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It's been—what, a week? Two? Two and a half?
Sunny settles on two. Not like she’s ever really been good at keeping track. Another bad habit to break—add it to the list. With a sigh she slides out of her bed, meandering out of her room. Mom was out. She expected as much. Rain pattered gently against the windows, singing down from gray-blue skies. She wrenched her mind back to the present before the inevitable flashback could begin, making her way into the kitchen.
Sitting in front of the window, slowly eating a bowl of some cereal she didn’t care to know the name of—something chocolatey, with far too much sugar—she reminisced. Two weeks—it felt far longer. And yet still it felt like far less. Both near and far, distant and ever close.
She could still see their faces perfectly, each and every detail.
She took another bite of her cereal. It was soggy.
The new apartment was still sparsely decorated, unopened cardboard boxes scattered haphazardly and piled high, waiting for the day they’d eventually be opened, for the day their contents would finally be set free from merely gathering dust. Sunny could relate. She’d spent far too long gathering dust, herself. Her spoon clinked against the bottom of her bowl—she’d finished eating without realizing.
She stared at the dregs of milk, swirling about. The rain continued to pitter-patter against the windows.
How did she get here? How did it come to this?
She was back in her room again—when did she…?
It didn’t matter, in the end. She sat down at her desk, idly watching the raindrops trace pathways down the pane of her window, branching and mingling, freely going wherever they were directed. They had it easy, she thought.
The rain threatened to dredge up bittersweet memories that she didn’t wish to deal with. Her hand drifted to her face—to the patch that covered what was left of her eye. That night was all a blur—blood and screams and grim, painful memories. She wondered how Basil was doing, now.
He hasn’t contacted her. None of them have.
She’s been trying not to think about how that stung.
Looking down at the street, through the single small window in her bedroom, she saw a bus bound for Faraway. She imagined—longed to be on that bus. To take the oh-so short trip back to the place where she grew up, where her friends still remained. Distant. She closed her eye, imagining for a moment that she arrived back in Faraway, just as the rain was stopping. Her friends were waiting for her; Hero, Kel, Aubrey, Basil, and—
She snapped back to the present with a gasp, blinking phantom tears from her eye. For a moment she was back in her old bedroom in Faraway, sitting on the edge of her bed, ceiling fan spinning lazily overhead, and—
Sunny stood, suddenly, chair toppling to the floor with the movement. Her breaths were quick, ragged, her heart pounding. The rain sounded like laughter, a chorus of tiny voices, mocking her. She pulled the curtains closed, shutting out the storm-gray city, before stumbling from her room into the hall, slumping against the far wall.
She—she just needed to breathe. Her head was pounding, legs feeling weak. The was an ache in her chest—a hollow space, carved out. A void.
She missed her friends.
She missed Mari.
‘Everyone's the same in this town.’
It was a thought Aubrey had had before.
She found her mind returning there now, thoughts meandering and unfocused as she lay in her bed, staring blankly at her ceiling. She'd been spending many days of the past two or so weeks like this—laying in bed. Thinking.
Everything had started to mend—to go back to the way it was.
But then Sunny had to go and—
She wonders idly if she'd be happier if she didn't know the truth. If she'd gone on living the lie that was Mari's suicide. Would this ache in her chest finally disappear? Would she have been better off never knowing?
Sunny wasn't
Aubrey had been trying not to think about her these past couple of weeks. Easier said than done, with a revelation like that.
She hasn't spoken to Basil since then either. Hasn't been able to bring herself to. She tried, a few days after he was discharged, only for a twisting knot of grief and white-hot anger to clog her throat and choke her words. She wondered if the others had yet. Kel might've. Hero… he would need time. He hadn't… taken the truth well.
She hadn't either, in fairness—she was angry, at first. Beyond angry, a fury she'd seldom felt before. It had taken everything she could muster to keep from lashing out, to force herself to leave before she did something she would regret. But that anger soon burned itself out, leaving only a numb static. Ashes.
And that numbness led to thinking. And so that's where she was now, stewing in her own thoughts, a scattered mess of disjointed ponderings.
She rolls over onto her side, ignoring the painful twisting in her gut. There was still anger—or she thought there was, at least. She knew there should be. God she should be furious. Consumed by an unquenchable inferno, choking out all else.
But she wasn’t. She tried not to think about this—this numbness, tingling in her limbs and drowning out all else. It was like TV static had crept into her veins and replaced her blood, and that was all she could feel now. She tried not to think about how it reminded her of the one time she’d tried her mother’s poison of choice, the way the alcohol had burned her throat and pooled in her gut, nor the way it had left her feeling empty afterwards. She tried not to think about how similar she really was to her mother.
She hated this. Hated herself for not being able to talk to Basil. Hated Basil for not trying to talk to her. Hated herself for hating Basil.
She hated her mother, and how similar she felt to her. For how she was rotting just like her.
She hated Sunny for leaving.
But she didn't hate her for killing Mari—she didn't even hate Basil for his part in hiding it. She didn't have the energy to hate them for that.
And she understood, in a way. That anger, overwhelming, suffocating. That desperate need to just get away. Your body lashing out on its own—and next thing you know, you've done something you don't know if you can take back. She understood.
She was almost the same as Sunny. If Hero hadn't— if he had been any later—
She didn't want to think about that.
They were just kids.
They were scared.
They were still kids.
Sometimes Aubrey felt like she was still just a kid.
It was no Othermart, but Sunny did appreciate the 24 hour convenience store near her new apartment. She stood at the street-corner, sipping from a grape soda. Night had long since fallen, the rain passing with the day and leaving the city-scape blanketed in a silvery fog, thick and suffocating. All encompassing.
She hated it.
She hated this city. It was lonely, cold. Distant. Unfamiliar.
Always surrounded by people, yet never more isolated.
The days blurred together, endlessly piling onto each other. Each day, Sunny grew further from who she once was.
She was older than Mari was. She would’ve been 19 this year—the same as Hero. In another world the two would’ve gone to college together. But Mari would never have the chance to go to college—she’d never grow past 15.
Sunny took another sip of her soda. It was flavorless.
There was a street light flickering across the road, blinking to a haphazard rhythm, before finally going dark. If Sunny were a more poetic person, she’d find some kind of symbolism in that. Her heart felt heavy in her chest, stubbornly plodding along. Reminding her she was still alive.
She was surprised she made it this far—that she lasted this long. She was almost proud of herself—as proud as she could be, in a cynical sort of way.
‘Here’s to you, Sunny.’
With that thought she chugged the rest of her drink, tossing the can into the nearby recycling bin.
What was she even doing here? She’d reconnected with her friends, and for what? Just to leave them all behind again? To never see them again?
All because she decided to open that door, to let Kel in.
To let the past back into her life.
To stop running.
‘What a load of bullshit.’
Now she was saddled with this weight that wouldn’t go away and this ache in her chest, this bitter truth that occupied her every waking thought, despite her best efforts. All she’d really done was drop this burden on the shoulders of the ones she had the gall to call friends. Some friend she turned out to be. And then—and then she left again, leaving them to deal with this world-shattering truth.
They hadn’t contacted her.
She found it hard to blame them.
