“I don’t want to watch this anymore,” Ashley said, as she moved away from Vivian.  She had to bodily scoot herself several times to move out from the back of the couch and drop down to the floor.

 

“That’s rude,” Tiffany said, narrowing her eyes.

 

Vivian tapped her phone, to pause the playback and sighed.

 

“But I don’t!”

 

“You can’t just say that!”

 

“It’s okay,” Vivian assured the older sister.  “It’s good for Ashley to be able to explain how she feels about things, and being blunt is sometimes better.  Not always, but that’s okay.  She’s only four.”

 

“The phone is too small,” Ashley said, as she fiddled with the velcro strap on her bright pink sneakers.  “Why can’t we watch Ponies on a TV?”

 

“Because they don’t have a TV,” Tiffany said with exaggerated enunciations, “remember?”

 

“Why not?”

 

At this, Tiffany just looked up at her.  The truth was that Lucia had owned a TV at one point, and its absence was curious.  There was still a blu-ray player nestled in the entertainment center.  Of course, Vivian couldn’t just say she thought Lucia had traded it for coke, or sold it for money to buy coke.  All of this ran through her head in the course of a few seconds.

 

Rather than answering the question, she thought a distraction would work better.  “Would you gals like to hear me play something?”

 

“Yeah!” they answered in unison and ran ahead of her toward the converted second bedroom.

 

Vivian followed the advice of her therapist and took a moment, as she walked, to be proud of herself.  Her gait, aside from being a little slow, looked completely normal.  You almost couldn’t tell she’d been in an accident.  She would always carry some scars, inside and out, but she was on the tail end of recovery.  Best of all, she was ahead of schedule.

 

“Are those egg boxes?” Tiffany asked, pointing to the walls.

 

“They help make it so that, if we’re loud in here, it’s not so bad for people on the other side of the wall.”

 

The girls nodded, accepting her at her word.  It was hard to tell if they really understood, but she took it on faith that they would ask follow-ups if-and-when they had them.  She picked up Lucia’s crappy acoustic guitar, because she always felt guilty about playing badly on the good one, and sat down on a chair while she tuned it up.  Ashley immediately sat down with her legs criss-crossed right in front of her, while Tiffany slowly made her way around the practice space.

 

“Alright,” Vivian said, “now, I’m not very good with this yet, but I can figure some things out.  Let’s see.  Should I just play anything, or something we can sing to?”

 

“Something we can sing,” Ashley sang, with a little twirl.  “Can you play Let It Go!”

 

Vivian winced and bit her lip.  “Sing a little bit of it for me?”

 

Ashley immediately launched into a spirited-but-tuneless a capella version of the theme song to Frozen.  When Tiffany joined in, the tune became a little more recognizable.  Vivian would have loved to have been able to guess at some of the chords involved, but the best she could do was to hunt down enough notes of the main throughline, one every fourth or fifth lyric, to resemble the melody.  On the second time through she added a few more notes, and her playing started to resemble the real thing.  Vaguely, maybe, and from a distance.  Ashley began to dance more than she was singing, but Tiffany kept going at full volume.  Top of her lungs.

 

Vivian was too focused to enjoy it.  Playing took too much of her attention, but she could hear the joy in their laughter, and it pulled at something.  Not so very long before, Vivian had actively believed that in order for a thing to be meaningful, it had to hurt.  That the only way to love something was to suffer for it.  It didn’t occur to her,  there in that room with her nieces, that things could be different, but the seed settled into the soil, and rain clouds were on the horizon.

 

She stopped playing, abruptly, at the sound of the front door closing.

 

“Girls, can you wait here?”

 

“Okay!”

 

“And not touch anything?” she added, unable to hide the fear.

 

“Fiiiiiine!”

 

Vivian set the guitar down gently, and hustled out into the hall and to the kitchen.  Lucia saw her coming, and gave her a sloppy grin.  “Heeeeeey.”

 

Vivian caught her just before Lucia kissed her, and it was agony to stop it before it happened.  She tilted her head this way and that, trying to look Lucia directly in the eye, and sighed.  Dilated pupils.  “You can’t be here right now,” she hissed.

 

“Ummm,” the Latina snickered, “I live here.  I think I’m allowed.”

 

“No, my nieces are here!”

 

“Aww!”  Lucia’s uneven grin grew into a smile, but Vivian stopped her before she could get their attention.

 

“No!  I finally got my brother to let me watch them.  It was a huge fight!  If they get here to pick them up, and you’re lit up like this?  I’ll never see them again.”

