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“Oh, for Christ’s sake, what are you guys doing here?”
“Mom let us track you and dropped us off to hang out with you,” Lily giggles, firmly grasping her twin sister’s hand as she leans into the laugh, dimples making themselves present in a similarly invasive way to their rendezvous at this location. Kat just looks sort of anxious, but is relieved and delighted to see the smile on Lily’s face.
“Did she know that it’s a college party ?” Beth snarls, enunciating the words clearly. At that moment, a fraternity Chad walks by to very obviously leer at the sixteen-year-olds’ backsides.
“I guess not!” Lily chirps, self-satisfied.
“Fuck,” Beth sighs.
Jordan materializes beside her, prattling at first about someone she met on the dance floor, until her eyes find their younger, minor sisters and she halts in confusion. “Um. What the fuck?”
“We have to go find Mandy. Mom dropped them off here because she’s fucking…” Beth’s tirade is drowned out by the heady beat of a rap song, and their efforts to weave through the crowd with Jordan taking Lily firmly by the wrist -- Lily who is using her other hand to tow the more submissive twin.
“No,” Lily begins to wheedle, “just let us stay,” immediately lured in by the purple-neon haze of the party and the college boys paying her the least amount of attention in a crop top--ew, creepy.
Mandy, who is fresh out of high school and into college, and is here on good ethical pretenses with her older sisters--her first party with them--is leaning a bit too heavily against the backsplash in the party house’s kitchen. She seems to be conversing with a slim, dark-haired girl. “Lizzie-Beth,” she exclaims in a breathy, drunken manner on first sight of her sister, “I found you a girl to dance with. She’s a junior, too.”
At the sight of a pissed-off Beth with two teenage twin girls in tow, the stranger looks hardly impressed.
“Mom fucking let the twins Life360 us and said it was cool for them to hang out with us, and then just dropped . Them off here.”
“Well, do they want a drink?” Mandy slurs, not in her right mind.
“Yes!”
“No. Fuck, no. We’re taking them home. I’ve barely had anything to drink, so I can drive. Who wants to come?”
Mandy’s slow and begins to whine, so Beth excuses her from the responsibility and ushers her in the direction of her slightly-more-responsible freshman friends. Jordan volunteers, but seems hesitant.
“What, that guy Chase wanted to dance some more?” Beth teases, but can’t keep some irritation out of her heart.
“Yeah, but I lost him, so it’s fine,” her sister replies with a not-quite-there smile.
“Chase with the basketball jersey?” the stranger, to whom Mandy had been speaking, cuts in. “I can tell him you stepped out for a bit. We came here together, he’s my best friend.”
“Oh, sweet, thank you so much!” Jordan gushes.
And then they’re shifting from the sweaty, milling crowd to the stifling cold, shoving two complaining teenagers into a Prius.
Upon re-entry into the party, Jordan splits off to look for her previous companion with an apologetic smile. Beth, now grateful for her help, waves her off with an encouraging one.
Ironically, though, Beth finds the Warriors jersey first as he’s leaning in to speak to the dark-haired stranger from earlier, and just finishes edging through a group of people talking in order to reach them.
They’re faced in the opposite direction, sitting casually on the back of a couch, so that their feet dangle onto the cushions wedged behind the rest of their group that’s sitting and talking pairwise. The dark-haired girl speaks first.
“Yeah, the Jordan girl’s really cute, I think she wants to get on your dick.”
“I like her, even just, like, the stuff she talks about. Her sister Beth, did you hear she’s a lesbian? And hot. You could get on that, too, and then we could double date.”
The dark-haired girl examines her nails. “Yeah, I don’t know. She seems like a priss or a micro-manager. Not my type.”
“No one’s your type,” Chase teases, but Beth has stopped listening and turned completely in the opposite direction.
“Something’s wrong,” Jordan observes the moment Beth finds her later to take a swig from their handle of vodka.
“I’m fine,” she says curtly, eyeing Chase, who’s curled a hand around Jordan’s waist by now and is speaking to someone else.
“He’s not paying attention,” Jordan murmurs into her ear. “Tell me what’s up.”
“What’s his friend’s name? The one Mandy was talking to?”
