. She started with only a handful seminars, but was now well-booked for the rest of the summer, with the occasional interview here and there. And now there was this offer on the table she could not quite wrap her mind around yet.

As she stepped into the elevator the HR manager kindly exchanged some more small talk with her. He seemed like an amiable man. With a smile he tapped the elevator buttons and started their descent down to the lobby.

No, never in her wildest dreams had Charlotte expected her road to lead her where it had so far. And this at only 36 years of age. This was wild. This went beyond her imagination. And Charlotte half expected to be woken up by the shrill tone of her alarm clock. She discreetly pinched her nails into her arm - just in case - but this was no dream apparently. The shrill alarm clock didn't sound, but the elevator did chyme and a monotone female voice announced the occupants they had reached the fourth floor, then the second floor and so on.

People trickled in and out the elevator and before she was good and well aware Charlotte had reached the ground floor. She smiled in agreement with the HR consultant as he thanked her for her time, which she countered with a thank you for having me. Ping-pong, as you go...

"And we'll be looking forward to hearing your decision," the HR consultant concluded their conversation, "and maybe I shouldn't say this, but we àre passionately hoping you'll be willing to work with us."

In her head Charlotte positively screamed fucking Royal London!, but in reality she smiled her best diplomatic smile. And while she shook his hand - firmly -, she politely answered she was absolutely honoured and would think the offer through.

Upon exiting the elevator on a pure adrenaline high, Charlotte inattentively bumped against a hurried nearby stranger who jogged out of an opposing elevator. Shaking the momentary lapse of concentration out of her head, she turned to the other party with a slightly surprised frown which swiftly morphed into a recognition, and then an awkward yet lukewarm smile.

"Charlotte?"

"Tom?"

2. See closer

3 days after Fringe. 3 nights after that night. 3 days and 3 nights without a single word. In either direction.

Charlotte’s heart thudded loudly and nervously in her chest. She was however oblivious whether this nervous spell was a good or a bad thing. Should she crawl under a rock and make herself scarce after exchanging the necessary small talk or should she act unaffected, like he was? Or should she take a breath, straighten her shoulders and ask for an answer in the hopes it could heal that awful gnawing feeling the aftermath of Edinburgh had left her with...

As she came round to a mute double (or was it triple?) take, she noted Tom seemed just as much out of his comfort zone as she was. And in a weird way it thrilled her. Karma. Suits him well. She could see him running his tongue over his lips before gently biting them shut. His hands fidgeted with the paperwork he held in his hand while he repeatedly re-adjusting his glasses.

Charlotte’s heartbeat however dropped some when she detected the variety of papers Tom had now safely tucked under his arm. So much papers after a doctor’s appointment, and that did not look good. At all. He didn’t look hurt. Was he sick? He seemed nervous, sweaty. He was silent, not at all like the Tom she’d come to know….

Her gaze got caught on the documents, but this point she couldn’t care less about that.

“Are - Are you alright?” Charlotte immediately questioned; she was worried. No point in denying this.

Her wall of defence had slipped and Tom could hear the concern in her voice inkling through. A small little frown came across her features. Only instantly, but he noticed nonetheless. And he thankfully concluded that perhaps she wasn’t yet hating him with the fire of a thousand suns…

"Yeah, no, I erm,” he stuttered, “I just had the obligatory medical check-up for a next project. But you?"

He was astounded though, for a woman who was most definitely not an actress she slid back into her defensive pose oh-so easily. A tall blank wall arose, that gave way to nothing or nobody. He swore he had caught a glimmer of relief into her eyes before though, but all sympathy had fled from her now.

“Good-good,” she replied with formal nod, “just - work.”

Tom took notice of how curt she suddenly acted. How could he not. But to Charlotte it was simply her only means as she desperately did not want to feel a single thing. Not those stupid-ass fireflies, not the inexplicable angry hurt, not the stomach drop. None of it. She wanted nothing more than to be cool and step over all of this matter-of-factly. Her gut swirled with bottled up questions and insecurities, but she would have none of that. Water under the bridge.

Get over it Daniëls. He sure has.

3. Believe

Charlotte slid into the leather seats of his fancy car. A fresh cool bottle of water clasped in her hands. He’d paid for it despite her vehement veto. He wouldn’t listen though. And now she was here, in his car, because he offered to drive her to the St. Pancras Station. She’d refused, replying she was taking the underground so he really shouldn’t bother. It was noon. Traffic would be a mess, etc. However she ended up giving in to this request - albeit reluctantly - because he was right on one thing; they needed to talk. Privately if possible and the hospital lobby was just no place to do just that.

But in spite of that, they did not exchange one word once inside the car. Tom pulled out of the underground parking with a silent ease. And emerging in the London streets and into the full sunlight, he reached out for his trusted sunglasses. Meanwhile the familiar scent of leather and some citrussy car perfume tempted Charlotte’s mind into a trip down memory lane, back to another night several weeks back in time. A night with equally nervous heart flutters, but for entirely different reasons.

He queued down the main road, while desperately trying to sort his thoughts before settling on a

“You’ve never answered me…”

Charlotte remained at a loss for words for a couple of seconds before huffing a vexed “honestly?!” and shaking her head in disbelief.

He could hear her as she exhaled loudly, seemingly trying to get her mind pulled back together again,

“With quite a delay I got your texts and,” a pause, “your voicemail.”

His eyes urged her on.

"You said - if memory serves me well, and it usually does - that you wished you'd said ‘goodbye’.” Charlotte paused, “forgive me but I thought that was how this worked for you."

"How what worked?"

"You didn't show up!!" She didn’t mean for her voice to go up in pitch and she furiously furrowed her brows to compensate for it, "I mean, it's all right, I was ….. naive I guess? Somewhere I knew I wouldn't see you again that night, but yet hoped for it. Against better judgement."

"Wha, wh- why would you expect I wouldn't show up?"

Charlotte lifted her chin and rested her head against the headrest while releasing a cold and hollow laugh, which he didn’t particularly cared for, "To-om!"

But he remained silent, a bit dumbfounded and clueless for what to say next. A car behind them honked, frustrated Tom had failed to acknowledge the light turning green and was still at a halt.

"You don't want to let anybody down, I understand," Charlotte muttered, "no need to..."

"Only I did," he interrupted, "I let you down, I let myself down. I’m just…”

“Just stop it,” Charlotte interjected as she shook her head in seeming defeat and looked at him wearily.

“You know, I hate it how you are making all of this around you?”

“I’m sorry,” he blinked twice, “come again?”

"Like it’s all your hurt feelings in the scale here. It drives me mad….” she huffed, “You know, I think or at least I hope we've established in the past that I'm not really the type of girl that just goes crawling into bed with someone on a whim?”

Charlotte gestured aggravatedly, “so excuse me if I'm a bit rough around the edges here, but I clearly heard you say ‘goodbye’ to me. So, what else would there be left for me to say? It didn't really feel like a message that allowed any type of answer…"

“So just,” she sighed, “let’s just call this for what this is or was. And move on?”

A pang went straight through his heart. He saw her turning away and looking through the window from the passenger seat at the building that passed her by. Good. He desperately needed a minute to himself to let her words sink in. He couldn’t quite grasp the fact that she would see him as this promiscuous playboy who just went sleeping around with whomever struck his fancy...

“I demand an appeal,” he muttered as he turned a corner.

“You what?!”

“Well, isn’t that what they do in your job?”

Charlotte snapped her head back. Oh really?

Trapped in a car. In traffic. No way for an escape. And he wants to plead his case. Fucking perfect.

“You know,” he argued more determined now, “you keep saying, ‘let’s call it what it is’. And then you do just that. And proceed to you turn your back on me. And it’s settled?” he questioned.

“But what about me? Do I at least get the chance to call it what it was for me?” he pressed on, “I do feel like you owe it to me to let me explain..."

"Owe it to you?" she frowned with a huff, hovering clearly unsettled.

"Yes, Charlotte,” he replied. Curt. To the point.

“And if you truly feel the way you say you do - I promise, I will not push this matter further. However I will not let you silence me before I have spoken my part.”

"I wanted to see you that night. But the crowd, .... and then some fans walked up and then there was this critic," he sighed in utter frustration and banged the steering wheel in sheer annoyance, "I am an idiot! I know I am. And I should have been more firm. I went about it all wrong. And for that I will be forever angry with myself."

“But,” he sighed, “I did want to see you and ... verify that the other night was not just a dream. I longed to see you. To hear you. To hold you and to kiss you goodnight. Not goodbye.” he shook his head in disbelief.

“And if I said that wrong on your voicemail then I apologize for it. All of it. I was tired. Impatient.”

Heartbroken

He held her gaze, “I am not thàt type of man you seem to want to take me for, I am not the type to sleep around. You must believe me on this one. I might not have the best track-record with you so far; I admit,” he added a bitter laugh, “but this is true. I promise you that."

She kept silent. This seemed like a good sign…

"But Charlotte, I called you and went straight to voicemail. To me, that was quite a clear message as well... No response is still a response, Charlotte,” he concluded.

"Have you spoken your peace, Tom?"

He replied to her with a silent surprised nod.

“Apparently,” she mumbled, “when you attach a cell-phone to a power bank it shuts off everything so it loads faster…”

“Of course,” he wrinkled his nose as he shrug his shoulders as if to convey her he did not see the point of this lesson, “that’s the way they work.”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow ironically, “well congrats to you but I didn’t know that.”

“What on earth?”

“In Edinburgh, a colleague of mine lent one to me… my battery was running low and … I didn’t want to miss any….” She furrowed her brows and looked down at the drink in between her hands. “I didn’t have a watch. My cell is … my clock, my calendar. It erm - it automatically put me in flight mode. I didn’t realize. And I’m sorry about that.”

He looked back at her with sympathy and nodded, “ok.”

She nodded with a kindhearted smile, “so, appeal granted. It’s good we talked. But, you don’t want this."

"Ouch," he chuckled and clutched his heart. "Well that stung. For a minute there I thought he came to an understanding here?"

"Don't miss my point," Charlotte slanted her head and looked at him with sympathy.

"And don't you miss mine,” he interrupted her, “because even though you believe you speak the truth, you are wrong."

"Am I?"

"So very wrong! Because, as it turns out, I do wànt this,” he gestured between them, “or at least a fair chance at this.”

But Charlotte only rolled her eyes and turned her gaze outwards again.

“My god! I swear there are pitbulls that are less tenacious than you!”

Charlotte grunted and looked down at the bottle in between her hands, before a stupid grin fell from her lips.

“I swear,” he shook his head, “so help me god.”

“And now she’s laughing… You’re putting me through hell here darling...”

“I’ve missed not talking to you,” he finally dared to confess, “And I so desperately wanted to reach out to you, only I … don’t know where you live, I didn’t know where you’d be? So,” he lingered, “I sent flowers to your firm.”

“Well congratulations to Luke,” Charlotte rolled her eyes.

“I tend to pick and send my own flowers, darling. I’m very precise about those things.”

She kept silent. Good.

Tom stared at the steering wheel before him,“Gladiolus, for strength of character, honor and conviction. And they needed to be white; the color of perfection, safety, purity and faith. Writing the accompanying card was an outright hell though because the odds were your colleagues might get it before you did.”

“That was you?” Charlotte reminisced a WhatsApp from her office depicting a gorgeous bouquet and demanding what she had said or done to deserve the honour of such a wonderful bouquet. They couldn’t make out the card though. It only mentioned one word, but the meaning of it was lost on everyone.

Until now.

“Maktub,” Charlotte whispered, to which he nodded.

‘Maktub.’ ‘It is written’.

A deep belief about destiny Paulo Coelho writes about in ‘the Alchemist’ where he captured it in just one word. Maktub. Everything is destined and written. How when and where has already been planned and we shall not get anxious about it. Just little patience and it will just come with time provided and the efforts needed.

She glanced up in his eyes that convey nothing but a clear bluegreen sincerity. She wanted to ask him to say that again, for good understanding. But he gladly repeated it on his own accord.

And there went her heart. In one thousand pieces, scattered all over the ground.

4. Achieve

He officially declared traffic was an absolute mess. It was barely noon and within 20 minutes he had barely made any significant progress towards Saint Pancras Station. Worriedly he inquired with Charlotte when her train was departing and when she quietly confessed “16:03” he dropped his chin to his chest and bit his lip trying to suppress a laugh.

“Can I propose lunch now?” he chuckled, to which she pleasantly nodded. That would be alright.

They agreed they would start over at lunch, wipe the slate clean. Talk. And reset.

Tom made a swift U-turn, sneaking into smaller streets. Homeward. He wanted to let out Bobby first, drop of his paperwork, leave his car. Charlotte wordlessly followed his path.

The chocolate brown Cocker Spaniël happily greeted his master as Tom set foot into his house. Charlotte followed quietly, awkwardly. Bobby sniffed her legs both suspiciously and curiously. When she crouched down and offered him the palms of her hands, he studied and snuffed them gratefully, ultimately giving them a little lick before ignoring her completely and favouring Tom over her.

Tom chuckled, “well, you’re accepted it seems.”

He clicked his tongue, guiding Bobby out into his backyard while Charlotte nervously waited around the living room. She wanted to go explore his bookshelf across the room. As she progressed down the room she admired the stupendously comfy-looking lounge chair and fought the urge to try it out herself. As she ran her fingertips over the fragments of paper that lay scattered around a reading table, her eyes fell upon an article with her name on it, post-its with scribblings on it. An email address, a phone number, some doodling, scratched out words. City names. As she picked up the interview curiously, a second one featuring her appeared underneath. Charlotte chuckled, had he really been trying to track her down?

