Chapter Text
Rain fell as two young girls sprinted across the beach together. The first, just several steps of ahead of the second, wore her brown curly hair in two french braids that ended just above her shoulders. Her vision was blurred, rain fogging up her glasses, but she was undeterred.
“Come on, Clarke!” she yelled back to her friend as she hopped over a log and looked back over her shoulder.
Clarke, wavy blonde hair matted to her face, too short to pull back with a hair tie, fumbled her way through the sand to follow her friend. The brunette slowed down to allow for the blonde’s shorter legs to catch up with her.
The brunette reached out for Clarke’s hand and the exact moment lightning struck barely feet away from them. Both girls screamed and Clarke leapt into Lexa’s embrace.
“We needa get outta here Lex!” Clarke yelled over the storm.
Lexa simply shook her head in response. “Don’tchya know?” she asked. “Lightning never strikes the same place twice. Besides, come ‘ere.”
Lexa grabbed Clarke’s hand and led her the few feet to the site of where the lightning had struck. The sand there was still smoking so Lexa held Clarke back with a hand as the younger girl looked down. “What is it?” Clarke asked.
“Once it cools, we’ll dig it up and I’ll show ya,” Lexa smiled.
“Ya know, you never answered my question from earlier, Lexa,” Clarke crossed her arms across her chest. “You said you wanna marry me, but that’s silly. We’re both girls. Why’d ya wanna marry me for anyhow?”
“Well before they died, my Momma and Daddy always told me that they got married ‘cuz they wanted to marry their best friend. And you’re my best friend,” Lexa answered matter-of-factly.
“That the only reason why you wanna marry me?” Clarke taunted.
“Well that, and so I can kiss ya anytime I want,” Lexa smiled, causing the smirk to fall from the younger girl’s face.
The two young girls leaned in at the same time and their lips touched tentatively. Lightning struck behind them.
Clarke was startled out of her dream and it took her a moment to register her surroundings. She’d been lying her head down on a table surrounded by sketches and swatches of fabric.
“So ‘why’d he wanna marry you anyhow’?” came a voice from across the room, speaking in a drawn out faux-southern accent. Clarke wiped her eyes and looked across the room at her friend Raven in confusion. Raven then began to speak again, this time in her normal New England accent, “You know, Clarke, your accent gets a whole lot thicker when you’re dreaming.”
Clarke rolled her eyes at Raven and shuffled the papers around her. “Why did you let me fall asleep?” the blonde asked.
“You needed it,” Raven responded. “You kicked that show out of the park this morning and the first thing you did after interviews was get back to work? Don’t you have somewhere to be tonight?”
“Yeah,” Clarke sighed. “The Mayor is holding a gala tonight.”
“And by the mayor, you mean your future mother-in-law, right?” Raven waggled her eyebrows at the girl.
“Finn hasn’t proposed yet, so don’t get too excited,” Clarke laughed as she gathered up everything in front of her and placed it in her bag. She checked the time on her watch and cursed under her breath. “I was supposed to have gone home over an hour ago to get ready.”
“Why don’t you just wear one of your own pieces,” Raven suggested. Clarke checked the time again, realizing that she really didn’t have time to go home.
“Okay, yeah. I’ll just do that.” She quickly stood up and headed over to the racks of clothing. Her clothing. Clothing she had put hours into designing. Clothing that was finally putting her on the map. She was going to be someone. Even Vogue had said so.
She sent a quick text to Finn, letting him know that she would be leaving from the studio instead of her apartment before she got ready with Raven’s help. Raven had been the first friend she’d made in New York City when she’d moved there five years earlier and the girl had quickly become the best assistant and friend she could ever ask for.
Once she was dressed appropriately for the event, one that would be attended by the most prominent of New Yorkers as well as the press, Clarke walked out onto the sidewalk, ready to try and flag a cab. Julia Collins, mayor of New York City, was hosting the gala and with her current bid for senate, Clarke knew that the press would be all over Julia’s son, Finn, and by connection, her as well. She was planning on taking a cab to Finn’s, where they would then get a car together.
Once she stepped out into the warm early summer air though, Clarke was surprised to find a limo waiting for her.
“Miss. Blake, Mr. Collins sent me to come pick you up,” the driver announced his presence. Clarke didn’t even delay for a moment when the driver called her Miss Blake. The name had been hers for five years and there were times when she forgot that it hadn’t always been her name.
