Chapter Text
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Lying in bed at home, Trinity can hear a heart monitor’s steady beeping. It’s slightly tachy. Not alarmingly so, but enough that she’d have to keep an eye on it, if it were real and not her brain playing tricks on her.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Brains like doing that, playing tricks. As a kid, she once read a creepy story about cave diving and ended up falling into a research rabbit hole about the whole phenomenon. Apparently, when it’s that dark and quiet at the bottom of a cave, the human brain can’t handle it. It copes by making you think you’re seeing something that isn’t actually there. Or, in her case, hearing something.
Beep. Beep. Be—
Trinity blindly reaches for her phone. The brightness forces her to squint to make out the time. 3:47. On a normal day she’d have to be up in a few hours for work, but it’s her day off. That should reassure her, but if she’s already hearing phantom heart monitors, she has little hope that her day off will do anything other than drive her crazy.
“You’re like a shark,” Kat once told her. Trinity can picture her perfectly as she said it. Collapsed onto the mats in a sweaty pile of limbs, her face pink from exertion as she grinned up at a still-training Trinity. By that point in the day, enough stray hairs had escaped from Kat’s braid to form a tiara-like crown at her hairline and it shook as Kat spoke, finishing, “If you stop moving, you’ll die.”
Trinity should turn over and go back to sleep. But with her luck, and the mutinous way her thoughts are drifting, she worries that the next sound she wakes up to will be the crack of Kat’s ribs as the paramedics tried to force her heart to beat. It’s no use, Trinity remembers thinking hysterically. You can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to.
Trinity drags a hand over her face and groans. She forces her body out of bed, more tumbling onto her feet than landing on them. The judges would take points off for sure. Her eyelids hang heavy over her vision as she makes her way out of her room and down the hall, one hand on the wall for navigation and balance. In her half-conscious state, it takes until she reaches the end of the hallway to notice the shadowed figure standing in her kitchen.
Trinity freezes. She thinks of sharks and dying and all the things she could use as a weapon that are closer to the figure than to her. The figure turns, lifts something—a tea kettle—from the stove, and pours some liquid into a mug on the counter. Trinity’s fear falters. Since when do intruders stop to make tea? It finally clicks in her sleep-addled mind—it’s not an intruder. It’s Whitaker.
The iciness of fear ebbs away, leaving behind the uncomfortable warmth of the spit in the back of your mouth right before you throw up. She isn’t nauseous, though. Just sick of herself.
Whitaker puts the kettle back on the stove, picks up his mug, and blows on it as he turns toward the hallway, only to jolt as he finally notices her standing there. Trinity gives a delayed, sarcastic, “Boo.”
“Sorry,” Whitaker says like a reflex. His apologies are as common as his expressions of gratitude. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Obviously.”
A moment of silence stretches. Whitaker gestures at the kettle. “Want some tea?”
Trinity isn’t a big tea drinker. “Sure,” she says anyway. She goes over to lean in the kitchen doorway and watch as Whitaker plays dutiful housewife. He gets another mug from the cabinet, fishes out a second teabag from a box Trinity knows she didn’t buy, and pours her a mug of steaming tea. “Thanks,” she mutters as he hands it to her.
It’s hot, but she wraps her hands around the mug without flinching. “Let’s see who can hold their hand above the fire the longest,” Kat dared her once. They were at some bonfire party on a beach Trinity doesn’t remember the name of. She wanted to pull Kat away from the flames, but she didn’t. She should’ve. She takes a sip.
“Where’d you get this stuff?” she asks, surprised at the not-horrible taste.
Whitaker swallows his mouthful of tea to answer, “Nurse Kim at work. She said it helps with insomnia.”
“So she got you a box?” Trinity asks skeptically.
Whitaker shrugs. “She said she had an extra one.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Trinity takes another sip. “That why you’re up at four in the morning? Insomnia?” She says it in mocking, exaggerated pieces, in-som-ni-uh, to make sure he knows that she doesn’t really care.
“I guess.” A touch of his defensiveness rears its head as he turns it back on her. “What about you? What woke you up?”
“A mouse scurrying around my kitchen,” she says dryly, and any spark of fight he may have had in him fizzles out immediately.
“Shit, sorry. I tried to be quiet. I won’t do it again—”
She cuts him off with a snort. “Relax, Huckleberry, I’m just fucking with you.” She turns back to the hallway, shaking her head. “You make it so easy.”
“Yeah, well, goodnight,” Whitaker says pointedly, like it’s remotely a good comeback. As she reaches her door, he tries again with a sharp, “Sweet dreams.”
Trinity doesn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her falter, but when the door closes behind her, she leans back against it for support. She doesn’t really remember the dream that woke her up. From the beeping, she assumes she was at the hospital. She remembers fear, a body looming over her. She couldn’t move. Or—she didn’t move. Maybe she could have moved if she tried, but she didn’t.
The mug she holds at her sternum isn’t hot anymore, just warm, like someone’s hand in hers. She turns and puts it down on the nearest available surface, which turns out to be the dining chair still sitting next to her door. It’s only as she stands next to it, flexing her hands to get rid of the phantom sensation of touch, that she realizes she forgot to put the chair under the doorknob like she has every other night since Whitaker moved in.
