Archive of Our Own ^beta

As the school year drew to a close, Cynthia and Lydia got in the habit of taking late-night motorcycle rides through town. For several reasons, going to Lookout Point like all of the other couples at Rydell wasn’t an option, so they were forced to be content with spending their evenings driving around lazily, exploring parts of their town that they’d never seen despite living there their whole lives.

One of their nighttime explorations led them down a series of dirt roads just outside of town. They followed the roads mindlessly, paying more attention to each other than where they were going. Eventually, they turned down one that was noticeably less traveled. It narrowed and wound them up a hill, trees thickening on either side of them. 

What they found became their spot: A little cliffside alcove that looked down on the lights of the town. It was their perfect alone place, their own Lookout Point. Every night, they returned to sit on the fallen log near the cliff’s edge and savor the lights, the solitude, and each other.

Once Lydia’s parents finally gave in and got her the car she’d been asking for, they took to riding that up to their spot and lying back on the hood so Lydia could stop complaining about the bugs and the dirt that came from sitting on the log. Lying on top of Lydia’s car, they would talk for hours and gaze up at the stars. 

Usually, their time there was marked by carefree laughter and the knowledge that even though they’d have to go home eventually, they would be back tomorrow. That night though, a more somber energy followed them up. 

They were avoiding the subject (and not very artfully, either). Lying back on the hood, they were talking about absolutely nothing so they didn't have to talk about The Thing. The Thing where it was their last night together for three weeks. The Thing where Cynthia was terrified of spending that much time apart from her girlfriend.

Was it codependent? Some might say so. Was it bordering on unhealthy? She preferred to think of it as a natural consequence of being in love.

Lydia looked at her watch and sighed up at the stars. “Cyn–”

“No, no, no,” she said, turning on her side to face her. “You were telling me about Mary Martin and how Disney let her down and–”

Her eyes fluttered shut as Lydia brushed the warm pads of her fingers across her cheekbone. “You don’t care about Mary Martin.”

“No, I do. I really do! Please tell me everything there is to know about her, even if it takes all night. And all day tomorrow, too, for that matter!” She kept her eyes squeezed shut, even when she felt Lydia’s nose prodding gently at her cheek.

“It’s only three weeks.” It was probably supposed to sound encouraging, but it missed the mark. Blindly, she leaned forward and found Lydia’s lips with hers–the kiss was heartbreakingly slow, like if they just made it last long enough time would stop moving forward without their permission. When they finally pulled apart, Lydia whispered against her lips, “I do have to go, don’t I?”

That shook her out of her stupor. “No, you don’t have to–but you want to. If you stay here, you’ll regret not going.” She pushed herself up and leaned back on the cool glass of the windshield. “So, c’mon,” she tapped her shoulder. “Tell me what you love so much about this place. Explain for the peasant.” 

Lydia chuckled and pushed herself up. “Well, it’s beautiful, for one thing.” She curled their fingers together. “We actually get to stay in the state park. When we’re not rehearsing there’s swimming in the lake, hiking–”

“Like summer camp.”

“Yeah, but it’s not just for kids. Each age group does their own show. Sometimes we get to sit in on the adult’s rehearsals, and that’s such a good learning experience. They really become like mentors to us, you know?” Cynthia felt the corners of her mouth pull up into a fond smile as she watched Lydia’s love of theatre light up her face. “And the rehearsals … They last for hours and hours, and you’re so tired, but you never want them to end. They fly in creatives from all over, so we’re working with the best. And everyone there is just as obsessed as I am, so–”

“A truly terrifying thought,” she whispered. Lydia just pushed her gently and plowed on.

“So, we stay up all night in the cabins; running lines and doing character work, and–” Something dark flashed across her face, disrupting the joy there. She turned her head back up to the sky, shoulders suddenly tight.

Cynthia brought their entwined hands into her lap and started rubbing comforting circles along Lydia’s skin with her thumb. “You think she’ll be there?”

She nodded. “It’ll be pretty hard to avoid her when we’re sleeping in the same room.”

The thought of Lydia having to spend three weeks cooped up with the person who broke her heart, and her trust, made Cynthia feel helpless. She’d give anything to be able to shield her from further pain. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said through a sigh.

“I know it isn’t, but I still wish you didn’t have to see her again.”

Lydia moved to look down at her watch again, but Cynthia’s hand came up to wrap around her wrist and cover its face. “Let’s just make the most of the time we have, okay? And then, after a very short and painless three weeks, we’ll meet back up here, and–” She was cut off with a kiss that she felt down to her toes. 

“It’s only three weeks,” Lydia mumbled into her mouth. 

“Easy peasy.” She wasn’t sure which one of them she was trying to convince. The thought of letting Lydia go was terrifying. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Lydia bit her lip and looked up cheekily. “Whatever will we do instead?”

“I can think of a few things…” She brought their smiling mouths together and pulled Lydia closer by her waist. They didn’t talk about much of anything after that.

___

21 hours after she last spoke to Lydia (not that she was counting or anything), the phone rang.  She was up so fast that she tripped over her own feet and nearly crashed into the wall. “Hello?” she asked through heavy breaths.

“Hey, Cyn!” 

At the sound of her voice, tinny through the phone line, all of the tension evaporated from her body. She flopped down on the couch, limbs loose with relief. “Hi. I miss you. Is it stupid and pathetic to miss you already?”

On the other end of the line, a door latched shut. “If it is, we’re both stupid. I miss you, too. I keep thinking about how much you’d hate it here. Theatre people everywhere doing vocal warmups and interpretive dance…”

“Yeah, but you love it,” she said with a knowing smile. 

“I really do.”

“So, c’mon–Tell me about auditions; I know you’re dying to.”

A harsh exhale crackled into the receiver. “So, our age group is doing Carousel.” 

“You’ve mentioned that show to me, I think. It’s got that Roy Hamilton song in it, doesn’t it?”

“I love that you think that.” The sound of her laugh made Cynthia’s fingers twitch. She gripped the phone tighter. “But auditions went well. Really well, actually. I got Julie!”

If she was being honest, that name rang no bells in her head. But, if Lydia was happy, she was happy. “That’s amazing! Congratulations!” 

“Thanks!” 

The silence that followed was thick with something. Without seeing Lydia, she couldn’t tell what it was. “Something’s wrong.”

“Marilyn is playing Julie’s best friend. We’re in almost every scene together.”

The heaviness in her tone could only mean one thing, but she had to ask. “And Marilyn is…”

“Yeah.”

“God, I’m so sorry.” She brought her hand up to rub at her temple. “Have you seen her yet?”

“Oh, yeah. Came right up to me as soon as my parents dropped me off like nothing ever happened.”

“She’s good at that,” she spat.

“You want to know something that is simultaneously hilarious and also not funny at all?”

She leaned her head onto the back of the couch and stared up at the popcorn ceiling. “Sure.”

“She sings a song to me in the first act, and you’ll never believe what it’s called: ‘You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan’.” She scoffed. “I mean, of course, right?”

Her reply was stunted by how hard she was grinding her teeth. “I–I don’t even know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t helpful, but it’s true.”

“I don’t want her to ruin this for me.”

