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“That’s it, we’re fucked.”
Gideon let go of the handle, stepping back. Splayed across the window of the front door was a thick coating of snow, and past that - a sea of white and cold.
“You don’t suppose that means we’re stuck here, does it?” Coronabeth asked, already laying claim to one of two couches in the tight living room, lounging across with her legs hung off the armrest. Harrow shot her a disgusted look, but if Corona had noticed it, she chose not to respond.
Nonagesimus, who she hadn’t had a civil conversation with in a full year, and Coronabeth, who either had a steel backbone or too few thoughts to connect Harrow’s glare to animosity.
For a moment, Gideon was caught between her instinct to run to the blonde in an embarrassing display of affection, or to run out of the hell-cabin while she still could.
The horrific face of Nonagesimus that would be if she saw the pair lovey-dovey in her proximity? Perhaps worth the inevitable vengeance she’d be subjected to later.
“Some of us have things to get to.” Said Ianthe, god’s worst consequence of Pandora's box. “Like lives, for example.”
Before she could continue down a rant that would inevitably lead to a self-gratifying monologue on the difficulties of modeling when you are in-fact a nepo baby, Gideon turned to the more favorable sister, and shrugged.
“I think we might be snowed in.”
The opposite reaction than she expected happened next. Coronabeth rose from her spot on the couch, leaving none an indent behind on the cloth. All eyes on her while she scanned the room, a visible hunger that transfixed Gideon.
“Well, party?” The blonde announced, and Gideon about whooped.
______
A week before Christmas, stranded in a too-cramped cabin with too many faces, Harrow wanted to die.
The pantry had been ransacked, then double-checked, and the awful reality of surviving this function both involuntarily and completely sober was set.
Maybe, it would be frostbite. A step through the doorway into the mercy of a blizzard, she theorized her death could be pronounced in a mere half an hour. They could ship her still-frosted limbs back to Ninth street, and the whole city of Canaan would still not give a fuck.
Or, she could be an adult, (a graduate with a bachelor's degree in biology, at that) and accept the fact that this night would just have to be miserable.
Griddle, who looked the least bit upset by their circumstances, had already marked her territory on the louder Tridentarius sister. In an extremely degrading exhibit of lesbianism at its worst, knee to knee she sat, waving her big arms around the blonde’s face and yelling. Coronabeth tipped her water bottle to Gideon, giggling into her shoulder.
For a brief moment, Harrow wondered if murder-suicide was too ambitious. The room was already cramped with its suggested capacity, but they were crammed up to seven. With limited seating, she found sanctuary on a barstool that squeaked every time she adjusted. At least it was warm.
“Maybe we could ring Pal? Surely he knows somebody with a truck large enough in that lab of his.” Said Coronabeth.
Ianthe, with sickly satisfaction, shook her head. “No, not a single one of us has service up here. We won’t be calling anyone.”
When Coronabeth looked upset, perhaps by how quickly her genius plan had been shut down, Ianthe spoke again. “Dear, we love you for your looks, not your brain.”
To this, Corona looked well-reassured. Her sister, uncomfortably prideful, stole a glance over at Harrow. She made sure to deadpan back.
Worse than Ianthe’s heavy-handed passes at her, was the lack of one of her two allies slated to be at this party.
—
Palamedes was one of the only a couple people Harrowhark considered remotely tolerable in this friend group. Every year since graduation, Palamedes and Camilla Hect insisted the lot of them drop their priorities, request an inconspicuous amount of vacation time, (a weekend) and reminisce in a cabin sat atop a mountain. Loaded in his truck, supposedly, was booze.
This year, however, disaster struck. Harrow had been in the passenger seat of Camilla’s mini-van, the dash pockmarked with stickers from different conventions, each in a varying state of decay and legibility. At that moment, while snow un-forecasted had covered the only drivable pathway both up and down the mountain, Harrow was chest level with ‘Michigan Renaissance Fair: Where fantasy ain’t fiction!’
Once they had driven to the top, the conquered path behind them already coated in an indeterminable amount of snow, there was no shot at going back down. Camilla, prone to a series of stoic faces - each expression less dramatic than the last - only sighed, dropping the key from the ignition to the cup holder.
