Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Carol is realizing she may have fucked up.

When that first dinner happens, the one after Zosia is unhived and finally relented; has finally let herself walk inside Carol’s home to eat a meal Manousos swore was not poisoned in any way—is when Carol finally realizes she may have grossly miscalculated the implications of an unhived Zosia. 

The tension is thick enough to choke on, and Carol almost does when she takes a sip of water and glances across the table just to see Zosia glaring at her already. She is so unused to this kind of look from her, something other than placidity and dubious warmth as she plots with seven billion other people on how to entrap Carol in their one great, big, beautiful fucking hellscape of a world. 

Manousos looks at her reproachfully while she sputters, and it takes all of Carol’s strength not to immediately flip him off. She had promised him earlier that afternoon she would stay civil, not react—well, react less than she would under normal circumstances—so as not to scare off the only other ally they may have left. 

She clears her throat and focuses on her own plate, ignoring Manousos’s watchful eyes and Zosia’s fork as it stabs the next bite on her plate. 

“¿Cuál es su problema?”

Carol looks up in surprise at the woman across from her, mouth falling open as Manouses smirks. 

He shrugs. “No sé.”

Yeah. Carol fucked up big time. 

It’s not like she meant for any of that stuff to happen. It just kind of… did. And unfortunately it made Zosia the best candidate for their little… experiment. 

But now there’s an aftermath that Carol never really considered. Not just what it means for Zosia, which is probably far worse, but what it means for her—the things she must now reckon with. She lays awake at night fighting the urge to throw up, imagining what it must feel like to wake up in your body and find out the things it did when you didn’t really know any better. She hates herself for it because she knew better. She fucking knew better.

There’s not much she can do about it now, though. She’s apologized more in the last week than she probably ever has in her life, and she’s not sure Zosia would appreciate any tears. She hasn’t tried getting on her knees and begging yet, but she doesn’t think that would go over well either. The best course of action right now seems like just steering clear, and there’s nothing Carol does better than avoiding people. 

It’s not like she has the time to be bored either, the way Manousos has them working on whatever he thinks might be a solution at any given time. He does a lot of work with radios and Carol just kind of, watches him do it? Sometimes he uses the translator on her phone to explain, but if it gets too complicated she ends up pouring herself a drink and pretending to understand. He doesn’t try to explain too much anymore now, not until he has something worth sharing. Which is fine by her, for all she cares.

Well—she does care, about the whole saving the world thing, but that’s not the point. It just kind of sucks that she has to do it with a man she can barely speak to and a woman that looks like she wants to throttle Carol at any given moment. It’s like a confederacy of dunces, or wayward patches you stitch onto a quilt once you’ve ran out of all the other good fabrics. 

God, bourbon makes her maudlin and pathetic. 

The doorbell rings before she can pretend to ponder over pouring herself another, and she pokes her head into the hallway like someone may come bursting in. There’s really only one other person it can be—Manousos locked himself away in the guest bedroom an hour ago with the first Wycaro, who swore up and down it was only to practice his English even though he looked a little intrigued when she first told him about it—so she creeps towards the door just in case she’s going to find a gun or a knife on the other side. 

When she opens the door it’s simply Zosia, no weapon in hand. She nearly takes Carol’s breath away, and she spends the first few seconds cataloguing all the different ways Zosia has chosen to style herself since getting unhived. It’s a subtle, but the wig is gone and her hair brushes her shoulders, bringing Carol’s attention to the simple t-shirt she has on to stave off the rising heat of Albuquerque. 

Zosia clears her throat and Carol’s eyes snap back to her face. “I’m staying at the Delgado’s. Come over at 8.”

She walks away before Carol can ask any follow up questions, and Carol watches her walk away. Even the way she moves is different, the sway of her hips more pronounced as she walks down the driveway. And jesus fuck, those jeans—

She slams the door shut, wincing at the noise. She waits to see if Manousos will walk out to question her, but there is blessed silence. Glancing at the clock on the wall, she breathes deeply at the time: just about two hours until 8, which means she has two hours to wonder if tonight is going to be her last. 

Easy.

She’s crawling out of her skin and all but bouncing of the fucking walls by the time it’s 7:55. She wants to scream and cry, and also feels a little bit like throwing up. She’s one glass of bourbon deeper and it has done fuck all to calm her nerves, the slide of it down her throat burning and acidic. A third glass sits half-untouched on the coffee table, her hands too jittery to risk picking it up again, and she’s about three seconds away from ripping the hair out of her own head. 

She has not felt like this in a long time—and if she thinks about it any longer, she’s going to come to the conclusion the last time she felt like this was the first time she ever slept with a woman, and she’s nowhere near drunk enough to accept the implications of that—and it damn near kills her to wait until 7:58 to walk out the door. The Delgado house is the farthest away in the cul-de-sac, and she times it perfectly so her finger is ringing the doorbell as soon as her watchface flips over to 8:00 PM on the dot. 

It takes a little for the door to open, and if she didn’t know any better she would think Zosia is simply taking her time to make Carol sweat. It’s kind of working, even though the sun is low and there’s a slight breeze in the air. By the time the door opens she’s sure there’s a sheen on her face. 

Zosia doesn’t say anything, just turns around and walks into the living room on the right. Carol closes the door behind her, unsure if she just showed up empty-handed to a knife fight, and follows right behind. She doesn’t remember the last time she was inside this house, or if she ever found herself here at all, and takes in the blanket crumpled on the corner of the couch and an empty bowl on the coffee table. It looks lived in, like someone has set up camp right here in the living room, which she supposes Zosia probably has. 

There’s an armchair diagonal from the couch, and Carol watches as Zosia clears the pile of blankets and other random items tossed across it. When she faces Carol again she pats the back of it, a clear indication. 

She moves slowly, as if trying not to startle a flighty animal, and gingerly sits as Zosia settles on the furthest end of the couch, facing her. Carol fidgets, unsure what to do next. “Is there—”

“Shut up.”

She does, fighting every instinct in her body. She thought maybe they’d talk things out, throw a few things against the wall to really get their anger out, but sitting here in silence admittedly did not cross her mind. And jesus, Zosia is looking at her like she wants to put her hands around Carol’s throat until they’re both blue in the face from it—and in the most, decidedly unsexy way. It’s jarring to see such anger on Zosia’s face, the her from before cold at worst and placid at best, but it’s kind of magnetic. Carol thinks the anger suits her, in a way. The slight furrow of her brows, the slight downturn of her mouth, the way her cheekbones curve—

Nope. Some roads are best left untraveled, and she thinks Zosia would actually kill her if she caught on to her line of thinking. This is already bad enough and Carol doesn’t really want a repeat of what happened after the experiment—there had been a split second of calm as Zosia’s eyes focused on her, and next thing she knew she was flat on her back as Zosia tackled her onto the ground, Manousos doing his best to bodily remove Zosia from on top of her—so Carol sits still and focuses on the wall behind Zosia’s head. She hopes her face is neutral but she’s never been good at hiding her thoughts.

It’s only when another ten minutes pass, full of that same tension as that first dinner, that Zosia clears her throat and cocks her head towards the front door. “Okay, you can go now.”

She all but scrambles out the chair, happy to put some distance between her and whatever the fuck that was, only stopped by the sound of Zosia’s voice as her hand reaches for the doorknob. “And Carol?”

She glances over her shoulder to see that Zosia isn’t even looking at her, just grabbing the remote off the coffee table to turn on the television. “Same time tomorrow.”