She was only half kidding when she said, “You want me and the girls to come up there and take care of her for you? They wouldn’t even have to know why, I bet they’d help just because I asked.”

Her heart unclenched a bit at Lydia’s laugh. “My hero,” she said dreamily. “Okay, enough about me. Tell me all the things you did on your restoration today so I can pretend to know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I went to the junkyard today–”

“Uh huh.”

“And I found a perfectly good torque converter that some dingbat just threw away.”

“People,” Lydia said, as if she had any idea what a torque converter was. “Are idiots.”

“My thoughts exactly. So, I took it into the shop…”

___

The next several days passed in much of the same manner. She got together with her friends as much as she could, but they were rarely available for long periods of time. This was more of a shock than it ought to have been; she hadn’t realized how much time they all spent with their significant others until hers wasn’t around. What used to be excuses (I’m working on a project at the shop, my dad’s working late and I want to bring him dinner, my bike’s shift bar is bent, etc.) quickly turned into activities she was actually using to fill her time.

Every night, even if she was out with her friends, she made sure she was home in time for Lydia’s call. She sat, rapt with attention, as Lydia told her every single mundane detail of her day, and she never got bored. As the days passed, she began to make a detailed mind map of the grounds of the park, and assigned the characters in Lydia’s stories physical characteristics based on the little details she knew about them.

She imagined that the ceiling above Lydia’s bunk bed had carvings on it from past actors. Apparently some pretty famous people used this particular summer stock program as a jumping off point for their careers. She loved the idea that the last thing Lydia saw every night before she went to sleep were the practice signatures of some of her heroes–Marlene Dietrich’s sloppy scrawl and Rita Hayworth’s ladylike loops carved into the wooden cabin ceiling before they were anybody at all.

As for the people she imagined: Tommy, the boy playing opposite Lydia in their show, was always wearing green in Cynthia’s mind’s eye. She wasn’t sure where that came from, but in all of Lydia’s stories where he played a starring role, he was in various shades of green to match the nature around them. 

Unfortunately, she knew exactly where her mental image of Marilyn came from. Just before Lydia left, they’d gone to see The Seven Year Itch; her new car’s inaugural drive-in experience. That night they confessed to each other that Marilyn Monroe was definitely one of the movie stars they had both had a crush on for years. 

That fed into a discussion about how and when they each realized they liked girls. It felt a little juvenile and silly; like they were in junior high, or something. But it wasn’t a conversation they got to have when everyone else did, and it was nice to have someone to finally talk about it with. For Cynthia, there had been crushes throughout the years (some more embarrassing than others) on friends, girls at school, and movie stars. Kissing Lydia was more of a confirmation than a revelation.

“Ooh, friends? Girls at school?” Lydia cooed. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

Blood rushed to her cheeks, and she quickly turned her face into the popcorn bucket. “Ah, it’s nothin’,” she said with a smile, hoping Lydia would drop it. “It was a long time ago.” Six months, actually. But, still. 

Unfortunately, Lydia didn’t look like she wanted to drop it. She searched Cynthia’s eyes with a furrowed brow. Whatever she found there made her face light up briefly in recognition, understanding. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. Not wanting to deal with that at all, Cynthia tried for flattery. “Plus, ever since this one bossy thespian walked into my life, I haven’t really been able to see anyone else.”

Her eyes softened and her lips pulled up at the corners for a split second–blink and you’ll miss it, but it was there. “Blech!” she groaned. “That was so corny–awful.” It would have been much more convincing had she not reached up to turn off the dome light and tangled their fingers together afterwards.

“Uh huh,” she nodded. “Yeah, I can tell you hated it.” That earned her an elbow in the side and they scuffled for a minute, poking and teasing each other before settling back in to watch a man cheat on his wife with Marilyn Monroe.

So when she found out the summer stock girl’s name was Marilyn, the unbidden image of Marilyn Monroe with her dress flying up in the wake of a passing train filled her mind. After that, she couldn’t help continuing to picture summer stock Marilyn as Marilyn Monroe in all of Lydia’s stories (which was only mildly irritating).

Lydia was so detailed in her descriptions, and Cynthia’s imagination filled in so many of the gaps, that eventually she was able to close her eyes and watch her days unfold in her head like a movie as Lydia spoke to her. 

Their phone calls felt like the only thing keeping her sane. She absolutely missed Lydia, but it was more than just wanting to physically be with her girlfriend. Lydia was the only person that she felt like she could be her whole self around. She’d grown up hiding, suppressing, and that was her normal. She overcompensated with humor and desperately tried to be who she thought the guys wanted her to be. With the Pink Ladies, she didn’t feel like she needed to impress them to be worthy of hanging out with them, but she couldn’t be her whole self around them, either (not even Nancy).

When she was with Lydia, she had a safe space. She could be her, fully her, and know that she didn’t need to be anything more than that, anything less than that, anything different than that.

During their fifth nightly phone call, Lydia shocked her by telling her that she would have to cut their talk short as she was planning on meeting Marilyn behind the cabins. 

“Wh–why?”

“Oh, not for that obviously,” Lydia rushed to assure her. “She just wants to talk, she said.”

She tried to tamp down the squirming in her gut. “She can’t talk to you in public? In the daylight?”

Lydia ignored her questions as if they were rhetorical. “Remember how I said she’s been acting like nothing ever happened between us?” She continued, not needing verbal confirmation. “Well, today something changed. She kept giving me these looks during rehearsal.” Cynthia rolled her eyes, grateful for once that Lydia was halfway across the state. “They were apologetic, almost. And now she wants to talk to me alone? I think she’s finally going to say she’s sorry.”

“Why now?”

“We’re officially done with music rehearsals–From now until the show we’ll be working together every day, acting side by side and pretending to be best friends the whole time we’re on stage. She’s proud, but I think she cares more about the show than her pride. She probably wants to clear everything up before our past starts messing up the show.”

Hearing “our past” had her teeth grinding together. When she spoke, it was through a clenched jaw. “She hasn’t earned your forgiveness.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve earned a good summer stock experience.”

Her jaw released as guilt pressed an exhale out of her. “You’re totally right. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She got significantly quieter at the end of her sentence, as though she’d turned away from the receiver. “Look, I think she’s heading out there. I’ll call you with an update tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Good lu–”

“Ah!” Lydia warned. “None of that while I’m preparing for a show!”

“You know that’s only supposed to be right before the show, right?”

“Cynthia!”

“Okay, fine–Sorry! Break a leg.”

Even from hundreds of miles away, her laugh made Cynthia’s breath catch. “Thank you! I love you, you know?”

“Yeah. I love you, too.”

They said their goodbyes and Cynthia hung the phone up on the wall, feeling the emptiness of the apartment more profoundly than usual.

That night, she barely slept. Her meticulous imagination of every aspect of Lydia’s trip meant that staying up and picturing the million different ways her conversation with Marilyn could have gone was not only easy, but cinematic. 

She played out every possibility in painstaking detail. Her favorites were the ones where Lydia stood up for herself and refused to forgive her, cutting off a chance for any sort of relationship (friendly or otherwise). The others weren’t as comforting; the one her brain chose to hyperfixate on was, predictably, the worst of them all. 

