Chapter 3: Part 3

“I’m home,” Ashley said, tiredly, as she shouldered through the front door, and she got two steps in before her heart tried to claw its way up into her throat.  The table had been set.  It was Thursday.  She’d missed dinner, date night dinner, and she cursed quietly under her breath.

 

Her mind raced.

 

‘Hey,” Hannah grumbled, tersely, from the kitchen.

 

“I lost track of time,” she said, by way of excuse.  “At the library.”

 

“Mmm-hmm.”

 

Hannah was doing the dishes.  She always cleaned when she was upset.  Ashley only had one recourse.

 

“Are you mad?”

 

“No,” Hannah said, through gritted teeth.

 

“You sound mad.  Are you lying?”

 

“I’m not—” Hannah bit off mid-word, and shook her head.  “You’re three hours late.  Of course I’m mad.  I made meatloaf.”

 

“The one with the barbeque sauce?” Ashley said, eagerly.  “That’s my favorite!”

 

“I know it’s your favorite!” Hannah shouted, as she turned and threw the wet sponge at the floor.  It bounced with a squick, and tumbled past Ashley’s feet.  “God, Ash!  Again?”

 

All she ever had to do was be patient and wait for her opening to appear.  “So you were just going to be mad at me and not say anything?  Again?”

 

“You missed date night.  Again.”  The heat coming off the top of Hannah’s head should have set the ceiling above her on fire. “You forgot about me.  Again!  Do I not matter to you?”

 

Ashley rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.  “If you don’t know how I feel about you by now, then what the fuck.  Like, what the actual fuck.”

 

“Then how can you treat me like this?” Hannah ranted.  “Like I’m disposable!”

 

She narrowed her eyes.  “Why are you acting like this?”  At Hannah’s shocked expression, she pushed, adding, “You never act like this.  What’s wrong with you?”

 

“What’s wrong with me?!” Hannah shrieked.  “You keep doing this to me over and over!”

 

“You know I’ve got a mountain of studyi—”

 

“And it’s so hard to make a fucking phone call?”  Hannah’s eyes were watery, and she was practically shaking.  Her throat gave out, slightly, as she screamed, “Spoiler alert!  It’s not!”

 

Ashley fired right back, shouting, “How the fuck am I supposed to know when you’re too fragile to handle a little interruption to our schedule if you never fucking tell me when you’re upset?”

 

“I’m telling you now!”

 

She threw her hands out at her sides, screaming, “Does this seem like a teachable moment to you?  When you’re already so worked up that it doesn’t even matter what I say?”

 

Hannah’s face fell, and all the fight drained out of her.  What was left behind, the empty resignation and acceptance, was worse.  So much worse.  Scary worse.

 

Ashley roared, “There you go again,” as her girlfriend turned and walked out of the room..  “Bottle it up.  Put on a smile and pretend, and I’m just left wondering what the fuck is going on in your head!  How am I supposed to trust you when you don’t...”  She fast walked, near to panic at Hannah’s sudden, disinterested turn, after her and into the living room.  “Don’t walk away from me.  Fight with me!”

 

“What’s the point?” Hannah said, tiredly.  “I’m not as good at it as you are.  You’re going to win, whatever the fuck that means, and I’m just gonna end up feeling like shit.”

 

Time seemed to slow down as Hannah stood there, half turned, pointedly not meeting Ashley’s glare.  The rain was coming down harder, a multitudinous thudding on the roof above…

 

...except, it wasn’t raining that night… and Hannah hadn’t slowed down at that moment.  She’d continued into the bedroom.  Beyond that was fuzzy, but Ashley could feel how brittle things were.  How tenuous.  She was reliving one of the moments where their relationship had bent to the breaking point.  

 

“Do you think so?” Hannah said, still standing there… except, it wasn’t Hannah.  Not really.  “Have you figured it out?”

 

Ashley couldn’t stand there, with the pain of that memory so fresh, and blithely banter with her psychopomp as she had.  It hurt so much.

