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i was young, so i forgot
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When Trini is four, her mother signs her up for swimming lessons.
It’s exciting for a while, splashing around in the water, and her mom keeps a firm hold on her the entire time.
It’s a Mother/Daughter swimming class and the other mothers say things like, “She sure has a knack for it, huh?” and Trini’s mom grins and grins and says, “That’s my daughter,” with such pride that Trini will remember it for years.
Thirteen years from now, she’ll have a hard time thinking that her mother ever really meant it, though, and she’ll sit in her new bedroom in her new city and think of her distant mother who, at some point, stopped understanding her and she won’t even cry.
But, for now, she lets her mother teach her how to move her arms in the water.
The lessons go on for about four months and then Trini, naturally, loses interest.
She has important things like kindergarten and learning to read to focus on and swimming isn’t fun anymore.
Her mother, who led her high school swim team to two consecutive championships, says, “That’s okay, honey,” and stops driving them there every Thursday night.
Thirteen years from now, dangling over the churning water by the Angel Grove docks, she’ll wish her mom hadn’t taken no for an answer.
That she had driven Trini there anyway and said, “You’ll need this later.”
.
When Kimberly is four, she breaks her ankle jumping into the water off a cliff on a hike with her dad.
It’s her own damn fault, but her mom screams at her dad when they get into the hospital—looking frazzled in her scrubs as all the nurses scramble because That’s Dr. Hart’s daughter.
After the X-Ray, her mom says, “Kimmy, you’re always going to hurt yourself and you’re always going to be allowed to cry about it. But only if you promise that you’ll learn from it.”
Her mom will do that for the rest of Kim’s life—when she breaks her wrist in fifth grade and has to take a break from gymnastics; when she nearly doesn’t make the first cut of cheerleading tryouts; when she punches her ex-boyfriend’s tooth out and is sentenced to detention for the rest of the year.
Her mother will look at all of those moments try to turn them into some sort of life lesson about never letting things get you down.
But this is the first time.
The doctor lets her pick out whatever color she wants for her cast and she picks yellow only because her friend Amanda says pink is “too girly” and it’ll be years before this memory is funny.
.
Trini’s mom has the twins partway through Trini’s second grade year.
She’s showing her mom a painting she did in class when her mom’s contractions start and she never gets through fully saying, “It’s us!”, but her mom is too distracted to admire the self-portrait anyway.
Trini stays with her grandparents for what feels like forever and then there are two squirming babies that she has to take lots of pictures with.
“They’re ugly,” she says in that white hospital room and her dad laughs, but it’s probably the first time her mom ever looks disappointed in her.
.
At Amanda Douglas’s ninth birthday party, Carson Miller kisses Kim as part of a dare.
It’s not her first kiss—her and Amanda played Wedding up until a year or so prior and it’s not as if they ever skipped the kiss the bride part.
Still, it’s weird and his lips are chapped and still slightly blue from the slushie he’d been drinking on his way in.
The other kids holler and Kim blushes and Amanda redirects their attention to the fact that it’s her turn and—
It’s just not what Kim expected, that’s all.
.
Trini never gets her letter to Hogwarts (and by the time seventh grade starts, it’s no longer plausible it got lost in the mail) and her brothers turn five.
They’re loud and needy and her mother is home all of the time now, but she never seems to have time to help Trini with her math homework.
It’s alright, though, Trini tells herself.
Her best friend Amy says it’s fine, of course. And Amy has a new baby sister.
“Mom’s do that,” she says and Amy is wise and smart and she lent Trini Harry Potter in the first place.
And her hair is really soft.
“Catwoman is really pretty,” Trini says when she watches the latest Batman movie with her family and her mom clicks her tongue beside her on the couch. “Better than Batman.”
Her dad laughs and then says, “Hardly,” and leaves it at that.
It’s an interesting thought at least—a woman swooping in to save her from the objects of her nightmares. Someone pretty with dark hair and kind eyes and saying, Are you okay? and offering this warm hand.
And Trini doesn’t need saving, but it seems like enough. More than.
.
In eighth grade, Amy asks her who she has a crush on during a slumber party and Trini cracks under the pressure and says, “You.”
Because she thinks a crush is someone you spend your whole day looking at, wishing you could hold their hand, or kiss them and—
She doesn’t feel that for any of the boys she knows.
She expects Amy to get grossed out.
To call her a freak.
She’s seen this sort of thing on TV before—two women kissing or holding hands—and her mother always changes the channel and scoffs, “Really?”