For a minute, she stares at it, debating whether it would be worse to touch the mug again or leave her door unbarred. At the sound of Whitaker’s shuffling footsteps coming down the hallway, Trinity snatches the mug and shoves it onto her dresser, pushing a handful of hair ties off the other end to make room for it. After quickly wedging the chair under the knob, she crawls into bed with her back to the door and shuts her eyes tightly.
The guestroom door creaks twice, once as Whitaker opens it and once as it closes behind him. In the silence that follows, the beeping returns. Still a bit tachy like before. It takes a minute for Trinity to realize that it matches her slightly-racing heartbeat perfectly.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
*
Distracted by the TV, Trinity blindly grabs the next item from her laundry basket and only realizes as she holds it up that it’s her underwear. She darts a glance at Whitaker, but he’s fully focused on his dusting. Trinity quickly folds her underwear and tucks them under the already-folded clothes in the basket before he can notice.
At that moment, the dryer sings its annoying jingle to announce the end of its cycle. Trinity stands to go move her clothes over, carrying her basket on her hip, and passes by Whitaker, who’s now going down the hall with the duster.
“Nice Cinderella impression,” she snarks as she opens the hallway closet to access the washer and dryer. When Whitaker got back from that Milton guy’s funeral half an hour ago, he started cleaning with weird, determined intensity. She’s not an idiot—she gets that he’s probably trying to distract himself from thinking about the patient he lost—but that doesn’t mean it’s not annoying when he makes too much noise and forces her to rewind her show to hear what she missed. Free maid service or not, she figures she’s owed a bit of snarking.
Whitaker turns back toward her with a familiar, clueless expression. “What?”
“Cinderella,” Trinity repeats as she piles the clothes from the dryer on top of the already-folded ones in the basket. Whitaker still appears confused when she goes to start moving the wet stuff from the washer into the now-empty dryer, so she says, “Blonde chick, abused by her step-family, forced to clean while they all went to the ball?” Whitaker blinks at her. “Seriously?”
“I mean, I know of her, but not anything specific about her.” Whitaker shrugs defensively and continues down the hall to the closet where Trinity keeps her cleaning supplies. “She’s a princess, right?”
“I was more referring to her scullery maid origins, but yes, she eventually marries the prince.” Trinity shuts the dryer door and hits the button to start the cycle. “Guess you weren’t a big Disney household.”
“I liked Cars when I was young,” Whitaker offers. He opens the closet and exchanges the duster for the vacuum. “The movie, I mean, not the vehicles.”
“Pretty sure that’s Pixar.”
Whitaker deflates visibly. “Oh.”
Trinity carries her basket back over to the couch. “I’d say you missed out, but Cinderella’s a pretty mid princess, comparatively. Now Mulan? That’s a girl worth fighting for right there.” Trinity smirks at her own joke, but evidently Whitaker hasn’t seen that movie either because there’s no flicker of recognition in his face. “Oh come on, nothing? What about Megara, you ever see Hercules?”
Whitaker’s features scrunch up as he rolls the vacuum down the hall to the living room. “Maybe once at a friend’s house? I don’t remember anything about it except for the guy with fire for hair.”
Trinity shakes her head in disdain. “Jesus Christ. Next to you, I’m practically a Disney adult.”
“Sorry.”
She rolls her eyes. “You always are.”
Whitaker abruptly turns on the vacuum, drowning out anything else she might want to say, and the bitchy look on his face as he does it actually makes her bark out a laugh. Thankfully, he’s focused on cleaning and the vacuum covers the sound, so she’s the only one who knows that he successfully made her laugh.
Trinity schools her expression back into one of vague annoyance, pointedly raises the volume on the TV, and grabs the next T-shirt from the top of her basket.
*
Trinity’s restless Saturday night translates into a sleep-in Monday morning, meaning she doesn’t have time to shower or eat breakfast or make herself a lunch unless she wants to risk showing up late for rounds. When she slams out of her bedroom, rushing and pissed, she finds Whitaker waiting for her at the dining room table with eyes that are somehow bigger, sadder, and more annoying than usual. The whole picture reminds her of that movie where the owner died but his dog kept waiting for him every day at the train station anyway.
Trinity scowls. “Now we’re both gonna be late, dumbass.”
Whitaker smartly does not respond and hurries to follow her out the door. He manfully keeps up with her power-walking until they get about halfway to the hospital, when he shrugs off one of his backpack straps to start rummaging through his bag.
“Watch where you’re going, Jesus,” Trinity says as she tugs him out of the way of a cyclist speeding across the sidewalk. “Whatever you’re looking for can’t be more important than not getting a fucking concussion.”
“I’m looking for—ah!—this.” Whitaker retrieves his quarry—a lumpy, squarish package wrapped in a plastic bag—and holds it out to Trinity.
“The fuck is it?” She wrinkles her nose and makes no move to take it.