In that scenario, they met up behind the cabins just like they had so many times the summer before. Marilyn poured her heart out in apologies and promises: I know it’s hard to trust me after what I did to you, but I’m all in now. I know we’re both scared, and for good reason, but we don’t have to let it change what’s between us.

Cynthia didn’t need to imagine what Lydia’s reaction to that kind of gesture would be–she could pull from her own memory.

Exhausted, she made her way over to Lydia’s house the next morning. Obviously she wasn’t home, but she needed to do something with her hands. Preferably, something for Lydia.

Her mother opened the door. They’d met briefly several times before, but this interaction was made doubly awkward by the lack of Lydia’s presence and Cynthia’s uncharacteristic dejection. After trudging through muddy small talk, she mentioned that the last time she was in Lydia’s car, she noticed the brakes squealing.

 This didn’t look like it meant a single thing to Lydia’s mother, so she explained that it was likely worn brake pads which could result in further damage to the car as well as safety issues if not fixed soon.“I’m a mechanic,” she explained. “I have some free time for the next few weeks and I thought I could replace them while she was gone.” 

“Oh! Well, that’s very nice of you, dear. Now,” she hesitated. “How much will that cost?”

She waved her off. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get all of the parts from the shop at school.” She and the boys would break in and steal them, but Lydia’s mother didn’t need to concern herself with the details. “All I’ll need is her keys, access to your garage, and permission.”

Once she took a closer look at the car, she pretty quickly decided that it was going to be her new project. Whoever convinced them to buy it in that condition was a total con artist. Not only did they sell her the car with brake pads that were worn to shit, but the shocks and struts were a mess, the belt was thin as hell, the tires needed rotating, and about a dozen other little things. Not to mention it needed a top down cleaning. 

Neither of Lydia’s parents knew what any of that meant, but they gave Cynthia permission to do whatever she needed to do to get the car up to snuff. They handed her a spare car key, a spare garage key, and told her to come and go as she pleased until Lydia got back. Finally having something to do other than sit around and catastrophize, the burden of her over-active imagination lessened considerably as she added more things to her list.

She allowed the work to overtake her. The tools became extensions of her hands as she expertly twisted and adjusted. The more she worked, the better she felt. Sure, maybe Marilyn was gorgeous and talented and there , but could she fix Lydia’s car? Make sure she would be safe wherever she went? Cynthia could. 

She was so into her work that she lost track of time and ended up having to speed home for their phone call. She could hear the phone ringing from the hallway outside of the apartment. Her fingers fumbled the keys several times before she finally burst through the door and practically ripped the phone off of the wall. “Hello?” she gasped. “Are you still there? I’m here!”

“Yeah, Cyn, I’m here. Are you okay? You sound out of breath.”

Her eyes closed as she sunk down onto the couch, breathing hard. “I almost didn’t make it home in time for your call.”

“You were out?” The shock in her tone rankled. Had it been that obvious that she had no life while Lydia was away? “What were you up to?”

She made the split second decision to keep the work on her car a welcome home surprise. “With the girls,” she replied vaguely. “So,” she pulled her lip between her teeth. “How did last night go?”

“It was just like I thought. She apologized for treating me the way she did, and asked that we move on for the good of the show. If I had to guess, I’d say the apology was about 25% genuine and 75% for the show. She was great in rehearsal today, though.” 

Her brow furrowed at the superfluous comment. “So, you forgave her, then?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’ve got to spend the next two weeks practically glued to her side,” Cynthia’s nostrils flared. “So I figured starting over would be best for everyone involved.” 

Her mouth opened and closed several times as she weighed out potential responses. She finally landed on, “Good. That’s great,” through a grimace. She went to ask about rehearsal, then decided that she really didn’t need to hear anymore about how “great” Marilyn was at everything, so instead she asked, “You guys did a hike this morning, right? How was that?”

“Well, I actually trekked through the forest. Me! And I didn’t even scream when bugs got in my hair, so I think overall it went very well.”

“Wow, you didn’t scream when bugs got in your hair?” she asked, really laying it on thick. “You’re like Laura Ingalls Wilder or Annie Oakley, or somethin’.” 

“I’m sorry, I think what you meant to say was: Wow, as your supportive girlfriend I’m so proud of you for stepping outside of your comfort zone and venturing out into nature.”

She had to purse her lips to hold back a laugh at that. “Mhm! Isn’t that what I said?” She cleared her throat to smother the last of the laugh that still hung there. “So, how was the view?”

Her voice lit up in excitement. “Ugh, it was amazing. You could see the Farallon Islands one way, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains the other way. Fred–do you remember me talking about Fred?”

“The older guy from New York who’s playing Curly.” In her mind, he had a mop of curly brown hair and a thick Brooklyn accent.

“Yeah, right! He brought binoculars, and when you used them you could see all the way down to San Francisco.”

“Fancy shmancy. Your day trip down there is Sunday, right?”

“Oh, God,” she groaned. “All of the days are running together already, but yeah. I think so.”

“Tell me what you’re most excited for.”

“Riding in a cable car, obviously.”

She put the pieces together quickly and smiled. “Because of Judy Garland.” 

Lydia chuckled warmly. “You know me so well…”

___

As the days went on, Cynthia found herself obsessing even more over her work on Lydia’s car. The more she repaired, the more issues she found and the longer her list grew. The only thing that posed a real, immediate safety hazard were the brakes, but there were plenty of  (not strictly necessary) improvements that could be made elsewhere. 

Unconsciously, there was a direct correlation between the “improvements” she found Lydia’s car to be in need of and the rapidly declining phone calls they had every night. What used to be 20 minute phone calls that her cabin-mates had to physically pull her off of, became five minute highlight reels–all with Marilyn as the main character.

“Act I run through today, right? How’d that go?”

“Eh, could’ve gone better, could’ve gone worse. Tommy and I are finally starting to figure out the choreography for our song, I think.”

“You’re not leading anymore?”

“Oh no, I’m still leading,” she assured her. “We’re just doing a better job of making it look like I’m not.”

Cynthia settled into the couch cushions, a smile on her face. “Well, that’s progress at least.”

“Honestly, I shouldn’t complain. At least Tommy knows he can’t dance. Marilyn’s stuck with David, who seems to truly believe that he’s Bob Fosse’s long lost son or something.”

The smile melted off of her face. Did Lydia’s headlights need cleaning? Hell, if she’s going to clean them, she may as well just replace them. She mentally added that to her list along with leather polish; her steering wheel was looking a little dull. You know, all of her interior was looking a little dull now that she thought about it. She should add that to the list as well.

Lydia’s voice worked its way through her brain fog. “Cyn? Are you still there?”

“Hm?”

“You got all quiet. I was just making sure you’re okay.”

She would be–if they could talk for 30 seconds without Lydia gushing over Marilyn. “Yup. Fine.” She sighed, resolved to start over. “So, you’re going into the city tomorrow! Have you decided which group you’re gonna go with yet?”

“We found out a few hours ago that South Pacific is at The Orpheum, so my decision was kind of made for me; Golden Gate Park sounds great and all, but I can’t just not go see something Mary-Martin-adjacent when I have the chance.”

“Of course not, that would be unthinkable.”

