Pairing: Paige Bueckers X Azzi Fudd
The kitchen smells like coffee and toasted sourdough.
I stand in pink platform slippers at the counter staring at the pathetic excuse of ingredients I managed to scavenge from Paige's fridge and cabinets. Beer. Bread. Half-dead tomatoes. Yogurt. Three different hot sauces. No actual groceries. Nothing remotely resembling a person intending to survive past the week.
So now there's two slices of toasted sourdough on a plate with butter melting into the cracks and tomato rounds layered over top. Salt and black pepper sprinkled across them.
It isn't much. But at least it's food. Although two slices of stale bread are nowhere near enough to fill up a person as big as Paige.
Sunlight spills through the kitchen windows in warm strips, turning the lake outside silver-blue. The A/C is on full blast filling the house with a artificial chill. The rug has finally been cleared of every last shard of glass.
My bonnet is gone now, the silk pajamas traded for a cream-yellow linen set. A fitted tube top paired with loose matching trousers. The thin white straps of my bra knotted behind my neck, braids held up in a ponytail.
Upstairs wooding groans as heavy footsteps thump on them. I don't turn around immediately. I just grip the mug tighter and stare at the steam curling upward.
Paige appear fresh from a forty minute long shower. My stomach does something deeply irritating.
Her damp blond hair hangs messy around her forehead, shorter now than I'll probably ever get used to. A dark gray T-shirt swallows her broad shoulders, sleeves rolled up at the hem. Black trousers. The Paige I knew would never been seen in anything other than shorts in summer.
And somehow that version of her is harder to deal with than the drunk one from last night.
Because for half a second she looks like herself again. Not the shell upstairs with razor blades hidden beneath first aid kits.
Then I notice the shadows beneath her eyes. The slight stiffness in the way she descends the final stair. The careful way she avoids putting too much pressure on her left knee.
"Coffee's probably terrible," I mutter, looking back toward the counter. "Your machine sounds possessed."
Paige huffs quietly slowing down in her track, blue eyes scanning me up and down. Her voice comes rough from sleep when she says, "It's purple."
"And that's supposed to do what exactly...?" Another tiny huff.
Three sharp knocks hit the front door. Paige's brows pinch together. She glances toward me instinctively before jerking her chin toward the door. "I'll get it."
I nod and reach for my coffee, pretending not to watch her muscled back shift with each step and the water droplets dripping from the nape of her neck to the collar of her shirt.
The morning light catches against her profile as she opens the door. And immediately a girl's voice practically explodes into the house. "Mornin'!
The girl standing outside can't be older than sixteen. Seventeen max. Blonde curls stuffed in a bun. Oversized school hoodie. Athletic shorts. Long limbs still caught awkwardly between teenager and adult.
And the second she sees Paige, her entire face lights up like somebody plugged her into a generator.
Paige notices too apparently because her expression instantly flattens into the exhausted tolerance of somebody dealing with a harmless but persistent raccoon. "What are you doin' here' Bianca?"
Bianca grins so hard I'm shocked her jaw survives it. "I told you to call me Bee" Then her eyes flick past Paige and land directly on me.
The smile falters. Just slightly.
There's a tiny, tragic little pout that overtakes her mouth before she catches herself. I nearly choke on my coffee trying not to laugh.
Paige notices it too because one corner of her mouth twitches upward for the first time all morning. "Azzi, this is Bianca, Martina's granddaughter. Bianca, this is Azzi."
Bianca straightens immediately. "I know who Azzi Fudd is."
Then she adds, quieter and deeply betrayed, "Unfortunately."
That one actually makes me snort into my mug.
Paige rolls her eyes. "Jesus Christ."
Bianca shrugs dramatically before stepping inside without permission like she's done it a thousand times before.
"Don't take it seriously. She's a kid," Paige tells me dryly like that explains everything. Then she stops Bianca mid step. "No outside shoes inside."