But Amy doesn’t freak out.
She just says, “I like you, too,” and kisses Trini’s cheek.
.
It’s at the end of Trini’s freshman year that everything changes.
Her dad gets a job offer in Michigan and her parents start fighting about it every night before bed.
Trini spends a week camping out in the living room with her brothers, trying to make it fun—saying, “It’s like that time we went camping last summer,” just loud enough to drown out the yelling from upstairs.
Amy comes over one afternoon to study for a test, but somehow it turns into some kind of feelings-fest.
Amy saying, “I would miss you so much if you moved away,” and then leaning forward.
Amy kissing her.
It’s Trini’s first kiss and it’s nice. More than.
Trini feels like she flying or something equally cliché and her heart is pounding out of her chest and then—
Her mom walks in.
And somehow, the fighting that night isn’t about moving.
She hears things like, “—gay, Patrick! How could we have missed something like this!” and, “She’s still our daughter!” and no amount of camping in the living room with her brothers can make her forget things like that.
.
She has to sneak out to say goodbye to Amy and they both make promises to keep in touch that neither of them will keep for longer than six months.
Later, in Michigan, when she’s alone in her empty bedroom and lying in a sleeping bag because the moving truck won’t arrive until the next morning, it will be the look of relief on her mother’s face when they left that town that will leave her haggard.
Make her leave the next day until the streetlights come on, skip dinner for a few weeks.
The physical pain of having to sit across the table from her mom who said, “You’ll grow out of it,” as if Amy was a phase or something less than Trini’s best friend.
And the worst part is that Trini isn’t mad at anyone but herself.
It’s almost like she can’t be sorry enough.
.
Kim tries out for the cheerleading squad because Amanda has decided that Harper Sparks is good enough to be friends with and follow into extracurricular activities and—
It doesn’t matter.
She makes it, but barely. And whines to her mom.
“Is this about the team, or Amanda?” she asks and she’s much more observant than Kim is comfortable with.
She thinks of Amanda in the locker room, her long, pale legs dripping water from the shower on the floor and the warmth of her breath on Kim’s face when she sleeps over and they wake up on the floor of the living room together.
Two days after she makes the team, one of the football players in their grade who never deemed her worthy enough to talk to before—Tyler, she thinks his name is—asks her out and Amanda nods her on from behind his head.
She says yes because she can’t figure out a real reason to say no.
“Finally, Hart,” Amanda says as they walk their lunch trays back to the front of the cafeteria. “He’s hot.”
“That’s not—” Kim flushes, tripping over her words. But Tyler Fleming is, for all intents and purposes, a catch. Especially for a freshman girl. “Yeah,” she says eventually.
.
They move again before they can even fully unpack the house, but Trini can’t even bring herself to complain.
She hadn’t let herself settle into this house.
This town.
This family.
She’s trying not to get used to anything
.
Climbing from trees as a kid must have done something to help her athletically—Kim is on the varsity cheerleading squad by sophomore year.
“You’ve got quite a knack for this, Hart,” Coach Jennings tells her after practice. “You could run this team one day.”
Things with Amanda become tense.
Well, more tense.
The social hierarchy has already done its thing to start the separation and its easy after that.
Ty Fleming says, “That’s just how girls are, babe. No worries,” and his lips are chapped even though she got him a pack of Chapstick for Christmas the year before.
“She’s my best friend,” Kim tells him, as if that changes things.
But Ty just scoffs. “Yeah, and I was best friends with Jason Scott in third grade. Things change when there’s competition involved.”
She guesses she sees what his point, but in the scenario he’s built he’s Amanda and she’s Jason Scott—the youngest quarterback of the varsity team their school has ever had.
It’s not a great metaphor.
.
This town is possibly a new record for Trini’s family.
They barely last the entirety of the school year.
“This is the last time, honey, I swear,” her dad tells her one night, sitting on the edge of her bed.
As if this—the third time—is the time that’s really gotten to her.
“You’ll make new friends,” he says, that old parental promise.
Except she never made friends here at all. Or at the old town.
Too afraid of the pretty blonde girl in her English class—with her pretty pink lips and the way she always raises her hand first.
Too afraid of the Amy Incident and the way her mom always knocks before coming in now.
“Yeah,” she tells him and leaves it at that.
.
That summer, Kim’s dad moves out.
“We’ll be fine, Kimmy,” her mom says one night on the front steps of the house, staring past the porch where the early evening rain is falling. “Now every night will be girl’s night.”