“Oh, be quiet,” she chuckled. “If you had the chance to… to–What would the equivalent be?” After a few seconds, Lydia came back with renewed excitement. “If you had the chance to ride Harley Davidson’s personal motorcycle, wouldn’t you take it?”

Cynthia smirked. “Probably not.”

Lydia grumbled in frustration, but Cynthia could hear her smile. “Why not?”

“Well first of all, Harley Davidson wasn’t the guy’s name.”

“Okay, well–”

“And also: I ride a Triumph.”

Her sputters turned into laughter. “Whatever, just let me go to the show, okay?”

“Sure, sure–Have your fun.” The rhythm of their banter settled into her bones with a soft kind of familiarity. She closed her eyes and let the sound of Lydia’s laughter draw her into sensory memories. She could see the shine of her smile and almost smell her shampoo. “That’ll be the matinee, right?”

“Mhm,” she confirmed. 

“Well, what are you going to do for the rest of the day?” she asked, preparing to sink into her very own Lydia motion picture. 

“Del and Phyllis live on Castro street–You remember Del and Phyllis? The ones who–”

“Run a magazine together,” she finished. “I remember.” Lydia never mentioned them separately. She pictured them to be comic opposites of one another: One tall and one short, one blonde and one brunette, one outspoken and one shy.

“Right! Well, they said they’d show us around their neighborhood and take us out to dinner after the show if we want. Their friend Mona owns a restaurant that’s really good, apparently. Marilyn wants us to walk all the way to Chinatown for dinner, but I think she’ll get outvoted.”

She should double check Lydia’s front and rear differentials; just to be safe. Her catalytic converter was a little dented the last time she checked. Maybe that didn’t even need to be replaced; if Cynthia got creative she could probably find a way to get the dent out while keeping the part intact. She added that to her list, too.

“Cynthia? Did I lose you?”

She blinked and shook her head to clear it. “No. I’m fine.”

Their conversations swung back and forth like that for days. They were like the path of a pendulum: Oscillating regularly to the untrained eye, but to a person that knew what they were looking for? It was easy to see that momentum was being lost with each pass. 

___

She waits all night for a call that doesn’t come. It’s pathetic, but even after hours and hours of sitting and waiting, she refuses to give up hope. She’s still waiting by the phone as the rising sun casts a pale orange haze into the room.

On his way out the door, her dad asks, “Did you sleep on the couch, kid?”

She didn’t sleep at all. She nods her head anyway.

All day, she sits there, staring at a silent phone. At some point, she realizes that she hasn’t eaten, but it’s also at that point that she realizes she’s not hungry. She’s not anything, really. She’s just waiting.

Time goes on around her–It's an ice cold river, ever moving, and she is the rock that sits in the middle of it, worn completely smooth from erosion and getting smaller every day. 

People try to talk to her at first. They ask questions, concern in their voices. They must look concerned too, but Cynthia wouldn’t know. She never takes her eyes off of the phone. She’s memorized the way the shadow moves across it every day. At some point, people stop trying.

She feels her hair get longer; it tickles her shoulders, then the backs of her hands that rest on her legs, then it puddles on the couch cushions underneath her. Still, the phone never rings. She sits for years. Never bored, and always sure that the call is coming any moment now. 

She’s not sure what shifts, but one day she knows it’s time to get up. Her legs are shaky from disuse. Her clothes hang off of her body. Her hair drags along the carpet as she walks towards the door. Her hand reaches out to grab the cool metal of the doorknob. She twists.

The phone rings.

Cynthia’s eyes flew open. She sat up with a gasp and looked around, disoriented for a second. The phone rang again. With a sigh, she crumpled in on herself and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. She blindly reached back for the phone when it rang again.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Hi.” Her question about Lydia’s day was cut off by a huge yawn that she buried into her palm.

“Oh, that’s your sleepy voice. Did I wake you up from a nap?”

She nodded tiredly before remembering that phones required sound. “Yeah, but it’s fine. Weird dream.”

“Bad weird?” she asked.

The memory of it was already slipping away like sand falling through her fingers, but what she still had a hold of was enough to make her stomach roll. “Yeah, kind of.”

She hummed in sympathy. “I’m sorry. Nap dreams are always a little off. What’s got you so tired?”

Hauling parts and tools back and forth from the school and her dad’s shop to Lydia’s garage. She still wanted to keep that a surprise for when she got home though, so instead she said, “Woke up early to help Nancy with something.” Another yawn pulled her mouth wide. “No big deal,” she said through it. “So, how was your day?”

She made a noncommittal noise. “It was fine. Our run through didn’t go as well as I hoped it would. The ensemble’s doing great, but after they left, me, Marilyn, Tommy, and David had to stay back for another hour of notes. I’m starting to think seven more days won’t be enough to get us where we need to be.”

Desperately trying to ignore yet another mention of her, Cynthia shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t say that. You know everything snaps into place right at the last minute. It will this time, too. You’ve worked hard and you’re incredible–the show will be great.”

“I miss you.” Not for the first time, her arms twitched on instinct to reach out, but Lydia wasn’t within reach. She wrapped her arms around herself instead. “Do you miss me, too?”

Her breath left her in a whoosh. “You have no idea.”

They let that settle between them for a moment as they listened to each other breathe. Seven days. Cynthia could do seven more days.

“You know,” Lydia said. “I’m really grateful everything’s good with Marilyn. For the sake of the show, I mean. Now we’re getting an hour’s worth of notes; I can’t imagine how much of a mess the show would be if there was still this big awkward thing between us.”

Windshield wiper fluid! She knew she’d been forgetting something. She would take care of that first thing in the morning. And if she’d forgotten something so basic, what else had she forgotten? She figured she may as well recheck everything from the top down just to be sure.

“Did–did I lose you again?”

“Hm? Oh, no. I’m here.”

“You’re not happy about that. About me and Marilyn getting along.” It was a statement, not a question.

She wanted to scream, but the last vestige of the nightmare hung in her memory. She had to say whatever would keep Lydia calling, even if it was a circumvention of the truth. “I just wish you wouldn’t let her off so easy. It seems like you’re the one getting the short end of the stick here, that’s all.” That wasn’t all, but she stopped while she was ahead.

“I don’t see it that way. I wanted to forgive her.” Cynthia sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down hard. “I would be miserable, and the show would be even more of a mess than it is now, if we hadn’t come to an understanding.”

“Okay.” Engine, brake pads, spark plugs.

“I don’t think I should have to apologize for that.”

“Okay.” Axle, radiator, battery. 

“I think I’m going to head to bed.”

“Okay.” Alternator, transmission, carburetor. 

“I–I love you, okay?”

Clutch, suspension, shock absorber. “Yeah, okay.”

___

Two nights later came another nightmare–one she couldn’t wake up from.

“I might not have time to call for the rest of the week.”

“Oh, okay.” 

“I’m sorry, it’s just that we decided we need extra rehearsals after dinner.”

She had to ask, even though the pit in her stomach was answer enough. “The whole cast, or–” 

Lydia sighed deeply. There was a moment where Cynthia could hear something shifting on the other end, like she’d gotten up. “Just me,” she sighed again. “And Marilyn. The boys didn’t get nearly as many notes tonight, but she and I still did. We need the practice.”

