Work Text:
Helen’s hand snakes across her back, allowed to rest only a fleeting moment before the realtor’s eyes burn into her shoulder blades like the ashy cigarette stains left in the hallway of their building. (When she glances backward, the woman is nowhere to be seen. No vigilant eyes cutting through the window. No security-driven gaze drilled into the shape of the hand splayed across her t-shirt.) (Still, she shifts away enough for Helen to know and drop the hand back by her own side. When she looks at her, it’s real. It’s almost pitying, and Carol knows it as familiarly as the taste of bile in the back of her throat.) (They’re buying a fucking house together, but god forbid the woman selling it sees their skin brush.)
“We could host parties out here,” Helen says, looking out at the backyard like she can see it. People mingling across the gross, seated around a long table set here on the patio where they stand. She sounds so serious about it that Carol snorts.
“Who the hell are we throwing parties for?”
She presses her lips together in consideration. Carol knows a joke is coming when the corner quirks up, before her mouth even opens. “My sister.”
She doesn’t want to laugh, but the vision tugs on her own lips. “Yeah, that would be a real ball, don’t you think?”
Helen shakes her head, shoving her hands into her jean pockets. “You know what I mean. We could have picnics out here, without even having to leave the house. We could start a garden.”
“Smart. You know how good I am with my hands.”
She nudges her with her elbow and Carol grins now, turning away until she can contain it.
Skin glowing in the sun’s haze, hands dug into the dirt, some floppy hat on her head. Leaned back in the shade, watching, drink sloshing in her glass as she waves her hand in gestured commentary. The vision is sweet. The kind of sweet that rots her gut, too good to be true. How easy it would be to stay in the apartment, listening to the early alarm of the upstairs neighbors’ footsteps, staring at the chipped paint on the ceiling while Helen fucks her in bed, washing the dishes by hand, passing them to Helen and her meticulous drying. A good thing need not be ruined.
(A good thing, thirty-two with a fat check newly deposited, and still she’s stepping over a creaky floorboard.)
“What do you think?” she asks, and Carol looks at her. Squints at the sun, placed right above her head. It lights up every single strand of hair,
With a shrug, “I like the fence.”
Helen smiles. She has this way of looking at Carol in the way you’re supposed to look at sunsets and moonlight glistening on the ocean and skies full of stars without any city lights dimming their shine.
“What do you think?” she asks, nudging her, and Helen looks back out at the grass.
“I think it might be the one.”
She wants to mention the broken tile at the bottom of the stairs and how the guy two houses down had one of those mustaches that screams I have kids in my basement. But they’re weak excuses. (And if Helen’s stayed stuck with her in those four square feet all these years why the hell would a house change that.)
“Sure,” she says, and nods her head. “Why not.”
“Weren’t you just watching this one?”
Her head snaps back, awkwardly curling her drink in toward herself as if Helen hasn’t already seen the glass. She looks back at the TV, muttering, “A hundred and something episodes and they keep playing the same fucking five.”
Helen makes a noise, something akin to a laugh—not quite kind. Carol makes an effort to ignore her, staring hard at Bea Arthur on the TV as she walks around the couch and picks up the half-empty bottle from the coffee table. Until she reaches her hand out and Carol has to look up and face her, the request in her eyes and her waiting palm.
Angry thoughts bubble inside her chest, all too cruel and not quite true. How sick she is of being treated like a fucking child, how greatly she enjoys the mornings before she wakes up because there’s no one to breathe down her neck about every little fucking thing. Guilt curdles around the thoughts; she holds her gaze and tips back the last of the drink before handing her the empty glass.
Helen’s lip curls up gently in a thankful smile, and Carol sinks deeper into the couch like a dog still working a piece of shoe out of its teeth.
“Still stuck?” she asks as she swipes away her mess.
“No, the ideas are flowing. I’m just choosing to sit on my ass and watch reruns instead.”
No response to her snark, not until she returns from the cabinet and walks to the TV, turning it off with no warning.
“Hey, I was watching that,” she argues, leaning forward now.
“I didn’t realize how invested you were,” she comments, dry and unphased. She gestures with her head. “Get up.”
Carol frowns. “Why?”
“We’re going to get you unstuck.”
Of course. Helen the savior, back at it again. She shakes her head, running her hand back through her short hair. “No thank you. I’ll figure it out.”
