Chapter Text
“Tell me something crazy,” Rio says.
Jen is relaxed across the couch, long limbs carefully arranged and Rio tucked half into her side, half on top. Her chin rests on Jen’s chest as she stares up at her.
“Crazy?” Jen asks.
Rio nods, rumpling Jen’s blouse with her jaw.
“Hm,” Jen narrows her eyes in thought, staring at the ceiling and absentmindedly smoothing out the blouse’s wrinkles. “Australia is wider than the moon.”
Rio lifts her head. “What?
“Yeah,” her girlfriend says, peering down at Rio past her nose. “Its diameter is wider than the moon’s.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“Skincare packaging,” she says, turning to look at the TV. “The serum was incredible. Crazy fact though, huh?”
Rio stays looking at her for another second before settling her cheek back onto Jen’s chest. The material of the blouse is soft and warm, and she can feel Jen’s heart beat gently against her temple.
“Crazy,” Rio murmurs in agreement, before focusing on the film Jen has chosen. It’s a comedy, Wedding Crashers, and it feels like it only came out last year, not nearly 20 years ago, christ.
The characters on screen are getting wild at another wedding. Do people really live like that, hopping from one insane situation to the next?
“I nearly got married once.”
Rio chokes on absolutely nothing.
“What?” She splutters, pushing herself up.
“Yeah,” Jen says, totally and completely casual, still watching the TV. Rio waits, but nothing else comes until she slaps Jen on the chest.
“Ow!”
“Jen, you almost got married?” Rio demands, because what? What? “That’s… that’s crazy! And you told me the moon fact instead of that?”
“It was a long time ago! And not to mention, wildly out of character.” Jen defends herself, pouting as she rubs at her chest. Rio rolls her eyes and drops a quick kiss to the area, making her girlfriend smile reluctantly. “I thought the moon thing was more interesting.”
“More interesting than you getting married? Come on.”
“Nearly married,” Jen emphasises, grabbing the remote and pausing the movie. “We never actually went through with it. Thank god.”
“I can’t believe you’ve never told me this.”
“It’s not a big deal,” she says, looking a little worried now. “Seriously, Rio, the whole thing was dumb. I honestly didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”
“You have to tell me everything,” Rio says, sitting up and pushing her dark hair out of her face. “This is wild.”
“It’s really not,” Jen sighs with a fond scrunch of her nose, “it’s just a thing that happened. Why are you so excited, anyway? Aren’t girlfriends supposed to get jealous over exes?”
“First of all, I’m not excited,” Rio holds up one finger, then two, “and second of all, I don’t have a jealous bone in my body. You know this. You said you liked that about me.”
“I do,” Jen concedes, pushing herself up and sitting back against the couch arm, “but you’re definitely excited. You’re literally vibrating.”
And fine, maybe she is, but who can blame her? When you find out your girlfriend of nine months nearly got fucking married, it’s cause for a bit of excitement.
“Well, excuse me for being a little surprised that my classy, organised, fancy bitch girlfriend did something so damn… impulsive.” Rio dismisses, grabbing her beer bottle from the side table and making herself comfortable against the opposite couch arm. She drapes her legs over Jen’s, who immediately rests her hands on Rio’s ankles. “Right. I’m ready. What happened.”
Jen pulls a face, tugging uncomfortably at one of her earrings. “Rio-”
“Give me the drama, babe,” Rio instructs firmly, “I need it.”
“You watch too much reality TV,” her girlfriend laughs. “Fine. It was two years ago-”
“That’s practically a year before we got together!”
“Yeah, Rio, I know how the passage of time works.”
“Sorry,” Rio says, waving a hand dismissively. “Continue.”
“Okay, so it was about two years ago. We met at a bar- don’t.” She holds a hand up in warning as Rio opens her mouth, prompting her to snap it shut with a click of her teeth. “She didn’t look like she belonged there. That’s why I approached her, actually. Way too chic for Jake’s. I mean, I’m also too chic for Jake’s, but Elouise insisted. Anyway, she was wearing a two-piece purple suit and a gorgeous white shirt. She had all this long, effortlessly messy dark hair and the most piercing blue eyes, even from across the room.”
Rio grumbles, staring pointedly. Jen grins at her, lopsided and endeared.
“Don’t worry, babe,” Jen reaches for her hand and squeezes it, “I prefer brown eyes.”
Rio gives her a smug smile, lifting one eyebrow. “Good. Go on,” she says.
“So, yeah, I went up to her and said hello, and she looked me up and down, slowly, and said ‘no’.”
“What?” Rio laughs. Jen shrugs through her own chuckle.
“Yep, just ‘no’. And I’d had a few cocktails at this point, greatly softening the embarrassment, so I just nodded and said ‘okay’. Then I turn around to go but she grabs my wrist.”
Rio knows she’s wide-eyed with delight at the story, but she can’t help it. “What did she say?”
“She said ‘change of plan. I want to make a mistake’.”
Rio’s jaw drops.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” her girlfriend laughs, “and then she tugged me out of there and back to her very fancy apartment where we-” Jen stops then, looking awkward. “Well. And so on.”
