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One hour. That was how long she waited. On any other night, Michaela would have squared her shoulders and walked out after fifteen minutes with no sign of her date, not even a text, call, or voicemail - twenty minutes, max - but it wasn't any other night. It was Valentine's Day, which meant every eye in the restaurant would be on her if she got up and walked out alone. She would be the loser who got stood up on Valentine's Day. Nothing in her life was going the way it was supposed to according to The Plan.
The Plan said she would marry Aiden, though a big gay wrench had been thrown into that one. It said she would be at the top of her class. That part was handled. Good grades required intelligence, a strict work ethic, and finesse with her teachers. Annalise might have been able to whip someone's saccharine smile off their face with a no-bullshit-takedown, but there were plenty of others - often male - that were all too pliable. She learned long ago that the right smile could turn an A-minus into an A. One way or another, she earned everything she had.
However. The Plan also said she wouldn't cover up murders and risk prison with a group of her friends. Well, a group of people she tolerated on a regular basis without too much agitation. And Asher. She could handle the stress and the nightmares about the things she had done, but she needed one thing to go right. Tonight, that one thing was not looking like a fool in front of a restaurant full of people in relationships who would feel better about their plummeting sex lives and couples counseling if they had the lonely Valentine's Day reject to sneak glances at with smug smirks. At least they weren't her.
So Michaela couldn't leave. Wouldn't give them the satisfaction. She waited. It was still possible that Caleb would come. And waited. Checked her phone. Sent a tight, loathing smile at one half of one of the (un)happy couples that glanced her way with a pitying look. Until the waitress lost patience with her stubborn refusal to walk out and give them a show even if the show was only an overblown fantasy wrapped inside a dozen post-traumatic-murder-cover-up issues in her head. She felt like she was shrinking.
"Ma'am, if you're not going to order, we need the table. It's a busy night. It's Valentine's Day," she told her. Like she was an idiot. Like she wasn't humiliating herself, because being stood up on Valentine's Day was the whole reason she was still sitting there.
She smoothed her skirt under the table, trying to decide whether she could save face by faking a call with her date on the way out and talking loudly about his family emergency, or if her acting took as big a blow as her ego tonight and would only make her more laughable. Then a miracle happened. A savior in all black.
"Michaela," Laurel looked down at her next to the table, "hey."
Michaela's mind worked fast. Redemption.
"Finally!" she said, turning a broad plastic smile up at her. "You kept me waiting so long we almost lost the table."
"What?" As quick as Laurel was, Michaela could see the group of women Laurel came in with being seated at the table they were led to. She clearly had other plans, but she was not going to let this opportunity slip by.
"Sit down," she grit out.
Laurel tilted her head at the sharpness of her tone and pushed back with a mocking scold. "Michaela, I thought we agreed we'd say 'please' in public and leave the demands in the bedroom."
Michaela's glare frosted around the edges, and the icy threat or Laurel's amusement at it prodded her into compliance. She sat down across from her. Before Laurel blurted anything else that could spoil her perfect get-out-of-looking-like-a-loser free card, she ordered for them both and sent the waitress off with a pleasant smile that looked more like ha!
"You're paying for that," Laurel said as she took her coat off and settled in her chair. "I would've ordered nothing but dessert tonight."
One of the women she came in with looked over at her puzzled, and Laurel shrugged with her hands out. Michaela shot a glare at the table that made the girl turn back around. She wasn't giving Laurel up without a fight.
"Are you coming from a funeral?" she asked, eyeing the group she entered with dubiously. They were a little block of black among a sea of pink, red, and white.
Laurel reached over and swiped Michael's glass of wine, draining the rest of it. "Red was banned. Any color that could be construed as celebratory was banned. Unity in drab. We're single, and we are militant about it. Apparently. I came for the cake."
She smiled sweetly. "You know anti-Valentine's Day parties are lame, right?"
Laurel admired the flowers in the vase between them unfazed. "You know how you're sitting here alone being badgered by a waitress? That's two. And forcing me to ditch the people I came in with and sit with you to avoid what I'm guessing is total humiliation... that's also two. Hey, you know, I think I might be able to put two and two together if I just... think... hard enough—"
"Okay, alright!" Michaela held a hand up. It didn't need to be said out loud. "Stop talking about it. It's humiliating."
"Who cares if you got stood up?" Laurel said out loud anyway. Michaela scowled. "It's just a day with a lot of flowers and chocolate. We're going to eat chocolate here, and I can buy you a rose if you want a rose."
"Save your money. It's not about the rose. It's about what's being said with the rose. It doesn't exactly mean the same thing coming from you," she said, though the idea of getting flowers from Laurel gave her a confusing moment of pause.
The same kind of pause that she got when Laurel leaned past her to reach for something when they were studying and her hair brushed over her bare skin. The hesitation she felt when she saw her outside of class or work and could walk on by but wanted to go over anyway. Or the way she couldn't always tell when Laurel jokingly flirted with her, what percentage was joking and what percentage was flirting. It was a pause she didn't want to look at too closely.
