They listened to the encore from the parking lot. Daisy looked at the moon hanging over the stadium and the stars dimmed by too much city light. Four sets of shoes were propped close together as the group leaned against the Jeep’s back bumper: Aiden’s combat boots, Shannon’s dark brown Vans, Daisy’s shiny pleather platform boots, and Chelsea’s glittery pointed flats. She didn’t look at Chelsea, because if she did, this moment, this piece of the night, this raw, elastic, odd magic might come to an end.
But she felt Chelsea looking at her. Somehow the magic stitching together a broken, perfect night like this one gave her the courage to lift Chelsea’s knuckles to her mouth and hold them there until the last song ended.
11
Chelsea listened to Daisy tiptoe around the kitchen. Mugs clattered; bare feet padded on the tile. She leaned against the wall that divided the tiny kitchen from the living room and split her attention between the old program on TV and the boys sleeping on the couch.
Aiden was stretched over Shannon’s stomach with his cheek pressed against Shannon’s chest and his toes tucked between the armrest and the couch cushion. Shannon, face turned away from the television screen, palmed the nape of Aiden’s neck. They’d been asleep for a while—an hour at least—and neither of them had squirmed or moved.
“Does this happen a lot?” Chelsea whispered. She took the mug of steaming green tea from Daisy and gestured at the couch with her chin. “Should we wake them up and send them to bed?”
One side of Daisy’s mouth lifted. “Not a lot, but it happens.” She shook her head and walked toward the balcony, waving for Chelsea to follow. They crept outside, being as silent as they could, and shut the sliding glass door behind them. “Do you know about Aiden’s sleep problems?”
Chelsea shook her head. “Shannon’s told me a little, but not much.”
Daisy leaned against the balcony wall. Her boots were gone, along with her necklaces and makeup, unveiling her pale lips and small stature. She took a sip of her tea and winced, mouthed the word hot. “Depression is different for everyone. Aiden’s… It’s gotten better, way better.” She stopped to attempt another sip. “But it always does. Every summer he gets better, he sleeps more, he doesn’t drink as much, he seems generally happier, but that’s because April is over with. Then it comes again, and he gets worse again and…”
Daisy turned to look over the balcony. “Anyway, when he does sleep I like to let him get as much rest as he can. I just sleep in his bed when they do this.”
“Did you two stay close when you went to college?”
“No,” Daisy said quickly. “I did my thing; he did his. We talked sometimes, but I never visited or anything. I needed a break.”
“It sounds like you deserved one,” Chelsea said.
“I just assumed, you know? I thought he’d get better. I didn’t realize…” Daisy rubbed the top of her arm, lifting a fallen spaghetti strap over her shoulder. “Did you and Shannon stay close?”
“I would like to say yes,” Chelsea said through a sigh, “but no, we didn’t. I watched his life go by on Facebook, never had the courage to reach out unless he was comin’ to Milford for a holiday. Even then I did my best to keep it quick and sweet, or I did the opposite and embarrassed myself. You never look beyond what you want, and all I thought I wanted was him.”
“You still love him a lot, don’t you?”
“I do. You still love Aiden.”
“It’s different.”
“Not anymore,” Chelsea said. Her attempt at sounding serious came out rasped and deep. She trailed her fingers over the back of a wicker chair and stepped next to Daisy. The moon was somewhere behind the night sky, shining its light on another part of Laguna. On this side, on this beach, darkness melted into darkness where horizon met water. Daisy’s light skin was a blinding contrast against the rest of the world. “I haven’t been in love with Shannon for a very long time, Miss Daisy. It just took me equally as long to realize it.”
“I was never in love with Aiden,” Daisy said. A crisp gust sent pieces of Daisy’s bangs flying over her eyes. “Can I tell you a secret, Chelsea?”
Chelsea hummed.
“I still haven’t forgiven him,” Daisy said softly, her voice barely there in the still morning. Times like these were charged with certain electricity. Places and instances came to mind: the airport in the middle of the night, an abandoned parking lot, unfinished neighborhoods filled with empty houses, familiar surroundings mingling with unfamiliar circumstances. “I want to. I should. But I can’t.”
“What’s there to forgive?”