“When I didn’t hear anything from your room, I figured you’d slept in and maybe wouldn’t have time to make your own lunch, so I made an extra sandwich.” Whitaker keeps holding it out to her despite whatever likely-mutinous look she’s giving him.
“If you knew I was still sleeping, you could’ve woken me up, asshole,” she seethes.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Oh, I’m definitely not brave enough for that.”
Trinity narrows her eyes further and considers smacking him, but when she lifts her hand, she ends up swiping the sandwich instead. She shoves it into her bag with a grumbled, “Whatever,” and quickens her steps to force him to catch up.
They thankfully make it in time for rounds, and even if anyone noticed their near-tardiness, they don’t have a second to spare for admonishment with the busy morning they have. Back-to-back-to-back traumas, on top of their regular caseload, mean that Trinity spends the morning running from one room to the next. After missing breakfast, she attempts to take an early lunch around eleven, but just as she has the thought, they get notice of yet another incoming trauma, this one involving a degloved hand. She can’t turn down the chance to get on that—or to see if Javadi will go two-for-two in fainting at the sight of degloved limbs.
By the time Trinity finishes with the trauma, her stomach bitches at her loudly enough that she beelines for the lockers to grab her lunch. Only, when she gets to the staff lounge to eat, she finds it full of other people also taking their lunch break. Trinity hesitates outside the door for too long and another trauma arrives to pull her away.
The staff lounge is still full by the time Trinity gets another spare minute, so instead of standing outside the door like an idiot, she cuts her losses and ducks into the stairwell. She goes one landing down and pops a squat to unwrap the sandwich Whitaker made her. She takes a tentative sniff and then a bite, expecting bland, beige awfulness.
Instead, she’s pleasantly surprised. He used some of the cold cuts from the groceries she had delivered yesterday and he didn’t put any tomato on hers, which she knows he put on his own ‘cause she smelled it as she walked by the kitchen this morning. That shit always lingers and if she’d had a spare second to do so, she would’ve gagged. There’s also some kind of tangy sauce on the bread and it takes her a few bites to realize it’s leftover tzatziki from the Greek food they had for dinner last night. Some of it gets on her upper lip and, as she licks it away, she realizes her mouth has pulled into a small smile. She scowls and takes another, more annoyed bite.
After a morning of fasting, she’s ravenous, and she ends up scarfing down the first half of the sandwich with relish. She tries to slow herself on the second half. As she takes her third measured bite, a door opens a few floors up, briefly flooding the stairwell with sound until it falls shut again, leaving only a single voice.
“—hate going down there,” the voice says with a groan. Trinity makes a face at it instinctively. They sound fucking whiny. “They were chaotic enough before they lost a senior resident. Now you’re lucky if they have a spare second to give you the rundown on a case before throwing it at you and running away.”
“They lost a senior resident?” a second, less annoying voice asks.
“Oh, yeah, you haven’t heard?” The annoyance in the first person’s voice dims slightly in favor of the kind of excitement that comes with having good tea to spill. “Dr. Langdon’s in rehab. Rumor is he got caught stealing drugs.”
“Langdon? Really?” the second voice questions disbelievingly.
“Yeah, I know, it came out of nowhere.” The first voice lowers without actually quieting, more like a faked whisper. “Some people are saying it wasn’t even him that took them, but this bitchy new intern who planted them in his—”
“Excuse me.”
Somehow, Trinity didn’t notice Princess exiting from the family room into the stairwell until she speaks up. Princess stands on the landing one floor up from Trinity, her arms crossed over her chest as she stares pointedly up the steps in front of her. Trinity can’t see what Princess is staring at, but presumably it’s the two people who were speaking. The way Princess looks at them reminds Trinity of her mother, how she would stare someone down as if she could bruise them with how unimpressive she found them. On her mother, Trinity usually found it embarrassing. On Princess, it’s kinda hot.
“Uh, hello?” The first voice—Whiny—doesn’t sound nearly as scared as they should be with Princess glaring at them like she is. If Trinity has learned anything in the week she’s been in the Pitt, it’s to never piss off the nurses.
“Are you the general surgery consult we’ve been waiting on for two hours?” Princess asks, her eyebrows raised dangerously high.
“Uh, yes.” The sound of shifting scrubs. “We were busy.”
“Hmm.” Princess purses her lips. “And yet you had the time to gossip about our interns.”
Whiny scoffs. “We were on our way.”
“Clearly.” Princess clicks her tongue. “I’m sure Javadi will completely understand what held you up when I explain.”
“Who’s Javadi?” Whiny asks, sounding unimpressed.
“Oh?” Princess feigns surprise. “You don’t know her? You knew so much about our new staff a minute ago.”
The other voice quietly says, “Javadi is Dr. Shamsi’s husband’s name. I think that’s her kid.”
It isn’t difficult to make the jump in logic—it’s widely known that Dr. Shamsi doesn’t tolerate rumors in her department. If it gets back to her that these two doctors were gossiping while they were meant to be on a consult, well. It wouldn’t be ideal for them.