“They introduced her to me as Fitz. It’s her middle name or something. First name something pretty like...Daniela?”
“She was talking shit about me, probably about the way I handled taking the twins home earlier,” Beth says, and realizes that tears are unjustly pricking at her. She blinks excessively. It doesn’t really matter what a stranger thinks of her.
“Hey,” Jordan murmurs, touching her palm to stroke it with a few fingers.
It should soothe away the warm wetness lingering around her eyes immediately, but the care it evokes makes Beth tear up even more. Her sister is perhaps the most generous person on the earth.
“She’s probably just having a bad night,” Jordan offers. “Or you’re so hot that she was disappointed and frustrated that you had to leave the party when Mandy was trying to introduce you.”
“I wish,” Beth laughs, but the distress is over now and she stands from where she was kneeling by Jordan’s spot on the floor.
“Go find some cute girl to make out with,” Jordan says, pointedly loudly, and drawing the attention of Fitz, who quickly looks away. “That one from your psych class that you fucked is here, I totally saw her.”
“Are you serious?”
“Please,” Jordan wheedles. “They asked for both of us to come.”
It’s been only three days since the initial party and the Twins Crashing Our College Party Fiasco of 2019. “I am not going to your little boyfriend’s frat party.”
“Don’t you want to see Fitz again?”
Beth bristles at even the mention. “No fucking way.”
“I know you think she’s hot. She can’t be that bad. And she always looks at you, even though she won’t talk to you.”
“Looks at me because she’s judging the hell out of me.”
“I told you, Beth, too often you assume what other people are thinking. It isn’t fair to how much people love you.”
Beth flushes and waves her off, but Jordan’s validation is the only that she really values, though she won’t let it on.
“So you’re gonna go tonight?” Char, Beth’s best friend and former dormitory roommate, asks, looking down to shake the dregs of her energy drink with the ice at the bottom of the cup.
“I guess so,” Beth says glumly. “She really likes this guy. Which I think is awesome, because she doesn’t let herself get distracted from sports enough to like someone, usually.”
“Does he express it back?”
“I think so. He asked her, anyway. She’s too shy to initiate a more intimate hangout yet.”
Char snorts out a laugh. “She’s not gonna keep his interest doing that.”
Jordan comes into Beth’s bedroom, stripping off her smelly racing jersey and tossing it into Beth’s hamper -- to some good-humored protest. “Who are you talking about?”
“You,” Char says, grinning and patting Beth’s comforter beside them. “Come tell me about your boy.”
“Why don’t you ask Beth instead about her new nemesis?” Jordan deflects expertly, and Char goggles at Beth with her mouth comically wide-open.
She feels much better with mango rum warming her stomach and her legs crossed over each other with fishnets under her denim shorts. Jordan is laughing beside her, a melodious sound, and Beth hums to herself and closes her eyes for a moment.
“Are you falling asleep?” a feminine voice asks.
“No,” she responds upon opening her eyes, “just happy to be chilling with my sister.”
Fitz studies her face for sincerity, and seems to find something that satisfies her.
Reese, the computer science major and one of the ringleaders of Chase’s floor in the frat, nudges her warmly. “Hey, I’m bored, talk to me about programming.”
Beth heaves an exaggerated groan. “You know that I only do Excel and Matlab.”
“Yeah, but you understand when I say ‘vector.’ So let me tell you about the image-recognition program I made in Python.”
“Fine. Go.”
He begins to regale her on his code that can differentiate between leaf shapes--he was commissioned by the botany department--and Beth tries her best to understand, nod, and ask questions when she can comprehend enough to do so.
She feels Fitz’s gaze occasionally bore into her, and when she does, she grips her own forearm for comfort and tries to keep the tremors at bay.
“Oh, my God,” Jordan groans in the bathroom. “I have the spins.”
“Did you not wanna pace yourself when you’re with someone you like?” Beth teases, holding her sister’s hair back regardless. It’s in vain--there’s no vomiting, but Jordan leans over the bathtub anyway.
“He thinks it’s funny when I do shots!”
Beth’s silence is equivalent to giving Jordan a look of warning.
“Not like that. He said I should stop whenever I reached my limit. It just didn’t hit until now.”
