trinity didn’t understand why she was so upset about the confessional, she didn’t understand why mr. grover going away was a bad thing. trinity was just trying to protect them.

“because i love him! and he loves me! and now they’re going to send him somewhere else because of what you told them!” marisol yelled at her, red faced, angry in a way that she had never been at trinity before. “just because you have a stupid crush on me, doesn’t mean that i don’t get to love someone else.”

trinity stuttered and blushed and denied it, “he’s our coach, he shouldn’t be doing–”

“shut up! shut up!” marisol screamed, all the fifteen year old rage built up inside of her. “you don’t know anything about what he and i–”

“well he’s doing it to me too!” trinity yelled back before she could stop the words coming from her mouth. marisol’s jaw dropped slightly, those wide eyes that always had been trinity’s downfall made her open her mouth and spill her guts. “does that mean he loves me too? huh?”

“no, no,” marisol started, but trinity is just as angry.

maybe more so.

“what, he tells you he loves you, that you’re his favorite?” marisol is shaking her head and the tears are coming out of her eyes faster now, but trinity can’t stop. she’s always needed to twist the knife. “does he say that you’re just so mature and how keeping it a secret makes it special? that you’re his special girl?”

marisol almost choked on the words, looking like trinity had hit her. trinity hated herself for making marisol look that way. she hated herself for trying to protect them both, she hated the priest for transferring mr. grover instead of handing him to the police like trinity thought he would.

“you’re not special,” marisol had bit back, shaking with either anger or what trinity would later think might have been grief. trinity’s chest hurt so badly she thought maybe she would just keel over, but instead she just lashed back out.

“you’re not special, either marisol. he’s just a fucking creep.” trinity let out a huff from her nose before turning around and grabbing her jacket before stomping towards the front door and slamming it behind her.

the two days before she got a text from marisol felt like the longest two days of her life.

when she saw her name pop up, marisol♥️, trinity thought finally it’s over.

and it had been, just not in the way that trinity ever foresaw.

trinity stood over marisol’s casket and her eyes were closed. her eyes were closed and her hair was straight and trinity would never see her best friend, her first love again. there wasn’t even a note, so she’d never get to hear from her either. the last words they spoke to each other, you’re not special.

she started to plead before she even realized the words were coming out of her mouth, “please, please, please come back. i’m sorry, i’m so sorry.” her apologies kept coming as her brother had to drag her away from the casket and away from marisol’s grieving parents.

she never told anyone about what they said to each other in that last fight. she never told marisol’s parents that she wasn’t sure if they were even friends when marisol died. instead she just let them hug her each time they saw her, like she was the last link to their dead daughter.

it was during one of those hugs that trinity knew she had to get out of that town.

who was she without marisol?

sad. angry. a little pathetic.

her college years blurred by. she drank and did some of the drugs that were passed around at the parties she went to. she hooked up with a girl for the first time and went home and sobbed, thinking about how she had always thought it would marisol.

she gets through medical school with her head down. she’s already had her best friend, her other half, so why even bother trying. except she does. in offhanded ways that don’t make her friends. she’ll tease and poke before retreating into herself. give a nickname, almost become friends and then ghost them before they could get close enough to hurt her.

(she’s so desperate to not be alone. she’s so lonely that its started to cut into pieces of herself. she gets an apartment with two bedrooms, just in case.)

there was a never ending pit inside of herself that marisol had left. she had been part of a duo.

it was never supposed to be just her.

she never goes to confessional again. she never hands a man the truth and waits for them to do the right thing with it, because she knows they won’t.

she knows the line, she's spent almost a decade learning exactly where it is. she had crossed it once, being sixteen and certain she was protecting the person she loved most, and that was the reason there was a beautiful, vibrant girl who never got to turn sixteen at all.

——————-—

trinity should see the irony of her choices in women. she had thought, at the funeral, that she would never want to see curly hair or deep, brown eyes again. she thought marisol had ruined them for her.

then she met yolanda.

her eyes were darker than marisol’s, not open and inviting. they were sharp and intense in a way that trinity wanted them on her. she wanted yolanda to watch her and take her apart. it’s only when she lets down her hair the first time they meet up for a drink at the bar that trinity blinks hard enough to get the tears to leave her eyes. it’s not the first, or twelfth, time she’s slept with someone with curls like marisol’s, but trinity lets herself find comfort in the feeling of them under her fingers as she weaves her hands through Yolanda’s hair.

baran came after. a slower approach, because trinity had her defenses up and chose a side firmly when she had come, because robby was there. robby had believed her. she had handed her trust to a man and hoped he would see that she was telling the truth and he did.

maybe he didn’t do everything the right way, she thought looking back, once she had discussions with baran about it. maybe he had been like the priest, as well.

baran was beautiful, with curly hair and eyes that trinity had to actively stop herself from staring into, because they're the kind of deep brown that used to only exist in one specific memory, in one backyard, under one sky full of constellations trinity could no longer remember the names to. she thought, not for the first time, that the universe has an unfunny sense of humor.

