Chapter Text
Surprisingly, it was Dot's idea for them to play spin the bottle at Fatin Jadmani's 14th birthday party. It was a warm sunny Sunday; everyone had spent hours and hours by their classmate's luxurious pool. Toni had only been to Fatin's house once before and could not believe that there were people so close living in something so big. Why would they need four bathrooms? In one of them you take a shower, in another you brush your teeth? She didn't understand the logic, she never would.
As it started to get dark some of the guests, those not so close to Fatin, were leaving, and at 4:00 p.m. only a few people remained at the party, among them some boys whose names Toni had no desire to remember. Leah, Fatin's best friend, was also there, as well as Marty and the Reid twins. And of course. Shelby Goodkind.
Shelby and Toni had known each other for a long time. Toni knew that Shelby went to church with her parents every Sunday and that she was annoyingly good at literature - she raised her hand in class every 5 minutes - plus she was in the drama club.
Shelby knew that Toni liked to bite her pencils in math class, that she skateboarded to school - Toni had run her over once - and that she didn't go anywhere without her friend Martha.
And that was it. Years and years attending the same places, knowing the same people, and just that, that was all they knew about each other. The feeling that they had nothing in common was mutual, they were too different. At least that's what they thought, since they didn't even imagine that they had anything in common.
"Do we really have to play?" Rachel Reid asked, despondently, as she realized that all her friends were already putting themselves in a circle while the birthday girl ran ecstatically to the kitchen to find an empty bottle of soda for them to use.
"Come on, Reid, it'll be fun!" One of the boys shouted while Rachel just answered him by rolling her light brown eyes.
Toni didn't want to play either. The thought of kissing one of those sweaty boys sickened her stomach, but she could never say that to her friends, especially Marty, who was too excited to notice the desperation running down her best friend's face.
"What's this? Are you guys doing a prayer circle?" Shelby Goodkind got giggles from everyone but Toni when she arrived in the room to find all her friends sitting on the floor excitedly. She had just returned from the pool and Toni couldn't stop staring at her, so she decided to focus all her attention on her untied Vans sneakers. Toni couldn't let them realize what seeing Shelby Goodkind in a bikini was doing to her.
Toni noticed that Shelby seemed less excited when Leah explained what was really going on, as if a prayer circle would be somewhat better. But, nevertheless, she joined the circle, alongside Dot and some other stinky kid whose name Toni definitely didn't know.
"It'll do!" Fatin announced, ecstatic, as she tossed the bottle into the center. Their friends shouted, excitedly, clapping their hands, but Shelby and Toni were in a panic. Of course, no one noticed.
Fatin, as the birthday girl, decided that she herself should do the honors of spinning the bottle first, and fate chose that it should be stinky boy number one. She grabbed his hand and led him to the nearest closet while Dot set a timer to ring in 3 minutes.
"She is so lucky! Charles is so cute!" Toni shook her head pretending to be interested, not because she agreed with her friend, but because she had finally learned the name of one of them. This moment was affecting her more than Toni could ever imagine, because she felt awkward. She felt lost. Why wasn't she so eager to kiss someone like Charles? She felt different.
Toni knew she was different, she knew that. But she didn't know exactly how.
Three more people spun and she felt her body getting stiffer and stiffer as she got closer to her turn, she had been lucky enough not to have been chosen any of the times the boys spun, but when she would have to play eventually, there was no escape.
So when Marty sat down next to Toni after spending three minutes kissing a boy named Daniel, Toni prepared to spin the bottle.
"Do it already, Shalifoe!" Rachel nudged her and Toni, with trembling hands, spun the bottle.
It was the slowest seconds of her life, her heart stopped every time the bottle hinted that it was going to choose stinky boy number 2 or number 3. She didn't know what she believed in at that time, but she prayed and wished for all possible gods to get her out of that situation.
But something even more despairing happened when, slowly, the bottle decided to plot its fate with Shelby Goodkind's.
Their eyes went wide at the same time and they barely had time to react to what had just happened when one of the boys decided to open his mouth.
"You're gonna have to spin it again."
Several heads turned in his direction.
"Why? Can't two girls kiss?" Nora broke the silence and Toni's face flushed.
"Well, no," he added like that was obvious. To him, it was absurd to reach any other conclusions.
"That's homophobic, Charles," Marty crossed her arms looking at the boy she adored so much until a few minutes ago. Toni felt safe; maybe Marty wouldn't hate her. But at the moment she was going to have to deal with another problem.
"But it's wrong. Come on, spin it again." He threw the bottle towards Toni, but Fatin was no longer accepting what was happening. She stood in the center of the circle and grabbed both Toni's and Shelby's wrists, dragging them to her closet. Again the two were in shock.
"But Fatin we-" Toni tried to speak, but the birthday girl interrupted her.
"Just stand there talking, I don't care, relax. It is just to show that he is wrong."