Beth relaxes and rubs her back comfortingly. “They said we could stay tonight. Which might be a good idea. I don’t really feel like walking home at this point. But only if you’re comfortable with that.”
Jordan’s answering smile is mischievous.
“You’re staying in Fitz’s honorary room with her. She just has one of the empty ones, no roommates so she can lock the door on all the guys.” Reese adds a wink.
“Perfect,” Beth grumbles, but her vision is swimming so she’s past caring.
Fitz’s perfect hips sway in front of her as they walk down a well-lit corridor and she comes to an unmarked room. Beth’s eyes were, ashamedly, glued to her ass all the way down the hallway and she almost careens into the other girl when they come to a stop. Fitz raises an eyebrow at her, but thankfully seems lost as to the reason.
There’s one futon when they enter, to which Beth internally groans. Some of Fitz’s things from the night are strewn around the room--a small backpack, an oversized flannel over the desk chair, a half-finished Corona, an iPhone charger.
Fitz settles onto the fold-out, shaking out what appears to be a sinfully soft blanket. She looks up at Beth questioningly when she doesn’t follow.
“Waiting for an invitation?” Fitz asks.
“Kind of, yeah,” Beth mutters, but slides in beside her. “Do you live here all the time?”
“God, no. Too much testosterone and sweat. And I’m not really allowed all the time. I live in the Chester Townhouses.”
Their arms touch, and Beth isn’t sure if it’s from her alcohol buzz or something else, but her skin smarts at the contact. She hardly has time to murmur an apology or wonder if Fitz feels it, too, before the answer is given to her.
It’s seemingly slow when Fitz props herself up on one elbow and drapes her other arm over Beth’s torso to lean down and connect their lips. If their arms touched with vibrations, their union here has infinitely more of that feeling. In fact, Beth’s mouth feels simultaneously numb and in flames as they connect.
They withdraw audibly, then return, and Fitz licks into her mouth subtly and Beth is hardly aware of her calf coming up to wrap around Fitz’s thigh.
Then, almost abruptly, Fitz stops, pulls away, and turns over onto her side to face the wall. She doesn’t relinquish all contact, keeping her back brushing against Beth’s rib cage, so the shame doesn’t burn Beth to her very core. But the confusion and hurt are still there.
She’s drunk enough to be able to fall asleep an hour afterward, staring up at the ceiling in bewilderment.
And in the morning, she’s too hungover and desperate to find Jordan that she numbs out to the manner in which Fitz evades eye contact and slips out of the room.
“Did you guys…?”
Jordan shakes her head with a smile. “But we kissed all night . Like, we didn’t sleep until three-thirty.”
“Wow,” Beth says with a hollow sort of amazement. Part of her is envious, but her sister is so enthusiastic that it’s contagious.
“How was sleeping with the ice queen? Did you guys rage-fuck?”
Beth shakes her head no, but opens her mouth with the intent to say something.
“ Did you?”
“No--it doesn’t matter.”
Jordan looks at her dubiously, but doesn’t push, just adjusts her purse to a more comfortable position on her shoulder.
Beth sends Mandy to chaperone at the frat parties from now on, instructing her younger sister very firmly to ensure that Jordan is being respected. Mandy’s eyes balloon and she nods soberly.
“I don’t know what happened last time,” Jordan says to Beth, “but I miss you being there.”
Reliably, at many of them, she has to arrive in time to drag the meddling twins off the fraternity lawn. They’ve learned that the parties occur like clockwork on weekends, and that the boys can’t distinguish between them and freshmen-–“They just look so fucking young nowadays!”
Sometimes it’s just in time, too, to take Mandy back to her dormitory, as she’s too far-gone and exhausted to walk there alone.
Two Saturdays after the last party she attended, she’s waiting in the doorway for Reese to drag her young sisters out to the driveway, and Fitz materializes in the foyer, leaning against the wall some feet away from Beth, watching her twiddle her keys.
“Do they live with you?” Fitz asks quietly.
“No, our mom lives really close, though. We moved into town in high school and there happens to be a good state college here.”
Fitz hums noncommittally.
Beth angles her head away angrily, hoping Reese will hurry up.