she let them in slowly, she’s been less lonely since she opened her bedroom to whitaker (that’s another reckoning she has to figure out, how a man who had none of marisol’s qualities had snuck into her life, well she supposed he did have her kindness), but there’s still the pit inside of her that just consumed all the happy parts of her life.

except, the pit doesn’t feel so deep when she’s around them. it doesn’t feel so overwhelming, when baran’s hands are carding through her hair while she lays her head on her lap or when yolanda walks with her hand-in-hand down the street.

the pit kept filling as the time went on and it caused trinity to start to get nervous. if the pit disappears, where does marisol go in her heart? if she hadn’t left the cavernous pit in her chest, then would trinity even remember her?

baran was the one to call her out on it, she asked one night after they had watched a movie that reminded her of marisol, “what’s wrong, azizam?” as yolanda turns on the couch to face her.

trinity hasn’t even said marisol’s name outloud in years, so when she does, she’s not surprised that a sob comes with it.

yolanda was faster than baran and pulled her into her lap, trinity’s face pressed securely in her neck, her curls tickling her neck with every breath.

she stayed there for another minute, with baran’s warm hand rubbing circles on her back before the confession came from her lips. it spilled out of her. how she met marisol on the back of the bus and they were inseparable since, how they went to the same catholic school. how everything one of them did, the other did as well. she told them about how she had a best friend that had been hers and she never ever considered what it would be like for her to be gone until it happened.

trinity told them how marisol would call her every night even when they would run out of minutes on their cell phones and have to switch to the landlines. she could see the hesitation in their smiles as she talked and knew she had to tell them how it ended.

she told them that she died when she was fifteen and tells them the part she’d never told anyone else before. her voice shook only a little bit, when the anger rose in her chest at herself for letting it happen at all.

"i told a priest what he was doing. i thought, i don't know what i thought. i thought someone would finally do the right thing. instead they just moved him somewhere else, and she found out it was me who said something, and she was so angry.”

it was harder to talk about this part for some reason. harder to tell them that trinity had been hurt and didn’t understand. harder to tell them that they had spit at each other about not being special, about how that was the last thing they ever said to each other.

“there wasn’t even a note,” trinity’s voice broke, she knows she sounds young, but she can’t help herself, it’s another one of the most unfair portions of her life. “she didn’t even leave a note, so i don’t know if it was him or if it was me–”

“no, it wasn’t you,” yolanda’s voice interrupted her, her arm was secured low against Trinity’s back and she pulled her even closer at the words.

“you were sixteen, trying to do the right thing.”

trinity shook her head. “i knew what he was doing was wrong, even if she couldn’t understand it. i let her think i hated her.”

“you were hurt and sixteen,” yolanda said like that made it better. she twisted until she was out of yolanda’s arms and back in between them on the couch. she needed them to understand the enormity of it, to see the scarlet letter that should be pinned across her chest.

Trinity stared down at her lap. “she died because i made her see what he was doing.”

“no,” Yolanda said.

“you don’t know that.”

“no, i do not know what was in her mind that night.” Yolanda waited until Trinity reluctantly looked at her. “neither do you.”

trinity would never know, it would be another mystery that sat unanswered. why marisol had taken her life instead of reaching out to trinity? trinity was mad, but she would have picked up. she always would have picked up.

“what if i forget her?” her voice was broken as she looked back and forth from yolanda to baran, over and over again. “what if i’m happy and i forget her?”

neither of them say anything for a moment and trinity could feel them sharing a gaze around her back.

“tell us about her then,” it’s baran who spoke, pulling her hand from where it was stuck behind trinity’s back when she pulled away from yolanda and grabbing trinity’s hand with it. “whenever you feel like being happy would make it so that you forget about her, tell us something. share it with us, let us help you.”

trinity looked at both of them, yolanda with a look on her face that trinity knew was devotion and the willingness of baran to share the hurt with her.

trinity could not bring her back.

she could not change the last words they had spoken or force the adults who failed them to get justice. she could not know what marisol had been thinking when she decided that it was enough.

but she could tell them about her and let her memory help sooth the fear of forgetting her.

and with each memory that she shared, each time that she’s brave enough to say her name outloud, trinity begins to remember the parts of marisol that she had loved, instead of the last moments of two hurt teenage girls who weren’t able to say the right words.

she could think about how marisol was a dirty cheater at every single game they would play, she could think about her yelling at the man selling ice cream when he didn’t give them back the right change when they were eight and that was the most important thing.

she also started to realize that maybe her heart had room in it and she wasn’t going to forget her by having the pit filled in with love.

it wasn’t about replacing marisol, or building love out of spare parts of a girl who's been dead for over a decade. yolanda's curls weren’t marisol's curls. baran's eyes weren’t marisol's eyes. they weren’t marisol, because there would never be another marisol.

trinity had been lucky to have her once.

and with each confession of love from baran’s lips and kiss from yolanda, trinity started to see that maybe her luck hadn’t run out with marisol’s death.

maybe over the past decade when she thought she had to fight for every step she took, when she thought luck had abandoned her side completely, it had just been saving it up for trinity to be able to cash in and have yolanda and baran.

trinity had never meant to be alone.