“Selfish things,” she mumbled. She finished her tea and pawed at one eye with the back of her hand. “You staying the night?”
“I don’t know. I should go, I guess. I have work, and…” Chelsea swallowed. She kept her fingers latched around the mug, making sure it didn’t slip from her grasp.
Daisy walked past her, one hand delicately trailing over the exposed skin on Chelsea’s stomach in a moment of index finger, thumb, knuckles, brushing over her hip bones—palm, wrist, petal-shadowed veins, pressing against her waist, pulling gently.
“Just come to bed.” Daisy sounded tired. She sounded annoyed. She sounded vexed.
They went inside, Daisy first, Chelsea second. They put their mugs in the sink, Daisy first, Chelsea second.
Daisy paused to pick up a blanket and draped it over the conjoined limbs occupying the couch. Chelsea glimpsed Aiden’s eye peek open, only to shut again when he saw it was Daisy hovering over them. His red, red knuckles clutched Shannon’s shirt. She clicked the TV off, shut the blinds in front of the sliding glass door, and walked down the hall.
Chelsea took one last look at the boys, listened to them breathe, checked the front door to make sure it was locked, and followed Daisy.
The clock read 2:06 a.m.
Aiden’s bed smelled like cloves and aftershave, vanilla and weed. Daisy smirked at Chelsea, who stood at the edge of the bed, twiddling her thumbs and scanning the sheets.
“He changes them every morning,” Daisy said through a quiet laugh.
“You sure? Those boys are gross. Trust me; I witnessed it first hand,” Chelsea mumbled, raking her gaze across every dip in the white comforter.
“Look in the closet.” Daisy pointed at the closet door, held open by an old pair of pale blue Vans. “Left side.”
Chelsea opened the door and looked. She made a pleased noise, having found the stacks upon stacks of white sheets that Aiden kept on hand. “I wouldn’t peg Aiden Maar as the overly tidy kind.”
“It’s a coping mechanism,” Daisy said. She turned over onto her back and gazed at the ceiling, looking for constellations in the ancient off-white paint. “I googled a bunch of stuff when we were in high school—ways to combat depression. A clean, safe space was one of the first things I found. Just changing his sheets, making sure his bed smelled new, giving him something fresh to hide in, made a difference.”
The light on the nightstand clicked off, and the mattress dipped under Chelsea’s weight.
“Sounds to me like you made a difference,” Chelsea said.
Daisy closed her eyes. “I had to.”
“Who made a difference for you, though?”
“Aiden did, believe it or not.” Daisy did not say he needed me more than I needed him. She did not say Marcus couldn’t do it alone. She did not say he showed me the monster I thought was my future. “What I’m about to tell you is private.”
Chelsea went impossibly quiet.
“I met Aiden through the guy I was dating, Vance. We were fourteen.”
Chelsea let out a breath. She looked over her shoulder. Blonde hair cascaded down her back.
“Vance and I stayed together for years—through all of it. Aiden’s parents dying. Everything falling apart. They were friends; we were all friends.” Daisy’s throat felt raw a
nd used. Her vocal chords quivered. “Two days before graduation I found Vance on top of Aiden at a party. Aiden wasn’t even… he was so fucked up, Chelsea. He was on so much shit. Vance wasn’t though, and he knew, he knew…” Her voice cracked. “… and he would’ve done it anyway if I hadn’t showed up.”
The sound of Chelsea licking her lips filled the room. Somewhere far away waves crashed. A fleeting whip of wind sent the blinds rattling against the window.
“I took Aiden home. I didn’t say goodbye to Vance or Jonathan, I just left. When Aiden woke up he had bruises on his…” She stopped to catch her breath. She hadn’t told this story to anyone. No one. Not Shannon. Not Marcus. This was the first time, a wound reopened with jagged claws. “On his neck and—”
“Daisy,” Chelsea whispered. Her sweet southern accent made Daisy’s name sound like a storybook character.
“Let me finish,” Daisy said, because now she had to. She took a deep breath to steady her voice. “He had bruises on his waist from Vance holding him down. When Aiden asked me what happened, I told him. He just sat there, not talking, wouldn’t look at me. I found out later, after he’d left, that he wasn’t upset at the fact that one of his closest friends almost…” The word was there on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say it. “… hurt him, he was upset that Vance cheated on me.” Again.