“Thank you,” Clarke grinned at him as he held open the door for her. She slid in and waited for the drive to begin. They wound their way through the city until they stopped outside the back of a building.
“Mr. Collins is waiting for you inside,” the drive stated as he opened the back door for Clarke.
The blonde thanked the driver and walked in through the back door of the building. She wandered down a lowly lit hallway, searching for her boyfriend.
“Finn?” she asked out loud.
Moments later a man with floppy dark hair wearing an expensive-looking tailored suit appeared from around a corner, smiling. “Hey there, Princess,” he grinned.
Clarke loved Finn, she really did, but sometimes the nickname Princess rubbed her the wrong way. Finn had called her that upon their first meeting at a fundraiser, assuming she’d come from wealth the way he had. She hadn’t corrected him. Because according to all the biographies, Clarke Blake had been raised on a plantation farm in Alabama. A real southern belle who never wanted for anything.
The problem was, Clarke Blake didn’t really exist.
“Hey, babe,” Clarke grinned as he placed a kiss on her lips. “Where are we, anyway?”
Instead of answering her question, however, Finn took Clarke’s hands and led her through another door. The room was just barely lit and Clarke wasn’t sure where she was, but she was more focused on the man in front of her.
“Clarke Blake,” Finn began as he lowered himself down on to one knee and the lights rose, revealing their surroundings.
Clarke quickly spun her head around, taking in the aisles of glass counters filled with jewelry and the attendants standing behind them. She saw the telling Tiffany blue boxes and she knew where she was.
“Will you marry me?” Finn asked simply.
Clarke looked at him in shock. She dropped her jaw and began to speak quickly, “Are you sure? Are you really sure? Because if you’re not, that’s totally fine. I’m sure the car is still here and we can head back there and go to the gala right now. It hasn’t even been a year yet, Finn.”
Finn quickly stood up off the ground, holding tightly to Clarke’s hands and reassured her in a calming voice. “I love you Clarke Blake, and if I wasn’t sure, trust me, I wouldn’t be doing this. I usually don’t ask a question that I already know the answer to, so with the risk of being rejected twice, Clarke, will you marry me?”
Clarke looked into the honest face of the man she loved and saw nothing but adoration there. She forgot all the complications and everything she knew that would eventually have to be dealt with and focused on just him. She brought a hand up to his face and nodded, “Yes,” with a smile.
She squealed and wrapped her arms around Finn’s neck and he picked her up off the ground and spun her around. She placed her back down and gestured to the store around them. “Pick one,” he spoke with a smile.
An hour later, Clarke and Finn were making out in the back of the limo on their way to the gala while Clarke continued to sneak looks at the gorgeous, incredibly expensive ring resting on her finger.
“We’ll be seeing my mom tonight, but we should call your parents now,” Finn suggested.
At the mention of her family, Clarke immediately seized up. “No!” she grabbed his phone away from him. “I mean, I want to tell them in person. Why don’t we keep this quiet, just until I tell them?”
“Of course,” Finn nodded with a smile as he kissed her forehead. He took her hand in his and turned her ring around so that only the band was showing.
As soon as the limo came to a stop and their door was opened, Finn exited and guided Clarke out behind him. Immediately cameras started flashing and the couple smiled enthusiastically as they made their way towards the event space.
Before they made it to the doors, they reached a woman surrounded by cameras - Julia Collins.
“Mother!” Finn greeted the woman with a warm hug which Julia returned.
Julia turned to Clarke next with a calculated smile that Clarke knew was one that all politicians had perfected. “Clarke, I see you and Finn are still together.”
“Yes mother, we are,” Finn laughed and Clarke knew that his smile was equally as fake as his mother’s. He was trying not to let the woman’s statement bother him.
“It’s great to see you, Mayor Collins,” Clarke smiled, trying to look as genuine as possible as she extended her arm and kissed Julia’s cheek.
Julia grasped Clarke’s hand, but when she didn’t let go immediately, Clarke watched as the blood drained from her face. She felt where Julia was gripping and knew she’d been found out.
“Finn, darling, why does Clarke have a ring on this very specific finger?” Julia asked through gritted teeth and a fake smile. She flipped the ring around to reveal the large stone and gasped. Cameras caught the moment on camera.
The next morning, the photo was all over the New York Times and other press outlets. All bore similar headlines:
Mayor’s Son Engaged!