Neither Whiny nor the other voice says anything more. Two pairs of quickened footsteps grow louder as they presumably descend the stairs. They eventually come within Trinity’s line of sight, but they both walk swiftly past Princess and into the ED, so Trinity doesn’t get a good look at their faces. Princess takes a moment to smile to herself, then turns to follow them back into the ED, only to stop as she notices Trinity sitting on the floor one flight below.
The pleased triumph on Princess’ face shifts into an expression of sickening pity as she presumably realizes what Trinity must have heard. An awful, insidious shame crawls out from the pit of Trinity’s stomach. It holds her still and pathetic under Princess’ stare.
Princess’ mouth opens and Trinity braces herself for pity, but the phone in Princess’ hand rings before she can speak. Since Dana left, Princess and Perlah have been trading the charge nurse title back and forth; today, it must belong to Princess. With a conflicted expression, Princess answers the phone and turns away from Trinity, disappearing through the doors back into the ED.
Trinity stares at the doors until something wet unexpectedly touches her hand. Her sandwich, forgotten in her grasp, has started to drip. A little more than half of it remains, but her persistent hunger from earlier is gone, so she rewraps the leftovers and shoves them back into the bag. She had the foresight to bring a napkin with her, which she uses to clean off the sauce on her hand, and then crumples it into a ball in her fist.
Trinity should get back to work. The idea of it makes her stomach twist on itself, like all the nerves she ever had before a competition have come back all at once. “Some people are saying,” Whiny said. Trinity isn’t dumb enough to delude herself into thinking those people aren’t in the ED.
It makes sense. No one’s made any formal announcements or reports about what happened. Someone found out that Langdon started rehab with the physician’s health program, but it’s like Whiny said—no one else had any suspicions about Langdon before Trinity showed up. What’s easier to believe, that the guy they’ve worked with for years has been secretly stealing drugs and no one had any idea, or the bitchy new intern tried to get back at the senior resident who humiliated her by planting drugs in his locker?
It makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. The idea of working alongside people who think she would do that—fucking plant drugs—
Another door opens on a floor above and Trinity flinches at the influx of sound. She gives one last, tight squeeze to the napkin in her hand and forces herself onto her feet. As she climbs the stairs back to the ED, the advice her mother gave her before every meet echoes in her head. Shoulders back, stomach in, always keep smiling.
Trinity pushes her shoulders back, sucks in her stomach, and steels her expression. She doesn’t let herself hesitate again as she approaches the doors back into the ED.
It’s not like she hasn’t had to prove herself before. She’s beaten worse odds. She’ll do it again.
*
“Wow, Huckleberry. Some would’ve said it couldn’t be done.” Trinity stands above Whitaker as he retrieves his unused pair of back-up scrubs from his locker at the end of their shift. “For the record, I was definitely one of them. But hey, you proved us wrong.”
Whitaker ducks his chin as he shuts his locker and stands up. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
“It totally was.” After a beat, she makes a considering face and amends, “Probably.”
Whitaker looks heavenward with a sigh.
A smile threatens to twist her mouth, so Trinity gestures over her shoulder with her thumb. “I have to go finish up a chart, but I’ll meet you outside when I’m done.”
Whitaker nods and slings his bag over his shoulder. “Sounds good. I’m just gonna stop by the ICU quickly, then I’ll be out.”
Trinity lifts her eyebrows, but doesn’t say anything else. Huckleberry’s daily ICU visits are definitely not her concern. Leaving him by his locker, she goes to find the nearest computer station. As she taps her badge to sign in to her charts, she wonders idly how funny it would be if she ordered a cake to commemorate the first time Whitaker went a whole shift without soiling his scrubs. Maybe if she smeared the icing on his scrubs before letting him eat it? Hmm. That might be worth it. Also, then she’d have cake.
Her musings distract her enough that she doesn’t notice Garcia approaching until she’s only a few feet away. Trinity tries to school the probably-stupid grin on her face into something more professional. And also hot. “Hey,” she greets as casually as she can.
“Hey,” Garcia repeats in the same tone. It comes off like an amused sort of mocking, like Trinity is a kid playing at being a grownup instead of an actual adult—or maybe that’s just how Trinity feels around her.
Trinity forces her focus back to her chart and starts typing. It’s easier than trying to figure out what to do with the look in Garcia’s eye, or how it makes her stomach do an aerial twist.
They haven’t talked much since Trinity’s first shift. Until today, Garcia hasn’t spoken to her outside of cases at all. Trinity doesn’t blame her for it—she wouldn’t want to be associated with herself either, given the rumors going around. But then today, Garcia did a total 180; she picked Trinity to help with every procedure, asked her unrelated questions about her personal life during cases, and turned that frankly unfair smirk on her, almost distracting her from answering the medical questions sent her way.
Trinity doesn’t know what to make of the flip and she doesn’t like not knowing where she stands, so she focuses on her chart and wills herself not to meet Garcia’s gaze.
“So,” Garcia says when she evidently realizes that Trinity won’t be speaking again. She leans her hip against the counter next to Trinity’s computer and crosses her arms loosely below her chest. In Trinity’s periphery, Garcia ducks her chin slightly to better meet Trinity’s eyes, but Trinity keeps her focus on the screen in front of her. “I realized that we never ended up doing that perf I promised to let you scrub in on.”