“Sounds like Aiden,” Chelsea said under her breath.
“He dislocated Vance’s shoulder, broke his nose, fractured his jaw,” Daisy whispered. A tear edged from her left eye, then her right. “He showed up at the beach with bloody knuckles, crying, asking me to forgive him.”
Now it was out in the open, the ugliness spilled everywhere for Chelsea to see.
“All that time I’d spent with Vance. All those years I wasted being sure it was us. Turns out he wanted my best friend the whole time.”
Chelsea scooted under the covers and pillowed her cheek atop her folded hands. Her gaze felt like needle pricks dancing across Daisy’s face. She turned to look and caught the slope of Chelsea’s nose through the darkness. The hard edge of her icy eyes patiently waited for Daisy to finish.
“Vance is a dick, but I can’t forgive Aiden for being wanted by him. We don’t talk about it. The other night…” Daisy’s voice gave out. She swallowed what she’d planned to say. The other night I fell apart. She gritted the words between her teeth, willing them to be present. “I’m a selfish friend. I stayed away for four years. I left him to deal with everything on his own. I justified it to myself by saying I needed to focus—self-care, distance, school, all the same bullshit from the same depression websites that taught me how to deal with him. College ended. I missed him so much and I got that internship with Blizzard and…”
Chelsea’s palm rested on Daisy’s cheek. “You needed to take care of yourself,” she said. “You still need to take care of yourself. Aiden went through something terrible, but you did too, and –”
“Are you ready for my second secret?” Daisy interrupted.
Chelsea’s expression softened. “Sure am, sugar.”
“Blizzard offered to pay for housing in Irvine. I lied and told Aiden I had nowhere to go, because I wanted to be friends again, real friends, and I didn’t know how to say that to him.”
Chelsea’s mouth squirmed as she tried to suppress a smile. “Well, he’s lucky to have you,” she said. Her thumb ran gently along the curve of Daisy’s cheekbone. “And sometimes we hurt the people we love the most, and we don’t know why we do it. It takes a resilient person to go through what you’ve gone through and come back, despite all that hurt. I could never do it.”
Sometimes Daisy was taken aback by Chelsea’s beauty; a subtle nuance, like honey or rum, built a flavor in the back of her throat. It didn’t strike all at one time. Chelsea’s beauty didn’t bite. It lingered in every quick flick of her lashes and parting of her lips, every breathy sigh and tentative touch.
Chelsea Cavanaugh was beautiful like autumn, Daisy decided. She left you wanting.
“Can I kiss you, Chelsea?”
“Yes,” Chelsea said, but she was already moving.
Daisy didn’t know if she’d leaned forward or if Chelsea had pulled her. The only thing she could do was clutch Chelsea’s slender wrists and part her lips for the taste of green tea and toothpaste and cinnamon ChapStick. This kiss sent Daisy stumbling along inside herself, grappling for purchase on any semblance of life before Chelsea.
She felt Chelsea’s palms, one on her cheek, the other on her throat, and her lips, softer than Daisy ever imagined them to be, and their teeth clicking when the kiss deepened—a revelation of secrets unmade, a monster unborn, a time in Daisy’s life that she’d never understood until now.
Daisy didn’t know she’d said anything until Chelsea whispered, “I won’t, honey, I won’t,” against her mouth.
That was when she heard herself say it again. “Please, don’t tell him I told you.”
Chelsea’s fingers pushed white hair off Daisy’s face. Warm breath ghosted over Daisy’s chin, urging Daisy to snake forward and snatch Chelsea’s lips in another kiss.
Everything felt too gentle, too slow, too soft. Daisy wanted to consume her. She wanted to sink her nails into Chelsea’s ribcage, claw out her heart, take a bite of it, and feel it beat in her palm.
“We’ve got time,” Chelsea said. A kiss against Daisy’s jaw. Another on her temple.
Daisy nodded, but she couldn’t help the guilt that spiked in her stomach. It crawled up her spine, climbed between her ribs, and whispered right against her heart: That was not your secret to tell.