Halfway out the truck while Harrow braved the drop from the frame to the ground, (curse her parents for being short fucks) she nearly froze at the sound of a loud, obnoxious voice somewhere in front of the hood.
“Cam!” Gideon’s greeting was excessive, as was the hug she scooped the other into, but surprisingly Camilla accepted it, wrapping her arms around the other. She was hardly affectionate, possibly even less-so than Harrow, but she still seemed to appreciate the sentiment. Albeit, a little reluctantly.
Harrow flinched.
In the year since Harrow had last seen her, the ginger had hardly changed. Same overbearing build, bringing Camilla’s impressive workout routine to a halt. Her hair, still unbearably orange and shaved at the sides in all of its fuckboy glory.
There had been a time, somewhere between the violent years of k-12 and college, that Harrow had looked at the dumb behemoth with some sort of twisted admiration. However, that had long since passed. Instead, it has been replaced by the overwhelming and all consuming weight of guilt.
Still stuck in her daze, Harrow jumped at a hand on her shoulder. Camilla was gripping it, nudging her slowly and probably aiming for the promising warmth of the cabin, but Harrow wouldn’t budge.
One, it was freezing. The snow was heavy, and power to it, but the wind chill ALONE was making Harrow rethink this entire trip.
Two, Gideon was standing there, eyes stuck on Harrow, waving sheepishly. That was a punch to the gut, and it burned down her stomach and torso.
Camilla was looking between them, obvious in her curiosity.
“That lying, skinny, malnutritioned loser!” Ianthe yelled, breaking Harrow from her daze as she dramatically sea-sawed back and forth on the hood of her and Coronabeth’s jeep. “Palamedes goes on and on about climate change, but look!” She held a finger up, making a ring above her head.
“Snow!”
Grateful to Ianthe, her idiocracy managed to kickstart her limbs and hurry into the promising low light of the cabin, leaving both Camilla and the uncomfortable image of Gideon outside.
———
Coronabeth held up the deck of cards, before starting to sift through them. Gideon couldn’t see which ones she was picking, but she had separated them into two piles - one significantly larger than the other.
The group had seated themselves in an unbalanced circle along the floor, aside from both Ianthe and Harrowhark who had insisted the floor hurt too much to sit on. Coronabeth, in all her social genius glory, had suggested they play a game to help pass the time. Soberly
—
“Has everyone played mafia?” She asked.
The group murmured and nodded. Aside from Gideon and Harrow, everyone seemed to be familiar with the game.
Noticing this, or just relishing in hearing herself speak, Coronabeth still insisted on explaining the rules.
Each person in the circle would be given a random card, and on it, the type given would determine their role for the rest of the game.
Numbered cards mean ‘townsperson,’ whose role was to successfully identify and vote out the ‘mafia’ among the circle.
A king card meant ‘mafia,’ who picked a target to die each night, and whose goal it was to successfully convince the town that they were indeed innocent. Because of their lack of players, there would only be one.
The two other roles that a player could potentially pull, were ‘doctor’ and ‘jester.’ Each night, when the townspeople went to sleep, (put their heads down and closed their eyes) and after the mafia had picked their target, the doctor (Queen card) could then choose a person to potentially save. If they pick the same person as the mafia, that person lives.
The other special role was ‘jester,’ identified by one of two jester cards in the standard card deck. Their entire purpose was to shake up the game, and to trick the town into voting them out.
The game only ended if one of three conditions was met: All mafia were voted out, all townspeople were dead, or the jester had accidentally been voted out.
While she mulled over the rules, Harrow took a quick glance at the card Coronabeth had handed her. It was pretty, unlike most other decks she had seen, and seemed to resemble a tarot card. On it, a woman was wrapped in a light blue sash, her nude body's most sacred parts hidden only by a slight deepening of the fabric’s color. Queen.
She looked around, hoping that somebody’s reaction may que their role, but for the most part, everybody simply looked at their card and set it back on the floor. Nobody aside from Ianthe as much as smiled, but that was at least typical of her. Cocky bitch.
Coronabeth grinned. “Alright! I’ll narrate, heads down everyone…..”
What transpired next was, arguably, not Harrow’s greatest moment.