“Get up, Carol.”
She keeps her gaze averted, like ignoring her would really be enough for her to walk away. Instead, she comes closer, putting out her hand once again. This time, a beckoning gesture. An open invitation. When she looks at her, the patience in her expression, her resolve dissipates and she has no other choice but to take it.
Helen doesn’t let go of her hand once she’s up, walking her through the house. She whines like a kid, dragging her feet. “Where are we going?”
No answer until she’s sliding open the side door and pulling her out into the heat. The patio burns the bottoms of her feet; is it masochistic to find pleasure in the sensation? Like taking showers so hot that when Helen touches her afterward she leaves handprints.
She lets go of her, then, once they reach the end of the patio, and Helen steps out into the grass. Carol remains where she is, watching her find a spot in the middle of the backyard and sit down on her ass.
“Sit down.”
She scoffs. “Yeah, right.”
“Sorry, your majesty,” she mocks, “I didn’t know you were too good to sit on the ground.”
Carol shakes her head. “I’ve always had my suspicions, but now I know that you are truly, certifiably insane.”
“Carol Sturka, get over here and sit the fuck down.”
She sighs, but it sounds more like a groan. Still, she relents, feet collecting dirt on their soles as she makes her way over.
When she sits down, Helen smiles. “Great. Now lie back.”
“I swear to god, Helen, you are fucking with me.”
She grabs Carol’s arm and holds it as she lies back herself, no hesitation as she settles against the grass. She looks around, searching for some sort of excuse. But she comes up empty handed and surrenders.
“There,” she says, grass poking behind her ears. “Happy?”
Helen’s hand moves down to grab hers, intertwining their fingers. Carol squeezes her palm.
“Shhh. Just take a second. Feel the world around you.”
She rolls her eyes, biting back the snark. She’s desperate to please her. (She thinks she knows it. She thinks she uses it to her advantage.) So she stares at the clouds, traces their wispy curves with her eyes. She feels the heat of the Earth seeping up into her body. She follows the fucking mosquito buzzing past their faces every thirty seconds.
She turns, what am I waiting for? about to roll off her tongue, when she finds Helen with her eyes closed. A soft smile graces her lips, expression captured in such a state of contentment that Carol is struck still by the extent of peace existing right beside her. She’s always envied her ability to breathe. Her ability to just be. Carol doesn’t know how to exist without noticing every little thing and contemplating every possible what-if and outcome of every possible situation. Even in sleep, her brain never stops.
(She thinks, sometimes, that’s why Helen doesn’t understand the drinking. Never will. She doesn’t need it—not like she does.)
She opens her eyes and smiles when she notices Carol, turning to look at her. “Hi.”
“Hey.” She shifts, skin suddenly crawling with the attention. “You know, maybe the epiphany hasn’t struck yet, but I’m not picking up on anything out here.”
“Mmm. Sorry about that.”
“You know what does help?”
She sits up on one elbow, hair falling forward as she looks down at Carol. “What?”
She leans forward and captures her mouth with hers, sliding her hand up around the back of Helen’s neck to draw her closer. She grins against her mouth and allows her to remain in control a moment longer before pulling away,
“I can certainly help with that.”
She nudges her back down against the grass, crawling over her and kissing her deeply. Carol grabs at her, but Helen pushes her hands back down into the dirt, lips sucking at the softness of her neck.
How easy everything floats away with her touch. The power she has in her fingertips and her tongue to be able to clear those stormy thoughts of hers. To open up space for what she needs.
(What she needs is for Helen to come impossibly closer. She needs her to touch her right . . . c’mon, right th . . . there—fuck.)
She works her way down her body, and then she’s prying off the boxers she sleeps in and hooking a leg over her shoulder and Carol couldn’t give any less of a shit that they’re in the fucking dirt. God, who cares. Certainly not her, not when Helen’s tongue is inside her. They could be on fucking Mars.
When she’s done, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and moves back up to kiss her, raising a brow. “So?”
She wants to tell her she might need some more time. Maybe they should go again.
Unfortunately, her plan worked a little too well.
“I think I figured it out,” she says, and allows Helen to help her up, making her way to her office before she can lose the words unraveling in her head.