 

“You never apologized,” not Hannah said.  “Even when you knew you were wrong.  Even when the harvest of your shitty, self-centered crop was withering before your eyes, you doubled down.  You deflected.  You turned the tables any way you could, even if it meant making me the bad guy, because you thought I could take it.  Forever.”

 

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Ashley whispered, hoarsely.  “I want to get off.  Why are you doing this to me?”

 

“Am I?” Hannah said, her eyes narrowing.  “Doing this to you?”

 

“Why are you doing this to me?”

 

“Who am I?”  The little brunette took a step toward her, and in response Ashley took a half-step back.

 

“I don’t understand!”  

 

Another step, and this time Ashley only leaned away.  “Who am I?”

 

“I don’t fucking know!” Ashley shouted, and this time it was her turn to shake.  “Okay?  I don’t know!  I don’t know!”

 

“I’m not doing anything to you, numb nuts.  I told you.  We’re in your head!  What could Hannah possibly do to you here?”

 

It was in a tiny, despondent voice that she answered, saying, “She left me,” though that was not exactly an answer to the question and she knew it.

 

“And nothing has gone right for you since.  Not one goddamned thing.”

 

“I pushed her away,” she said, even softer.  “I did.”  

 

It felt like tearing out her own heart to say something she’d always known, deep down, which was stupid.  Shallow.  The kind of thing a complete narcissist does.

 

“Not a complete narcissist,” not Hannah said, and when Ashley looked up through her tears, she saw her diminutive girlfriend crossing into the bedroom with a hurt look on her face.

 

Ashley’s awareness of the moment faded like daylight at dusk.  The panic rose in her chest, making her heart beat faster and faster, and she practically ran into the bedroom.  Hannah turned, surprised, and froze as Ashley wrapped her arms around her tightly.  Her forward momentum carried the two of them to the edge of the bed.

 

“I’m sorry,” Ashley sobbed, squeezing with her whole body.  Squeezing like it could fix things.  “I’m sorry.”

 

Hannah blurted something unintelligible, and then followed that up, more quietly, with, “You never apologize.”

 

“I’m doing it now,” Ashley said, her face buried in the perpetually-messy tangle of brown hair.  “I fucked up.  I’m sorry.”  

 

Hannah sounded nearly hysterical herself when she said, “You are?”

 

She nodded, feeling comfortable leaving it at that because their heads were so close, and the sensation of her little girlfriend’s arms slowly sliding around her hit her like a blow to the stomach.  Her knees buckled, and she leaned more heavily on Hannah than she ever had before.

 

“It’s alright,” the brunette said, as she helped Ashley to the edge of the bed.  “It’s alright.”

 

“It’s not alright,” Ashley blurted, feverishly.  Her chest was heaving, like she couldn’t get enough air, and it hurt.

 

“Baby,” Hannah said, “it’s just a fight.”

 

But it wasn’t, and Ashley knew that.  She knew, in the back of her mind, that this was every fight they’d ever had, and every fight they would ever have.  She was always more comfortable pushing Hannah away than admitting she’d done anything wrong, but now she clung to Hannah as if her life depended on it.

 

As her legs gave out more and more, she sat down on the edge of the bed, with Hannah standing in front of her between her legs.  “Hey,” Hannah said, as she pulled up on the tip of Ashley’s chin.  “Are you okay?”

 

Ashley couldn’t bring herself to look Hannah in the eye as she shook her head.  Even though she couldn’t put her finger on why she felt so worked up, so terrified, she knew it wasn’t out of place.  Her hysteria belonged here, even if she didn’t know the full reason.

 

“You’re not a bad person,” Hannah said, which struck her as being so ridiculously false that she couldn’t help but laugh.

 

The spike of laughter fit right in with her sobbing.

 

Hannah ran her fingernails across tear-streaked cheeks and tucked red hairs behind her ears.  “You’re the most… wildly confident person I know.”   

 

Twenty percent laughing, eighty percent crying.

 

“It’s your best trait,” she said, smiling that crooked, off-center little smile of hers.  “Definite panty wetter.”

 

Sixty percent laughing, forty percent crying.

 

“It’s not always your most attractive quality, though.”