A soft chuckle brought her back to reality. Tom stood against the door frame, smiling bashfully.

“Caught me red handed.”

But Charlotte could only look at him, rendered speechless.

“Wasn’t lying,” he reminded her, “wanted you. Want you. If you’ll have me.”

It turned out to be the most difficult question anybody had ever asked her.

Do I want this - Do I want to invest in this, whatever it is, potentially discovering it would be only a waste of her time.

Charlotte stood by her belief that notwithstanding their shared morals or values, their common interest or visions, they did remain so different on countless other things. Things that mattered just as much. And you did need some common ground to form a solid basis on which you can build your relationship. Without a solid base everything goes to waste. Hell, even with a solid base things could very well still go to waste. Her marriage was a perfect example of the latter.

On the other hand though... this was him. The man that slowly but surely had crawled under her skin. Attentive, interested, good hearted. And when she’d crumbled down in Germany he was there, while he didn’t really need to be there. Yet there he was, offering support when she had needed it most. He unknowingly found the smallest of cracks in the seemingly airtight seal around her heart and nestled himself inside. Gentleman-like, well dressed and with a good book. Ever patient. Trustworthy. Present. Shit.

Her stomach was in knots when she came to realise, that day, what her heart had known deep down a few days earlier; she could not walk away. Not from this man. But the future scared her nonetheless.

"But - we're as different as chalk and cheese,"

"Are we?"

She smiled, "we live out of our respective suitcases."

"For now," he corrected her.

"Yes, for now. But when I touch down after all this...."

"You'll still only be 2 hours away,"

"But..."

"I dare you," he grinned, feeling he was winning this battle.

"Brexit," Charlotte tried.

"Honestly, Brexit? Of all excuses you come up with, Brexit?"

"Well,..."

"I will gladly add some more pages to my passport. For you," he paused. “Come on darling, don’t hold back now,” he teased, “any objection you have, give it to me. I will gladly deny or overcome every single one.”

“To-om,” she slanted her head. He liked this ‘To-om’ better, when her voice was full of loving emotion again.

“Either you go at it with passion, or not at all,” he added.

“Permission to engage the enemy sir?” he chuckled.

Charlotte rewarded him with a lopsided smile. Momentarily banning all scary thoughts out of her head she gladly but carefully opted to open her heart and take the leap of faith. As petrifying as it felt. Her smile was all the persuasion Tom needed to walk the short distance between them. He stroked her dark brown tresses, admiring her soft feminine features and seeing if he’d remembered them correctly.

She closed her eyes when he slid his hand into her hair and slowly he leant in for a soft kiss. And another one. And another. Sweet and innocent, little testaments of adoration and longing. She ran a hand up from the nape of his neck and through his curls. She’d missed this, that much was true already. And she allowed herself to revell in this sudden rush of enamourment.

She felt his lips curve into a smile in between pecks.

“‘m getting better at this,” he whispered

“Hmm?”

“Third time's a charm. No interruptions here, only Bobby.”

“Nu-uh,” Charlotte breathed, “you’re still buying me lunch Hiddleston.”

Later that afternoon Charlotte lovingly petted Bobby's head before making her leave. Tom had signed up for ComiCon in Vienna, which coincided with her seminar. Only two more days and they would be together again. After sharing a loving last kiss, Charlotte stepped outside into an unsure yet thrilling future.

Tom had asked her to call him when she'd arrived home, claiming he'd only worry until he'd heard from her. He was so easy to love.

Two more days….

#tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston x ofc #simple-things

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artificialqueens · 7 years ago

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Love Shack, 1-5 (Trixya) - mallstars

Trixya college AU I’m currently writing after eleven years of not writing fanfiction at all. It’s a lesbian AU that is mostly fluffy, but definitely involves a lot of angst, pining, and smut!

Chapter 1: In Which Trixie Likes Cowboy Boots

“Sorry, I’m sorry!”, Trixie apologizes for what feels like the hundredth time today, struggling to roll her suitcase off the woman’s foot it’s currently crushing. She feels less sorry than she seems, however. After all it’s not her fault that woman has her legs sprawled out in front of her when Trixie with her two big suitcases obviously needs all the floor space she can get. She hopes that woman’s foot hurts and she learned not to be in everybody’s way. Trixie is exhausted. Exhausted from waking up in the middle of the night to get to Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee to catch a too-early flight to Boston. Exhausted from dragging around her suitcases. Exhausted from life. As excited as she is to start her new life (and she is beyond excited), it sucks that she has to start it feeling tired, annoyed, and stressed out because her family couldn’t even be bothered to see her off (and help her carry her luggage, thank you very much).

Two hours, a lot of queuing, and two overpriced smoothies later, Trixie is finally on her plane and watches Wisconsin get smaller and smaller in the distance. She sighs loudly and settles into her seat, pulling her blanket tightly around her shoulders. She finally did it. She’s finally leaving. She’s finally starting college. At the age of 23.

Five years ago, when she just finished high school, Trixie didn’t know what she wanted to do. It wasn’t that nothing excited her. It was that too many things excited her. She wanted to be a singer. She wanted to be a conductor. She wanted to work with small children and teach them how to read and write and make music, she wanted to be a hair dresser, a fashion designer, a makeup artist, an interior designer, any kind of designer, a journalist, a chef, and even, briefly, a botanist. She felt overwhelmed. She spent countless hours mulling over the possibilities while working her job as a receptionist at a hotel near her school, a job she had gotten as a junior in high school. The weeks had turned into months and she had found herself still working her receptionist’s job, thinking less and less about her future and getting more and more used to the idea of staying here. Helping customers, preparing the breakfast room, taking phone calls, reading magazines at her desk. It wasn’t that life in Wisconsin was bad. Well, it was, for a while when she was still a kid, but her mom had separated from her stepfather years ago and things had gradually gotten better. Towards the end of high school, things had been exciting, actually. She had been in love for the first time, and if she was honest with herself maybe that had a little to do with her hesitance to move away for college. But things hadn’t worked out with her and Shea, of course not, how could they when Trixie had struggled so much with her sexuality wanted to keep things between them secret long enough for Shea to run out of patience and eventually disappear out of Trixie’s life and Wisconsin.

But things are different now. Trixie is no longer a scared 17 – year – old, she loves girls and she loves that she loves girls, and everybody in Boston would just have to deal. She knows things will be different in a big city anyway, she will no longer be the only one that doesn’t fit into the cookie cutter standards her family have set for her, she will meet people like her, and she will meet people nothing like her, or her family, or anyone she knows.

There are so many things Trixie wants to do differently in her new life in Boston. This scares her, a little. For years the thought of moving away and flipping her whole life upside down had been a calming and reassuring (if at times unrealistic) thought. It didn’t matter that what Trixie was doing with her life wasn’t fulfilling when she knew she would really get things started soon enough. Dreaming about the future has always been a way to tolerate and justify the present. Now that she’s actually making the next step, she’s scared things are going to be just more of the same and her fantasies of a better future are going to be exposed as a lie. Trixie takes another deep breath and forces that thought out of her mind. No use in stressing out about this before she even landed. To calm herself, she puts her pink headphones on and listens to some music. She takes out her notebook and tries to come up with song lyrics, since that often helps to calm her down, but she can’t think of anything and instead just scribbles some flowers into the corner of a page. Writing music. Yet another thing Trixie wants to do with her life but almost never does.

Out of the many things Trixie wants to go to college for, she finally settled on early childhood education a couple of months ago. She got into Boston University, found a room in student housing, made all the decisions she hadn’t been making the last five years, and is about to start University in only three days. More things had moved in her life in the past three months than in the five years before that. The feeling of accomplishment she gets from this almost makes up for the awful morning she’s had. She scribbles a little sun on the middle of the mostly empty page in front of her and spends the rest of the flight in a state of nervous excitement. She is ready, bring it on.

♥♥♥

After what feels like an eternity, Trixie is finally standing in front of her apartment that she’ll be sharing with another girl. This is probably going to be awful, Trixie thinks, but there was no way she could afford a place on her own. She nervously pulls out her little mirror out of her bag to check her reflection one last time before meeting her new roommate. It’s an important moment, after all, and Trixie is nothing if not a little vain. Her pink lipstick has long since faded, and she didn’t really have the time to put on more than some mascara this morning. Her hair is flat and looks exactly like she spent her day on an airplane, and her blue dress is looking more like i-picked-this-because-I-wanted-to-be-as-comfy-as-possible-on-the-plane than pretty. Oh well. It is either this or changing and fixing her makeup in the dimly – lit hallway, and she is not that desperate. For all she knows her roommate spent all day in bed eating chips and wearing pyjamas.

She cautiously knocks on the door and only seconds later, a tall girl with pastel purple hair opens. She is dressed for whatever the opposite of a lazy day in bed is. “You look exhausted. I made soup if you want some? I’m Kim. Hi.”, she says, sounding nervous, and with a small lisp. She’s a sight to be seen. She’s wearing more makeup than Trixie has ever seen on anyone. Trixie loves makeup, loves it, but never wears a lot of it because she’s seen the way people at her home and at her old job look at her whenever she wears a little more, knows people think she’s being too much, and she can’t really handle that, as much as she’d like to. Kim, however, doesn’t seem to have any of these concerns. She’s wearing bright purple lipstick that matches her hair, a big white line under her eyes, at least three colours of sparkly eye shadow and a lot of fake eye lashes. Trixie stares at her for a second. She definitely was not in Wisconsin anymore.

♥♥♥

Half an hour later, Trixie and Kim sit in their room, eating Kim’s soup. It’s warm and tastes great. A roommate who can cook. That can only be helpful. This is what Trixie has learned in the last half hour: 1) Kim is great. 2) Trixie likes their room (which looks a lot like Kim, with pastel green walls, a lot of photos of high fashion makeup dos (and also cats. A lot of photos of cats. Maybe a little too many if Trixie is being honest), and very neat and organized. 3) To Trixie’s disbelief, Kim studies business administration.

“So what do you study? I never asked you, sorry.”, Kim says when Trixie is finishing her soup. Kim is sitting on her bed, facing Trixie, and applying silver nail polish to her toe nails. “I’m gonna do Early Childhood Education.” Trixie answers, smiling. She likes the sound of that. She’s finally going to do something she’s passionate about, how about that? “Oh, cool, I have a friend who does that. Shangela?”, Kim adds as a question, as if she is expecting Trixie to know this person. “She has a pretty cool job at a day care, she might be able to hook you up. Uh, if you need a job?”

Trixie smiles brightly. “Oh wow, that would be great! I’m definitely gonna need a job. I thought about waitressing or something, but that would be so much cooler.” Trixie thinks about the times she’s helped out at the hotel’s restaurant, about impatient customers and a lot of running back and forth. Yeah, she’d definitely appreciate not having to do that again, ever.

Kim stretches to reach her nightstand to get a little box, then pulls out some sticker nail art and starts applying sparkly silver stars on top of her silver nail polish. It’s a lot. Trixie loves it. “We’re gonna hang out tonight. Shangela and I. I’m at her place a lot, it’s the best.” Kim sounds genuinely excited and as much as Trixie already likes Kim, she’s a little relieved she’s going to have the place for herself for tonight, to breathe and settle in.

“How so?”

“So she lives in this house that’s big and awesome but also kind of a dump. And she lives with a bunch of people and they’re all so great. Mostly art students. Well no, only two art students. Hang on.” She narrows her eyes and thinks for a second. “Three art students. There’s Katya and Sasha, and no, that’s only two. Then there’s Adore, she’s a singer. I think she’s hypothetically taking classes here? But god knows what, I’ve never even seen her on campus.” Kim laughs, and then continues, going a hundred miles per hour: “Then there’s Jinkx, she just finished Uni and is looking for the next thing to do, she’s the best. Juju, she’s doing Philosophy but she’s really –

“Okay, wow, lots of people!”, Trixie interrupts her, pulling her knees to her chest where she sits on her new bed. Her head is hurting a little. It’s been a long day. She’ll have to put sheets on her bed and she doesn’t want to. “What’s with the names, do people in Boston just…not have normal names?”

Kim raises an eyebrow at her. “What’s a normal name?” she asks with a huff and a half smile.

“Uhh…Brenda, I guess? That’s a normal name. Wisconsin is full of Brendas.” It’s not actually that true, Trixie knows one, maybe two Brendas, but it’s a point she made so she’s gonna stand by it.

“Alright, Trixie.”, Kim snorts. “You’re literally called like my aunt’s dog, but sure, come for the names of my friends.” Kim is smiling, so Trixie knows she didn’t actually offend her. “Most of them picked a name they liked a while ago and made it stick.” She offers as an explanation. She tries to bend forward enough to blow her toe nails dry, but doesn’t quite succeed. She’s not the most flexible. Looks pretty awkward. “So if you’re fed up with your name, now is the time you wanna change it. New beginnings and all.”

Trixie laughs. “I actually like my name. I mean, not Beatrice, but Trixie. I like that a lot.” She admits and Kim raises an incredulous eyebrow at her. “What?” Trixie says, faking a pout. “It sounds like a doll’s name. I’m into that.”