New York’s Most Eligible Bachelor Is Officially Off The Market
Finn Collins Engaged to Up and Coming Designer Clarke Blake
While Julia’s press office dealt with the ramifications of the announcement and she observed the sudden upswing in her polls thanks to the reminder that she was a mother as well as a politician, Clarke hopped on the first flight out of JFK the next morning for Alabama.
When she arrived at the airport, Clarke rented a sports car and drove the two hour drive to the small town of Polis, Alabama.
She cringed as she drove through the small town where every single store and office of operations stood side by side on a single street. She drove past the town and out onto the dirt road that led her up by the lake.
When she reached the familiar run down house, she pulled into the driveway and parked the car. She looked down at the ring on her hand, marveling at it. It was a three stone Asscher-cut diamond ring. It was beautiful. It was her perfect ring, one that growing up she could only have dreamed about. When she looked at the ring though, she couldn’t help but be reminded of another ring. One that had only a small diamond on it, so small that the band itself was nearly wider than the stone.
Clarke shook her head, trying to forget the other ring. She carefully slid Finn’s gift off her finger and placed it in the glove compartment of the car. She then exited the car, holding in her hands the files she’d travelled all the way from New York with.
Clarke hadn’t even made it all the way to the steps of the porch when the screen door swung open and a woman exited. She wore ripped up jeans and a wife beater. Her curly brown hair was up in a ponytail and her arms and face were streaked with grease from the car part she was holding.
The blonde rolled her eyes at the mess of a women, knowing that she herself was exquisitely dressed in a designer dress and heels that were starting to get stuck in the dirt she stepped in.
“What can I do you for, Miss?” the brunette asked as soon as she exited the house.
“Well, Lexa,” Clarke began, her annoyance evident in her voice. She lifted up her Tom Ford sunglasses, placed a hand on her hips and stared at the women. She lifted up the papers she was holding. “For starters, you can get your ass down here and get me a divorce.”
Lexa’s jaw dropped at the same moment the car part fell out of her hand and onto the porch.
Lexa Woods could not remember the first time she saw Clarke Griffin. There was no way for her to remember the day. After all, she was still in diapers. Lexa Woods could not remember the first time she saw Clarke Woods. She knew the day, but she was too drunk the day of their wedding to remember the exact moment she said, “I Do.”
There was one thing for certain though. Lexa Woods would always remember the first time she saw Clarke Blake. She was skinnier and more toned than ever before, wearing clothes that looked like they came straight off a runway, heels that made her cringe to think about the pain they caused, and an annoyed expression while she demanded a divorce.
The car part she’d been holding fell out of Lexa’s hand and landed with a loud thud on the porch. The last thing Lexa had expected to happen when she woke up that morning was the arrival of her high school sweetheart, the girl she married when she was nineteen and Clarke was eighteen.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Lexa gasped with a half laugh after she finally realized who it was that was standing in her driveway. “Clarke Griffin, as I live and breathe. Hello to you too. I was expecting a ‘Honey I’m Home,’ but I guess you lost your southern charm the day you left this town for wherever it is you’ve been for five years.” She ignored the part on the ground and crossed her arms across her chest and leaned against the side of the house.
“I didn’t lose anything when I left this god forsaken town,” Clarke scoffed. “But I did gain my dignity the moment I landed in New York.”
“So that’s what you hoity-toity Yankee bitches are calling a crass attitude and that look of utter constipation?”
“At least I’m not covered in grease and looking like a…like a…” Clarke raised her hand and gestured to Lexa.
“Like a what?” Lexa asked.
“Like such a goddamn lesbian,” Clarke spat, as if the word was a disgusting poison. The tinge of hurt Lexa felt at the remark was well hidden behind an impassive face.
“Well, we both know that I am a lesbian, so I really don’t see what the problem is there,” Lexa scoffed, throwing off the taunt with laughter. “You’d think my wife woulda known that though.”
“I’m not your wife, Lex,” Clarke sighed. “I’m just the first girl who climbed in the back of your truck. I’ve changed, though. I don’t even know that girl anymore.”
“Neither do I,” Lexa stared wide-eyed at the blonde. She could barely recognize the woman her once best friend had turned into.