First, she incorrectly picked Camilla as the first person she’d attempt to save, assuming her mental prowess made her an obvious target. This, unfortunately, left Gideon super dead. Dramatically, Griddle flopped to the side, right into an amused Coronabeth’s lap. The blonde giggled, running a hand through Nav’s hair and feigning a pout. If Ianthe and Harrow found solace in a shared gag, that was nobody’s business.
The remaining survivors chose not to vote someone out just yet. Next, assuming herself the next-most useful in a mental game, she chose to protect herself, only to find Camilla had been murdered instead. Corona padded this with storyteller flourish that only an egotistical runt could think up. Camilla, to her credit, didn’t seem to care.
At this point, the mix of overstimulation and humiliation at her failed ability to suss out the bad guy in a children’s game, led Harrow to zone out. Around her, the game must have continued. Ianthe eyeing her down, a smirk already planted on her crooked lips, and Coronabeth humoring an already dead ginger.
The storm, the stuffy room, the lack of any escape route was coming to a front, a culmination of misery in Harrow’s head. She could only beg that the time would pass quicker.
“I win.” Said a voice from the other side of the room. Harrow turned to see who the unfamiliar voice belonged to.
Judith Deuteros, who had all but shimmied herself into the corner of the cabin, was sitting criss-crossed. In her hand, she had a card, and spun it to show the front to everyone: The jester. While Harrow wasn’t paying attention, Judith had been voted out.
Harrow, kicking herself for her lapse of awareness, hadn’t even realized the girl was with them. While she usually (almost always) favored people who knew when to put their foot in their mouths and sit quietly, she had found an exception in Judith. If anything, the lack of contribution to the conversation was unsettling.
Back in college, the girl had come in a pair of two. Stuck to each other, as if molded, both Judith and Marta had somehow joined their hoshposh of a friend group. She didn’t know the whole story, since neither had seemed too keen on offering it, especially to her, but it apparently went something like this:
Judith and Marta had both excelled in high school, and not only that, but had grown up in houses side by side. Same church, (Pentecostal, she could at least sympathize with that) same school all the way through graduation, and now, same group of friends that she couldn’t understand the draw to. From Harrow’s perspective, Coronabeth’s salaciousness and Ianthe’s insistence on being so Ianthe sounded nothing like Judith and Marta.
Still, Marta was missing from this year’s get together, and Judith seemed terribly uncomfortable with everybody’s eyes on her. Harrow could feel some communion with that.
“We’ll look at that, you did win.” Ianthe said, but it was all teeth.
Coronabeth was less bitter, leaning across the circle and clapping. “Good job, Judy!” (when were they on nickname terms?) Judith, still backed in her corner, looked like prey before the hungry Tridentarius sister. Harrow was surprised she hadn’t seemed to notice it before. While Gideon had frothed at the mouth at Corona, the other seemed to be much more excited at even this small amount of notice from Judith. The prospect was satisfying, if not a twinge embarrassing on Gideon’s part.
Her fondness, while she supposed was slightly endearing, brought a different kind of spark out of her.
Jealousy? No, not at that kind of unrequited care. Though, glancing across the circle, who’s undivided did she have?
She considered Camilla Hect a close enough friend, but knew her devotions, at their heart, belonged to Palamedes and her hometown. If any of them were bound to stay in the city of Canaan, it was Camilla.
Palamedes was similar, so he was checked off. Besides, her admiration for him started and ended near his passions for academia, and their shared interest in the sciences.
There was Ianthe, who despite Harrow’s tendency to be modest, even she was well aware that Ianthe would be over the moon to claim her as a partner, or some other sick title failed models like to hand down to their lackeys. Something about her felt animalistic, a trait shared by both the Tridentarii. Tempting, maybe. She could admit the girl was pretty, and the confidence that oozed from her once she had started on estrogen only amplified that. Though, Harrow wasn’t in the mood to be ‘claimed.’ Next.
Harrow hardly knew Coronabeth, and not for the latter’s lack of trying. Gideon had once described Harrow as having a ‘RBF,’ or resting bitch face. She could only assume that it paid some contribution to Coronabeth’s eventual giving up.