Bianca scoffs, kicks off her sneaker and walks in with blue and yellow minion socks covering her feet.
Bianca side eyes her. Then she points at the plate on the counter. "Whoa. You cooked?" She says, looking back at Paige.
"I did." I say taking another sip of the coffee.
Bianca sighs. "Of course, miracles aren't real."
Paige groans low in her throat. "You're bein' real disrespectful in my own house right now."
"You live like a lighthouse keeper." Bianca gestures wildly toward the fridge. "You survive on beers and bread."
"She's exaggerating." Paige pinches the bridge of her nose.
We both say simultaneously.
The energy in the room shifts strangely after that as Paige's eyes flick between us repeatedly.
"Oh! Wait. I actually came for something important." Her face brightens again as she swings back toward Paige.
Paige leans against the wall cautiously, coffee-less and still waking up. "No." She deadpans before Bianca can even continue.
"I didn't even say anything yet," she smacks her tongue with exasperation.
"And I already said no." Paige rounds the kitchen counter to stand beside me and grabs the steaming mug.
"Just listen." Bianca ignores her rejection completely. "Our school's annual fundraiser's tomorrow." Bianca clasps her hands together. "For the girls athletics program?"
Paige blinks once. "The bake sale thing?"
Bianca gasps like she's been personally insulted. "It is not a bake sale thing anymore. It's huge now."
"Mhm." Paige nods solemnly. "My apologies. The huge bake sale thing."
Bianca rolls her brown eyes. "All the girls teams host it together now. Soccer, volleyball, and of course basketball. The whole town comes."
My eyes drift toward Paige automatically at the word basketball. I catch the exact moment her shoulders tighten. Tiny. Nearly invisible. But it happens.
Bianca either doesn't notice or chooses not to.
"We raise money for equipment and travel fees and tournament stuff," Bianca rushes out, words tumbling over each other. "And this year Coach Dana said maybe we could get special guests involved and literally everybody said you."
Paige physically recoils like Bianca just confessed to murder. "Absolutely the fuck not."
"Language." I hiss, eyes pointing to the very energetic teenager in the room.
"Yeah, language, Paige." Bianca squints at her with theatrical judgment. "You kiss your mother with that mouth?"
Paige snorts through her nose humorlessly. "'Kay then. Lemme say it the Christian way." She plants both palms against the counter dramatically. "No."
Bianca whines dramatically. "Paige."
"You literally live here."
Bianca stomps a sneaker against the floor. "C'mon! Everybody loves you."
Something flickers across Paige's face then. Fast. Ugly. Gone before Bianca can catch it.
Funny thing to say to someone who disappeared from the face of the earth for two years without saying a word to anybody who loves her.
Bianca either misses it or pretends to.
She keeps going anyway. "You don't even have to do much! Just show up. Sign stuff. Smile at old people. Maybe inspire the youth."
Paige deadpans instantly, "I am the last person who should inspire youth."
Bianca points at her accusingly. "That self-loathing thing only works on adults by the way. Teenagers think it's cool."
That drags a loud laugh out of me.
Paige's eyes flick toward me instinctively at the sound, and for one dangerous little second something passes between us before she looks away again.
"Pleeeease." Bianca drags out, rocking side to side now. She presses both hands together beneath her chin dramatically. "Please please please pretty please."
And then she tries the kicked puppy face on Paige.
Wide brown eyes. Exaggerated pout. Eyelashes batting so aggressively it looks medically concerning.
A sad edged smile sneaks onto my face before I can stop it.
Because that used to be me.
I used to weaponize those eyes against Paige constantly. Big doe-eyed looks. Fake little pouts after arguments. Crawling into her lap at two in the morning asking for ice cream or back rubs or attention while blinking at her like some Disney creature moments away from woodland singing.
Paige used to fold instantly.