12
Sleep peeled off Chelsea in lazy, slow waves. She felt the warmth first—heat from the sunlight shooting through the blinds, then the breath on her shoulder, warm and cool between inhales and exhales. She tried to wrap her head around the night before, around information and sensory overload.
Daisy had a past—a dormant, troubled, vicious thing—and as Chelsea thought back on the tears and the confession and the kiss, she thought of everything she’d ever heard come from Shannon’s mouth about Aiden Maar. How they’d landed themselves in such parallel situations left her hungry for answers.
What else happened? Who else happened? Is Daisy all right? Will we be all right?
And lastly the thought that’d been lingering for weeks spoke louder than it ever had.
These people are your future.
A soft sigh coaxed her to glance over, and she was given the chance to catch the exact moment Daisy opened her eyes. Her short, dark lashes twitched, she blinked, and her almost-black irises transformed from hazy to sharp in the bright morning light. Her lips parted, and she stilled, her breath halted, her gaze cemented on Chelsea’s face, her cheeks darkened. One hand was tucked by her chest; the other rested on Chelsea’s stomach. Instantly, Chelsea felt Daisy’s fingertips lift away from her skin.
“Mornin’,” Chelsea said. She cleared her throat, unsure if Daisy’s hesitation sprang from conflicted feelings or fear or both. “Did you sleep okay?”
Daisy’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. Her cheek hollowed, squirming under the weight of her teeth as she chewed on it. The white side of her hair fell over one ear, and the black side was smashed against the pillow, making her look as if she was being pulled in opposite directions. Chelsea wondered if she was.
“Yeah, I didn’t mean—I’m sorry,” she said through a sigh, yanking her hand from its place above Chelsea’s belly button. “I don’t know what’s okay and what’s not.”
She touched Daisy’s temple, pushing bangs off her brow. “What do you mean?”
“Last night,” Daisy started, her mouth opened and closed around unspoken thought. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, or tell you any of that to make you feel sorry for me, or for Aiden, or make you think that you needed to kiss me. It just happened that way, and—”
Chelsea covered Daisy’s mouth with her hand. “Has anybody ever told you, you ramble?”
Daisy nodded, and it became clear to Chelsea that Daisy wasn’t having conflicted feelings, she was afraid.
“I don’t think I like being your friend, Daisy,” she mumbled. Chelsea wasn’t used to the truth. She’d fed herself lies for too long to be at ease with something true, something easy, something this good. But here it was in front of her, and she wasn’t going to let Daisy squirm her way out of it.
Daisy’s face softened. “I should probably tell you something.”
Chelsea hummed, waiting.
“I’m… It’s not a big deal, but I’m demisexual.” She kissed Chelsea’s palm and leaned forward; her lips and teeth came down around knuckles and then wrist, thumb, and then index finger. She kissed Chelsea’s hand as if she was trying to tell her future; her mouth dragged lightly along the grooves of her palm, up the backside of her fingers, under her fingernails. “I won’t—I don’t. Shit, how do I say this?” Daisy murmured.
Chelsea wondered if Daisy might be a fortune teller, or a psychic, or a witch, because she was certain Daisy had done something to her—whipped up a potion, drew a sigil into her skin with the tips of her fingers, cast a spell in a wistful glance. For the first time in twenty-five years, Chelsea believed in magic. “I know what demisexual means, Daisy. I wasn’t born yesterday.” She would do anything to keep Daisy’s mouth against her heart line. “What’re you comfortable with?”
“This,” Daisy said softly. “Kissing you, knowing you, being close to you, finding out that you’re good at playing pool and that you eat onion rings with barbeque sauce. What’re you comfortable with?”
“First off, I’m in the bisexual club with Shannon.” Chelsea dropped her hand and was pleased at how quickly Daisy moved to chase it. “And I’d like to kiss you and know you and be close to you, too.”
The sun coming through the blinds made the room uncomfortably hot. Even with the ceiling fan turning and turning above them, the bedroom felt thick and fevered. Her shirt was pushed up, exposing the soft skin on her belly and the very top of her underwear beneath the waist band of a pair of Shannon’s sweats. She watched Daisy watching her, tracked the movement of her eyes as they trickled past Chelsea’s throat, to her abdomen, her waistline.
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