Who did that leave? There were a handful of people in the outskirts of their friend group. Those who were more prone to flaking out on them on the rare occasion that they group made plans, like these annual get togethers. Silas, whom she was responsible for introducing to everyone, quickly proved to be nothing more than a douchebag who’d been given a handful too many ‘gifted child’ compliments when he was younger.
If she really reached, there was her professor: Abigail Pent. Originally, Harrow had taken the more convenient path of a nursing degree. In highschool, it had been a popular choice, so she thought it would be an admirable enough path for her too. During her sophomore year of college, she’d picked out a variety of different electives, mostly with the goal of shaping any kind of worldview for herself that wasn’t already molded by god and his disciples.
One such choice had been Cell and Molecular Biology, given her complete lack of knowledge outside of Reverend Catholic high school’s basic rundown of how cell structure worked, and how it existed to benefit God's greater plan.
During the class, she was no stranger to asking questions. Enough so, that she imagined the other poor students in the class had found her obnoxious. Still, she found no issue in passing, and Abigail Pent had been kind enough to answer every single one. Harrow had debated her, probably with a harshness the woman did not deserve, and as such felt her own perspectives on the world shift and restructure themselves. It had been Pent who had seen a potential in her, despite her crooked beliefs, and it had been Pent who Harrow considered to be her first ally.
And, all that meant that at the end of the day, Abigail Pent was still her professor first, peer a lingering second. The friend category in Harrow’s life was looking slim.
As Coronabeth continued to congratulate Judith, her hands on her shoulders as she shook her, much to the dismay of the other girl, Harrow’s eyes drifted around the room. They stopped when, to her dismay, they found a pair of gold staring back.
—
Gideon had hated her hometown. It was all still Canaan, but her adoptive house was located closer to what she assumed city kids meant when they referred to ‘hick country.’ There began the first of Gideon’s many misfortunes.
Her parents had died when she was young, too young for her to remember. Though, she had never admitted that to Nonagesimus. ‘Yes, obviously I knew my mom!’ she would yell, even if Harrow had never been convinced. In retrospect, neither would she.
Their death left her to the mercy of an orphanage, and that orphanage left her to the clutches of the Nonagesimus household, a stronghold of ugly greying brick at the dead-end of Ninth street. She had felt, even at her young age, that the move was hardly an upgrade from her bunk at the orphanage.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus was a highlight among her lifelong grievances. For some reason, she had stuck.
—
“Coronabeth, you’re humiliating herself.” Ianthe said, as Corona moved closer and grew more touchy with her congratulations to Judith.
A huff came from her sister, and it was starting to look like a showdown of which privileged brat could out-brat the other.
“Why is that? Judy, am I humiliating myself?” She went as far as to pucker her bottom lip and bat her eyelashes. Suddenly, Gideon was growing thankful to not be the target of Corona’s interest.
“Judy.” Ianthe mocked in a shrill tone. “You’re nearly throwing yourself at this girl, and look at her! She’s hardly gay!”
That had struck something. Years of sisterly tension were threatening to boil over, covering everyone in their proximity, especially Judith, with the water. “She IS gay! She’s just a different kind of gay!”
“What kind of gay is that? Internalized homophobia gay?” Ianthe asked, the tone of her voice and tilt of her brow hiding none of the satisfaction she was gaining from this conversation.
“Just-“ Coronabeth stuttered, flustered and red in the face. “Just a little shy!”
Gideon was starting to think they should just ask Judith what kind of gay she was, or better yet, drop the subject as soon as humanly possible.
Ianthe laughed, cold and mean as the mountains of powder piling up outside. “Judith, name one lesbian.” Gideon watched Harrow look over, and draw inward at the fact that the twin was already staring back. “Better yet, name one gay person.” Ianthe continued, eyes all full of Nonagesimitus. Gideon felt her heart hop from its strings and systematic chords and fall right down to her stomach’s center. The blonde was intense, she could give her that.
Though, who was she to be bothered? Nonagesimus could fuck with the slime mother all she wanted. Hell, for all she cared, Harrowhark could fuck anyone. Best for Gideon if that person happened to be far away, and full of STD’s.
Or, why stop there? Maybe she’d start manifesting a Harrowhark hallmark on the damn moon. The chilly weirdo would probably like the lack of oxygen. Or life.