She’d arrived back at her apartment by now, scarcely realizing she’d even begun walking. Mari had always said she had her head in the clouds. Basil’s photo album sat unopened, tucked away on a shelf in her room. She hadn’t looked through it since the last time they were all together. Another precious thing gathering dust. The old toy box was shoved under her bed—she hadn’t been able to leave it behind, despite everything. Another ghost of Faraway, another phantom that she let willfully haunt her.
Moving was supposed to be a new beginning, so why did everything remind her of the past? What was the point of leaving everything behind if its absence just made the hurt worse. She hated it here. She wanted to be back in Faraway—she wanted to see her friends again. So desperately she wanted things to go back to the way things were. But they could never go back. Not truly. People had changed too much—and yet she was still the same. The same scared girl who killed her sister.
The same girl who ran from it for four years. Who locked herself away, rotting away while the truth was buried in layers of falsified dreams and saccharine fantasies. She wanted to scream.
Maybe it would be better if she’d never answered the door for Kel to begin with.
Maybe it would be better if she’d died instead of Mari.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Kim came by today, worried for her—not that she says it aloud. Instead she asks Aubrey if she wants to go to the lake, and Aubrey thinks ‘what the hell, why not.’
A flat, rounded pebble flies from her hand, skipping twice across the surface of the lake. She’d always thought of it as a lake, but it was more of a pond, wasn’t it?
“So, gonna tell me why you’ve been so reclusive lately?” Kim says around a lollipop. Her tone is blunt, abrasive, but Aubrey knows Kim well enough to hear the concern underneath. ‘Are you okay?’ Kim asks without really asking, masking her worries in a way Aubrey herself was all too familiar with. “Everyone’s been pretty worried about you, since that… stuff with your old crew went down…”
Aubrey hums noncommittally as she lets fly another stone—it sinks the moment it touches the water’s surface. She mulls her words over in her head, responses dying malformed and unfinished. She stares at her reflection, morphing as the water shifted under it.
“Do you think I’m a bad person, Kim?”
“I uh- shit,” she sucks in a breath, tossing in a stone of her own. It doesn’t skip, but sinks with a gratifying plunk. “One hell of a conversion topic.”
“Just- just answer the question.”
“Well like- it's complicated, isn’t it?” She sits at the edge of the old dock, legs dangling over the water. “I mean- most of the people here don’t like us, sure. But like- who are they to judge?”
Aubrey sits down next to her with a hum of acknowledgement, turning Kim’s words in her mind. Her mind wandered, drifting through a sea of thoughts. She wondered who she was, deep down. If you peeled back the layers and looked underneath, what would you find? Who was Aubrey, underneath it all?
“And either way, can’t good people still do bad things?” Kim continued, tossing another stone, which skips across the lake’s surface—5 skips, before it plunges into the cold depths. Sinking down, down. “Cause if good people can do bad things, then that’d mean bad people can do good things as well—and then the whole ‘good’ and ‘bad’ thing kinda starts to fall apart, y’know?”
“I guess,” Aubrey sounds unconvinced, even to herself. She finds another pebble in her hand, running her fingers over its weathered surface. Her eyes drift to the statue jutting out of the lake’s middle. She distantly recalls its mirror in the semetary. It was some glorious monument, once, but now it was little more than a ruin. Rough and worn. Broken, not unlike her. “It just always felt so- so right. Justified.”
Kim turns to her, confused, but says nothing, inviting Aubrey to continue.
“What we- what I did to Basil,” it's hard to say, words like bile in her throat. “I was awful to him, and for what? For scribbling out some photos? I almost- god, Kim I almost killed him. And I look back and just- I just feel so disgusted with myself.”
Aubrey’s words fail her, and Kim wraps her arm around her shoulder. A silent gesture of understanding, of comfort.
“I just- I just don’t know what to do anymore.”
And Kim has no answer for her—none that would show her where to go or what choice she was supposed to make. So they stay like that for a long while, silence broken only by distant sounds of the town and the rustling of the leaves in the gentle breeze.
And later, when Aubrey finally returns to the desolate ruin that was once her house, she stops. First before the front door, and then again in front of her mother. This shell—this husk of a woman, once so full of life. She glares down at her, and she understands—after her father left, her mother let her fury at the man consume her. And this is what it had done—burned her out till there was nothing left. Aubrey’s gaze meets the listless, glassy eyes of the woman on the couch. The woman who was once her mother.
And Aubrey feels her stomach twist—in disgust, yes, but also pity. And she understands.
“I hate you.”
And she leaves her mother there, retreating to her room, and then to her bed, where the stillness of a dreamless sleep takes her. And in the morning, she finds she has reached her decision.
Sunny dreams tonight, for the first time since confessing the truth. She finds herself treading a worn path through a pitch black forest, soaked in a deep fog and bearing the weight of an angry crimson sky. Her legs carry her onwards. Step, step, step. Her gaze wandered, scanning the bleak, leafless trees. In the distance she heard voices—laughter. The voices of her friends, always just around the next bend. Always out of reach.
Gravel crunched under her shoes, the path winding ever onwards. She didn’t know why she still walked, or what she hoped to reach, but still she continued. Aimless. Unceasing.
She was looking for something, she thought, and as she rounded this next bend she saw it—a tree, towering over the others, standing tall at the end of the path. And there, clustered at its foot, were her friends. Just as she remembered them.
Something is wrong.
She feels her feet pounding against the gravel path as she rushes to meet them. Their backs are turned—all of them.
Something is wrong.
And finally, as she reaches the foot of the great tree, they turn to her. Empty eyes bore into her, and she feels her legs lock up. She tries to speak, but her voice doesn’t come. Her friends—Kel, Aubrey, Hero, Basil—they walk past her, one by one. Finally Sunny can move again, and she whirls around, only to be met with nothing. Her friends, the forest, the fog—all of it consumed, leaving nothing but a pitch-black void.
“Sunny…” and she knows that voice. And she can feel her heart beating out of her chest as her skin begins to crawl.
Something is horribly wrong.
She turns around once more, finding herself face to face with Mari—only she’s wrong. Her smile just a bit too wide, and her eyes a bit too dark.
“Mari-” Sunny finally says through the thorns choking her lungs. And she reaches out, hand trembling.
And Mari steps forward, and two things happen at once. A sickening crack rings out, her neck twisting as her head falls to the side, face still split by that terrible grin. And for a moment the void is replaced by their old home, red light spilling like blood from the window behind Mari, before Sunny feels Mari’s hands on her shoulders, cold and corpse-like.
And then Sunny is falling, plummeting down an endless stairway. And she looks upwards, and sees that sickening grin splitting Mari’s face, as the wind rushes all around and a cold and broken laughter fills the darkness and she feels herself hit the ground and she feels her neck snapping and her blood spilling warm and wet and she just wishes that laughter would stop stop stop just stop already please I’m sorry—
And she wakes up, gasping for any air she can force into her lungs. Cold sweat clings her as she fights to breathe, her heart threatening to burst free from her ribs. She tries to calm the desperate trembling of her hands, the way her skin is still crawling. Her breath comes in short gasps, raspy and uneven. Tears prick at her eye as the gasps turn to quiet sobs, and her heart slows. She curls in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest. Sheltering herself from the world.
Sunny doesn’t sleep again that night.