 

Ashley let her forehead come to rest against Hannah’s chest, hands resting gently on her hips.  Lips pressed against the top of her head, and she felt shivers running over her whole body.  Waves of chill tingles emanating from that top most part of her.  Nobody could center her like Hannah did, could ground her like Hannah did.

 

“I’m lost without you,” Ashley croaked.

 

“Well that’s easy enough,” Hannah said.  “Don’t leave.”

 

It was such a relief to have it put so simply even if, down in the core of her, Ashley knew it was more complicated than that.  Fingertips on her chin again, and this time she didn’t fight it.  Hannah kissed her.

 

She had a way about her.  When Hannah kissed her, Ashley felt like they were the only two people alive.  They had always spent so much time kissing, far more than they did anything else.  Not that other things weren’t good, or fun, but the energy that passed between their lips was as necessary as air.  The roaming hands, moving through hair, over and underneath shirts, were lovely, and Hannah had a deft touch, but it was the kissing around which all those other sensual bodies orbited.

 

When Ashley moved back, slightly further onto the bed, Hannah crawled onto her lap, straddling her legs.  Palms cupped her cheeks as she caressed Hannah’s back with all the delicate care of a mother with her newborn.

 

She wanted Hannah to always be kissing her.  

 

Hannah had thin lips paired with a small mouth, but they had a natural pout to them that gave them such a shape.  Sometimes, especially at breakfast when Hannah had not yet had her coffee and was thus unaware, Ashley would stare at those lips out of the corner of her eye, shamelessly.

 

Hannah did not fight her when she pulled up on the brunette’s gray t-shirt, nor did she stop holding Ashley’s face when Ashley unclipped her bra.  Hannah’s breasts were beautiful little buds topped with rosy red nipples that protruded so obviously that the poor thing couldn’t be braless no matter what.

 

Ashley really liked kissing those too, and she did.  Hannah gasped, and slid her hands back to grip Ashley’s hair tightly, right at the scalp.  Her nipples were responsive little bundles of nerves, and the more Ashley kissed, suckled, and gently bit down, the harder they got.  Hannah was writhing in her lap, hands now clutching the back of her head to keep her close.  

 

As with many things between them, Ashley led.  On a different night, she might have pushed her girlfriend down, between her legs, and let Hannah’s dexterous little tongue continue to kiss and tease and suck.  On a different night, she might have thrown the smaller girl down onto the bed, straddled her face, and done some kissing of her own.

 

Just then, though, she couldn’t imagine having any focus at all on herself.  The idea was near to repulsive.

 

She rolled to the side, taking Hannah with her, and the little brunette both gasped and laughed. She laid her out on her back, straddled her narrow hips, and, while her fingers fought with the button and zipper of Hannah’s jeans, got back to doing the one thing she was truly good at: kissing the love of her life.

 

Her medium-length flame red hair fell like a curtain around them, and Ashley played her favorite game in the whole world.  In between one breath and the next, she’d pause before putting her lips back where they belonged, hovering less than an inch away.  Crushing intimacy, where looking each other in the eye was almost too much, and instead she could appreciate each pale freckle that dotted her girlfriend’s nose and cheeks.  Her gorgeous eyelashes.

 

Most times, that was enough to drive Hannah into a frenzy, but that night was not like most.  They did stare this time, both of them, even from so close.  Green flecked throughout with blue.  She’d always known that Hannah had pretty eyes, but she’d rarely gotten close enough to appreciate the watercolor-like interplay in the hazel.  The striations, and all the little places where the two colors blended to become something new and unique.  Something nameless.  Something gorgeous.

 

When the pressure became too much to bear, Ashley retreated, planting kiss after kiss along the way down Hannah’s body.  Her girlfriend’s legs hung over the edge of the bed, and Ashley made short work of clearing the way for more.

 

Like everything about her Hannah’s pearl was tiny, buried between folds so delicate and pale-ly pink that the whole thing looked more like a Renaissance fresco of the most holy and sacred than anything so vulgar, earthly, and mortal as a pussy.  Ashley wound her arms under and around her girlfriend’s thighs, letting her palms come to rest just above the mons, and she paid reverence.