She at last winked at the two and closed the door. The last thing they heard was the door being locked from the outside and Fatin announcing that they would have 5 minutes, 2 more than the others.
"Well, that was...weird." Shelby said, finally, after the two had wasted 15 seconds of their time in silence.
"Yeah." Toni was not feeling well staying in such a cramped space with Shelby Goodkind in front of her in a bikini. So she thought it would be best to just stare at the ceiling.
"What are we looking at?" Shelby asked, looking up alongside her.
Toni's face flushed, again.
"Hm? What? Nothing I just-" Toni looked down, and Shelby's green eyes were watching her intently. "We could just stand here and talk, you know? Like Fatin said so...what's your favorite color?"
"Green," Shelby answered quickly, it seemed like it wasn't really what she wanted to do. Because it wasn't. "Toni, actually, I wanted to give it a try."
"What?" she stared at the ceiling again, as Shelby was getting closer and closer.
"I want to kiss you."
Shelby was now very close and Toni was startled to hear those words, she lowered her head quickly and her forehead met Shelby's.
"Shit, I'm sorry." Toni was embarrassed, she wanted to shove herself into the nearest hole, dig to the other side of the world, but Shelby was smiling.
"It's okay if you don't want to, I just thought maybe-"
"It's okay!" She said, too fast.
"It's cool with you? Me kissing you?" Shelby moved even closer.
"Yes, but I don't know how to do it. I've never kissed anyone before," she admitted embarrassedly and Shelby once again laughed, so relieved. "Me neither, I just know what to do because of the movies."
"So... How do we do it?"
Shelby promptly got Toni lined up in front of her and grabbed her hands, positioning them on her waist. Toni, at that moment, could hear her heart beating in her ears.
"I'm gonna hold your face and I'm gonna get closer, okay?" It took a few seconds for Toni to understand that this was not a dream and was really happening, that she was indeed going to kiss a girl and the girl was Shelby Goodkind.
And then she felt the strawberry taste of Shelby's lips touching hers and her whole world collapsed and rebuilt in seconds. Everything made sense, her existence, what she did, what she felt, everything. She wasn't strange, she wasn't weird, she was just different. She just liked that, she liked that feeling.
She wanted more. She squeezed Shelby's waist tighter as she ran her hands through her messy hair. Toni and Shelby's first kiss had been anything but ordinary, because it wasn't bad. On the contrary, it wasn't awkward, it wasn't embarrassing, their kiss fit, it made sense.
"1 minute left!" Fatin's scream startled them and they broke apart, mainly because they needed air.
Toni's world was totally different and she could see that the same was happening to Shelby, but unlike her, she seemed calmer. More serene. Shelby smiled and to Toni's surprise, she ran her finger slowly along Toni's lower lip.
"It was smeared with strawberry. My lipstick," she explained.
Then the two spent the remaining seconds looking at each other, in complete silence, until the closet door was unlocked and, as if they had agreed, they said at the same time that they just stood around talking. It would be their secret.
But Toni couldn't stop smiling, couldn't contain her excitement that she had found out more about Shelby Goodkind that day. Like the fact that Shelby might be just like her. And that her favorite color was green.
It was on the second to last day before graduation from high school that Shelby Goodkind officially came out to the whole school. Of course, there were rumors, but it was never actually confirmed. It was a silent pact that lgtbq+ people from their school would never out others. So, among straight and cis groups, it really might have been a surprise to find out that the prom queen was a lesbian, it wasn't something that surprised Toni, because Shelby Goodkind had already kissed every queer girl in school, even her. Fuck, she had been the first one on the list.
"I heard her parents didn't take the news well."
"Yeah, apparently she was kicked out of the house."
"My neighbor's best friend said he saw her on the street asking for shelter from anyone passing by."
Those were some of the whispers Toni had heard that day, but she didn't believe it was true, because Shelby looked radiant, walking down the halls, nothing in this world could shake her. But there wasn't much Toni knew about Shelby Goodkind; she hadn't learned any new information about the most popular girl in school since that day in the closet.
And she didn't seem to care either.
"That was iconic!" Marty was exclaiming, chatting animatedly with Leah, when Toni approached with her tray for lunch. She didn't even have to ask what they were talking about, because the topic at the entire school was no different.
"I'm happy for her, it's not good to hide yourself."
"I don't understand why that's a big deal." Toni said finally, receiving judgmental looks from her friends. "What? It's true, it's not like the world stopped when I came out as a lesbian around here."
"Toni, you weren't Catholic Barbie, were you?" Fatin said, appearing out of nowhere and at the same time Leah's face widened. Fatin gave her girlfriend a brief kiss before joining them. "People were shocked."
"I knew it." Toni muttered, softly.
"You can stop pretending you don't like her; we know you have a crush on her." Leah said, holding her hand, comforting her for going through a hard time. Toni just slapped her.