When the sun finally climbs over the horizon, Sunny meets it red-eyed and weary, fatigue clinging to her like wet paper. She stumbles out of her small, suffocating room, shoulders slouched and steps heavy. Her mother is in the kitchen, making herself breakfast. It was about the time she usually got ready for work, wasn’t it?
She doesn't particularly want to talk to her mother—she knows the kind of conversation that will ensue, and it is not appealing by any means. But she's also been up for hours, and is unfortunately reminded of how feeble the human body is—she's hungry, in other words. Stupid body and its stupid needs. She considers fleeing back to her room, waiting for her mother to leave, but a jolt of pain as her stomach twists tells her that that will not be an option.
So, on sluggish feet, she reluctantly pads into the kitchen. Her mother has yet to notice her, and she again considers turning back to her room, but that idea is banished just as swiftly as it came, as Sunny’s mother turns about. And she freezes as her gaze meets Sunny’s, eyes widening in shock. And all at once Sunny would rather be anywhere else than at the center of her mother’s gaze.
“Oh! Hello Sunny,” she finally says, her voice the kind of overly-cheery that Sunny had come to recognize. Disbelief and something else that Sunny couldn’t quite place laced underneath. She looked like she had a million things to say, and yet couldn’t bring herself to say them. “You’re up early.”
“Mm. Couldn’t sleep,” she brushed past her mother as she went about making her own breakfast—bread, strawberry jam, and a toaster. She tried to ignore the feeling of her mother’s eyes at her back.
“Well, I’m glad to see you up and about, at least,” she had finally stopped her staring contest with the back of her daughter’s head, instead turning back to her food in progress—eggs and bacon, from the smell. Sunny tried to ignore the nauseous turning of her innards. “It can’t be good for you to stay cooped up in your room all the time.”
And Sunny grit her teeth, biting back the sudden anger that floods her, threatening to spill forth. She focuses on spreading jam on her toast, trying to ignore her mother’s words and the feeling that crept up her throat like bile.
“I think you’ll grow to like the city,” she continues, ignorant of Sunny’s simmering frustration. “I know I certainly have- though the traffic on the way to work I could do without. I swear people here have never driven a car in their lives! We’ve gotta have the worst drivers in the world!”
Sunny tries to tune her mother out as her teeth sink into her toast with a crunch. It tasted like ash in her mouth. Her mother, eggs and bacon served and ready, migrates to their dining table, where she reads the morning newspaper over a cup of coffee. Sunny takes another bite of toast. She has her own chair at the table, though she hasn’t used it once since they’d moved in.
She didn’t think it’d ever feel right.
“There’s a park a few blocks away,” her mother is looking at her again, and Sunny finds she can’t meet her gaze. “I haven't had the time to visit yet, but it looks nice. You used to go to the park all the time, back th-”
Sunny can see her nearly jump from her seat as the knife clatters to the floor, dull blade still coated in jam. She can feel herself shaking, though she tries to quell it as she reaches down to retrieve the utensil. The jam looks a little too much like blood, and she blinks the image away, suppressing the instinctual cry that almost tears itself from her throat. Her mother, mercifully, says nothing—though whether she noticed the way Sunny trembled or the way her face paled, she gave no indication.
There’s silence again, suffocating, uneasy silence. Sunny crunched away at her by-now cold toast. Small, deliberate bites. Her mother finishes her breakfast, depositing her dishes in the sink. Sunny has only finished one slice of toast.
“I know moving can be acary,” she says as she finishes off her coffee, and Sunny finds her good-eye drifting towards her. “Especially to the big city. ButI think this was exactly what we needed—a fresh start, don’t you think?”
And Sunny can’t hold that building anger back any longer. That white-hot rage that builds in her because how dare she .
“No,” is all Sunny can muster at first, low and quiet, face downcast. Her hands balled into fists, a shudder passed through her, up her spine. And she tries, she really does. She tries to quell this tide of pent up emotion, pressure that had been building since she first left her Faraway behind. “No. Its- its not. Not for me.”
“Sunny-”
“This is what you wanted- what you needed,” she spits the words, unable to hold back this flood now that it has been unleashed. It surges through her like the waves of a tempestuous sea, crashing and churning. “But I- I never wanted to-”
“All staying in Faraway was doing was hurting you,” she fires back, and Sunny can’t stand to look her in the eyes. Eyes that remind her so much of Mari. “Sunny, this was for you.”
“I never asked for this!” Sunny very nearly screams, eye stinging with fresh tears. She takes a shuddering breath to steady herself as everything she’d struggled to keep back laid itself bare, spilling out of her. It's a struggle to express everything that plagues her mind—she never had never been good at expressing her emotions.
“What was I supposed to do, Sunny?” her mother finally responds, defeated and weary. “After… after we- we lost Mari, and your father… left, I… I was afraid. Afraid that I’d lose you too. And- and when you started to- to isolate yourself, I… I didn’t know what to do. God, Sunny, I- I was so scared that if I- if I stepped in that you’d-”
She cut off, barely holding back tears—and Sunny thinks this is the most vulnerable she’s ever seen her mother. For all her efforts, the woman Sunny saw now could scarcely be confused for the one she remembered. An imitation at best, enough to fool most—but Sunny could tell.
“So I- I let you lock yourself away,” she inhaled, shakily. A vain attempt to recompose herself. “I watched as my daughter cut herself off from everyone, because I was too afraid to intervene- because at least you were alive! ”
‘Alive is a stretch,’ Sunny thought, offhandedly, but said nothing. It was back—that yawning emptiness, gnawing at her from inside, fiercer than ever before. She felt light headed, legs unsteady, as she tried to ignore the nauseous feeling squirming in her gut. She wants to speak, to scream. And yet she finds she can’t give shape to her disjointed thoughts—every little bit of anger, of hatred—towards herself and towards everyone else.
“Please Sunny, understand,” and Sunny recoils as her mother brings a hand towards her cheek. A gesture meant to be a comfort, but to Sunny a threat. “We had just lost Mari, your father was gone, and I- I had to try to provide for both of us. I- I couldn't bear to keep coming home to that house. It was all too much.”
Sunny wonders, idly, how she could ever have confused the woman before her now with the woman in their old family photographs. On the surface they were the same—same hair, same face, same clothes. But the eyes. In every photo they sparkled with energy and life, but now?
Now there was a weariness that mirrored Sunny’s own, an existential exhaustion, the kind that crushed your spirit and left you feeling hollow.
“It was like walking through a tomb,” her mother wrings her hands, eyes downcast. And Sunny gets the distinct impression that she’s trying to justify her actions—or lack thereof. Her throat feels tight, her head fuzzy. She tries to push past her mother, stumbling forward almost blindly—it's agonizingly familiar, this overwhelming feeling, this need to just leave. “Sunny please! Our family died in that house, and you want to stay there?”
And all Sunny can do is look at her—part of her wants to cry. But there are no tears left for her to shed. Her mother doesn’t stop her from leaving, at that look. Not as she leaves the kitchen, nor as she shambles back to her room, slumping against the door, trembling with silent, tearless sobs.
Some time later, she hears her mother leave for work.
And Sunny is alone.
Aubrey runs into Basil when she’s leaving Othermart and he’s leaving Fix-It. He sees her before she can duck back into the store, their eyes locking. The air hangs heavy with tension—thick and palpable, heavy and overwhelming.
