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There’s something wrong with Van that Taissa just can’t put her finger on. Something that’s been hovering just out of reach for days, since that first moment she stepped into Van’s too-specific, probably financially-failing store. Something that’s only gotten worse since arriving at Lottie’s honest-to-god compound, with Van’s intentions of driving back to Ohio dead on impact, tied up and shot between the eyes as soon as Lottie breathed her name like a fucking prayer.
It’s the strongest emotion Taissa thinks she’s felt in a long time, more than the guilt and fear and confusion gnawing at her stomach, the pure fury that almost blinds her when Lottie locks eyes with Van.
Be careful around her, Shauna had warned about Van, and Taissa wants to throw the warning into Van’s face, wants to shake her until all the jagged Lottie pieces sand down, until Van’s seventeen again and never knew what it was like to starve.
There’s something anticlimactic about seeing Lottie for the first time—ripped from the woods that imbued her with a mystic, manic gleam, she’s normal, she could be one of Sammy’s friend’s moms or one of the women who volunteered their Saturdays on the Turner for Senate campaign. The shock of Van’s resurrection obviously gets to Lottie too, but she recovers faster, pasting on a smile, and leading the most fucked up high school reunion to what she calls the dining hall, calmly talking about trauma and healing and hope.
Shauna looks like she’s about to burst out laughing, and Taissa isn’t far behind. The whole thing is a fever dream, from the chandeliers made of antlers, to the hazy mirror image Lottie’s lake makes of the past. It’s like some fucked up summer camp, sitting and eating a surprisingly good vegetarian dinner next to Natalie, if the last time all your camp friends were together was a bacchanalian ritual. Like if nineteen months of Hell were repackaged into a fucking Lifetime movie.
The dinner falls into inevitable chaos quickly. Shauna brought a bottle of surprisingly nice whiskey that she had confiscated from her daughter, and she takes long, unbroken sips from it.
“I think Callie’s too much like me,” she admits halfway through, and for a second it looks like Lottie is going to rest her hand on Shauna’s breastbone, but she grabs the bottle instead.
“I think I’m going insane,” Lottie says after taking a sip. “Or maybe that I’m not insane, just that everyone else is.”
Van starts to walk over to her, but Natalie beats her there, grabbing Lottie’s hand and twirling her in a circle.
“Lottie, baby,” Natalie says, and Shauna mouths baby in confusion, “it doesn’t matter,” and it’s a side of Natalie that’s never come out, not in the woods, not in the whole-numbing horror of it all. This, here is the worst thing that’s happened all day. Worse than Van’s all consuming devotion to Lottie’s bullshit, worse than Shauna being on the run from the police, worse than the sixteen missed calls from the hospital and Simone’s mother. Natalie always stood apart, strong against the pull of something more, and now, now if even she’s been devoured by it — drinking seems like the best answer.
No one notices when Van cracks one of the big, plate glass doors and slips out, and everyone pretends not to notice when Taissa follows her out.
Van’s somehow managed to take Shauna’s whiskey with her, and Taissa finds her sitting on a hill overlooking the lake, smoking a cigarette.
“I thought you quit,” Taissa says, sitting down next to her, half-remembering a fight that seemed like the end of the world in the early fall of senior year. Something about those things are going to kill you and I thought you cared more about soccer, which of course really meant I thought you cared more about me.
Van shrugs, and puts it out in the sandy dirt.
“I’m not good at quitting anything, Tai,” she says, and Taissa’s heart seizes for a moment. It’s about Lottie, probably, about the way that after those first few shocking seconds, Lottie’s eyes glance off Van, right over to Natalie.
“I mean,” Van continues, “look where I fucking am,” and that’s about Lottie too, but in some traitorous crevice of Taissa’s mind, maybe it’s about her too.
“We could leave,” Taissa says. “Your IHOP’s probably 24 hours. Just say the word and we’re there,” and Van tips Shauna’s whiskey into her mouth.
“We could drive until we’re somewhere where we know no one, ” Van says. “Just fucking start over.”
The lies feel good, feel like falling asleep in the freezing cold, like a rope pulled tight. There’s something sharp and painful in Taissa’s mouth, something that she can’t recognize as want until Van’s grabbing her hand and tugging her closer.
“Lie to me,” Van says, and she’s desperate in a way Taissa can’t ever remember.
“I’d find a job practicing law again,” Taissa says, spinning it into existence into Van’s shoulder. “And you could … fuck, I don’t know. Do you have any transferable skills?”
Van laughs, and that’s better.
“Fuck you, Turner, I have a GED and the ability to sell VCRs to nineteen year olds, you tell me if that’s transferable.”
“Okay,” Taissa says. “I’ll let you open another useless store, and we’ll live off my income,” and Van nods.
“A trophy wife,” she says, but that’s wrong. There’s sixteen missed calls that are about Simone, about the way she’s lying in a hospital bed, the way the life Taissa’s so carefully built has had a fucking wrecking ball taken to it.