“I’m sure.” She could hear how cold and harsh her voice sounded, but no longer had the energy to pretend.

Lydia sighed again. Cynthia rolled her eyes; she was going to make herself hyperventilate if she kept that up. “She’s my scene partner, Cyn. There’s no reason for you to be jealous.”

A hysterical giggle bubbled up out of her rapidly constricting throat. “Yeah, okay.”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just that, the last time you did extra rehearsals with someone you hated, you didn’t exactly hate them by the end.”

She scoffed. “This is nothing like that! I’m not interested in her anymore.”

“Yeah? Well, not that long ago you were. Excuse me for being concerned about you spending time with someone you used to like.”

“I can’t believe after everything you don’t trust me.” The calmness in her voice was startling. It was the way people said “the end” at the end of fairy tales. 

Cynthia reached up and fisted a hand in her hair. “I do, it’s just that– I feel like you’re not even talking to me anymore. The fewer details you give me, the more room I have to think the worst. Now you’re telling me you want to talk even less?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean–”

“This past week, I’ve tried to tell you about my days and you don’t want to hear it. As soon as I mention her, you get all huffy and shut down.”

Energy was starting to pool in her chest; her breaths coming shallower and shallower as her lungs filled with fear. “Because I don’t need to hear from you how funny and talented and beautiful she is all the time!”

“I– what?” She sounded genuinely shocked. “When have I ever said any of those things? And, I can’t help that she’s a big part of my time here, Cynthia. We’re scene partners; that’s it. There’s no reason for you to be jealous!”

“Yeah, well we were just scene partners once, too!” She could hear herself talking in circles, but didn’t seem to have control over her mouth anymore.

“Oh my god, we’re back to this again? I had a crush on her for three weeks. A year ago.” She spoke clearly and slowly, refusing to be misunderstood. “You and I have been together for seven months and I’m in love with you. Don’t you see how that’s different?”

“It doesn’t feel different!”

“Well, that’s not my fault!” She paused, like she was gearing herself up to say something big. The miles between them crackled like an electric fence. “It’s not like I get jealous every time you’re with Olivia.”

The liquid fear in her chest froze. Cracked. Shattered. 

“What?”

“Cynthia, I didn’t mean to say–”

The tops of her ears got hot. “So, you meant it, you just didn’t mean to say it.”

“No–God, I just meant that–”

“No.” All at once, the tension crashed down around her. The frustration, the fear, the hurt–it all washed away to make room for a burning anger that she’d felt before, but certainly never towards Lydia. The hand holding up the phone to her face shook traitorously. “I’ll tell you what: Go rehearse with your ex. Have fun.” She had to get one last jab in, however childish. “And hey, since I won’t be talking to you before your show: Good luck.”

“Cyn, please–”

It took her one, two, three tries to get the phone hung back up. The definitive click of it returning to the hook echoed through the empty apartment for hours afterward. 

___

After the fight, Cynthia didn’t sleep. At all. Her bed was too hot, her pillows too thin, the crickets too loud. Every little annoyance was amplified tenfold until it was hard to breathe. She threw the covers off, chucked her pillow across the room, and stuffed her fingers harshly in her ears. For the briefest second, that brought relief. Then she was too cold, her neck ached for something to rest on, and the rumble of her blood in her ears started to drive her crazy.

She couldn’t settle; her body didn’t know how to handle the pain. There were moments where she got up to rush to the bathroom, positive she was going to be sick. About halfway down the hallway, she would flip back to anger and stomp back to her room.

The immense weight of her shame settled deep into her gut and made a home there. As she ran through their conversations from the last two weeks over and over again in her head, she realized that Lydia was absolutely right: She’d never called Marilyn funny or beautiful. She hadn’t called her talented either; not in so many words, at least. Instead, Cynthia’s insecure brain worked overtime to twist their conversations into something they weren’t. 

Did she even mention Marilyn that much? If asked yesterday, she would have said that Lydia mentioned her significantly more than everyone else at the theater. She would have gone on to clarify that not only did Lydia mention her more than everyone else, but she gushed about her; going on and on about how perfect she was ad nauseam. Now that she really thought about it, she’s not sure if that was ever true.

She was also right about how much Cynthia had been responsible for the distance in their phone calls. Lydia always wanted to keep her engaged in conversation. It was Cynthia who shut down every time the other girl was mentioned. Shutting down was her instinct when things got tough. For several months after her mom left, when the T-Birds excluded her, when everything was rough with Lydia at the beginning–she clamped down on all of her feelings, put up a hard shell around herself, and pretended it wasn’t happening. Lydia had seen this tendency of hers before, but she had no way of knowing that’s what was going on from hundreds of miles away.

Lydia did everything right, everything she could, from her position. Until she brought up Olivia.

Unlike the shame that hardened in her gut, the hurt lodged somewhere behind her lungs, squeezing relentlessly like a vice. 

The Olivia thing was the only subject she and Lydia never broached. They’d talked about her mother leaving, not fitting in, her goals, her dreams, her fears–but never that. It was too complicated, and up until that point, Lydia had understood that implicitly and never asked. 

Ever since Olivia’s family moved to town, Cynthia had been enamored by both her and Richie. Richie at first because he came off so cool and smooth, and then even more when she realized that it was all an elaborate act and he was really just a soft-hearted dork with good hair and a leather jacket. Olivia because she was so different than anyone else she’d ever met. 

Everyone at school clamored to fit in; that’s the only reason anybody did anything at Rydell. Then Olivia came along and not only refused to conform, but seemed actually proud of the things that made her different. 

She was smart enough that she could have been a total egghead, but she didn’t like how competitive the eggheads were, so instead of forcing herself to be like them, she walked away with her head held high. Back in Pennsylvania, she took dance lessons and could have easily been a Rydell cheerleader, but she hated how mean the girls were. At lunch, she’d sit all by herself and read while ignoring all of the stares and whispers. Cynthia had never been so inspired by anyone.

Unfortunately, Cynthia couldn’t fit in if she tried. And unlike Olivia, she did try. At first it was just for her mother’s benefit. She’d wear dresses and go to church; say the right things, do the right things. No matter how much her mom squished her into the mold, no matter how much she contorted herself to fit into it, it never worked. They both figured that out when Cynthia started junior high, when the line dividing boys and girls could no longer be ignored. At that point, her mom left, and she took a hard pivot in the other direction. If she couldn’t fit in with the girls, she’d fit in with the guys. That never quite worked either, but she just kept trying because there was no other option.

Olivia presented another option. She never quite worked up the courage to be a free agent, but knowing the option was there completely turned her world upside down. Not to mention, she was confident, talented, funny, a little mysterious in her interiority, smart, and beautiful. 

So, she harbored an embarrassing crush for years. Her heart raced when Olivia walked into the room, she and Gil both did everything they could to make her laugh, and she found herself being hyper aware of everything she said and did while in her presence. That in itself was humiliating (for reasons that had nothing to do with Olivia and everything to do with Cynthia).

Then Olivia followed Cynthia up on stage the day of student council nominations. Then, inexplicably, Olivia pulled her skirt down and flashed the whole student body with her before stealing Gil’s car and riding off into the sunset. Then, they became friends. 