"Fuck you, I don't have a crush on her."
As the years went by, Toni began to dislike Shelby. At least that's what she kept telling herself, because it was really, really hard to have any feelings for Shelby when she was kissing all the girls in school, it wasn't like she was actually going to have any chance. And, also, she had met Regan, so she didn't have time to think about Shelby Goodkind.
"So... Goodkind is a lesbian," Rachel appeared, taking a seat next to Toni, followed by her twin sister. "Really there were people who didn't know? And why do these people care so much?"
"Because she's hot." Nora said, attracting the attention of everyone at the table.
"Don't say that, Nora, Toni will get jealous, she'll think you're trying to steal her girlfriend."
Toni kicked Leah on the spot.
"Ouch!"
"Don't touch my baby, Shalifoe, or I'll rip every strand of hair out of that ugly head of yours with my own teeth, I don't care."
"Whatever. Reid, are we going to practice today? The championship is coming up and we need to win this shit."
"Sure, Shalifoe, 2pm I'll be on the beach, taking orders from a raccoon, as usual."
"Excuse me, but am I the raccoon?"
Rachel took a slow bite of her plain sandwich before answering yes, with a sly smile on her face. A few minutes later, Shelby Goodkind appeared in the cafeteria, smiling so openly, she seemed genuinely happy. Toni might not be her number one fan, but she was happy to see someone lgbtq+ finally feeling free. Who knows, maybe she would find a girl who could make her happy.
That afternoon, Toni and Rachel played beach volleyball for 3 hours and were only interrupted because Rachel urgently needed to get home, because apparently, she and Nora needed to go to a charity dinner at the house of someone super important whose name Toni didn't care to remember. Again, she wasn't very good at memory. Or she really didn't care, maybe both.
"Ready to go home?" Marty asked, approaching the court where Toni was throwing the ball against the net.
"You could practice with me, Marty! How about it?" Toni threw the ball towards her best friend/sister and Martha cushioned the hit of the ball with her face. "Shit, Marty, I'm sorry."
"That's why I don't practice with you. Can we go now?"
"Let me just get in the water one last time and we can go."
"I'll go with you, it's too hot today."
The two of them raced to the ocean, the water now much less cold than it had been earlier. It was late afternoon, and at that time the beach was surprisingly empty, except for the people who played sports there, so in the distance it was possible to see some surfers or other people playing soccer and volleyball. As Martha got out of the water, she noticed that Toni's gaze was fixed on the beach soccer court nearby, and she knew immediately what was going through her sister's mind.
"Come on, Toni, it's been months. She doesn't deserve all this suffering."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Toni lied.
"Please, your left eyebrow goes up when you're not telling the truth, and even if it didn’t, I would know you're not being honest."
Toni was taken aback by the revelation and then stood raising and lowering her left eyebrow, completely ignoring what Martha was saying.
"Regan is not the last girl in the world, you know you can find someone just as good and maybe even better."
"My eyebrow isn't moving," she said, as her eyebrow clearly moved.
"Okay, ignore me all you want, but you know it's true."
"If it was, the year's already over, there's no point in thinking about it now, there's no other girl in this fucking town who could-"
"You know who you could ask out..."
"No, no! Martha, no!" Toni's tone of voice grew higher as she understood who her friend was talking about, "I'm not going to ask her out!"
"Why not?"
"Because... Because it doesn't make sense! We're not friends, I'm not obligated to like every girl just because they like girls too. And... I don't know anything about her, just that..." The memory of Fatin's birthday filled her mind in seconds, it was like she were there all over again. She could almost smell the strawberry scent. "I only know that her favorite color is green."
"Come on, Toni! Stop being a pain in the ass and ask Shelby out!"
"Okay, I'm in." The voice startled both Toni and Martha. Especially Toni, who ended up tripping over the remains of a sandcastle, falling face first into the ground. Of course, getting up and finding Shelby in a bikini - again this my God - holding a surfboard and smiling at her was not a sight that calmed her down.
"What?" Toni couldn't concentrate on what was happening, her eyes roaming through everything and at the same time trying not to pay attention to anything. Shelby's collarbones... Look at the floor... Her golden hair... Wow, how beautiful the ocean looks... Since when did she have a tattoo on her rib?
"I will go on a date with you."
"What?"
"Is tomorrow good for you?"
"But I didn't ask you out."
"Pick me up at five.
"Shelby, I don't-"
"I suppose you know where Dot lives, huh?"
Shelby wasn't listening. Meanwhile, Martha had simply disappeared from her side.
"I know," she blinked her eyes, thinking she was delirious "but I don't want to go out with you."
"Great, see you tomorrow!" Shelby cracked an even bigger smile, winked at her and walked away.
"What just happened?" Martha magically reappeared by her side and they both watched Shelby Goodkind's silhouette disappear along the shore.
"I don't fucking know, Marty, but apparently I have a date with Shelby."