“You haven’t been coming here anymore.”
“Oh, now you want me to come?” Beth says semi-calmly. She didn’t even intend the double meaning, but it’s not lost on the two of them. Fitz’s eyebrows shoot up.
The twins emerge into the foyer, foiled again.
“Come on, troublemakers. Back to popsicle stick arts-and-crafts for you for the next two years. You’ll be here in due time,” Beth sighs, ushering them by the shoulders. She shoots Reese a grateful look, and doesn’t pay Fitz a passing glance.
Beth commits to the next one upon Jordan’s pleading, if only to save Mandy’s liver for one weekend.
(She doesn’t admit that it’s also partially because of Fitz’s previous quiet, plaintive sentence.)
But when she arrives, she avoids Fitz at all costs, to the point where when an unfamiliar male presence attempts to invade her space, she smiles tightly and welcomes it. In her peripheral, she sees an approaching Fitz hesitate and settle into a seat beside Chase instead.
His name is Wade, and he explains that he’s from another frat, Sigma-Alpha-Epsilon. He tries to engage her in conversation, somewhat flirtatiously, and she explains politely that she actually doesn’t do men or anything associated with them. He notices one of her fleeting glances across the room and turns to mirror her.
“Oh, you know Dannika?”
“Uh, in passing.” This is the first time that Beth has heard someone refer to Fitz by her first name.
He chuckles, almost pained. “Lucky for you,” he says with irony in his tone.
“Not a good experience for you?” she asks, interest piqued.
“We grew up family friends, actually. She was a major bitch all her life, even from eight years old. A bit of a bully. Made my little sister cry a lot. And a huge druggie when she got older, maybe her sophomore year of high school.”
“Oh. That seems to track.”
“Yeah,” he scoffs. “You want to smoke?”
Beth looks up at the exact moment that Fitz is casting eyes towards her, and she holds contact challengingly for a moment, before standing. “Yeah, sure.”
Beth wakes to Jordan crawling into her bed at eight-thirty on Wednesday, sniffling.
“Wha’s wrong?” she mumbles, turning to throw her arms around her sister’s neck.
“I asked him if we were gonna go on an actual date, like, two days ago. He just responded at two this morning, idk . Nothing else.”
“What the fuck?” Beth snaps, suddenly awake.
“Just hold me,” Jordan whispers. “Go back to sleep.”
Their apartment is filled with melancholy. Where spaces once filled with Jordan’s laugh, Jordan’s smile, Jordan’s aura in general, there is silence for over two weeks.
She glumly pads, socked, into the kitchen, looking aimlessly at the cabinets. Beth has been trying to feed her, but knows the sick-to-your-stomach sensation of heartache.
“Can you ask him--?” Beth begins.
Jordan simply shakes her head. Without words, she tells Beth, Something’s just changed.
Beth doesn’t expect that a lot of people remember from parties that she’s a lower-level math tutor. Nothing so intense as linear algebra--she’s lost spatially in that respect. Never mind Eigenvectors.
Her office hours are in the evening, and they’re almost up--she peers at the clock to see that in twenty minutes, she’ll be home free. No more word problems for the week.
Fitz strides in. “Hear me out.”
Beth sits up suddenly at the intrusion, calculating from which conversation Fitz might’ve remembered where she works.
It’s been two weeks since she’s seen the other girl, but she looks...good. Like, tantalizingly, mouthwateringly good. Dark hair framing high cheekbones that always seem to be taut in a severe expression. Ringed fingers that elegantly end in black nail polish. Plump, pouty lips. She opens her mouth to speak.
“I really fuckin’ like you. Okay? I wouldn’t even mind dealing with your crazy mom, or your weird little sisters, if I could just kiss you every day.”
“ Excuse me?” Her heart drops into her stomach at kiss you every day , but a thin veneer of rage clouds every emotion.
“Oh, come on, Beth, you know what I mean. Your mom tracking you? That’s fucking insane. And Mandy getting fucking wasted and talking to strangers. And the twins trying to crash all our parties and talk to the guys.”
“I’m super fucking flattered at your confession, and a little confused because you kissed me and then ignored me, but let’s just address how you’re insulting my family right now.