"No?" Laurel asked with a sweep of a raised eyebrow and a tone that walked the edge between playful and goading. It was frustrating how blurry the percentages were.
They were eating the meal they were brought, fresh wine in their glasses, when she gave up on her denial and her silence on it.
"We're done," she told her. "Caleb and I have been done for a while, but I guess neither of us was willing to say it. I would have preferred a face-to-face discussion, a phone call, a text, a—"
"—drawing of a broken heart on an Etch A Sketch?"
Her eyes narrowed dangerously, "But standing me up on the most romantic night of the year is loud enough to get the message. I think I'm more upset that I'm not upset. It feels like I had my life in order, and one thing after another got lost or ruined. I had a bright future. And Caleb. Until," hiding bodies became her extremely grudging new hobby, "everything."
She didn't even have the decency to lower her voice, "And here I thought murder brought people closer together."
"Laurel." Michaela looked around horrified, but now that she wasn't sitting alone as a shiny pathetic spectacle, no one was bothering to pay her any attention. "I'm serious."
It was the wine or the festivities or Laurel was losing her mind, because she didn't seem at all concerned about her public misstep. "Me too. You and me? Ride or die, bitch. And you still have a bright future. It's just your guilty conscience that thinks it's all been ruined."
Convinced that no one was eavesdropping and pulling out their phones to record their conversation, she relaxed somewhat. "What good is a career and money and respect if I can't enjoy it?"
She expected her to blow her off, but Laurel sobered, a shadow behind her eyes as she thought. "I know what you mean." Michaela looked up from her food to see that she was serious. "I never wake up thinking if we get caught. It's always when. It's like we're stuck in the New Year's Eve countdown from Hell."
"Does that make Annalise the Devil?" she asked. They shared a look of miserable loyalty and resentment towards the woman that it would be so easy to blame all of their misfortune on even if the truth was a lot more complicated than that and handed blame out more generously. There was plenty for everyone.
"You ever seen Orange is the New Black?" Laurel asked. "We're going to get so much ass in prison."
Michaela smirked even if it was only slightly easier to joke about than face the truth that trouble could be coming for them at any moment. "Think we'll share a cell?"
"Yeah," Laurel twirled her fork as she contemplated the fantasy. "We can flip a coin to decide who's whose bitch. Or we could wrestle in cafeteria Jell-O. Winner gets to be dom."
She shot her a look of disdain. "Maybe I should take my chances with a stranger."
"Hey," Laurel pointed her fork at her, "how many times do I have to tell you? You're mine."
Michaela pinched a smile down at the start with a roll of her eyes.
Weakness wasn't something she handled with much grace, but it was a secret they shared. Made it easier to admit. "I'm scared."
It was less a confession and more an offering. Laurel could turn it back into a joke, or she could go to that place with Michaela that kept her up at night and turned her dreams into memories that only grew more vivid with time.
She chose to be with her. "You'd be stupid if you weren't. Everything we've done, that's scarier. Eventually, the lies weigh more than the truth. Sometimes I think going to jail is the only way we can be free."
It scared her what a belief like that might one day push Laurel to do, but it scared her even more that it rang true. There were the bars that could cage them and the bars they made for themselves.
Somehow, Laurel convinced her to go to a club. It wasn't one she was familiar with, but Laurel walked into Silver with a nod to the hot bouncer in the tight red shirt and led her straight to the bar. There were same sex couples dancing, drinking, making out in corners. Michaela briefly wondered if Aiden went to places like this now, but it was a fleeting curiosity that vanished as soon as Laurel set a drink down in front of her. He wasn't hers anymore, never was, and she didn't miss it. The only thing she missed was that feeling of belonging - to someone, with someone. It could have moved that way with Caleb, but that was over too now.
"Here you go, Valentine," Laurel said as she pulled a long stemmed rose from the inside pocket of her coat before taking it off.
Michaela narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Did you steal that from the centerpiece at the restaurant?"
"Yep. I needed some diversity on my rap sheet. I'm thinking of adding public indecency next. You want to call up the guys and go streaking?"
There wasn't enough alcohol in the world to even joke about that being anything but horrifying.
"No." But she did take the rose.
"Chocolate and flowers." She tipped her head towards the rose. "This is a binding contract now. All this goes south, and we get prison married."
"I don't think that's on the LSAT," she replied dryly.
Laurel ignored her. "I'll even let you choose whether to dom or not. I'm flexible." She leaned in close, lips at her ear to be heard over the music (or to take the line between them and blur it until it was hard to see there was a line at all). "In a lot of ways."
She wasn't touching her, but Michaela felt the words crawling up her spine, a whisper that buzzed against her skin more than the bass beneath her feet.
