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The whole thing starts at the lesbian bar, and later, Victoria will look back and find this fact hilarious.
Right now, all she knows is that she’s at Blue Moon with Trinity and Whitaker, buzzed off two tequila shots and a vodka cran, and she’s having the time of her life. The music is bumping, a club remix of some pop rock song that she vaguely recognizes from Trinity’s car playlist, and Whitaker keeps buying shots for them. Victoria’s not sure why, really—there might be some low-grade blackmail involved on Trinity’s end—but as long as the alcohol keeps coming, she’s not complaining.
“Hey, Crash,” Trinity yells over the music, pulling Victoria closer so they’re not separated by a pack of high school girls trying to push through the crowd. “Where’d Huckleberry go?”
Victoria looks left, right, left again. They’re all waiting in line for drinks, or at least they had been; now Whitaker’s nowhere to be seen, most likely lost somewhere in the sweating mass of glitter and lesbians that covers the dance floor.
“Dunno,” she yells back. “Bathroom?”
Trinity makes a face: one of her signature Whitaker expressions, somehow conveying ninety percent annoyance and ten percent concern. “You don’t see him anywhere?”
Victoria shakes her head, which makes some little pink circles float across her field of vision. Huh. Maybe she’s more drunk than she thought.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Samira says from her spot at Trinity’s side. She’s a little flushed, almost as much of a lightweight as Victoria herself, and she’s smiling up at the mini disco ball above the bar like it’s a long lost friend. “I can go look for him.”
“No, stay here,” Trinity says quickly, catching Samira’s elbow before she can move away and nudging her back in the direction of the bar. “You’re our point person, we’ve come too far to give up now. As soon as you get through to the bar, they’ll come right over.”
Victoria’s not sure about that one, since they’ve been waiting for about fifteen minutes already, but what does she know—maybe there’s some elaborate bar etiquette she’s unaware of here. She’s new to this, remember.
Samira, similarly doubtful, just looks at the overflowing line of people crowded along the curve of the bartop. “You think so?”
“Yeah, a hundred percent,” Trinity says, light and breezy. “Pretty privilege always works.”
Samira rolls her eyes at that, but she’s giving Trinity a soft little smile that Victoria’s never seen her give anyone else, which is Victoria’s cue to make an exit. Trinity’s accused her more than once of cockblocking, and she really doesn’t need to hear the whole lecture again, so she just pokes Trinity in the arm, tells her to order another vodka cran once they make it to the front, and slips away to go try and find Whitaker.
+
The bar’s a small space, and not completely unknown to Victoria—she’s been here a couple times since she turned twenty-one and Trinity first dragged her out, but it’s so full tonight that she feels like she’s walking through a foreign and overpopulated land. Everything is strobe lights and glitter, laughing faces flashing past in a blur. She has no idea how she’s going to find Whitaker in all this mess, but hey, at least she’s trying. Not trying as hard as Trinity is with Samira at the bar, maybe, but still—she’s doing it. She’s a good Samaritan, that’s what she is. Someone should give her a Nobel Peace prize. Or another drink.
“Coming through, sorry,” someone says, and then there’s a girl pushing past her in a wave of strong-scented perfume. Victoria steps back to let her pass, noting that she’s kind of hot in an androgynous way: short wavy hair, a nice smile, a polo shirt over black pants. There’s a spark of interest somewhere in Victoria’s stomach, stirred up from curious embers on a slow burn. Maybe she should go up to her. She could say something witty, and the girl could laugh, and the two of them could move a little closer, and then—and then what?
The girl turns back long enough to grab the hand of a very tall, very gorgeous girl whose eyeliner could cut through solid diamond, and right. Right, that’s definitely her girlfriend. Victoria sighs and turns away, her disappointment shot through with relief. Whatever. She’s not here to get laid, she’s here to find Whitaker.
Whitaker, Whitaker…where is he, anyway? Victoria glances around wildly, which probably makes her look like a lost fool. She hopes it doesn’t, but then again, no one’s even looking at her. Every other person in the vicinity is either drinking, laughing, flirting with someone else, or all three at once. Victoria is going to die alone, probably.
She does another scan of the crowd, rising up on her toes to get a better vantage point. It makes her feel like a lighthouse, alone and watchful and beaming out across an indifferent sea—one where all the waves are busy and won’t stop making out with each other. Does that make sense? She thinks it makes sense.
The small part of her brain that’s not under fire from her blood alcohol content starts cataloging people as she circles the bar, labeling them and putting them in temporary storage under the categories of Whitaker and Not Whitaker. Hot blonde girl over by the high-top tables: not Whitaker. Tall butch standing by the pool table: not Whitaker. Redheaded woman leaning against the wall by the door: not Whitaker, but she sort of looks like Dr. McKay, which is funny. Short brunette girl next to her—
Victoria slams to a halt in the middle of the floor, feeling like she’s been sucker-punched in the stomach by a brick wall with hands. Someone bumps into her from behind and spills half a beer on her shoulder, and she should move, she should get out of the way, but she can’t. She can only stare, because holy shit. Because that is Cassie McKay, and she’s here at Blue Moon, at the lesbian bar, the bar where lesbians go, holding a can of Diet Coke and leaning casually against the wall as she smiles down at a pretty, dark-haired girl who looks twenty-four at most.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
More people are pushing past her now, not gently either. Victoria doesn’t pay attention; she just stands where she is, cemented to the spot. She feels like a rock in deep river currents, heavy and barely above water. She shouldn’t look, she shouldn’t look, she shouldn’t—
She looks, and instantly goes dizzy at what she sees. McKay is still leaning on the wall, long and effortless in her white t-shirt shirt and blue jeans, like she’s James Dean in that one old fifties movie Victoria watched on cable TV when her mom wasn’t home. She’s got her head tilted slightly to the side, the way she does when she’s really listening to someone, and her smile is just a little crooked. When the strobe lights shift, changing color, there’s a bright flash as they catch the gold chain tucked under the collar of her shirt. God.
The girl she’s talking to, the stupidly lucky girl who probably doesn’t even know how good she’s got it right now, is twirling her hair and smiling up at McKay like a high schooler with a crush. Victoria loathes her, immediately and on principle.
McKay’s buying into it, though. She sets her soda can down, pulls the girl closer with a gentle hand on her hip, leans in to whisper something in her ear. The girl laughs in response, loud enough that it’s audible even through the buzz of the club. And Victoria, standing there like a voyeur and a fucking fool, feels heat flush hard through every vein in her body. Green fire, burning jealous in her blood.
She’s going to walk away, she tells herself. She’s leaving, right now. McKay has both hands on the girl’s waist now, smiling as they sway together a little, and Victoria’s not watching, she’s walking away, so why aren’t her legs moving?
McKay rests a hand on the girl’s shoulder, the way she does to Victoria after a correct answer or a good save, and tips her head towards the door; the girl nods, clutching at McKay’s arm with one hand. Victoria’s not a violent person, but right now she wants to blow up the earth.
Look at me, she wants to yell. I’m here, too!
McKay’s smiling again, her hand rising from the girl’s shoulder to rest on the back of her neck. Victoria’s sick at the sight, can’t turn away. McKay looks around the bar, calm, surveying, like she owns the building and the heart of everyone in it both. Like this place belongs to her, instead of Trinity and Victoria and Whitaker and Samira and everyone else they’ve ever brought out on a Friday night. She’s looking and looking, observant, sharper than anyone else in the room—and Victoria, tipsy and tequila-slow, somehow knows what’s coming next, but can’t find a way to stop it.
McKay’s gaze lands on Victoria, all the way across the crowded room. Their eyes lock, hold contact. Victoria’s knees turn to liquid. The song flips to something sensual, full of synthesizers, and McKay’s holding onto that girl, but she’s still looking at her. Victoria’s stomach does a flip, and then another, and then launches into a set of back handsprings with very drunken landings.
“Oh, fuck,” she blurts out, and bolts for the bathroom with a hand over her mouth. She gets there in time, but only just.
+
She somehow makes it to work by seven the next morning, hungover and sore from a night spent on Trinity and Whitaker’s ancient Facebook Marketplace couch. By the grace of the gods, or at least Dana, she’s thrown onto a string of easy solo cases: a head lac in South 3, an infected abrasion in North 16, a severe ankle sprain in Central 6. She charts data and takes vitals and tries to pretend that the dull ache in her temples is caused by the fluorescent lighting instead of the shadow of tequila that’s still kicking around her intestinal tract.
She’s inputting patient data on one of the central workstation computers when a shadow falls over her, and she glances up with a lurch in her stomach. McKay is standing there, arms crossed, looking down at her with an inscrutable expression.
“I was wondering where you were,” McKay says evenly. “Looks like someone stole my old favorite med student for the morning.”
Victoria swallows nervously, stops typing mid-chart. McKay’s tone is casual, betraying nothing, but there’s a slant to her mouth that’s almost confrontational.
“I, uh, I was taking care of some night shift hand-offs,” Victoria explains, and tries hard to avoid thinking about McKay’s hands on another girl’s waist. It’s not easy. “Do you need me for something?”
She winces inwardly at the way it comes out, somehow defensive and submissive at the same time: that knee-jerk instinct of I’m not doing anything wrong, and the hope that someone does actually need her. It’s an unstoppable force, immovable object kind of deal, one that McKay brings out of her more than anyone else these days.
“There’s a complete digital avulsion over in South 14,” McKay says, thankfully oblivious to Victoria’s inner turmoil. “Could be a cool learning experience, even for someone who’s an official intern now.” She winks, so quick and smooth that it looks practiced. “Wanna take a look?”
Victoria got more than enough of a look last night, but she can’t exactly say that. She just nods, stands, and follows McKay in the direction of the south wing.
They head down the hall together, side by side, and Victoria can’t help but notice that she takes two steps for every one McKay does. McKay’s legs are a mile long, her strides quick and confident. Victoria looks young and naive just by walking next to her, which is not a thought that should get her going, but still kind of does anyway.
“So,” McKay says after a second. “Got anything good planned for this weekend?”
“Uh,” Victoria answers, and her stomach dips sharply. “Not really. I’m working tomorrow too, so. Probably just gonna go home and sleep.”
McKay hums in acknowledgment. “Good plan. You could probably use some rest.”
Victoria bristles at that, senses something behind it—concealed, a well-placed tripwire in the conversation. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, you know,” McKay says with a shrug. “You’re young, I figured you’d have had some fun last night. Friday out on the town, right? God, I remember those nights like they were yesterday.”
Victoria stares at her, trying to parse the lines of code. McKay’s got a little smile on her face, one that pulls into a smirk at the edges of her mouth, and she’s holding onto her stethoscope like so many people in the Pitt do, hands curled loosely around the ends. Her fingers flex there, long and strong; without meaning to, Victoria drops her gaze to the third finger of her left hand. No ring there, just the slight tan line of what once was.
McKay’s looking at her, still smiling, waiting for an answer. Victoria licks her bottom lip, suddenly dry-mouthed.
Like they were yesterday…McKay is messing with her. She has to be. She saw Victoria watching her with that girl like a total freak and now she’s—testing her, or something.
Well, Victoria didn’t get this far in life without knowing how to pass a test. No flashcards here, no study guide, but she still has her brain and her hands. Assets she can use, if only she can figure out where to apply them.
“Yeah, Friday night,” she says, praying that her tone sounds cool and unbothered. She’s pretty sure she succeeds, at least somewhat. “Lit, crazy, movie. Trinity took me to the gay bar with Whitaker and Samira.” She takes one step closer to McKay, lowers her voice a little. “And it was fun, actually. You never know who you’re gonna see at the bar, right?”
McKay inhales sharply, blue eyes flashing bright with surprise. Victoria pulls back—control it—and steps away again, pushes open the door to South 14. When she sneaks a glance back over her shoulder, McKay is gripping her stethoscope harder, like she’s trying to choke it. Victoria grins to herself, subtle, tucked away in the turn of her head, and feels like she’s scored bonus points on an extra credit question she didn’t prep for.
+
In the days that follow, the two of them settle into some kind of stasis period. Condition is unchanging, at least for now, but Victoria senses some moving parts behind the scenes.
She thinks it’s like one of those logic puzzles her mom used to drill her on, where Victoria would get two disparate pieces of information on a theoretical case, or cases, and have to put them together to form a plan of action.
Like this: patient one, female, early 30s, no visible wounds, slightly tachy at 110, BP 125 over 90; patient two, male, late teens, minor scalp lac, all vitals good, sinus holding at 100, BP 120 over 80. Arrived at the hospital at the same time, and you’re understaffed on the morning shift. Who do you treat first, and how? Detail your process.
Back then, Victoria had lived for problem-solving games like that. They’d play every day, or almost every day: at home, at school, on the long road trips to visit her dad’s side of the family for the holidays. Victoria would reel off answers, praying she was correct, living for her mother’s smile every time she got it right—and then she got sent off to college at age thirteen, where her course load was heavy enough that she stopped finding anything but misery in Eileen Shamsi’s constant push for perfection.
And now it’s nearly eight years later and she’s got a new puzzle to solve, except this one goes more like: patient one, newly appointed med intern, almost 21, bisexual in theory but never been kissed by anyone; patient two, senior resident, early 40s, who’s been at the Pitt for a fourth of the intern’s entire lifespan, has an ex-husband but definitely likes women. Saw each other at the lesbian bar one night and still won’t acknowledge it outright. Where do you go from there, and how?
No matter how much Victoria shuffles the pieces around in her mind, she still can’t come up with a clear answer. The only thing she knows for sure is that her mother would definitely not approve of this as a teaching case.
Anyway, like she said: it’s a stasis period for them. A stalemate, if you want to get all game theory about it. The memory of that night at the bar runs between them like a tether, taut, touch-sensitive; they’re not talking about it anymore, but their unfinished conversation simmers just beneath the surface. It’s like a dance, the way they move around it—one step sideways, two steps back. There’s the space between them and the strange gravity that wants to close it, and then there’s Victoria, caught in the middle and waiting for a sign to guide her.
McKay’s not distant, at least. She’s still around every corner in the Pitt, treating patients, drinking too much coffee in the break room. She’ll catch Victoria’s eye sometimes and smile, or pass her a scalpel for a thoracotomy like the brush of their fingers isn’t an earthquake inside Victoria’s chest; they’ll talk about a case, or the weather. Harrison, sometimes, or even Victoria’s mom when she’s being extra overbearing. But McKay never says anything to Victoria, not really—just hovers at the edge of her orbit, leaving Victoria to play and replay the rare moments of collision.
The waiting is what really drives her crazy. It’s tense and near-constant, a metaphorical leash around her ankle, and the worst part is, she doesn’t even really know what she’s waiting for. A hand on her shoulder, maybe, or a word of praise: well done, Javadi. Something to pave a two-way street, to prove that she’s not the only one who felt something that night—who feels something still, every time she looks at McKay. Every time McKay looks at her.