Carol stares hard at the patties, pink meat sizzling, so long she isn’t sure she’ll ever find the sight of a burger appetizing. Anything but looking at the table. Anything but looking at Helen’s fingers flipping the pages of her manuscript. Staring at the grill’s surface, the flames’ tendrils reaching up to caress her cheeks, she swears she can hear it. The rustle of the pages.
“I was thinking maybe I could change chapter forty-two so that it ends with—”
“Carol, I’m still reading.”
She glances at her. Eyes not even lifted, lips pressed together in focus. “Yeah. Sorry. Just saying—”
“Carol.”
“Sorry.”
Her attention returns to the meat. She finds the spatula and flips the patties—too soon. The other side is still red in the middle, a pinkish grey on the ends she doesn’t love the look of. When she was ten, her uncle let her man the grill on the Fourth of July. One of her cousins threw a handful of Pop Its at her and when the spatula slipped from her fingers, she scrambled to grab it, accidentally pressing the entire side of her hand against the grill’s surface. She’s thinking about that now. She’s thinking about how hard she’d cried while her aunt wrapped it up. She’s thinking about lowering her hand now to the surface, just to remember if it hurts. (Just to remember if her mom was right when she told her she was looking for attention.)
She flips the patties again—one side cooked through.
What part is Helen on now? Has Tatiana lain her teeth in Flynn yet? Has Llana laid eyes yet upon the sight? She’s heard no gasps, no change in breath, but Helen has always read quietly. Never given away answers easily.
“There,” she says, finally, and Carol almost vomits into the grill.
She clears her throat. “Perfect timing. The burgers are done.” It feels like she’s racing against the ticking of a bomb, hurriedly scraping the patties from the grill and plopping them onto the buns. She sits down at the table and slides one of the plates to Helen. It’s like her seat is on fire, shifting left to right as she watches Helen squeeze the ketchup out onto her plate.
“So?”
She looks at her now, and when she sees the expression in her eyes, she deflates. All the hope sucked from her like dust into a vacuum.
“It was good,” she says, biting into her burger, and Carol’s too nauseous to even look at her plate.
“That’s it?”
“It’s great! It wraps everything up. I love the ending. The fight with Tatiana and Llana had a great flow.”
“But did you like it?” She feels so small, sitting there. So desperate.
She takes her time chewing, as if struggling to prepare the right words. “I think it was exactly what it needed to be.”
“So you didn’t like it.”
Her insides are on fire. She needs to throw her plate and flip the table and put the manuscript in the grill. Let it burn like it deserves to. (She knew she’d hate it. Of course she hates it. There’s nothing to like!)
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you did. Don’t worry about it. It’s shit, and we all know that.”
Helen sighs, that kind of exasperated noise that only makes Carol’s chest tight. “Is that what you want to hear?”
She shakes her head. She doesn’t know what she wants. (If she had what she wants, she isn’t sure she’d be writing these stories at all.)
“What if I stop?”
Helen doesn’t jump. In fact, she doesn’t seem to react at all. Not until her face softens into something gentle, curious. “Do you want to stop writing?”
“Who cares!” She throws her hands in the air, huffing out a laugh. “No one read the last one. No one’s gonna read this one. It’s a huge fucking waste of time.”
Helen reaches across the table and grabs her hand, thumb rubbing back and forth across her skin. “You’re a good writer. I wouldn’t tell you that if it wasn’t true. Bleeding Heart did great, especially for a debut. The sequel just didn’t land, and you’re right. This one probably won’t either. It doesn’t mean that’s it. This pirate idea we were talking about would fit great into the direction the market’s going.”
She laughs again now. Harder. But it isn’t funny at all. “Vampires. Pirates. It’s all fucking bullshit.”
She pulls her hand from Helen’s and shoves the chair back, storming away from the table, toward the sliding door inside.
“Where are you going?”
“To get a drink.”
She doesn’t look back.
“There you are.”
Helen turns and smiles, sitting on the ground rather than in any of the twenty chairs on the patio. “Are those popsicles?”
Carol holds one out, stepping outside to join her. She feels bare in nothing more than her briefs and Helen’s college athletic department t-shirt she stole from the hamper, but the fence is tall.
“Mango,” she says, taking it from her hand. “My favorite.”