Suddenly, liking Olivia became even more of a problem. They were together all the time: Detention, campaign meetings, parties, sleepovers. The closer they got, the more disastrous it was going to be when Cynthia’s secret inevitably came out. That weird girl who hangs around your brother secretly likes you? Strange and wrong. Your best friend who you’ve slept next to and hugged and held hands with secretly likes you? Predatory, sick, betrayal. 

Lydia walked into her life soon after, and now she only saw Olivia as one of her best friends, but that only made her even more sensitive about it. She valued their friendship so much that she couldn’t talk about, or even think about, the fact that she used to like her. She relegated it to a dark corner of her brain, put up a protective wall around it, and did what she did best: She shut down.

To have this thing she was so ashamed of pulled into the light and used against her by the person she loved? It made it physically hard to breathe. 

It must have been habit that led her to Lydia’s garage the next morning. The last thing she wanted to do was think about her, and yet she found herself yanking the garage door up from the ground and continuing where she left off the day before. As she worked, she found that the ball of guilt in her stomach abated some. Each part she fixed to make sure Lydia would be a little safer was like its own little apology. Until she got back, that would have to do.

The pain of what Lydia said to her wasn’t reduced by working on her car, though. In fact, there were times when she got so pissed that she’d slam down whatever she was working on and tear off on her bike, vowing to do nothing else until she got the apology she deserved. That never lasted long.

On the third day after the fight, she was cleaning up the interior when she found a sticky knot of bobby pins in the cup holder. They were each covered in a thick film of hairspray which had fused them together in the summer heat. Some of them had rogue hairs attached, wrapped around the hot metal that was bent from use. 

At the sight, she was thrust harshly into a montage of memories. Lydia pinning up her curls to fit under her spring musical wig, her eyes set in determination while everyone else was full of pre-show jitters. Lydia letting her hair down after a long day at school, feeling safe enough in Cynthia’s presence to let her guard drop. Lydia blushing as Cynthia slowly slid them out of her hair so her hands were free to tangle into it.

She grabbed the lump of pins and stalked over to the trash can, mumbling the whole way about how gross it was to leave them in there like that. She hurled them into the metal bin before stomping back over to her bike and taking off.

She only got a couple of blocks before she was hit with another memory. They were in Lydia’s room getting ready to go to the Frosty Palace with some of the thespians. Lydia pulled out her little baggie of bobby pins, which was, shockingly, nearly empty given how much she used them. She explained that they just sort of disappeared, so she had to buy more every few months.

“The bigger ones–” she pulled a couple out of the bag and dropped them into Cynthia’s open palm. “These ones. They’re easier to keep track of.”

“If the little ones are called bobby pins, are these called Robert pins?” she asked jokingly. 

Lydia laughed so hard she snorted. They then proceeded to laugh so hard at her snorting that tears ran down both of their cheeks in rivers, their stomachs sore from the muscle strain. 

The memory rounded out the edges of her anger until all that was left was a big round hole where she wished her girlfriend was. She changed direction on her bike, and ten minutes later she was walking out of the general store with a new set of bobby pins in her hand.

___

Cynthia finished up work on the car just as her parents were leaving. “Are you guys headed up to get her?” she asked as they made their way into the garage. 

“That’s right,” her dad said. “Are you all done here? The car looks great.”

She nodded and handed him the garage key and the car key. “All fixed up. Any time it needs anything, have Lydia call me, okay? I can do anything the dealership can do for way cheaper.” 

He stowed the keys in his pocket. “Yeah, we’ll do that!”

“Thank you for your work, dear,” her mom said with a smile. “We’d better be on our way, though. We’d like to see her before the show starts and I’m afraid we’re running a bit late.”

“Could you–I mean, if you’re seeing her beforehand, could you maybe tell her ‘break a leg’ from me?” While her pointed “good luck” at the end of their last call was certainly not the worst of her offenses, the thought of Lydia being extra nervous because she was convinced there’s some kind of bad luck on her had been weighing on her thoughts since the moment she said it.

“Can do!” 

“Thanks again!”

Her shoulders dropped. With her first genuine smile in days, she watched Lydia’s parents roll out of the driveway, closed the garage door behind them, and made her way home to wait. 

The rest of the day was torture. She got multiple invitations to hang out with people, but turned them all down in favor of looking at the clock and thinking about what Lydia was doing right then, several hundred miles away. 

At 11, her parents were probably pulling into the park. At noon, they were probably eating lunch together. At one, Lydia probably started her pre-show ritual. She wondered how many bobby pins she had to use to get her wig to settle just right. At 2:30, the curtain was probably going up. She wondered if her parents had remembered to tell her to “break a leg”. By five she was probably taking her final bow. Then came the cast party. 

When the clock struck seven, her heart picked up speed. Lydia and her parents were definitely on the road by now; getting closer and closer every second. Way too early, she got herself ready to meet Lydia at their spot. She didn’t even know if she was still planning on going there after what happened, but the implications of that were too much to handle, so she shut them away. 

She would be there, right? She would see her soon, right? In two hours. One hour. 30 minutes. 

Cynthia wormed her way up the hill, through the trees along the little dirt road, thinking about what she was going to say the entire time. An apology was the first order of business. She ran through the words in her brain, well-practiced from days of thinking about nothing else. Then, she’d expect an apology back, which she would absolutely accept. 

She parked her bike and climbed off, unlatching her helmet and giving her hair a shake. After about two seconds, she decided that she couldn’t bear the silence of the clearing, so she paced around the moonlit hilltop, gravel crunching under her feet and compulsively biting the skin around her nails.

After what felt like hours, her head whipped around as a car made its way up the road, brand new headlights illuminating beams of kicked up dirt and bugs flying in the humid summer air. She stationed herself on the driver’s side, right in front of where she knew Lydia’s door would open in a few moments. 

The car crawled to a stop, silently thanks to its new brake pads. Pouring in through the windshield, moonlight lit up Lydia’s face; her open expression of longing thrown into silver relief. Cynthia couldn’t help it. She stepped up to the door before the car was even fully stopped and reached for the handle, prepared to open it the second the car was parked. Lydia seemed to be in the same mindset; ripping off her seat belt and throwing the car into park without ever taking her eyes away from Cynthia’s. 

Everything she wanted to say, everything she promised she’d do, ceased to exist. One flutter of Lydia’s eyelashes extinguished it all like a water on flame; a thunderstorm on a single matchstick. 

Their haste made them clumsy, but everything clicked into right as soon as the distance between them closed. She threw her arms around Lydia’s neck, pushing herself up on the tips of her toes. Lydia let the keys fall from her hand and immediately reeled Cynthia in, hands balling up in the fabric of her shirt.

Their lips met in the middle, and the ground disappeared from under Cynthia’s feet. The kiss was desperate and a little mean–The “I’m sorry”s and “you better be”s clear without words. She didn’t want words. She wanted Lydia to feel how sorry she was and feel how angry she was in equal measure. It was impossible to tell who made the low, satisfied noise that hummed between them, but in the end it didn’t matter, because they both just pulled each other closer. 

It wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough. She smelled like vanilla shampoo and makeup remover, and maybe that wasn’t a universally appealing smell, but it spoke so clearly of Lydia that whatever semblance of control she held onto evaporated. She walked them blindly back to the car, and Lydia gasped into her mouth as her back connected with the cool metal.

She used it to take the kiss deeper. It was lovely the way Lydia literally melted back against the car when Cynthia’s hands moved to tangle in her hair. Cynthia knocked her legs apart with her knee and stepped forward, Lydia pulling her closer, closer, closer the whole time. She was almost fully bent back against the hood of the car, her hands wandering down into Cynthia’s back pockets. 

Something inside of her gave her the strength to turn her head to the side and whisper, “Wait, wait, wait.” Although, that strength was severely compromised by the whine that Lydia let out in response to the separation. That sound was almost too much, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to let herself fall back into the softness of her lips. 

She pulled further back, just enough to breathe. Lydia looked up at her from where she was laid out–lips swollen, and a pink blush high on her cheeks. She saw Cynthia’s eyes flit down to her lips and started to pull her back in with the hands still settled in her back pockets. 

Cynthia had to put a hand out between them. “We–we should talk,” she choked out.

“Yeah,” Lydia breathed. “We should.”

For a moment, their eyes locked in perfect stillness. Then, like a dam breaking, they crashed back together simultaneously, picking up right where they left off. She knew they needed to do… something. There was definitely something they were supposed to be doing, but whatever it was could wait, right? Because God, she missed this.

Her hands ran up and down the curves of Lydia’s waist obsessively. All of the soft angles under her fingers threatened to buckle her knees–every arch indicative of something feminine that she hadn’t let herself want for so long. She couldn’t contain the moan that crawled up her throat, nor did she want to. Not when it made Lydia nibble at her bottom lip like it did.

It broke something in her; she was sure that every last fragment of restraint had already been shattered, but Lydia managed to reach down and deftly snap the last remaining one with her teeth. 

She was a fraction of a second away from slipping her hands under the hem of her shirt when Lydia turned her head away. “We have to talk,” she let out through heavy breaths. To accentuate her point, she put out a hand between their bodies. Because they were so close, that had the unintended consequence of landing her hand directly on Cynthia’s sternum. 

The weight of her hand there made Cynthia’s hands fist up reflexively. Lydia seemed to only notice where her hand was as she watched her hand rise and fall with her chest. Instead of pulling straight back, she let her fingers glide all the way down Cynthia’s front to rest on her belt loops. 

Her whole body erupted in goosebumps with the weight of her warm hand. She looked down, dazed, to see Lydia curl her fingers through two of her belt loops and pull slightly. Her eyes fluttered shut. “Shit. Can we talk fast?”

She heard Lydia’s breath catch in her chest before a strangled giggle fell out of her. “Cyn.” She didn’t need to have her eyes open to know that she was rolling her eyes and shaking her head, pretending to be annoyed while a smile played on her lips.

Once she got sufficient air to her brain, everything she wanted to say came flooding back. Right. Apologies, promises, talking. She nodded, eyes still shut. “Yeah, okay.”

“Could–could you move at least? I really don’t think I can have this conversation with you between my legs.” 

Taking one last deep breath, she opened her eyes and tried to move back, but Lydia didn’t seem to want to let her go. “That makes two of us; I can’t have this conversation from between your legs either, so you gotta let me go.”

She jumped a little, as if she hadn’t realized she was still holding her close. They disentangled from each other, clearing their throats and adjusting their clothes. Cynthia closed the car door and grabbed the keys off of the ground before hopping up onto the hood to sit a respectable distance away from Lydia.

They sat for a minute, staring straight ahead at the city lights and listening to the sounds of night all around them. Finally, at the same time, they turned to each other and said, “I’m sorry!”

They blinked at each other with wide eyes. “You go first,” they both said. 

The tension between them dissolved as they laughed quietly at each other and scooted closer, threading their fingers together. The place where their hands connected felt like an anchor point, a promise and a reminder that they were right there. “Can I please go first?” Cynthia asked. Lydia nodded and angled her body towards her, giving her her full attention. 

“I’m so sorry for how I’ve acted the past three weeks. All of the doubts I ever had about me being good enough for you took over my mind like the Invaders from Mars.” Lydia’s brow furrowed. “Well, I guess not exactly like that because the doubts were coming from me, not from aliens, but,” she shook her head to get herself back on track. “Anyway, I let them freak me out so much that I shut down on you. That’s not okay. I know you’re always there for me, but you can’t help me if I don’t talk. It’s not fair to you, and I’m sorry.”

Lydia’s brows were still furrowed in confusion. She thought she’d been clear, but she did go a little off script, so she tried again. “When–” she gulped. “When there are things I don’t want to deal with, I push them aside instead of dealing with them. Like when we kissed in the music room and I just left you there.” She blanched. “Not that you’re a thing I don’t want to deal with. Also, I shouldn’t have brought up another time that I did this to you, because that means I didn’t learn from it, but this time I will.” Her head fell. “Oh, god. I sound like every jerk apologizing to their girlfriend, don’t I? But, it’s the truth! And–”

A gentle hand on her chin lifted her gaze up. “That’s not why I was confused,” Lydia said. “What do you mean ‘doubts about you being good enough for me’? Do–do I make you feel that way?”

“What? No! God, I’m really screwing this up…” 

“No, hey–” Lydia whispered, sliding in even closer to her. “It’s okay. I just–” Her shoulders slackened with the weight of her sincerity. “I just really need you to know that you’re good enough. Not just for me, but in general. You, exactly as you are, are enough.” 

Her nose started to burn, and she had to blink away from Lydia’s big, blue eyes before any rogue tears escaped. “I know,” she said after a second. “You always make me feel that way.” She sniffed. “I think maybe I need to work on that separate from you.”

Lydia reared back. 

“No, no! Damn it.” All of that practicing in her head didn’t do shit for her, apparently. “I meant: I feel that when I’m with you. But I need to feel that from me, you know?” 

“I think so,” she nodded, relaxing slightly. 

“What’s that thing Mrs. Adcock always talks about in home ec? Where babies think their mothers don’t exist if they leave the room?”

“Object permanence?” 

“Yes! That!” she said, tapping Lydia’s arm. “I don’t think I have any object permanence when it comes to my, like, self-worth.” Suddenly sheepish, she looked down again. “Or whatever. But I do want to work on it. I just–it might take time.” Cynthia looked up through her eyelashes, the question of “will you wait?” written clear as day in her eyes. 

“Then I’ll just have to remind you. Every single day. Until it sinks in and you believe it with or without me.” She smiled sadly and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, keeping her hand there and rubbing a soothing pattern down her neck.

Cynthia’s eyes filled with tears again, and she turned away to collect herself. Sometimes Lydia did and said things that made her feel so… small. In a good way. In front of nearly everyone, Cynthia was tough, loud, and rambunctious; larger than life despite her shorter stature. Sometimes all she needed was to let herself be small, and she hadn’t found a place safer to do that than in Lydia’s arms. 

After a moment, Lydia broke the silence. “Is it my turn?”

She sighed and pulled Lydia’s hand out of her hair and onto her lap. “Your turn.”