He’s silent. She says nothing. She came here alone, it's just him and her—no gang, no bat. Just Aubrey and Basil, staring each other down.
“Hey,” she finally forces herself to say, squeezing the words past that pesky knot in her throat, trying as hard as she can to sound calm. Relaxed. Easygoing.
“H-hey, Aubrey,” he sounds jumpy, jittery. Like he’s moments from just running off. She supposed she doesn’t blame him for that.
“Can- can we talk?” she sounds far less sure than she’d like, uncharacteristically stumbling over her words. God she hated how fast her heart was beating, this—this unfamiliar anxiety.
“I- y-yeah, we can- we can talk,” and god he sounds just as unsure as her, his voice quivering as he finally breaks eye-contact. Aubrey feels a weight leave her shoulders, and its like she can breathe again.
“So um-” “What-” they begin simultaneously, halting as they hear the other begin.
“Sorry, you first,” Aubrey relents.
“Ah, okay. W-well, what did you- what did you want to talk about?” Aubrey suspected he already knew. That this was just a formality.
“Well,” she pauses, ordering a drink from the vending machines—just to have something to do with her hands. The drink—cherry soda, it seems—drops down into the slot with a thunk . She takes and opens it, taking a hearty swig. “I- I dunno, just- I just- have you been doing… okay?”
“Oh um- I- I guess so,” he’s unsure, gaze downcast. “I- I mean, it's been hard, you know? I- I haven’t heard from Hero or Kel since- since being discharged- not that I blame them, but I- I dunno. It’s been hard, since- since my grandma… B-but it's also been easier? It’s- it’s like I don’t have to hide anymore.”
“Yeah,” Aubrey understood—she thought she did, at least. “Look I um- I want to apologize.”
“What are-”
“For- for the way I treated you,” she can’t make eye contact with him. “I- I’ve been horrible to you, Basil. I never even tried to listen to your side of things, and- god, I treated you like shit, Basil. And you didn’t deserve that! I was- I was angry. And scared. And I- I just- dammit you didn’t deserve that!”
“Aubrey I-” his voice was quiet, and his hand hovered just above her shoulder, hesitant. “Its- its okay Aubrey-”
“Don’t gimme that!” she batted his hand away, whirling towards him. He recoiled, and her heart sank. Unbidden tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she stubbornly wipes them away, once again turning away from Basil. “I made your life hell - for four goddamn years! I almost- I almost- if Hero hadn’t gotten there when he did- both you and- you’d be dead , and-”
She inhaled, that tightly bound knot unraveling, guilt and grief spiralling spilling outwards, an untamed flood of everything that had gone unsaid.
“And it would have been my fault.”
It was like she could finally breathe again.
“I- I never blamed you,” Basil was quiet, eyes once again cast downward. “I- it felt like justice- like I deserved it. Like somehow I was… atoning. For what I did to- to her.”
“I… yeah- yeah I think I get that,” she mulled her words over, unsure how to express her scattered thoughts from the past weeks. “I… god, we’re both a bit fucked, huh?”
And she laughs, surprising herself as much as Basil.
“I get it, though,” she meets his bewildered gaze. “Why you did… what you did. God, Basil, you were- you were a kid. A scared, stupid kid. And- god. When I pushed you I- I panicked. I… shut down. It was like time had stopped and I- I couldn’t think clearly. If I had to guess… I’d say Sunny felt the same.”
“I- you…” Basil stuttered, stumbling over his words. “You should be mad at me.”
And in his voice she can hear it, that self loathing plea. ‘You have to be mad at me.”
“I was,” Aubrey didn’t miss a beat, and Basil’s shoulders drooped. “I was furious at the two of you. But being angry is exhausting, Basil. I’m tired of being angry all the time. So I’m making a choice. And I’m choosing to try—to apologize, and make amends. So I’m sorry. For how I treated you all these years.”
“I- you can’t just- just forgive me like that-” he stammered—he looked like he was about to cry.
“I don’t. Not yet. And I don’t expect you to forgive me, either,” Aubrey placed her hand on his shoulder now, bridging the gap between them and finally dispelling suffocating tension. “I just- I’d like to start again. Can we do that, Basil?”
“I- yeah,” and Basil finally let himself cry, brushing tears away from the corners of his eyes. “I’d like that a lot.”
So they do, then and there. They talk, and talk and talk and talk. And as their conversation goes on, Aubrey feels lighter than she has in years. Eventually, they find themselves in Gino’s, chowing down on pizza that was more grease than food while a nostalgic tune plays from the jukebox. And Aubrey feels a warmth in her, the kind of warmth that reminded her of the old times, before everything went to shit. When Mari was here. And she finds that for the first time in a long while, thinking about Mari doesn’t hurt—not as much, anyway.
“So,” Aubrey began between bites of greasy, cheesy goodness. “Have you talked to her yet? Sunny, I mean.”
“Oh um. No, I- I haven’t,” he nibbled on his own slice, suddenly very intrigued by the table’s surface. “I haven’t… been able to. I want to- I’ve tried , but… I don’t- I don’t think I’m ready.”
“Mm,” Aubrey hums as she takes another bite. She ponders as she chews. “I miss her. God Basil, I miss her.”
Basil nodded but said nothing, instead opting to take another small bite of his pizza.
“I- I want to go see her,” Basil’s eyes snap upwards, meeting hers. “If what she went through- if it was anything like what I felt after the lake, then… that guilt must be eating her alive.”
Because Sunny didn’t have the same saving grace Aubrey did. No one to swoop in and save the day. Sunny had to live with that guilt.
“Yeah,” Basil muttered, quiet and distant. “Yeah… it does…”
Sunny was pretty sure she was going insane.
Not that that was anything new, but here, staring at her grey stucco ceiling, she was more certain than ever. It was an unreasonably hot day, the rain from only a few days past giving way to an intense heat-haze that permeated the city. No less than three fans were pointed directly at Sunny—she was pretty sure the AC didn’t work. Sweat dripped down her face and clung to her back. This was the kind of heat that drained all energy, leaving you sluggish and delirious. The kind that melted your brain and let it leak out onto the floor.
That's what Sunny thought, at least. It was like an oven inside, and worse outside. Her usual brooding and melancholic thought-spirals were replaced by the sheer agony of being boiled alive in her own apartment. If this was how she died she was going to haunt this place and its broken AC forevermore.
Unbidden, she recalled another unreasonably sweltering day from her bygone days, the same heat clinging to Faraway town on the very same day everyone gathered to build the treehouse. She sighed, reminiscing about those halcyon days. She yearned for those days, longed to go back—but she promised herself, she promised Mari that she’d move forward.
And yet, she felt stuck. Stagnant. Different yet just the same. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. This city felt like limbo, between the past and the future.
And she knew, in the end, that she was still just waiting for something to happen. For a change. Waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Waiting for a knock on the door. For her friends to drag her out of this hole. For someone to spur her on—for a reason to carry on.
The clock on her wall ticked onwards. Seconds into minutes into hours into days. The unceasing march of time the only proof that she had changed. That she was not the same Sunny she was four years ago.