Didn't matter how irritated she was. Didn't matter if we were mid-argument. One look from me and her entire body would melt like a hot knife through butter. She'd roll her eyes all dramatic while already reaching for me anyway.
But Bianca's imitation doesn't seem nearly as effective.
Paige just stares at her over the rim of the coffee mug now in her hands, suspicion written all over her face. "You look like a mormon missionary," she mutters.
"Well then, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, am I hearing a yes?" Bianca puts a palm behind her ear.
Paige opens her mouth, already winding up another refusal.
"She'll be there." I cut in before her.
Paige's head turns toward me slow, blue eyes narrowing into slits. "Will I now?"
"Yes," I say lightly, taking another sip of coffee. "Yes, you will."
I lift a brow at her, shifting my weight onto one hip as I fold my arms across my chest. "Real bold of you to assume you can say "no" to me and I'll listen."
Paige stares at me for a second too long. Her pupils dilating like she's remembering something she shouldn't.
Bianca, meanwhile, looks between us like she's courtside at Wimbledon.
"I'm counting on you then," she tells me with a sugary grin. "And you should totally come too. We can definitely hit our target with you there."
The entire town smells like barbecue smoke and lake water.
Thick charcoal hanging in the heat. Humid air sticking to my skin the second I step out the car. Somewhere nearby somebody's burning mesquite because the sharp woody scent keeps cutting through everything else.
Music spills through the street before we even reach the place. Midnight summer blasting through the walls.
The fundraiser sits right in the center of town inside what looks like a giant wooden shack somebody kept expanding over the decades instead of rebuilding properly.
And somehow it works. American in a way it feels cartoonish.
Warm string lights zigzag above the outdoor patio despite the sun still being out. Hand-painted signs lean crooked against barrels overflowing with flowers. Somebody's hung up maroon and gold streamers for the school colors, though the humidity's already defeated half of them and now they droop sadly from the railings like exhausted party decorations after a divorce.
There's a massive smoker puffing near the side yard beside a line of picnic tables crowded with townspeople. Kids sprint around with painted faces and melted popsicles dripping down their wrists. Me in baseball caps sit in folding chairs arguing over football loud enough for Jesus Himself to hear.
And everywhere I look there's girls in sports jerseys moving around carrying raffle baskets and trays of food and clipboards.
Basketball. Soccer. Volleyball.
An entire ecosystem of teenage athletes.
The sign above the entrance flickers every few seconds: MABEL'S SMOKEHOUSE & DINER
One of the letters in DINER keeps dying and coming back to life.
Beside me Paige stands unusually still.
Black cap pulled low. Black t-shirt stretched over broad shoulders and slightly cropped that if she raised her arms it would expose her lower stomach. Dark blue denim held up by a brown leather belt.
She hasn't said much since we left the house. And even less after I walked downstairs dressed in a black half sleeved Nike crop top and soft cotton capris trimmed with lace along the hems topped with black Chanel flats.
But her eyes revealed everything she didn't say.
The way her gaze stalled for half a second too long before snapping toward her Cadillac windshield. Her fingers tightening once around the steering wheel. The muscle in her jaw ticking like a pendulum.
Like my body was something she was forbidden from looking at.
Which was ironic considering she used to peel and tear my clothes off with the urgency of a fish on the brink of death trying to find the ocean.
I glance sideways at her just in time to catch her staring at the crowd with that same expression she used to wear before playoff games.
Like her brain's already mapping everything out.
The problem is basketball crowds make sense to her. Arenas are structured. A clear separation between the crowd and the court. This is different.
These people know her and there's no boundary between them and her.
"Relax," I murmur, nudging her elbow lightly with mine. "Nobody's gonna jump you."
Paige says quietly. "You say that now."
The second we step through the doors of the diner, the entire room changes temperature.
Not literally. The air's still thick and warm and humid enough to stick to the back of my neck. But attention shifts so violently it feels stepping infront of an oncoming train.
Conversations stutter mid-sentence.