“Look, Lexa,” Clarke took several steps closer to the porch and Lexa noticed the way her heels stuck into the ground, making it hard for the blonde to walk properly. “I’ve been sending you these papers for years, but I guess you didn’t quite get the hint. So here they are. They even have idiot proof tabs to show you where to sign.”
“Do your parents even know you’re here?” Lexa asked, realizing that if Clarke had gone to see Jake and Abby, that she probably would have heard about it. And therefore heard that Clarke was in town in the first place.
“Can you just sign the damn papers so I can get back to New York?” Clarke spoke, exasperated, as she held out the papers to Lexa.
With her suspicions confirmed, Lexa shook her head. “Come back after you’ve seen Jake and Abby, then I’ll think about it.” She turned around and left Clarke behind her. Lexa kicked the screen door open and it swung shut behind her.
The brunette wasn’t surprised to find that Clarke had followed after her. Clarke was nothing if not persistent.
“Goddamnit, Lexa, just sign the papers!”
“Like I said, go see your parents, then we’ll talk,” Lexa retorted, slamming the door on Clarke’s face and locking it.
After making sure the back door was locked, Lexa sauntered into the kitchen. She opened up the fridge, barely even noticing that it was nearly empty, and pulled out a bottle of Corona. Lexa had never been picky when it came to her beer, never even minding Natty Lite, but recently she had upgraded herself to Coronas, thinking it was about time with everything she was up to recently.
After opening the bottle, Lexa meandered into the living room while drinking. She had the bottle up to her lips when she noticed that the front door was open and the screen door just slightly ajar. She shifted her gaze and saw Clarke standing in the middle of her living room, dangling a set of keys. Her eyes went wide and she quickly chugged the rest of her beer.
“Next time you try and lock someone out of a house they used to live in, maybe you should try and remember to remove the hidden key,” Clarke arched her eyebrows.
The bottle now empty, Lexa chucked it into the trash and it made a clinking noise as it hit the other empty bottles.
“Get the fuck out of my house, Clarke,” Lexa’s voice was suddenly harsh and stern.
“I will when you sign the papers,” the girl crossed her arms across her chest, and suddenly she looked more like a petulant child than a pissed off adult. The sight made Lexa remember the girl who Clarke used to be, the kind of girl who would do anything for the people she loved, the kind of girl who threw rocks at the windows of a house just because her friend was upset that his Dad was caught cheating on his Mom.
Not in the mood for an involuntary trip down Memory Lane, Lexa left Clarke in the living room without another word and went to the kitchen where she spent a few minutes searching for her cell phone. She hardly ever used it, there was no need, not when she always knew where her friends were at any given time. She dialed the town sheriff and tossed the phone back in the drawer.
When she returned to the living room, Clarke was still standing there holding the papers. Neither of them spoke, just stared at each other, until the flashing lights of the cop car shone through the windows.
“You called the sheriff on me?” Clarke exclaimed, quickly straightening up. “You KNOW that bitch hates me.”
You smirked at the frazzled girl, even as you realized that Clarke had no idea that Sheriff Indra had retired and that the new Sheriff in town was her son. She started to hustle towards the back door at the same moment Lincoln, dressed in his sheriff’s uniform, knocked on the screen door.
Lexa let her friend in and Clarke turned around, taking in the surprise behind her.
“Lincoln?”she asked, shocked. “You’re the town sheriff?”
“Sure am,” he grinned in response. Clarke sighed in relief and crossed the room and gave Lincoln a hug. “Haven’t seen you around here in a while, Clarke. How are things? You’re in New York, am I right?”
“I am,” Clarke nodded. “It’s great, Linc. You should really come up and visit at some point. You’d love all the art. Not just the museums, mind you, but the street artists as well.”
As Clarke caught up with her high school friend, Lexa remembered that there was a time when she would peak into the window of the art room at Polis High to watch Clarke paint and draw. She would always have a smile on her face and she and Lincoln would always be sitting at desks next to each other. Lexa wondered when the last time Lincoln did anything artistic.
Lexa quickly snapped out of the memory she was experiencing and focused instead on the two others in her living room. “Lincoln? Care to be a bit more professional?” she sighed. “You’re here to take Clarke away for trespassing, remember?”
Lincoln looked up at Lexa as if just remembering why he was there, then looked back at the blonde. “She’s got a point, Blondie,” he remarked. “You can’t just going on breaking into houses that you don’t live in.”