As the days go by and nothing comes of it, though, Victoria has to cut herself back down to size. Sure, she saw her mentor out at the lesbian bar; sure, she holds the mind-blowing knowledge that Cassie McKay likes them young. Sure, that fact could probably ruin her life if she let it.
But, she reminds herself, she’s a real doctor now. She’s made it through the hellish wasteland of med school, stood on her own two feet in PTMC—except for her first day, yes, shut up Trinity—and finally earned some respect for herself. No matter what her mother says, she can be professional. She can work with McKay, or around her at least, and pretend she doesn’t know the exact angle of her confident take-me-home smile or the shape of her hands on a pretty girl’s waist. Yes. She can do this.
She starts off slow, just a few short exchanges with McKay as they chart at the same workstation. She talks about the weather some more, like they’re two strangers in the same elevator. She consults McKay for advice on a particularly nasty orbital fracture and pinches herself, hard and discreet, to avoid visibly folding when McKay tells her she’s doing great, and it’s working. Early stages, maybe, but it’s working.
And then the new med students show up, and Victoria’s carefully laid plans promptly go to shit.
+
“Hey, Crash,” Trinity says, sidling up to the workstation with a carefully neutral expression that instantly charts a high 6.5 on Victoria’s suspicion radar. “What’s good in your world?”
“Nothing, right now,” Victoria says, and immediately regrets it. Blood, meet water; a grin splits Trinity’s face, wide and shit-starting.
“Someone’s feeling angsty today,” Trinity says sweetly. “Is this emo Crash I’m talking to right now? Do I need to be wearing a Hot Topic choker necklace for this conversation?”
“Bold talk from someone who had a My Chemical Romance poster on her wall until she was sixteen,” Victoria mutters, staring harshly at the computer screen in front of her. The chart is complete, but she still feels like there’s something missing. “Do you have any actual work to do, or did you just come over here to bother me?”
Trinity presses a hand to her heart and fakes a little stutter-step backwards, like she’s just been stabbed. “Ouch, dude. First of all, I told you about that in strict confidence. Second of all, I do have shit to do, but I always have a minute for my favorite coworker.”
Victoria arches an eyebrow at her, has to crack a smile at that. “What, Samira doesn’t count?”
“Oh, shut up,” Trinity says, reaching out to flick her in the forehead. She messes up Victoria’s hair a little while she’s at it, then leans back against the desk in a way that’s forcibly reminiscent of Cassie at the lesbian bar, which is downright sickening; Victoria’s a big girl, true, but she can only handle so much. “So—what’s your take on the newbies?”
“Uh, they’re new,” Victoria says shortly. She really, really doesn’t want to talk about the new med students. She might actually rather go deal with the intractable vomit case in the south wing than talk about them. Or, well—one of them, at least.
Trinity, of course, picks up on this with an infuriating ease. Victoria’s not sure how she even does it, but it’s one of the unshakable pillars of Trinity Santos: she can see all the cracks in a foundation, find the places where someone’s softest or weakest, and let the light pour right through them. One of her specialties, for better or for worse.
Victoria’s envious of it, sometimes. She knows she’s smart, she could name every bone and muscle and ligament in the human body before she turned eleven, but remembering isn’t the same thing as knowing. She’s never been able to look at someone and see right through them, not without going in for the dissection first.
“I’m not really rocking with our kiddie pool either,” Trinity confides, unsurprisingly. “Especially not the tall kid, he seems like a human fucking wet wipe. But…” She makes a show of raising a hand to her mouth and talking behind it, a purely ostentatious gesture that does nothing to actually lower the volume of her voice. “Looks like the other one’s managed to make a new friend, at least.”
She jerks her head across the room in the direction of Central 2, where the door’s swung open wide enough to show the entire department what’s going on in there. Victoria already knows what she’ll see when she turns around, but she does it anyway. May as well twist the knife, or whatever.
Inside Central 2, McKay is sitting bedside to run a suture on the patient’s forearm lac, and she’s not alone. She’s side by side with the new MS3—Joyce, Victoria thinks, or Joni, something like that. Whatever her name is, she’s watching McKay with such clear admiration that Victoria feels a little nauseous. She used to be the one looking at McKay like that. She still should be.
“Well,” Trinity says, drawing the word out all slow and obnoxious. “Would you look at that. New girl’s found herself a mentor.”
“I don’t care,” Victoria says hurriedly. Lying, and knowing she’s not doing it very well. She pulls her hair down just for something to do with her hands, shakes it out, ties it up again. “It’s cool, it’s whatever. Dr. McKay’s a good teacher.”
“Sure, if that’s the way you wanna play it,” Trinity says. She taps the toe of her sneaker against Victoria’s, gives her a knowing look. “Catch you later, Crash.”
She pulls a tablet from the charging station on the desk, then saunters off towards the locker room Victoria turns back to her own work, opening a new chart for the toe fracture in North 5, and tells herself she’s being stupid. She’s an intern now, she doesn’t need a hand to hold. McKay can work with anyone she wants. She doesn’t care.
+
(Except she does care, actually, and it might even be ruining her life a little. It’s not that deep, or it shouldn’t be, but it feels like every single time she turns around, McKay’s hanging around with her new med student. Joy, Victoria knows now—and remembers, because forgetting her name on purpose would be a little too petty, even if it’s tempting sometimes.
Joy, despite her name, is anything but joyous to Victoria. She attaches herself to McKay’s side like a barnacle, trailing around at her heels every single shift and asking a million irritating questions. Unbelievably, inexplicably, McKay doesn’t seem to mind.
Victoria minds, though. Victoria minds a lot.
She resents Joy down to the marrow, in a way she can’t even begin to rationalize. It’s maddening, illogical even; she should be happy to have new blood in the Pitt, where every set of spare hands could tip the scales of life and death for their patients. But when she looks at Joy with McKay, when she sees McKay give her the smile that means good catch, well done, Victoria doesn’t feel relieved. She feels small, and she feels like screaming.)
+
It all comes boiling over during a STEMI in Trauma 3, because of course it does. Victoria’s on the scene with Trinity and Whitaker, gloved up and scrubbed in and ready to go; Mel’s there too, and Perlah’s on standby to assist. Samira’s running point, rolling off orders: push EKG and troponin, prep for a primary PCI. Victoria’s focused, clear-eyed, riding high on the rush of knowing exactly what to do and where to go.
And then the double doors swing open, and McKay strides in with Joy close behind her. Victoria glances over, momentarily distracted, as something at the back of her throat goes hot and sour.
“Heard there was a STEMI in here,” McKay says, looking to Samira the way she would usually look to Robby. “Can we sit in on this?”
Samira nods once, decisive, her hands never pausing as she preps the injection site and holds the introducer needle out in Victoria’s direction. “Whitaker, sheath and IV contrast,” she says. “Mel, you’re on balloon duty. Javadi, radial injection and then sheath introducer.”
“Not femoral?” Mel asks, looking a little surprised, and Samira shakes her head. Says: “For this guy, we need to reduce the risk of an access site bleed. Javadi, ready.”
Victoria takes the introducer needle, positions it carefully. The radial pulse jumps beneath the needle tip, weak and thready as she slides precisely into the vein.
“Good,” Samira says, and the word is a tiny flame of pride flaring low in Victoria’s stomach. It’s immediately extinguished by the loom of a figure over her shoulder, short yet somehow overshadowing. Joy, of course, with her phone in her hand for some ungodly reason, leaning in to get a better look at the procedure.
Victoria, reaching for the sheath introducer, shoots her a cold look. “Can I get some space here?”
“Joy, step back a little,” McKay says, sounding almost amused. “With me, okay?”
Joy inches away, but not nearly far enough. Victoria grits her teeth, hard, threads the guidewire in, slips the sheath introducer into place. The handoff goes to Whitaker, who pulls the wire and advances the sheath. “I’m in,” he says, “bag him,” and Mel inflates the balloon and that’s it, that should be the job done—
The monitor flares in warning, a rapid alarm bell chime. Victoria’s head turns on a swivel, matching with Samira and Mel and Whitaker, searching for the cause.
“Sats dropping,” Perlah calls. “BP 105 over 78.”
“He’s crashing,” Whitaker says. “The balloon didn’t work.”
“Then switch to stent procedure,” Samira orders. Calm, collected still, but the strands of her hair falling loose around her face tell a different story. “Prep for right ventricle access, pre-dilation. Mel, dilate a little further—there, perfect. Javadi, you’re up.”
Perlah passes over the stent and Victoria flips it over, prepares to deploy it. Her heart beats faster, tempo rising with the challenge, but she’s still breathing and that’s all that matters. She’s never done this before, but she knows where she’s going still.
“Careful, now,” Samira says, even-voiced, a lighthouse beam over dark night water. “Slow down if you need to. Over the guidewire, past the dilated balloon, shift into the right ventricle.”
Victoria nods, breathes, and slides the stent deeper. Guidewire, dilation, balloon, right ventricle. There’s the guidewire, and then she’s past it. The stent moves in smoothly, slips right over the curve of the balloon—there.
“Almost done,” Samira says, and Victoria inhales again. She’s doing this. She’s doing it. She’s—
—got a presence over her shoulder, Joy again, and the hot well of anger compressed in Victoria’s stomach pushes upwards, outwards, acidic and explosive, as she snaps: “Can you step off?”
It comes out loud, louder than she intended. The room goes silent except for the beep of the monitor; Joy steps back, eyes going wide behind the big black frames of her glasses. Victoria’s stomach turns, twisting in on itself, a surgeon’s knot tying itself as she locates the stent again—right ventricle, there—and shifts it one last millimeter, fully into position.
“Done,” she mutters, praying to all thirty-three major deities of the Hindu canon that the earth will open up and swallow her where she stands. She can feel McKay’s eyes on her, hot and relentless against her back, but she can’t turn around. “Stent in place.”
“Antiplatelets, then up to cardiology,” Samira says. “Good job, team. Victoria, a word?”
Victoria drops her eyes to the floor, studies the tile as everyone else files out of the room. She sees Samira’s shoes approaching her before anything else, sensible sneakers with black laces and a high white platform. Spotless somehow, despite the environment they work in.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out in a rush, raising her head again to look Samira in the eye. She might look like an idiot right now, but she won’t be a coward as well. “That was totally unprofessional of me, I know and I’m sorry. It’s just, I’ve never done the stent before, and I felt kind of suffocated, not that it’s really an excuse—”
“It was very unprofessional,” Samira agrees. No punches pulled there; Victoria feels the reproof like something physical, an elbow strike to the gut. “We can’t let our emotions rule here, especially not even on the hard cases. I know you know that.”
Victoria does know, and it makes her feel small and stupid to hear it said out loud. She hates that this whole stupid thing could get inside her head, beat her like that, leave her bleeding out and embarrassed on the trauma room floor. She’s mad at Joy, at McKay, at the entire institution of emergency medicine. Mad at herself, most of all, for letting this happen. Here, on the unforgiving floor of the Pitt, Samira isn’t the friendly acquaintance she’s shared drinks and a dance floor with. She’s Victoria’s superior, clear-cut, and Victoria has failed her.
Her mother’s voice, harsh in her ear: I’m disappointed in you, Victoria. You are better than this.
“I apologize for my conduct, Dr. Mohan,” she says. Pulls herself together, straightens her spine to face the fire. “It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t,” Samira says simply. The line of her mouth relaxes a little, softens at the corner as she adds: “Outburst aside, you did well with the stent. Good work, Victoria.”
She reaches out and places her hand on Victoria’s arm, just above the elbow, a soft and reassuring touch. For the space of a heartbeat, no longer, Victoria is held and whole in a way that kind of makes her want to cry. Samira’s not McKay, never could be, but there’s still something to her that radiates calm, caring. Victoria half wants to fall into it, just to have somewhere soft to land.
God, she thinks, this is what happens when your relationship with your mom is a success-driven fucking minefield of conflict. The way things are going, she’ll probably be swooning over crumbs of kindness from older women for the rest of her natural life.
“You should probably talk to Joy, though,” Samira adds, taking her hand back. There’s a knowing little gleam in her eye, bright against the rich brown of her iris, as she adds: “And Cassie.”
She pushes open the door and leaves before Victoria can say anything in response. Victoria just stands there, alone in Trauma 2 except for the unconscious patient, and wonders how fast she could secure an intern position at a hospital somewhere in Saskatchewan.
+
Victoria does talk to Joy, because she’s not actually a horrible person. She finds her in central with the other med student, Ogilvy, printing out a sheet of patient discharge instructions, and asks her to step away for a minute.
The conversation is less painful than she thought it would be, honestly. She apologizes, quickly and sincerely, for snapping like that; she explains that she was under pressure and that’s no excuse, but also, when you’re observing as a med student, you should really give the doctors space to work. Joy nods and offers an apology of her own, which Victoria feels is genuine even though Joy’s deadpan expression doesn’t exactly lend itself to clear sincerity.
“It’s a lot, working here,” Victoria says fairly. “Things go wrong, shit happens. You’ll see that a lot in the next few weeks.”
“Yeah, probably,” Joy mutters. She adjusts her glasses with one hand, settles them back on the bridge of her nose. “I’ve never worked somewhere like this before.”
Victoria feels a pinprick of guilt at the admission. She remembers how she felt on her first day in the Pitt, lost and overwhelmed even before she went crashing to the floor at the sight of a degloved foot. Maybe, just maybe, she’s been too harsh in her judgement.
“You’ll be okay,” she says, offering Joy a small smile. Joy’s mouth sort of twitches in response, like she wants to smile back but she can’t quite figure out the muscle movements. “We’re here to help, when we’re not yelling at each other. You’ll learn. I’m still learning, too.”
“Uh huh,” Joy says. “Well. Thanks for—whatever this was. Are we good?”
“Yeah, we’re good,” Victoria says, and means it. Like this, up close, Joy hardly seems like a fair target for her anger. She’s small, unassuming in her all-black clothes and thick-framed glasses. Just a med student, like they all were once. A year younger than Victoria, if that—even older, maybe, which makes Victoria sort of uneasy. Down here in the Pitt, ten months deep in emergency medicine and graduated to intern status, she’s never felt so young and so old at the same time.
“Cool,” Joy says, and pulls her phone out of her pocket. “I’m going to go find Dr. McKay.”
“Cool,” Victoria repeats flatly, sour once again at the mention of McKay. Joy slopes off without a backwards glance, no doubt on the way to farm another bunch of praises from McKay and her stupidly kind heart, and oh, yeah—that’s why Victoria can’t stand her, alright. That’s it, right there.
+
She puts off talking to McKay for another hour or two, because she has no idea what to say. It’s unnerving, really, how Samira had dropped that in at the end of the reprimand session—like someone tossing a hand grenade onto the battlefield last minute, just when you thought the mines had cleared.
Not that Victoria’s ever seen a battlefield, obviously, but Trinity and Whitaker have Call of Duty: Black Ops on their aging PS4 and Victoria’s watched them play enough to know what she’s talking about. It’s a metaphor, whatever. She’s a doctor, not an English major.