Judith, for her part, sat there frozen. She looked halfway ready to march over and string Ianthe on a clothesline, squeezing out her guts and innards until she was a pile of ugly wet sludge, and halfway about to break down right there in the corner of the cabin. Leaving them all to bear awful witness to the undoing of Judith Deuteros and all her tight-ass honor.
An uncomfortable silence followed, a standoff between Ianthe, (who was still staring at Harrow, waiting for something. Support, maybe?) and poor Judith. Finally, after what felt like hours of pin-drop levels of un- stimulating torture, Coronabeth stood.
She turned, and walked right over to Gideon, sticking a hand out. For a second, she felt her heart flip-flop again, but before she could embarrass herself, Coronabeth clarified. “Your card, Gideon.”
“Oh!” Gideon sputtered, lamely. Without a fight, she handed it over, and Corona began collecting the cards of everybody else in the group. “If we’re gonna go for each other’s throats, let’s at least make it a game.” She said Gideon could get behind that.
“What game?” Said Harrow, with another extremely unfriendly smile.
With her eyes on Judith, who still looked about ready to leave and never speak to a single one of them again, she bounced in excitement. “Truth or dare, of course!” She yelled, like a pre-teen game should have been obvious to a group of graduates who were in their mid-twenties.
A low murmur fell over the group. With nobody jumping on board, Corona continued. “What? Can any of you think of a better idea?” Silence. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like playing, what? Seven person WAR?”
She had a point. They were locked in there, with no sign of the storm slowing in sight, and if they didn’t think of a game soon, Gideon could imagine Nonagesimus lunging at her neck. For a gay bitch, her nails admittedly long. Plus, she knew to go for the jugular.
—
Harrow should have known that truth or dare with this crowd was a recipe for a fucked up and regretful night. Still though, she took part in it.
The last thing she needed was a back-to-back medal for making a scene of herself at these things.
It started as one figures a game like that at their age may go. Coronabeth, pining to be tasked with using her body as a punishment in Judith’s direction, and Judith insisting on exclusively picking the truth.
Camilla, to Harrow’s surprise, had dared Gideon to stand in the cold for three minutes without a coat. Gideon, to even more surprise, said ‘oh fuck no’ eloquently and let Cam hit her in the arm. (which, when she thought nobody was looking, she dutifully rub)
Coronabeth asked Ianthe if there was anybody in the circle she was interested in, a clear set up, and a stark difference from the depraved behavior they had exhibited when attacking one another earlier in the night. Ianthe had stared right at Harrow and smiled, saying nothing until Gideon eventually cleared her throat.
Up to this point, Harrow was simply grateful that the group, outside the blonde, had seemingly forgotten she was there.
Then, disaster struck home for a second time that night. This time in the form of a petty lesbian with a misplaced bone to pick.
“Harrow, truth or dare.”
It came from Ianthe. Accessing the situation, the last thing she wanted to do was be asked to make out with her, or anyone else, (she didn’t doubt her liking voyeurism). This left only one viable option.
“Truth.” Harrow said.
The grin that spread across Ianthe’s lips told her immediately that she had made the wrong decision. “Is it true what you said about Gideon last year? About her,” she paused, “parental line?”
Coronabeth was glaring, pulling off and balling up her jacket to throw across the room. Harrow’s brain, for what it was still worth, had gone into the equivalent of an emergency shutdown.
Gideon was already out of the room.
—
Gideon couldn’t see her own face, but she imagined the sight would embarrass her.
She could hear small footsteps trailing behind her, but Harrow didn’t seem in the mood to offer condolences first.
“Get lost, Harrow. I’m leaving.”
Nonagesimus was standing in front of her, dangling her heart. like it was a toy. She had braved heartache, and god knew living by “every shot you don’t take, you miss” didn’t guarantee shit. Still, this was different. A cavernous pit in her stomach was forming, and here was Gideon clawing at the edge of it. Pulling grass and dirt and choking on all of it the whole way down.
Gideon was eight again, crying by her lonesome in the pews of the Nonagesimus’ church on the corner of Canaan and Ninth, curled up while the child-prodigy reigned her terror down. The everyday routine of Nav’s life in the American bible-belt.