She hums an affirmative and it sounds pathetic, and a little bit desperate, and she hates herself for it. 

She runs all the way home.

*

Walking downstairs at 7:55 the next evening, she runs into Manousos in the hallway, who is heading upstairs with a cup of tea in hand. He takes one look at her and raises an eyebrow. 

“Mind your business.” 

He has the audacity to chuckle as he brushes past her, shaking his head as Carol squirms. “I’m so serious, dude, I will spoil the entire Wycaro series right now if you don’t shut up.”

He turns around at the top of the stairs and points a finger at her, a serious look in his eyes. “No.”

With one last, withering look in his direction, she leaves and begins her death march. Zosia opted out of dinner tonight so she hasn’t seen her for a full twenty-four hours, which has allowed for the panic and dismay to rear its ugly head again. This all would be a lot easier if she knew what the fuck was happening, or why Zosia is making her do this. She’s not really of the mind she deserves any answers right now though, so for now she just sits down in the same armchair and lets herself be killed slowly. 

She’s doing her best to study Zosia back this time without making it obvious, training her eyes on the spaces around her so the periphery is full of brown hair and resentful eyes. It’s odd, trying to make this version of the woman in front of her fit into the idea she had before; this Zosia, real Zosia, is a far cry from the one they planted in her lap. This Zosia is louder and more pissed off, eats like she’s actually hungry and rolls her eyes enough times that Carol is actually worried they might get stuck in the back of her head. This Zosia is so human, and it keeps taking Carol aback. 

It’s odd though, because as Carol studies her without actually looking her, she can still feel all the ways her body reacts to the slightest breath from the other woman, the slightest move. She is still so pitifully attracted to her, but it’s different now. Before she could almost say she was falling in love, but what she knows now—something she knew quietly all along—is that the Others knew exactly how to use their knowledge against her. Everytime the before Zosia opened her mouth it was like Carol was thirty-three and falling in love with her wife all over again, a spectral manipulation tailored perfectly to her tastes. It’s kind of sad how easily it worked. 

But this Zosia? Carol does not feel the same about her. Sure, she could rip her clothes off and fuck her on the floor right now, but there is none of that carefully crafted safety from before. There is no warmth and radiating affection, and the dichotomy makes her feel the most alone she has since they all abandoned her. The back of her throat closes up and she has to force herself to stop thinking about it just so she can breathe.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, counting her breaths and thinking the Delgados have bad taste in art. Zosia just keeps staring at her all the while—perhaps unaware, but Carol thinks the worse option is correct, that Zosia knows and simply doesn’t care—silent and unnerving in the silence of the night. It makes her fidget, leg bouncing up and down while her hand reaches for a glass that isn’t there. 

She decides to risk it. “Do you think I could get a drink, at least, if this is all we’re going to do?”

Zosia responds calmly though a tad unkindly, “The Delgados are sober.” A pause, and Zosia looks away like she’s trying to place something in her mind. “It’s your fault, actually. Block party, 2019.”

A memory surfaces quickly and Carol winces, can remember the way Helen all but had to carry her home. If she thinks harder, she can hear the sound of glass breaking and the image of a bounce house deflating. 

“Listen, if they didn’t want drunk people at their party then they shouldn’t have bought Fireball.”

“Bit too old for Fireball, are you not?” Zosia smirks but it’s laced with  visciousness, and Carol thinks the best course of action is to stay quiet. “You know, the same thing that got you your second DUI?”

It’s a low blow and not completely unexpected, though it raises alarm bells in her head. Carol waves a hand around exasperatedly, eyebrows pinching together in annoyance. “So do you just, remember everything from when you were… joined, or whatever?”

“Of course not,” and the way Zosia says it makes Carol feel like an idiot for even asking. “But I do remember that,” which is stated with a ghost of a satisfied smile. It raises the hairs on the back of Carol’s neck.

It’s a little funny, too—in an absolute asinine kind of way—that Zosia may not remember all that knowledge she gained from living in perfect symbiosis with the rest of the fucking world but she can remember the night Helen was sick and left Carol to fend for herself at one of those stupid publishing parties she was always getting invited to. Yeah, she probably shouldn’t have gone for the second Old Fashioned, and she definitely should not have ripped her car keys out of the valet’s hand and flipped him off while doing it, but it tickles her to think Zosia can remember the square root of that night and not four thousand, one hundred thirty. 

She risks a small smile. “Oh, that’s sort of—”

“And I hate that.”

Carol clamps her mouth shut, scared again. “Oh.”

Zosia tilts her head to the side, still looking at Carol like she’s the shittiest painting in a shit museum. “You’re a very annoying person, Carol Sturka.”

“I’ve been told that a time or two, yeah.” It’s derisive, a show of self-flagellation, and it still does not get Zosia to budge. 

“Leave.”

She stands up, going for broke and bowing mockingly. “A pleasure, as always.”

The door slams on her way out and it feels a little satisfying, enough to carry home and into bed. It’s not until she rolls over to find the other half empty that she remembers she has a lot more to be unsatisfied about—this half life at the end of the world with two strangers and a mountain of grief in between each of them. 

A sickening thought, the one that stays on her mind as she falls into a fitful sleep, is that maybe this is all she deserves.  

*

Two nights later, and still unsure why she keeps doing this to herself, Zosia finally speaks to her again. “We’re watching a movie tonight.”

“Okay.” She nods, confused as fuck, but choosing to play along. “What are we watching?”

The reply is immediate: “Shut up.”

Carol sits down in her chair swiftly, watching as Zosia peruses through a box of DVDs she’s pretty sure aren’t the Delgado’s—the player by the TV looks new and somewhat out of place, and the thought of Zosia dialing 0 just to ask for movies makes her heart tug. She can feel the inherent loneliness running through the cracks in this place, all these dark rooms and heirlooms staying untouched. Carol imagines she must feel like a fish out of water, grasping for something familiar to hold onto while gasping for foreign air. 

Her thoughts are interrupted when Zosia finally stands, having made her selection. She pops it into the DVD player and settles on the couch as the trailers begin to play. Carol jerks her head to the side, suddenly realizing the armchair is faced away from the screen, forcing her neck into an awkward angle. She stands to move it, I’m just gonna…, but Zosia stops her with a resounding no.

She plops back down, defeated, and watches as the menu for A Perfect Murder plays across the screen. It’s… suspicious. And pointed. And a little bit terrifying. 

Carol does her best to sit still the entire time, wincing in pain on her way home when her neck twinges. 

It’s definitely on purpose when The Shining plays out before them the next night, these movies about murder. She’s still not allowed to move the chair so all Carol can do is sit, wait it out, and hope she’s not next. It’s honestly the most fun she’s had in weeks, because the alternative is watching Manousos’s facial expressions as he slowly works his way through Wycaro. He keeps a little notepad next to him to write down certain words and thoughts about some of the scenes, though he has yet to share them. It would be endearing if Carol wasn’t still so unsure about having a man in her house. At least he cooks. 

Zosia turns to her with a wisp of a smile on her face, eyes still trained on the screen. “They had to let Jack Nicholson break down a real wooden door in this scene. He kept chopping through the prop door too easily.”

She sits up and rolls her shoulders back, alert at the first sign of life. “Fun. Where did you—”

“Sometimes I think about taking an axe to your door like that.”