A fork clatters somewhere.
"Told y'all," Bianca says smugly, already bulldozing through the crowd toward us.
"Feelin' proud of yourself aren't you?" Paige mutters beside me.
Bianca ignores her completely. "No time for bull shitting around. Ya'll got work to do."
She hooks both hands around Paige's wrist and my forearm and starts dragging us deeper into the fundraiser while people practically part like the Red Sea around us.
The inside of the smokehouse is louder than I expected. Ceiling fans spinning overhead. Zara Larsson is even louder now. The scent of smoked brisket and cinnamon and fried dough layered thick into the wood itself like the building's bloodstream.
Every wall's cluttered with something.
Old football photos. Hunting trophies. Neon beer signs buzzing softly. A faded photograph of a fishing competition from what looks like 1987.
And woven through all of it are fundraiser decorations. Maroon streamers. Handmade posters. Glitter signs reading SUPPORT GIRLS ATHLETICS!!! In aggressively enthusiastic handwriting.
"Where we goin'?" Paige asks low.
Bianca turns around while still walking backward. "The stage."
Paige slows. "Absolutely not."
"Yes absolutely." Bianca points toward the far side of the room where a small raised wooden platform sits beneath hanging fairy lights. "Coach Dana already announced y'all were here."
"You announced us?" Paige sounds mildly horrified.
Bianca slaps each of her hands on our shoulders, "Jesus ain't gonna help you right now. Chop chop, buddy!"
I bite back a smile watching panic creep into Paige's face.
Not full panic. Just enough to make her jaw tighten slightly beneath the brim of her cap.
She used to own rooms like this effortlessly. Not even trying. Fame fit her naturally back then. Like a custom suit.
Now I can practically see her trying not to retreat into herself.
Bianca finally gets us to the stage.
It's tiny. Barely big enough for the folding table shoved across it. A maroon cloth hangs over the front with the school mascot painted across it in gold. Two chairs wait behind the table beside stacks and stacks of things waiting to be signed. Basketballs. Jerseys. Posters. Shoes. Old trading cards. One girl even apparently brought a toaster.
Why the fuck does she need a toaster signed?
"This is insane," Paige mutters under her breath as she takes the seat beside me.
"Millionaire athlete has to attend a fundraiser and sign a couple of jerseys." I jut my bottom lip out mockingly. "How tragic."
Her eyes drop to my protruding lip and then back up. "You also seem to have a lot of free time for a millionaire athlete. Don't you gotta prepare for the season."
"I can't have a season without a point guard now can I?"
Her mouth twitches as she averts her gaze to the crowd.
The onslaught of objects to be signed starts.
Teenage girls mostly. Some little kids. Parents.
One tiny girl wearing basketball shorts nearly to her ankles climbs onto the stage holding a worn-out Wings jersey with both hands. She can't be older than nine.
Paige's whole expression changes the second she sees her.
"Hey, kiddo." Paige leans forward onto her elbows. "What's your name?"
The girl shakes her head aggressively. "Like the flower. They're mommy's favorite."
"Thas a cool name." Paige uncaps the marker with her teeth. "Want me to draw you a lil flower?"
The kid gasps like she's been knighted by royalty as Paige hands her the jersey with a wonky funny looking flower drawn on it.
I watch woman who speaks to children like they matter. Who signs every item carefully instead of rushing through it. Who asks names and remembers them.
Basketball has always loved Paige loudly and I'll make sure she never stops loving it back.
A teenage boy steps up next holding a basketball card. He looks at Paige like he's meeting Superman.
Then his eyes shift to me and he nearly short-circuits entirely.
"Oh my God." He laughs nervously. "Both of you at once is kinda terrifying."
"Because y'all are like..." He gestures vaguely between us. "Basketball Superheroes."
Paige chuckles beside me. "Which one of us is Iron Man?"
"Azzi," the kid answers without hesitation. "Obviously."