♥♥♥

Trixie doesn’t know how, but somehow Kim has talked her into joining her when she leaves to go meet Shangela. She’s tired and in need of a shower, but also exhilarated and giddy, and genuinely curious about Kim’s friends. They sound intriguing. They sound like the kind of people Trixie has always wanted to know but who didn’t enter into her life much when she was living with her mum in a small town, working the desk at a hotel mostly frequented by people above the age of fifty. Half an hour ago, when they were getting ready, she pulled some clothes off the top of one of her suitcases and changed into them but changed her mind again after seeing what Kim had settled on wearing for the night:a purple dress with a big frilly skirt that matched her hair and makeup perfectly. That made Trixie empty out her suitcase in order to find her favourite pink dress. She barely ever wears this dress, because it’s just a little too much (or at least that’s what her mother had told her), but she loves the bright colour and how she could make the skirt twirl, and if Kim was going walk out in what she was wearing right now, Trixie could wear that pink dress. She made Kim wait for her while she put on some makeup – a little heavier than usual, because why not, and when she looked in the mirror, she felt prettier than she had in a long time. She hadn’t made an effort to look her best in a while, because she hadn’t seen a reason to, but tonight was special. Tonight was the first night of her new life – and also, if she was honest, she could already feel Kim’s over the top style helping her to be more daring. Next to Kim, it didn’t seem to matter what she wore.

Kim, waiting for her propped up on her desk chair and scrolling through her – pastel blue – phone, looked at Trixie’s final look and gave her thumbs up. “Do you need shoes for that? I have some really cool heels that would go great with that dress.”, she offered. Trixie thought about that for a second and decided that high heels might be a little much to go hang out with somebody at their house. She grins. “Nope. I got just the right shoes for that.”

Shangela’s house is a fifteen-minute walk from their apartment and the campus. Kim chatters away the whole time, lisp and all, tells Trixie about her Instagram account (“People love me on Instagram! It’s crazy!), and gives her more information on Shangela and her friends, that Trixie can’t really follow. She spends most of the walk feeling happy to have met Kim, and some of the walk anxious about meeting new people. Maybe she should have stopped at Kim today. Maybe that would have been enough. But she’s here, in her dress and her soft pink cowboy boots (that Kim made fun of for a solid two minutes earlier), and they’re walking up to the house, and Trixie can tell immediately why Kim likes spending so much time here. The house is big and old, with a small garden in front of it. In the garden there’s a big table with some candles, a fat white cat, and clutter on it, and a big tree that holds both fairy lights and two swings.

Before they’re even through the garden, the door swings open and a girl with big dark hair grins at them. She comes to hug Kim, seemingly unaware of the wet grass under her fuzzy, previously white socks. “Hi, you must be the new roomie? I’m Shangela.”, she says, and Trixie still thinks that’s the funniest name she’s ever heard. Shangela is tiny, barely reaches Trixie’s shoulders and looks about half the size of Kim. Before Trixie can answer her, Shangela points to her boots and laughs. “Oh my god, did Kim tell you to wear those? Kim, you bitch.”

“Actually, they were her idea. You can’t blame that on me.”

Usually, Trixie would regret her choice by now, but something about Kim’s frilly dress gives her confidence. “I’m country. Deal with it.” She says, deadpan, and at Shangela’s grin wavers and adds: “Oh, uhm, I’m Trixie, by the way. I hope it’s okay I tagged along? I don’t really know anybody here yet besides Kim and she said I could come?”

“Sure! Don’t worry about it, there’s always loads of people here at the Love Shack. After all, this is the best house in Boston!”

♥♥♥

And it is, probably. The house is big but so full of stuff that you barely notice. They are currently sitting in the kitchen with a checkers floor, three (!) big sofas and no table, and drinking tea.

“So, uh, the Love Shack?” Trixie asks after a while, remembering what Shangela said outside.

“Yes!”, Shangela grins, gesturing to the house around her.

“Nobody calls it that” Kim informs her. “I mean, Shangela does, but she’s tried to make it catch on for like two years now and no.”

At this, Shangela starts to sing pretty loudly: “The Love Shack is a pretty old place where we can get together – her – her”

“This isn’t even the lyrics” Kim says and rolls her eyes.

Shangela’s singing is pretty awful so Trixie interrupts her by asking how many people live here. She gets a vague answer. Something between six and nine, apparently, depending on she doesn’t know what exactly. Shangela changes the topic to her about her job at the day care and how her co-worker named Ginger (again with the names!) had just moved away and they were looking for somebody. Things seem to work out perfectly pretty much ever since Trixie landed in Boston and a part of her keeps waiting for something bad to happen. A cool job? Cool people? This is enough like Trixie’s secret fantasy life that she feels like it can’t be true. But Shangela is telling her about what she does with the kids – which involves a lot of dancing – and Kim has gotten up and started making pancakes as if she lives here, and her tea is warm, and the sofa is soft, and Trixie feels at peace.

Trixie’s peace lasts another eleven minutes. Then, somebody comes in the front door with a lot of noise, enters the kitchen in a rush and throws herself on the yellow sofa opposite of where Trixie and Shangela are sitting. “Hope you’re making enough pancakes, I’m the most hungry person in the world!” she exclaims in Kim’s direction before noticing the stranger in the room and flashing her a grin. “Hey, I’m Katya. I like your dress.”

Chapter 2: In Which Bob’s Hardwood Floors are Always Scratched

In the non-existent who-is-the-most-extraordinary-person-trixie-has-met-today contest, Katya gives Kim a run for her money. She is wearing a bright red lace bodysuit that covers every inch of her body except for her head, hands and feet, and a chunky necklace with a big black eye on it. Her blonde slightly curly hair is pulled back with a scrunchie, her lipstick is just as bright as her bodysuit and her heavy black eye makeup looks like she applied it in the dark.

“Did you wear that outside?”, Trixie blurts out before she can stop herself. Katya looks at her with her mouth open comically wide. Oh god. Trixie can already feel a blush creeping down her cheeks. Why couldn’t she just have said thanks for the compliment about her dress and left it at that. Always with the talking.

Shangela and Trixie laugh out loud. “New girl’s not a fan of you bullshit, Katya, how about that”, Shangela says, still giggling and reaches over to pat Trixie’s arm. “Get her, Jade. She needs that.” Trixie doesn’t know how to respond. The thing is, she is a fan of “Katya’s bullshit.” Very much so. Trixie wishes she had the guts to wear shit like that. Well, maybe not that colour. And maybe not the necklace. And also not the earrings with the tiny hands on it that she just noticed. What the fuck. But still.

“Katya’s an interpretive dancer.” Shangela says, as if that explains it all.

“Butoh.” Katya corrects her. Apparently, it’s obvious that Trixie doesn’t know what that means. “Butoh!” Katya says again, only louder, and lets herself glide off the couch until she’s lying on the floor with one leg still on the couch, dangling above her head. She rolls onto her back and starts laughing, heavily and without a sound, flailing her hands in the air above her. Trixie doesn’t know what’s so funny, but she laughs anyway. Katya doesn’t remind her of anybody she has ever met.

“That was her ‘dancing’” Kim comments helpfully. “That was one of her better moves, actually.” Kim walks over to them, settles a plate with pancakes on top of Katya’s stomach, and hands Shangela and Trixie full plates as well. “Anyone else home?” Kim asks Shangela. “Uh, Jinkx is home, and Adore too I think, but they just ate and you know they’re probably sleeping anyway.”

“More pancakes for me.”, comments Katya, who apparently decided she could eat without getting up, ripping off huge bits and letting them fall into her mouth from her extended arm.

They eat in silence for a minute, Trixie’s heart still beating a little faster from her thoughtless comment about Katya’s appearance before. Katya, thankfully, doesn’t seem offended by her comment. She’s fine. When Katya has finished her first pancake she turns to lie on her side, facing the others. “So”, she says with a grin (and if Trixie had teeth like that, she’d grin all day long, holy shit, they’re perfect)

“Who are you, besides uneducated in the art of dance?” When Trixie doesn’t answer because she doesn’t know how, Kim comes to her aid: “That’s my new roommate. Trixie. She likes that name. And those boots, she likes those also.” Katya looks at Trixie’s boots for a long while, chewing her second pancake thoughtfully. “I like them too” she finally says and – did she just wink at Trixie? Trixie must have imagined that.

“A woman not afraid to look stupid! A woman after my own heart.” Trixie’s heart beats faster at that, and she almost forgets to feel offended about being called uneducated. Almost.

The rest of the night is pretty great. They are chatting about anything and everything, with Shangela doing most of the talking and Trixie being happy to listen. Katya isn’t saying much either, she stays on the floor for most of the night but gets into weird stretch positions every once in a while – that girl can move her body. Katya seems to find their conversation endlessly amusing, breaking out into breathless giggling fits every couple of minutes. Most of the times, Trixie doesn’t even know what’s so funny, but Katya’s laugh makes her laugh anyway. Trixie feels drowsy, she’s been up and about for close to thirty hours now, and she settles deep into the couch and lets the conversation wash over her. Inadvertently, her eyes keep focusing on the girl on the floor in the tight red lace and matching lipstick. Trixie catches herself waiting for Shangela and Kim to say the next funny thing, so she can watch Katya laugh again. A couple of times she can feel a light fluttering in her stomach whenever she looks at Katya for too long. But she is tired and a little overwhelmed with everything and her stomach is probably all messed up from the plane ride and this means nothing, she decides. She is not going to crush on a person she met her first night here. Especially not one that wears an eye around her neck. They go home after Trixie has fallen asleep on the couch for the fourth time and back in her dorm room she goes straight to bed, without bothering to try and find her pyjamas or put on sheets. The last thing she thinks of before falling asleep is Katya’s laugh.

♥♥♥

The next morning, Trixie wakes up to pastel green walls, the faint smell of fruity perfume, and the thought of surprise that she was able to sleep that well in a new place. She must have slept a little too well, actually, because the sun coming though the half open blinders is bright and when she peeks at her phone she sees it’s past noon already. Kim is nowhere to be seen but even from her place in bed Trixie can see a post it note on the door: I’m at Shangela’s. Come over if you want to. Feel free to take my cereal if you don’t want to go buy something. – K. On the bottom of the page is a phone number that probably belongs to Kim.

Trixie stretches and remains in bed for a little while, feeling more at peace then she has in a long time. Her new roommate is better than she could have imagined, she has a job in sight, and she is still genuinely excited about starting classes on Monday. She looks around the room for a long while, deciding which of Kim’s cat pictures had to go to make room for Trixie’s stuff. She had packed a bunch of things to decorate her room, things that she loves and that are very personal, and she hadn’t been sure she would ever actually take them out. After all, she knew she was going to be sharing that room with somebody. But with Kim she knows she can fully be herself. And for now, being herself means getting out of bed to hang up pictures of her and her grandfather who had passed years ago, of her with her musical theatre group she had been in for most of high school, some pretty flowers, and some song lyrics she liked so much she had taken the time to write them down in her best attempt at calligraphy. She quietly sings to herself while putting on her favourite bedding (yellow with little daisies on it), arranges the few books she had taken with her on the empty shelf in her part of the room, and decides to go shopping for plants later. Currently the only plant in the room is an orchid on Kim’s night stand and it looks to be dead. Kim had painted the orchid’s brown leaves golden with what looks a lot like nail polish. A tragic plant.

It takes Trixie another hour to empty both of her suitcases. They have a big closet, but she shares it with Kim and while Kim has made her some space, it’s not quite enough (and not nearly half the closet). But Trixie doesn’t mind. Most of her clothing she doesn’t like anyway, it’s boring and she got it because she always had to look “nice” for her receptionist’s job. It’s all very uninspired, a lot of white, a lot of black. Then there’s a couple of things she really loves but never wears enough, some frilly dresses and skin-tight skirts, and she feels like she’ll actually get to wear these things around here. She spends a lot of time admiring Kim’s clothes and wonders if she’d mind sharing. Kim is taller than her and not exactly slim, but Trixie has some weight as well, big thighs and hips mostly, so Kim’s things might just fit her.

When her suitcase is empty, her side of the room looks like her and she’s happy. It’s only then that she begins to think about Kim’s offer to spend the day at Shangela’s. She wonders if Katya would be there. Katya. By the light of day, she is sure the fluttering in her stomach last night really didn’t have anything to do with her. Sure, Katya is beautiful and is obviously crazy in a great way, but Trixie doesn’t know her and it’s not like Katya would be interested in Trixie. As far as Trixie knows, she has met an underwhelming amount of three gay women and one bisexual woman in her life. One of the girls in her musical theatre group was gay, out proud and beautiful, but also never that interesting to Trixie. Then there was Shea, who Trixie very much didn’t want to think about. The third one was a woman who frequented the hotel Trixie worked at, and who always complained about the AC being too loud and generally got on Trixie’s nerves quite a bit. The bisexual woman was a girl named Courtney who Trixie met at a night club two years ago. They hooked up regularly over the course of nearly half a year but ultimately didn’t care enough about one another to make things work. So chances that Katya was going to be the fifth in this unimpressive line of women were slim. Then she remembers the way Katya winked at her last night it takes a second for her to catch her breath after that.

♥♥♥

After a long shower and some of Kim’s cereal, she decides she’s going to take Kim up on her offer and go to Shangela’s place. She thinks she can remember how to get there and puts Kim’s number into her phone in case.

Trixie finds her way to the house eventually, getting a little lost a few times on the way, but appreciating the chance to get to know the neighbourhood. On the way from her place to Shangela’s, there are a couple bars (including a 50s themed milk shake bar that Trixie will definitely be spending some time in), a supermarket, a nail studio, and even a little cinema that looks like it can’t have more than one room. It’s somewhere between summer and autumn, and the sun is still warm, so Trixie is wearing a soft yellow dress and her cowboy boots again – Katya said she liked them, didn’t she? And it’s not like Trixie needs a lot of encouragement to pull these boots out. When she reaches the house, there’s a group of people sitting at the table in the garden and Trixie makes out Kim by her purple hair immediately. Katya’s also there. She’s on one of the swings, swinging so high it looks like she might fall off any second. She waves at Trixie without letting go of the swing’s string. “Hi Trixie”, Kim says from where she sits at the table and then, “That’s my roommate I told you about. Trixie, this is, uh, a lot of people. This is Adore, Jinkx, Juju, Sasha, Chi Chi, and Bob. And you know Shangela and Katya. Kim points at each person individually and Trixie does her best to remember who everyone is.