“Oh.” Carol slumps back, neck sore and heart torn. Perhaps one day her penance will be over, but for now she plays the game and lets herself be torn to bits. Again, maybe this is the only thing she has earned over these past few months, and maybe it will be all she ever has. 

*

The sun is high in the sky by the time her and Manousos’s first argument-like conversation of the day occurs, which actually might be a new record for them. Their bickering doesn’t really know any bounds, their heads clashing often and loudly. He knows a lot about survival and science, and she knows a lot about the hivemind, so in theory they should be an unstoppable force. Unfortunately they are both stubborn and immovable objects. 

And yeah, maybe she saw him leave yesterday afternoon and come back a few hours later, a smile on his face. She didn’t hear the sound of a car and he’s (self-proclaimed) a little tired of walking places lately, so there’s really only one place left he could have went. The thought filled her with such a sharp and bitter envy that she blacked out for the few seconds it took Manousos to walk upstairs and into his room—and if she stayed up late blasting music, loudly singing the words off-key in her own room while slamming back a bottle of wine, it’s nobody’s business but her own. Her house, after all. 

He drags her to the dining table now, the surface scattered with notes, and points to something he scribbled on the back of a cable bill. “What do you know?”

Carol peers at it, eyes squinting as she tries to make out the letters. “I don’t know what that says, I can’t read your fucking handwriting.”

Manousos rolls his eyes, pointing to each syllable as he sounds it out for her. “E-lect-ro-mag-ne-tism.”

“Oh.” Pretty simple. “I don’t know anything about that.”

He rolls his eyes again—seriously, what is with these two and rolling their fucking eyes?—and grabs the car keys out of the bowl near the front door. He turns around when she doesn’t move, exasperated. “We must go to the library.”

She fights him only because she can. “Why does it matter?”

He gestures above his head to something she can’t see. “The waves—they’re in the air, all around. It will help us.”

They stare at each other for fifteen seconds, each of them playing out the rest of the fight in their minds before deciding it’s not worth it. Carol sighs, snatching the keys from his hand. “Fine. We’ll go to the library.”

When they’re settled in their seats a sudden thought occurs to her, and she unbuckles her seatbelt—uno momento—to stalk down to the Delgado house. 

Zosia answers after the second ring of the doorbell, already annoyed when she opens the door. Carol can ignore it for now, forcing a smile onto her face. “Manousos and I are about to go to the library to pick up some books on electromagnetism. I was wondering if you’d—” 

The door slams in her face, and Carol nods to herself because she really shouldn’t have expected anything else. 

She does a walk of shame back to the car in the driveway, met with an unimpressed look from Manousos. She glares, fighting the urge to hit him as she backs out of the driveway and grips the wheel tightly, knuckle-white. Her window is down so she hears the door slam, but she doesn’t register why until Zosia suddenly steps in front of the car as she steers it down the road. 

Carol slams on the brakes, arm shooting out across Manousos’s chest to stop him from flying forward as the car lurches.

“Jesus fuck,” she says as Zosia climbs into the backseat, “I almost ran you the fuck over.”

“But you didn’t.” She buckles her seatbelt and huffs, looking between the two of them in the front seat. “Well? Drive.”

Her hand shifts gears automatically, even as she glances at Manousos and raises her eyebrows in a silent question: do you know what the fuck is happening? He just shrugs, and Carol wonders why she thought he would ever be much help at all. 

The library is dark when they walk inside, and a bit too quiet. There’s no incessant hum of the public computers, no beep of the scanners as the librarians check books in and out. Manousos reads the map and stalks off in the direction of math and science, Zosia slinkering away in a similar fashion.

Left alone, Carol looks around at the emptiness, disheartened. It’s been years since she was last here, and placing it in her mind aches. She was here with Helen, the two of them browsing the shelves in a futile attempt to be more eco-conscious and buy less books. (They had always been partial to annotating, writing stupid little notes in the margins for the other to find as their to-be-read lists slowly merged into one.) She had laughed when they came across Winds of Wycaro, its pages yellowed and worn. Helen had whispered in her ear—how many times do you think these pages have witnessed someone jerking off?—which caused Carol to hastily stuff the book back on the shelf and bury her face in Helen’s shoulder to stifle her laughter. Such a nothing moment at the time but christ, what wouldn’t she give to go back? What altar wouldn’t she kneel before just for a taste of the air that day?

She runs her fingers over the spine of the third Wycaro now—the first are two missing, probably left somewhere in a deserted home to collect dust—and feels compelled to pray for the first time since she was sixteen, just to see if God will answer this time. 

“Do you always look at your own books in the library?”

Carol jumps, hand over her heart as she whirls around to find Zosia standing there. It takes a few seconds to get her breathing under control, mind conjuring up any excuse that might sound at least a little bit convincing. “I was just checking it was the right edition, or whatever.”

Zosia stalks over, grabbing the book off the shelf to flip through the pages. “You mean to say there’s more than one edition of this crap?”

“Three, actually. One has sprayed edges I think.”

“Those are bad for the environment.”

“Oh.” Carol nods, uncertain if she should feel bad about that or not. Val’s the one who suggested the anniversary editions, and then the collector’s editions. She went along with it even though she thought they were ugly—then again, all the covers are a bit ugly. Comes with the territory of the genre, she supposes, which is the last thought she has before watching Zosia drop her book right into a trash can at the top of the stairs, edges banging against the metal on its way down. “What the fuck?”

“That one is the shittiest,” she shrugs. “Plot holes everywhere.”

“What plot holes?” Carol’s hackles rise, because it may be shitty art but it’s her shitty art. She trails after Zosia when she doesn’t answer, simply walking back down the stairs and leaving Carol fumbling. “Zosia, what fucking plot holes?”

She never answers, and the drive back home is arguably worse than the drive there. Manousos and Zosia are carrying on a conversation in Spanish that Carol has almost no hope of understanding; her knuckles are white on the steering wheel again, an unpleasant feeling spindling out across her body via vexated veins. If she was honest with herself she would admit it feels like jealousy, but she’s never been all that good at admitting truths. 

“Es difícil al principio, pero sus historias son tan elaboradas y matizadas.”

“¿Beloved es la primera?”

“Si.”

A lull, one that she should let sit, but the words are out of her mouth before she can stop them. “You two seem chummy these days.”

Manousos ignores her, which is not surprising, but she can see a shift in the backseat. She makes a mistake and glances in the rearview mirror, eyes connecting with Zosia’s, who doesn’t look put off at all. 

In fact, she’s fucking smirking. 

“Are you jealous, Carol?”

A snort from the passenger seat, and she clenches her jaw against an onslaught of expletives and insults. (Because she doesn’t want to make this worse for herself, and because she’s still trying to kick the habit of biting her tongue around Zosia in order not to inflict any unwanted seizures.)

Nevertheless, she’s still pissed by the time they get home, sighing heavily in the entryway. She startles when Manousos shoves a book in her hands, breaking her out of a breathing exercise.  

“For you.”

Carol looks down, an English-Spanish dictionary looking back. Manousos is already retreating to the dining room when she calls out, “Subtle.”

The whiskey slides smoothly down her throat, coating her insides with a warmth she hasn’t felt in days. She’s dragged a chair out to the driveway to watch the sunset on the opposite horizon, as the sky fades into purple bruises. From here she can see when Zosia leaves the Delgado house and walks up the street, eventually pausing a few feet in front of her and blocking her motley view. 

“Carol.”

“Zosia.”

“What number is that one?” She gestures towards the drink in Carol’s hand, eyebrows raised. 