Mandy’s a freshman, it’s her job to be getting wasted for the first time. Lily’s a little wild, maybe, because she’s experiencing feelings and hormones for the first time, but she’s a good kid and she loves her little sister. Kat doesn’t know what to do with herself, so she just follows along. And my mom--I can’t explain that shit. She completely has no boundaries, but she loves us and wants us to be happy. It probably has to do with my dad leaving when we were so young.
And if we’re going to talk about fucked-up, why don’t we talk about how your family friend Wade tells me that when you were younger, you were high and a bully most of the time? No wonder you can’t deal with your fucking issues when you like someone. You’d prefer to just check out emotionally and make them feel like shit. So, yeah, sorry if I’m not that receptive to you at the moment.
And finally, I don’t know if you know how much I love my sister, but it’s a fuck-ton. And she was really, really into your best friend. And for some reason, I can’t get it out of my head that you somehow talked him out of getting into something more serious with her. So it’s a no from me. Get the fuck out of my office.”
She’s not sure if she wanted Fitz to put up a fight, but she doesn’t. Quietly, softly, Fitz turns out the door from which she entered.
Beth squints at her phone screen lighting at three in the morning. Understandably, she can’t sleep for all the thinking.
It’s an unknown number, and her stomach sinks when she opens it to view a long block of a message, separated into segments by empty space.
Hey, it’s Dannika Fitz Darcy, Mandy actually gave me your number the night we first met.
I just wanted to explain a few things, in case it would help you hate me a little less, but I understand if you do--
About the family stuff. I totally was out of line. But Chase has a super controlling home life and had been saying for a long time that he wanted to get out of that kind of situation. And also was often in charge of raising his younger siblings, rather than living his own life and being young. There’s nothing wrong with kids who come from families like that--in fact, they’re often even stronger and more sensitive people, a bunch of us were just wondering if maybe it would be a triggering situation for Chase to be around.
And about what Wade told you about me--it’s true that I had a pot phase in high school, and I was even moodier back then than I can be now. But he has a personal vendetta against me. When he was 17 and I was 15, he tried to get me alone at Thanksgiving and come onto me in a sort of aggressive and sexual way. I gave him a black eye, and our parents got into a big argument over it. That’s why we aren’t family friends anymore. What he says about me is coming from a hugely biased perspective, and I think he’s a creep and would do it again in a heartbeat because he likes power.
Anyway, that’s all I had to say. I hope you have a good night
Immediately, she’s filled with guilt at Chase’s family background and how it meshes seamlessly with their own--it would put him in an uncomfortable headspace at times.
And Wade’s near-abuse of Fitz--it makes Beth furious. Seething. And ashamed at her easy, gullible nature, eager to believe anyone who will confirm her preconceived notions.
She can’t even think of anything to respond. Understandably, her eyelids are too heavy to focus in her eight-a.m. class the next day, for her lack of sleep the night prior.
“Okay, now you’re acting weird,” Jordan says, stroking Beth’s hair now as the moon glimpses their curled forms through the window.
“What do you mean?” Beth asks softly.
“You’re acting like you did when you turned Jeremy Kiddle down for prom. You felt so fucking bad. What happened?”
It’s suddenly hot where the blanket is spaghetti-forked around Beth’s legs and she feels stifling heat creep up her spine. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“You don’t have to take care of everyone, you know. I’m fine. I’m happy just getting to lie beside you. And I can handle your problems just as well as you can listen to mine.”
Beth hesitates. “I know. I just feel like...if I say them, it will make them more real.”
“Your problems are real, no matter what. They won’t go away if you carry them around inside.” Jordan’s breathing is beginning to slow, and her words beginning to get more muffled.
But I can try , Beth thinks as Jordan dozes off.
“Come on,” Char coaxes.
“I...know someone who lives in those, and I don’t want to risk it.”
“Your nemesis-slash-admirer?” Char edges, examining her nails with a smirk.
“Stop,” Beth sighs. “Yeah, she lives in those townhouses and I will be wrecked if I see her.”
“Don’t you kind of love the risk, though?” her best friend goads. “Plus, out of what, sixty different complexes there, you think we’re going to hers? We pop in, drink some booze, and then run out. I swear.”