Gideon was eighteen again, and all her childhood grievances were nothing compared to the realization that the mantra she’d repeated to herself since early 5’s (“Harrowhark Nonagesimus was a name of the past after high school”) meant absolutely nothing. Sitting on the wooden ranch style table center in the dining room were two acceptance letters to the same college. It had been years since she shed tears over the other girl, and her streak had nearly broken that night.
Now, she was twenty four, and her heart was breaking all over again.
“I’m not doing this shit with you, Nonagesimus.” Thankfully, the cabin had a back door, which she had immediately ran to the second the question had left Ianthe’s mouth. The less favorable exit, and preferred living room made it so escaping wouldn’t come with a flurry of protests or unneeded attention from the rest of the group, at least if done back here.
Besides, Judith and Coronabeth were surely sucking faces - part way home to pound town with their perfect relationship, perfect dynamic and story. (maybe that was a stretch)
Gideon could hear it already. A year from now, back in this stuffy cabin for another mind-numbing night of laughs and catching up, but this time, Gideon would be miserable, saved only by the gift of alcohol. She pictured Coronabeth, gripping Judith by the arm, recounting for the thousandth time the tale of how a snowstorm pushed the pair to one another. The only thing that could make the image worse would be a scruffy little emo fuck in the corner, cackling at Nav’s discomfort for a third year in a row.
Back in the present time, Gideon already had her hand on the knob and was turning it, fishing on her coat with her free arm. Her gloves and hat, she must have thrown somewhere haphazardly in the main room when they had first arrived. Coronabeth under her coat had been dressed scantily, with a skin tight top and leggings to match. Arguably, an eyeful had been much more important at the time than her winter clothes. She’d have Camilla bring them to her sometime soon, she supposed.
“Where are you going to go, Griddle?” She was glancing between Gideon and the window, encased in a layer of solid ice. “It’s freezing out there, and I know your truck didn’t have tire chains.”
That was a great question. Where would she go? Anywhere but here, she decided. Anywhere out of Nonagesimus’ sharp nails, digging into her back through her hoodie, and away from her condescending tone - that felt exclusive to Gideon and Gideon only.
“You don’t know? So you just plan on freezing?” Said Harrow. Condescending again.
“Yeah!”
“Then you’re a moron!”
“Yeah!”
Harrow stomped one of her feet down, and it looked somewhat like a toddler having a tantrum. “Just wait a damn second, Griddle! This is what you always do, acting all brash and leaving no room for anyone else to act.”
Gideon hesitated, before looking over at Harrow for the first time during the argument. Her hand remained firmly on the handle, ready to twist and throw the door open when Harrow inevitably let her down again. “Fine.” And, “Go ahead, say your piece.”
Instead, Harrow simply stared at her. The perfect physical embodiment of a ‘deer in headlights.’ Eventually, she uttered. “I’m not good at these things.”
That was enough for Gideon to turn the knob, stopped only by Harrow’s heinous grip, her nails like claws carving into the back of her shoulder, then her neck once the girl got more desperate to keep her in place. “Fucking OW!”
Harrow dropped her hands to her sides, fidgeting instead with the hem of her jacket. When she caught Gideon watching her, she stopped doing that too. “I just…..I’m not good at accepting these things.” She motioned with her hand, the ‘these’ being the two of them, and whatever was happening.
“Yeah, no shit Nonagesimus. Now let me fucking leave.”
Harrow ignored her, barreling on. “But, I want to be.” She paused, the next words were hard, and she shifted her head as if trying them out on her tongue, practicing affection. “I want to be a friend to you again, a better one.”
Something broke inside Gideon. Something deep and covered with layers of dirt and worms and unkept soil, and here Harrow was with a shovel. Digging up old history and trauma. Maybe when she was eight, and she craved attention from anybody, she would’ve jumped at the chance to forgive Harrow. To hear her out instead of braving the storm in spite.
Maybe when she was thirteen, and highschool was proving to be worse than homeschooling, she would have depraved herself in front of Nonagesimus. In the sterile hallway, waiting for the bell to ring so that the walk from the third to fourth hour wasn’t miserable, Harrow asking to walk with her would have been music to her ears.