She’s a mere three hours away from the end of her shift and still trying to come up with a decent first talking point when the whole avoidance thing becomes unnecessary, because McKay finds her in the break room instead. Naturally, she shows up at the exact moment that Victoria bites into a Nature’s Valley honey oat bar.
“Hey, Vadi,” McKay says, so warm and familiar it’s like no time has passed, like they’re still mentor and student. Victoria splutters, choking on a mouthful of tiny granola crumbs,
“Uh, hi,” Victoria manages, once her windpipe is clear enough. She wipes at her mouth and comes away with a damp oat stuck to her thumb, which is—great, really. Just awesome. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much.” McKay leans her hip against the sink, crosses one leg loosely in front of the other. Victoria immediately locks her gaze onto the cheap pineboard cabinets above the microwave so she won’t say something irredeemably disastrous about it. “Just thought I’d come check on you. That was quite a moment there, back in Trauma 2.”
“Nah,” Victoria says. She gives a little shake of her head, breathes out, trying to be chill. Trying be cool, slipping on an invisible pair of aviator sunglasses like a hot woman in one of those slick action movies that Trinity likes so much. A Bond girl, or something.
McKay just hums like she’s unconvinced, pinning her with the same gentle but no-nonsense look that’s cracked open dozens of stubborn patients past. Her eyes are the kind of blue that Victoria could drown in. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“No, yeah, no, I’m good here,” Victoria says, “all good,” and then curses herself internally for saying the word good twice in the span of ten seconds. So much for being cool. “I was under pressure, I let it get to me a little. It’s totally not a big deal.”
“Okay,” McKay says evenly. Her expression doesn’t change, but it does reach for a marker and scrawl the words I DON’T BELIEVE YOU! across the wall of her face. Honestly, Victoria needs to surround herself with some people who are less perceptive. And less attractive.
McKay frowns now, says: “What was that?” Victoria, mortified, realizes that she's been mumbling her thoughts out loud to herself.
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “Never mind.” She fidgets with the granola bar wrapper still in her hands, sending a rain of crumbs cascading to the floor, and tries not to say something stupid. She doesn’t succeed.
“So. Um. Seems like you and Joy are getting along pretty well.”
“You could say that, I guess,” McKay agrees easily. “She’s a good student. Learns quick. She’s gonna be a good doctor.” She smiles, conspiratorial, a door held open just for Victoria. “If she can put her phone down long enough, anyway.”
Victoria’s heart jumps upwards, happy to be let in on the joke, then plummets abruptly again—there’s praise in McKay’s mouth, the exact thing she craves more than every drug she’s never tried, and it’s aimed at someone else. Don’t be petty. Don’t be petty. Don’t—
“What is she, like, your new favorite med student or something?”
She was hoping for an immediate no, or at least a hint of hesitation, but McKay just tilts her head a little. A challenge, then, one that runs hot beneath Victoria’s skin. “Would that be a problem for you?”
“No,” Victoria snaps. Quickly, too quickly. Another sharp error, the kind she can’t stop committing today. Her head aches, pressure tight at the temples and the hinge of her jaw. She looks at McKay, her stupid sexy lean and her deeply carved laugh lines and the suffocating blue of her eyes, the messy red sweep of her hair in its loose-held ponytail, and feels a hot, tight curl of acidic desire in the pit of her stomach. “I just don’t see what’s so great about her.”
“She needs to be taught,” McKay says. Still tilted, still challenging; Victoria wants to rise to it, doesn’t know how. “So did you, once. She’s young, she’s new. I’m just trying to help her.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Victoria says. She’s being a brat, probably, acting like the child she tries to convince everyone she’s not, but she doesn’t really care at this point. Everything is suddenly too much—the change and the loss and the STEMI, her unbanished hunger for approval. The lesbian bar, dim and sensual. McKay’s hand on someone else’s shoulder, another girl’s waist, and the emotions of the last twelve days build to a peak of frustration between Victoria’s ears as she adds: “I know you like them young, so.”
The air between them goes charged, dangerously electric. Victoria inhales pure ozone, feels every cell in her body shimmer with heat and energy: the outside-time moment before lightning strikes, stretched out, interminable. It’s like standing on the third rail, like a hand over a hot stove. It’s addicting, more than anything else, and that’s enough to bring Victoria to her knees.
“What,” McKay says, deadly quiet, “is that supposed to mean?”
Victoria’s throat is dry, sandpaper when she swallows. She’s come too far to stop now. “You know exactly what it means.”
“Oh, we’re talking about that now?” McKay’s eyes narrow, blue and burning like she’s sighting through the scope of a rifle. Victoria, caught in the crosshairs, can only shiver in anticipation of whatever’s yet to come. “That’s funny.”
What’s so funny about it, Victoria wants to say, but the words die in her throat. McKay takes a step forward, then another—into Victoria’s space, so close that she blots out the light from the overhead fluorescents. Victoria’s thrown into shadow, weak at the joints and trying not to shake; McKay slowly raises a hand, reaches out, places it on the back of Victoria’s neck, and holds her there. Her grip is firm, her palm rough with calluses: not painful, but not quite gentle either. Victoria’s breath stutters, her heartbeat loud in her ears as McKay leans in even closer. She’s suddenly, desperately aware of how turned on she is.
“Careful, Vadi,” McKay murmurs, low and rasping, right against Victoria’s ear. “That smart mouth of yours just might get you in trouble someday.”
She sweeps her thumb along the side of Victoria’s throat, a hot brush over the pulse point, then lets her go and steps back again, turns away, pushes open the door to leave. Victoria stands there, frozen, dumbstruck, clenching her hands around a sheen of cold sweat on her palms, and the only coherent thought she can form is, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck, I am so fucked.
+
(That night, driving home in the tiny 2011 Toyota sedan that she finally convinced her parents to give her, Victoria hits 95 on the speedometer for the first time in living memory. She’s barely made it into the house before she’s kicking off her shoes, rushing up the stairs, pulling off the clothes she threw on post-shift to replace her scrubs. Distantly, she gives thanks for the fact that both her parents are working the night shift.
Her desk waits patiently in her room, piled high with case studies and pages of notes, but Victoria has eyes only for her bed. She falls onto the duvet facefirst, soft cotton cover patterned with lilacs that she’s had since she was ten, and pushes her head beneath her pillow. When she closes her eyes, McKay appears: angry, hot-eyed, unbearably close. The ghost of her hand brushes Victoria’s neck, memory made touch.
Victoria puts her own hand on the back of her neck, pushes a hand beneath her panties. She touches herself quick and hard, gasps into the pillow to muffle her sounds; she imagines McKay bending her over, holding her down, telling her to take it. When she comes on a whimper, pushing her hips down into the mattress, there’s only one word left in her mouth: Cassie.)
+
“Okay, what the hell happened yesterday?” Trinity asks. “Samira said you almost bit off a med student’s head over in trauma.”
Victoria sighs deeply. It’s the day after STEMIgate, one of those semi-rare occasions when their days off align, and she’s over at Trinity and Whitaker’s apartment for a late breakfast. She hadn’t even wanted to get out of bed, really—she’d slept poorly, despite or maybe because of the fact that she came her brains out the night before while thinking about her former mentor—but Trinity had lured her out with the promise of homemade mimosas and a decent batch of pancakes. She should’ve known there would be a catch.
“Samira told you, huh,” Victoria asks. She tries her best to make a suggestive face, though it’s hard to do when her eyebrows refuse to fully coordinate with each other.
“I guess,” Trinity says, chewing at her bottom lip. “I don’t know, it’s whatever. She’s kind of hard to read, if you didn’t notice.”
There’s a faint blush creeping over Trinity’s face, turning her pink around the edges. Victoria smiles at the sight, endeared despite herself—there aren’t many things that can make Trinity Santos truly soft, but Samira Mohan is at the top of the list. Victoria’s rooting for them, hard, even if they’re taking the long way around in her opinion. “You could just, like. Tell her how you feel, maybe.”
“Oh, cause you’re so good at that,” Trinity shoots back, no real bite to it. “Shit, yeah, my bad. Paging Dr. Javadi to the relationship advice conference, stat. Dear Victoria…”
Victoria kicks her under the table, not too hard but not softly either. Trinity hisses in pain, swears loudly. “Fuck, dude. Forget medicine, you should’ve been a soccer player.”
“Tell that to Eileen Shamsi,” Victoria says, dry. “As if she ever would’ve let me do an extracurricular activity that wasn’t violin lessons or the free infant CPR course at the rec center downtown.”
“Yikes,” Trinity says, and then: “Hey, speaking of infants, stop being a baby and tell me what went down with you and the glasses chick. I can’t believe I missed a Crash crashout.”
“That joke wasn’t funny the first time,” Victoria says, even though it kind of was—she’s got to keep Trinity humble somehow. “Fine, okay? The STEMI went sideways, I had to place the stent, Joy was all up on my back while I was trying to work, I told her to step off. There’s your story.”
Trinity whistles, looking pleasantly impressed. “You told her to step off? Like, you actually used that phrase? Nice one. No wonder Mir was shocked.”
“I don’t get why it’s such a big deal,” Victoria groans, resisting the urge to rest her head on the table and just disintegrate into Trinity’s weird bamboo placemat. “It wasn’t really that bad, was it? García says worse stuff to Robby on the daily. Langdon too, before he—well, y’know.”
“True, but García”—Trinity’s mouth twists a little afterwards, leaves the second name unspoken—“isn’t you, Crash. She’s a badass bitch who probably, like, does martial arts in her spare time and orders straight whiskey on the rocks when she goes out. You, on the other hand—you’re like a little deer in the woods or something.” She holds up one hand to stall Victoria’s reaction, continues: “Look, I know you’re a firecracker when you want to be. I’m just saying, not everyone gets you like me.”
“Huh,” Victoria says, mulling this over. “That was—weirdly complimentary? I think.”
“Pfft,” Trinity replies. “I call em like I see em, that’s all. Just like I’m calling that you totally flipped out on Glasses McGee because she’s all over McKay these days.”
Victoria opens her mouth, closes it. Opens it again, then sighs, resigned. “Okay seriously, how the hell do you keep clocking me like this?”
“Lesbian intuition,” Trinity says loftily. She taps a finger to her forehead, right along her parietal bone. “Never fails, baby.”
“Fine, you got me,” Victoria says. “I might be—kind of, just a little—jealous or whatever.”
“And the crowd goes wild.” Trinity takes another bite of pancake—from Victoria’s plate this time, since she’s already finished her own stack. Victoria doesn’t have much of an appetite right now anyway, so she lets it slide. “What else is up with you, though? I know you’ve got more shit to spill.”
“You’ve become a real gossip lately,” Victoria remarks, a little sharp with it. “Has anyone told you that?”
Trinity just huffs. “Blame Princess and Perlah. Those chismosas got me good, I’m in the inner circle now.”
Victoria chews the inside of her cheek, considering. There’s this poem, she remembers randomly, a pretty famous one—two roads and a yellow wood, something like that. Right now she’s in the wood, and she needs to make the choice of where to go next. It’s another puzzle, more philosophy than logic this time: if a person walks into a glass box, on their own, open to the eyes of whatever corner of the world exists nearby, does that make another person wrong for seeing them and speaking of it later?
Okay, so maybe that train of thought is incomprehensible even in her own head. She shuffles the deck and comes up with an equation, far more her speed: if X is us at the lesbian bar and Y is Cassie McKay being there too, and you add element E which is telling Trinity about it, does this equal Q (an unfair choice if made by anyone other than McKay herself) or Z (a fair decision to make, all things considered)? Show your work.
“In your own time, Crash,” Trinity says, and Victoria snaps herself out of her contemplative haze, back to the moment at hand. Trinity’s looking at her, checking an imaginary watch on her wrist. Decision made, Victoria guesses. There could be worse options, after all.
“Okay,” she says slowly, “but you can’t tell anyone else about this.”
Trinity pinches thumb and forefinger, makes a zipper motion in front of her mouth. “Done deal.”
Victoria has a non-zero percentage of doubt about that, considering the bloodhound-like ability of Princess and Perlah to dig up even the most desiccated bones of workplace gossip, but then again—she does trust Trinity well enough, and this is gay stuff. Trinity is an expert on gay stuff. Is that offensive? Probably not. She forges ahead.
“Remember when we went to Blue Moon with Samira and Whitaker the other night, and Whitaker went missing?” She waits for Trinity’s uh, duh expression, then continues: “I, uh. When I went to look for him, I kind of…well…saw Dr. McKay there flirting with a girl half her age.”
She says that last part all in a jumbled rush, like speeding it up will make her any less fucked in the head about it. Trinity gapes at her, mouth hanging open in surprise, looking like she’s just been handed one of the keys to the universe. “Cassie McKay was pulling at the dyke bar? And you didn’t tell me?”
“Um,” Victoria says faintly. “I’m telling you now?”
“Holy fuck,” Trinity says, gleeful. She pounds the table for emphasis, reaches for her glass, then throws back her mimosa in one long swallow. “Holy shit, I’ve prayed for days like these.”
Victoria side-eyes her. “You have?”
“Of course,” Trinity says. “I’ve got eyes. Don’t worry, I won’t move in on your woman, I’m not that big of a dick. Objectively speaking, though, I’m popping fucking bottles. I mean, Jesus. What a win for the community.”
Victoria, who was lost by the halfway point of this little speech, nods along and hopes it looks authentically knowledgeable. “Community. Yep. Exactly.”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you,” Trinity says fondly. “Ah, you sweet summer child.”
“You’re, like, six years older than me. Tops.”
“That’s at least a decade in lesbian years,” Trinity says, grinning. “Come on, finish your mimosa and then let’s go play MarioKart while we unpack the absolute fucking revelation of lesbian Cassie McKay.”
“We don’t know if she’s lesbian,” Victoria points out fairly, “she could be bisexual,” and gets promptly rewarded for her diverse perspective—hello, Press-Ganey high score—by the dramatic roll of Trinity’s eyes.
“Fine, the absolute fucking revelation of woman-liner Cassie McKay, then,” she says, pushing back her chair and rising from the table. “You do see how that sounds way dumber though, right? Okay, let’s roll.”
Out in the living room, Victoria settles into one of the faded green beanbag gaming chairs and accepts a Switch controller from Trinity, clicks through the list of characters, finally settles on Princess Peach. She then proceeds to lose ten games in a row to Trinity as Toad, struggling to steer around the curves every time. McKay’s voice echoes low in the back of her mind: careful, Vadi; careful, Vadi; careful, Vadi, endless, looping around and around like the course beneath her pixelated wheels. No wonder she keeps losing.
+
McKay doesn’t talk to her during their next few shifts, and Victoria doesn’t seek her out either. They’re back to whatever cold war stalemate they had before, the silence and the stares from across the room, except now it’s worse, because the silence is actual silence instead of just silence about important things.
It’s not easy avoiding someone you work with when your department is undersized and chronically shorthanded, but McKay manages it. She’s actively steering around Victoria now, as if she’s some kind of roadblock on the highway. Even when Victoria walks past her purposefully, eyes darting over despite her best efforts, McKay pulls back: into doorways, into herself. She still looks at Victoria, with an intense gaze that feels like it could dismantle her atom by atom, but it’s always from a distance.