“What luck.” Like she didn’t open the box and dump them out on the counter because they all look the fucking same and she had to hold them up to the light to make sure she got one that specific shade of orange.
She puts her own lemon pop into her mouth, sighing at the cold sweetness dissolving on her tongue. She wipes her mouth with her hand before leaning in and pressing her lips to Helen’s shoulder once, twice, three times before resting her chin there instead.
“I love you,” she mumbles, and puts the pop back in her mouth to cover it up.
But Helen smiles, turning to kiss the side of Carol’s head. “Love you too.”
She wants to stay here forever, tucked into her side with the distant noise of crickets and the setting sun. The same way she wanted to stay there forever, moments ago in bed, with Helen’s knee tucked between her legs and her fingers in her hair, slick skin clinging to each other, still glowing.
Maybe it’s enough to have Helen forever, and let things happen how they happen.
“Dance with me.”
It’s one of those nights where all Carol can do is think about how lucky she is. How beautiful Helen is. With her hair braided back, with that shirt undone by just one button too many. Moving freely to the music that pours from the radio set atop the table, smoke twirling above her head from the cigarette between her fingers.
“You’re dancing plenty for the both of us,” she says with a smile, and takes a long sip of her wine.
Helen frowns, walking closer and putting her cigarette out in the ash tray. “Get up. I love this song.”
She’d love to argue, but she’s in no mood to say no to her. She takes her hand and allows herself to be pulled to her feet, tugged out into the grass. Helen leads, moving with her along to the music. Compared to the looseness of her moves, Carol feels so stiff, awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other.
“I hate dancing.” She recalls the clubs they used to go to, back on the east coast, back when they were first dating. She’d fought so hard to keep up with her. To impress her. It was the first time she’d ever felt like that. Like it mattered so deeply.
So she’d danced, and she’d tried so hard to be good and to enjoy it. But the nice part about being with someone for over ten years is that there’s no one to impress.
“Yes, I know, you’re no fun,” Helen teases, and proceeds to spin her around.
The comment digs unusually deep, like claws snagged between her ribs. But Helen is laughing like it’s funny. “Hey, I’m fun! I’m very fun, actually.”
She nods her head. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”
“There you go. Remember when we egged your ex-boyfriend’s house? How about the time I spontaneously drove you to New York City to go see the Rockettes? Huh? F-U-N.”
“How lucky am I.” She leans in and kisses her, long enough to clear her mind of the clouds. When she pulls away, Carol leans forward and rests her cheek on her shoulder. Helen pulls her closer, swaying with the song and humming along with the words.
Baby can I hold you tonight
Maybe if I told you the right words
At the right time, you'd be mine
“I like dancing with you,” Carol mumbles, holding on tight to Helen’s body, hands around her waist.
She kisses the top of her head. “I know.”
She shakes her head, swallowing a comment. It’s unnecessary.
For a moment, she believes the house to be empty. She imagines Helen packing a bag while she slept, shoving clothes and a toothbrush into a duffel and leaving her behind. Leaving this silence in every corner. Echoing. Carol’s ribs are pulled so tight her organs are being squeezed up into her throat, ready to be vomited out onto the tile.
And then her eyes catch outside the window and she sees her, sitting there on one of the lounges. She exhales, a breath steeped with more relief than has ever coursed through her veins. The culmination of all her fears dissolved by the sight.
(Yet, it feels wrong. Like the sweetness of a stolen candy bar.) (She should've left. She shouldn’t have even picked her up from the station. Carol should’ve had to crawl back home on her hands and knees and maybe—just maybe—then would she have completed some sort of penance.)
She should stay inside. Leave the space between them she put there with her recklessness. Yet, her feet are carrying her outside before she can stop them. Desperate to lay her head in Helen’s lap and beg for forgiveness like a dog.
She doesn’t look at her when she comes out. Nor when she sits down on the ground beside her lounge. Just keeps looking off at the sky, smoke curling up from her lip.
She wants to tell her she’d only been speeding because she wanted to get back home to her. That she’d only been driving because she didn’t want to call her, didn’t want to wake her up if she’d been sleeping. That she’d only been drinking at the bar because she knew she hated when she did it at home.
But what good would it do? When her license is still gone and her court date is still on the calendar and Helen will always have a good-for-nothing drunk as a wife. (A good-for-nothing drunk who cares. Who cares so goddamn much.)