Everyone changed. Sometimes it felt like she was the only exception, a single static mark on the ever changing canvas of human existence. How self-centered.
The clock chimed the hour—that bus would be leaving for Faraway right about now. She imagined a world where she did go back. Back to Faraway. No matter where she wound up, Faraway would be her only true home. Too much had happened there for anything else to ever be the case. Maybe one day she’d go back, only to find her old friends had all long since left the town behind. Left her behind. Left Mari behind.
She shoots up in bed, suddenly unable to bear the thought of just lying here—a waking mirror to her self imposed four year imprisonment. She half-sprints into the hall, clumsily making her way to the bathroom mirror. She looks at herself—really looks at herself, white-knuckling the edges of the sink. Who was she, really? Who was Sunny? What did Sunny want?
The Sunny from four years ago wanted to please her older sister, to live up to everything that Mari was.
The Sunny from two years ago wanted to live in a world of her own making, to leave reality behind.
The Sunny from two weeks ago wanted to move on.
She was all of them, she supposed; still trying to escape Mari’s shadow, still trying to run away, and still trying to carry on. For Mari’s sake.
For Mari’s sake.
“So… you're sure about this?” Basil asked, the only one there to see her off. The only one besides Kim she’d actually told her plan to—and Kim had been given the task of keeping the rest of the gang busy. Aubrey didn't want to make a big deal out of this. It wasn't like she'd be gone for long anyway.
“Yeah,” Aubrey said, after a moment's hesitation. “Yeah, I'm sure. I need to talk to her. Face to face.”
“Well I… I guess I can't stop you…” Basil sighed. “Just… be careful, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, cut me some slack,” she waved off his concerns, but appreciated them nonetheless. “Y'know you could always come along. She’d be happy to see you.”
“I know, I just- I'm not ready yet,” Basil said quietly. “I don't think I can face her again. Not yet.”
“You need time,” Aubrey understood the feeling. “I get it. I'll tell her you said hi, kay?”
“Yeah… thank you.”
They stood side by side, waiting for the bus to arrive. Aubrey had to admit, it was a stupid idea—but she needed to do this. She needed to see Sunny. To get closure, or something. But she had an address, and that's all she needed.
The bus rolled into the stop, lurching to a halt with a hiss, before the door rattled open.
“Well, guess this is it then,” Aubrey said, gazing upwards at the great wheeled box of steel. She wasn't sure if she was ready herself, but she knew she wouldn't find out by waiting here. She always did prefer to take the active approach. “You'll look after Bun-bun while I'm wrong, right?”
“You say that like you'll be gone a while,” Basil couldn't meet her gaze. “Of course I will. Just… just be safe, okay?”
“Me? Safe? C'mon, get serious,” she joked, but Basil gave her a pleading look, and god it was like they were kids again—like nothing had changed. “Sorry. I'll be careful. I promise.”
He visibly relaxed, tension leaving his shoulders.
“Okay. Um. Good luck,” he did his best to smile, and Aubrey found herself smiling back.
“I'll see you when I get back,” she boarded the bus, glancing back towards Basil, a billion unsaid words behind his eyes. But in the end there was nothing more that he could say, so he simply nodded. Aubrey watched him watch her as the doors to the bus clattered shut, and she rode off into the unfamiliar city-scape and the uncertainty that brought with it.
The bus left Faraway, and Aubrey half expected to feel some big change in her, to feel the weight of leaving her hometown for the first time. But there was no fanfare, no momentous realization. Only her, the road, and her thoughts.
Suburban sprawl slowly gave way to urban spires, pillars of concrete and glass holding up the cloudless heavens. Sparsely populated sidewalks were replaced by bustling, dense crowds of people, ever-busy and each in their own world. Alive like bloodcells, pumping through the city’s veins. Each the protagonist of their own story.
And yet as Aubrey stepped off the bus into the heart of the unfamiliar city, she has never felt so insignificant.
In Faraway she stood out, all bright colors and sharp edges. But here she was just another face in the crowd, the very things that made her stand out being what made her blend in. There were people all around, bleeding warmth into each other's space, and yet no one spared so much as a passing glance towards anyone else. Despite the crowd, they were distant. Disconnected.
Aubrey hated it—and yet it was perfect for her.
Sunny’s new place isn't far, if what Basil told her was. He had been the sole recipient of Sunny’s new address—the only one who'd been around to receive it. The only one who’d seen Sunny off when she left.
And that’s another tally on Aubrey’s ever-growing list of regrets.
The sweet sweet air conditioning of a convenience store beckons her within, promising her overpriced sodas and shitty snack food. She relents to this temptation, a soda in hand as she steps once again into the sun’s wrathful gaze.
And she walks.
Only a few blocks to her destination, if the address Basil gave her was correct.
She sips from her drink—carbonated, overly-sweet, and only vaguely cherry flavored. The taste takes her back, back to her childhood. And suddenly she was overcome by bittersweet nostalgia—and she was 12 again, ordering a soda from the vending machines outside Faraway park, while Kel tried to convince her to buy him an Orange Joe and Basil chatted with Sunny nearby. Or she was sitting in front of Mari, brush gently working through her hair in the way only Mari could ever manage. Or she was sitting on the swings with Sunny, airing her struggles into the comfortable stillness Sunny always brought with her.
She went to take another sip, but the can was already empty. As the images fade back into mere memories, she tosses the can into the nearest recycling bin.
Before she knows it, she has come to a halt at an innocuous slice of brick and concrete, wedged between much of the same. To anyone else it was just another apartment. To Aubrey, it was everything. Sunny was so close, and yet never further away. She bit back her growing unease, making her way into the building. It's musty, old. Dust clings to every surface, and the air is heavy with a feeling of stillness—not the comforting stillness that comes with nightfall, but the cold, uncaring stillness that felt all too similar to death. Unbidden, images of Mari’s funeral crept into her mind.
And that serenity, frozen and all too akin to sleep.
And Aubrey banished that image from her mind. No use dwelling on the past now—it was time to move forward. Her footfalls were loud, too loud as she made her way through the hall, up the stairwell to the third floor—where she had been told Sunny now resided.
And before she knew it, Sunny’s door stood before her now. The silence was deafening, and Aubrey felt like the world itself had frozen, like the universe itself was waiting, watching.
Her hand hovered inches from the door, knuckles curled.
What if Sunny didn't want to see her?
What if—what if she didn't even open the door? What if Aubrey had already seen her for the last time?
What if—what if she already missed her chance?
Her heart pounded. God she hated this—this feeling of weakness. What if she had come all this way for nothing. This hopelessness, the feeling of isolation she’d felt for the better part of four years. Loneliness that drove her to desperation—to acts she knew she’d always regret.
Aubrey didn’t want to regret anything else.
‘Y’know what- fuck it.’
So she swallowed her fear, grit her teeth, drew her hand back, and knocked.
And a few moments later, the door would open.
Sunny was rotting again. Willfully letting herself decay.
Heat accelerated decay. Today was broiling. She wished it was cooler—that this suffocating, all encompassing heat would just leave her alone. Sometimes she wished she could just stop it all. Stop feeling things. Fade away into nothing—she wondered, if she just vanished, would anyone wonder what happened to her? Would anyone come looking for her? Would Basil? Kel? Aubrey?
They hadn’t contacted her.