“Where she made a mistake,” Rio grins, lurching forward to pinch Jen’s cheek. “That’s you.”
“Hey,” she laughs while pushing Rio away, trying and failing to glare, “I am no one’s mistake. And I made that very clear to her the following morning.”
“I’m sure,” Rio grins fondly. “So, how does that end in marriage?”
“ Nearly marriage,” Jen says, taking her wine glass from the side table and taking a sip. “And I don’t know. The whole thing was a total whirlwind. Her mother seemed like a real asshole, always disappointed no matter how hard she tried to be good enough. I think that’s why it happened. Within six weeks we were engaged and two weeks later we were at the registry office to make it official.”
“Wow,” Rio murmured. “So why didn’t you guys go through with it?”
“We both freaked out,” Jen chuckles, cheeks lifting sweetly, “at pretty much the exact same time. I turned to her in the queue and said ‘wait, are we actually doing this?’ And she looked super panicked and said ‘god, no, what the fuck’ and we ran out of the building. We ended up at the bar across the street where we broke things off amicably. Then we got whisky drunk.” Jen shrugs delicately with a smile. “And that’s what happened.”
“Holy shit,” Rio says quietly. “That is so… I don’t even know. Are you still friends?”
“Eh, kind of,” Jen says, “we occasionally send a text or two to check in, but that’s it. She was always kind of intense, so I’m happy to leave it at that.”
“What’s her name?” Rio asks eagerly.
“Agatha,” Jen says as she reaches for the remote. “Can we go back to the movie now?”
“Agatha,” Rio tries out the name. “Do you have a photo?”
“Don’t be weird,” Jen sighs. Rio huffs, indignant.
“Fuck you, I’m not being weird!” She insists. “I just want to see her so I can picture it. Right now I’m imagining a young Alison Brie.”
“Hotter. Older.” Jen says, pressing play on the remote.
“Then show me,” Rio demands, reaching towards Jen and wiggling her fingers impatiently, “show me and I’ll leave you alone to watch your little film. I swear.”
“Okay, okay,” Jen surrenders, fishing out her phone from her purse by the couch. “You’re annoying, you know that? I probably have one from back then.” She scrolls while Rio bounces impatiently. Jen makes a noise of success, then hands her phone over. “Okay, here she is.”
And, yeah. Here she is. Here Agatha is. Rio stares.
And stares.
“She’s,” Rio starts, then loses the words.
Agatha is stunning. Older, a pale smattering of freckles across her strong nose, long dark hair, and eyes so sharply blue they’re almost unsettling. She’s holding a glass of whisky to red lips, staring up at the camera through thick lashes. Jen is in the frame next to her, smiling that wide, carefree smile Rio likes best. Agatha’s fingernails are painted a poisonous purple.
“That was after the almost-wedding,” Jen tells Rio, “when we broke up.”
Rio swallows.
“She’s, um,” she clears her throat. “Beautiful. God. Jesus, Jen, she’s literally- wow.”
She feels the phone being pried from her hand and looks up to find Jen frowning at her.
“You okay?” She asks. “You said you weren’t jealous.”
“I’m not,” Rio quickly says, before rethinking. Her stomach feels unsettled. “Or… maybe? I wasn’t expecting her to be so gorgeous.”
“You’re more gorgeous,” her girlfriend says, wrapping a warm hand around her ankle and squeezing it. “Seriously.”
“Yeah, okay, liar,” Rio scoffs, trying to push away the discomfort in her gut. She wants to look at the picture again. She wants to look at it and find others and look at them, too. “She’s, like, Disney villain beautiful.”
“Rio, babe, I’m being 100% honest when I tell you I find you a thousand times more attractive than Agatha,” Jen insists, and she’s serious, Rio can tell, but it doesn’t help for some reason. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Rio says, because what else is she supposed to say? She forces a laugh, hoping it doesn’t sound as uncomfortable as it feels. “Fuck, what a story. I haven’t got anything nearly as crazy.”
“That’s why I love you,” Jen smiles, squeezing her ankle once more before pulling her hand back. “You’re Rio. Everyone knows what to expect from you. You’re fun but reliable. Now come and cuddle me again, I won’t even mind when you inevitably wrinkle this blouse further.”
Rio stares. It feels… it feels like Jen’s calling her boring. Is she calling her boring? Maybe she is boring. Reliable, predictable Rio. And it’s not like she can argue with that, anyway. She is those things.
Rio swallows down the dissatisfaction that her girlfriend’s answer brings and shoves, kicks, wrestles Agatha’s face from her mind. She smiles more genuinely then, and nestles herself back against Jen’s body when she shifts to lie down.
On screen, they’re crashing another wedding. Rio wouldn’t ever crash a wedding; she’s too sane for that. The thought brings her a kind of comfort.
She sighs deeply and snuggles into Jen’s expensive blouse, listening to the thud, thud, thud of her heart.
——
At 1am, Rio is thinking about Agatha.
So, sue her, okay? Whatever. She found out only hours ago that her girlfriend nearly married another woman. Granted it was a year before they even met, and Rio doesn’t feel jealous, but she’s not sure what she feels, so, shit, maybe it is jealousy.