And it’s the first time that her mom doesn’t try to turn it into a lesson of some sort (or maybe that’s saved for her life only).
Her dad gets a house across town and she has a new room she doesn’t ever decorate because she’s only there for two weekends a month, but it’s fine.
Really.
She doesn’t mind.
She hadn’t seen it coming—had cried nonstop for those first two weeks until Amanda had rolled her eyes and said, “My parents divorced, too. It’s not special.”
Except for when she does mind—when she’s sitting in the living room on Friday nights and a movie they used to watch together comes on or when she has to clear all those episodes of Chopped off the DVR or when she goes hiking in the woods surrounding her house without him because—
He’s too busy now.
She tries to find new routes through the woods, even when her legs are sore from cheer practice, even when her phone is buzzing in her back pocket—Ty, no doubt, asking what she’s doing.
She doesn’t care about any of that. That’s not important when she’s had to save her father’s pictures from the trash and store them under her bed at his house.
When she came downstairs the day before her mom had been screaming into the phone about Thanksgiving plans.
There’s this small lake just at the edge of their property, a mile or so from the old mine and she goes there. Always.
It’s like she’s five-years-old again, stumbling across the forest floor and her dad’s steady hand keeping her from falling. Watch your feet, Kimmy.
But her dad left her and her mom hasn’t even really faced it or mentioned it outright or said why and Kim can’t—
It’s fine.
Everything is fine.
.
She gets meaner somehow.
Harder.
Colder.
Ty brings it up one night. “You’ve changed,” he says, but Amanda doesn’t complain and Harper stops looking at Kim like she’s a pest.
Everyone stops looking at her like she’s nothing special.
She turns heads now.
She says, “So what?” and kisses him to shut him up.
.
Trini starts her junior year the way she started her freshman and sophomore years—at a new school.
She gets a haircut her mom hates and sits quietly at the back of every class. She buys button down shirts and slouchy beanies at a thrift store just because her parents will hate them and wears them until they stop being a statement.
No one really notices her or tries to talk to her.
She doesn’t talk much either.
Says, “That seat’s taken,” when some weird, too-nice kid in a hot dog t-shirt and his friends try to sit across from her at lunch her first day.
Rolls her eyes at a girl in a cheerleading uniform in her English class when they accidentally bump into one another and says, “Watch where you’re going, puta,” under her breath after the girl says, “Out of my way, freak.”
Just tries out the curse on her tongue.
It’s a far cry from the kid who read during every break in class, spent recess on a bench to do it, and who actually let people in.
She doesn’t make that mistake again.
.
Kim becomes head of the cheerleading squad. It’s a first for someone her age, and Amanda and Harper stop talking to her completely for a solid week and a half.
Kim doesn’t care. She pretends that turning heads in the hallway and having people practically line up around the cafeteria to sit with her at lunch is more than enough.
“Things are just so hectic! This year is gonna be good,” is the quasi-apology she gets from Amanda when she comes crawling back with an invitation to a party she’s throwing.
It’s the best her year could start in theory.
She’s okay with it, for the most part. Gotten used to it.
Doesn’t even really notice who she’s become until some new kid calls her a bitch in Spanish before class (she googles it later and then pretends not to care when she reads what it means).
.
Amanda’s party is relatively usual, as far as these things go.
There’s the loud music and the crowded dance floor in the middle of the basement and—
Amanda herself grinding with Ty.
Something painful drops into Kim’s stomach like a stone and she doesn’t really know who she’s jealous of exactly—remembers all those innocent, close-mouthed kisses when they were younger and then the less innocent ones during Spin-The-Bottle games in middle school.
“These parties suck,” someone says behind her—someone with a soft, kind voice and she turns to find Jason Scott leaning against the wall with a beer.
She’s heard this line before. Every other football player on the team has tried it on her when Ty is preoccupied, but it’s a first for Jason who rarely even goes to these parties, as far as she’s aware.
“Yeah?” she asks, quirking an eyebrow.
He nods and pushes himself off the wall to move closer and she resists the urge to step back. “Music’s too loud, room’s too dark, and everyone’s too hammered to have a proper conversation,” he explains.
“A proper conversation?” she asks, crossing her arms—still thinking of Amanda, of Ty, grinding behind her. “About what? The shortcomings of high school parties?”
Jason’s face falls for a second—just a second—and then he looks mildly impressed, smiling at her. “Something like that.”