Trinity nods distractedly. “Yeah, I think Crash said it ended up being a spider bite. No OR for me.”
“Yeah, but I promised you. I don’t like breaking my promises.” The words are teasing and insincere, like Garcia truly couldn’t care less about breaking a promise to an intern, but then why bother saying it at all?
Trinity shrugs one shoulder. “Not your fault.”
“Still.” Garcia shifts closer. “Let me make it up to you with a drink.”
The iron fist Trinity has around her self-control releases briefly in surprise. She squeezes it tightly again, but not quickly enough to keep herself from looking Garcia’s way. The cocky little smirk on Garcia’s lips and the smell of her, so close, make Trinity’s mouth water. She feels somehow both like a predator, salivating at the thought of its next meal, and the prey about to be eaten.
“I thought I was trouble,” Trinity says dumbly before she can stop herself. She bites down hard on her bottom lip in punishment and—Jesus fuck—Garcia’s eyes drop to Trinity’s mouth.
“You are,” Garcia says, something hungry in her voice. “Maybe I like trouble.”
You didn’t seem to like it the other day, Trinity doesn’t say, but only because she still has her bottom lip pinned in place. She looks back to her chart, hoping for a distraction, only to find that she finished writing everything she had to say. Fuck.
Trinity releases her bottom lip and, “I can’t,” falls out of her mouth.
A part of herself that’s trapped in a cage in her mind beats its fists against the bars. It screams, “What are you doing? A hot surgeon wants to buy you a drink! Say yes! Even if you don’t want to fuck her—which you do—imagine what it could do for your career!”
Over the sound of her screaming subconscious, Trinity says, “I promised a friend I’d go out with them tonight.”
Garcia’s expression doesn’t change except for the slightest squinting of her eyes. “Alright,” she says, instead of pointing out that it’s a Tuesday, or asking if the friend would mind if Garcia tagged along. “Rain check?”
Trinity nods too fast. “Sure.”
“Good.”
Garcia makes no move to leave first, so Trinity ends up gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb and saying, “Well, I’ve gotta go meet my friend. So. Bye.” She nods again pointlessly, ignores the amusement in Garcia’s face, and turns around to book it out of the hospital. She doesn’t stop until she gets to the spot that she and Whitaker usually meet at.
Whitaker isn’t here.
Trinity huffs. Worried that Garcia might drive by and spot her loitering, she ducks into an alley to pull out her phone and text him, wya. Trinity stares at their message thread for the full minute it takes Whitaker to type out, I might be a while. Leave without me. It annoys her at first—if he was gonna keep living in the hospital anyway, she would’ve left him on the eighth floor last week—but the longer she looks at the text, the more it unsettles her. That unfortunately-familiar, sickly warning sensation wriggles at the back of her neck like a spidey-sense made of worms.
Trinity shoves her phone back in her pocket, peeks her head out of the alley to check for Garcia, and starts making her way back to the hospital at a brisk pace. She maneuvers her way through the waiting room and up to the ICU, where she approaches a clerk at the front desk to ask what room a burn patient named Teddy is staying in. The clerk checks their system as Trinity waits with her hands in her pockets, bouncing a bit impatiently despite her best efforts not to.
“Oh,” the clerk says with a frown, and Trinity already knows the rest.
“Thanks anyway,” Trinity says, tapping once on the counter. She returns to the stairwell without waiting for the clerk’s response and starts climbing up to the eighth floor, the same path she followed after her first shift here.
Like last time, a voice in her head asks her why with every step. “Why are you doing this? Why are you following him? You don’t know him, leave it be.” She ignores the voice and it only gets more insistent. “Jesus Christ, Trinity, can’t you ever just leave it be?”
No, I can’t, Trinity spits back. ‘Cause the last time I did, Kat died.
Trinity climbed stairs that day, too. The stairs in Kat’s house were familiar and beloved after years of play dates, hang outs, and sleepovers. The wooden steps creaked predictably under Trinity’s feet and her fingers traced the well-worn grooves along the railing as she climbed. She knew every notch on every baluster, knew the contents of every framed photo hung on the wall, knew this house as if it were her own, because it had always treated her like she belonged there, too.
That’s how she knew, as soon as she saw the closed bathroom door at the top of the steps, that something was wrong.
No one ever shut that door, not since Kat’s brother went off to college. He and Kat were the only ones that used that bathroom and Kat never bothered to close the door behind her. “I could hear anyone coming up the stairs and yell for them to cover their eyes before they saw me,” Kat insisted whenever anyone criticized her strange habit. On that day, at the sight of that closed door, Trinity climbed faster, so fast that she tripped and banged her shin hard on the very last step.
Trinity doesn’t trip as she climbs to the eighth floor now, but her shin pulses with a phantom pain. The bruise was still there at Kat’s funeral. Trinity wore a black dress that cut off at her knees and she refused to put on the tights her mother bought her to cover it up. She regretted that later when she went to give her condolences to Kat’s family and Kat’s mom’s face crumpled at the sight of the bruise.