“Shit,” Van says, “I’m drunk, I’m —” and the apology would be completely unbearable, so Taissa does the only thing she knows how to do with Van, and grabs her by the face and kisses her, the sharp want in her mouth slicing into Van.
//
Your hands dig into Van’s arm, and Taissa’s panic is warm and sour in her stomach, like milk. You’re right where you need to be, Taissa awake under you, where you’re fraying into her. Where she’s blurring into you. Where you’re the same, where there’s nothing but an empty pit of need.
Van’s kissing you back, mouth open and hungry and her eyes are closed; her eyes are yellow; her mouth a gaping maw, full of teeth.
She pulls back, and looks at you; she pulls back, and sees you.
“Where’d you go?” and she means Taissa, she means you; she’s the only one who ever means both.
“Still here,” you say, and you mean Taissa, you mean yourself; you never mean anything other than both.
Van nods, and holds your face tenderly. You’ve been asleep so long, Taissa locking herself up, Taissa smiling and insisting she doesn’t, she never needed you; Van holding your face and kissing her; Van older and still imprinted impossibly the same on your hands, your lips— wake up, you’ve been hissing at Taissa for twenty-five years, wake up , this is not who you are, this is not where we’re supposed to be— Van, her hands cold and rough and exactly where they’re supposed to be.
“Where are you supposed to be?” Van echoes. “It’s what you said, earlier,” and you shake Taissa’s head, Taissa shakes your head.
Here, you say to her.
“Here,” you say to her.
//
Sometimes Taissa is entirely unsure of who she is. Not in a trauma way her therapists explained over and over, not in the way Simone thinks when she wakes up gasping, but in the very real and immediate sense of being someone else.
Right now though, Taissa is entirely sure she is herself, even as the other one runs her thumb across Van’s lips, as Van sighs in a way Taissa thought she’d never hear again.
“Taissa,” she says, “Tai,” and the other one nods her head.
“We shouldn’t do this,” except her face is flushed, and she’s got her nails in the soft place behind Taissa’s ear, and losing control never felt so tempting, so good, and Taissa unlocks a cage within herself.
“It’s been too long,” Van’s still talking. “You’re married and I’m …”
The other one presses her nose into Van’s neck, and Taissa lets her, holds her on a leash made of fraying rope.
“I’m not the same anymore,” Van finishes, gasping.
“Neither am I,” Taissa says. Here, someone hums to you, here, here, here.
//
“Isn’t that the point?” Taissa says, and you strain against the hold she has on you. You want Van under your skin, tucked up against Taissa; you want to devour her; you want her to lead Taissa towards and towards and towards.
“We shouldn’t,” Van says again, but her hands are at your throat, unbuttoning her own shirt away from your skin.
“We shouldn’t,” Taissa agrees, letting Van push the shirt off her shoulders, letting go of your leash. You don’t have to say anything, and Van looks you dead in the eyes, and smiles; it’s snowing in the past, and Van follows you forever through the waist-high drifts; there’s a lake in the past, there’s a lake in front of you, there’s Taissa grabbing Van’s hips and pulling her onto your lap.
“Mine,” you say, and Van nods, her face hidden, sucking bruises into Taissa’s collarbone; Taissa doesn’t complain, just gasps; tugs on Van’s hair until she’s looking at you; until she’s climbed inside Taissa’s cage and locked herself in.
“Are you okay?” Taissa asks, and Van nods again, and you’ll never let her go now.
//
“Let me,” Van says, breathless, her braid loose and almost entirely fallen out, “let me,” and she unbuttons the borrowed jeans, runs her thumbs against the sensitive skin she finds there.
“I’ve got you,” she says, unbearably gentle, “I know,” and —
//
You’ve been waiting for her for twenty-five years, and Taissa moans or maybe it’s you and maybe Van’s fingers are skimming that deep, empty pit of need between you.
It’s snowing in the past; the sand is rough under your back in the present; both are cold, in both Van takes your hand and leads you. Van-in-the-past opens your eyes and speaks you into needing her, Van-in-the-present is lying to Taissa even as she crouches between her legs and holds her still, pressing her mouth to your inner thigh, your stomach, your cunt.
//
“I’ve got you,” Van’s mumbling, and Taissa can feel it vibrate through her, can feel the other one unfold herself and press herself up against the want unfurling in her brain.
Taissa hasn’t been quite so aware, quite so awake in years, and maybe it’s Van’s tongue and mouth and fingers, and maybe it’s dissolving of the constant dislocated ache in her stomach. Maybe it’s the way Van looks at the other one and calls her Tai.
//
You hold Taissa in your hands and kiss her cheek, soft and gentle like Van would.
I told you you whisper at her, and she can’t hear you anymore, her ears are your ears again and the world slots into place, Van with her cheek against your thigh, eyes starving and she’d let you devour her whole; she’d let you, so you don’t have to.
Taissa lets you pull her back up, and you let Taissa kiss her, let Taissa make her gasp and pant and shudder; Van-in-the-past is on her knees in front of you, and you-in-the-present are kneeling in front of her; you-in-the-past are screaming, desperate to be heard.
Van tilts your head up and you are entirely and completely hers.