He’s nice, but she knows where this leads. Knows where it always almost gets with Ty when her mom works late and he starts trying to get a hand under her shirt.
It makes her skin crawl, makes the room suddenly feel too hot, too crowded.
Maybe he just wants someone to talk to—someone to say, “We make quite the pair—quarterback and head cheerleader,” to without any intention of actually hitting on her—but she doesn’t really care.
She leaves the party.
Walks herself home.
And when she goes to pick up her car the next day, Ty’s Chevy is still parked on the lawn.
.
Trini’s mom makes three total attempts to break her walls down that year.
At Thanksgiving, she says, “I’m thankful for my beautiful, wonderful daughter and the light she brings to my life,” and Trini rolls her eyes to appear unaffected.
At Christmas, she buys Trini a whole slew of new beanies and a yellow leather jacket and says, “I thought you might want more clothes to fit your…new style.”
At Easter, she says, “You can stay home. Maybe you can join us for lunch later?” when the rest of them go to church.
Trini stays home and she doesn’t join them for lunch.
It’s not that she doesn’t love her mother, her father, Julian and Alex. It’s that she doesn’t know what to do with them now that they don’t know what to do with her.
.
Ty breaks up with Kim, which is fine because she was planning on doing that anyway.
Still, she can’t help but ask, “Why?”
And his answer hurts. Says something about her not being the kind of girl his mom thinks he should be with.
As if that matters.
And they haven’t been dating for something like 3 years already.
She’s the one who storms away.
.
Kim’s first reaction to the picture Amanda sends her is a sudden heat to her cheeks and it must be visible because Amanda says, “What?”
“Nothing,” Kim says and then swallows thickly. “Why did you take this, exactly?”
She doesn’t look up from it, memorizing the image of curves she’s seen in the locker room plenty of times but somehow never like this.
Amanda scoffs. She turns her head and pushes Kim’s phone away—a silent stop looking at that—and then says, “Why? Like what you see?”
It takes Kim a second to process what’s just been said and then…
“Don’t tell anyone, I’m—” Amanda swallows. “I’m planning on sending it to someone and it’s for your eyes only until then.”
Kim tries to say something, but Amanda moves on just as quickly and she’s out the door a minute later saying, “Thanks, Kim!” on her way out the door.
Kim burns all night.
Wonders what Amanda meant by that question, by planning on sending it to someone.
Imagines her with Ty, naked under his probing hands.
She’s sending the picture, the text, before she can even really figure out why.
.
Then everything goes to hell.
.
She cuts her hair in the bathroom because the only other option is to cry and—
Her mom said not to cry unless she’d learn something.
Be better.
And she doesn’t really know what to learn from this.
.
“What is going on with you, Trini?”
It’s said so quietly, so suddenly, that Trini isn’t even certain she was meant to have heard it.
She’s sitting on the back porch and she hadn’t heard her mom even come out but now here she is.
“I’ve tried to give you space, but—” There’s a pause. Like she’s either thinking of something to say or get up the nerve to say whatever she’s planned. “I’m worried about you, cariño. Just talk to me. Your mother. Tell me what I can do.”
Trini thinks of this.
Lets it settle.
Thinks of Amy and that kiss and her mother’s empty eyes on the drive to Michigan.
Thinks of all those nights she’d heard her mother crying as she washed dishes in the kitchen.
Thinks of her mother with her brothers and how unabashedly she loves them, touches their heads, and how it’s possible that two people can just run out of things to say to each other.
Trini wants to say that she’s sorry for being this way—breaking everyone’s hearts—but she’s almost positive it can’t be all her fault.
So she doesn’t say anything at all.
She gets up and pushes her way back her mom and into the house.
For a few days, she waits for a punishment. A backlash.
Waits for the news that their moving.
This time, it doesn’t come.
Perhaps they’re getting more creative in their punishments.
Perhaps this time they’re getting back at her by making her stay.
.
“You cut your hair?” is the first thing Kim’s dad says to her—in something other than text message form—in a month.
She lets him yell. Lets him rant and rave on the way home because at least he’s talking to her now.
At least he’s putting the blame somewhere even if it’s not falling back on him as it should.
.
Both of them start this year the same way, though it’s unlikely that either ever expected that to be as superheroes.
.
Trini knows she’s in trouble before that train ever even hits them.
Kimberly Hart helps her to her feet and Kimberly Hart runs beside her and she can hear her panting and—
Suddenly, she’s fourteen-years-old and having a panic attack in her bedroom as Amy slides out the window, too afraid to face her mom.