Lexa smirked, ready to watch Lincoln take Clarke away in handcuffs, but instead watched as a look of realization crossed the blonde’s face. “I’m willing to bet that my name is still on the deed to this shitty ass house,” Clarke spoke and Lexa tried not to care about the adjective Clarke had used to describe the house they had once christened together. “Or at least it should be, considering the fact that Lexa refuses to sign these divorce papers.” She lifted up the file, the colored ‘idiot proof’ tabs fully visible.
“You’re still married?” Lincoln looked between the two women, shocked.
“Unfortunately,” Clarke said at the same moment that Lexa responded, “Yep.”
“Lexa, if you’re still married and she still owns the house with you, then I can’t exactly arrest her for trespassing,” Lincoln sighed, and Lexa could tell that he was starting to feel awkward about the whole situation.
The wheels in Lexa’s brain started turning as she tried to figure out a way for Lincoln to take Clarke away. “What’s the statute of limitation on destruction of private and public properties?” Lexa smirked as she remembered the countless pranks Clarke had pulled around town, several of which she’d managed to avoid detection for.
“Fuck you, Lexa,” Clarke turned to the brunette, quickly figuring out where the brunette was headed. “You were with me for every single stink bomb and defacement.”
Lexa quickly realized that Clarke was right. In fact, Lincoln had been with them as well for several of the pranks. Back in high school they had caused so much trouble, but she and Clarke had always been thick as thieves, even before they started dating and became the first-ever lesbian couple in Polis, Alabama. They’d had their group of friends as well. They’d all been friends since diapers. She and Clarke had always been the ringleaders, but they’d almost always been accompanied by Bellamy Blake, Lincoln Forest, Jasper Jordan, Monty Green and Wells Jaha.
“There’s no reason for me to arrest Clarke, Lexa,” Lincoln stated. “This here is just a little domestic dispute. Unless she hit you,” he turned to Clarke. “Because we’re taking that stuff seriously now. She didn’t hit you, did she?”
Lexa snapped her gaze to Clarke, wondering if the girl would have the balls to lie just to piss her off. Clarke’s gaze softened though as she spoke, “No, Lincoln. Lexa would never hit me. She couldn’t even kill a spider.”
Clarke had been the designated spider-killer in their relationship. Lexa noticed in Clarke’s words that Clarke hadn’t said that she would never hurt her, just that she would never hit her. Because Lexa sure as hell knew that she’d hurt Clarke in plenty of other ways, non-physical ways.
“I don’t have a single childhood memory that doesn’t have you two in it,” Lincoln smiled, clearly not totally catching onto the tension in the room, or ignoring it. Lincoln had always been the peacekeeper in the group. Him and Wells. But now that role fell solely on the Sheriff.
“Now is not the time,” Lexa sighed.
“Right,” Lincoln responded as he started to back towards the door. “Well, I’m going to head out. Clarke, if you’re in town for a while, you should come to Grounders. The whole gang is there most nights.”
“Thanks for the invite Lincoln, but I’m on the first flight out of here tomorrow morning,” Clarke spoke with a tight-lipped smile.
Lincoln tipped his hat at the two women and left the house.
“I guess not much has changed,” Lexa raised her eyebrows at Clarke after the wheels of the cop car were heard crunching through the dirt driveway. “You come to town and the first thing you do is seek me out, then you have a confrontation with the cops.”
“Fuck you, Lexa,” the blonde narrowed her bright blue eyes at Lexa, glaring at her. “I’ve changed, I’m not the same girl who used to skip gym class, show up cross-faded to prom or have sex in the back of a truck with some girl.”
“You’re right,” Lexa nodded. “That girl was happy, something you certainly don’t seem to be.”
“I am happy,” Clarke crossed her arms. “I am incredibly successful. I have people writing about me in magazines. People want to BE me. And I have someone who loves me and wants to marry me. I’m engaged to someone else Lexa.” Clarke lowered her voice with a sigh at the end of her sentence and Lexa’s stomach dropped. She should have known that everything she had been doing the past few years wasn’t going to make a difference, but she’d still held out hope nevertheless.
“Well I hope you’re happy with your new Yankee fiance. Maybe this time you’ll get the whole marriage thing right. I hope she isn’t as big of a disappointment to you as I was,” Lexa rolled her eyes and looked at the glass figurine resting on the bookshelf over Clarke’s shoulder.
“He.”