The group at the table looks extraordinary for sure. Very much not like the friends Trixie had in high school and who slowly dropped out of her life one after one in the years after school. There’s at least three people at the table whose gender Trixie can’t make out. There’s Adore, with hair such a bright blue that she stands out even next to Kim. Adore is slouching in their chair, smoking something, wearing only an oversized shirt and hugging their hairy legs to their body. There’s Jinkx, short red hair and about zero features that indicated their gender. There’s Sasha, in men’s clothing and bald, but with an impressive amount of make up on. Juju is a small Asian girl who’s currently busy building a house out of playing cards; Chi Chi, who has a Nintendo in his hands, seems too involved in his game to look up, and Bob, tall and bald, a little older than the others, is the only one who stands up and shakes her hand.

“Hi everyone”, Trixie says, and awkwardly sits down in the empty spot next to Juju who looks up from her cards to tell her: “You’re joining us at exactly the right time, Bob is giving us an important lecture on how to treat his precious hardwood floors.” She rolls her eyes non-discreetly. Trixie must have looked a little lost because Sasha chimes in:

“It’s Bob’s house. He lets us stay here for next to no rent and certain people” – Sasha pointedly looks at Juju – “could be a little more grateful.” Juju doesn’t dignify this with an answer and instead adds a sixth floor to her card house, which promptly falls apart.

“So, uh, it’s your house?”, Trixie asks Bob, because she doesn’t know what else to say. In the corner of her eye she can see Katya has stopped swinging and is sitting still watching her. Watching them. Not her, of course.

“Yup.” Bob replies with a grin. Trixie likes him immediately. His septum reminds her of her unrealistic plans of getting one as well. “Used to be my dad’s house, is my house now, and I rent it out to these guys.”

“We’re his charity.”, says Chi Chi in a heavy southern drawl without looking up from his Nintendo. There’s no bitterness in his voice, Trixie notes.

“I’m not anyone’s charity”, Juju says, sticking her tongue out at Chi Chi, “Maybe your ass, but not mine.”

“Bob is a social worker and does a lot for LGBT youth”, Sasha says, apparently being the most helpful person at the table. “This house is basically open for those of us who need it.”

“Oh. So you’re all…” Trixie doesn’t finish that sentence, and regrets having started it.

“Fucking queer”, says Adore from next to Juju and almost all of them start laughing. Trixie feels a little lighter at that.

“Fucking queer”, echoes Katya, who has suddenly come up behind Jinkx and squeezes herself into the space between Trixie and Juju. She’s wearing a skin tight black dress covered in pictures of abstract faces, combat boots, and the little hands are dangling from her ears again. Her thighs press against Trixies and she smells like cigarettes and flowers. Maybe daisies, Trixie catches herself thinking, before frowning at herself. It’s not like she even knows what daisies smell like.

Katya is very close. And Katya is fucking queer, whatever that means. This close up and in the light of the sun, her dark makeup looks even messier. Her mascara is clumping a bunch of her lashes together in the corner of her right eye and her foundation doesn’t match her neck. Trixie wants to reach out and pick a stray lash off Katya’s cheek. The thought makes her blush. To her relief, nobody seems to pay her too much attention and after a while Trixie manages to get her mind off the girl next to her and focus on the rest of the group. Bob has resumed his lecture on how to treat the floor – apparently they were scratching it rearranging furniture all the time. Sasha and Jinkx listen earnestly, while the rest of them don’t seem too bothered. After a minute, Katya snatches away Chi Chi’s Nintendo mid-game and starts playing his Pokémon game while he quietly curses at her but makes no effort to get up and get it back. They spend another half hour half bickering with Bob, half doing their own thing (Juju is now busy gluing little crystals onto a mirror for god knows what purpose and Shangela is knitting what looks like a tent in the ugliest green Trixie has ever seen) when Kim turns the conversation to Trixie: “So Trixie, have you settled in already? Anything you need?”

Trixie remembers the plants she wants to get. “Uh, yeah, everything’s pretty great. But I want to get some plants. Can you tell me where to get them?”

“Plants! I need plants.”, Katya chimes in from next to her. “I’ll take you.” Trixie’s heart flutters at that. Again with the fluttering. Can she still get away with blaming that on the air plane? Probably. The thought of going plants shopping with Katya seems nerve wracking to her. She hopes somebody else will come too, maybe Kim, Kim could probably anchor her. “Anyone else wanna come? No? Good.” Katya says without really waiting for an answer, gets up, pretends to give Chi Chi back the Nintendo but then puts it on the ground out of his reach last second.

♥♥♥

The first thing Katya does when they’ve left the garden is take a cigarette and a lighter out of her bra. The second thing is ask Trixie this question: “So, who are you, and, more importantly, who do you want to be?” Trixie looks at her in disbelief for a second. What the fuck kind of question was that. Did she hear that in some kind of self – help group for people with awful fashion sense? Katya seems to expect an answer, so Trixie wrecks her brain for a second and comes up with:

“I’m the gal who’s not here for a long time, but is here for a good time. Trixie!” Katya almost drops her cigarette out of her mouth at that and laughs for way too long. That was pretty funny. Trixie mentally pats her own back.

“So Kim says you study art?” Trixie asks eventually, because she suddenly remembers that.

“Yes! Visual arts.” Katya says in a voice that leaves no doubt she lives for that. “With Sasha. The bald one? Sasha’s my favourite person!” Katya skips a little like that, grinning at Trixie. She seems just as overflowing with happy energy as last night and Trixie wonders if she’s always like that. Trixie isn’t, that’s for sure. She is right now though. Something about Katya makes her heart feel light. “So how do you like it here so far?” is Katya’s next question. With it, she spreads her arms and spins around in a circle twice, indicating the area around her. “I’ve never lived anywhere else, honestly, but I think it’s pretty cool, yeah?” she adds.

“Yes, oh wow, I mean it’s definitely better than Wisconsin. It just has to be.” She proceeds to tell Katya about her home town, about growing up in the middle of nowhere, about how much she had liked Wisconsin at times, and how much she had resented it at different times. She tells her about her neighbours’ farm and how she used to ride horses there until they moved away. She misses the horses.

Katya seems to listen intensely, looking way more at Trixie than at the street in front of her, and lighting another cigarette as soon as she’s finished the first one. Trixie likes being looked at, but feels weirdly self – conscious under Katya’s eyes. They reach a little flower shop after a couple of minutes. It’s painted in a faded yellow and Trixie likes that it matches her dress. It makes her feel beautiful.

♥♥♥

When they leave the shop a little later, Trixie is carrying a big carton box with an orchid (that is always going to look better than Kim’s and that is never going to get too close to nail polish), some succulents and a couple of plants whose name she doesn’t know but that she thinks are going to look very pretty in their room. The only thing Katya had gotten was a chunky (and ugly) metal sculpture of a crow that was meant to be a decoration for flower pots. “This will make a great necklace” she said when she first saw it, making Trixie snort.

“It’s way too heavy!”

“Pretty hurts.”

“I hate to tell you but this is like the opposite of pretty.”

Naturally, Katya bought the thing anyway, claiming she’ll be wearing it everytime they see each other.

“What about plants then?” “What?”

“Plants. You wanted to get plants? That’s why you came with me?”

“Oh yeah, no. I’m fine. Sasha has a cactus and that’s already a lot of responsibility, you see, I mean we share custody, but still.”

Whatever.

Her arms hurt from carrying the box, the wind is a little too chilly for her to be wearing just her dress, and she’s pretty hungry, but Trixie feels happy. Katya is great, she decides on their way back to Shangela’s – Bob’s? – as if she didn’t already decide that last night. Katya didn’t say much last night or in the garden today, but now that they are alone, she is talking pretty much constantly, skipping from one topic to another and back in a way that makes it hard for Trixie to follow but that’s also entertaining. Katya talks about her efforts to learn Russian and how she’s making sure her pronunciation is perfect, even if she doesn’t know that many words yet (“ворона, ворона“ she yells out, fiddling with her metal crow, as if Trixie knows what that means). She talks about the cat Trixie saw in the garden earlier and how she calls him Milk but everybody in the house has a different name for him, which doesn’t matter because it’s not like he listens anyway (“he’s not technically ours, and not technically allowed in the house, but I swear he spends most of his time in Juju’s and Shangela’s room, Juju lets him sleep in her bed). She talks about her dancing class and about a girl named Laganja that talked her into trying it out (“You have to meet her, she’s my favourite person!”) By the time they reach the house, Trixie is sure she wants to stay here and listen to Katya talk all day.

The garden is empty except for Kim, who’s petting Milk the cat, Shangela, who’s still knitting her tent-thing, and Jinkx, who seems to have fallen asleep in her chair. Trixie heaves the box with her plants onto the table and slumps down next to Kim. Katya, apparently filled with too much energy to sit down, stands behind Shangela and messes up her hair. “Stop that”, Shangela complains and then adds: “Go and call Violet. She sent Sasha like 10 texts today saying you should stop ignoring her.”

Katya sighs deeply and messes with Shangela’s hair even more rigorously, trying to knot it into a pretzel on top of her head. “Seriously Kat. What’s going on with you two?” Shangela asks, her voice suddenly soft. Katya opens her mouth as if to answer, but then doesn’t, and shrugs. Her giddy energy seems to slowly leave her body.

“Ugh” is the only thing Katya says before she turns and goes towards the house, presumably to call Violet.

“Who’s Violet?” asks Trixie, curious about the sudden shift in Katya’s mood.

“Oh, Violet. She lives here, technically, but she’s currently travelling around with a bunch of people making shows. She’s mostly doing aerial.” Kim explains. “You should see her, she’s amazing. She’s Katya’s girlfriend.”

Chapter 3: In Which Chi Chi Goes Hard And Goes Home

Katya’s girlfriend. Kim’s words are stuck in Trixie’s head even half an hour later when she’s back in her room, distracting herself with Netflix and a vegetarian Burrito she got on her way over here. Katya’s girlfriend. Of course Katya has a girlfriend. Katya is amazing. Trixie sniffs a little and hides her face in one of her pillows. When she comes up for air she catches sight in herself in Kim’s big mirror and suddenly has to giggle in slight exasperation with herself. The drama! So unnecessary. It’s not like she knows Katya, not really. Katya could be a serial killer for all she knows. With that jewellery of hers, she probably is. And at least Trixie found out about her girlfriend now, before she had time to indulge whatever feeling she gets when she looks at Katya for too long. It isn’t a crush yet anyway, not really. Everything is still pretty amazing, she decides, things are going just fine. And if she spends the rest of the day thinking about Katya’s laugh and the way her combat boots are just a little too chunky on her skinny legs, well, that’s okay. She’ll be distracted soon enough. She has things to do, people to meet, a life to live. Her life is going to be exciting.

As if to undermine that point, she spends the rest of the day in her room watching Netflix and mentally preparing for starting classes tomorrow. There’s not much to do. She already did most of her preparation reading weeks ago when she had still counted days until she would leave. So now her preparation consists mainly of pulling half of the clothes she just put into the closet this morning out of it to put them on and decide if they are the right clothes to wear on her first day. Trixie likes when her clothes mirror who she is. Or, maybe, who she wants to be. Either way, she wants people to have an idea of who she is before she even starts talking. But today none of her clothes say what she wants them to say about her, so she leaves everything lying around, deciding she’ll just have to wing it tomorrow morning. In order to do at least one productive thing today she brushes up on her resumé to give to Shangela when she next sees her.

In the early evening, Kim comes home from Shangela’s. She raises an eyebrow at Trixie’s clothes on the floor – and shit, Trixie realizes, Kim is so neat and she fucked up the room on only her second day here – but doesn’t comment. Instead, she throws herself on her bed and puts on Project Runway on her laptop while eating pickles straight out of a jar. Classy. Trixie, having gone back to her what-will-i-wear-tomorrow dilemma, is hardly paying attention to the show, but Kim keeps commenting on it, trying to involve her: “Can you believe Heidi talks trash about his look when she wears this? This?! She has some nerve.” Kim even turns her laptop so that Trixie can see Heidi’s outfit. At that, Trixie decides to give in and join Kim on her bed, and they watch the show together. It’s dumb and funny and gets Kim agitated in a way Trixie hasn’t seen her before, and this is nice, Trixie thinks, this is really nice.

♥♥♥

The next morning Trixie wakes up buzzing with excitement about starting her classes. She puts on an amount of makeup she never would have worn back in Wisconsin, slips into a light pink dress she settled on in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling and not being able to sleep, and carefully curls her long blonde hair. Trixie’s hair is her whole pride, and she spends an embarrassing amount of time making sure it looks perfect at all times. And it does – as long as she doesn’t have to spend a day in an air plane. Kim blasts some Asian music Trixie has never heard before while changing outfits at least seven times and eating cereal at the same time. She lets Trixie leech off her cereal once more (Trixie is going to buy her own shit tonight, for sure) and then leaves for her classes in the opposite direction of where Trixie is going.