“I’m sorry,” spilled from Trinity’s lips in response, babbled and snotty as she started to cry. “I knew something was wrong when she wouldn’t come study with me after school. I should’ve made her come with me, but I didn’t—I couldn’t—you can’t make Kat do anything she doesn’t want to—”
A tight hand encircled Trinity’s wrist and her mother dragged her away from Kat’s family. “What are you doing?” she hissed in Trinity’s ear. Nothing like the sickly-sweet whispers Coach put there, but as the heat of her mom’s breath hit Trinity’s skin, she flinched anyway. “You had nothing to do with that girl’s death. I will not let you incriminate yourself.”
Trinity glared through her tears. “That girl? That girl? She ate at our table. She slept in my bed. She was my best friend.” Trinity tore her wrist from her mother’s grasp, hurting them both in the process. “Her name was Kat. Show her some fucking respect.”
Trinity stormed out. She couldn’t stand the idea of sitting in the car with her mother, so she walked back home, cut through the woods to avoid being spotted from the road. Her stupid ballet flats gave her blisters within minutes, so in a fit of rage she threw them into a river. Barefoot wouldn’t be much better, she only realized afterwards. She waded into the water to retrieve them, but after she picked them up, she stopped and looked down at her mottled legs, bruised and bleeding. The water turned faintly pink as it washed away the blood. The horrible, purple-black bruise was stark against her pale skin, even as she started to turn blue in the cold.
As she stood in the water then—and as she stalks down the eighth floor hallway now—she remembered—remembers—standing outside the broken-down bathroom door in Kat’s house. Remembers the pink bathwater sloshing over the edge of the tub as the paramedics pulled her body out. Remembers how black her hair was as it fanned out around her head, slapping wetly against the dated, pale blue tiles. Kat never let her parents update the bathroom. Said it held too many memories.
“Even Trin agrees,” Kat said once during another rendition of the familiar, lighthearted argument. She turned her sunny smile on Trinity, insisted, “Right? Remember all the potions we used to make in that sink? And showering together in our bathing suits after beach days? And that time we tried to dye my hair?”
Trinity remembers too well. So well that her body can’t tell the difference between checking an abandoned hospital wing for a guy she met a week ago and climbing the stairs to find her best friend dead in a bathtub. Her heart races with every room that turns up empty. Her shin pulses with imagined pain. Her heels sting from long-healed blisters. She grits her teeth against it all, insists to her body, This is not the same. I don’t even know him, and he’s not going to fucking kill himself, so calm the fuck d—
Trinity finds Whitaker sitting on the floor in the last room, his knees pulled to his chest, his eyes shut as tears leak out from the corners. Relief replaces the dread in Trinity’s chest. “Jesus,” she says, and it’s closer to a prayer than the curse it usually is.
*
Trinity sits on the floor in front of her coffee table and painstakingly glues inch-long, blue press-ons to each of her nails. She starts with her left pinkie, then her right pinkie, and moves inward with each consecutive finger, alternating between hands. The difficulty level grows with each one she puts on, but she’s a capable fucking doctor so she still does a faultless job.
Whitaker emerges from his room as she reaches her right index finger. She glances up briefly but has to do a double take when she sees his outfit. Until now, she’s only seen Whitaker in scrubs or pajamas, and a suit that one time. He thankfully had the wherewithal not to wear that altar boy suit, but the outfit he chose instead isn’t much better. In dark blue jeans and a flannel open over an undershirt, he wouldn’t be out of place as an extra in 2011’s Footloose. Trinity opens her mouth to roast him and only barely manages to bite her tongue when she remembers how desolate he looked on the floor earlier.
Trinity forces her focus back to her nails. “We can go as soon as I’m done with these.” Whitaker pads over like a dog and looms over the table to watch her work. Trinity works precisely with or without an audience, but it does kind of weird her out that he’s treating her nail application like a medical procedure he has to learn to do. “You want a manicure, or?”
Whitaker shakes his head. On another day, she suspects he would’ve jumped and stammered through a reflexive “no” followed by a qualification about how he doesn’t begrudge anyone who wants to paint their nails, men or whoever, it’s just that he specifically doesn’t care to try them. But it seems the day has subdued even his jumpiness.
Whatever. Trinity can’t say shit, since she isn’t exactly acting normally either. The last time she wore press-ons, she was still in her second year of med school. She likes the way they look while she’s dancing, but they aren’t conducive to literally anything else in her life, so she hardly ever bothers with them anymore. She positions the last one—her right thumb—and holds it in place, counting in her head.
As she reaches twenty, she seals her fate. No hooking up for her tonight.
“Alright, let’s go,” she says as she climbs to her feet. Standing next to Whitaker emphasizes the absurd differences in their outfits—she might as well be a disco ball in her shimmery black romper. Her restraint breaks. “Do you have anything else to wear?”
Whitaker looks down at his outfit. “Why? Is this bad?”
Trinity rolls her lips against her teeth to hold back her instinctive response of, “No, no, it’s perfect—if we were going to a hoedown and not a fucking nightclub.” It annoys her that she has to bite her tongue, since she’s already been supernaturally pleasant today by taking him out with her at all, but after his little freak-out on the eighth floor, her usual snark feels more like kicking a dog than just good fun.