Victoria is once again, predictably, going crazy over this. More than last time, even, because when she looks at McKay now, she doesn’t just feel frustrated—she feels feral. Like she’s lost a step or two, like she’s become a wild child instead of the old soul she’s always been labeled by adults. Like she wants to sink her teeth into McKay and shake her, hard, until the answer to the question of what they are to each other falls out onto the ground.
She’s turning that last thought over in her head as she types up a treatment plan for a femur fracture, vaguely wondering if she should book herself in for a psych consult upstairs, when Mateo walks up to her desk and says, “Hey, rockstar.”
“Hi,” Victoria says, and has to smile. Mateo’s got his hair pulled back as usual, which should look stupid but on him just looks cool; he’s all freckles and dark curls, those grey nurse scrubs, a grin resting confident on the lower half of his face. “Still hanging onto that nickname?”
“Hell yeah I am. I’ll retire it when you stop kicking medical ass around here.”
Victoria laughs, and it’s easy. Mateo’s still as handsome as ever, even if she’s moved past her day-one, state-sized crush on him. He’s smart, charming, the whole package. The kind of boy her mom would want her to bring home, if she actually wanted Victoria to bring boys home—and if he was a doctor instead of a nurse. Eileen Shamsi respects nurses, in her way, but she also looks upon them in an unmistakably downward direction.
Mateo grins wider at her laugh, gives her a flash of perfect white teeth. Safe and easy, and still a little state-shaped, if she’s being honest: Utah in miniature now, so much smaller than she once imagined. What she feels for him is impossibly different than what she feels for McKay. If Mateo is Utah, then McKay is the entire continent of North America, oceans included on either side. Pacific, Atlantic; Victoria, landlocked in the middle, looking for a river to lead her from here to where she belongs.
There’s the light pressure of someone’s gaze on her, unmistakable. Victoria glances over her shoulder and sees McKay across the room, eyes locked onto them as she stands there talking to Dana. McKay’s stance is rigid, arms folded tight; her shoe taps against the floor, a harsh tattoo in staccato. Victoria can see the line of her jaw clenching, even from a distance, and it sends a sharp-edged shiver down her spine as she thinks: yes, watch me. See how I don’t need you, even if it’s a lie.
She tilts her body a little closer towards Mateo, pitches her laugh a half-step higher. “That’s funny,” she says, reaching out to touch his arm lightly. She feels foolish doing it, really, like a drunk girl hitting on the bartender. “You’re funny.”
“And you’re weirdly energetic today, for a girl who’s working twelve hours,” Mateo replies, not unkindly. “What’s up, rockstar? Someone put ecstasy in your Cheerios?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” Victoria says. She smiles at him for McKay’s benefit, then lowers her voice a little, serious again. “For the legal record, that was a joke. I don’t do drugs. I mean, not even accidentally. Well, not that I’d know if it was an accident, but—no. No drugs.”
Mateo makes a sound of amusement, gives her a look like he’s not exactly sure what to do with that but he’s enjoying their conversation nevertheless. “Got it. Well, I’d better go. The toenail guy in South 4 is probably yelling for me again.”
He puts his fist out and bumps it gently against Victoria’s before he walks away. Victoria makes herself wait a full seven seconds, counted and everything, then glances back across the room. McKay’s staring at her, stone-faced, tight-mouthed; her right hand, crossed underneath her left antebrachium in the fold of her arms, tightens against her own bicep, a grip like steel. She looks barely contained, a tidal wave held behind a low stone jetty.
Victoria doesn’t blow her a kiss, but she can’t pretend she’s not tempted to. She just smiles, slow and showy, then spins her chair around and resumes typing at the keyboard. The scales tip minutely, spinning back towards her side. Beneath the desk, between her legs, her pulse thumps hot and heavy.
+
By the time the next Friday night rolls around, Victoria’s already switched her Find My location to her iPad, packed the charger in her bag, and put together a lie to tell her mother: a night in with Trinity, to study for upcoming levels exams and review the new developments in ocular/facial transplant surgery. It’s in a 2024 edition of JAMA medicine journal, volume 338, issue 18. No, Mom, this doesn’t mean I suddenly want to go into surgery; no, I won’t be here for dinner tonight. I’ll probably just stay over at Trinity’s place, honestly.
Her mother swallows it unquestioningly, which is annoying but unsurprising. She likes Trinity, against all odds. Despite Trinity’s brash attitude, the boldfaced lack of humility she presents to the world, she’s the kind of emergency doctor that Victoria’s mother would like to see more often: strong, assertive, uncompromising. Quick with an answer, open to a career in surgery. The dream—and the opposite of her own daughter.
“It’s so annoying,” Victoria complains later, once she’s plugged the iPad into Trinity’s wall socket and swapped her sweatpants and zip-up hoodie for the lace tank and black jeans that she hid in her backpack. She’s got her makeup bag out now, all the tubes and bottles that she bought behind her mother’s back on covert trips to Ulta and Sephora. Doing her eyeliner while sitting on Trinity’s bedroom floor isn’t ideal, but that’s where the only mirror in the apartment is, so. Beggars, choosers, et cetera, et al. “She thinks you’re, like—a good influence on me, for whatever reason. She actually believes me when I tell her I’m going to your house to study.”
Trinity laughs from her perch on the bed, sans makeup, where she’s typing away on her phone. Texting Samira, Victoria guesses; she’s been doing that a lot recently. “What can I say? Moms love me.”
“Must be nice,” Victoria mutters. Her hand jerks at the corner of her right eye; she steadies it before the whole thing gets smudged, caps the eyeliner, observes her handiwork. The lines of her eyes are sharp and black, a little smokey at the edges—not quite as neat as she wanted, but pretty decent. Maybe it’s not too late to be a Bond girl after all.
“Hey, it’s not my fault,” Trinity says. “I’m just irresistible like that. Anyways, you’re the one who’s hung up on a MILF right now, not me.”
Victoria’s face flushes, warm and rich with blood. “She’s not a—don’t call her that. She’s not.”
“Uh, she’s a mom and you’d like to fuck her. That’s literally the definition of MILF.”
“Who are you talking about?” Whitaker asks, sliding up to Trinity’s open door on socked feet. He’s dressed to go out, a grey flannel and jeans, but Victoria can’t help noticing that his socks are hideously mismatched: one is a white compression sock, the other a pink crew sock with green stripes. Each one has a small hole in the heel. “Did I miss something?”
“I said MILF, not DILF,” Trinity says, impatient. “Clean your ears out, Huckleberry. Don’t worry, we’re not talking about you or your big fat crush on our geriatric attending.”
Whitaker squeaks wordlessly, sputtering like a bad generator. His blush is immediate and overpowering, chalk to cherry tomato in a matter of seconds. Victoria’s never been so thankful that she’s not white.
“Hold on,” she says, pointing a finger at him. “Attending? Do you—do you have a crush on Dr. Robby?”
“NO,” Whitaker says loudly, emphatically. To Victoria’s left, Trinity mouths an exaggerated YES. “Please, please, please let’s change the subject.”
Trinity takes pity on him, springing off the bed and disappearing out the door. She comes back a minute later with a bottle of Bacardi and three shot glasses, all of which look like they were bought from a gas station at two in the morning. Victoria gets one decorated with a Hawaiian shirt and the words LET’S GET LEID!; Whitaker gets one shaped like a woman’s naked torso. Trinity keeps the smoked-glass pirate’s hat for herself, a choice that Victoria can’t really argue with.
“Drink up, bitches,” Trinity says, pouring each glass up to the rim. They all tap glasses and drink; Victoria’s gotten used to this routine enough that she doesn’t gag at the taste of hard liquor, just screws up her face in immense distaste.
Sitting there in a loose triangle on the fraying blue carpet, Trinity to her left and Whitaker to her right and the heat of alcohol spreading down her throat, Victoria feels more human than she has in a long time. When she catches a glimpse of her reflection again, pressed side by side with Trinity’s in the slightly warped glass of the mirror, she doesn’t spare it a second glance.
+
The bar is packed when they arrive, and they have to wait ten minutes to get a drink. Victoria orders a tequila sunrise and a vodka cran at the same time to avoid getting right back in line, then accidentally tips the bartender ten dollars she really can’t afford because she hits the wrong button on the pin pad. Said bartender—tattooed, middle-aged, very female—smiles at her when she sees the transaction total, which flusters Victoria enough that she almost spills over the water pitcher on the end of the bartop.
“You are such a cougar hunter,” Trinity tells her, once she’s escaped death by hot bartender and they’ve found three seats at a table in the corner. It’s so tight that their elbows knock together every time one of them takes a drink. “You’re putting even me to shame here.”
“I am not,” Victoria says, defensive. “Also, what is that?”
“Someone who hunts cougars,” Trinity says unhelpfully. “Look, I get it, alright. Mommy issues, it just makes sense. Happens to the best of us.”
Victoria takes a long sip of her tequila sunrise to avoid answering right away. Her elbow hits Whitaker’s, right on the ulnar nerve; she winces in pain, wondering if that’s some kind of karmic retribution from the universe. Mommy issues…well, Trinity’s not wrong, but Victoria’s never really thought about it this way before. There’s the never-ending war with her mother, one battle after another with the winner predetermined, and then there’s the pounding emotion she feels for Cassie McKay, burning hotter every day. Two different stars, placed at two different ends of the galaxy. Or so she thought.
“Liking older people doesn’t always mean you have parental issues,” Whitaker offers, graciously and Midwesternly shielding Victoria from further scrutiny.
Trinity dead-eyes him. “Sorry, Huckleberry, are you actually trying to tell me you don’t have daddy issues right now?”
“I don’t!”
“You literally told me the other day that your dad gave you a horse and a rifle at age ten and told you to bring home a bunch of lost cows or whatever the fuck, or else you’d have to find some other roof to live under.”
Victoria raises her eyebrows, stunned. Her mother’s done a lot of cold things in the name of intellectual development, but she’s never gone that far. “Wait, are you serious?”
“I brought them home,” Whitaker says, but he looks a little crestfallen. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Pretty fucking big deal if you ask me,” Trinity says, less emphatic now. She pokes her fist against Whitaker’s forearm, gently enough that Victoria can see the care behind it—maybe that’s what they call a love tap. “Good thing you’re here now.”
Whitaker nods, then fishes the little pink umbrella out of his cup and swallows the last of his vodka Sprite. “Okay, are we done unpacking my family problems for the night?”
“Damn right,” Trinity says, finishing her drink as well. “You know the drill, Huck. Time to shake some farmboy ass.”
The three of them abandon the table, spill over onto the dance floor as the DJ booth changes hands and the music switches from 2000s hits to shimmering pink pop remixes. Victoria’s drunk enough by now that she doesn’t mind how crowded it is—there’s hardly any room, only sweat and sound and other people’s bodies, but she dances through it easily. She feels light and loose as she moves to the beat, finds a rhythm, balances the drink still in her hand. Trinity knocks up against her, leans into her shoulder as she sings along to whatever track is playing, and Victoria leans right back without hesitation.
Whitaker’s loosened up too, shaking off the blue of his family’s past. Victoria’s glad to see him like this, drunk and smiling, slightly off-beat as he tries to dance. He takes Trinity’s hand, spins her around in their tight little circle of space; when she spins him right back, he death-drops it down to the floor. A group of girls behind them cheer.
“Attaboy,” Trinity yells, grinning. She beckons Victoria closer with one hand, slings an arm around her shoulders. This close, she smells like clean sweat and something else, warm and earthy-smooth—cedar, maybe, or sandalwood. So sure of everything, so completely herself that Victoria can’t help but envy her a moment. “Come on, Crash, show me what you got.”
Victoria inhales, waits a second, lets everything wash over her: the music and the liquor, the sweat, the crush of bodies. Trinity’s smile, Whitaker’s dancing. The world sways, soft in her peripheral vision, then comes reeling back and lifts her, featherlight, towards the ceiling, and oh—she’s drunk, she’s so drunk, but it feels like freedom.
The song changes again, one that she recognizes this time; she takes it as a sign and dances up against Trinity, presses her back to Trinity’s front like she’s seen other girls do before. She moves to the beat, dips down lower like Whitaker did, runs a hand through her own hair like she’s a girl in a L’Oreal commercial. When she glances back over her shoulder, Trinity’s smiling, shark-like.
“Hell yeah,” she says, close enough now that her voice pours right into Victoria’s ear. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
She puts a hand on Victoria’s waist and pulls her in closer, tighter, until they’re really and truly dirty dancing. Like that movie, Victoria thinks, the one with—with Courtney Cox, maybe. Except it’s dirty, but it’s not dirty;Trinity’s hand stays planted, unmoving, and even the press of her breasts against Victoria’s back feels more comforting than anything else. They’re just two friends dancing in the club, drunk on life and too much alcohol, moving like they’ve never had to hold a human life in their hands—like they’ve never had to let it go.
Whitaker dances up against Trinity too, the usual for them, not the first or fourth time Victoria’s seen them grinding like that—the lavender grind, that’s what Trinity called it once—and the three of them dance onwards just like that, sandwiched between each other, sweat-glazed and swaying under glimmering strobe lights. Victoria tips her head back, looks up at the ceiling, the mirrorball flashing pink orange yellow red blue, and feels untethered from herself, wild and free and exactly her age.
The song ends on a beat drop, the DJ yells something over the speakers. Trinity face plants laughing into Whitaker’s shoulder, laughing, and the dance floor crowd thins out a bit. Victoria stays put, content, dopamine levels spiked high with the thrill of it all. A couple slides past, a tall brunette girl holding hands with a shorter blonde; Victoria steps back, lets them through. The movement turns her just enough to see the front door, where a line of newcomers is streaming into the bar.
Victoria squints, trying to make out details. There’s a shift in the middle of the line, she sees—a disturbance moving outwards, pushing back against the flow of traffic. When the light catches auburn hair, it’s familiar even through the many-colored flicker of the strobes.
“I’m, uh, gonna get some air,” Victoria says, barely loud enough to be heard. She’s gone before they can stop her, off the floor and through the crowd like smoke on the intoxicated breeze.
+
She finishes her drink at the door because the bouncer won’t let her leave with it, open container law, and shoulders her way outside with the taste of vodka and cranberry juice fresh in her mouth. The sidewalk is cluttered with people talking, laughing, borrowing lighters from each other, but she only has eyes for one person.
Cassie McKay is standing to the right of the door, leaning back on the bricks with one foot propped against the wall—that lazy lean, again, like she wants Victoria to bleed out and code right here in the street. She’s got a cigarette in one hand, held loose between two fingers, and the image is so life-ruiningly attractive that Victoria could almost forget about the carcinogens and lung health and the increased risk of heart disease.