“My first, actually.” She smiles, saccharine, “Manousos is trying to instill a ‘no drinking between 9 and 5’ rule. Calls it horario de trabajo.” She downs a healthy gulp. “Fucker.”

Zosia nods. “Smart man. You’re kind of useless when you’re drunk.”

Her eyes narrow, teeth grinding together but allowing a slight resentment to peak through. “What are you doing here anyway? Can’t get enough of me?”

It’s Zosia’s turn to smile, cheekbones prominent against the backdrop of dwindling blues behind her. “Manousos and I are watching a movie.”

“Oh?” She finally notices the DVD case in Zosia’s hand, quirking an eyebrow as that same feeling from earlier sprouts back up. Clearly their movie night is cancelled in favor of another. “How buddy-buddy. What are you watching?”

“None of your business.”

Zosia walks away and Carol twists in her chair, trying in vain to get her to stay.“Can I—”

“No.”

The front door slams and it sounds like a train horn—bygone and forsaken. When she finally goes back inside she can hear the murmuring in the living room pause, so she slips inside her bedroom to down another glass of vodka and muffle her screams into a pillow. 

*

Zosia lets her sit on the couch tonight. 

She spends half of the movie glancing between the screen and the woman next to her, trying to figure out what’s changed. There’s a bowl of popcorn in between them, part untouched in fear she’ll accidentally graze Zosia’s hand and break whatever peaceful spell seems to have fallen over her tonight. Jaws is flashing across the screen and it heightens the suspense she already feels tightening in her stomach, always waiting for that other goddamn shoe to drop. 

Zosia sits up, body leaning towards the screen as her eyes are alight with something Carol has never seen in them before. “I love this part.”

She takes in the scene of beachgoers, all perfectly happy with limbs attached. The shark hasn’t even show up yet. “Why?”

“Just watch.”

So Carol does, as the camera moves around in murky water and pans up, music crescendoing as some poor kid gets his legs torn off. She turns back to Zosia when everyone is finally out of the water—except that kid, rest in peace—who is still watching the screen like it just gave her answers to life-long questions. She’s never looked at Carol like that. 

“What about it?”

Zosia glances at her, incredulous. “Spielberg’s reimagining of Hitchcock’s dolly zoom perfectly encapsulates Brody’s absolute terror in this moment. It’s a physical representation of his world shifting on its axis. That,” she points to the screen, “is cinema.”

Carol is at a loss for words, which doesn’t happen often, so she just says the only thought she’s ever had about this movie. “I always thought it was a bit overrated.”

“Are you serious?” She scoffs. “Do you know how many modern horror movies this film alone inspired? One technical issue and now all contemporary horror knows how to effectively instill suspense in the audience. There’s a lot of reasons not to like Spielberg, but you—” 

“Zosia,” Carol interrupts, trying to formulate her next words carefully. “Are you—are you teaching me about Jaws right now?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” She pauses. “I must miss it.”

“Jaws?”

“No.” She grabs a handful of popcorn and shoves it in her mouth, a look on her face that screams she’s trying not to call Carol a fucking idiot. “Teaching.”

This is news—such wonderful, glorious news about real Zosia—and Carol latches onto it with a fervor. “You taught? What did you teach?”

“Film, up at Sarah Lawrence.” 

The information is given, though a tad reluctantly, and Carol lets it sit inside her brain. She’s remodeling the image of this person she thought she already had a grasp on, but every day she discovers that couldn’t be further from the truth. Before Zosia was presented to Carol on a silver platter, finely tuned and mild with a whole world inside her Carol couldn’t even begin to fathom the size of; Real Zosia is singular and stupefying, not the whole world but a fragment of some long-forgotten star. “I can’t believe I didn’t know that.”

“How would you?” Real Zosia laughs but it echoes, no humor to bounce off of. “You never asked.”

There’s nothing else to be said after that, no clear defense for Carol to use. It’s true—she didn’t ask too many questions about Real Zosia before she was hived; she was always afraid of getting an answer she wouldn’t like to hear. The questions she dared slip from her mouth were always well crafted, leaving very little room for the type of honesty that could break the illusion. They could probably tell, too, what Carol did and did not want to hear. The deception went both ways, and it’s the very thing that keeps her tossing and turning at night. 

She leaves as soon as the credits roll, a muttered goodnight as she wills the guilty tears to wait until she’s all the way home.  

*

They don’t see each other for a few days after that. Carol spends it trying to fight her demons back into submission, willing them to go back down where she stores them under hear ribcage. It only works a little bit. 

“Good job on this,” she says, after digging into a particularly delicious dinner prepared by Manousos. 

He swats at the hand she put on his shoulder, rolling his eyes. He looks at Zosia across from them, then back at her. “The things I do for you, Carol Sturka.”

It’s an odd thing to say, especially when she’s complimenting him for once, but she just ignores it. Instead she gets to listen to him and Zosia drone on about something or other, words spoken faster than her ability to look them up in the dictionary Manousos practically forced her into studying. 

One word, however, catches her attention as she cracks open her second sparkling water. “Novio? Who’s novio?” Because why the fuck are Zosia and Manousos talking about boyfriends? In her own fucking house, of all places. 

“Really? That’s what you picked up on?” Zosia has the audacity to look at her like she’s the one who’s done something wrong. “We’re talking about one of his exes.”

“Oh.” Okay. Simple enough. The white-hot jealousy recedes. Wait—“Hold on. Manousos is gay?” She turns, jaw practically on the floor. “You’re gay?”

He shrugs, taking another bite.

“Honestly, Carol, it’s like you’ve never had a conversation with him. You’ve been living in the same house for months.”

She turns back to Zosia, brows furrowing. “We speak different languages.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“The American education system’s?”

Zosia shakes her head, somehow just as unbelieving as Carol. “His favorite movie is First Wives Club.”

“How the fuck would I know that?”

“We watched it the other night.”

Carol wants to scream but nothing comes out, and all she can do is wave her hands around in indignation. “You didn’t invite me.”

“Oh, right.” Zosia chuckles. “I forgot about that.”

Zosia must feel bad about not inviting her to watch First Wives Club, because she leads Carol back to the Delgado house after dinner is done and the dishes are clean—and for the first time since starting whatever it is they’re doing, they’re not watching a horror movie. 

Not exactly. 

It’s Beetlejuice, which Carol hasn’t seen since it first came out. (Looking back on it now, it’s clear her little heart had a crush on Winona Ryder that equal parts terrified and excited her. At the time she said it was because the sandworms scared her, which her mom believed. For a little while.) 

To distract herself from memories of youth, she chances a question. “Is film something you always wanted to do?”

“Yeah. It was…” Zosia doesn’t take her eyes off the screen but she tilts her head towards Carol, the answer spoken into the air between them. “It was how I escaped when I was younger. Watching movies taught me how to speak different languages, and how to imagine places other than my own.”

It’s spoken like an admission—like a secret—and Carol yearns for more. “What kind of classes did you teach?”

“A bit of everything.”

Okay, so she might have to work for it. That’s fine. “What was your favorite?”

“Love stories.”

“That’s surprising.”

“Is it?” Zosia finally meets her eyes, the evil demon trying to infiltrate a family’s home be damned. “My thesis was about love stories not told as love stories.”

It is surprising, and Carol is once again putting up a load bearing wall in the foundation of her knowledge, hoping one day it might resemble the woman before her. “Do you have a favorite?”