Like a true first semester student, Trixie is early to class. Twenty-eight minutes early to be exact. She wanted to make absolutely sure she’d have enough time to find her building and then found it much faster than expected, mostly due to a little plan Kim drew up for her. On her way here, the campus was mostly deserted,and in the small brick building she is right now she can’t see a single person. She double checks if she is at the right place. She triple checks. She goes into the bathroom to check her reflection in the mirror. She walks up and down the corridor reading the signs on every door. She goes into the bathroom again and washes her hands. Still twenty minutes. She wants to take a walk over campus because she hasn’t actually looked at anything yet, but is suddenly anxious she won’t find her classroom again, so she stays put. God, she’s nervous. What if in twenty minutes her professor will say something that tells Trixie that she shouldn’t be here, not in this room, maybe not even at this university, that maybe she can’t do this, and she should have stayed at the hotel.

This is stupid, Trixie decides, she needs to distract herself. In the last few minutes one other student has arrived, but he is lost in his phone and seems to be not at all interested in a conversation, so Trixie pulls out her phone as well. She hardly had time to look through her notifications this morning but now she sees she has a following request on Instagram from Kim and Shangela. She accepts and scrolls through Kim’s profile for a little while. That girl really is an artist, Trixie will definitely have to learn from her. It takes only a little scrolling before she finds Katya in one of Kim’s pictures and with it a link to Katya’s profile. She wonders for a moment if checking Katya’s profile is a good idea, but it seems a better option than freaking out about her studies before they even began, so she clicks on the profile. For whatever reason it’s called ‘momsgoldteeth’. Katya’s profile picture is of her with photoshopped demonic eyes in front of a background of fire. Her bio only says: Can you even fuck a pokeman? What the fuck. Katya’s profile is private, and Trixie hesitates before sending her a friend request, goes to check her own profile for potentially embarrassing pictures before she does. Trixie’s profile picture is her favourite picture of her that a classmate took on a field trip a couple of years ago. She’s standing on a meadow, wearing a flower crown she had just made, her arms raised in the air and the sun behind her making her hair look like it glows. Her bio says: Love your hair, hope you win with a bunch of heart emojis added in and oh, well, why not. She sends the friend request and while she’s at it, also sends one to everybody else she met yesterday. Making friends! It’s important.

She barely has time to look at their profiles before her professor arrives and opens their room. It’s still fifteen minutes early but apparently this professor is used to first semester students being anxious and early and she gives Trixie a smile that immediately makes her feel a little easier.

Trixie’s first lecture is probably boring – filled with: this is what we are going to do this semester, this is how to register for your classes, this is how everything works, and you need to pay attention, your exams aren’t going to be easy – but Trixie listens intensely and feeling much more relaxed than just half an hour before. She’s finally here and damn if she’s not going enjoy her time here. The two guys sitting next to her start playing hangman ten minutes in and a girl in front of her is eating dry cornflakes, but Trixie carefully writes down everything her professor says. She’s going to be good in this class. If these two idiots next to her – one just failed at guessing the word ‘compass’ – could be at university, then so could she.

♥♥♥

When Trixie comes home after her second and last lecture of the day, she’s still feeling good, but she’s also exhausted. Who knew sitting around for four hours could be so tiring? Kim seems to feel the same way because she’s lying in her bed, full face of makeup but changed into pyjamas, and plays on her phone. “Hey, how was it?” Kim asks with a smile. “Pretty cool!” Trixie answers. “I mean, we didn’t actually do much today, but the classes sound nice and apparently we’re allowed to eat during lectures so what more could you want?” She decides to do as Kim and changes into one of her night gowns before lying down in her bed and pulling out her phone. Katya and Adore have already accepted her request and she clicks on Katya’s profile. Her stomach is fluttering in excitement.

Katya’s profile is a lot. She barely has any pictures up, instead, there are a bunch of short videos. Trixie clicks on the latest one. In it, Katya is wearing the same red bodysuit she wore when they met and is doing a hand stand in a dance studio. A second video shows her zooming in and out of Bob while he is reading a paper, singing “You’re my favourite person” to him off key while he does his best to ignore her. Another video shows her smearing her red lipstick off with her hands before laughing hysterically and going out of the frame.

“Katya?” Kim asks, without looking up from her phone.

“Yeah. I’m uh, I’m just looking at her Instagram.”

“It’s a mess. Wanna see a good Instagram? Go to mine. Or Sasha’s, that’s amazing. But Katya? Hot mess.”

“Yeah.” Trixie agrees distractedly. Here’s a picture of Sasha kissing Katya’s cheek while she grins into the camera widely. “So, umm, Kim? Katya and Violet. They are…” she trails of, suddenly not knowing where she wants that sentence to go.

Kim frowns at her for a couple of seconds before saying: “They’re a couple. They are gay. A gay couple. Well, Katya’s bisexual and I’m actually not sure what Violet identifies as currently, but they’re a couple. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?” Kim sounds a little concerned at that.

Okay, okay. They’re a couple. Trixie knows this already and it’s bad enough without Kim repeating it a billion times over. Kim still looks at her with a scrutinizing look on her face and it takes Trixie a second to understand her behaviour. Oh. Kim thinks she’s a homophobe. “Oh no! God no. I’m gay. I’m pretty gay.” Kim looks relieved. “Pretty and gay. Gay and pretty” she adds to lighten the mood.

“Oh” Kim grins. “Oh, good. I’m not. Gay, I mean. Pretty, sometimes.”

“Yeah, umm” Trixie thinks for a second. Should she bring this conversation back to Katya? She really wants to. “So Violet is travelling a lot?”

Here’s what Trixie finds out: Katya had been interested in Violet since Violet first moved into Bob’s house a little over two years ago, but they had only started dating a year ago. Apparently, there had been quite a lot of pining on Katya’s side before that, and only when Sasha had played matchmaker had they finally started dating – damn Sasha, Trixie thinks. A couple months later, Violet had left to travel with her group. They are still together, talking on the phone all the time, and apparently arguing a lot lately.

Kim says she doesn’t know what these arguments are about, but it’s obvious she’s keeping something from Trixie. It’s also obvious that Kim cares a lot about both Katya and Violet. When Kim gets bored with the conversation a couple of minutes later, Trixie wraps her blanket around herself and tries to resist the temptation of checking out Violet’s Instagram.

Nothing good can come of this, she knows. She resists for all of four minutes, then takes her phone to find Violet’s profile. Thankfully, it’s not private. Trixie wouldn’t have brought it over herself to send her a follower’s request. As Trixie expected, Violet’s Instagram doesn’t help her feel better about the situation. Violet is hot. Of course she is. She is also tall, slim, has perfect dark 50s styled hair and makeup and looks nothing like Trixie. To make things worse, her body is barely covered in any of her pictures. Violet seems to have a preference for wearing a couple rhine stones and feathers, and nothing else.

Trixie has to scroll down quite a bit – trying hard not to admire the poses Violet gets into when doing aerial – before finding a picture of Violet and Katya together. It was taken in what looks like a night club. Violet is dressed in some glittery thing (she was probably performing that night, that can’t seriously be something she wears on a night out, Trixie thinks and feels more inadequate than ever) and Katya has her arms and one leg wrapped around her and laughs happily. She can clearly see the admiration in Katya’s eyes. The sight makes Trixie sad. She wants somebody to look at her the way Katya looks at Violet in the picture. (She wants Katya to look at her the way she looks at Violet in the picture, is a thought Trixie has, but refuses to indulge).

♥♥♥

It’s the first week of Uni, so there are a lot of parties happening on and off campus. Trixie loves parties but barely ever gets to go and it takes her a whole four days before she manages to talk Kim into going with her. Kim doesn’t seem to be too thrilled at the thought of spending the night at a club, but finally gives in at the prospect of getting to really dress up. She spends over an hour on her nails that end up so over the top she can’t use her phone. This is why she has Trixie text back and forth with Shangela, who wants to join them and bring some of the others along. Trixie wants to ask if Katya is coming, but doesn’t want Kim to tease her about it – and, also, she has managed to not talk (or think too much) about Katya for the last three days and she is not going to break that streak now.

When they’re finally in front of the club a couple of hours later, everybody from Bob’s house, except for Bob himself is there. (“Bob has a husband and a kid, he doesn’t wanna hang out with our asses too much” Juju explains when Trixie asks about him).

They are quite a sight to behold, Trixie thinks. Sasha is wearing a blue velvet jump suit and graphic blue makeup under the eyes, Shangela is in something that looks suspiciously like a cheerleader uniform, and Adore has replaced their blue hair with blond hair so big they are now taller than even Trixie. And then there’s Katya, in a bright purple dress covered in black hand prints and her hair in two messy buns on top of her head. The hands on her ears have long glittery fingernails today that Trixie is sure weren’t there last time. (Did she glue them on? Does she have more than one pair of creepy hand earrings? If yes, why?) Trixie hugs everybody hello and when she gets to Katya, Katya smells like daisies again. Well, daisies and cigarettes. Trixie tries to focus on the cigarettes. She wouldn’t want to date a smoker. But Katya is a lot shorter and skinnier than Trixie, and she feels so nice in her arms, and Trixie lets go of her with reluctance.

“Great dress.” Sasha tells Trixie, and Trixie looks down at herself, feeling a little self-conscious. She had borrowed one of Kim’s dresses, a tight black lacey one that shows her curves in a way that makes her more than a little nervous, but Kim had complimented her for a full twenty minutes, giving Trixie enough confidence to work this dress. (Also, if Kim gets away with that floor length golden dress covered in fans, cats, and fancy cutlery, Trixie should get away with this). She spins around twice to show herself off to the group, hoping for Katya to jump in on Sasha’s compliment, but Katya is busy looking for her lighter in her purse and doesn’t look up at her.

♥♥♥

The club they have picked is a queer club (because why step outside your bubble when you don’t have to) and Trixie is delighted with the energy there. It’s pretty small and a little bit dirty, the walls are plastered with posters of upcoming events and events long passed, either smoking is allowed inside or at least nobody cares, and some people are dressed weird enough that Trixie and her group don’t raise too much attention. It’s also the club where Adore has most of their gigs and where they – and apparently everyone they know – get to drink for free. Trixie orders a Gin and Tonic and leans against the bar, taking in the club around her. Being in a club and not being drunk has an unreal quality to it, and something about the heat and the loud music always makes Trixie feel a little drunk before she even starts drinking. Katya gets up on the bar stool right next to Trixie, back to the bar, and crosses her legs so that her shoe lightly touches Trixie’s thigh. She is wearing green jellies and Trixie wants to comment on them, but Katya is busy taking a video of Sasha, probably for her Instagram. The spotlights on the ceiling rapidly change from green to purple and back, reflecting prettily in the ice cubes in Trixie’s drink and Trixie can already feel a bit of sweat forming on the small of her back although she has yet to start dancing.

So far, there’s no dancing except for a group of guys awkwardly shuffling around in one of the corners. Trixie feels ready to dance, but not ready to be the only one dancing and having all eyes on her, especially not in the dress she is wearing. Chi Chi, however, doesn’t seem to have such qualms. He has barely taken a sip of his vodka tonic before he abandons the drink on the counter, walks to the middle of the dance floor and starts going hard. The song they are currently playing doesn’t have any lyrics, but that doesn’t stop Chi Chi from singing along loud enough for Trixie to hear him over the music. Chi Chi’s moves are enough to inspire a couple of people to start dancing as well, although nobody comes even close to his energy. After drowning not only her own drink but also Chi Chi’s, Juju drags Shangela on the dance floor, and Trixie trails behind them. She starts dancing rather carefully, her drink still half full in her hand, and her mind aware of Katya watching them with her phone in hand, texting someone. It’s probably Violet, Trixie thinks, and feels her stomach knot, and she probably should stop being hyper aware of Katya when Katya obviously isn’t paying her any attention. It takes her another minute to truly shift her attention and instead focus on Chi Chi and the others, on their silly dance moves and their laughs, and the light reflecting in their hair.

After an intense half hour of some of the most ambitious dancing Trixie has ever seen in a club, Chi Chi kisses Shangela goodbye, messes up Juju’s hair and gives a wave to Trixie and the rest of the group at the bar, before saying: “That’s it, I’m out” and leaving the club. Trixie is slightly puzzled. The night was only just getting started. “He always does that”, Katya, coming up behind her, says loudly into Trixie’s ear. She places both of her hands on Trixie’s shoulder and gets on her toes to talk to her. “He goes hard for thirty minutes tops and then just goes home to sleep. And then he makes fun of everyone else for being hungover in the morning” Katya is so close Trixie can see where her red lipstick is slightly overdrawn. A strand of her hair is sticking to the side of her neck. She let’s go of Trixie before Trixie can reply and starts dancing, suggestively grinding against Juju until Shangela squeezes in between them and all but sushes Katya away.

♥♥♥

Two hours later, Trixie is a little drunk and a lot happy. Everyone but Kim has joined them on the dance floor and they take turns taking breaks and sitting with Kim – which mostly involves making fun of the rest of them dancing. Trixie tries again and again to get Kim on the dance floor, but every time Kim points to her nine-inch heels and tells her there is just no way. After another two gin and tonics, Trixie feels free enough to bust out her favourite dance moves, which resemble tap dancing and which she learned taking a class four years ago. She’s a little rusty and she can barely remember how to properly do the steps, but she’s making everybody laugh in the best way, and that’s all she can hope for. Shangela and Juju are making out heavily against the wall behind her, without a care in the world for their surroundings. Sasha is talking animatedly to a stranger in a bowler hat, Jinkx has her arms around Kim’s shoulders from behind and seems to be taking a nap on her, and Adore is dancing with Katya and Trixie, every now and then mirroring one of Trixie’s moves in a half-mocking way. The music at the club is mostly 80s pop in questionable remixes and they shout along with the lyrics (and pretend to shout along where they don’t know the lyrics), and when What a Feeling comes on, Katya starts cartwheeling in the too small space and manages to kick pretty much all of them at least once.