“I–” she bit her lip and shook her head. “I can’t believe I said what I did. About… Olivia.” It was whispered, like she didn’t want to say it again even now. “I’m so sorry. I had no right to bring up something that you aren’t ready to share with me yet, period, but especially just to be cruel. When I’m upset, I lash out. I feel myself doing it in drama club, too. It’s something that I’m going to work on. I was stressed and upset, and I said the thing that I knew would hurt you the most. I’m sorry. ”

“I think I’m ready to share now. If you want to hear it.” It was a peace offering. A chance to practice the whole communication thing, as well as a show of trust.

Lydia looked up, with uncertain eyes. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I do.” 

Lydia gave her hands a squeeze and nodded for her to continue. 

“I did like Olivia. When she and Richie moved here, I just thought they were so cool. Me and the boys started hanging out with her more and more, and she didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t like everyone else. She didn’t care that she wasn’t like everyone else. It wasn’t really an issue until the Pink Ladies. All of a sudden, we were spending time together without the boys, and we were hugging, and having sleepovers… I got really scared that if she found out about me it would ruin everything. Even though I obviously don’t like her that way anymore, I guess I’m still scared that if she finds out, she’ll look at our friendship differently. She’ll look back on all of our memories and wonder if I was secretly perving on her the whole time, or something. I just–I didn’t even want to think about it. So, I didn’t.”

She looked up warily, but only found a look of gentle understanding on her girlfriend’s face. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Thank you for not judging me,” she said with a dry chuckle.

“There’s nothing to judge you for.”

Her eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “You don’t think it’s a little bit creepy that I hung around her for years, and then was her friend for months, and secretly had a crush on her the whole time?” 

“No,” she said seriously. “You couldn’t help what you felt for her, and you never crossed the line. I know you, Cyn. You weren’t ‘perving on her’. You had a crush, but respected her enough to put that aside and be a good friend.” She gave her hands another squeeze. “I know I don’t know her as well as you do, but I think she would agree with me, here.” 

“Maybe. It just feels like a big risk. I love her so much as a friend that I can’t imagine losing her, especially over an innocent crush that I got over forever ago.” 

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but if you ever get to the point where you want to tell her and the rest of the girls: I’ll be there.” 

Her eyes filled up again, and she grumbled in annoyance, turning her face up to the stars and blinking the unshed tears away. Once she was in the clear, she sniffed and found Lydia’s eyes with her own. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. C’mere,” she said, pulling her closer. “I hated fighting with you.”

Cynthia swung her leg over Lydia’s so she was straddling her lap. She immediately wrapped her arms around her neck and pulled her into a warm hug. “I wasn’t a fan either. Let’s be done,” she said into the crook of her neck. 

Lydia’s arms wound around her waist, and she turned her head to press a kiss onto her hair. “Hear, hear!” They sat there for a while, intertwined under the stars, reveling in the weight of each other.  

There was still a part of her that tried to tell her she didn’t deserve to be sitting there. It was a whisper in the back of her mind that sounded a bit like her mother and a bit like herself. But Lydia’s arms were wrapped around her, rubbing up and down her back with so much care it took her breath away. If she found something in Cynthia worth caring about, maybe she could find it, too. 

Letting that truth take root, she pulled back to look into her girlfriend’s eyes. What she found there made her feel so taken care of, so loved and treasured, that she felt blood rush to the apples of her cheeks. She ran her tongue across her lip and leaned forward, gently connecting the tip of her nose to Lydia’s.

She heard Lydia let in a shaky breath, and a moment later her lips were on hers. While the other kisses they’d shared that night were full of fire and desperation, this one was so sweet, so purposeful, that her stomach flipped and her toes curled in her shoes. The contentment was a full-body thing that had her limbs turning to liquid in Lydia’s arms. There was nothing else. Nothing but the warmth of her body, the soft pressure of her lips, the pounding of her heart. 

She unfurled completely when the kiss deepened, brain fuzzy and unfocused. Lydia was pulling her closer by her hips, and as soon as they were pressed together completely, the heat from earlier returned. It kindled in her veins and bloomed out to the rest of her body, arching her back and rolling her forward. 

Lydia gasped against her mouth, like she was trying to steal the air directly from Cynthia’s lungs. She dug around in her pocket, and after a fraught second, pulled her keys out with a jangle. She made a questioning sort of noise that Cynthia didn’t really understand. She nodded anyway, because yeah. Sure. Whatever her question was, the answer was yes. As long as they could keep doing this.

No, no–not that. Lydia started to push her back, and Cynthia looked up petulantly with hooded eyes. Lydia caught her confused face in her hands and pressed a hot kiss to her lips that had her leaning in for more when it ended. “If you want to get in the car,” she murmured. “You have to get off of me first.” 

In the car? The words stuck in her brain, caught in her thoughts slowly dripping like molasses. Lydia leaned forward again to take her bottom lip between her teeth as she shook the keys again for emphasis. Oh, in the car. In the car. 

She scrambled off of her lap and down onto the ground quickly as Lydia threw her head back and laughed. She tossed her the keys, and Cynthia caught them, forgetting to be embarrassed by her enthusiasm. As Lydia slid off of the hood, she unlocked the door and motioned dramatically for her to climb in. As if she couldn’t resist, Lydia ran her fingers down her arm as she passed. 

She followed her in, closing the door behind her and tossing the keys on the floor. Lydia reached out for her with grabby hands, spreading her legs and laying them both out along the backseat with no space between them. 

A shudder rippled through Lydia’s body and her hands slipped under Cynthia’s shirt, dancing along the skin of her lower back. She ran her own fingers over Lydia’s ribcage, and was delighted when she felt her breath hitch. “You fixed my car,” she whispered before bringing their mouths together, hot and shameless. 

She just nodded into the kiss and continued to memorize the swell of Lydia’s ribs over her shirt. When Lydia turned her head to the side, she latched onto the underside of her jaw, refusing to take her lips off of her for anything. 

“Even though we were fighting, you fixed my car,” she gasped. Cynthia bit down on the skin of her neck in response. A little whine left Lydia’s mouth. “You bought me bobby pins.” She left a trail of open-mouthed kisses down Lydia’s neck, and her breathing became even more erratic the lower she got. “You–you told my parents to tell me to break a leg.”

Cynthia spoke directly into her skin. “Do you really want to talk about your parents right now?”

“God, no!” she giggled. 

She hummed into her skin and let her hands sneak under Lydia’s shirt, moving back up to run over her ribs; this time without the fabric of her shirt in the way. Lydia frantically wove her hands through her hair and guided their lips back together. 

She couldn't tell which of them was trembling, maybe they both were. They kissed like they were drowning and the air in the other girl’s lungs was their only chance of survival. Lydia’s soft skin under her fingers felt like something utterly divine, and she spread them as far as they would go, trying to feel as much of it as possible. Lydia gasped into her mouth and her back arched off of the seat. 

“God, I missed you so much,” Cynthia managed between kisses. 

“I missed you, too.”

That moment could have lasted forever as far as she was concerned. She never wanted to let Lydia go. Not because she was scared, but because she loved her–she just genuinely wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. It was a subtle distinction, but one she wouldn’t have made three weeks ago.
They both had a lot to work on, but as long as they could continue to grow together, Cynthia thought they’d be just fine.