And that’s how Beth ends up made-up, hair curled outside of Fitz’s neighborhood, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. They approach the complex that’s vibrating with bass, and enter. A drunken girl greets them with glee, like an old friend. Amused, they hug her back, and try to help her up the stairs.
A beer pong table takes up almost the entirety of the kitchenette, and the two visible players on the end look resigned already, lining their cups up to form the “stoplight” configuration. A crowd of drunken onlookers slaps them on the back sympathetically, and those who don’t dance in a static manner, too entrenched in their intoxication.
Beth and Char edge farther into the kitchen, to peer at the counters for half-empty liquor bottles.
Beth stops in her tracks to see a ping pong ball sail through the air from the elegant flick of a wrist none other than D.F. Darcy’s. Her eyebrows screw up with concentration, eyelashes perfectly groomed to frame green pupils in charcoal.
Her partner is Chase, in a tight white t-shirt and his hair mussed in its signature style. He looks entertained...but otherwise, almost...miserable. His grin at the game doesn’t reach his eyes, and seems to recognize its pointlessness in the grand scheme of things.
Fitz looks up to see who the newcomers might be.
Her surprise is unparalleled. Her mouth opens as if to say something.
Beth turns around and darts out of the townhouse.
Beth, on the brink of a panic attack, leans over to clutch her knees on the sidewalk.
It’s not long before there’s a presence at her shoulder. A hand smooths alongside her spine and she shivers. The hand hesitates at the feel of the shudder, almost draws away, until she relaxes and takes a few deeper breaths.
“I’m surprised to see you,” the voice says, high with the enormity of its tenderness, and soft.
“Yeah, me, too,” Beth chuckles without humor.
There’s a lull, where Fitz allows her to simply be and breathe in the frosty night air. She rounds Beth’s side so that her delicate forearms and hands and legs fall into Beth’s point of view. “I’m surprised every time I see your freckles,” she murmurs.
Beth pauses, suddenly wishing her hair was falling into her face to contain her blush. “Because you’ve never seen a half-black, half-Irish person before me and my sisters,” she quips.
“Maybe,” Fitz admits. “But I’ve seen a lot of freckles in my life, and I like yours the most.”
Beth isn’t sure how to respond, so she’s thankful to have her phone ping in that moment.
Beth, I did something really stupid , Kat texts individually. “Fuck,” she curses, and doesn’t even mind that Fitz moves to peer at the screen with her.
What’s wrong?
You’re going to hate me.
I can’t hate you. Please tell me though
Beth is wildly going through thousands of different scenarios in her head.
I sent my nudes to someone I shouldn’t have
Fuck. Are they trying to blackmail or pressure you?
Yeah…
Who was it?
I don’t know
Yes, you do. One of the college guys?
…
I need a name.
Beth’s heart nearly stops when she reads Kat’s final text.
“I don’t know what to do,” Beth cries to Jordan. “I feel responsible.”
“You’re in no way responsible,” Jordan assures her. “None of us are.”
“But I knew what kind of person Wade was,” she says defeatedly, “and I didn’t share that information.”
Jordan looks alarmed. “Why, did he do something to you?”
“No--but he almost did something to Fitz. When they were younger.”
No words pass between them, but Jordan seems to understand the magnitude of her regard for Fitz that has grown in the past month.
A knock sounds at the door of their apartment. Expecting Mandy to have come over for crisis reduction, Jordan rushes to answer it.
Chase Bingley stands there, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. He wears a blue short-sleeved button-up, tan shorts, and boat shoes--the most they’ve ever seen him dressed up. Beth lingers in the background.
Jordan invites him in, curtly.
“I just wanted to say that the situation has been taken care of. With Kat. And there’s a movement to get Wade removed from Greek life.”
Relief settles in the lines of Jordan’s face--it’s plain to see. “Thank you so much.”