 

Laps, an effort that aspired to be a full grown lick someday, were all that it took.  A gossamer-light touch.  Her fingertips sank into the alabaster skin, pulling outward and spreading, and once the way was open to her she brought her full tongue to bear.  An hour from tastebud to tastebud.  A lifetime.

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Her cheeks reddened at the sounds she drew from her girlfriend, and it was tempting to use those sounds as a guide, but Ashley knew better.  Slow and steady.  Hannah could cum in a heartbeat if Ashley played her cards right, but those were easy.  Cheap.  Small.  She wanted the big one, and that took time.  For minutes on end Ashley pawed and licked, sipping on the fine wine Hannah produced and savoring its diaphanous flavor.

 

Hannah’s shy petals, tucked away from sight, were ritualistically bathed by turns.  If there was one thing that rivaled the simple delight of kissing her girlfriend, it was seeking out her silken folds.  They were each so unique and responsive to her tongue; each a microcosm of Hannah herself.  It was easy for her to become lost in the forest of them, and let time slip by them for a while.

 

Hannah writhed above her, nipples gripped between thumb and forefinger and pulled in the way she did when she was turned on beyond the point of no return.  This was a moment she wanted, needed, to be there for, so Ashley crawled up onto the bed, hovering above and slightly beside the smaller girl.  Her palm cupped against the mons, two fingertips curling and penetrating, as she leaned in and kissed the squirming brunette.

 

Hannah moaned into the kiss, back arching up and away from the bed.  The moan spiraled upward, across the breadth of Hannah’s vocal register and back again, and when their lips parted there were little strands of fluid arcing between them.  Connecting them.

 

They were never fully apart; not really.  They’d been so close, for so long, that they each had little gaps in the makeup of themselves where the other ought to be.  

 

Ashley ended up on her back, with Hannah draped over her like bed sheets, legs stretched out to the side.  The little brunette smiled her beautiful, crooked smile, and absently toyed with the bra strap peeking out from under Ashley’s shirt.

 

“I didn’t even get your shirt off?” she complained, with fatigued effrontery.  

 

Ashley shook her head, and intercepted any further inquiry along that line by craning her neck to kiss Hannah again.  She couldn’t put her finger on why but felt like she had some things to make up for, and was uncomfortable just then with the idea of being reciprocated upon.  She knew she couldn’t distract Hannah forever, but it was the only move left in her playbook.

 

“I was good to you, wasn’t I?” Hannah asked, her eyes distant.

 

Ashley, still panting, could barely comprehend the question being asked of her, and laughed.  “Of course you were,” she said.  “You were always the best part of me.”

 

At this, her diminutive girlfriend gave her a wry look which didn’t suit her.  It was an expression rooted in guile and misdirection, however playful the motive.  It looked more like an expression she herself would give.  Hannah was always impossibly honest.  This incongruity, still, was not enough to provide the necessary jolt to break her out of the comforting memory, and so Hannah whispered,

 

“One year, eight months, twenty seven days.”

 

Upon hearing this, Ashley began to cry all over again.

 

***

 

Ashley sat in the back seat of her mom’s car, with her forehead leaned against the window and Hannah sitting across from her.  She knew this memory, which was strange, because she knew it was a memory.  All the others had been memories too, up to a point, but in this one she was aware.

 

She looked down at her hands in awe.  They were so small.  Ahead of them, over the roof of a blue house, she spotted the tall pines that had ringed the backyard of their house.  Their first house.  The one they’d all lived in together before the accident.  

 

It wasn’t hard to pinpoint the time period.  She was angry, and that meant it was after the accident.  Everything had been worse after the accident.

 

It was jarring, projecting her thirty two year old brain into her nine year old body, but then her body started acting on its own anyway.  For a brief moment she wondered if she’d had any agency at all in any of her earlier memories, or if her obliviousness had allowed her to play the role and speak the lines in perfect synchronicity with her past self.

 

“Can you girls each grab a bag?” Ashley’s mom said, as she put her minivan in park.  

 

“Yes,” Ashley grumbled, sourly, and slammed the car door behind herself.  She huffed around to the trunk.  “Oh look, I wasn’t late.”