 

“Viv, come on!” she said, grasping Vivian’s shoulders and giving her a gentle shake.  “Lighten up!  It’s me!”

 

Vivian shook her head.  “Can you just... find somewhere else to be for, like, an hour?  They’ll be gone by then.”

 

“Vivian,” she repeated, narrowing her eyes, but Vivian was unmoved.

 

“Please, Luc. This is important.  For me.”

 

Lucia frowned, but could only hold Vivian’s gaze for a few seconds before looking down and nodded.  “Yeah.  Okay.  I’ll, uh… I’ll head down to the Waffle House.”  She turned and reached for the door.

 

“I hate seeing you like this,” Vivian whispered.

 

This time, Lucia couldn’t meet her gaze at all.  She just stared at Vivian’s feet looking perplexed, nodded once, and left.

 

Vivian stared at the door for a long minute afterwards, barely keeping the tears at bay.

 

“Aunt Vee?”

 

Vivian quickly wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.  “Yeah.  Yeah.”

 

“Is your friend okay?”

 

“No,” Vivian said.  “I don’t think so.”

 

“Is she sick?”

 

Vivian ran her fingers through her straight, black hair, and held the mass of it together near the back of her head.  “Kind of.”  She carefully lowered herself to her knees and held her arms out, and both girls ran up to hug her.  “Lucy really likes...candy.”

 

“Mommy says too much candy will rot our brains!” Ashley said, emphatically.

 

Vivian nodded.  “Yeah, it’s not good for her.  You know how when your sister has a little too much sugar, she goes a little crazy?”

 

Both of them nodded.  Again, she couldn’t be sure how much they were really understanding.

 

Ashley said, “Can we watch Ponies on your phone again?”

 

Vivian nodded, kissed the tops of their little blonde heads, and led them back to the couch.

 

“Can you teach me to play?” Tiffany asked, as they all got settled into place.

 

“Guitar?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“We’ll have to ask your mom.  If it’s okay with her, then yeah.  I... probably know enough to stay ahead of you, and we’ll learn some things together.”

 

Tiffany nodded.  The two of them leaned in tightly on either side of her, and Vivian gave them a big hug before pulling out her phone and loading up Netflix again.

 

***

 

It was nearly midnight when Lucia stumbled back through the door, laughing and singing to herself.  Vivian put down her bass just in time to hear a heavy thump.  No battle plans ever survive first contact.

 

“Luc?” Vivian said, as she stuck her head out into the halls.  Some of Lucia’s drum equipment was stacked on the floor.  It was maybe a third of Lucia’s live kit, so she tucked herself back into their practice space and waited.  A minute later, Lucia returned a second time.  A second heavy thump, and then singing and laughing retreated back out into the night.  

 

This time, Vivian planted herself at the end of the hall.

 

“Heeeeeeeeeeey,” Lucia said, smiling broadly as she came through the door with the bass drum in her hands and a gear bag over her shoulder.  “Are we all clear?”

 

“Yeah,” she said.  “They’re… they’re gone.”

 

The Latina dropped her gear, shut the door, and sauntered toward her.  “Good, because they don’t make earmuffs big enough to hide the noise we’re gonna make.”

 

Vivian’s stomach twisted itself into a bow knot.  Her crush was looking at her, and wanting her.  Coming toward her.  It was agony to clear her throat and say, “Luc, no,” even as the shorter woman reached her arms around Vivian’s waist and started to kiss her.  She could tell, from her breath, that Lucia had not gone to the Waffle House at all.

 

“It’s okay,” Lucia whispered into the kiss.  “I know you want to.  We can fool around.”

 

There was no audience.  They weren’t kissing because it would turn Kevin on, or any of their friends.  They weren’t kissing because a threesome had simply evolved that way.  This wasn’t a drunken dare, or a bet, or a show.  It was just the two of them.  Finally.

 

Vivian reached back, took hold of Lucia’s wrists, and pulled them back around.  It was easier to do that than to stop kissing her.  All of her breath left her, and her voice was an ineffective tool to stop what was happening.  At any given moment, half of her body was giving in, kissing back, or holding her.

 

Lucia giggled in that way she did, a rapidfire purring paired with her crooked grin, and something inside of Vivian shriveled and died.

 

“I know you’re still not back at full strength,” she said softly, her voice low and husky.  “All you have to do is lie down.   I’ll take care of you tonight.”

 

“I don’t just want tonight,” Vivian said.  Her whole rib cage burst open, leaving her heart exposed as it thumped.  “I don’t just want to fool around.”