Instead, she was way too fucking old for this.
“Harrow.” She started, slow and gentle. Maybe feigning kindness was the right approach, and the quickest way outside. “Please give me a Christmas miracle and leave me the hell alone. I don’t need whatever condescending comment you’ve cooked up in that creepy little head of hers.” She resisted the urge to point out her own clever alliteration, seeing as she enjoyed her head screwed in at its current angle.
“You always assume the worst out of me!” Harrow was stomping again, and a small part of Gideon felt pity for her. How sad to be so old and still so childishly mean.
“I’m not planning anything else! I just wanted to apologize.” Harrow said, crossing her arms.
“Apologize?” Gideon asked, as if winded and testing the word, entirely unfamiliar. “You came to apologize to me?” The girl nodded. If she noticed how obviously confused Gideon was at the direction this conversation was beginning to approach, she chose not to ponder it.
“It seems only fair….” She’d started fidgeting again, running the tip of her index finger along the palm of her opposite hand. “...After what transpired last year.”
The smaller girl had come to the function adorning nothing but black, complemented by an array of silver jewelry jotting the outer ring of her ears and nostril. For the first time that night, Gideon noticed how sad the other girl looked. Underneath a heavy handed layer of make-up, she could still make out the small rings of darker pigment that underlined Harrow’s eyes. When was the last time this girl had gotten a proper night’s sleep? She wanted to grab her, and interrogate her for not taking proper care of herself. That was one thing that had always remained consistent about Nonagesimus. That, and her pure hatred for Nav.
“I don’t want to talk about last year.” She found herself saying instead. Trumpets blurred and died in the background of her head.
“Then at least believe me that I hadn’t meant any of it.” She realized Harrow, who had spent years reigning hell on Gideon in tyrannical fury, was pleading with her. “I was just pissed and overwhelmed, and I took it out on you in the worst way possible.”
“Fucking medical school,” Harrow continued, waving away the words with her hand, “I was knee deep in applications, which I nailed none of by the way, and here you were, all bubbly and sweet in this stupid cabin. I just lost it.”
—
To be fair, Gideon could hardly remember that night. A year ago from that exact day, the memories had devolved into misshapen slides.
One of her holding a beer, dancing against Coronabeth, or Corobaneth dancing against her.
One of Camilla laughing, an uncommon but warming sight, as Palamedes managed to pull a dimple out of her.
One of Harrow, assigning every eye in the room to her as she yelled at Gideon. Calling her every name in the book that counted as a synonym to ‘stupid.’ That wasn’t the worst of it though, hardly so. Instead, what Gideon can remember best from that night took place a few minutes afterwards, where Harrow had grabbed her drink and thrown it into the floor, the sound of glass shattering echoed to every corner of the wall, and Gideon had winded up covered in it.. She looked up at her, pointed with a skinny little finger, and slurred out, half drunk.: “At least I don’t smell like cheap beer!”
Gideon then said: “At least I don’t look like Nosferatu’s asshole!’
Harrow said: “At least I can name a better fucking movie!”
Gideon said: “Yeah, cause I have a life. Y’know, friends, love, whatever.”
And Harrow had shot the world by saying: “Yeah, you need friends don’t you? Dead fucking family and all.”
Coronabeth had gasped, but aside from that, only the wind blowing angrily against the window panes dared to speak. The group stared at Gideon in silent sympathy. Then, the icing on top of a shit smoothie, Harrow stormed off to the bedroom, and in the process, took away her only chance at sanctuary for the night. Nobody moved to clean up the glass, or the small puddle traveling its way across the floorboards.
Eventually, Coronabeth broke the silence with a pathetic, “Honey, I’m so sorry…” But Gideon didn’t want to hear it.
It was her fault, honestly. She had lied to each of them about her ancestry. To her, it seemed easier to explain away a mother and father too busy on business, then a couple of dead sacks of weight buried under rotting wood in the Canaan cemetery. They had known that Gideon and Harrow grew up together, and could likely infer that the relationship was touchy at best, but Gideon, much like Harrow, it seemed, had ended the history lesson there.
Harrow hadn’t shown her face the rest of the night, and despite planning to drive Harrow home out of convenience, the girl had instead opted to ride with Camilla, leaving Gideon and her beat-up truck alone for a long, dreary trip home.