“What?” Lexa moved her gaze from the glass to the blonde.
“I’m marrying a man, Lexa.”
“Of course you are!” Lexa laughed out loud. She knew that Clarke had always been attracted to men and women. She wasn’t sure which would have been worse though, Clarke moving on with a girl or a guy.
“I’m straight, Lexa,” Clarke insisted and Lexa laughed loudly. “I realize now that you were just a phase. My mom was right, it was a phase I’ve now grown out of. I was just confused back then. I confused the feelings I had as your best friend for love.”
At Clarke’s utter denial, Lexa was actually mad, but she wasn’t going to let that show. Instead she let out some more laughter, as if Clarke’s statement was just laughable, instead of a knife in the heart. “For a straight girl, you really enjoyed eating my pussy. But hey, I guess that was just a failed experiment, right? I never meant anything to you.”
“That’s not…” a flash of guilt passed over Clarke’s face. “That’s not true. I cared for you and you know that. You were my best friend, but that’s all.”
Lexa had the hundreds of memories of the two of them lying naked together, professing their love to each other, to prove Clarke wrong, but she didn’t bother. She didn’t see the point.
“I’ll sign your goddamn papers,” Lexa sighed and Clarke smiled. “But only after you see your parents. I’m not changing my mind on that. They’d kill me if they knew I’d seen you and didn’t make you go over there.”
Lexa realized that something must have shifted in her own face, maybe it was the realization that everything she’d done in the past years didn’t matter anymore, but whatever it was seemed to make Clarke believe her.
“Fine,” she responded, finally relenting, but not without a sharpness to her speech. “Only because if I stay with them then I don’t have to stay at the airport hotel.”
“Okay.”
“Where will you be after I see them?”
“I’ll be around tomorrow morning before you gotta leave,” Lexa explained, becoming more aware of her own southern accent and how strong it was compared to Clarke’s faded one.
Without another word, Clarke turned on her heels and left the house, leaving the papers behind on the table for Lexa to sign. As soon as she heard the rental car pull away and leave her driveway, Lexa sunk on to her couch and sighed.
All of a sudden everything around her made her think of Clarke. From the light blue sofa to the painting on the wall, to the centerpiece of it all. The glass piece that had been created in a lightning storm fifteen years earlier had been the inspiration to everything. But it didn’t matter anymore.
Instead of being bombarded with memories of a thunderstorm when she was ten, or the vicious yelling fights that had ended their relationship, Lexa was hit by the memory of her and Clarke’s second kiss.
Lexa was sixteen and Clarke was fifteen and their sophomore year of high school was just days days away from starting. In honor of the end of summer, Bellamy Blake was hosting a party at his family’s plantation. There was a bonfire and plenty of beer and no one worried about the police being called. Bellamy’s dad was out of town, probably with one of his girlfriends and his mom was on the other side of town, living in the trailer park with her new husband and Bellamy’s half sister. The property was large enough with no neighbors in sight, so that they never worried about getting caught there.
They were all pleasantly drunk and circled around a bonfire, the fire more for aesthetic than heat as it was still warm enough to hang out outside, even at night. Monty and Jasper had put the fire to use though, roasting marshmallows and trying to throw them into each other’s mouths.
The whole gang was there; Lexa, Clarke, Bellamy, Wells, Jasper, Monty and Lincoln, as well as some others that they were friends with, but not as close with.
The night was one of those perfect nights. The kind of night that could have been an ordinary night, but once you’re with your friends it just becomes the epitome of high school. They all felt it, the ease between them all and the easy fun that came from drinking together outside in their small hometown.
Someone brought up the topic of first kisses and Clarke and Lexa exchanged a glance as they remembered being each other’s first kiss in the middle of a thunderstorm, six years earlier. Since then, they’d each kissed other people, many of whom were in attendance, but neither forgot that first kiss.
When Maya Vie announced that she hadn’t had her first kiss yet, Jasper, mouth full of marshmallows, promptly volunteered. The shy girl, confident only because of the beer coursing through her, nodded and after Jasper swallowed the marshmallows, he kissed her. Everyone cheered.
Soon, everyone was drunk enough that they were splitting up into smaller groups, and after several more beers Clarke turned towards her best friend. “I have to pee, come with me?”