“I kept telling myself that you were too smart to do something so fucking stupid,” she finally says, shaking her head, still refusing to turn her head. “I could get through the drinking because you were handling it. You were . . . responsible.” She huffs out a rough laugh. “Look how that turned out.”
The guilt piles on, the weight too great for her shoulders to carry. Her bones tremble under its heaviness. (She wants a fucking drink, and that’s the worst part. Is that all she wants is a fucking drink and the minute Helen isn’t looking she’s going to pour herself one because she’s never learned how to say no to that insatiable black hole.)
“I can handle myself,” she says weakly. “I didn’t crash into a fucking tree or something. It was bad luck. Everyone speeds.”
“Don’t.” She looks at her now, with a gaze so sharp any word falls silent on her tongue. “Please. Don’t.” She sighs and puts out the cigarette, running a hand over her face. “You’re going to kill yourself and I’m going to be the one who has to deal with it. I’m the one who has to . . .” Her voice breaks, suddenly flooded with emotion; it startles Carol. She takes a deep breath and says, “Do you realize what it does to me?”
Yeah, because she’s the one who had to put her mom to bed when she’d pass out on the couch with the bottle in hand.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Helen sighs. “Not sorry enough.”
She wants to scream and argue and shake her shoulders. Shift onto her knees and beg her for forgiveness. But it’s the truth, isn’t it? Because here she is, listening, understanding, and still she can’t stop.
She leans forward, resting her head on Helen’s thigh. They stare at each other for a moment that seems to stretch on forever. And then she begins to move her fingers through Carol’s hair so softly she wants to cry.
“You know I made out with a girl in a hot tub once?”
Carol raises a brow. “I see. You waited to tell me until after we bought one so that I couldn’t say no.”
She throws back her head, laughing, and Carol can’t help a matching grin. Even with the childish jealousy brewing in her gut, a possessiveness burning beneath her skin, there’s something light inside her. Maybe it’s just the bubbling of the water, maybe it’s how fucking good her book is doing. (Even if it could be better. Even if it isn’t doing quite good enough.) Maybe it’s just because she’s here with Helen and they’re laughing and nothing could ever be better than that.
“That’s it. You uncovered my master plan.”
She chuckles. “Yeah, yeah. Who was she?”
Helen scoffs. “God if I remember. I was . . . what, nineteen?”
“Was she hot? I wanna know details, come on.”
“Why, so you can brainstorm your jealous fantasy?”
Her mouth falls open in mock offense; it shouldn’t be a surprise how well Helen knows her. “I’m not jealous!”
“Oh, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not. I have nothing to be jealous of.”
Helen grins at that, something almost challenging in her gaze. “Well, we all know that’s true.”
“Yeah, and I can prove it.” She’s already moving across the tub, through the warm water.
“I’d like to see that,” Helen says, hot amusement gleaming in her eyes as Carol nears, channeling all the charm and sexiness she can. (Channel fucking Raban, she thinks, and cracks herself up so bad she almost begins to laugh and ruin the whole thing.)
She grabs her face and kisses her, melting at the groan she lets out against her mouth. Something wild is awoken between them, something achingly desperate. Her tongue diving into Helen’s mouth, Helen’s hand slipping up into her bathing suit. When she pulls away, a strand of spit trails between their mouths, breaking and dripping down Carol’s chin. She wipes it with her hand and smiles, raising a curious brow.
“Certainly the best hot tub kiss I’ve had.”
“That’s what I thought.” She attempts to slip away, back through the water, but Helen’s hand is sturdy on her waist.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she murmurs, kissing her again. Carol makes no argument, quick to lose herself in her hands.
(Take that hot tub girl. Fuck you.)
“What am I supposed to be looking at?”
Helen tears her eyes from the sky to glance again at the article on her phone. “I don’t know, it’s supposed to be extra bright? Closer to the Earth or something.”
“Hmph.” It looks exactly the same as every other full moon. (Beautiful, sure, but nothing special. Nothing to be standing in her boxers in the backyard over.) “You ever feel like they make one of these up every couple ‘a months? Here’s the red moon, it only comes out every five years. Except for the one that’s gonna come out in November.”