What she can’t forget about, though, is the girl who’s standing next to McKay: dark-haired, early twenties, also smoking a cigarette. There’s space between their bodies, but not nearly enough; Victoria sees the way the girl’s torso is angled, turned towards McKay expectantly, and there’s a an acute stab of pain low in her stomach.
“Hi, sorry to interrupt here,” Victoria says, channeling her coldest and most professional tone. “Dr. McKay, do you have a minute?”
McKay’s head snaps up, eyes widening as they land on Victoria. “Javadi? What are you doing here?”
“Hold on,” the girl says, pointing between them. “Doctor? Shit, are you her girlfriend? Is this some kind of roleplay thing?”
“No,” Victoria says at the same time as McKay, perfectly synchronized, and Victoria’s heartbeat kicks up a step faster. She glares at the girl, which shows restraint on her part—in her head, she’s chasing her away with torches and pitchforks. “But I need to talk to her, so like...do you mind?”
“Dude, whatever,” the girl says, holding up her hands. “I just needed a light. She’s all yours.”
She wanders away, tossing her cigarette into the gutter as she goes. Victoria’s tempted to yell at her, like hello, that’s littering and also a fire hazard, but she’s got about twenty more pressing concerns right now and they’re all named Cassie McKay.
“Harsh,” McKay says, amused, and takes another drag of her cigarette. “You’re mean sometimes, Vadi, anyone ever tell you that?”
The nickname lands hard in Victoria’s chest, a meteor gone to ground, but she forces it down. She’s all yours.“You’re here again. You—you came back.”
“Came back?” McKay laughs, rueful. “You’re funny. I’ve been coming to this bar since before you could walk.” She blows out a mouthful of smoke, heavy on the exhale, and oh—there’s something to that statement, a red-hot comet tail of truth burning through Victoria’s stratosphere. Her whole body goes warm, pulse jumping in her wrists.
“You’re not supposed to smoke,” she says, stepping closer. The streetlight shifts, spills down on them more brightly; she sees the details now, McKay’s dark jeans and battered leather jacket and the dizzying hint of gold chain that glimmers along her scalene muscle. “You’re a doctor.”
“I only smoke when I don’t have Harrison for the weekend,” McKay says. There’s something seriously wrong with her, Victoria thinks, because even that gets her hot. A caring, intentional decision from a mother? God, she wants it bad. “And we’re off the clock right now.”
“Are we?” Victoria says, low. She dares another step forwards, close enough to touch now. “Cassie?”
McKay—Cassie—inhales sharply at that, her cigarette hand dropping down to her side. Everything smells like smoke, bitter and heavy. Victoria stares at the end of the cigarette, the little orange flare of the embers, and feels desire burn right through her, bone marrow to the tips of her fingers.
“Don’t,” Cassie says quietly. Her free hand clenches briefly, uncurls again. “Vadi. Don’t do this to me.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Victoria says. She tips her head to one side, a calculated angle, one that sharpens her jawline in her bedroom mirror. “We’re just talking. Don’t you want to talk to me, Cassie?”
Cassie lets out a short laugh, smokey, rough at the edges. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’re drunk.”
“I’m not that drunk,” Victoria lies spectacularly, with the eloquence of someone sitting at a good .08 on the blood alcohol content scale. “BAC of .04 at most.”
“Yeah, and mine is a whopping zero.” Cassie pushes her hand through her hair now, a frustrated gesture that sends Victoria’s insides swimming with arousal. “You’re not here alone, are you?”
Victoria waves vaguely towards the building. “Trinity and Whitaker are in there. Don’t worry, I won’t end up in a ditch somewhere.”
“That’s not funny,” Cassie snaps, although it sounds more protective than angry. She takes another drag of her cigarette, a longer one this time. “You should go back inside. They’re probably looking for you.”
It’s not a suggestion, even if it sounds like one; Victoria’s mind turns automatically, hardwired to obey. To be the good girl she’s always been, hands folded, eyes on her own work. Her mother’s daughter, perfectly shaped yet coming up short every time.
Well, fuck that. She bites down on the impulse of submission, stands her ground. Cassie’s here, closer than she’s been in days or even weeks, and Victoria can reach her with the stretch of an arm. She won’t give this up, not even for another dance beneath the lights.
“I’ll be fine out here,” she says, pushing forwards. “I’m with you.”
Cassie laughs again, the same short laugh, gives her head a brief shake of disbelief. “Sure, whatever that means to you. But hell, Vadi, I don’t know what you want from me.”
Victoria pauses, derailed. She doesn’t have an answer for that, or more accurately, she has too many—there’s a thousand things she could say, all piling up in her mouth like hailstones. What can she say, really, when for her the sight of Cassie is synonymous with the word desire? What she wants from Cassie is impossible, undefinable. An unsolvable equation, spanning the whole big endless sky.
“Well,” she says, flicking her gaze to the stub of the cigarette still held between Cassie’s fingers. “I’ve never smoked before, so. We could start there.”
Cassie stares at her, one brow arched and skeptic. “Dream on, Vadi. I’m not gonna be the person who gives you your first taste of lung cancer.”
“Why not? Dr. Robby’s the one who gave me my first taste of alcohol.”
“Jesus, really?” Cassie asks, and drags a hand over her face. “Okay, fine, sure. Why not.”
She crushes the last of her filter against the brick wall, drops it in the trash can by the door, takes a pack out of her jacket pocket—white and green, with the word NEWPORT printed on the side—and hands over a new cigarette. Victoria holds it gingerly, keenly aware that her mother would nail her to the cross if she could see her right now. A lighter appears in Cassie’s hand, cranks a couple times, and sends a flame sparking suddenly to life.
“Put the filter end in your mouth,” Cassie says, “and lean a little closer.”
Dry-mouthed, taut-spined, Victoria obeys. Cassie touches flame to cigarette, her hand so close to Victoria’s face that it’s agonizing, and the cherry flares into life.
“Good,” Cassie says, and Victoria’s entire body clenches. She’s wet right now, she’s almost certain. “Now suck.”
Victoria sucks. Smoke shoots through her mouth, pours down into her throat with a bitter burning taste. She tries her best not to cough, but it’s a losing battle—after one more attempt at inhaling, she has to let out a hacking wheeze and set the cigarette down.
“Oh, god,” she manages, once she’s spit out a mouthful of minty acid. “You do that for fun?”
Cassie smirks. “Trust me, it’s better than the alternative.”
“Okay, well, it was nasty.” Victoria waits a second, until the ember burns out, then scoops the cigarette into the trash. “You can cross that off the list of things I want from you.”
“Oh, there’s a list now?”
Victoria bites her lip, looks Cassie up and down the way she’s seen Trinity do with Samira. “What do you think?”
“Jesus Christ,” Cassie says, with feeling, and pushes off the wall to walk a tight little circle, going nowhere. She looks up at the sky, mumbles something under her breath—Victoria tries to listen but only catches fragments, accept and serenity, wisdom and difference—then looks back down. “This is not fucking fair, okay? It’s just not.”
Victoria pulls back, stung by the bite in Cassie’s tone. For the first time tonight, she feels a flicker of doubt worming through the drunken courage. “What’s not fair?”
“You,” Cassie says. She waves a hand at Victoria, like that explains everything. “You confront me at work, you don’t talk to me for days after, you show up here tonight looking like that—”
“You don’t like how I look?”
“Not what I said.”
Victoria crosses her arms, put out and on the defensive. “It was implied.”
“I’ve never seen your hair curly before,” Cassie says, more a rasp than a sentence. “That’s all.”
“Yeah, well.” Victoria digs the toe of her shoe into the asphalt, self-conscious. Straighten your hair, her mother always tells her, or you won’t be taken seriously—a thousand times, if she’s said it once. “Now you have.”
Silence, for a moment, and the sodium glow of the streetlight. Everything is yellow-orange and shadowed, casting them in silhouette, doubling their shapes across the pavement. Victoria shivers again, this time from something less welcome than arousal; there’s a light chill in the air and she’s always run cold, even on a summer night in late July. She feels stupid and small, shrunken beneath the weight of her own foolish hope.
“Here,” Cassie says, sliding her jacket off. “You’ll freeze.”
I don’t want it, Victoria almost says, but the lie sticks in her throat. Cassie’s there already anyway, draping the jacket around her shoulders; Victoria threads her arms through the sleeves, pushes her hands into the pockets automatically. It smells good, leather-rich with hints of gasoline and the familiar sharp scent of hospital sanitizer—and like Cassie, like Tide detergent and smooth cedar spice.
“Listen,” Cassie continues. “Whatever you think you want from me, you’re better off without it.”
She’s using her soft voice now, calm and motherly, caring. Victoria wants to sink into it and never surface, almost as much as she wants to open Cassie’s beautiful head and pour her own brain inside the cranial structure, all the grey matter and neuroses and hopeless bleeding desire, until she understands.
“I don’t, like, want anything from you,” Victoria says tiredly. It’s two in the morning, maybe even later, and her alcohol rush has faded into something less energized: the comedown period, where the peak of the night begins to fall into the long slog towards a hungover morning. She’s only been out a few times, but she’s learned this lesson well. “I just—want you. For whatever that’s worth.”
She shuts her eyes tight, holds them closed, runs a quick count to seven. Her lucky number still, she hopes. When she opens her eyes, though, she knows, with the sinking-stone dread of sats dropping fast on the monitor, that her luck has run out. Cassie’s looking at her with a soft kind of sadness, the line of her mouth rueful and slanted downwards.
“Victoria,” she says gently, and it’s worse than being yelled at, so much worse—the kindness cuts like a knife, a surgical incision straight into Victoria’s heart. She doesn’t think Cassie’s ever used her first name before, not like this. “This can’t happen.”
“Why not?” Victoria asks, petulant. She feels childish, simplified to the worst version of herself, and she should stop talking, but she can’t. “Why can’t I want you?”
“You just can’t,” Cassie says. Still so soft and light, and Victoria’s breath pools up in her throat like she’s going to cry, which she won’t. She won’t cry now, not in front of the only person she’s ever wanted enough to confess it. “We work together. You’re my student, or you used to be. You’re so young—god, when I graduated college, you weren’t even born yet.”
Despite the cold, despite the tears she’s holding back, those words spark hot between Victoria’s thighs. Her spine arches minutely, involuntary, covered by the jacket wrapped around her shoulders.
“Yeah, I know,” she says, pitching lower. She sweeps her tongue over her bottom lip, doesn’t miss the way that Cassie’s eyes drop to follow the movement. “I like that about you.”
The line of Cassie’s body goes tight, then relaxes again; when she speaks, it’s slow and measured. “You should get home,” she says quietly. “I’ll help you find Trinity and Dennis.”
“Don’t bother,” Victoria snaps, then swears on a whisper as the backs of her eyes begin to burn hot and saline. Fuck, she said she wouldn’t cry. “I’ll be fine without you. That’s what you want, right?”
She turns on her heel and walks quickly, jaggedly, back into the bar. It’s only once she’s through the door and beginning to cry, alone and adrift in a sea of happy drunken friends, that she realizes she’s still wearing Cassie’s jacket.
+
When she wakes up the next morning, drifting upwards through a syrup of hangover haze, Victoria slowly becomes aware of two things. First: her head feels like there’s an EZ-IO drilling into it. Second: her foot is pushed up against something that’s warm, moving, and there’s a rhythmic puff of air brushing her heel every couple of seconds.
“Oh, what the hell,” Victoria says, and scrambles desperately to jerk her foot away from Whitaker’s sleeping face. She cracks her eyes open just a little, wide enough to see where she is: in Whitaker’s room, on his bed, with the blue plaid comforter and the faded THANK A FARMER! poster on the wall above the pillows. There’s sunlight streaming through the curtain, bright enough to blind her, and her head has an all-percussion band marching circles through it. Her lace top from the night before is still on, her jeans replaced with flannel pajama pants. Everything tastes like tequila and rotten fruit.
She squints over at Whitaker, shirtless and sprawled across the end of the bed with his arms curled up beneath his head, and a sudden bolt of horror shears through her. She reaches over to shake him until he jerks upright and awake, feeling a wave of nausea sloshing through her. “Whitaker, wake the fuck up, oh god, where’s your shirt? Why am I in your bed? Am I—did we—”
“No,” Whitaker says quickly, sitting up and wincing immediately at the light, “no, no, we absolutely did not. Trin put you in my room because she had to go in early this morning, that’s all, I promise.”
Victoria’s still coiled up like a spring, all fight or flight instinct at the presence of a boy in the bed—her mother might even be proud—but she manages to unwind herself enough to remember who she’s dealing with. This is Whitaker, after all—sweet, mouse-like, probably gay Whitaker, who dances badly to weird funk music and cried the other day when they were all watching When Harry Met Sally. Safe and comfortable, even if he is wearing nothing but mismatched socks and boxer shorts with little terrier dogs on them.
“Also, ew,” Whitaker adds, pulling a face. “Your foot does not taste good. Thanks for kicking me to the end of the bed.”
“Sorry,” Victoria mutters, trying to gather herself together enough to move without throwing up. She puts one leg over the edge of the bed experimentally, then frowns in confusion when she meets something smooth and worn—a leather jacket, clumsily folded on top of Whitaker’s tiny green throw rug. A bell rings somewhere in the back of her brain, muted beneath the sound of the drums. “Ugh, I feel dead. What even happened last night?”
“Uh…” Whitaker scratches the side of his head, eyes screwed up in concentration. “Not really sure, actually. Trin and I were dancing, you disappeared for a while, and then when we found you again you were really upset. Something about cigarettes, I think? And—”
Victoria freezes, dread and bile clawing upwards in her throat. The jacket—that’s Cassie’s. She saw Cassie last night, and they smoked a cigarette together, and she said—god, she said—
“Oh no,” Victoria groans, and that’s all she gets out before she’s lunging off the bed and into the bathroom. She’s barely through the door before her stomach capsizes, a boat overturned in a seething storm of half-digested liquor.
Whitaker holds her hair back until she’s done vomiting, which is nice and also insanely altruistic of him. Victoria’s not sure she’d do the same in his position, but she’s wretchedly grateful for the kindness of the act. She heaves until she comes up empty, then waves him off and slumps back against the wall.
“Hey,” Whitaker says, staring at her with kind, bleary eyes. He’s hungover too, Victoria realizes, which makes her feel even worse about the whole situation. “Are you okay?”
“I did something bad,” Victoria admits, closing her eyes. The shape of the room spins around her, pushing down; she presses her hands to the cool tile of the floor, traces the uneven grooving there until her breaths come a little easier. “Like, really bad.”
“Uh,” Whitaker says tentatively. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad?”
Victoria scoffs, tasting bile again. “Trust me, it was bad.”
Whitaker hums like he’s thinking, then gets to his feet. Victoria does the same, slowly, though her method involves grabbing the sink for leverage and trying not to dry heave anymore.
“Come on,” Whitaker says. Kindly, again—always kindness, with him. “We can figure this out after breakfast.” He glances down at himself, sheepish, and adds: “After I put a shirt on, maybe.”