“Love story?” Zosia pauses, a beat of silence burrowing. “Not yet.”

When Carol goes home later that night, she diagnoses herself with tachycardia. 

*

June feels hotter than usual—happy Pride to me—maybe because she got a late start on the yard work this morning. Either way she is dripping in sweat by the middle of the afternoon, arms tense and sore as she pulls another weed out from the soil. This has always been her preferred method of exercise, can’t bear the thought of putting in so much physical work unless there’s a result on the other end of it, and the number of weeds growing in the backyard make it a necessity. Half a million dollars and a house full of weeds—a common complaint lodged between her and Helen on the weekend mornings they spent out here, Carol pulling and huffing as Helen watched on from the shade of the patio. It nips, this small moment of remembering, and she puts a little more heft behind the next pull so the nostalgia might get hauled out along with the roots. 

It doesn’t work. She needs a fucking drink.

When she checks the fridge it’s almost empty, mentally telling herself to call later so she can go grocery shopping, then swears loudly when she can’t find what she’s looking for.

“Manousos!”

He trots in from the living room. “¿Qué?”

“Did you drink my lime La Croix?” He sighs, looking guilty. “We agreed on six each, dude. Seis for you, and seis for me.”

“I take yours when you, how do you say…” He tilts his head back, hand miming a drink. “Glug, glug, glug.” 

It would be funny if she wasn’t trained to take everything extremely personally. “Are you fucking with me right now?”

“Bad for you, and saving the world.” He taps the side of his head as he turns. “Clear minds, Carol Sturka.”

“You’re a slimy bastard, do you know that? Just an absolute fucking dick.”

She can hear him laughing under his breath, so she rolls up a piece of scrap paper and launches it at the back of his head.

Apparently both Manousos and Zosia woke up and chose violence against her, because Brokeback fucking Mountain is playing out before her eyes later that evening—every single moment of cool denial and vehement remorse. She tries shoving popcorn down her throat in a vain attempt to get the lump out of it, but by the time Jack monlogues his heartbreak on a random mountain in backwater fucking Wyoming, she can feel the tears slipping down her cheeks. 

They must glisten in the light because Zosia leans towards her, hand on the back of the couch for leverage. “Are you crying?”

“Mm-mm.” She wipes her face. “Nope.”

The realization sinks in then, not unlike an anvil dropped on a head. “Shit, I didn’t even think about it.”

“It’s fine, I’m fine.” She stands, trying to get her bearings. “I’m just gonna head out early tonight, if that’s okay with you?” She doesn’t wait, can only think of getting to the door and getting home as fast as possible. 

“Carol—”

“Have a good night, Zosia.”

She offers a weak smile because this isn’t Zosia’s fault. None of it is. 

It’s always been hers. 

Her room is especially desolate that night. The bed is cold and only half of it is lived in, because the thing she’s been trying to run from always catches up with her. She doesn’t even have the energy to pour herself a drink, can only collapse under the weight of all the regrets piled up into something she’s been calling a life. 

What was even the point, in the end? Everyone knows now. She shrouded herself in the shadows and named it safety, forcing the one person that has ever truly loved her into obscurity along with her. An author and her manager, two friends going out for drinks, only a wife at home. What was the fucking point? What is left now that it’s all gone? 

She falls asleep with the answers just out of reach. 

The next morning she sits on the back patio, sunglasses over her eyes as she pretends to read. Really she’s looking at Helen’s grave, using Winterson’s Written on the Body as a distraction when the hollowed earth in front of her becomes overwhelming. 

It’s here that Zosia finds her, offering a lime La Croix like a white flag. Carol takes it, a question in her eyes. 

“A peace offering,” Zosia explains.

“How did you know about this?” She indicates the can in her grip, condensation dripping over her fingertips. 

Zosia sighs, seemingly contrite for the first time since Carol’s known her—real her. “Manousos was actually covering for me. I like to steal them when you’re not looking.”

“You could just get your own.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

They smile, maybe the most genuine ones in months, and it feels a little bit like deliverance. 

*

Carol should have known better—that the peace would only last so long because she would inevitably fuck it up. She always does, because it’s the only thing she’s ever been good at. 

Manousos drove his ambulance to the nearest radio station earlier that day, citing something about waves and frequencies. Carol just waved goodbye, figuring he’d explain more when he got back. It’s how she finds herself at Zosia’s place for dinner, giant bowls of pasta in front of them as they stuff their mouths standing over the kitchen counter. They had been too hungry to wait, both severely underestimating just how long it would take to make their own sauce from scratch. 

She wipes her mouth on the back of a paper towel, watching Zosia for a moment before saying what’s on her mind. “Can I ask something?” She continues when Zosia nods absemindedly, “What are we doing here?”

“I invited you.”

“No,” she laughs, can’t help it, “I mean, what was with the whole staring at me thing? You know, before we started watching movies.”

Zosia stops eating, placing her fork carefully on the side of her plate before meeting Carol’s eyes. “I was trying to study you.”

“Like some kind of science experiment?” 

“I wanted to put a concrete face to all these memories I have swirling around in my head.”

She picks her fork back up and Carol watches, a spike of adrenaline pumping throughout her body. “From when we… were together?”

“Yes.” Another bite taken, chewed slowly and meticously. “And more.”

“More what?”

“About you.”

“Me,” and it’s not quite a question, and not quite a statement. (To her own ears, after a lifetime of listening to her own voice, she knows it sounds like a plea.)

“It’s like one corner of my brain is taken up by this…” Zosia pauses, eyes scrunching up as she thinks. “What’s the word for when you bring a bunch of things together into one?”

“Combination?”

“No.”

“Mixture?” Zosia shakes her head. “Amalgamation?”

“Yes, I have an amalgamation of everyone’s thoughts and memories and feelings about you,” she points to a spot near her temple, “right here. And I guess I was having trouble processing that.”

Carol pushes her plate away, no longer hungry. Shifting on her feet, she elects to dig her grave a little deeper. “And when you say amalgamation, this includes all the bad things?”

“You really should have been kinder to Molly. She loved you so much it was almost pathetic.”

“Molly.” She pauses, placing the name, “As in my second girlfriend, Molly? Ew, no.”

“She trusted you with that information.” Zosia uses her fork to point at her, “That kink was perfectly natural, and honestly a healthy—”

She puts her hands over her ears, “Can’t hear you, sorry.” She only takes them away when Zosia rolls her eyes, eating her pasta again. “Anyway, that’s not really fair.”

“What isn’t?”

“That you get to know all these things about me but you’re still, I don’t know, like a stranger.” Carol presses her lips together into something resembling a smile but Zosia only narrows her eyes, and it’s the first sign her shovel has reached six feet. 

“I don’t necessarily want this information about you.”

“Yes,” she draws out, insistent, “but you still have it.”

“Against my will.”

“Yeah, sure. But all I know about you is your thoughts on Kubrick’s filmography and that you lived in Manhattan even though it made your commute two hours long. Again, it just feels a little unfair.” She shrugs, lifting her hands in a show of loss, and starts climbing inside the hole.

“So you want to talk fair, now?”

It’s snide, a rage underneath Carol has never heard. Perhaps she should have stopped the conversation long before it got to this point, but she’s never known when to stop. She must see things through otherwise it gets caught in her throat and she will die choking on it. If she implicates, if she says and does the things instinctively sparking on her fingertips and tongue, then she is no longer alone to deal with the fallout. Two deaths are better than one. (It’s not, but this is what she must tell herself so as not to drown underneath the weight of her own guilt.)