 

“Ash,” her mother said, agitatedly, as she rounded the bumper.

 

“Nothing,” she replied, but Hannah was looking at her worriedly.  Then she said, “This bag is heavy,” as soon as the bag she grabbed by chance was up and in her arms.

 

Her mom said, tiredly,  “Thank you for helping.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Hannah said, helpfully.

 

“Thank you for showing up on time,” Ashley mumbled.  “Oh wait.”

 

“Aaaaash,” Hannah whispered, urgently, but Ashley ignored her.

 

Once the door was unlocked, they went into the kitchen and dropped their bags.  Her mother went out for another load while Ashley and Hannah got to work unpacking and stocking up the pantry.  Ashley’s mother dropped off her second armload of bags, and had just turned back around when Ashley spied the red cardboard box top of cereal peeking out of one of them, and completely lost it.

 

“Mom!” she screamed.  “You know I hate Cap’n Crunch!”

 

Ashley’s mom turned slowly, eyes wide, and blinked.  “What?  No, it’s… it’s your favorite!  I got your favorite!”

 

“Not anymore,” she shrieked, as she yanked the box out of the bag, threw it on the floor, and kicked it.

 

“Ashley,” her mother snapped, scoldingly.  “Pick that up!”

 

“I don’t like it!”

 

“I just bought this for you last week, and you ate it every day!  I don’t understand!”

 

Ashley screamed, “I hate it!” at the top of her lungs.  “I hate it, and I hate you!”

 

Stomping up the stairs was a blur.  Storming into her room as a blur.  She was on her side, on her bed, with her back to the door and her stuffed dragon, Nigel, in her arms.  She was not crying.  There were tears, and she couldn’t seem to stop them, but her expression was as fixed and hardened as she could make it.

 

She twitched when the door opened, briefly, behind her, but stubbornly refused to turn around.

 

“Hey,” Hannah said, softly, as she sat down on the bed behind her.  “You okay?”

 

“She knows I hate Cap’n Crunch,” Ashley croaked.  “I told her, like, a thousand times.”

 

“I didn’t know,” her best friend said, even more softly.  “I thought it was still your favorite.”

 

“Well, then you’re dumb too,” Ashley said, sitting up and glaring over her shoulder.

 

“You don’t mean that,” she replied, sullenly.  “You’re just sad.  My dad says it’s okay to be sad.”

 

“I’m not sad!” She’d tried to shout it, but it had been hard to get it out through the tears. Instead, it came out wet and awful, and Hannah launched herself across the bed, more tackle than hug.  “Stop!” Ashley said, though her efforts to push her best friend off were feeble and lame.

 

“Your mom is worried,” Hannah said, softly.  “She’s really upset, you know.”

 

“Good!  She was an hour late picking us up from school!”

 

“It was thirty minutes,” Hannah said, softly but insistently, “and she already explained.”

 

“No!”

 

“She just got stuck in traffic!”

 

“I thought she was dead too!”

 

Hannah was crying as well, which made Ashley even more upset because Hannah had no real reason to be upset.  Hannah still had both her parents, which was completely unfair.  Her best friend, since daycare, just kept hugging her and hugging her, and not letting her go.  Ashley was much bigger than her, and had always been bigger.  She could have thrashed her way out.  She could have pushed Hannah off.

 

The longer it went on the less she wanted to, and, in fact, when Hannah sat up and withdrew her arms, Ashley almost asked for her to keep going, but she hated appearing weak.  Hated looking like she needed help, which was almost as bad as actually needing help.

 

“I worry about that. Sometimes,” Hannah said, as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.  “Especially my grandmom.  My mom always tells me she doesn’t have a lot of time.  I don’t like it when she makes me think about that.”  Then, after a quiet moment, she added, “You shouldn’t be mean to your mom, though.  She’s so nice.”

 

Ashley sulked, lips curling very nearly into a sneer.  Even though she’d calmed down, she still couldn’t really see the pattern of fear-overreact-lash out.  She knew when she was being unreasonable, but it was beyond her to see the why.