“He’s gonna make it,” Kim says behind her and this kid really doesn’t know how to drive very fast, does he?
“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” Trini counters and she’s ninety-nine percent certain that she made Kim up—that girl in the cheerleading uniform that she’d cursed at last year.
Ninety-nine percent positive that no one could ever look that good with short hair.
Ninety-nine percent positive they’re going to die.
But Kimberly Hart is real and her hand is warm on Trini’s shoulder—gripping fiercely—as that train hits them and god—
That one percent sends her shooting up in her bed Monday morning, completely fine and totally alive.
.
Two weeks after they win—live, really, because for a second there they’d all been certain they were going to die—Kim can’t sleep.
Makes her way out into the woods and skips past her usual spot entirely. Heads for the mines.
The cliff above their secret hide out.
Feels heavy with a sadness that makes her feel guilty.
She’s alive. That should be enough.
But instead she feels let down, empty. As though something is ending even though it’s not.
They’re stuck like this.
Kim sits down on the edge of the mountain doesn’t let herself look out at the town she hates so much—the town she’d saved. Doesn’t let herself see how significantly dimmer it is now that most of the buildings have been crushed.
She stares, instead, up at the sky and wonders where exactly it was that they’d sent Rita.
If she’ll be back.
“Of course. Just when I thought I’d escaped you for good.”
It’s Trini.
And Kim smiles, suddenly, in a way that surprises her even as she’s doing it. “Hey there.”
It’s meant to sound firm and assured, but instead it just sounds like she’s some middle schooler talking to her crush.
But Trini doesn’t seem to notice.
“Want company?”
Kim shrugs and then Trini is sitting down beside her, shifting until she’s comfortable on the ground and then reaches into her backpack to hand her that metal water bottle in some sort of silent offering.
That first time they’d been here—her arms around Trini’s shoulders as she’d tugged them over the edge—seems like a million years behind them, though it’s barely been a month.
She takes the bottle and opens it to take a drink.
And then nearly chokes.
“That’s not water!” she splutters and Trini just snickers at her and shakes her head.
“No, Princess, that’s Grey Goose.”
And she looks proud instead of sheepish and Kim can’t help but smile.
“I’m not entirely surprised,” Kim jokes, imagining Trini picking the lock on a liquor cabinet and Trini bumps their shoulders together.
“Sure seemed surprised a second ago,” she snickers and Kim lets her.
Can’t stop smiling.
It’s quiet for a little while. Just two teenagers sitting on a rock.
Like they didn’t just save the entire known universe a couple of weeks ago.
Trini takes a long pull from the bottle and says, “This party pretty much sucks,” in this weird, soft echo of Jason’s words just last year.
It sits between them for a while, becoming heavy with the weight of everything else they’ve left unspoken until now—all those things Kim is just now trying to give names to and compromise in her own head. She doesn’t know what to say.
So she just says, “Thanks.”
Trini turns her head, catches her eyes, and frowns. Like she doesn’t understand. “What for?”
Kim shrugs. “This.” She gestures between them. “Not turning us over to Rita to save yourself. Not dying. Not completely kicking my ass in training today. I don’t know.” She sighs. Heavily. “All of it.”
Trini shakes her head. “I’m not much of a backstabber. Lesson number one if we’re going to be friends.”
And Kim’s not certain, but she thinks Trini’s voice catches around that word.
Friend.
Like that’s all they are to each other.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this,” Kim starts, “But I’m pretty sure you’re stuck with me. Fate of the universe, and all that.”
The smile she gets is brilliant. Blinding. The laugh makes Kim’s chest feel heavy and light all at once.
“I guess I am,” she concedes.
“Pimp-slapping murderous alien ladies into space will do that.”
And then they’re both laughing, Trini making a joke about doughnuts that leaves Kim hunched over, chest heaving with laughter and Trini has her hand resting high on Kim’s thigh as she tries to breathe.
It goes on for a while. Neither is sure how long.
And then their eyes meet carefully, slowly, and they stop laughing all at once.
“I’m really glad you didn’t die,” Kim says and the smile slips off of Trini’s mouth as she sucks in a breath.
For a second, Trini looks like she’s going to throw up or cry or something, but her fingers just come up to brush against Kim’s neck, brushing her short hair. Kim is positive, for a moment, that they’re going to kiss.
Or something.
That Trini is going to lean forward and kiss her and she’s going to kiss her back.