"Why obviously?" Paige scowls.
"'Cause Azzi is richer than you."
I choke on my laugh while Paige stares at him in silence.
"Damn," she mutters eventually. "Kids gettin' meaner these days."
At one point Bianca dumps an entire cardboard box of old photos in front of us.
"Sign these too for the auction."
Paige picks one up and freezes.
It's an old UConn picture.
Me and Paige when we won the national championship. Arms around each other. Paige's head buried in my neck. Tears streaming down my face.
My heart lurches. The light atmosphere thickens in an instant.
Paige goes still beside me for half a second too long before grabbing the marker again gauzed hand trembling as she signs the photo.
Time starts behaving strangely after the first hour.
It warps into the sticky heat and music and constant stream of faces until the entire fundraiser begins feeling less like an event and more like a very southern fever dream.
One second I'm signing somebody's basketball.
The next I'm holding a toddler because her mother asked for "just one quick picture," except the toddler immediately grabbed my braid and refused to let go like she'd caught prey.
At some point Bianca and two volleyball girls begin auctioning things off from the stage.
"SIGNED PAIGE BUECKERS JERSEY," Bianca hollers into the microphone loud enough to rupture an organ. "DO I HEAR THREE HUNDRED?"
The stage becomes increasingly absurd as the night crawls on. Signed sneakers. Duffel bags. Jerseys. Basketballs. Footballs. Soccer balls. Somebody somehow donates a signed cast from Paige's third season injury and that alone nearly starts a bidding war violent enough to qualify as organized crime.
The entire diner roars every few minutes whenever Bianca screams SOLD into the mic like she's Wolf of Wall Street.
Eventually the crowd loosens enough for me to escape.
I drift toward the quieter side of the smokehouse near the counter where the noise dulls and Zara Larsson's high notes are enjoyable rather than migraine inducing. The old stools creak beneath me as I sit. My spine loosens in relief.
Across the room Paige stands near Coach Dana with one hand hooked into the pocket of her jeans.
The waitress behind the counter slides me a strawberry lemonade with condensation already dripping down the glass.
"On the house, sweetheart."
The lemonade tastes aggressively homemade. Too sweet. Too tart. Tiny strawberry seeds catching between my teeth.
I'm halfway through another sip when the stool beside me groans quietly beneath new weight.
My entire body stiffens instantly.
Please don't let this be what I think–
I close my eyes for one microscopic second before turning.
Tall. Probably mid thirties. Broad shoulders beneath a flannel rolled to his elbows. Baseball cap. Pretty in that painfully southern sort of way where men look handcrafted exclusively to drive pickup trucks and go for freshly eighteen girls.
"I know that face," he says, amused. "You trynna decide if I'm an asshole or not."
I, however am rather unamused. "And?"
"And I'm hopin' I'm the latter."
"Jury's still out." I sip on my drink avoiding eye contact and causing a scene.
His grin widens. "Steven," he says, holding a hand out.
His palm's rough when I shake it briefly. Callused. But not like Paige's. His hands don't make me feel buzzy and restless. The calluses don't make my skin erupt with goosebumps like hers do. Like I want her to pin me to the surface and sand me down with the roughness of her callouses.
I take another sip of the lemonade, this time to avoid a conversation.
"You actually playin' for Golden State now?" he asks.
"That's insane." He leans one elbow against the counter slightly toward me. "You know half this town thought Bianca was lyin' by sayin' y'all were comin'"
"Hah." I huff out a fake ass chuckle and glance around the diner. "Uhh...no wayyyy."
That earns another laugh from him.
And from the corner of my eye I catch movement.
Blonde hair and muscles. Still across the room near Coach Dana. Except she's not really listening anymore.
Her attention's landed here now.
The shift is almost invisible unless you know her the way I do. The way nobody else could ever know her. I straighten, my spine arching as if she's spread her hand on my back and bent me forward.
Her shoulders are locked so tightly her shirt rides up.