She laughs, snaking an arm around Carol’s waist and tugging her close. She leans back against her chest and follows her gaze back up to the star-splattered sky. Is Helen thinking of the beach, one of those first nights together, and Carol’s dumb twenty-year-old ideas of romance? Does she remember which star she’d said was hers?
“They delayed our flight,” Helen says, reeling her back in.
“Is that an excuse not to go?”
She smiles, but she’s shaking her head. “No, but it means we get to sleep in.”
It’s funny how romance changes.
The quilt was hers when she was a kid. Helen’s. Her favorite blanket, a gift from her grandmother. In some way, it feels right for her to have it.
Right.
Like any of this is fucking right. How could any of this be fucking right?
She digs the shovel into the dirt and pours it into the hole. It’s better that she can’t see her. That she can try so hard to pretend she’s doing anything else. That Helen is right behind her on the other side of the kitchen window making that fucking pink lemonade she’s convinced is liquid gold.
She can pretend. But she tosses another scoop of dirt down and she knows. She knows it’s Helen’s body she’s burying. Helen who she’s letting disappear into nothingness. Into the ground.
Helen who fucking loved this backyard. God, why didn’t they spend more time out there? Why didn’t they have fucking picnics and shit? Why didn’t she look at her a little longer? (How is thirty fucking years not long enough to memorize every curve of a person’s face?)
Why did she walk away from her, outside the bar? Why didn’t she fucking stay there with her head on her shoulder? Why wasn’t she there to catch her? To hold her?
It was always Carol making stupid choices. Carol speeding. Carol burning herself in the oven. Carol taking too many pills when her head was throbbing. It was always Helen who had to fear for her life. Who had to wonder just when the world would cease forgiveness for her recklessness.
It wasn’t supposed to be her.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
It isn’t supposed to fucking be like this.
Another scoop of dirt. She imagines crawling inside the hole. Wrapping her body around Helen’s the way she has countless nights. They always seemed to fit. Like their bodies were once formed together, broken apart only to find each other once again. She could fit again. Lie there with her until the sun had baked her alive.
(But her body is stiff. Her body is cold. Her body is just that, a body, and she probably wouldn’t fit against it at all.)
She stares at the flowers on the end of the backyard. Helen’s flowers. And it feels as if someone has taken the shovel and dug it inside her chest, emptying her of all her insides. Anything that mattered. Another scoop and another until she’s nothing but a black hole.
She’s dying, she thinks, but she isn’t that lucky.
“Hi, Carol.”
She looks up at her, and for that brief heartbeat of a moment, it’s almost her. Like she’s looked up and seen her there a thousand times. The muscle memory of a deep breath in. (The slap had stung, been more of a kick, that first time. When she heard the voice and turned and for a moment she had woken up from her dream. Helen was not beneath her, she was standing right there.) (Now, she has grown too used to Zosia’s waves down her shoulders, to that pleasant cadence of her voice and the curve of her body.)
She comes closer, mouth stretched in her permanent smile. “It’s such a beautiful day out, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Beautiful.” She downs the last of her drink, setting the glass back down on the patio with a clink. She can’t quite look at her. Not right now. After the dreams, endless tossing waves, and the startled wake up, hand reaching toward the other end of the bed.
Zosia, still smiling, asks, “Would you like me to leave?”
“No.” It comes out too quick. Too pathetically desperate. “Just . . . get on with it. What’s the plan today?”
She doesn’t answer, and Carol itches to snap. But she bites her tongue, watching her sit down beside her so easily.
“Carol,” she says, and puts her hand atop hers. Like a jolt of electricity up her arm, to her spine. She brushes her thumb over her skin and it’s so familiar she wants to pull her hand back and run. Never allow herself to be touched again. But then she continues in that gentle voice, “is there something wrong? Would you like to talk about it?”
Bile rises in her throat and then, she snaps her hand away, into her chest. “No. I’m fine.”
Zosia smiles. “Alright. Whatever makes you happy. Would you want to go on a hike today? There are many beautiful trails right in the neighborhood, I thought it might be a good idea to get out of the house.”
“Sure.” Her chest is tight with everything unsaid. Helen would pry, would dig her hands into her ribs and open them up, unravel the mess inside until it was something she could read.
But she guesses that isn’t what she wanted.
(It occurs to her she misses not having to want things for them to happen.)