She curled inwards, wrapping in on herself. Lying on her side, her bed felt hard and unwelcoming beneath her.
Then came the sound. It took Sunny a moment to register it, and then a moment further to decide whether she’d hallucinated it. Had the heat melted her brain that far?
Then she heard it again, too clear to be imagined. She shoots up, flying off of her bed, vertigo overtaking her before she collides with the carpet. A moment spent as a tangle of gangly limbs on the floor and she’s up again, unsteadily tripping over herself with each step as her feet carry her out of her bedroom, into the hallway and towards the door.
And then she just… stops. The space between her and the door is but a few feet, yet feels ever longer, an endless, yawning expanse. Time seemed to slow, grinding to a halt as Sunny stood there, frozen. Fear, cold and all too familiar, wound its way up her spine, coiling around her neck. An ever tightening noose.
Doubts cling to her, caressing her mind. Isn’t this what she wanted? For someone to come and save her? So why—why was she so afraid? She felt her hands tremble, palms sweating—she felt sick.
She wanted to run.
But she couldn’t—not anymore. She’d promised.
A breath, wavering and unsteady. The knocking rings out once again, and Sunny forces herself forward, through her lingering doubts, through the ringing in her ears. She nearly collides with the door, shaking hands grasping the handle. And she feels herself hesitating—her body resisting her mind, tensing as she again goes against everything she’d taught herself. That overactive sense of self preservation, born from the deepest pits of despair and regret, urging her to once again turn back—to retreat to her bedroom, where it was safe.
‘No—I’m done running!’
And while the fire is hot—before she can second guess her resolve, before she can psych herself out—the handle turns, the door swinging inwards.
And Sunny finds herself face to face with, truthfully, one of the last people she expected to see on the other side.
“Hey,” and Aubrey says it oh so casually.
“Hi,” and Sunny is suddenly conscious of how hoarse her voice is, the way it quavers and cracks unsteadily. Altogether she becomes acutely aware of how disgusting she must look, with her messy hair and pallid skin. Moments pass in heavy silence, broken only by the distant bustle of the ever-living city. It pulsed and thrummed endlessly, breathing and moving—but here, in this apartment, in this moment, the world stood still.
“So… you gonna let me in, or are we just keep standing here?” Aubrey said with a chuckle. She exuded that familiar air of self-assured confidence that Sunny always associated with her—except now she could see. The cracks in her facade, and the fear that lurked beneath the surface—when they were kids she’d hidden it behind unrelenting optimism, and then behind blue contacts and pink hair, too bright and too sharp—too intimidating. She demanded attention, yet forced distance. Aubrey had made herself into a weapon—something to be feared and admired, but only from a safe distance. “Uh- Earth to Sunny?”
Shit she’d gotten stuck in her head again, hadn't she? She scrambled to the side, awkwardly motioning Aubrey inside and shutting the door behind her. And all at once it was like they were kids again, and Aubrey had come over to spend an afternoon with Mari. Sunny had rarely joined them in whatever it was they did—though not for lack of an invitation. She’d simply never been interested, and it was only now she wished she'd joined them more.
“So,” Aubrey's gaze swept across the apartment as she spoke, taking in each and every detail. “Nice place you got here. Cozy.”
“Yeah…” Sunny’s voice sounds distant, disconnected from herself. Her apartment had begun to feel hazy, a nauseating fuzziness that hung around her, creeping into every nook and cranny of her surroundings. It clung to her like wet-paper—or maybe that was the heat-induced delirium. Her throat feels tight, and her mouth is dry. It's far too hot. “Its- its alright.”
“Can’t say I’d ever imagined you living somewhere like this, but-”
“What are you doing here?” Sunny blurts, her thoughts spilling out before she can stop them. And Sunny forces herself not to think about the hurt that flashes across Aubrey’s face, or the way her heart crawled into her throat. “I mean- I didn’t…”
‘I didn’t think you’d want to see me again.’
Her words failed her, unable to look Aubrey in the eye. That day a mere two weeks prior turned over in her thoughts, those moments playing again and again. The most important thing Sunny had ever said.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Aubrey said after a long pause, her voice far too small, too quiet. Not the voice the Aubrey that Sunny had grown up with, nor the Aubrey that had been shaped by tragedy and loss. This was the voice of the Aubrey who spent too many nights alone—the Aubrey who Sunny would do her best to comfort on those rare swing-set sessions where she’d let the bright exterior slip and expose what was really troubling her. “I just- I missed you, Sunny.”
And Sunny really wished that Aubrey saying her name didn’t send a shiver down her spine, or make her heart flutter and her stomach do backflips. But it does. And Sunny just has to deal with that. She wants to ask why, but she can barely bring herself to speak.
“I um- I wanted to talk, I guess. About everything,” it's jarring, how unsure she sounds, even as she shoves her hands into her pockets in an attempt to reestablish that casual, unbothered air she had entered with. Sunny watches as she sighs, slouching in what Sunny can only assume is something like resignation. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past couple weeks. Maybe too much. But I realized something. A bunch of things.”
Aubrey’s eyes close, and Sunny isn’t quite sure if she imagines the slight tremble to her shoulders.
“At the lake, when- when I pushed Basil. Things could’ve- the two of you almost-” and Sunny wants to go to her, to comfort her as she once did. But she doesn’t—her feet stay rooted to the spot. Instead she waits, throat tight and not sure what to do with her hands, as Aubrey steadies her trembling shoulders, composing herself. “Hero saved you- both of you. But he also saved me, in a way. When you all left, that day… I was still angry, at first. But then came the guilt, and I- if things had happened differently—if they’d gone worse…”
And Sunny does step forward, almost on instinct, her hand reaching out, before once again falling to her side.
“My point is I get it,” she blazes on, turning away from Sunny, determined not to let her see her crumble. “I was angry- more than angry. I didn’t mean to push him, I just- I just wanted it all to go away. I wanted space and- and I lashed out. And I damn near killed the both of you.”
She whirls about, facing Sunny with red eyes, stubbornly refusing to let her tears fall. Not yet.
“It was the same back then, wasn’t it?” her voice quavers with barely constrained pain, raw and fresh and all too vulnerable. And all Sunny can do is nod, not trusting herself to speak. She never was very good at it, after all. “Yeah, I figured as much. I- I wanted to be mad. Maybe I was, when you first told us. But I- god! I’m just- I’m so tired of being angry, Sunny!”
Aubrey steps closer at the same time Sunny steps back, instinctively recoiling from Aubrey’s presence—running away, once again. She wants to let Aubrey close that distance, to embrace her. She wants everything to be okay, for things to make some amount of sense again. Like they did before—before she’d gone and messed everything up.
“Those four years, you- you were alone,” and yet Aubrey is not discouraged, persistent. She steps forward again, and this time Sunny doesn’t retreat as far. The distance between them shrinks. “That guilt… nobody deserves to suffer through that alone, so- so that's why- that’s why I’m here, Sunny! I’m not- I can’t leave you alone- not again!”
With another step the distance shrinks further, and they’re close enough to touch, now, and yet Sunny finds she still can’t meet Aubrey’s eyes, familiar doubts bubbling upwards despite her words.