+
Neither of them actually have an appetite, but the kitchen is a welcome change of scenery. Whitaker makes them tea with lemon, using an ancient-looking copper kettle to boil the water, then sits down next to Victoria at the kitchen counter and passes her a small plastic bear-shaped jar of honey.
“Thanks,” Victoria mumbles. upending the jar over her mug. The tea is good, herbal and fragrant. She feels better in the strictly physical sense, after stealing an oversized Rehoboth Redbirds softball tee from Trinity’s room and rinsing her mouth five times in the bathroom sink, but there’s a persistent ache throbbing in her head.
“Yeah, no problem.” Whitaker stirs more lemon into his own mug, yawning hugely. He’s wearing one of Trinity’s shirts too, a blue one that says UMICHIGAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Ugh,” Victoria says, and buries her face in the hot steam rising from her tea. “Okay. I’m only going to say this once, but I, uh. Saw Cassie—Dr. McKay—at the bar last night. And um. Kind of, maybe, sort of, confessed my feelings to her.”
Whitaker’s mouth is agape. “You did what now?”
“Okay, I literally just told you I was only going to say it once.”
“Sorry! Sorry. Um.” Whitaker taps his spoon against the palm of his hand, clearly thinking hard. “Feelings…maybe that could be, like, ambiguous? Like—oh, I really like you, but only because you’re such a good mentor?”
“I told her I want her,” Victoria says flatly. The panic hasn’t hit yet, crushed down as it is beneath the layers of hangover and regret, but she can feel it starting to come loose. “Oh god, I told her I want her.”
She bows over from the weight of the realization, dropping herself facedown onto the laminate surface of the counter. Whitaker pauses a moment, then hesitantly reaches out and pats her on the back a few times. “It’s…gonna be okay?”
“It’s not,” Victoria whines, truthfully. but she tries to believe him anyway.
Whitaker’s quiet for a minute or two, then he takes a deep breath and speaks again. “But we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
Victoria blinks at him. “You what?”
“It’s a Bible verse,” Whitaker says, sounding mildly embarrassed. “Romans 5:3. I don’t know, I have a bad habit of reciting scripture in times of stress.”
“I’m Hindu,” Victoria reminds him, but she’s not mean about it. There’s something comforting about his words, even if she has no frame of reference for their meaning—it’s in the tone of Whitaker’s voice, the gentle upwards lilt. Maybe it’s the person speaking, rather than the words being spoken.
“Yeah, I know,” Whitaker says, blushing. “Sorry. I did that to Dr. Robby too, with the whole Jewish thing.”
“It’s okay,” Victoria decides. “The way I’m going, I need all the prayers I can get.”
Whitaker gives a relieved laugh and drinks some more tea. Victoria’s phone, plugged into the socket by the fridge, finally flickers back to life; the apple-shaped logo dances on the screen, then yields to a slew of notifications. Victoria sighs and reaches for the device. She has two email notifications, one text from Trinity, three from her mother. Nothing from Cassie, not that she’s surprised—she doesn’t even think they have each other’s numbers, but still. She’d been hoping, maybe.
Well, whatever. Hope, as Trinity would no doubt say, is for suckers. Victoria taps into her texts, deflated but brought back down to reality.
From Trinity, two hours ago: hey crash i’m off to work. don’t freak out huckleberry won’t bite. i know youre hungover as fuck rn lol so have some fluids. greasy leftovers in the fridge if you want too. k see you later
Doctor’s orders, short and not exactly sweet. Victoria has to roll her eyes, but the hangover must be affecting her judgement, because she’s actually kind of touched by the gesture.
From her mother, twenty minutes ago: Good morning, Victoria. I trust you had a productive study session last night.
Then, five minutes later: I see that you are still at Trinity’s apartment. I hope you’re up. I know it’s your day off, but that is no reason to laze around.
Then, one minute ago: Are you awake? Call me when you’re heading back to the house.
Victoria glares balefully at the string of texts, hot with resentment. God forbid she spend one night away from home; god forbid she have plans. God forbid she have a life, outside the rinse and repeat of trying to please Eileen Shamsi. She feels like Sisyphus, rolling the rock up the hill again and again, getting flattened every time on the way back down.
Whitaker’s watching her, eyes crinkled with concern. “Everything good?”
“Yeah,” Victoria sighs. “Just my dear mother, obsessively stalking my location as usual.” She clicks the screen off, puts her phone face down. “She is literally insane. I went to college at thirteen, I’m legally an adult now, I can save a human life, and she still acts like I’m a kid at a sleepover. I can’t take it.”
“Wow,” Whitaker says, reflective. “Yeah, we had really, really different childhoods.”
Victoria huffs. “Believe me, at this point I’d almost rather go herd some cows.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Whitaker says definitely. “But, about that—well, Trin and I have been thinking about moving once our lease is up in August. There’s a place down the street, a three bed-room with two baths. It’s got a fire escape, too.”
Victoria’s not sure how exactly this connects to the cow anecdote, but Whitaker’s mind is often a mystery best left unsolved. “Cool?”
“We’d need another person,” Whitaker says patiently. “For the third room. Could be you, if you wanted.”
“Oh,” Victoria says, slow, bewildered. “Wait, you guys would want me to live with you? But we’re, like—we’re not even really friends.”
Whitaker’s expression crumples, wounded. “What do you mean, we’re not friends?”
“I—” Victoria waves her hands, trying to sort through the tangled web of her thoughts. It feels like she’s thirteen again, walking through the Pitt campus lost and alone. “I only hang out with you when Trinity’s around. I’ve never even called you by your first name. And Trinity, I don’t think she even likes me, really. She’s always just making fun of me and—and using that stupid shitty nickname from literally ten months ago.”
Whitaker grins. “Oh, no, that’s just how she shows affection. You didn’t pick up on that yet? In her mind, you’ve been friends since, like, day one at the Pitt.”
Victoria considers this, then thinks of all the times Trinity has been there—talking to her, teasing her, inviting her over. Taking her out to the gay bar on her birthday, even though Victoria said she’d be fine staying home and watching Love Island. The more she thinks, the more stupid she begins to feel.
“See,” Whitaker says, reading her expression. “Told you. As for me, well, I would consider you a friend, and it really would be nice to live with you—and, like, pay a little less rent every month. Just keep it in mind, yeah?”
“Huh,” Victoria says. She looks around the room, noting traces of two lives fully lived: photo strips and lewd magnets and sticky notes on the fridge, a half-empty package of Oreos on the cutting board, one plant on the window sill barely hanging onto its chlorophyll. The beat-up secondhand couch over in the living room, and a coffee table littered with vape cartridges and video game controllers. Messier than she’s used to, maybe, but better, too. “Okay, I’ll think about it. Thank you…Dennis.”
Dennis beams, and it’s like sunlight through stained glass windows. Despite the hangover, despite the bags beneath his eyes, there’s something wonderfully warm about his company. Victoria remembers Trinity’s text—huckleberry won’t bite—and smiles, feeling unexpectedly found.
“Yeah, I guess that does sound a little weird coming from you,” Dennis says. “I’ll get used to it, though. You should drink your tea, it’s getting cold.”
Victoria drinks her tea. It’s significantly cooler now, lukewarm at best, but sweet enough to still be worth it.
+
Her next two shifts don’t align with McKay’s, which feels just barely short of a genuine miracle. She spends two days breathing easy, working solo or mostly with Mel when she needs a hand and pretending that her brain isn’t overrun by memories of that night at the bar. Every time she remembers another detail, the taste of cigarette smoke or the way McKay looked at her like something to be pitied, she feels like taking the elevator right up to the roof and just standing there for a good long time until the entire city crumbles and her problems become meaningless.
Which, like—objectively not a great train of thought to be running, sure, but she’s not actually going to hurt herself or anything. Besides, she’s just thinking about the roof, which isn’t the same as doing. She knows that Dr. Abbot actually goes up there, and sometimes Dr. Robby too, because Trinity told her, so. Could be worse, really.
So she gets two days of luck, or at least relatively lucky circumstances, but the tank runs bone-dry on day three before she even makes it to work. She wakes up late and has to speed to the hospital; she’s pretty sure she drives over something sharp on the way there, but she’s got no time to check on that if she wants to clock in on time. Her ID card refuses to tap, twice, and there’s already forty-six patients waiting in chairs. Trinity sees the doom in her expression and asks who died, which just adds to her foul mood.
And then she’s tapped to help out with a pneumothorax in Trauma One, construction worker versus steel beam, and she’s scrubbing in with Whitaker when Cassie comes through the door too, messy-haired and dark under the eyes like she hasn’t slept well in a few nights, and god, Victoria is seriously so fucking done with this day.
“What’ve we got?” Cassie asks. Her eyes find Victoria, half-scrubbed and pulling on a pair of gloves, and she stops short. Victoria can almost hear the regret, the quiet oh, no. Her stomach goes tight, pinched.
“Thoracotomy,” Samira answers. Her pager rings; she checks it, then tucks it away again. “And there’s a GSW five minutes out, LOC on site and heavy blood loss, so can you handle this?”
“Uh, sure,” Cassie says, and that’s all it takes—Samira’s gone. Cassie steps up to where she was standing, bedside in the point position, gloving up as she talks. “Okay, I know these are pretty standard for you guys now, but run it by me just in case. Operating position?”
“Lateral decubitus,” Whitaker answers quickly.
“Good. First incision?”
“Skin and intercostal muscles,” Victoria mumbles. She risks a look at Cassie, just a flicker of movement in her gaze, and sees the blue of her eyes all dark and stormy. God. “I can do it.”
“Okay then,” Cassie says evenly. “Tenblade to Dr. Javadi.”
She holds her hand out, palm up, with the scalpel resting along her heartline. Victoria takes it carefully, but not carefully enough; her fingertips brush over Cassie’s abductor pollicis brevis, skin to skin contact like fire despite the layers of latex between. Her eyes catch Cassie’s, burn, dart away again. To her left, Whitaker quietly clears his throat.
“Okay,” Victoria says, more to herself than anyone in the room. This, she can handle—if everything else comes crashing down on her, she’ll always have this. Patient, treatment. A life hanging in balance, and her hands that have grown strong enough to catch it. “First incision, going in.”
Blade touches skin, and the chest begins to open as she makes the cut. She feels Cassie watching, intense, a sunburn on the back of her neck, but she doesn’t flinch. She treats the patient the way she’s supposed to, the way she’s spent her entire life being prepared to do, and when the blood starts flowing, she doesn’t look away.
+
The rest of her shift passes glacier-like, agonizing. She makes it through eight hours without having to work with Cassie again, but she’s so aware of her presence in the building that it’s almost the same as standing in a room with her. She’s tense, stretched thin, wondering at every second when the hammer’s going to fall on her; she treats her patients well, efficiently, but can’t muster up much enthusiasm to do the same for her coworkers.
She pushes back against Robby for the first time, then feels vindicated when she turns out to be correct. She snaps at Ogilvy for making an MS1-level mistake and doesn’t even feel bad about it. By the last ten minutes of her shift, stress-sore and tired down to her marrow, she’s ready to rip her own head off if she has to deal with one more thing.
She’s walking towards the locker room when she sees Trinity down the hall, by the water fountain, and the day’s been so bad that the prospect of being antagonized by her ungentle teasing is actually welcome. Before she can walk over, though, she sees that Trinity’s not alone—Samira is there too, talking around a shy smile. Victoria notes the close tilt of their bodies, flowers to the sun, and makes a note to ask Trinity for an update later before steering a separate course back through the other hallway. She almost makes it, too.
“Victoria, do you have a minute?”
Her mother’s voice, of course. It’s phrased like a question, but the tone is flat and demanding. Victoria turns around slowly, tries hard not to lift her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. “Yes, Dr. Shamsi?”
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” her mother says. “You’re never at home anymore.”
“That is literally not true,” Victoria says, because it’s not—she still spends most weeknights at the house, even if she’s usually staying with Trinity and Dennis once the weekend rolls around. “And I’ve told you to stop acting like my mom at work.”
Her mother just frowns sternly. “I’ve had another discussion with Dr. Robinavitch with regards to your career development. I keep telling him you’re wasting your talents down here, but he refuses to advocate for your advancement.”
“Yeah,” Victoria snaps, “because unlike you, Dr. Robby actually listens to me sometimes. He knows I want to be here, doing emergency medicine.”
“You don’t know what you want yet,” her mother says, dismissive. “Dr. Robinavitch may be a lost cause, but perhaps I could try speaking with your department mentor. Dr. McKay, wasn’t it?”
Every nerve in Victoria’s body lights up, a chain reaction, a fireworks display of rage. Cassie may not want to be with her, or even coexist with her after the events of Friday night, but the thought of her coming anywhere near contact with Eileen Shamsi makes Victoria’s blood go fully volcanic. Cassie McKay is someone sacred to her, treasured, tucked away in the space behind her ribs; someone who sees her, every part of her, and what she’s capable of doing. She shouldn’t even have to walk the same earth as Victoria’s mother, let alone be roped into a conversation about Victoria’s path for the future.
“A word of advice, Dr. Shamsi,” Victoria says slowly. Her tone is frigid, every word carved from ice. “If you value our relationship in any way at all, you will leave Dr. McKay out of any and all discussions pertaining to me or my future. And in said future, if I’m lucky, hopefully you won’t be a factor in my decision-making at all.”
She turns and walks away as fast as she can, ignoring her mother’s protests behind her—past the scrub return, into the locker room. She spins the combination dial mindlessly, pulls out her backpack, shrugs into the jacket that she’s idiotically been wearing for the last four days, then heads out the emergency exit side door. Screw returning her scrubs, screw clocking out. If she has to stay in this hospital one minute longer, she’s going to explode like a dying star.
Outside it’s just beginning to rain, a cold summer shower that comes down on her with a vengeance as she walks through the parking lot. She’s just gotten to her car, wet and shivering, when she sees that something’s wrong; the front end is slanting downwards, no longer on a level with the rest of the body. Flat tires, she realizes—and remembers, suddenly, the rough section of unpaved road that she drove over on the way to work this morning. That feeling of sharpness beneath the wheels, disregarded in her rush to clock in.
“Fuck,” Victoria says softly. Then, louder, echoing in the empty parking lot: “FUCK!”
“Hey,” a voice says from behind her. Familiar and gentle, a slight rasp in the tone. “Are you okay?”
Victoria closes her eyes tight, praying that it’s all an auditory hallucination, but the hope is futile. When she opens her eyes and turns around, Cassie is standing there: tall, damp-haired, beautiful. She must have had time to change after the shift, because she’s wearing grey sweatpants and a thick black flannel that’s half shirt and half jacket; there’s rain collecting in her eyelashes, along the gold links of her chain. Victoria wants her so badly it hurts.
“My tires went flat this morning,” she says, tearing her eyes away from the side of Cassie’s neck. “I didn’t know until right now, and I just had a big fight with my mom, and—fuck, sorry, this isn’t your problem, you can go. I’ll just—take the bus, or something.”
“Do you have Triple A?” Cassie asks. She sounds calm, detached, but Victoria can’t help noticing: she’s still here. She’s staying, at least for now, even after everything that’s happened between them.