 

And then Hannah took her hands and held them —not too tight, and not too gently— and it seemed like maybe it wasn’t beyond Hannah to see.  Hannah had always seen.  Hannah had always known when she was being unreasonable… because Hannah was her conscience.

 

Hannah’s eyes lit up.  “There it is,” she said, suddenly sounding very much less like a child.

 

She had always been Ashley’s conscience.  That afternoon, so many years earlier, she’d gotten Ashley to go back downstairs afterwards and apologize.  And admit that she still loved Cap’n Crunch.  And tell her mom that she loved her.

 

“I’m not perfect,” not Hannah said.

 

“Me neither,” said Ashley.

 

They were nine, holding hands on Ashley’s bed, and even though it was the middle of the day, there were strange lights flashing up into her room.  Strobing blues and reds.  They both turned to look.

 

“Fourteen years,” Hannah said, “five months, thirty days."

 

Until the end, Ashley thought, bitterly.

 

Then Hannah said, "We can’t change the past.  All we can do is acknowledge it.  Be honest about it."

 

“Ashley!”

 

Ashley turned and frowned.  Her mom’s voice sounded different.  Farther away than it should have been, and higher pitched.  And when had it started raining?

 

“Over here!!”

 

***

 

“Over here!!”

Ashley blinked, with effort.  It was dark.  She couldn’t make out much until another flash of lightning lit up the sky, and then it was far too bright to see much of anything.  Her eyes felt slow, and lazy.  Her whole body was wet, but not her face.  What she was looking at didn’t make sense, like one of those pictures where the dolphin was hidden in a cloud, and was going to jump out at her.

 

Any minute now.

 

And then she remembered the tree.  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that the cabin of her car had been crushed by that tree.  She’d have died if she’d gotten into it.  She was further away from it now that she had been… and Hannah was kneeling next to her.  Holding her hand with one hand, while the other held the flap of her unzipped hoodie up over Ashley’s face to shield her from the rain, which was coming down harder now.

 

Hannah had moved her.  Hannah had protected her, and kept the rain out of her nose and mouth.  Hannah had called the police, and stayed with her despite the fact that they were both outside in a thunderstorm that, seemingly, was only getting stronger.

 

Despite the way Ashley had treated her.  Because of course she did.

 

Hannah was soaked to the bone, but no amount of rain could hide that she’d been crying.  Ashley tried to clear her throat, tried to ask how long she’d been out, but she couldn’t make her body do anything.  She could feel a little, enough to know that Hannah had probably been squeezing her hand for a while, but she couldn’t move on her own.

 

She felt so tired.  She tried to blink but her eyes stuck shut.  Her world tilted dangerously, and she experienced a full-sensory hallucination somewhat like having a bullet train speeding past her, inches from her nose, at two hundred miles per hour.  A horrific blur of colors, a roaring, and every once in a while a tiny glimpse of something on the other side.

 

When she finished the second half of the blink, the part where her eyes opened back up again, she saw washed out lighting.  Fluorescent.  The room around her jostled.  She was being jostled.  High droning, changing pitch.  Like an engine.  She was in an ambulance.  The EMT, sitting next to her, was double checking the straps that held her in place as they flew down the road, and on the other side…

 

On the other side of her, still holding her hand, still soaked through to the bone, and still sobbing, was Hannah.  Her face was splotchy and red.  She’d always been an ugly crier.  Ashley made a burbling sound when she tried to laugh, and that drew Hannah’s attention.

 

“Oh my god,” Hannah said, squeezing her hand even more.  “Oh my god!”

 

“I’m sorry,” Ashley said, hoarsely.  “I’m so sorry.”

 

Hannah said, “Forget about that!  Ashley, do you know where you are?  Do you know what day it is?”

 

There was a digital clock above them, mounted to the wall, that read 12:01.  Ashley looked at it and smiled weakly.  “Day one.”

 

“What?” Hannah said, sniffling loudly and narrowing her eyes.

 

Ashley croaked, “...glad you’re… here.  We need to… to talk.”  Then she squeezed Hannah’s hand, as hard as she could, and kept right on squeezing all the way to the hospital.

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