—
“I should have never said that to you.” Harrow finished, her hands now shoved wrist-deep in the pockets of her cargo pants.
Gideon was somewhere between awd and whiplashed. Never before had Nonagesimus apologized to her. Clearly, it showed, because Harrow just kept talking.
“I can’t go another year without talking to you, Gideon. I can’t go another year without having you and your stupid jokes, or your pre-workout breath or your refusal to put on deodorant more than once a day.”
“Wait, that’s not-” Gideon started, only to be interrupted by Harrow.
“This year was hard, and honestly? I hardly feel like I’m in the holiday spirit. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a New Years Eve where I've reflected on those 465 days and thought, ‘good job, Harrow!’
“Just pause a second-”
“I hated college. I really did. The pressure, and the cliques, and the frat parties you dragged me to because you swore you could beat any of those douchebags at beer pong. I could hardly stand any of it!”
“You forgot the part where I said they could ‘suck my strap.’”
“But you.” Harrow’s gaze has been fixed on the ground for most of her word vomit, only shifting to allow her arms to work as a weapon of emphasis. Now though, she was looking up at her. Her deep brown eyes meeting Gideon’s gold. “You somehow made it a little better. I think I underestimated that. I underestimated YOU.”
At this point, the barrage of compliments was starting to feel a little embarrassing for Gideon. She made a move to calm Harrow down, aiming for her shoulders, but Harrow took it a step further, grabbing both her arms and holding them.
For a half-beat, the pair stood there. Gideon with her arms outstretched straight forward, and Harrow holding onto each bicep for dear life.
“Then you were gone, Gideon. You were gone and I realized that I am a shell of myself without you.”
The weight of Harrow’s words hung there, stagnant in the stuffy air of the cabin, huddled into their dark corner and surrounded by still-drying winter boots and coats. Harrow, and all her five feet and four inches, looked ready to cuddle herself like a turtle on the floor and die of humiliation. On her cheek, Gideon noticed, a hint of soft pink on brown skin betrayed.
Gideon, still stumped by Harrow’s confession, realized that neither of them had spoken a word in an uncomfortably long time. In her chest, somewhere next to or sharing space with her heart, an unfamiliar warmth was growing, doubled only by the look of Harrow staring up at her expectedly.
“Hug me, you dolt.” She whispered, and the two, very cautiously, moved to coordinate their bodies together. The end product was awkward, with Gideon shoved up against a counter, half her ass on the top, and with Harrow cradled between her legs and arms, her cheek resting against Gideon’s neck.
For a while, they stayed like that. Just two beating souls pressed together in the corner of a cabin, all while the mountain collected more and more inches of freezing snow. It was weird, and it was unfamiliar, but they made it work.
—
Gideon and Harrow, still uneasy at their newfound closeness, walked back into the main room of their lodging and sat side by side. As expected, Coronabeth had snuggled her way into Judith’s space, arms looped and locked against her military-set bicep. The other’s opinion was unreadable, but she made no effort to shimmy away. Both glanced over, hiding none of the shock they felt on their faces.
“Gonad.” Ianthe sneered. “What the hell is this?” She motioned between them, as if referring to a disgusting pile of dogshit left on fire outside her doorstep. There was played-up confidence in it, but her eyes were gaunt.
An onslaught of berating would surely follow, laced with every insecurity Ianthe could conjure up, specially made in her own Tridentarii exclusive witch’s den. From the looks of it, everybody else in the circle seemed just as bewildered.
Then, primarily from Coronabeth, the questions started.
Gideon was already drowning out the sound, focusing only on the beat of Harrow’s heartbeat in the skin of her hand, which had at some point found its way over from the girl’s lap to Gideon’s side, and grabbing hold of the fabric of her jacket. It was a quiet thing, and that made it all the more special. A perfect pattern made just for her that only she could hear.
Yes, it was just a heartbeat.
But for Gideon, it was an ensemble of Christmas bells chiming in her ears. She had no clue what was next, or what the new ‘this’ between them may be, but she hardly cared.
The snow was piling up all around their cabin, but let it, she decided. She had all the warmth she’d need.