“It’s fine,” she forces herself to say and moves to grab her shoes.
“I don’t want to embarrass you,” Whitaker says pathetically.
“You’re not, it’s fine, just.” She gestures at Whitaker’s sneakers as she snags a pair of heels. “Put on your fucking shoes before I change my mind.”
Whitaker thankfully listens without further argument, so Trinity can focus on strapping her heels to her feet. With the nails, it takes her longer than usual. When she finally gets the straps fixed in place, she pulls back to assess and realizes belatedly that she should've chosen a different pair. These are some of her least comfortable shoes, and her feet were already sore from working in the ED all day. She can’t even console herself with the knowledge that these heels make her ass look great because she won’t be hooking up tonight anyway. Fuck. But she isn’t going to deal with taking these ones off now that they're on.
Annoyed at everything, Trinity glares at nothing. Stupid fucking Huckleberry and his stupid fucking sadness. Her phone buzzes, alerting her that the Uber has arrived. Even if she would ever admit defeat in front of Whitaker, there’s no backing out now.
God help her.
*
“Your boy’s got moves,” someone half-shouts from behind the bar.
Trinity turns slightly and gives the bartender her best unimpressed face. “That’s generous.” Her gaze drifts back to where Whitaker flails in the center of the dance floor. To be fair, he has more rhythm than Trinity expected. He mostly keeps time with the music, but either he’s unaware of how goofy he looks or he’s too drunk to care, because it’s clear that he isn’t used to dancing outside the privacy of his own room. Without taking her eyes off of Whitaker, Trinity halfway-turns her face back toward the bartender to add loudly, “And he’s not my boy.”
“Coulda fooled me,” the bartender says, a grin in her voice. Trinity takes a long sip of her drink. “You’ve been watching him all night.”
“He’s not a big clubber,” Trinity says in justification. “I took him out to get his mind off things and I don’t wanna be responsible for him throwing up on some girl’s $200 shoes.”
“So you can’t keep an eye on him while dancing with him?” the bartender asks, clearly unconvinced.
Trinity takes another, even longer sip of her drink. The thought of dancing with Whitaker makes her itchy, like bugs are crawling across her skin. She keeps her touches careful with him. Bumped shoulders, a light punch to the arm, a kick to his ankles. Dancing is unpredictable. Someone bumps her, pushes her into him, and their bodies collide unexpectedly. God forbid she steady herself on his chest and he gets Ideas.
Trinity turns fully around on her stool to glare at the bartender. “Does pissing off customers usually get you more tips, or am I just special?”
The bartender grins easily. “I don’t think you need me to tell you you’re special.”
Trinity stills, assessing the bartender with new eyes. She’s the same one who’s been serving Trinity since they arrived, and she’s been efficient and professional every time she replaces Trinity’s empty glass with a full one. The professionalism has disappeared now as she braces her hands on the bar and rests her weight on them so she’s leaning slightly into Trinity’s space. A few of her curls have broken free of the bun on top of her head and they hang down to frame her round cheeks. There’s a gap between her two front teeth. Not a huge one, but wide enough that Trinity can see the hint of a pink tongue peeking through her smile.
“I don’t,” Trinity says, tossing her head. “But it’s still nice to hear.”
The bartender leans in closer. “I’d be happy to tell you, but it’s a little loud in here for that, don’t you think?”
Trinity lifts her eyebrows, darts a pointed glance at the other two bartenders on staff. “You’re trying to skip out on your job?”
The bartender’s grin widens. “My shift ended five minutes ago.”
Trinity downs the rest of her drink.
The bartender doesn’t bother clearing away Trinity’s glass before ducking out from behind the bar. She also doesn’t look back to see if Trinity follows as she makes her way through the crowd toward a door marked “Employees Only.” A quick survey of the room behind the door tells Trinity it’s a break room, with a wall of lockers on one side, a small kitchenette on another, and a terribly stained couch opposite the door.
“And here I thought you were taking me to a bathroom stall,” Trinity says dryly as she finishes her assessment. Her gaze lands back on the bartender, leaning against the wall next to the now-shut door. “You sprung for the good room.”
“Only the best for you,” the bartender teases. At the bar, she had a few inches on Trinity, but with Trinity’s heels and the bartender’s legs slightly bent to slouch against the wall, they’re of a similar height. Trinity steps closer, standing between the bartender’s spread knees.
“If I remember right,” Trinity says as she reaches up to twist one errant curl around her finger. “You had something you wanted to tell me.”
“Did I?” The bartender plays coy, tilting her head. “You might have to refresh my memory.”
Trinity plants her free hand against the wall behind the bartender’s head and leans in until her lips barely brush the shell of the bartender’s ear. This close, Trinity can feel the bartender’s hitched breath as her chest expands into Trinity’s.
“Remember now?” Trinity punctuates the words with a murmured kiss and then drops lower, pressing another at the hinge of her jaw.