“I just meant—”

But it’s too late to backtrack now, because Zosia is pushing her plate away and standing tall before her. “Is it fair the entire world knows every single thing about me and not you? Is it fair you get to sit on a moral high ground and constantly moan about individuality when it hasn’t even been stripped from you?”

Fighting is easier, so Carol hits the nail on the head and reminds them both of a betrayal committed long ago. “Yet.”

“It already happened to me!”

Silence rings out, a calm before the storm. “Zosia—”

“Seven billion people know every thought I’ve ever had,” she continues. “Every memory, every experience. They may know some things about you, but you still get to have secrets, Carol.” 

She’s gasping as she tries to get her words out, and Carol can see as the tears start to fall over the edge of her eyelids. “Hey—”

“I don’t have anything. Don’t you get that?” She clutches the counter in front of her, keeling; she’s not breathing right, it’s too fast, and Carol steps forward in a panic. Zosia is whispering something, panting a mantra over and over, but she can’t make it out until there’s almost no space between them: I’m nothing, I’m nothing, I’m nothing. 

It breaks her fucking heart and she’s not entirely sure what to do, so she just follows a gut feeling and grabs Zosia’s face between her hands until she can look in her eyes. “No. You’re Zosia—real Zosia. And you’re here with me. They don’t know that, do they?”

Zosia shakes her head, eyes closing. “They do. They do.”

Carol risks it and puts Zosia’s hand over her heart, doing the same and taking a steadying breath in the hopes it will be mirrored. “But they don’t know what color shirt you’re wearing right now. They don’t know which movie is playing on the television in the living room. They can’t feel your heartbeat, or count your breaths. Just me, Zosia.” She brings their foreheads together, willing it all to go away. “Just me.”

It takes a minute but the gasping becomes quieter, and Zosia tilts her head. They’re closer than they’ve been in months and maybe it’s an accident, maybe it’s not. “Please, Carol.” 

“What?” She squeezes the back of Zosia’s neck gently. “Please, what?”

“Just go.”

“Zosia—”

She’s roughly pushed back, hip painfully knocking into the counter. “Go.” 

Carol pauses, fighting the urge to linger for once in her life. Finally she relents, pausing on the front steps to breathe her own air and remind herself: she can’t force things to be better. It’s a luxury not afforded when the world, and everyone around you, is dying. 

*

It’s a quiet week after that. Her and Manousos don’t talk much outside of debating radio frequencies and just how much damage an atomic bomb would create if detonated, him often retreating to the radio towers scattered throughout the city at night to read up on their manuals. Carol lets him go, tired of trying to get people to stay. Maybe the hivemind was right about her and it’s better she’s alone. She can’t hurt anybody this way; nothing gets fucked up if she’s the only person around to deal with the consequences. 

So she spends her time reading the books Manousos left behind—the ones he got from the library, even though half of the science jargon about waves and radiation flies over her head—and writing. It’s not Wycaro, not even Bitter Chrysalis, but something altogether new. The pages are still taking shape before her eyes but there are words on them, whether or not anybody besides her will ever read them. 

She’s in the driveway again, watching the sunset refract on the rest of the sky. She has a glass of lime La Croix (and a dash of vodka, sue her) in one hand, the fingers of the other drumming restlessly against the armrest as she thinks up character descriptions. Maybe one will have eyes the exact shade of blue the sky is right now, deep and morose; or maybe a bruise blossoms somewhere along their body at some point in the story, right on the knee because she tripped over her own two feet and landed on the wrong side of things. 

A door slams somewhere in the distance and Carol trains her eyes on the figure leaving the Delgado house, a folding lawn chair dragging behind. It’s the kind people bring to picnics and beaches, the aluminum base scraping noisily against concrete, eventually stopping right in front of her. Zosia unfolds it and sits down so she’s next to Carol but faced in the opposite direction—towards the sun. 

They don’t speak for a long time, both content to watch the sky cleave itself in two. She can’t stay quiet forever, but her voice is only a murmur when she decides to speak. “I’m sorry. For everything. For what happened while you were still—while you were, you know. And for not knowing how to deal with it after, or how to help you. I am just, so fucking sorry.”

Zosia sighs, stealing the glass from her hand and taking a drink. “You can’t fix this for me, Carol.”

“I know I can’t. I know that.” She turns, taking in the golden tones of light next to her. “But I—”

“You can’t,” Zosia turns too, her eyes slightly amber in the glow of the sun, “and I don’t want you to. I have to sort this all out for myself. Alone.” She looks away again, eyes downcast. “But I’m not the only one hurt here. What they did to you—what I did—it wasn’t okay.”

Carol presses her lips together, shrugging a shoulder. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not.” 

“Takes two to tango.”

Zosia levels with her, unimpressed by the nonchalance. “It wasn’t just the two of us. It was you and seven billion other people trying to manipulate you. And we just… left you here. I’m so sorry, Carol, for that and how I’ve been acting.”

When Carol questions her with a look, she continues, “I want to help figure all this out, and I can’t do that if I spend every moment figuring out the best way to kill you in your sleep.”

“Oh.” She laughs, because what else does she have left if not the sound of her own voice forcing a smile onto her face? 

“Kidding.” Zosia laughs too. “Kind of.”

It’s an out—of this conversation and the situation they keep finding themselves in again and again, ever since Zosia woke up with her humanity back intact—and Carol grabs onto it with both hands. “Just tell it to me straight. Should I be locking my bedroom door at night?”

“I don’t think I actually want to kill you. Maybe just the idea of you.”

“The idea of me, huh? Sounds pleasant.”

“It’s not. But unfortunately the idea doesn’t quite match up with what’s in front of me anymore.”

Carol steals her drink back, smirking. “Talk to me nice.”

Zosia takes the glass again, unfazed. “You are really bad at pushing your own luck.”

“I know, I’m trying to work on it.”

She stands up, turning around her chair until they’re facing the same direction. It’s so much brighter from this point-of-view, sunrays catching on everything around them. It’s golden but also something else too, like topaz and the color of Helen’s coffee in the morning. Carol always gave her shit for it, those mugs half full of milk. She laughs and it’s real this time, genuine and liberating. It might be the first real thing she’s done since breathing deeply in Zosia’s kitchen, or dreaming up a character that may yet be unburdened by this life.  

Zosia looks at her questioningly and she shakes her head, trying to find the words. “All that time I was dealing with being alone, you were dealing with the exact opposite.”

She hums, “Seems to me like we’re both still alone, in a way. Now we’re just alone… together.”

“Alone together.” Carol smiles, watching the sky erupt into orange. “I like that.”

They stay there until the sun is firmly tucked away for the night, a silent promise that waking up might be a little easier tomorrow. 

*

Life has been a little easier, days flying by as her and Manousos combine their craftiness with any leftover knowledge Zosia has from being part of the Weird-Mastermind-Collective. Sometimes they spend their whole day up at the nearest radio tower, tinkering with the controls and figuring out how it works without sending a giant warning sign to the rest of the world about what they’re getting up to. It’s been so easy that Carol almost forgot, which makes the day gnaw harder at her bones when it finally comes. 

It feels heavy before she wakes up, limbs moving in slow motion as she pushes the hair out of her eyes to face the empty side of the bed. It was not an unusual thing to wake up alone before—before the Joining, before the death and everything that came after—Helen an early riser while Carol was prone to sleeping in and fighting off any potential hangovers. It stings, thinking of all those morning moments she could have spent with her wife instead of in bed, nursing herself back to some semblance of a well-adjusted person. 