It’s 5 am when they make their way back home, Trixie and Kim to Campus, the others to the house. Trixie’s hearing feels muffled, her feet and her back hurt, her voice is hoarse from screaming to the music, and the cold air bites into her skin where it’s sweaty from the club, and she decides they are going to this club at least once a week from now on. Kim, however, swears she’s not going to go out again for at least half a year.

When they stumble into their hallway, Trixie impulsively wraps her arms around Kim’s shoulders and hugs her as they continue walking. “Thank you” she says. “No, thank you.” Kim replies dryly. With you in the group, I’m not the worst dancer anymore.”

Trixie’s already half asleep in her bed when her phone buzzes with a message from Katya.

Katya

You looked like a goth Barbie doll tonight and I love it.

♥♥♥

Trixie spends the rest of her first weekend in Boston in their apartment, where Kim teaches her how to glue on fake lashes and overdraw her lips. Trixie is pretty much in awe of Kim’s skills, especially since she found out that Kim makes most of her clothes herself. Trixie itches with the desire to go out and buy some more clothes she likes, but she has to save her money for rent. At least one good thing came out of her hesitating to go to college: she has some savings and can make rent without too much of a problem, but still, better not splurge before she has a new job. Kim says she can just wear whatever she wants from her part of the closet, so it’s fine. Trixie spends quite a bit of time trying on Kim’s clothes, finding out which dresses fit her, and which don’t, and which lip stick looks best with which dress.

She doesn’t see Katya this weekend, and in fact hasn’t even replied to her 5 am text yet, a text that had kept her up for another half hour. Katya likes her. Or, at least likes her style, and her style reflects on her, doesn’t it? Honestly, the main reason why Trixie hasn’t replied is because in her happy buzzed state she had felt like replying with several heart emojis, but knew this wasn’t an appropriate answer.

At some point during their lazy Sunday Trixie realizes that Katya doesn’t even know Trixie is gay. But it doesn’t matter, she decides. It’s not like Katya’s available anyway.

Chapter 4: In Which the Rain is Metaphorical

The second week of Uni is a lot more stressful for Trixie than the first one. She has a hard time focusing in her lectures and seminars, not because they are boring – ok, some of them are, but not all of them – but because she doesn’t like sitting and listening without talking herself for too long. The lights in the lecture hall are always a little too bright, her professor’s voices always a little too dull, and the other students always a little too loud. She finds herself drifting off a lot, and spends more time with anxious thoughts about upcoming exams than actually listening. She can’t fail at this, she thinks, she just can’t.

On Thursday in her second week, she has an interview at the day care Shangela works at. It’s called Miles of Smiles Childcare, it’s painted a bright blue and the windows are full of children’s art. There’s a jungle scene painted all over the big front window, with barely distinguishable animals obviously drawn by enthusiastic toddlers. Trixie likes it there right away.

Her interview is with a large woman with a deep booming voice. She’s called Latrice and is in charge of the day care, but looks like she might as well be in charge of the country. Trixie follows her through the hallway into her office, bumping into kids who cross her path in unexpected way not only once, but several times. There is a stray tomato lying next to a single shoe right in front of Latrice’s door, which Latrice picks up with a sigh and places on the desk in her office. Once they are sitting on opposite sides of Latrice’s desk, Latrice offers her tea and cherry gummy bears that are already set up on the table. Trixie takes two of the cherries and notices with relief that she feels rather relaxed. There’s something about the ugly yellow of Latrice’s office walls and Latrice’s calm smile that has a soothing effect on her.

The interview goes over rather well. Latrice is unimpressed with Trixie’s work experience in the field (which basically comes down to her baby sitting her neighbour’s kids every time their dad had to take out their mom to make up for the stunts he kept pulling), but Shangela must have talked Trixie up quite a bit, because Latrice wants her back the next day to see what she can do. Trixie is nervous about that, nervous about an opportunity to fuck up yet another thing, but when she walks through the corridors of the day care, all bright and colourful and loud, she knows she really wants this.

She’s on her way back home when her phone buzzes.

Katya

Heard you have your interview today. You’ll be fine! I mean, they took Shangie, and she’s Shangie, so their standards aren’t too high. This time, Trixie texts back immediately.

Trixie

You’re late, interview’s over. Went well!

Katya

Good! Sasha ditched me for a date with weird-hat-guy, so I’m lonely do you maybe want to get drinks? I should get a hat like that, don’t you think

Drinks? With Katya? Trixie’s heart starts beating way too fast and she sits down on a nearby bench for a second, weighing her options. She’s not sure going out with Katya is the best idea for her. After all, she is still only semi-successful in not developing a crush on that girl. At the same time though there is no way she could say no to that offer. She hasn’t had time to talk to Katya alone since they went to get plants and maybe, just maybe, hanging out with her would help her in demystifying Katya and moving on. So maybe hanging out with Katya is the best thing she can do.

Trixie

I hope it’s milkshakes

Katya

At that milkshake bar? Yeah, sure I’ll be there in twenty?

Trixie is at the 50s milkshake bar fifteen minutes later, her stomach fluttering a little. So far, she’s barely spent time with Katya, and she’s not even sure she can hold a conversation with her. The last thing she wants Katya to think is that she’s boring. Trixie isn’t boring, she knows that, but she also knows that she’s too good at hiding that fact sometimes.

When Katya arrives it’s on a bike with a deflated wheel that seems to take her all her strength to ride. She probably would have been faster on foot. “It’s Juju’s” she says, as if that was an explanation, and then “Hi”. She hugs Trixie and she’s a little sweaty from her ride here and Trixie can smell her shampoo in her hair for a second. She doesn’t know what it smells like, it reminds her faintly of…yellow? Trixie isn’t good with scents. Today’s outfit includes a dress with a pattern of coffee beans and a necklace of the crow they had gotten together. Katya had already broken her promise to wear that thing every time they see each other, but apparently, she hasn’t thrown it out yet either. She’s also wearing big brown glasses. Trixie didn’t know Katya had glasses. She catches herself thinking that the glasses make Katya look even more beautiful, and internally rolls her eyes at herself. That’s just too much.

Half an hour later, while sipping the rest of her strawberry milkshake, Trixie is assured she doesn’t bore Katya. Quite the contrary, she’s rather successful at making Katya laugh; a laugh that makes her flail her arms in front of her almost every time. She tells Katya a little about the guests at the hotel, and brings out every funny exchange she can remember, sometimes shamelessly exaggerating, just so she can get that laugh out of Katya. It works every time. Trixie is pleased with herself.

After Trixie admits she doesn’t know what Butoh dance is (she had wanted to look it up but her refusal to indulge in her Katya madness had stopped her), Katya pulls out her phone and shows her a video on her friend Laganja’s Instagram. Katya and three other people, all of them in bodysuits, are…moving around to synthetic music in a dance studio. There’s a lot of dramatically exaggerated facial expressions, falling to the floor, and twisting your body in ways Trixie could never do. It’s mesmerizing, artistic, impressive, and also hilarious. At one point, when Katya lies on her stomach, grabbing her feet with her hands and letting a silent scream into the camera, Trixie chokes on her drink. She goes into a little laughing fit, can’t help herself, and Katya, turning off the video grabs her shoulder and says: “This is art, bitch. Get with it.”

“The art of what exactly” Trixie retorts, still laughing and a little relieved that Katya doesn’t look to be too insulted. “The art of moving your body in a way nobody ever wants to see?”

“Exactly. Yes!” Katya yells out, hitting the table twice as punctuation, making a man a few tables over shoot them a curious look. “That’s exactly it! I mean, it isn’t of course, but that’s exactly it!”

“Look at me, getting art.”

“Get it or it gets you!” Katya puts away her phone and flips through the short menu again. “You should come to one of our shows sometime. You’d fit right in with Shangie and Juju, last time they almost got kicked out of the theatre because they couldn’t pull themselves together.” Katya grins at that memory.

“Is there a show this weekend? I have, like, nothing on.”

Katya shakes her head no. “I’m actually not here this weekend and maybe all of next week. We’ll see, I’m visiting someone.” There’s beat of silence before that last word and Trixie wonders whether she should maybe not ask further questions, but her curiosity wins over.

“Who?”

“Violet.”

“Oh. Your girlfriend, right?” Trixie says as casually as possible, not looking at Katya and instead focussing on the ice cubes in her glass. There’s one that’s shaped like a foot. Trixie crushes it into pieces with her pink straw.

“Yeah.” Is Katya’s only answer. She closes the menu and leans back in her seat, looking at Trixie expectantly.

“So are you guys, like, long distance? Kim says she’s travelling?” Trixie asks after a few long seconds of silence in which she contemplated changing the subject back to the hotel, to Laganja, to her classes, anything else.

“Yeah. Uh, she’s travelling with a show as an Aerial performer, she’s pretty incredible.” Katya’s eyes light up at that. “We met at the house, she lives here too.”

Trixie knows all this.

“Do you manage to see her a lot?”

“Nope.” Katya says, playing with a crumb on the table. She pushes it back and forth with her straw, leaving a small trail of bubbly milkshake foam on the plastic table. “But it’s fine, you know, or it will be. I’m done with Uni next summer and who knows, maybe I can travel with her. I have some talents as well, as you know!” At that, she grins before she immediately gets serious again. “She’s in New York sometimes and that’s when I get to see her most.” Katya takes off her glasses and rubs them on the bottom of her dress. The dress, which is a little too short anyway, rides up, but Katya is mostly covered by the table. Trixie forces her eyes away and looks out of the window they’re seated next to. It’s getting dark outside and her reflection stares back at her out of the window. She’s pale in the light of the bar and a strand of hair has gotten out of the bow at the back of her neck. She hopes her hair wasn’t messed up like this at her interview earlier. It’s drizzling outside, a big puddle is forming right in front of her on the sidewalk and the thought of Katya maybe being gone all week makes her feel forlorn somehow.

“So you’re going to be in New York all week?”

“Oh, I’m going tomorrow and then we’ll see. It’s not easy to plan this stuff and her schedule changes around all the time and I also never know how long I’ll want to stay. Sometimes she has time off and we get to do stuff, but then other times no. But this time should be fine, I’ pretty sure we have a room just the two of us this time. There’s this girl travelling with her who’s a little, uh. Valentina. She’s cool, I like her, but she’s also awful, and, ugh, I’m not even sure what bothers me so much about her, but it’s something. It’s something!”

“Maybe you just want some alone time?” Trixie tries to sound casual, fixing her hair distractedly.

“Yes. Yes, alone time would help.” Katya says and sighs quietly. Then her mood suddenly changes and she’s grinning again. “Alone time would help” she repeats, and winks at Trixie obnoxiously. Trixie forces herself to grin and then focusses back on the puddle on the sidewalk. It’s growing and growing, and the rain is leaking in a trickle out of its corners down the empty street.

♥♥♥

Working at Smiles for Miles is a challenge, that’s for sure. Trixie arrives after her morning lecture and barely has any time to settle in before she has to comfort a little boy who’s crying because his mom is coming to pick him up half an hour later than usual. She awkwardly sits on the floor with him trying to come up with things to distract him, and when she gets up ten minutes later her legs have fallen asleep and she almost stumbles into a little bookshelf. Just when the boy stops crying, Trixie has to break off a fight between two girls. She’s not sure she gets what the fight is about. Apparently one girl uses the purple pen too much so that another one can’t use it, but when Trixie points to at least seven other purple pens right in front of them on the table it doesn’t seem to solve anything.

She barely gets to her actual task: to change the decorations on the window from paper bunnies to paper leaves the kids made this morning. Shangela is in the room with her, keeping an eye on her per Latrice’s orders. She’s sitting in a corner of the room with a couple of kids and builds a space station out of Legos. She looks to be a lot more relaxed than Trixie is and doesn’t come to Trixie’s aid once.

The kids are curious about Trixie and, not being able to distinguish between things that are important (changing the decorations) and things that are not (everything else), keep coming up to Trixie with things like this

“I’m sleeping over at Tom’s tonight. His mum is making chicken fingers.”

“Do you know where I live?”

“You have pretty hair.”

“My uncle is a fire fighter and his car is bigger than your car.”

“Can you count to 100?”

“Will you come to my birthday party?”

“Can I touch your hair?”

“Maisie is sleeping at my place tonight. We are making chicken fingers.”

“Annie says she’s a fairy princess but she’s not. She doesn’t even have the wings. But I have the wings. But they are at home. But I can get them, can I go?”

“I can count to six billion trillion. One, two, three, four, five…”

Trixie is stressed out at first, but slowly settles into the ridiculousness of it all, deciding that putting up the decorations can’t really be what Latrice wants to see from her. Instead, she engages with the kids. Turns out, a lot of them want to touch her hair. Turns out, Trixie likes having her hair touched (Well, except by Sebastian, whose fingers are stickier than is acceptable). When Latrice comes to check on her two hours later, Trixie is sitting in a rocking chair with two kids on her lap and a couple more at her feet, reading the Rainbow Fish. It’s a good thing she knows that book pretty much by heart, because the kids on the floor insist on looking at the pictures the whole time, making it almost impossible for Trixie to get a look at the words. She has to read quite loudly to be heard over the space battle fight Shangela and her kids have going on in the corner. Trixie feels her voice getting hoarse already. The space battle ends as soon as Latrice walks in and looks over the room. Latrice gives Trixie a nod and a satisfied smile.