But Trini sits up and pulls away, smiling a little distantly. “Not gonna push me in again are you, princess?” she asks, nodding at the darkness below them.
She doesn’t meet her eyes, takes another drink from the bottle.
“Kim? You okay?”
Kim watches her, the way Trini’s jaw curves, the way her lips purse forward, little puffs of air coming out in bursts and Kim can’t look away. For the first time, she’s not thinking about Amanda or Ty or detention or her parents’ divorce or anything other than Trini. This moment.
The two of them in this moment.
And she’s terrified at once. This girl who fought Rita with her and won.
She wishes she would wish for it to be someone else—Ty or Jason, even—anyone other than this girl she’s barely known a month.
But it isn’t.
It’s Trini.
And, how could she not have noticed before?
Trini’s fingers grab at hers on the rock between them, warm against Kim’s knuckles, and she says, “Kim?” like a whisper. Like a question she doesn’t want the answer to, as if she has no right to say it and she’s apologizing for that fact alone.
Kim brings her hand up to Trini’s wrist, thinking of all those times in the past month when Trini could have died before they could do this—sit on this rock together—and she wishes she could get up and leave, but she can’t.
Doesn’t want to, really.
And it doesn’t matter anyway, because then they’re kissing.
Trini kisses her carefully. Slowly. A little sad, as if she’s not certain she’s allowed and she’s half-expecting Kim to pull away and slap her or disappear.
But Kim isn’t doing any of those things. Won’t. There’s nowhere to go, anyway. No way to escape this inevitability.
She kisses Trini back and neither of them is sure how long it goes on for before Trini pulls away, gives Kim this little smile, and says, “We should probably go home.”
Kim says, “Yeah,” because she can’t think of a reason to say no, they shouldn’t. They should stay right here, possibly forever.
But then Trini is standing anyway and holding out her hand and Kim can’t help but take it.
It’s terrible, really, when they part ways up by the start of the woods.
Watching Trini get smaller and smaller on the road until Kim can’t see her anymore.
.
“You look sick, Kimmy,” Kim’s mom says in the morning.
And she isn’t. She’s tired. She was up all night thinking.
“I’m fine, Mom,” she lies on her way out of the door.
And her mom lets it slide, thank goodness.
.
At school, Trini tries not to think too much about anything other than her schoolwork.
Tries not to think about Kim’s lips or hands or anything that might take away what she’s found, what she has with the four of them.
This family she was starting to make.
In Bio, Kim tries to catch her eye, tries to walk with her when the bell rings, and Trini lets her—talks back, lets Kim bump shoulders with her playfully—because the alternative would be to run and she doesn’t want to do that anymore.
.
“You okay?” Zack says when he sees her, after jumping and water and Jason saying, Let’s get started, gang, like fucking Fred Jones.
“I’m fine.”
Kim is up ahead, laughing with Billy, and it isn’t until she looks back at Trini—that smile on her face—that Zack grins at her and pokes her shoulder.
“Eh?” he says. “Something you wanna share with the class?”
But, no. Not particularly.
She kicks his ass when Jason pairs them up and he’s maybe, like, two seconds from tapping out when she catches Kim watching her—thinks of the edge of the cliff and that kiss and how scared she is that she’ll have to move again because of it, but—
Zack has her pinned in five seconds flat, whooping triumphantly as Billy claps and Jason is yelling something like, “Constant vigilance!”
Trini lies there when Zack gets up, taking some sort of victory lap. Stares up at the rocks above her until she hears someone shuffling across the dirt towards her.
“Are you okay?” Kim asks, like some sort of Wonder Woman and she isn’t in her armor but Trini remembers suddenly—vividly—when she was and her face is bright red. She knows it.
“Yeah,” Trini says. Not a lie exactly.
And lets Kim pull her up.
.
Kim can’t sleep again that night.
Lies in bed and convinces herself that she’s better than this—better than reducing herself to some school girl fantasy over one kiss.
And then she tells herself—as she pulls herself out of bed, tugs on some clothes and shoes, and slips out of the house—that this isn’t just any kiss.
This is a kiss with Trini.
And kissing Trini changes everything.
.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
Trini says it from the same spot they’d been on the night before and Kim only hesitates a second or two before she sits down.
The bottle is full of vodka again and it’s enough liquid courage that when Trini says, “That night we were all, uh…when we had that campfire. Why did you want us all to skip you?” Kim doesn’t completely shut down.
She tells her. About Amanda. About Ty. About all of it.