“Uh, I don’t know,” Victoria says. “Maybe? I don’t really know about stuff like that, my dad usually handles it.” She hates how her explanation comes out, all whiny and privileged. Childlike, again. Cassie probably carries a Triple A membership card in her wallet, renewed every year. She can probably change a tire by herself, too.
“Okay,” Cassie says. “Well, you can deal with it tomorrow then, but…look, it’s pouring out. You cant just stay here like this.”
“I know,” Victoria says, small. She’s so cold and wet, so exhausted from the twelve hour shift. She feels wrung out, like a towel. Like someone put their hand around her and squeezed, hard, until every semi-valuable part of her was gone. “Seriously, you can leave. I don’t, like, expect you to be kind to me anymore.”
“Victoria,” Cassie says. Her expression’s changed now—if Victoria didn’t know better, she’d say it almost looks like hurt. “I’m driving you home. Don’t argue.”
She turns and walks away without waiting for Victoria’s answer, like it’s been written, like it’s a foregone conclusion. And maybe it is, Victoria thinks, because she follows, step for step, without a beat of hesitation.
+
Cassie drives a boxy red truck with a manual gearshift and a leather bench seat, something that Victoria never would have guessed just by looking at her. It’s an old truck too, from the nineties if not earlier, but the heater works and that’s all she cares about right now. She perches on the furthest corner of the bench seat, away from Cassie, and tries to directly absorb the hot air spilling from the vents.
“I didn’t know you had a truck,” she says, then mentally kicks herself for saying it. A ride home is more than she deserves right now. To ask for small talk is just stupid.
“It used to be my dad’s,” Cassie answers, shifting gears again. “1994 F-150, Ford in-line six under the hood. No airbags, though, so I only drive it when Harrison’s staying with Chad.”
Victoria nods, as if she understands all of the words Cassie just said, and burrows herself deeper into the triangle of the seat and the door. It’s still raining, coming down harder now; the windshield wipers move back and forth rhythmically. The radio is on low, playing some old rock song that Victoria doesn’t recognize.
“Shit, which way is your house?” Cassie asks, tapping two fingers against the wheel. “I don’t actually know.”
Victoria points right, to the upcoming exit ramp. She wishes for a further drive, a road trip clear across the country. Cassie at the wheel, and a highway long enough for them to be okay again.
Cassie takes the exit, downshifts into a slower gear. The rain keeps falling, a relentless hum against the metal roof, and an agonizing silence stretches out between them. Victoria folds her hands in her lap, clenches them tightly, unclenches them again. There’s an air of finality to this drive, she thinks. Like this could be the end of everything they’ve ever shared, if she doesn’t do something to stop it.
“I’m sorry,” she says, spilling it out like arterial blood. “For the other night, for what I said to you at the bar, and also in the break room that one day. I—I shouldn’t have done that.”
Another gear shift, and Cassie lets out a slow breath. “Thank you.”
It’s said just like that, no comfort or absolution to be found. Victoria’s throat tightens, but she forces herself to ask the question: “Do you hate me?”
Cassie smiles sadly. “No, of course not. I don’t think I could ever hate you, Vadi.”
The nickname lands softer, a finger of sunlight between grey clouds. Victoria’s next breath is easier, if only by a fraction. “Then are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad, just disappointed,” Cassie says, cracking a quick smile that disappears just as fast. “Sorry, not the time. No, I’m not mad. I’m just—processing, I guess. It’s a lot to think about.”
“No, yeah,” Victoria says, “for sure,” and then contemplates the possibility of opening the door and launching herself out into the ditch. Broken bones, moderate to severe CTE, but she’d survive, probably. “But we’ll be okay, right? Like, at some point?”
“Yeah,” Cassie says. A nod, definite. “We’ll be okay.”
Victoria exhales, fully, for the first time since Saturday morning. The atmosphere lightens by degrees, lifts higher. She looks across at Cassie, takes in her blue eyes and her crows-feet lines, the thumbprint shadows beneath her eyelids and the gorgeous curve of her mouth, and exhales again. She can keep this, or at least some of it. It’s not too late.
Or it wouldn’t be, if she could keep her fucking mouth closed.
“I just have to know,” she starts, even as the warning flares start blazing in her head. Shut up shut up shut up, but she won’t; she’s older now, stronger, and she won’t lie down on the railroad tracks anymore. Her tongue, held for so many years, is now running free. “Why don’t you want me?”
“Victoria,” Cassie says. Sharp, a warning. “Don’t.”
“But I don’t get it,” Victoria says. It comes out high-pitched, almost a whine. “You like younger women, don’t you? Younger girls?”
Cassie’s mouth goes flat. “I’m not talking about this with you.”
“You like them young,” Victoria repeats, eyes fixed on the curve of Cassie’s side profile. The mandibular muscle, flexing tight beneath her skin. “Pretty. Brunette.”
“Javadi,” Cassie says, and it wavers a little. Her grip on the steering wheel goes tighter, two hands instead of the lazy one she’d been using on the highway. “I won’t tell you again.”
“I’ll drop this forever, if you just say it,” Victoria promises, and means it. This is the flaw in the puzzle, the knot in the line of logic: despite the anger, despite the refusal, Cassie never actually affirmed Victoria’s belief. “Say you don’t want me, and I’ll stop, I will. Just—tell me there’s no chance. Tell me you don’t want me, and you never have.”
Cassie’s jaw clenches tighter, until it looks painful. Victoria waits, spell-bound by the helix of fear and hope; time holds its breath, knee-deep in treacherous waters, before rushing in again, and then—
“Of course I want you, Vadi,” Cassie says, plain and miserable. “That’s never been the fucking problem.”
Victoria’s world spins on its axis, tilts away, flings itself straight into the sun. She doesn’t think she’s breathing as she says: “Pull over.”
“What?”
“Cassie,” Victoria says. She’s breathless, riding on an adrenaline ripcurrent she’s never felt before—it’s electrifying, catching flame as it wells up within her. “Pull the fucking truck over, now.”
Cassie jams on the brake, sends the truck skidding over into a gravel shoulder roadside, throws them into park. It’s dark out, or dusk at least, but Victoria can see hints of a neighborhood around them: row houses, tight-packed and suburban. She doesn’t look for very long, though, because Cassie’s turning on her now, angry and confused. “What the hell was that about?”
Victoria doesn’t answer with words. She unclips her seatbelt, and she slides across the bench seat, and she kisses Cassie McKay like it’s her last day on earth.
It’s not like in the movies, that’s clear right away. Victoria goes in too hard, too hungry, knocks her teeth against Cassie’s bottom lip and gets a stifled curse in response. But then Cassie opens her mouth, sweeps her tongue along the seam of Victoria’s lips, licks in like she belongs there and nowhere else, and it’s hot and wet and deliriously, mindfuckingly good. Cassie kisses her harder and it’s like drowning, a hand pushing her down beneath the surface of the lake. Victoria, lightheaded and hopelessly turned on, can’t even imagine coming up for air.
“Fuck,” Cassie says, breaking away. Victoria whines, chases her mouth, reels her back in. They kiss for a minute longer, tongue-first and filthy, until Cassie pulls away again. “Fuck. Vadi, you—we can’t do this.”
“We just did,” Victoria argues. Her mouth feels swollen, tender on just the right side of painful, and all she can think is, more. “You kissed me too, Cassie. You kissed me back.”
Cassie barks out a harsh laugh. “You’re half my age.”
“I’m legal.”
“Barely. You just turned twenty-one this month. Hell, even Chad’s cradle girlfriend is older than you.” Cassie’s mouth twists into a grimace. “Oh god, Chloe is older than you.”
“Chloe can’t do an EZ-IO,” Victoria says fiercely. “Or a thoracotomy, or a cric, or a perocardiocentesis. Chloe can’t save multiple lives before lunchtime—but I can. That’s worth a few years’ difference, I think.”
Cassie shakes her head, doesn’t say anything. The opening is there, waiting; Victoria takes it, leans in close until her lips touch the auricle shell of Cassie’s ear.
“I’m an adult,” Victoria says, low and slow. “I can make my own choices. And right now, I’m choosing to tell you how bad I want you to take me home and touch me.”
Cassie shudders hard, full-bodied, and Victoria feels it in her chest. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Maybe not,” Victoria admits, “but I want it anyways. I want you, Cassie. All of you.” She places a hand on Cassie’s sternum, fingers spread wide to feel the rhythmic heave of her breaths. “Take me home?”
“Fuck,” Cassie says, strained, and turns the key in the ignition. The engine roars to life, thundering like the chorus of Victoria’s heart.“I tried to be good, I really did, but fuck it. Buckle up, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart boils in Victoria’s blood, riot-rousing. She slides into the middle seat, buckles up. Cassie hits the accelerator and the truck shoots forward into the night, and as they barrel towards the main road, burning long tracks of rubber out behind them, her hand finds Victoria’s thigh and holds on tight.
+
Cassie’s house is a single-unit brick building near the edge of the city, two stories and a small front porch, but Victoria doesn’t get to see much of it. They’ve barely gotten inside when Cassie’s hands are on her hips, grabbing her, pushing her up against the door.
“You don’t know how much I’ve thought about this,” Cassie says. Her mouth charts a path down the column of Victoria’s throat, finds her pulse point, bites; Victoria gasps, hips jerking forward at the scrape of teeth. “Touching you, tasting you. Jesus, Vadi, I’ve been losing my fucking mind.”
Victoria whines, all her thoughts going scattered at the rasp in Cassie’s voice. “You thought about me?”
“All the time,” Cassie says. She pushes forward on her right leg, puts pressure at the crux of Victoria’s thighs. It’s heavenly, and Victoria grinds down before she can stop herself. “I tried not to, but god—you’re such a tease, you know that? Every time you ask me for advice, every time you wait for me to tell you how good you’re doing, I just want to bend you over and ruin you.”
A moan rips from Victoria’s throat, loud and wanton as she rolls her hips to meet Cassie’s thigh. The pressure builds between her legs, hot and fast and good, so good. “Cassie,” she whines. “Fuck, you feel good.”
“Yeah?” Cassie asks, rhetorical if Victoria’s ever heard it, and bites at her neck again. Victoria gasps, hungry, aching. “I bet you’d come just from riding my thigh, if I let you. You need it that bad, baby?”
“Yes,” Victoria whimpers. She’s so turned on it hurts, every part of her coiled tighter and tighter inside as Cassie licks a stripe along the line of her jaw. “Yes, please, can I—I want—”
“Wait,” Cassie says, mean, and pinches Victoria’s nipple hard through the fabric of her shirt. Victoria’s body seizes, muscles locking and unlocking, as an orgasm trembles through her.
“Fuck,” she moans. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“So fucking desperate, sweetheart,” Cassie says, clicking her tongue. There’s a reprimand in there, one that kicks Victoria’s instincts into overdrive: do better. “That’s okay, we’re just getting started.”
She takes her hands off of Victoria and steps back, crouches down to untie the laces of her purple and white Hokas, then toes off her own shoes. “Come on baby, let’s take this to a real bed.”
Victoria kicks her shoes off, dazed, and follows Cassie through a yellow-tiled kitchen and down a hallway with three doors. There’s a wooden placard tacked to one of the doors, with Harrison spelled out in hand-carved letters across the surface—Cassie’s work, probably. Victoria might actually be the sickest freak on the planet, because the realization turns her on even more.
“Here,” Cassie says at the last door, and catches Victoria’s hand to pull her playfully over the threshold. The door shuts behind them with a decisive snap, and then they’re in Cassie’s bedroom, the place she sleeps every night, pale green walls and a warm-glowing lamp on the nightstand, and Victoria can’t contain herself anymore—she fists her hands into Cassie’s shirt, drags her face down, presses their lips together again.
Cassie makes a little sound of surprise in the back of her throat, like she wasn’t expecting this so soon. Her hands find Victoria’s lower back, dip down to palm the swell of her ass. Victoria moans into the kiss, touch-drunk, wanting more.
“Off,” she says, “now,” and tugs at Cassie’s shirt hem until she can pull it up and over her head. Cassie’s all smooth skin and black Nike compression underneath, pale, dotted with freckles. Victoria’s gaze drops to her abdominals and obliques, outlines of muscle moving subcutaneously, and her mouth goes dry.
“Take your shirt off,” Cassie says. “And my jacket.”
Victoria obeys, sliding the jacket off and onto the floor. Her scrub top goes next, and then her undershirt, until she’s left in nothing but her purple lace bra.
“Possession is nine tenths of the law,” she says, partly to shake off the nerves of being so exposed. She’s never been bare in front of anyone like this, and she’s not even naked yet. “You could argue that it’s my jacket, now.”
“There’s that smart mouth again,” Cassie says, raking her gaze up and down Victoria’s body. “I told you it would get you in trouble someday.”
Victoria tilts her head, gives a cocky smile. “Yeah? Do your worst.”
Cassie chuckles darkly, undertones of disbelief. She moves so fast that Victoria barely sees her, just feels the grab of hands on her waist and the give of the mattress below her as Cassie pushes her down on the edge of the bed. Fingers find the drawstring of her scrub bottoms, deft and expert; Victoria’s skin prickles, rapid piloerection, as her legs are bared to the air.
“Matching, huh,” Cassie murmurs. She slides a finger beneath the band of Victoria’s lacy purple panties, lets it snap back against her skin. “That’s cute, baby girl.”
Victoria whimpers, barely held up by the prop of her elbows on the bed. She’s so turned on it’s painful, so wet she can feel herself soaking through the lace. Cassie can smell her, probably, and the thought zips electric down Victoria’s spine. “I—I like to be coordinated.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Cassie says, and snaps the band again. Victoria’s back arches, pure desire with the slight sting of pain. “Or maybe you just wanted to look good, in case you got the chance to get naked for one of your superiors.”
The words settle hot in Victoria’s stomach, simmering. Her clit aches, begging for pressure, for touch. “No,” she says on a whine. “Just you, I only want you.”
Cassie smiles, knife-sharp, and leans in to nip at Victoria’s earlobe. “Good girl.”
That lands like an asteroid, five hundred miles of impact radius; Victoria’s hips cant steeply upwards, her hands grab at Cassie’s arms. She wants more, needs it so bad she’s halfway to coding right here in the bedroom.
“Praise kink, huh,” Cassie says, pressing a kiss to Victoria’s chest now. “Could’ve seen that coming a mile away, baby.”
Victoria’s vision blurs. “I don’t—”
“Relax,” Cassie says. She’s moving again, pulling back from Victoria’s torso—sliding further down her body, over ribs and stomach and hipbones. “Do you want to be good for me?”
“Yes.”
Cassie drops to her knees, eye-level with Victoria’s thighs. She traces one finger along the sheer line of Victoria’s panties, possessive, dominating. “Then lie back,” she says, “and say my name.”