Lexa nodded and followed the blonde out of sight of the others and waited as the girl crouched behind a tree and relieved herself. Lexa remembered the uncharacteristic confidence that Maya had shown earlier and she realized that it was about time that she showed some herself. She’d been waiting all summer for the right moment to tell her best friend her biggest secret, but had managed to talk herself out of it on multiple occasions. Now that the summer was practically over, Lexa knew that she had to stop with the excuses.
When Clarke reappeared from behind the tree, Lexa immediately spoke so that she wouldn’t lose what little courage she’d managed to gather.
“Clarke, I need to tell you something.”
“What is it, Lexi?” Clarke approached Lexa and threw an arm around her. When Clarke was drunk she got incredibly physically affectionate. Physical affection usually bothered Lexa, but never when it came from her best friend.
Lexa took a deep breath and decided to go for it. “I like girls,” she spoke quickly. “I think dicks are gross and boobs are awesome. I’m gay, Clarke. Totally and completely gay.”
She searched Clarke’s face for a response and the blonde quickly gave her one. A smile. “I know Lex,” she laughed. “I’m pretty sure everyone knows. You’re not exactly subtle.”
“I’m not?”
“No,” Clarke shook her head. “I’ve never seen you show interest in any guy, not even when you spent the night making out with Ryder that one time last summer.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Lexa asked tentatively. They lived in a small town in Alabama and Lexa didn’t know a single other gay person in the town, girl or guy.
“Obviously,” Clarke rolled her eyes. “You’re my best friend no matter what, obviously I’m okay with it. Besides, now that you’ve officially told me, I guess I should tell you that I’ve had a crush on you for a long time. I’m not sure how long, I dunno when the crush started, maybe it was always there, but I definitely have a crush on you Lexa.”
Lexa looked at the drunk blonde in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not the only one here who isn’t straight,” Clarke laughed. “Don’t get me wrong I still like guys, but I’m a sucker for a sexy girl as well.” This reveal was news to Lexa. Clarke was definitely the most sexual girl in their grade, having been the first girl they knew to lose her virginity, but Lexa was pretty sure she’d never tried to hook up with a girl before.
“You’re not straight?” Lexa asked, still confused.
“If I was straight, would I do this?” Clarke then approached Lexa and placed a hand behind her neck, winding her fingers through the curls she found there. Lexa realized what Clarke was about to do just moments before it happened.
Clarke’s lips were soft and tasted like cheap beer and cigarettes. They tasted like sandy beaches and a rainstorm. They tasted like home.
It didn’t take long for Lexa to start kissing Clarke back, quickly deepening the kiss when Clarke didn’t pull away immediately. Before she knew it, Clarke was moving them and Lexa’s back was against the bark of a tree, scratching her where her shirt had ridden up. But she didn’t care. She barely even noticed it, certainly not when Clarke’s hand was suddenly on top of her clothed breast.
Clarke kept her hand there for barely a moment before removing it, and when Lexa whined at the lack of contact, Clarke laughed into her lips. She then used that hand to take one of Lexa’s, both of which were resting on the blonde’s hips. She led Lexa’s hand to her breast and lifted her lips slightly from Lexa’s.
“You said you love boobs, Lex, so here you go.” Clarke’s voice was low and gravelly and it elicited a growl from Lexa’s lips, one neither of them knew she had in her. Instead of laughing though, Clarke moved Lexa’s hands away from the top of her shirt and guided it under instead.
Lexa didn’t need much guidance to know what Clarke wanted. She pushed her hand underneath Clarke’s bra and grabbed her bare breast, causing Clarke to attach her lips to Lexa’s once more.
Lexa flicked a thumb over Clarke’s nipple and Clarke drove a knee between Lexa’s legs. It was like the rest of the world didn’t exist. And that’s when Lexa knew she was a goner. There was no turning back. She was Clarke Griffin’s, her body and her soul.
They never really came out to their friends. They all just figured it out when they started holding hands in public and when they would sit on each other’s laps when hanging out with everyone, occasionally exchanging chaste kisses. Everyone figured it out on their own and it was never a big deal.
Jasper was the last to figure it out. It took him until the end of the September when he finally asked why Clarke would call Lexa her girlfriend, but none of their other girl friends. Lexa had answered for Clarke by kissing her in a way that was slightly PG-13 and saying, “Because I’m the only one allowed to do that. Because I get to kiss her anytime I want.”
And Clarke’s eyes had sparkled as they both remembered the words they’d spoken before their first kiss.