It’s so much easier to fall back asleep than linger on the thought. 

The second time she wakes up must be later in the afternoon, the soft murmuring of voices somewhere in the house an excuse to get up and distract herself from the haze. She drags herself out of bed, wrapping a robe tightly around her body as she creeps downstairs. Zosia and Manousos are in the kitchen, cutting fruit as they mutter to each other. Carol’s Spanish has gotten a lot better but she still only catches snippets, one phrase standing out from all the rest.  

She briskly turns around and goes back to her room, not caring if they hear her stomping up the stairs, Zosia’s soft voice ringing in her ears: El cumpleaños de su esposa.

Of course Zosia would remember. Apparently she remembers most things about Carol’s pathetic fucking life, which is just fucking perfect.

She makes sure the shower is scalding before she steps inside, letting the water turn her shoulders a raw pink so something else feels scraped and broken open. She ends up sitting on the tile floor, curling inward to hug her knees to her chest. If she angles her head correctly then she can’t tell the difference between the droplets and her tears; if she tries hard enough, she can make herself believe there are no tears at all. 

But that would be lying, and she’s trying to do less of that these days. Now she must sit with herself and a ghost, with a body buried in the backyard and a headstone that might be the only honest piece of art she’s ever made. She must stand still even though all she’s been doing is running, because her grief has finally caught up with her in the shower on a sunny day. Her wife is gone, fragments scattered into seven billion strangers, and all she wants to do is pull the memories close—cover them in the blue and green silhouettes of the northern lights, compress the outlines into the shape of their wedding outfits, or flatten the day they met until Carol can sit in the umbra. She wants so many things, but nothing is going to give. 

Carol doesn’t remember getting out of the shower or getting dressed, just aware she’s sitting at the edge of her unmade bed and staring at the sky, at the horizon beyond her window. There is no longer an urge to cry, only a staticky sort of numbness washing over like water. She can’t get Helen’s face out of her head, and maybe she shouldn’t want to. 

Something rustles and she looks over to find a slip of paper poking out from underneath the door. She can’t bear the idea of standing up again, so she leaves it for now, laying back down and falling back asleep.

It is dark when she wakes next, the clock on her nightstand glowing: 9:24 PM. 

She’d feel grosser for sleeping all day if she still wasn’t so fucking sad, but it’s less dense now—like wearing those stupid ankle weights people put on when they go for walks around the neighborhood. Twenty-pound ones, leaden and strenuous, but focalized. She can walk outside, away from the ghost and the body, and make her way down the street. 

(The note was still under the door when she looked. Seven words and perhaps a salvation: I’m here if you want to talk.)

Zosia opens the door before she can knock, and for a second Carol is back where she was five months ago—when every move she made was watched and anticipated, someone always waiting on the other side. The panic must show on her face because Zosia is quick to clarify, “I saw you coming through the window.”

She takes a deep breath, willing herself to believe the explanation right in front of her. She notices the glow of the television from where she’s standing. “Late night movie marathon?”

“The Before trilogy,” Zosia nods. “Want to join?”

Carol considers it for a second, then nods. 

They don’t really talk as they finish the movie and roll into the next, a quiet settling quite serenely between them on the couch. Instead they watch two people circle each other for years, pulling at an invisible string until there’s nowhere else to turn. 

Towards the end of the second movie, Zosia mumbles an admission: “I had a brother, once. He was my best friend.” Carol can hear the mourning in between the syllables and waits for the rest, letting Zosia sound them out in her own time. “He was a lot older than me but it was always the two of us against the world. He’s the one that taught me how to swim in the ocean, waves crashing at our feet from all those boats.”

She wants to know more, like a craving gone thus unsatisfied, so she asks for it. “What happened?”

Zosia swallows. “He was driving, and the only person I’ve ever loved was sitting in the passenger seat. They crashed and neither of them made it.”

“Shit, that’s…” A risk made, as she reaches out to hold a hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’ve had a long time to process it.” Zosia squeezes her fingers, meeting her eyes. “You haven’t.”

Carol doesn’t say anything else, just continues watching the movie and holding Zosia’s hand. The night is a little easier to bear this way so it’s no surprise she falls asleep. When she wakes the next morning, birds singing somewhere in a tree as her hand feels warm with another’s, she slips quietly out the front door—pausing only once. 

Only when she’s home, tucked back into her own bed and mind reeling, does she realize she didn’t have a single drink. 

*

Manousos has given up on trying to explain the inner mechanics of radio towers and started experimenting on them by himself. Carol is perfectly fine with it—she was never going to be a woman in STEM, she used to write softcore porn for a living—trusting that he will come get her when he needs her. Sometimes it’s Zosia he needs, and those are the days Carol locks herself away in her office to keep writing the novel she’s no longer sure is fiction. 

It’s on one the days Manousos doesn’t need either of them that she notices something has shifted, a slight relocation of vibes in the air. They’re all fighting less and less, yes, but as she writes a character with eyes such a deep brown there are no words for that shade of it, she realizes Zosia no longer looks at her with poorly disguised loathing. Indeed, Zosia might actually like her now, which is something she was never sure she’d live to see. (She really did sleep with her bedroom door locked for a spurt of time, because Zosia used to be scary, and mean.)

Only to make sure she’s not wrong, she knocks on Zosia’s front door that evening. She opens it, already concerned. “Carol? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just thought—well, Manousos is staying at the radio tower tonight. And I’m bored.”

Zosia smiles knowingly, which is how they find themselves half a bottle of gin deep an hour later and fucking giggling. Some indie film is playing on mute in the background, long forgotten because they’ve spent the last half hour trying to outdo each other with the worst dad jokes they could think of, and Carol covers her face with her hands as she tries to recover from the latest bout of laughter, stomach aching.

“Carol Sturka.”

She sits up straight, taking on the serious manner Zosia is now presenting and lowers her voice, “Zosia NoLastName.”

“It’s—”

Carol covers her ears with her hands, loudly singing, “Don’t care!” 

Zosia launches a piece of popcorn at her face—does she only eat fucking popcorn?—to get her to listen. “Truth or dare?”

“Oh my fucking god,” she groans. “Are you twelve?”

“Humor me.”

She sighs dramatically, pretending to think about it. “Truth.”

Another piece of popcorn is thrown at her. “Boring.”

“I didn’t want to play this stupid game anyway. Plus, you already know everything about me.”

“Not everything,” Zosia exclaims. “Your first kiss was with Sally Madsen, but what did it feel like to you?”

“Really? That’s what you want to know?” Zosia nods, so Carol tries to get her brain to conjure up a forty-year-old memory. “It felt slimy, yet also dry. She had a bad lick lipping habit.” She pauses, trying to figure out what she just said wrong. “Lip licking habit? Oh my god.” She buries her head in her hands while Zosia laughs maniacally. 

“Oh, you are drunk.”

She swats Zosia’s hand away from where it’s pointing in her face, because she really can’t deny the pleasant warmth in her stomach right now. “Shut up. Anyway, it’s your turn. Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Boring.”

“Was that supposed to be an imitation of me?”

Carol pauses, rethinking every decision that has led her to this point. “It was supposed to be, yeah.”

Zosia tries really hard not to laugh, and really, it’s an admirable effort. “Ask me your question.”