♥♥♥

The next day is a Saturday. It’s sunny outside and Trixie almost takes a walk before breakfast to enjoy the sun after the last days of constant rain. Almost. Kim is away visiting her mum, and Trixie, who had been looking forward to having the room for herself for a while, feels a little lost without her. With Kim and Katya gone, she doesn’t really know what to do with her weekend and spends most of her Saturday on her homework. It’s a good thing she has time to catch up, honestly. She tends to underestimate the work she needs to do for her classes, always counting on her smarts to get her through, but she had to learn pretty fast that she is one of the least experienced people in her seminars and that catching up with the others is not going to be easy. Trixie lies on the floor in between her and Kim’s bed and reads pages after pages of highly theoretical texts. The way they read, their primary intention seems to be to never be understood by anyone, ever. Trixie spends a lot of time marking key phrases in different colours and developing an organization scheme for her course work, and little time getting her reading done. She is taking a break changing her nail colour from plum to light blue – to match her highlighter – when her phone buzzes with a text from Shangela.

Shangela

Talked to Latrice. You’re in & the kids won’t shut up about your Barbie hair. :) Text me the times you’re free and we’ll work out our schedule :) halleloo!! :) :)

“Yessssssss!” Trixie shouts out, jumping up from the floor doing a silly dance in front of Kim’s mirror. She has a job! She’s going to be paid! When she picks her phone off the floor to text back Shangela, she sees she has an Instagram notification – which, given the fact that she barely ever posts anything on there is pretty rare. She clicks it and sees Katya has liked one of her pictures. Her stomach twists a little at the sight of Katya’s name. The picture she liked is one of Trixie’s notebook with some song lyrics she had been proud of at the time – the time being five years ago. The notebook lies next to her guitar on her bed, pink sheets, a pink pillow. She remembers having taken quite a lot of time to arrange things for this photo only to gather a whopping amount of two likes on it. Now there’s a third one. She’s instantly mortified and reads over her lyrics again, trying to pin point just out how embarrassing this was. Well. Pretty embarrassing.

She had written the lyrics after her break up with Shea and they basically screamed: I’m heartbroken and I don’t know how to express myself but I really need to do it anyway, please metaphorically hold my hand by giving me likes on this picture, thank you.

Hang on.

How had Katya even found that picture? Granted, it doesn’t take that long to scroll though Trixie’s Instagram, but this is one of her earliest posts and there’s about two hundred pictures between this one and her latest one. Had Katya really scrolled through all of them? And if yes, why? Trixie sits back down on the floor where she spent most of today and scrolls through her own profile, looking for any more embarrassing shit Katya could have seen. There’s some pictures of her in a lot of ugly makeup doing the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Given Katya’s own ventures with makeup, Trixie thinks these aren’t so bad. There’s a lot of pictures of Trixie with her guitar, some taken by friends from school, some awkwardly taken by herself. Those are fine, except for the occasional bad hair style. Most of the pictures show landscapes and farm animals and more or less dumb and or thoughtful captions Trixie had come up with. There was one picture of Trixie’s favourite cow that she had captioned with: You’re not fucked up. It’s your behaviour. There was another one of that cow and Trixie in matching flower crowns. Then there were a bunch of pictures showing her and Shea, that didn’t give any indication that they were anything other than friends and that made Trixie’s heart ache a little. But all in all, not much to see. It is then that she gets a text.

Katya

How you doing, Beatrice?

Trixie snorts at the sight of her own name. How does Katya even know this? Is Katya short for something? She doesn’t know.

Trixie

Got the job at the Smilemile. Am thinking all I’ll have to do is sit still and be a Barbie doll and then collect my check.

Katya

That’s the dream. Well, a dream Not my dream. Sounds pretty bad. badddd Liking the check part

Trixie

Also finished all my coursework Workin it!

Katya

But it’s Saturday Don’t you know homework is for Monday morning When u already felt bad abt it all weekend and u have a couple of minutes before classes and you’re freaking out That’s the sweet spot, mamma

It’s 6pm on a Saturday, Katya is with her girlfriend in New York, and she is texting Trixie. She wonders where they are right now, what they are doing. Maybe they aren’t together yet? Maybe Katya is still on her way, bored at some train station. Maybe she has already gone through the news, and twitter, and everybody else’s Instagram and Trixie’s the last bit of entertainment she has. Or, maybe, she’s at Violet’s show, waiting for it to start. Unlikely. She doesn’t know exactly what kind of show they’re doing but it definitely looks like a night time thing. Like, late at night. Maybe she should look at Violet’s Instagram some more. Violet is so pretty, and skinny, and perfect.

Unknown Number

Hi, Katya says you’re alone and standing in the rain outside being sad. If you want you can always come over. There’s not much going on, but we are playing video games and Jinkx is showing Adore how to fry an egg. Sasha.

Trixie

Katya! It’s not even raining!

Katya

The rain is a metaphor Metaphorical rain! Get with it

Trixie

What’s your damage

Katya

You don’t know what to do with yourself because I’m gone And Kim But me also The rain is the absence of meaning And me Can’t spell meaning without me HAA Did u know that, I didn’t MEaning I love that

Trixie

I hate that.

Trixie

Hey Sasha, thanks for inviting me, I’ll be there in 20

Trixie spends another two minutes lying on the floor but neither Katya nor Sasha respond to her again, so she finally gets up, relieved that she has something to do now, somewhere to go. She gets dressed quickly, in one of Kim’s earlier dresses, that didn’t come out too well but that’s very warm and comfortable. When she checks herself in the mirror, she notices that she doesn’t care much about what she looks like today, because Katya isn’t going to be there to see her. That realization makes her huff. This is stupid. Since when does she dress for Katya? Dressing for Katya is pointless for at least two reasons: 1) Dressing for anyone is stupid. 2) Katya, specifically, dresses like if a scarecrow had a baby with some kind of alien life form.

This is why Trixie takes off the comfy dress and exchanges it for an uncomfortably tight pink pencil skirt and a fluffy pink sweater. Then she puts on a full face of makeup, just for herself, and likes it so much she even takes a selfie (or twenty-five) to upload to instagram later. Well, maybe this isn’t just for herself. Who cares. This is complicated. Trixie spends her first Saturday night without Kim in the Love Shack’s living room playing Mario Kart with Chi Chi and Adore. She curses herself a little for wearing a tight skirt just to sit on a couch and envies Adore who isn’t even wearing pants, but she is having a great night - even though she keeps checking her phone for more messages from Katya. But Katya is with Violet, and it’s not like Trixie’s last message invited a response anyway. Her phone stays silent.

♥♥♥

Trixie’s first week of balancing Uni and her new job is a struggle to say the least. It takes most of her Sunday to try and rearrange her schedule, so she can work at the day care three times a week. She even drops a class because of that, but that’s okay, she had taken on more classes that she needed, expecting for something like this to happen.

On her first real day of work Trixie finds out fast that working here is not going to involve a lot of sitting around like a Barbie, and instead involves a lot of quick tough decisions. At lunch time Aaron spits his tea into Evan’s face, which sends Evan into a fit of rage. Trixie knows what to do, sort of, but not really, and keeps her arms locked tight around Evan, who struggles to get free and screams at Aaron. Trixie is doing her best to calm him down, keeping her voice as soothing as possible and making sure not to hurt him with her grip. It’s scary to see how angry a child can get, he’s shaking with rage and she’s not sure she knows what he’d do if she let him go. Thankfully, Shangela and another co-worker, Betty, are in the room as well and look calm, so she must be doing an okay job. Ten minutes later, when Aaron is peacefully playing with a train on the carpet, Trixie is still a little shaken. Her neighbours’ kids never got this angry.

Katya remains gone all week and doesn’t text Trixie once. She updates her Instagram daily, however. Most of her videos are random things she filmed in the streets in New York, things that caught Katya’s attention for some reason. Some of her videos contain Violet, leaning over a bridge, eating a waffle, and doing nothing much but making Trixie feel bad. Katya’s latest video is of a plate of ravioli that Katya keeps zooming in and out of, laughing hysterically.

When Trixie gets home from Uni and work every day, she’s exhausted, but always looking forward to evenings of Netflix, makeup and watching Kim make clothes. This is how her first month of her new life passes. Not every second is exciting, not even every day is, but every day something small has Trixie feel grateful that she came here.

Chapter 5: In Which Katya Doesn’t See The Sunrise

“I don’t know. This is too much. Is this too much? It might be too much” Trixie says, frowning at herself in their mirror.

“No, it is perfect” Kim reassures her.

“But – “

“Perfect”

It’s a Friday night and they are invited to Juju’s birthday party later. It’s 80s themed. Kim went all out with their 80s looks, claiming that motto- and costume parties are the only parties that matter. This is why Trixie is currently in a pink velvet body suit, complete with a fanny pack, yellow cuffs, and pink headphones on. Roller girl fantasy Kim calls this creation. It is too much. But she is also not changing out of it, not now that she has spent almost an hour on the perfect hair and make up for it. She can’t stop looking at herself in the mirror.

Trixie has been looking forward to this party ever since she got the invite two weeks ago. Her social life hasn’t exactly been thrilling lately, between homework and her job, she’s barely hung out with anyone but Kim. She also hasn’t seen Katya in a while. The few times she went over to Katya’s, Katya usually wasn’t home. One night, Trixie was playing video games with Chi Chi and Adore when Katya walked in, sat down on the couch next to Adore, and watched them play, falling asleep on a bag of chips after a while. One other time Trixie was baking cookies with Kim and Shangela at the house and Katya joined them, making a mess of the kitchen. Other than that, they barely saw each other. The good news is, Trixie has used this time to ban Katya out of her thoughts. She has been mostly successful at that; she’s not thinking about Katya before going to sleep, she not looking at Katya’s Instagram, and she’s definitely not looking at Violet’s. The bad news is, she can’t wait to see Katya tonight and she hopes to get another compliment for her outfit from her. The ‘goth Barbie doll’ is still echoing through her mind. But that’s okay. Baby steps.

They get to Juju’s late, because getting ready always takes longer than you think. Also, if Trixie is honest, she got ready extra slow on purpose, because there’s nothing more awkward than arriving at a party early, when everybody just sits around and waits for the party feeling to kick in. No thank you.

Luckily, when they get there, the party is in full swing, with people spilling out of the house into the garden and music so loud Trixie feels like this can only end in a neighbour’s complaint. Somebody has set up a wading pool in the garden, full of ice cubes and beers. Classy.

Trixie and Kim go inside, looking for Juju or anybody else they know. The kitchen is stuffed with people, most of them wearing clothes that might have been fashionable some time between the 60s and the 90s – nobody seems to take the 80s motto too seriously - , there’s ABBA blasting from the stereo and a lot of smoking inside. Bob definitely wouldn’t approve. The first familiar person they find is Jinkx. They are sitting on the kitchen counter, sipping tea, looking calmly around the room, not interacting with anyone. Their 80s outfit isn’t really 80s at all. Like the dress Trixie wore to the club the other night it is out of black lace, but this one is a lot less tight and goes past Jinkx’ feet. Jinkx must just have stepped out of the shower, because their hair is still wet. They look like a witch, Trixie thinks.

“You look like a swamp witch”, Kim greets Jinkx and hugs them were they are propped up on the counter.

“Thank you”

They stay with Jinkx for a while, Trixie hopping up on the kitchen counter next to them. It’s a nice view from here and for now she’s comfortable socializing with just Kim and Jinkx. Jinkx, as turns out, studied four semesters of Early Childhood Education before switching majors and goes out of their way to let Trixie know all there is to know about her professors and courses and even offers Trixie their old materials, including text books. The evening has already paid off just for this. Trixie is in the middle of complaining about one professor’s messy presentations in his lectures when Katya comes up behind Kim and yells “hi!” into Kim’s ear so loud that Trixie flinches. The stereo is loud, but not that loud. That was unnecessary. Katya is wearing a simple colour blocked dress that’s much too big on her, and her open hair is teased into more volume than she normally has. Trixie awkwardly leans forward to hug her without getting up from her prime spot on the counter – she’s decided that’s her party spot for tonight. From her position, Katya feels even smaller than usual. As always between them, Katya lets go of the hug first, takes a step back and beams at her, making a motion that indicates Trixie from top to bottom: “This. Is. Amazing” she says, validating all of Kim’s and Trixie’s efforts in three simple words. Trixie feels herself blush a little but hopes it’s not visible in the dim light of the kitchen. Only when Kim elbows her slightly does Katya make sure to compliment Kim as well.

“What are we drinking?” Katya asks, taking Kim’s cup and smelling the drink. “Tea? Really Jinkx?”

As if on cue, Shangela pops up behind Katya, a bottle of wine and some plastic cups in hand. “Kim, Trixie! Finally, we thought we would have to do this without you” she shouts as a way of greeting, handing all of them cups and pouring in a generous amount of wine before leaving as quickly as she came. Trixie notes she didn’t offer Katya a cup. Does Katya not drink? She opens her mouth to ask Katya just that when Katya seems to spot somebody at the other side of the room. “Hang on” she says, sounding excited. “Be back in a second, I want you to meet someone, Trix” When she comes back, she is accompanied by a very tall, very intimidating looking girl, in a purple dress that’s a little too tight to be convincingly 80s but that looks amazing nonetheless. Violet. Of course. Of course Violet would be here for Juju’s birthday. Trixie doesn’t know why that thought hadn’t occurred to her before. She could have used some time to prepare for this. She takes a big sip of wine and sits up straight, crossing her legs and draping her hair over her shoulder.