“I deserved it,” she blurts, fists clenching. She hangs her head as her shoulders begin to tremble, fear and anxiety crawling up her back and whispering in her ears. And as her gaze pierces the floor she doesn’t see old carpets of her apartment, instead staring down a flight of stairs that feels impossibly high, tangled darkness coalescing at their foot. “I- I ran, Aubrey! That's all any of it was- running! I- I just ran and ran and ran- and I hid the truth from you- from all of you! You should hate me- I- I killed her! I killed her, Aubrey! She’s dead because of me! And- and as much as I want to think she’d- she’d want me to move on, I know that- that it should’ve been me! She should- Mari should still be here- but she’s not, and it's my fault! I- I took her from you! So why- why don’t you hate me?! Why-”
And she looks up in time to see a flash of pink, blurred through tears, before something warm and heavy and comforting slams into her chest, as something wraps around her back. And it takes her a moment to realize that it's Aubrey, embracing her.
“Cut it with that bullshit!” comes Aubrey’s voice, hot with the anger Sunny expected, though wracked with sobs. Behind the anger there is regret and fear, and Sunny realizes that it's not just her who’s trembling. “Mari loved you, Sunny. She’d- she’d want you to be happy! She’d want you to move on- to live your life!”
Tentatively, Sunny’s hands rise from her sides, hovering just shy of Aubrey’s back, hesitating to return the embrace. She wants to—god, does she want to. She so readily wants to believe what Aubrey says, but at the back of her mind there’s that voice, coiling up her spine like a serpent, whispering her own deepest fears. Telling her she’s undeserving, that Aubrey is wrong—that she deserves to be alone. To die alone. But, if that were true, then why did she tell her friends? Why did she press on, even when the alternative was so tempting?
Why did she take those steps forwards, towards truth and reconciliation?
If she deserved to die, then what had driven her to fight so hard, that night, when it would have been so easy to just give in, and take that irreversible step.
In the end, whether she deserves to be here isn’t up to her. And Aubrey thinks that she deserves to keep living, and Sunny owes it to her to try.
Finally, she buries her face in Aubrey’s shoulder, arms pressing against her back. Her hands grasp fistfuls of Aubrey’s jacket, fingers digging into the fabric. And she has her answer, she thinks.
And she lets herself cry, as she makes one more promise, one she is determined not to break.
She promises everyone—herself, her friends. Mari. She promises to try.
Time happens around Sunny, a whirling blur of seconds and minutes, and the next thing she knows she and Aubrey have both retreated to her bedroom. Sunny sits on her bed, back flat against the wall and knees hugged up to her chest. She could feel Aubrey’s eyes on her, sitting across from her in the desk chair. Idly, Sunny fiddles with her bedsheets. It's a comfortable silence between them, disturbed only by the ticking of the clock on the wall, incessantly counting away the seconds. The march of time, ever unstoppable. She feels… fuzzy. Almost numb, but for once not in a bad way. It clings to her, like a comfortable blanket. She’s tired.
And Aubrey’s still looking at her with those piercing eyes, artificial stained-glass blue looking into everything she is. Sunny finds she doesn’t dislike this, the way Aubrey seems to see all of her.
“So,” Aubrey finally drawls, and Sunny’s eye snaps to meet hers. There's a weight in Aubrey’s tone, heavy like a loaded gun. “What did you um… do? During those four years, I mean.”
“I… slept, mostly. Dreamt. Of simpler times,” she breaks the link between Aubrey’s gaze and her own. Sunny closes her eye, reminiscing on those honeyed dreams, hand-drawn pastel worlds still so vivid in her mind’s eye. “Of us- all of us. Of… Mari.”
Aubrey listens with rapt attention, silently urging Sunny to continue.
“We… we would go on adventures. Meet all sorts of people,” she takes a breath, a moment to steady herself—Headspace is still something of a sore subject, one she is less than eager to delve back into. A gilded cage was all it was. “There were battles, too. We’d defend each other—you were always the strongest.”
“The strongest?” Aubrey mused, leaning forward, eyebrow raised.
“The toughest,” Sunny continued. “We all had our specialties. Kel was fast, Hero kept us healed, and you were the strongest.”
“What about you?” Aubrey regrets asking almost immediately as she sees Sunny’s barely hidden wince.
“I was… I wasn’t,” Sunny finally says, and Aubrey can see the way her eye looks to the wall without really seeing, her thoughts elsewhere. Remembering something, maybe. “In those dreams I’d- I wasn’t myself. I was… what I thought I should have been. A perfect version of me.”
“I’m sorry,” Aubrey’s voice is soft in a way that Sunny still isn’t used to. Sunny hums, and there is silence between them once again. Silence that Aubrey is eager to fill. “So, the strongest, eh? What else can you tell me about dream-Aubrey?”
“Well,” the change in subject is more than welcome, and Sunny closes her eye as she thinks. “You were the way I remembered you- from before. Cheerful, optimistic, kind—and strong. Any time we got into trouble, I could always count on you—and um…”
“And…?” Aubrey leans forward, interest more than piqued. Sunny squirmed under her gaze, hesitating to finish whatever thought she’d started to express, and as Aubrey looks closer she can see a faint pink dusting her cheeks. It was all very endearing, if she was being honest. Were she more honest with herself, she might say cute.
“And you… had… a crush. On me,” Sunny’s voice is quiet, barely over a mumble and muffled further as she buries her head in her arms. But Aubrey hears, and takes in every word. And grins.
“Yeah, that sounds about right. I was real clingy back then—honestly I’d be more surprised if you hadn’t noticed,” Aubrey mused, chuckling as she looked back. Sunny feels her heart skip a beat at the warm, nostalgic smile that paints itself across her face—and Sunny can’t tear her eyes away. She recalled that day, all those years ago. The rain, Kel and Aubrey bickering, Basil showing her his newest photograph—and teasing her about her poor attempts to hide her crush. She had thought that it had died, that she’d grown beyond this pesky crush—she was wrong. God she was so, so wrong.
The longer she found herself staring at Aubrey, the more she understood. The way her hair hung about her shoulders, a curtain of pink pierced by those false-blue eyes. Her subtlety of her musculature, the bandages on her legs—and that damnable smile that sent a shudder through Sunny.
“Uh… earth to Sunny,” Aubrey says, snapping Sunny back to the present. Aubrey’s smile is tinged with a hint of concern, and Sunny could feel warmth bloom across her cheeks—Aubrey had caught her staring. “Getting lost in your own head again?”
“Mm,” Sunny hummed, finally looking away. She hoped that the red in her cheeks was not as noticeable as it felt—she doesn’t think she could handle having to explain her years old crush, or the possibility of rejection that came with it. Not now, emotionally exhausted as she was.
“Guess some things never change,” Aubrey says with a light chuckle, and Sunny is inclined to agree. For all that’s different, there’s as much that has remained unchanged. There’s a saying like that, if Sunny remembers correctly, though the precise wording eludes her. She shunts that thought away for later, stopping her mind’s meandering before it can really begin. “So you dreamt I was hanging off your arm all the time, huh? What, you have a crush on me, or something?”
Sunny’s throat tightens as she tries to stammer a response, but her tongue has turned leaden and heavy, and she finds she has no response other than a series of indistinct mumblings.
“Relax. I’m just messing with you, Sunny.”