“What was your best kiss?”

“Fishing now?”

“No. No,” she insists. “I’m simply staying with the theme you have created.”

“Hm.” Zosia looks at the ceiling as she recalls, a wisp of a smile on her face. “I was thirty-four, and my friends had convinced me to go out to celebrate the end of the semester. We met outside while I was trying to get a car home and god, it must have been three in the morning by that point, but the longer we talked the more awake I felt. It only ended when my car finally showed up, but she grabbed me before I could get in and just… planted the hottest, messiest kiss on me. Then simply walked away. I never even learned her name.” She finally looks back at Carol, brows furrowing from what she must see. “What?”

“She?” Her voice cracks when it comes out, and Carol doesn’t think she’s ever been more mortified. 

“You think you’re the only one here who likes to fuck women?”

No, this is the most mortified she’s ever been. “I didn’t want to assume, or anything.”

“They wouldn’t have chosen me for you if there wasn’t already some inclination.”

“Oh, you mean the master manipulators taking over the world? I didn’t realize they had my best interests at heart.”

It could easily dissolve into a sobering moment, but Zosia manhandles it back into the idiocracy of being middle-aged and playing a child’s game. “Okay. Dare.”

“For you? It’s my turn.”

“No, for you.”

“You can’t choose for me. That’s literally not how this game works.” Her words are a little slurred, and she’s only comforted by the fact Zosia’s are too. 

“I dare you to go skinny dipping.”

Carol pauses, brain trying to catch up to what the fuck is happening. “Not that this should be my first question, but where in the fuck would I even do that?”

“The Gibson house.”

“Fuck, that’s right. I forgot they had a pool.”

“And a hot tub.”

She catches the suggestion, and she turns to the woman next to her with a sly smile. “Have you been sneaking over to the Gibson house to use their hot tub?”

“That’s a truth, and it’s not my turn yet.” Zosia stands up, offering a hand to Carol. “Come on.”

“I am not drunk enough for this.”

Zosia grabs the bottle off the coffee table and pours a hefty shot for each of them, shoving the glass in Carol’s hand. “Cheers.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

Next thing she knows they’re standing at the foot of the pool in her neighbor’s backyard, moonlight refracting off the ripples made by the breeze. “Is this thing heated at least? It’s fucking freezing tonight.”

“Stop whining, you big baby.” Zosia shoves her shoulder. “Get in.”

Carol listens and grabs the hem of her shirt before pausing, doing a quick mental calculation. “You are not watching me get undressed.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

She rolls her eyes, trying to ignore the tingling flaring up across her skin. “But that was before, so… turn around.”

“You’re no fun.”

“And you’re annoying.”

Zosia relents, dutifully turning away so Carol can get fucking naked to go swimming in her fucking neighbor’s pool. God, not even she could make this shit up on her best writing day. The water is actually warm when she gets in, a respite from the cool air. It’s mixing well with the gin still coursing through her, and it’s all shaping up to be a cocktail of a night she can’t resist. “This is actually really nice.”

“The hot tub is even better. Can I turn around now?”

“No, it’s your turn.” She treads, watching Zosia’s back tense. “Truth or dare?”

They both wait with bated breaths for the answer. “Dare.”

“Get in the pool,” which is the challenge they already knew was coming.

“With my clothes on?”

It’s an attempt at facetiousness, and one that doesn’t work. “Get in the pool, Zosia.”

She sighs, almost like defeat. “Turn around.”

Carol does, listening intently to the sounds of clothes rustling and water lapping against concrete as Zosia joins her. It’s silent for a minute, both of them unsure about the next move. 

“What if we promise to keep our eyes above the water?”

“Deal.” 

They move at the same time, timid smiles as they reorient themselves in the absurd situation they have willingly created. “I haven’t swam in so long,” Zosia says, arms languidly moving. “I almost forgot how good it feels.”

At some point they end up in a splash war, both of them fighting for air through laughter and trails of water flung in their faces. When they settle again, their bodies closer than either realized, Zosia smiles at her. “Your turn.”

Carol assesses the night, how easy and thrilling it’s been. Charged—because it’s the only way she knows how to describe it, and she’s willing to stick her finger in the socket and blow a fuse in order to find out just how far the sparks fly. “Truth.” She looks at Zosia, looks at her, and eyes the droplets falling from jawline to collarbone. She wants to lick them away to see if they taste like redemption. “I want to kiss you so badly right now.”

Zosia inhales, sharp and quick. “I want you to.”

It’s all the permission she needs, and then she’s grabbing Zosia’s face and crushing their mouths together in a kiss that feels like too much and a long time coming. Zosia pushes her tongue between parted lips and someone moans, maybe both of them, and she maneuvers until Zosia’s back is against the concrete so she can grip it with one hand for leverage. The other is under water and sliding over skin she hasn’t felt in so long, slippery with longing. She moans, starving and needy until Zosia takes that hand and places it between her legs. Carol moans—again, always again and again until Zosia can’t get the sound out of her head—at the wetness she finds there, different and warmer than the water they’re submerged in. 

She wants to sink, underneath and inside, but an echo sounds from the back of her mind. She can’t do this until she knows, so she grabs Zosia’s jaw and pushes it away from her own, lips trailing after each other. “Zosia, look at me.” 

She doesn’t, eyes closed as she bucks her hips against Carol’s hand. She pulls it back, her other hand pressing more firmly against the cheekbone cradled in it. “I need you to look at me.” Brown eyes finally meet her own, and she’s sure the desire she sees is just as potent in her own. “Do you want this?”

“I want this.” She presses her lips against Carol’s. “I do.” Once, twice more. “I do.”

Carol whimpers, relieved and hungry and aching. “Thank fucking god.”

They don’t talk anymore, and Carol finally puts her fingers where she wants them and sinks into a heat she hasn’t felt in months, thumb working Zosia’s clit the way she knows Zosia likes it. (That voice in the back of her head—is this what Zosia likes? Or is it just a standard that worked for the hivemind? She only had two weeks and it never felt like enough time to figure out what was real and what wasn’t.)

The voice is drowned out when Zosia comes quick and dirty, immediately switching their positions until Carol’s back drags painfully—deliciously, she can’t deny it—against the edge of the pool. This is where she’s been waiting to belong, her back sore because Zosia is in front of her and sucking marks into the side of her neck, hand inching closer and closer to the place she’s always needed her. (The voice again, why does she gotta be so goddamn fuckable, but really this whole time it’s been Carol that wants to be—)

Zosia bites down and Carol cries out, a hand suddenly over her mouth as she helplessly succumbs to the torrent that is Real Zosia fucking her in her neighbor’s pool. Her mind swims with alcohol and a yearning she hasn’t felt since college. Zosia must take pity on her because two fingers thrust into her a second later, curling perfectly and right where she needs it. It doesn’t take long for her to come, weeks of fighting this spilling over until a white-hot sensation of bliss that curls out from her center, exploding colors behind her eyes as she whines and chants against the hand trying to drown her out. (It’s Zosia’s name, the mantra coming from her lips, because it’s always Zosia, Zosia, Zosia.)

*

When she wakes the next morning, body sliding against foreign sheets in the early light of bedroom she does not recognize, she finds the other half of the bed empty. Carol sits up, straining to hear anything but the sound of her own breathing, but the house is silent and barren. 

She throws herself back against the pillows, head pounding with a hangover and pure, unbridled shame. 

Okay, so she may fucked up. 

Big time.

Again.