The bartender grabs at Trinity’s hips, her fingers flexing. “It’s starting to come back to me.” She inhales sharply as Trinity moves lower and adds in a hint of teeth. “Maybe keep doing that and I’ll remember.”
Trinity kisses her way down, licks the sweat from the bartender’s collarbone, nips at a tendon in her neck just to listen to her breath hitch again. Trinity can taste her heartbeat, feels the blood rushing under her teeth. Subconsciously, Trinity starts naming the veins like she’s taking a fucking exam before she catches herself, pulls away, and swallows. The bartender’s eyes must have shut at some point, but now they slit open and she stares at Trinity through her lashes.
“What?” the bartender asks, her mouth tugging in a smile. “You’re really gonna make me say it?” She huffs a laugh. It tickles Trinity’s chin. “Fine, you’re spe—”
Trinity kisses the word from her tongue.
Time stretches like a piece of gum held taught between someone’s finger and teeth. Some things stick. The maraschino cherry taste of the bartender’s tongue, sweetened by every muffled noise of pleasure. The bartender’s hand sliding up from Trinity’s hip to meet bare skin, her fingertips dipping beneath the fabric of Trinity’s backless romper. One of the bartender’s loose curls tickling Trinity’s cheek.
Trinity reaches for the hair tie holding the bartender’s bun in place, no longer satisfied with only a few curls. She wants to bury her hand in them and pull, bare the taut line of Garcia’s neck and suck a mark into it high enough that everyone at work will see it and know—
Hair gets tangled around Trinity’s nails, putting a strange, tugging pressure on her nail beds. What the fuck? Trinity thinks, then realizes, Oh shit, the press-ons. Trinity breaks away from the bartender’s mouth like surfacing for air and takes a step back, shaking her head.
“What?” The bartender’s eyes flutter open, then squint in concerned confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“Sorry.” Trinity swallows. “I have to find my—” Friend, she almost says, but doesn’t. “Sorry,” she repeats like she can’t help it. Like she’s Whitaker, for fuck’s sake.
“Your boy?” the bartender asks, a wry tilt to her lips. She doesn’t seem angry. That shouldn’t be as much of a relief to Trinity as it is.
“Yeah.” Trinity gestures lamely. “Babysitting duty, you know how it is.”
“Sure.” The bartender holds out her hand. “Here, I’ll give you my number.” Her eyes shine with amusement. It makes Trinity want to kiss her again. The want twists Trinity’s stomach, like when you’re so hungry it turns over into nausea. “You can call me up on a night when you’re off-duty.”
Trinity quickly unlocks her phone and hands it over. The bartender taps in her number and hands it back with a new contact for Gabi open on the screen. Trinity shoves it in her pocket and nods. She doesn’t promise to call. Gabi doesn’t ask her to.
When Trinity spills back out into the pulsing mass of gyrating bodies, everything is suddenly louder and brighter and closer than before. She scans the crowd for Whitaker, quickly finds him in his stupid fucking flannel, and starts briskly making her way toward him. A dozen or so feet away, his face comes into focus, and Trinity stills.
Whitaker has his eyes closed. His arms flail around him as he spins and sways, his feet sure with every blind step, somehow always on beat. A goofy smile curls his lips. He looks ridiculous. He looks free.
Something jealous in Trinity wants to break it. Take it for herself. She doesn’t think she would know what to do with it if she had it, though. She doesn’t know how to dance without watching for approaching figures. She doesn’t know how to exist in her body without keeping a mind on what the judges will think. She doesn’t know how to quiet her mother’s ever-present voice, reminding her, Shoulders back, stomach in, always keep smiling.
The only way Trinity could ever have what Whitaker has in this moment is if there was a door with a dining chair wedged under the knob standing between her and the rest of the world.
The longer she watches him, the more distant her envy becomes. Something kinder takes its place. Something proud. She can’t have that for herself, but she did give it to him. She brought him here. A few hours ago, he was a ball on the floor with tears on his cheeks, and now he’s dancing with a smile on his lips.
That shouldn’t matter. What does she care, if Whitaker feels free or not? She only brought him here so he wouldn’t mope around the apartment all night and annoy her. She doesn’t care about him. He’s not her friend.
“He wasn’t your friend when you brought him home either,” says a voice that reminds her of Kat. It’s teasing, but fond. The kind of tone that says, “yes, I see your sharp teeth, but I’m not afraid of letting you bite if it means having you close.” Trinity suddenly wants to cry, but her body laughs instead.
What the fuck does that mean? she wonders and then doesn’t let herself touch the answer. Whatever. She’s drunk. She doesn’t have to think so fucking hard about it.
It’s time to go. She doesn’t know when she decided that—maybe when she pulled away from Gabi’s mouth—but it’s something she’s sure of. She strides forward, grabs Whitaker by the wrist, and pulls him from the crowd. He startles for a second, but when he sees that it’s her, he grins, wide and goofy,.
Don’t fucking look at me like that, she wants to say. “I told you you’d love it!” she yells instead.
“You were right!” he yells back without hesitation. She squeezes his wrist tighter and his pulse pounds against her fingers.
He’s alive, she thinks inanely. And so am I.