 

Lucia was undeterred.  She tried to interrupt Vivian with a feather touch; a light brush here, and a soft caress there.

 

“Luc, please,” she managed.  “I want this too much.”

 

Lucia planted kisses along her neck line and down to her collarbone.  “Then what’s the problem?”

 

“I don’t just want to hook up while you’re wasted.”  Vivian tried to lean into her, using her forehead to push Lucia away, because her hands were too busy responding in other ways.  It was beyond her to make her body behave after so many years of wanting and hoping and praying and waiting.  She could push Lucia away, or she could talk to her.  Not both.  “I want more than this.”

 

“Oh,” Lucia laughed.  “More sounds like fun too.”

 

“I want to wake up with you,” Vivian slurred.  The nibbling on her earlobe, as a hand moved up under her shirt, was devastating.  “Not just tomorrow.  Every day.  Forever.”

 

“You can sleep in my bed,” Lucia teased.  “I already told you that you could.”

 

Vivian felt herself pushed back flat against the wall, and her body writhed in tortured ecstasy.  “I want to be with you,” Vivian whined.  “Not just a hookup.”

 

At this, Lucia slowed.  She didn’t pause, but her attention was clearly divided.

 

“Being this close to you is killing me.  Knowing it would just be tonight is killing me.”

 

“I don’t understand,” Lucia said, hoarsely.

 

“Seeing you like this is killing me.”

 

“I thought you wanted this.”

 

“I do,” Vivian sobbed.  “I do, but I don’t want this just because you’re drunk, or high, or whatever brought this on.  I want you to want this like I want this, and it is killing me.”

 

Full stop.

 

“And you,” she said, crying openly now.  “Yo-you always dabbled.  We always dabbled, but you have been ripping through coke like it’s a race, and I... I know why!  I get it!”

 

Lucia stared hard at her.  “He... asked me,” she said, her own voice losing its steadiness.  “He asked me to go with him.  A stupid taco run.  It was supposed to be me.”

 

Vivian wrapped her arms around Lucia, but the wiry little Latina immediately began to fight it.

 

“No!” she cried.  “I don’t want your pity!  It was supposed to be me!”

 

“I know,” Vivian said, trying to fight through it.

 

“No!” Lucia screamed, and this time she pushed.  

 

She had always been stronger, despite being smaller, but the difference between them was so much more pronounced now.  Vivian bounced off the wall and crumpled to the floor.  

 

Lucia pulled at her hair, knuckles whitening as she heaved.  “He couldn’t drive!  He should never have been driving!  He was out of his mind!”

 

Vivan sat up as Lucia paced feverishly into the kitchen and back.

 

“It should have been me,” she said, over and over.

 

When Vivian got to her feet she tried to approach Lucia again, but Lucia was even more worked up this time and Vivian got another, harder shove for her efforts.  Again, she tumbled to the floor and cried out, and this time Lucia seemed to have noticed what she’d done.

 

“Oh God,” she said, as she rushed to Vivian’s side.  “I can’t, you see?  This is why I can’t!  Look what I do!”  She hesitantly proffered a hand, and took a fistful of her own hair in the other. 

 

“You can’t... hide from pain like this, Luc,” Vivian said, as she took the Latina’s arm and pulled herself up.  “I lay awake every night, thinking the same thing.  I should have been the one driving.”

 

“You were worse than he was!” Lucia screeched, her cheeks splotched with color.  She grabbed the front of Vivian’s shirt and shook her.  “You could barely walk to the car!”

 

Vivian looked her dead in the eye, and said, “And you were out of your mind.  None of us should have been out there.”

 

Lucia lost her balance, and fell back against the wall as she cried.  Vivian got herself up onto her knees, and drew Lucia’s entire, hunched body into an embrace.  They cried, and they held each other.

 

Some time later, they got each other up and moved to the bedroom.  They stayed in each other’s arms.  Vivian had avoided a lot of things by focusing on what was in front of her to get through each moment, but the breaking point had arrived.  She cried more than she had ever cried in her life, and Lucia did the same beside her.  Every time it seemed like she was going to sink under completely Lucia was there to pull her back up, and she did the same.  They held onto each other to stay afloat.

 

She’d needed it.  She’d needed the release more than sex, or companionship.  More than air.  As the worst of it washed away on a tide of tears, she was left with the warmth of her friend.  They clung to each other so tightly that there wasn’t even room for sweat between them.  They whispered truths and secrets, the kinds of things that hurt to say out loud, the kinds of things that couldn’t even be hinted at in the light of day, and when the tide rolled back in they buoyed one another.

 

They survived the night because of each other.