And Trini doesn’t look at her until after and she’s expecting Trini to hate her or maybe give her a hope speech like Jason had, but Trini doesn’t do any of that.
She just says, “That sucks,” and then takes another drink from a bottle.
“That’s it?” Kim asks.
Can’t help it.
Trini shrugs. “I mean, yeah. That sucks, but, like…You feel bad about it, so that’s good at least? Means you learned.”
And Kim thinks about her mom saying that she can only cry if she promises to learn something from it—her mom saying she’s always going to hurt herself—and wonders what her mom would say about this—
Kissing Trini again. The second day in a row.
About Trini kissing her back.
.
The next day is more of the same.
Except Trini can’t even pretend to be thinking of anything else.
She blushes through Bio, staring at the back of Kim’s head, and doesn’t even pretend to hear Zack when he teases her at training.
Billy asks if she’s okay exactly once before training ends and Jason pats her back on his way out and Kim—
Kim gives this wave on her way back home that Trini takes to mean see you tonight and maybe it does.
She was right, when that train was about to hit them—when Kim’s hand was warm on her shoulder.
She really is in trouble.
.
Or maybe not.
Kim is already there again that night and it’s not a surprise. Not at all.
Not anymore.
Trini sits down beside her and there’s no point in fighting it.
There’s not even really any fight in her anymore. Not about this at least.
.
They don’t talk much because Kim isn’t sure what to say. She isn’t sure if there’s even words, really, for what she wants to say because she’s been thinking about this all day.
Nonstop.
And she can’t remember if she’s ever wanted anyone else like this, but she’s pretty sure she hasn’t.
She wants to tell Trini all of this, but either can’t quite manage it or she does because they’re kissing more quickly than the other two times and somehow this time feels different somehow.
Like there’s no end in sight and then Kim is straddling her and they’re scooted back away from the edge of the cliff and Trini is moving her fingers up under Kim’s shirt.
And this is what matters—them on this cliff. Trini’s lips on her collarbone.
She tries to shift closer and accidentally sets her knee down into a rock and lets out a grunt of pain that makes Trini pull away.
“You okay?” Trini whispers against her lips.
And she goes to say that she can’t get close enough, can’t stop, can’t do this with a rock in her knee, but all she manages to say is, “I can’t—” and then Trini looks like she may start crying, turns her face away so Kim can’t see her eyes.
“Please don’t say that,” is all she says.
And Kim wants to ask what happened—who hurt her, if this has anything to do with her family—but she doesn’t.
She just tilts Trini’s chin up and kisses her again.
Says, “I don’t want my first time to be in the dirt,” and Trini laughs and starts kissing up Kim’s jaw and towards her ear.
Somehow, she manages to say something about her mom being at the still-packed hospital with her patients all night, her house being empty.
And somehow they manage to pull apart.
.
It takes forever to get home.
Long enough that Kim starts to wonder if this is a good idea—if she should really have sex with someone she may spend the rest of her life fighting alongside with, because what if this goes south?
What if they hurt each other? Won’t it break apart the team?
And her bedroom is a mess. She hasn’t had the time or energy to do laundry since everything happened and—
If this ends badly, it could tear everything she’s found apart.
But then Trini’s hand is warm on her back and this may be stupid or fast or they may be too young but her mother always said, “You’ll know the right time,” when it came to this sort of thing (always so supportive and open about this kind of thing, especially once her dad left) and this definitely feels like the right time.
.
Trini’s heart stops when they’re climbing the stairs, thinking of all the ways this could go wrong.
Because, this is stupid, right? She’s only really known Kim a month and this is a far cry from having just one stolen kiss before Kim.
And she doesn’t want to get her heart broken, but…
That’s happened before.
It happens easily.
But somehow, this feels right. Like the right time. The only time.
Like it was going to happen now or a year from now or five years from now or twenty. But it was always going to happen no matter what.
She’s been imagining this for a while—some variation of it at least.
Maybe she’s wanted Kim her whole life.
But that sounds cheesy. Overplayed and dramatic.
Even if it feels true somehow.
“This is okay, right?” Kim says in the darkness of her bedroom, leaning in to kiss Trini again and Trini nods. “Do you want this?”
Thinks of Zack making kissy noises at her after she’d sparred with Kim at training, saying, You’re so far gone on her as she’d punched him—lighter than she physically could have—in the arm.
Says, “More than,” and then they’re kissing and moving back towards the bed. Trini groans out an, “I want you,” that feels truer than anything else she’s ever said before.