It’s a weird twisting in her gut, an itch in her fingertips.
She wants to look at Agatha again. Maybe if she can just study her a bit, Rio will be able to get used to her and move past it.
Glancing over at Jen, she finds her sound asleep. She’s lucky like that; quick to sleep, as delicate and elegant looking as she is awake, heavily until morning. Rio usually falls asleep quickly too, unless there’s something on her mind. Someone on her mind.
Rio leans up on her elbows and looks at the bedside table next to Jen. Her girlfriend’s phone sits there, quiet. Rio has never gone through her phone before. She’s never gone through anyone’s phone before. But Jen will be gone tomorrow night, sleeping at her own place, and Rio will miss her chance.
She leans across Jen carefully and grabs the phone, heart pounding in her chest.
Fuck, this is so bad. Rio cringes as she unlocks the phone, knowing Jen’s password because she trusts Rio and would never even expect that her partner would do something like this. Rio swallows down the guilt and opens the photo app. She scrolls back through two years of photos, speeding past pictures of the pair of them, Jen’s friends, random screenshots, her wellness store, flowers, until a glimpse of dark and purple stops her.
It’s Agatha.
Rio stares at the picture of the couple. Stares more.
She zooms in, cutting Jen out of the picture, and looks at Agatha.
God, she’s still beautiful. All sharp edges and smoulder with an intelligent, intimidating glint in her eyes. Rio raises the brightness and sees those faint freckles in more detail. Her eyes are ocean blue, now that she has longer to look at them.
Rio traces every line with her gaze, every hair, every angle, every mark, and then it’s 1:25 and she’s been staring at Agatha’s face for nearly 25 minutes.
Rubbing her eyes hard, Rio sits up again to put Jen’s phone back. But- but there could be more photos, right? Jen never deletes photos from her phone, opting to pay for more storage every time it gets full because she claims you never know when something old or obscure may make ‘the perfect piece of content’. Surely there are other photos.
Rio scrolls.
And, yeah. There are more.
Not a tonne. It gives Rio the impression that Agatha isn’t into getting her photo taken, or at least not by or with Jen. If the whole relationship was a somewhat toxic mistake then it makes sense.
But there are some. Each more stunning than the last.
“Give me a break,” Rio mumbles under her breath.
It’s Agatha sitting primly yet somehow relaxed on a couch, not looking at the camera. It’s Agatha looking exasperated but fond while walking towards the camera in a park, takeaway cup in hand. It’s Agatha with wine in a restaurant, Agatha holding a fan of cash somewhere dark, Agatha with makeup smudged around her eyes looking hungover at Jen’s kitchen island.
It’s Agatha with a spotted beige rabbit under one arm and a pet carrier under the other. It’s Agatha shouting happily, forever frozen in silence on a carnival ride, Agatha pulling sunglasses down her nose and peering over them judgmentally in what Rio recognises as a local park, Agatha with an old book in her hands, focused on its pages. It’s Agatha walking down a dark street with her heels in hand and nothing on her feet, it’s Agatha and Jen dressed to the nines and holding champagne, it’s Agatha wearing-
Rio slams her eyes shut, but it’s too late. Only half a second of the image and it’s seared in her mind.
Agatha in lacy, forest green underwear, sprawled on white sheets, legs crossed at the ankles while she looks down at her phone. Her hair and the sheets indicate what must have happened not long before the photo was taken.
And the thing is, Rio isn’t mad at Jen for having this picture. She knows, knows that she doesn’t delete anything. She scrolled past a photo of a shopping list from six months ago to get here, and a screenshot of some pink shoes, and a photo of a shelf in her store mostly blocked by her blurred finger. So Rio’s not mad, she’s really not, she’s just-
Rio opens her eyes.
Jesus. Agatha’s body is as perfect as her face. Ample breasts spilling just slightly over balcony cups. Smooth skin with a hint of silvery stretch marks on her hips. Legs that seem to go on and on and on. Rio can’t get enough. The phone is inches away from her face as if it will help her get more of the photo, more skin and sex and Agatha.
Jen makes a snuffly noise in her sleep and Rio feels her heart launch into her throat. She’s holding the phone so tightly she swears she hears the case creak. She needs to put it back and forget about the photos. She needs to put it back. She needs to-
Rio doesn’t know what compels her to select every photo of Agatha and send them to herself. She doesn’t know what compels her to delete the message from the text thread between herself and Jen to erase the evidence. She doesn’t know what compels her to scroll through Jen’s contacts until she finds Agatha’s number, quickly typing it into her own phone.
She places the phone back carefully, carefully, then buries herself on her side under the covers, her back to her girlfriend. She saves the photos from her messages. She looks at the nameless phone number in her contacts. She can’t save her as ‘Agatha’. Rio swaps to her photos stares at the photo of Agatha in lingerie and stares and stares and stares.
She has the wherewithal to exit the app as her eyes scream at her to close, the grey light of pre-dawn creeping around the blinds. Before she succumbs to sleep, she opens Agatha’s number one last time. She’s asleep 3 seconds later with a brand new contact.
‘A’