That’s all the warning Victoria gets before Cassie’s mouth is on her, hot and wet against the lace of her panties, pushing up against her clit. Victoria’s eyes roll back in her head at the feeling, shot through with full-bodied tremors. “Cassie, more. Please.”
“Greedy,” Cassie says, darkly amused, and then she’s pulling Victoria’s panties to the side and licking right through her center, from her opening up to her clit. Victoria gasps, her hands scramble to find purchase—she needs to hold Cassie’s hair, her arms, anything to keep herself grounded. She’s never felt anything half so good, drunk off the feverish drag of Cassie’s tongue against her clit and the wet sounds that follow. Cassie eats her out like it’s emergency medicine, quick and precise and phenomenally fucking talented—Victoria’s expanding, contracting, heart too big for her body, pleasure building up in waves—
There’s the press of a fingertip against her opening, just the bare ghost of touch that hints at more, and Victoria’s back arches so sharply off the bed that her spinal erectors pop a little. Cassie hums, satisfied, a low vibration against Victoria’s clit that has her straining for more as she gasps, desert-mouthed, please, Cassie, please fuck me.
“I am fucking you,” Cassie says. She wraps her lips against Victoria’s clit, sucks there. “Or did you want something else?”
Victoria’s cerebellum is fusing, neuroses bleeding out. “I want—please—”
Cassie sucks harder on her clit, a bright burst of pleasure-pain. “Use your words.”
“Inside,” Victoria manages. “Need you inside me, Cassie, please, I need it so fucking bad.”
Cassie groans, punched-out and deep in her throat. “You’re gonna be the death of me, Vadi,” she says, like a promise, and then there’s two fingers inside Victoria, pressing deeper than she’s ever gone herself—Cassie’s sucking her again too, relentless and Victoria’s brain whites out in searing pleasure. Her hand tangles in Cassie’s hair, holds her there; she rolls her hips, frantic, arrhythmic, against Cassie’s mouth. Heat piles up inside her, molten lava, a pot left on high and boiling over, and it’s so good, so fucking good, she can’t—
“I can’t hold it back,” she whines, desperate, clenching hard around Cassie’s fingers to stave off the rush of pleasure bearing down. “Cassie, please, I need to, can I—”
“Good girl,” Cassie praises, and thrusts even deeper. Victoria doesn’t scream, but it’s a close call. “Yeah, baby. You can come for me.”
That’s all Victoria needs—she tips right over the edge, damp-eyed and crying out Cassie’s name as she writhes in full-bodied bliss. The ocean draws back, leaves the seabed bare, floods in again; she’s left helpless on the shore, twitching and oversensitive as Cassie keeps fucking her through the tail end of the orgasm.
“Sensitive,” she says at last, more a whimper than a word, and pulls at Cassie’s hair. “Too much.”
Cassie presses one last kiss to her opening, then slides up until they’re face to face once more. Victoria’s center clenches at the sight of her, another wave of aftershocks: Cassie’s mouth is soaked and glistening, wet all the way down to the mentum.
“Hnn,” Victoria says intelligently, and makes a half-hearted reach for her lips; Cassie meets her halfway, licks into her mouth like she’s still just as hungry. Victoria can taste herself on Cassie’s tongue, salty and earthy and a little bit sweet too, and it’s way hotter than it should be. “Wow. That was. Wow.”
Cassie grins, looking deeply pleased with herself. “Oh, I know.”
“Bitch,” Victoria mutters fondly, then wonders if that’s anti-feminist. Maybe, she concludes, but she’s too fucked out to care right now. She just needs to lie here for a while, until the earth stops spinning so fast, and then she can worry about the fourth wave or whatever. Judging by the way Cassie goes tense above her, though, there are other plans in the works.
“You’re funny,” Cassie says, the pitch of danger. “You think we’re done here? Think again.”
Victoria’s core clenches again, anticipatory, and her hands curl in on themselves. She realizes, belatedly, that she’s glazed in a thin layer of sweat and the muscles of her thighs ache from wrapping around Cassie’s head. “What are you gonna do to me?”
“That depends.” Cassie taps a finger against her mouth performatively. “I could have you sit on my face. I could have you grind on me till you come just from the friction, again. Or…” She traces her hand down Victoria’s body, cups her cunt gently. “I could get out my strap and fuck you until you cry.”
If Victoria hadn’t come twice already, that sentence alone could have been enough to push her over. “Fuck, uh—that one. The last option.”
“So demanding,” Cassie says. Her fingertips find Victoria’s opening easily, press in just far enough to hint at what’s to come. “What happened to your manners, sweetheart?”
Victoria whines, bucking her hips forward. “The last option, please.”
“Good,” Cassie says—her teaching voice, all approval. Victoria spasms a little, tries not to think about how wet she’ll be the next time they have to work a trauma together. “Get on the bed and turn over.”
Victoria scrambles to obey, landing on her hands and knees in the center of the mattress. There’s a sharp intake of breath behind her, and the warm caress of a hand on the curve of her ass as Cassie says, “Beautiful, baby. So good for me.”
The words pool warm in Victoria’s chest, honey-sweet between her ribs. She’ll probably be touching herself to the memory of this moment for the rest of her life, which is—fine, whatever, she doesn’t even care.
“Cassie,” she says, trying to regain control of the situation. It works until her voice breaks in the middle of the next sentence, clean at the halfway point. “Just fuck me already.”
There’s a rush of air behind her, the sound of skin hitting skin, and Victoria’s ass burns with the force of contact. Heat shoots through her, nearly topples her over as she thinks, oh, thinks, did she really just—
“I thought I told you before,” Cassie says. “Watch that mouth, sweetheart.”
Victoria’s slipped down on her elbows from the force of the blow, plank position now with her ass still raised. She feels raw, exposed, a deep-ground root bared to the elements as she says, “Yeah? Or what?”
Cassie spanks her again, harder this time but just as accurate. Victoria’s spine arches, high geometrical contrast; she’s wet again, or still, so wet that it’s running down her thighs.
“Stay,” Cassie says, and the mattress lifts with the loss of her weight. Victoria stays, shiver-wracked and overrun with nerves. She hears the sound of a drawer opening, the gentle clink of metal, bundled fabric dropping to the floor, Cassie’s steady breathing. The drawer shuts again, and then Cassie’s back on the bed, a hand on the swell of Victoria’s hip, a kiss brushed to the back of her neck. “Lift your hips.”
Victoria lifts, obedient. Cassie slides a pillow underneath, between her body and the bed; Victoria ends up folded slightly, a book left open, facedown. The wetness between her thighs grows damper, runs further. She’s soaking into the pillowcase, probably.
“God, Vadi,” Cassie says reverently, and strokes a hand down the dip of Victoria’s spine. “Can’t believe I get to see you like this.”
“Yeah,” Victoria chokes out, muffled, pillow-quiet. “No one else has ever. Only you.”
Cassie grips the small of her back, fingers digging in—quick pressure, like it comes involuntarily. “You’ve never—fuck, is this your first time?”
“No,” Victoria lies, humiliated, and then thinks better of it. “I mean, yes. I wanted it to be you. Want it to be you.”
“Fuck,” Cassie says, like it’s being strangled out of her. “Sweetheart, I’m gonna fucking ruin you.”
Victoria moans, grinds her hips down into the pillow—soft friction, not enough, but better than nothing. “Good.”
Cassie swears again, a low string of curse words, then slides her palm between Victoria’s legs, gathers up the slick wet there. Victoria raises her head enough to look back, sees Cassie stroking her wetness down the length of the strap—long, thick, navy blue silicon—and nearly passes out.
“So wet I don’t even need lube,” Cassie murmurs, more to herself than Victoria. “God, you’re filthy. Fucking perfect.”
The praise is just as good as before, but Victoria is seriously going to fucking die if she doesn’t get Cassie inside her right now; she pushes backwards, raises her ass higher, tries to catch the tip of the strap against her opening. When it makes contact, she whines like a slut. “Cassie.”
“Yeah, baby,” Cassie says, breathless. “Yeah, I got you.”
She shifts forward, slides the strap along Victoria’s clit a few times just to tease her—Victoria whines some more, feverish, nonsensical, hands grabbing behind her to try and force Cassie in faster. Something cold touches the back of her neck—Cassie’s chain, she realizes deliriously, draping over the vulnerable nape of her neck, fuck, that’s hot—and then Cassie’s pushing the strap into her, inside her, and Victoria’s heart nearly gives out.
Cassie moves slow at first—slides deeper by inches, gives her time to adjust. Victoria feels feral, incoherent, split open by the thick blunt length of her; her eyes blur, salt-blind, as she fumbles Cassie’s hand into hers. She’s making sounds, she realizes after a moment, little drawn-out cries of desperation as Cassie bottoms out and her hips press up flush against Victoria’s ass. She’s so deep that Victoria feels it in her stomach, in her throat. It’s fucking incredible.
“God, look at you,” Cassie groans in her ear. She’s draped over Victoria’s back, chest to spine, covering her like a blanket. Victoria could die happy right here, filled with Cassie’s strap and sheltered by her body. “You’re taking me so well, sweetheart.”
“Uhn,” Victoria gets out, and nothing more. Her head has gone fuzzy, oversaturated. “Uh huh.”
“Gonna fuck you now,” Cassie says, licking a stripe along her pulse point. “Tell me if you need to stop.”
Victoria nods into the pillow, jerky. Cassie tilts forward, pushes deeper, pulls back, pushes in again, and oh—if being fingered by her is heaven, being fucked is somewhere beyond mortal comprehension. Cassie sets a fast pace, hitting deep on every thrust, hips slamming into the backs of Victoria’s thighs as she pushes in again and again; she’s finding spots that Victoria only knows from diagrams and locker-room talk, Trinity’s hook-up stories. The head of the strap drags inside her over and over, slides against a certain rough spot that has her seeing stars—her back is glazed in sweat, Cassie’s and her own, her fingers burn from curling into the sheets. Cassie fucks her steady and brutal, passionate, perfectly timed, every push of her hips a sunburst of bliss flaring across the pan of Victoria’s brain, and she’s never had it like this, never had anything even close—
“Did you think of me?” she chokes out, jumbled, piecemeal words. “When—the other girls, the ones you fucked. Did you?”
Cassie lets out a harsh exhale at the question—thrusts even deeper, a sucker punch to the G-spot, and Victoria wails. In a very distant corner of her mind, she’s thankful for the lack of upstairs neighbors.
“Of course I did,” Cassie says, jagged, breathing hard in time with the push of her hips. “You’re all I can think about, Vadi. Wanted you for so fucking long, I don’t know how I survived it.”
“More,” Victoria moans. “Please.”
“Fuck,” Cassie says. Her hand finds the back of Victoria’s neck, squeezes like it did that day in the break room. Spots swim across Victoria’s vision. “You’re even dirtier than I imagined, Vadi, you’re fucking gagging for it. You’d let me do anything to you, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” Victoria says, bent around a sob. Tears are building in her eyes, just like Cassie promised—everything’s salt-drenched and soaking, too much and not enough. She’s barely a person anymore, just a loose melting mess of desire held together by Cassie’s hands. “I would, I would, I will, just—”
Her voice cracks, splintering. Cassie grabs a fistful of her hair, yanks her head back. “Just what?”
“Don’t—don’t have anyone else,” Victoria grits out, raw-voiced and vulnerable. “Have me. Keep me. No one else.”
Cassie pauses mid-thrust, makes a strangled sound. “Vadi, you—you don’t mean that.”
“I do,” Victoria says, strung-out, undone. She’s come this far, gotten this close, and she’s a latchkey kid at heart—never forced to choose, never learned to share. She remembers how it felt to see Cassie with those other girls, like standing in a thunderstorm with a lightning rod for a spinal column, world-shaking, devastating. “I want you, Cassie. Don’t make me fucking tell you again.”
“Brat,” Cassie says, and starts moving again. It’s even faster now, harder somehow; Victoria’s mouth falls open, lips parted wide as Cassie does her best to put her right through the mattress. “God, you’re so—Vadi, you’re so special, so amazing, you’re a fucking star—”
“And what else?” Victoria huffs, each word fucked out of her like it costs money. Her body is a fever, burning hot, ready to break. “What else am I?”
“Mine,” Cassie says, “mine, you’re mine,” and Victoria comes so hard she stops breathing, mass casualty, total fallout. Everything’s blurred, flashing, hazy-edged, all pure sensation; Cassie keeps fucking up against her, rapid shallow little thrusts and a low moan that’ll live in Victoria’s ear forever, then gasps, pushes in deep, swears low, fuck, Vadi, I’m gonna—and collapses down on Victoria like summer into fall.
There’s a moment, five seconds or ten minutes or a year and a half, where Victoria can only focus on getting oxygen back in her body. It comes slowly, reluctantly, in harsh heaves of breath, a two-count at first, then up to four. In, hold out. In, hold, out.
Only then does everything else come flooding back—the soft cotton of the bed, the salt taste of her sweat and tears. She’s on her side now, and the weight has lifted from her body; Cassie’s lying next to her, soft-eyed, gently cradling Victoria’s face with one hand while her thumb strokes back and forth. Victoria can feel the calluses on her palm, tiny hardened patches of tissue grown from hard work and dedication. She smiles, or tries to—she finds herself boneless, all loose ends. Sudden onset hypotonia, an unforeseen side effect of getting railed within an inch of her life.
“You’re good,” Cassie says gently, like it’s any day, like she didn’t just pull apart Victoria’s solar system and stick it back together with a thousand iterations of her touch. “You’re good. You did so well, sweetheart.”
“Okay,” Victoria says, more a sigh than a word. She’s never felt this relaxed, ever; it’s like she’s been stretched in a thousand directions, pressed flat beneath the palm of some giant hand. “Do you, uh—want me to do you?”
Cassie laughs softly, tucks her chin down like she’s embarrassed. “No need. I uh, actually got off just from fucking you.”
Victoria’s mouth spreads into a smile, successfully this time. She’s going to gloat about this forever, once she can string three thoughts together again. “Really? Wow.”
“Shut up,” Cassie huffs, impossibly fond. “You really are a brat, you know.”
“Your brat,” Victoria says tiredly. She’s drifting a little, lulled by the suggestion of sleep, but Cassie’s hand keeps her anchored. “More tomorrow?”
“We work tomorrow,” Cassie reminds her. A strand of Victoria’s hair slides down over her eyes, and Cassie’s fingers tuck it back behind her ear before she can even complain. “Although I’m not sure you’ll be able to go in, baby. I might have broken you.”
“Didn’t break me,” Victoria mumbles, sliding slowly into the deep end. She has Cassie here, holding her, giving Victoria her undivided attention, and that’s all she’s ever needed, really. Attention, and someone to see her when they look in her direction. “Be fine in the morning, you can drive us.”
“Okay, Vadi,” Cassie says, quiet and happy, full of care. “Whatever you want.”
Victoria smiles again, pillows her head against Cassie’s arm, and lets herself drop into heavy, contented sleep. She has to call out of work the next morning, sore down to the bone and walking sideways around the kitchen, while Cassie laughs at her and the coffee pot starts brewing for two.