And it is.
It’s more than okay when Kim tugs her shirt over her head and drops it somewhere behind them.
Better than she ever imagined during those awkward birds and bees discussions she had with her dad years prior when Kim’s fingers reach for the zipper of her jeans as she just kind of pants into Trini’s mouth.
It’s the only way it could have been.
.
Trini is awake already when Kim opens her eyes the next morning, sitting on the bed, flipping through a yearbook from elementary school.
Kim is groggy and sore and it's early, but she has no trouble swatting at it, saying, "Please, don't. I was such an ugly kid."
“No, you’re—” Trini looks down at the book, probably at Kim’s missing-toothed, five-year-old smile and says. “You’re adorable.”
“Sure,” Kim sighs, drawing it out.
But then Trini says, “Jason was hideous, by the way,” and holds up the yearbook to prove the fact.
And it’s not weird at all. Weird only in the way that it isn’t.
Maybe it’s because she’s eighteen and this is a lot of firsts for the past month, but—
All of it feels perfect.
This beautiful girl she hadn’t really known two months ago, sitting in her bedroom—mostly naked—flipping through an old yearbook.
“I like your room,” Trini says quietly, scooting towards her on the bed and Kim scoots, bunches the sheets around her torso to cover herself up.
“Sorry about the mess,” Kim says, making a face, looking over at the overflowing laundry hamper by her closet and her homework scattered all over her desk.
“No, I—” Trini shakes her head. “My room only just started to look like…I don’t know, like it was mine before Rita kinda…wrecked it. I haven’t been used to settling down anywhere lately. But…I don’t know. I can tell you’ve been here a while. Your whole life.” She breathes. “It’s nice.”
And Kim reaches out. Brushes her fingers against Trini’s wrist.
“How are you—?” She cuts herself off. “Are you still okay—?”
But Trini seems to get it and kisses her, softly, in the early morning sunlight and says, “I really am.”
She’s not sure what to say to that other than, “Me too,” so they go back to flipping through the yearbook.
Laugh at Billy in the Honor Roll picture—smiling proudly. Laugh at Jason again, together. Try to find Zack and aren’t surprised when he’s listed under the Not Pictured sectioned. And Kim tries to tell her about that year.
How she broke her ankle diving into the water off the cliffs by her house and Trini says, “You do that a lot, huh? Jump off cliffs.”
For a long time, that's all it is: the two of them laughing and talking and Kim feels right for the first time in forever. Since she can remember, at least.
Eventually, the front door opens downstairs, and there are footsteps heading up the stairs -- and then it's a rush to throw some clothes on before Kim's mom catches them and Kim throws the first thing she can at Trini and almost laughs when she puts it on but doesn't -- can't -- because Trini looks good in pink.
Kim says as much and Trini blushes, but doesn't fight it.
It’s been hours of that—talking about anything. Everything. All of it.
Until Kim knew about Amy, about that recurring nightmare with a doll she’d had as a kid, and those dreams she had about a beautiful superheroine who came in to save the day, about her mom and all those times when trying wasn’t enough.
Until Trini knew about that yellow cast when Kim was little and the cheerleading tryouts she’d almost broken her neck during. Those long months after her dad left. The scissors in the bathroom and taking control of something tangible.
“We did have English together,” Kim says much later, after We’ll get food when we’re hungry, Mom and This is my…friend, Trini as Kim’s mom grinning and saying something about finally meeting her before ducking back out of the room. “Last year. You sat right behind me.”
And then she remembers that day—the stubbed toe. Kim saying, Out of my way, freak, just to make Amanda laugh and the way Trini’s eyes had dropped down.
“Oh.” Understanding flashes through Trini’s eyes. “You…I’m sorry.”
She expects Trini to say she should be, expects her to make a comment about Kim having been a bitch, but it never comes.
What she gets is warm fingers against her neck, up to the curve of her shoulder and a careful smile she’s certain she doesn’t deserve until she’s saying, “You should hate me,” just to strike a spark. A reaction. Any reaction at all.
Trini kisses her, soft and long and sweet. Breathes her in and whispers against her skin, a reminder of those dreams after Catwoman and Are you okay? and asks how she could possibly hate her.
Says, “When I was a kid, I imagined you saved me,” and Kim thinks she knows what she means.
Definitely knows enough to say, “You saved me too, I think,” as she tugs Trini close enough -- by the shoulders of that pink t-shirt -- to kiss her.
…