Violet kisses Kim on the cheek and gives Trixie a small smile.

“Trixie, this is Violet. Violet, Trixie. Kim’s new roommate.”

“Hi” Violet says, giving Trixie a once over. She looks a little bored. There’s nothing boring about Trixie, so that look pisses her off a little. She tries to mirror the look and holds Violet’s eyes for a couple of seconds.

“Violet managed to get the weekend off just to come to Juju’s birthday!” Katya says, her smile big and her eyes glistening.

Violet snorts slightly at that. “Well, mostly for you, babe. You know Juju can’t stand me.”

“Even better” Katya says, grinning, and takes Violet’s hand.

This is bad. This is pretty bad. Of course Trixie knew that Katya is in a relationship, but knowing about it in an abstract way, and seeing it play out right in front of her are two very different things. Trixie withdraws from the conversation completely, trying to listen and not focus on where Violet and Katya stand so close their sides are touching. The group are talking about Violet’s show and her experiences on the road, with Violet, Jinkx and Kim doing most of the talking. There’s an aura of arrogance and disinterest surrounding Violet. She speaks in a mostly monotonous voice, sounding bored about experiences that to Trixie seem to be the opposite of boring. Apparently, she has spent the last couple of months on a tour bus with fire-eaters and acrobats, touring most of the US. She seems over it. With a stab of pain, however, Trixie notices that Violet’s eyes turn soft whenever she looks at Katya. At one point during the conversation, she puts her arm around the much smaller girl, hugs her closer to her side, and kisses the top of her head. This is when Trixie decides she needs to leave the kitchen. Her party spot be damned.

Once she is out of the kitchen, she leans against the wall in the hallway for a second. Deep breaths. None of this is news. None of this matters. She waits until her heart has stopped racing, grabs a bottle of wine that’s just sitting there on the ground waiting for her, and decides to see who else is there. She is going to have a good time tonight. Wearing what she’s wearing she just has to.

♥♥♥

Trixie finds Juju, Shangela, and a bunch of people she doesn’t know sitting in folding chairs around the wading pool. Juju has her naked feet in the pool, in the ice cubes, in the middle of October. “Trixieeeeeeee!” she shouts when she sees her, “come here, tell me happy birthday!”

“Happy birthday” Trixie grins, sitting down in one of the folding chairs next to her. It’s covered in one of the ugliest floral prints Trixie has ever seen.

“I’m drunk, are you drunk?”, Juju asks her, waving a bottle of vodka around and almost hitting Shangela’s head.

“Working on it.” Trixie indicates her bottle of wine.

Juju looks at her expectantly.

“What?” Trixie asks.

“So we’ve been talking” Juju waggles her eyebrows at Trixie, trying to prompt her to ask her to go on.

Shangela puts her hand on Juju’s thigh and shakes her head lightly. “Come on, Jujubee, just don’t.”

“What?” Trixie asks again. She puts up her feet at the edge of the wading pool, trying to not put too much weight on it so the water doesn’t spill out. Some spills out anyway, immediately seeping into her shoes and making her toes freeze.

“Do you like the ladies?” Juju asks gleefully, swatting Shangela’s hand away.

“Huh?”

“The Ladies. You know, I like them. Or I like Shangie, but that’s the same thing. It’s the same thing!” She stops and blows Shangela an overdramatic kiss, who rolls her eyes at her with a little smile. This apparently prompts Juju to get up and sit in Shangela’s lap, who is trying her best to remain her balance in the cheap chair. “Ladies are lovely. If you like them, there’s somebody you should meet. Somebody likes you! Ahh!”

“Oh. Umm. Yes, I, uh ‘like the ladies’” Trixie doesn’t quite know what to make of this conversation. If Juju keeps bouncing up and down like that, the chair will break and maybe they’ll land in the pool. That would be funny. She hopes the chair will break.

Juju screeches at Trixie’s answer and slaps Shangela’s shoulder excitedly. “See! I told you”

“You told me, darling” Shangela nods patiently.

Juju seems to suddenly realize something. “But do you have a girlfriend? Please don’t have a girlfriend.” Her voice is whiny. She is too involved in this, Trixie thinks.

“I don’t have a girlfriend.” Trixie says, trying not to sound too bitter. She takes another big sip of wine. Was this bottle full when she got it? She isn’t sure. She tries to get excited about somebody asking about her but can’t quite manage to do that.

“Do you want one? I can introduce you” Juju wiggles her eyebrows at her so vigorously that one of her fake lashes detaches from her lid and dangles left of her eye.

Trixie thinks about it. She should do this, she should. What’s the worst thing that can happen? Even if she doesn’t care about this person, getting to kiss somebody is always nice. She sips on her wine some more, leans back in her chair, and unwittingly her mind drifts off to kissing Katya. Leaning in, slightly down, and putting her pink lips on Katya’s red ones, feeling their softness, smudging their lipsticks. She thinks about putting one hand on Katya’s neck, pulling her closer to her, and one hand on Katya’s back, travelling down, slowly down.

An ice cube hitting her shoulder puts her out of her fantasies. “Trixie! You wanna meet her or what” Juju whines impatiently, already fishing for more ice cubes to throw, but they keep slipping through her clumsy fingers.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

♥♥♥

The party goes on for hours and everybody seems to have a good time. Trixie does her best to have a good time as well, but it’s hard when she runs into Violet and Katya at least another ten times. Violet and Katya dancing on the patio. Violet and Katya talking to people in the hallway, their arms wrapped around each other. Violet and Katya cheering for Chi Chi in his beer pong game. After a little while, Trixie ends up lying on the sofa in the living room, doing nothing but watching Adore blow smoke circles out of the open window, and half listening to the conversations they’re having with people outside. The music is loud, the people are loud, and she feels heavy with alcohol, but she is peaceful just lying here. Part of her is angry for not having a better time and using her chance to dance to some of her favourite songs, but she’s learned in her life that a good time can’t be forced.

She must have fallen asleep after a while because when she wakes up, the sky is starting to turn pink with the sunrise, and the room around her is empty save for some people passed out on the floor and quiet hushed conversations. She thinks about just sleeping here, but her outfit is uncomfortable, and she needs to get all this makeup off, so she gets up to leave through the garden. She feels slightly buzzed, but she stopped drinking a couple of hours ago, so she should be fine.

There is a small group of people still at the wading pool and they are stumbling up to make their way home just as Trixie passes them. One of them can’t find his shoe, which Trixie spots floating in the pool. She doesn’t say anything.

Trixie is about to leave the garden when she hears a soft familiar voice behind her. “Hey, Trixie”

Katya is sitting leaned against the big tree, her knees pulled to her face, smoking. She’s alone.

“Hi” Trixie says, wondering for a second if she should continue walking or not. She takes another two steps, then decides to turn around and walks up to Katya. She looks lost.

“What are you doing here?” Trixie asks.

“Me? Oh, err, watching the sunrise. I like watching the sunrise.”

Trixie frowns at that. The sun is rising, is slowly turning the part of the sky behind the house a soft pink colour; and Katya, with her back to the house, can’t see this at all. Trixie does not point that out.

“Where’s Violet?”

“She’s sleeping” Katya puts out her cigarette against the cold ground and lights another one. She looks at Trixie for a long second, chewing her lip, then asks “Do you maybe want to stay for a couple of minutes? I can’t go to sleep yet.”

Trixie has never seen Katya like this. She looks sad and drained of energy, very unlike her usual self. Trixie pulls of one of the ugly lawn chair cushions and sits down on it opposite of Katya. The ground is cold beneath her even through the cushion. She doesn’t quite know what to do and starts digging little holes into the ground with her fake pink nails that she spent too much time decorating. There’s little hearts on every second finger, or there used to be. Most of them must have come off at some point during the night, and they took the underlying nail polish with them. Now there are heart-shaped holes in Trixie’s nails. Trixie wants to say something, fill the silence, but one look at Katya tells her Katya is trying to get up the nerve to say something herself, so Trixie waits.

This is what comes out of Katya after what feels like an hour, but was probably only a minute:

“I’m screwing this up”

Trixie tries to catch Katya’s eyes at that, but Katya puts her head against the tree and faces the sky, her eyes closed.

“Screwing what up?”

“With her. With this! My life? Everything. Take a pick.

“Did anything happen between Violet and you?” Trixie asks, hating herself for the small glimmer of hope she feels inside her stomach at that. This is not a nice thing to feel. Her right index finger hits a stone under the dirt in the garden and the nail comes off almost entirely. Trixie pulls it off and buries it in the dirt next to a patch of dandelions.

“No. I don’t know. I don’t know. Did you know it took me months to convince her to even go out with me? Months. She just wasn’t interested. She rejected me again and again and I can still remember that. And we’re together now, but I can still remember that. I didn’t change, you know? I’m still the person she rejected” Katya shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this, you were on your way home. Sorry.”

“But, I don’t know, she kept getting to know you better and finding out new things about you, so that’s probably why she changed her mind. People change their minds, you know.” Trixie says softly, trying to be as helpful as she can. God, she’s not used to conversations like this. The only person she ever talked to about relationships was Shea, and she had failed at most of these conversations, obviously. At school, she always had friends, of course, but she was never anyone’s best friend, and people just didn’t come to her with their problems. Now she is Kim’s best friend, or at least Kim is hers, but Kim never seems to want to talk about romantic relationships. So Trixie is pretty new to this.

“But if people change their mind, they can change their mind again.”

“Yes, I guess. But – “

“Do you know the kind of people Violet is on the road with? They are all artists, they are all interesting, they are all creative. I’m not better than them. I’m not. This is a truth!”

“Are you scared Violet is going to cheat on you?”

Katya sighs at that and opens her eyes, finally looks at Trixie. She takes the time to light another cigarette before answering. How many cigarettes does she go through in one day? This can’t be healthy. “It’s not like that, Violet and I. We’re open, you know. She can fuck all of them, that’s fine.”

Oh. This is news. An open relationship. It had taken Trixie quite a while to wrap her mind around that concept when Courtney had first suggested it to her, ages before. She likes the thought, she thinks, but only in an abstract this-is-for-other-people kind of way. The thought of being in an open relationship herself makes her uncomfortable and a little sad. It just doesn’t line up with her idea of romance, outlandish as that idea may be. Suddenly something occurs to her and her heart beats twice as fast as before. If Katya is in an open relationship, then –

“So you can, uh, do whatever you want then?”

Katya huffs out a breath of smoke. A small smile forms on her lips but it’s gone as fast as it came. “Of course not. But if you’re talking about hooking up with people, yeah. Yeah, it’s just… I don’t know. I hook up with people sometimes, sure, but do you want to know what I think about when I’m with them?”

Trixie doesn’t.

“Violet?” she asks, her sudden rush of excitement over the news of Katya being allowed to be with other people already mostly gone.

“Violet. All the time. It all comes down to her, every time. I hook up with a guy with an ugly tattoo, I end up trying to memorize it, so I can tell Violet about it. I hook up with a girl who has the nicest hand writing I’ve ever seen and I want to take a picture of it and send to Violet. And it’s not like Violet cares. Not that much. Or maybe she does. I can’t tell anymore. God, this sounds so bad. She’s amazing, she really is, please know that I know that”

Trixie doesn’t know what to say to this. She looks at Katya’s face for a long time. Katya has her eyes closed again and the sun behind her lights up her curls. Trixie wants to lean in closer and hug her, do something to get the sad look off her face, but she feels frozen in place. She’s cold, sitting there without a jacket in the early morning, and if she’s cold in her velvet jumpsuit, Katya must be freezing. She wants to suggest going inside, but feels like she can’t interrupt this moment, so she tries to clean the dirt of her hands on the seat cushion and thinks of something to say. There’s a worm making its way over one of her shoes. She gets him off her with a folded leaf and watches as it buries into the cold ground again.

“It was different when she was still here.” Katya goes on after a while. “We were open then too, but it was more fun. I could go out, hook up with a guy, and come home and hook up with her. That was brilliant. Brilliant! And it should work now too, but it just doesn’t. I miss her so much. I don’t wanna fuck anybody just because I can’t fuck her. Do you want to be fucked by someone just because the person this someone really wants is unavailable? Do you?”

This is an awful thought, Trixie thinks, but damn if she doesn’t love the way Katya says fuck. There’s so much force behind it. “No, I don’t.”

“See? This is why it doesn’t work. So I stopped sleeping with other people and I don’t think Violet even understands why. And she hasn’t stopped. And she shouldn’t have to. She’s not doing anything wrong at all. I mean, those were my terms, my fucking terms. I wanted to be open. And now I can’t handle it. And I just miss her too much.”

This is Katya’s breaking point, apparently, because she puts her hands on her face and begins to sob. Shit. Trixie still doesn’t know what to do, but has to do something, so she gets up and sits down next to Katya, without her cushion, on the dirty ground. Kim will be so pissed about the dirt on her butt. Trixie snakes an arm around the smaller girl, who immediately leans into her side.

Katya is cold against her side and the smell of the cigarette she is holding where her hands are wrapped around her knees bites into Trixie’s nose. She cries for what feels like a small eternity, and Trixie’s head is spinning. Where is a bottle of wine when you need one? She wrecks her brain for helpful things to say, comes up empty, but after a while at least remembers she has tissues with her. She pulls one out of her fanny pack and hands it to Katya, who blows her nose loudly.

Katya’s sobs slowly subside after that and she rubs her face dry with the back of her hand. When her breathing has calmed down, a small grin forms on her face.

“I can’t believe you’re wearing a fanny pack, by the way. Like, you did that.”

“I did that.”

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