“And,” he hesitates, looking between Jordan and Beth, and finally deciding that anything he has to say should be said in front of both of them as proof of any sort of commitment, considering the bond between the two. “I want to say I’m sorry. That I was so avoidant when things were naturally progressing to get serious. I got really scared because I didn’t have the best home life growing up, and I didn’t want it to affect anyone else. It’s okay if you don’t forgive me right away or never do. But I would love to take you out tonight, if you’d still--”
He’s cut off by Jordan’s lips, and he melts into her, even with his stature so broad and tall. She had nearly leapt to kiss him, but now he bends down to meet her, and Beth can see clearly that they are equals, individuals in their own respects, but a sight to behold when together.
She turns away to give them space, when she finds a notification on her phone. She puts on her shoes and gathers herself to go outside.
“I just want to say thank you for what you did. I really don’t know how you got a handle on the situation.”
“No worries. I kind of just reminded him that it’s a felony to have them, threatened him along with all the other frat guys to beat the shit out of him again, and forcibly took his phone to erase them.”
They’re walking along a half-lit street, and both cross over to the side with street lamps. “Well, no matter what, like I just want to say thank you on behalf of my family. That could’ve been a huge shitstorm and put my sister’s future in jeopardy.”
They stop there, and Fitz looks soberly up at her after toeing a piece of moss. “I’d love to be noble and say you’re welcome to your family, but I honestly didn’t do it for them. It was all for you. You have to know that by now.”
Beth feels real heat creep into her cheeks, almost feverish. She wasn’t even previously sure that was something that happened in real life, only in books.
Fitz hesitates before going on, seeming to choose words meticulously. “I know the first time I told you, I was such a fucking dick, and I didn’t even make sure you felt the same way, I kind of just pushed the feelings onto you. Say you’re uncomfortable or you just want to be friends or you never want to see me again, and I’ll shut up forever. But I just wanted you to know that I still feel the same way, and I can’t stop thinking about you.
Not even just anything physical--I mean, you’re gorgeous--but who you are when you talk with us at parties. How you can be so academic and so fun at the same time, what I also strive for. How you sit like a lady and sip your drinks, and then turn around and cuss up a storm. How you let Reese drone on, and you’re so kind and interested in what he has to say. How much you love your sisters.”
“I was so mean in what I said before, when you came to my office hours, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it,” Beth confesses. “How I believed everything Wade said. I’m so sorry. I just...was so convinced that you hated me this whole time, and I wanted to hate you back.”
“I’ve never been so vulnerable as to let myself care for and respect someone this much. You were right in that I used to want to feel numb instead of deal with my feelings as they came. But,” Fitz rolls the words on her tongue, and Beth nearly sees them approaching as the other girl entertains a self-satisfied smile, “I want to address my feelings as they come, and I want to make you come.”
Beth catches herself in a stupid grin and tries to level it. “No more kissing me and then rolling over to go to sleep?”
“Maybe I wanted you to spoon me.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t make your wants very clear.”
“I can do better?”
“I’d like that.”
“I told Chase I’d go take a shot with them,” Beth pants, with lips coasting along her neck.
“Oh, sweet girl, I love when you get along with my best friend.”
The hand working in her jeans doesn’t let up, though, rubbing relentless circles against that spot in her panties.
“ Please let me make you come, first,” Fitz pleads, and by way of consent, Beth moves the hand into her underwear, eliciting a dark, satisfied chuckle.
The first brushes over her clit are already done with ease, as she’s so turned on by her girlfriend’s enthusiasm. Fitz rubs quick, light circles, middle finger parting the folds there.
Beth makes a whining sort of moan.
“What do you want?” Fitz mutters into her ear, from her position seated behind Beth.
“Fuck me,” Beth whispers, so past embarrassment at this point.
Fitz kisses her to swallow the keening sound Beth makes when her fingers are as far inside as possible. It only takes a few pumps -- going at a pattern of shallow, shallow, deepandhard -- with the help of the thumb of her other hand swiping wetness up to Beth’s clit.
“Oh, my God,” Beth sighs as she returns to her body. “You’re so bad. And so, so good.”
“Let’s go pretend like no one knows what we were doing up here. And as if we don’t smell like sex.”
Beth softens her lips with a kiss for good measure. “I love you, Dannika Fitz Darcy.”
Fitz wrinkles her nose, but secretly loves the attention of her birth name. “I love you, Elizabeth Bennet.”