She resisted going to the dance floor, because it made Laurel take her hand and saying yes never came easy. She was pulled into the crowd, inside the music under the pull of Laurel's smile. They danced close. The hand on her side made the club go soft and dark. For a while, there was only Laurel, and their secrets didn't matter. Being good people or irredeemable didn't mean anything. It was as close to free as she got since the night Sam died.
By the time they spilled back out onto the street, the flush she got from all the dancing was chilled by the freezing temperature. It was the cold that made them walk so close. Definitely.
Michaela flinched at a noise in the far shadows of an alley they passed.
Laurel raised an eyebrow. "Are you seriously afraid of a monster in a dark alley? Michaela, look at our lives. We are the monsters in a dark alley."
"Speak for yourself. I'm not scared anyway," she said, even though it was obvious that she was (deny, deny, deny), and she raised her chin in defiance to apply armor to the lie.
"I'm glad you got stood up and I got to steal you tonight," Laurel said, weaving her arm through hers. "I would have spent Valentine's Day alone."
If she was trying to dole out pity, she could save it. "You walked into the restaurant with an entire group of friends."
"They're girls I've studied with twice in the whole semester," Laurel dismissed. "I don't know half of their last names. As far as I can tell, the only thing any of us have in common is being single and liking cake."
"Everybody likes cake."
"See, it doesn't even count as a shared interest if it's universal. Now, murder," Laurel was intent on pushing it tonight, "that's binding."
"Can you stop?"
"It's the elephant in our subconscious, Michaela. Maybe if we talked about it more, the elephant wouldn't fill so much space."
The whole slay-your-demons thing would apply if they were talking about cheating on an exam or spreading a false rumor about someone for looking at them wrong. She leaned in and hissed, "We covered up not one but two murders. We could filibuster about it until we passed out from dehydration, and I'm pretty sure it would still be the biggest and worst thing we've ever done."
"Fine," Laurel conceded and stopped walking. Michaela turned around at the alley they were passing and lingered near the brick wall of a small store to look back at her. "Maybe talking isn't the answer. Maybe the elephant just needs a treat to distract him. A little bag of peanuts to remind him there are good things to focus on too."
"Peanuts?" Michaela tried to hang on to her acerbic tone, but her bravado was failing her. Laurel was close, and the next step she took forced Michaela's back against the alley wall.
"Yeah." Laurel leaned in, gaze coasting between her lips and back up to her eyes. One of her arms went up, hand flat against the wall, blocking her in.
The air went from cold to white hot, charged with all the little pauses that slipped inside the space between them. All of the times Laurel smiled and Michaela had to look down to keep from smiling back, the moments when panic could have destroyed her but Laurel coaxed her back into motion, every almost, not quite, and maybe accumulated into a pressure in her chest that made her breathing go tight and her heart jump with uncertainty.
"You're drunk," she tried, but her eyes betrayed her, flicking down to Laurel's lips.
"I'm really not."
Neither was Michaela, but for some reason she wasn't pushing her away. The light from the street lamp gleamed off Laurel's eyes, her smile small but fixed, and her body shifted, close enough to shove back or pull in. Her fingers twitched at her sides, but she held still, afraid of what they would choose. It wasn't some reason. It was many reasons, everything. It was the way Laurel was looking at her, eyes that knew her while stripped bare, cut down to the regret, shame, and fear of what they had done. Eyes that saw her worst and wanted her anyway.
The pressure mounted, turned to static, and forced her racing heart to confront the confusion that haunted all of their little moments and mattered in a way she never acknowledged during the big ones. It was Michaela that leaned in next. Her lips crushed into hers, smooth and soft, and her hands were freed with the choice. They smoothed up the front of Laurel's coat and fisted in the soft material as she pulled her closer. Laurel was right, but it wasn't the dark part that was binding. It was the secret. The trust. Her lips parted for her, and Laurel's hand scraped down from the bricks to hold her shoulder and the back of her neck. Her palm was cold, but that was okay since she was running hot everywhere else.
She got so used to lying about everything that giving in made the ground tilt beneath them. The lies kept her stable. Kissing Laurel was a truth that upended everything. She fell into it.
She didn't let go of her even when their lips parted, each short breath turning to white fog between them.
"Did you compare me to an elephant?" she asked since it was easier than putting words to all the things that one kiss would change for both of them.
"Your guilt is the elephant," Laurel murmured. "You're the peanuts."
Considering the year they had, there were a lot worse things to be. Still.
"You need to be better with words if you're going to be a lawyer, Laurel."
Their foreheads pressed together, and Laurel's fingers traced her face, committing lines to memory. "And you need to be better at shutting up if you want me to be your Valentine."
There was too much noise in her head since the night in the woods, a blend of fear and regret that got louder with the passage of time. Their fingers interlocked at their sides, and they kissed until the noise died down and Michaela's mind went quiet. Turned out, shutting up was pretty easy.