“And um. If- if I did uh- have a crush on you,” Sunny finally manages, already regretting it. She half-hopes her bed would open up and swallow her whole, just so she didn’t have to finish her sentence. Stubbornly, she refuses to make eye contact, or even to tear her gaze from the spot she’s picked on her bed-sheets, for fear of what Aubrey’s face may reveal. “If- if I did, what would… how would you… react…?”
“Well you’d have to be crazy for me to be your type,” her tone was light, humorous, but underlaid with something else. Surprise, maybe. Sunny couldn’t be certain. “Are- are you serious?”
Sunny’s silence is answer enough, and momentarily stunned, Aubrey finds herself at a loss for words.
“Well- shit uh… how- how long?” Aubrey doesn’t like the way she trips over her words, nor the way she can feel her heart fluttering. She pretends she isn’t struggling to make eye contact, tries to wield her veneer of confidence—a shield, the heart of her defence.
“A while. Since we were kids, I guess,” is all Sunny says at first. Her voice is muffled, face hidden behind her arms—a shield of her own, defending her from Aubrey’s gaze in a vain attempt to hide the pink that paints itself across her cheeks, ever so subtle yet still all too obvious. There’s a buzzing in her ears, an ever present droning that almost hurts it's so loud—or it may just be her imagination. She doesn’t dare peak out from her shelter for fear of what she may see—of the certain rejection waiting for her. “And then when- when I saw you again, I…”
Aubrey inhales sharply, as she leans back in Sunny’s chair, facing skyward. Her leg bounces, powered by something like nervous energy. She doesn’t say anything, and Sunny isn’t sure whether that's a blessing or a curse. There's a storm behind her eyes, indecipherable and raw, just waiting to break free. Aubrey’s cheeks are pink.
“Ain't that something,”Aubrey says, finally—more to herself than to Sunny. Her finger taps on her knee, lost deep in thought. Sunny could relate. The silence has turned tense, thick and heavy—you could cut it with a knife. “Kinda wish you’d told me back then, y’know.”
“Sorry. If I um- weirded you out,” Sunny mumbled. She traced circles in her bedsheets, waiting for the inevitable blow of Aubrey’s rejection. But Aubrey says nothing, and as Sunny risks a glance, their eyes lock. And Sunny can’t decipher what she sees through those pale blue windows.
“Do you- do you still… feel that way” Aubrey’s tone is unreadable, wrapped in layers that Sunny can’t even begin to decipher. A cryptic, enigmatic, loaded question.
“Um-” she hesitates, heart pounding against her ribs as she tears her gaze away. “Y-yeah. Yeah I… I think I do.”
And Aubrey is silent again, her face still unreadable.
“Well,” she finally begins, slow and meticulous. “Wanna… give it a shot?”
And Sunny is dumbstruck. She opens her mouth to speak, and closes it again when no sound comes out. Part of her is certain she misheard, that her mind is misleading her. That in reality Aubrey has issued a vicious rejection, and Sunny’s own ears have shielded her with a merciful delusion. And for a moment she’s sure that must be what happened—until she looks up and meets Aubrey’s gaze once again, those eyes like flashes of blue-green fire, burning holes through her.
“Hey, you uh- you in there?” and suddenly Aubrey is there, sitting cross-legged on the bed—when did she get so close? Sunny can feel the fresh coating of pink, painting itself across her face. Aubrey turns away, those intense eyes filled suddenly with uncertainty. “You uh- you don’t have to answer if-”
“Yes,” she blurts, before she can stop herself, sounding more certain than she thinks she has in weeks. It's funny how clear everything becomes—all her worries and fears of these two weeks past, all seem so distant now. “I- I mean um- y-yes I’d- I’d love to- if you’ll h-have me.”
“Of course I- I asked you, remember?” And Aubrey grins, a smile that lights up the room, and feels genuine. Real. Sunny can feel her heart flutter, as she returns her own smile—small and uncertain, but Aubrey beams at the effort. And then Aubrey’s smile falters the tiniest bit, as her eyes dart to the side. Her face flushes pink, briefly, before she’s back to meeting Sunny’s gaze, eyes blazing with intensity. “Hey, close your uh- eye for a second.”
Sunny cocks her head, asking a voiceless question.
“C’mon, just do it,” she insists, and Sunny reluctantly complies, pouting a little. There’s a rustling as Aubrey moves, but beyond that… nothing. So Sunny patiently waits for what feels like an eternity, heart pounding. “Hold still for a sec—and no peeking!”
Aubrey’s voice is closer now, and instinctively Sunny’s eye almost flutters open. She feels something come to rest against her cheek—a hand, she thinks. Aubrey’s hand. Her fingers are rough and calloused, but her touch is light and gentle, and Sunny can feel her heart nearly stop.
And then it happens. She feels… something warm, press against her lips. It's an unfamiliar sensation, warm and soft. It's a fleeting moment but to Sunny it feels like forever, just the two of them. Nothing else matters just then, just them.
And when Aubrey finally does pull back, Sunny’s eye flutters open, her mouth hanging slightly ajar. Aubrey is smiling, cheeks flushed. Sunny imagines she must match, if she looks as giddy as she feels.
“I’ve uh- kinda wanted to do that for a while,” she says with a laugh that takes Sunny back to when they were 12. Sunny feels like she’s floating, heart soaring. She turns away, suddenly bashful. “Sorry if that was… too forward, I just-”
She falls into a stunned silence as Sunny takes her hand, soft and smooth to contrast her own, and again Aubrey’s eyes meet hers. And then it's Sunny’s turn to lean in, closing her eye once again. It's messy at first—Sunny is inexperienced and uncoordinated, and Aubrey is more than eager to take the lead.
Where Sunny is tentative and cautious, Aubrey is forceful, demanding, yearning for more. Her free hand ghosts up Sunny’s back, sending shivers up and down her spine. Aubrey pulls her in, humming with something that might have been contentment. Satisfaction. She squeezes Sunny’s hand as she breaks away, pulling back. And she laughs. A light, breathy laugh. Sunny is breathless, and she can’t tell if she’s lightheaded or if that’s the endorphins. She blinks, blearily, eye unfocused.
“Hey,” Aubrey smiles, shifting back into clarity as Sunny’s vision refocuses. Her cheeks are flushed, and Sunny can only imagine hers match. She looks at Sunny with stars in her eyes, like she’s the most precious thing in the world. “You’re pretty good at kissing.”
“Th-thanks,” Sunny breathes, still feeling an unfamiliar buzzing beneath her skin. It's electric, like a lingering charge from their kiss. She tries again to return Aubrey’s smile, and finds that it comes easy to her. There’s a warmth in her now, fluttering and alive. “Um. You- you too.”
Wordlessly, Aubrey pulls her close. Her arms wrap around Sunny’s shoulders, burying her in a tight embrace. And Sunny doesn’t hesitate this time, readily embracing Aubrey. She breathes in, squeezing tight. As if Aubrey will vanish the moment she lets go. She takes in all that Aubrey is, and Aubrey embraces all of her.
And Sunny feels that ever-present gnawing void begin to shrink, the thorns uncoil themselves from her chest, and finally start to fade away.
And she feels, for the first time in as long as she can remember, that things really will be okay after all.