The guy keeps talking, unaware he's moments away from getting his nose broken by a six-foot one-hundred and eighty pound point guard with a penchant for self deprecation.
"So," he says casually, "how long you in town for?"
And at the exact same moment, across the diner, Paige starts moving toward us.
Not fast enough to make a scene. Not slow enough for me to miss her intentions.
People part for her instinctively. The same invisible current that used to ripple through tunnels and arenas and press rooms whenever Paige Bueckers entered a space and everyone suddenly remembered they were standing too close to greatness.
Her eyes stay fixated on us the entire walk over. Or more specifically, fixed on him leaning too comfortably into my orbit.
He notices her eventually.
Everybody notices Paige eventually.
His posture unbends automatically as she approaches the counter.
I follow her every movement as she stops beside my stool close enough for her thigh to brush mine.
Her hand lands on the counter and on my drink. Long fingers. Gauzed palm. The faint silver flash of her cross necklace disappearing beneath her shirt collar as she leans slightly forward.
"Az," she says casually, taking a sip of my drink right where my pink gloss has left a sticky imprint of my lips. "You disappeared."
Because I'm not "Azzi, you need to leave" anymore, suddenly I'm "Az, you disappeared."
Steven glances between us. Beginning to sense the tectonic plates shifting beneath his feet.
"I've been sitting here for maybe four minutes."
"Mm." Paige nods solemnly like she's humoring a child. "Felt longer."
That smooth low drawl she weaponizes when she wants us to be narrowed into something private and intimate despite being surrounded by people.
Steven clears his throat awkwardly. "Hey, man."
Paige finally looks at him fully.
She doesn't even look mean. Her face stays almost pleasant. Relaxed. But there's something cold in the way her eyes are crystal clear blue.
Music hums overhead. Somebody near the stage erupts into cheering as Bianca auctions off signed sneakers for an amount that should qualify as fraud.
Paige's fingers tap once against the counter.
"What's your name?" she asks.
"Mhm." Another nod. "You play sports?"
The question sounds harmless.
"Baseball," he says. "Used to."
Paige tilts her head slightly. "Used to."
Something in me starts overheating because I know exactly what she's doing now.
Paige has always been disarmingly charming when she wants to be. She asks questions softly enough people don't realize they're being cornered into a cage until the metal rails drop and they're trapped inside.
Steven laughs nervously. "Tore my ACL in college."
"Damn." Paige's voice drops lower, almost sympathetic. "That'll do it. Only the special bounce back from that."
I nearly choke on my lemonade because there's no way she just said that with the three knee injuries between us that we overcame and the fourth I'm trying really hard to bring her back from.
Her gaze flicks toward me briefly.
Steven seems to realize it too about three seconds later.
His eyes dart between us again, slower this time. Taking inventory. The way Paige has unconsciously angled herself toward me like she's shielding me from something.
Paige's smirk bleeds into a placid smile. "Oh?"
"That's not," Evan points vaguely between us, looking deeply afraid now. "Y'all are still a thing–"
"Yes," Paige says instantly.
"Nope," I say at the exact same time.
Paige turns toward me slowly. "Azzi." My name on her tongue feels like the drag of a blade against bare skin. I don't know when she'll finally press hard enough to split me open and despite everything the depravity swirling in my bloodstream makes me lean into the blade every time.
Because that's always what I've been for her.
Spent on the invisible wall she keeps building between us only to claw openings through it whenever somebody else gets too close to me.
Spent on the way my name shrinks from Azzi to Az whenever possession starts rotting through her restraint.
I'm worn thin by the contradiction of her. The selflessness and selfishness.
I'm fucking sick with need for her. Debauched with how my body rumbles for her at the slightest sight of her.
The body she fucking debauched.
But Steven doesn't need to know that. Nobody does. So I put on my happy face and shrug a shoulder.
"What?" I sip my lemonade calmly. "You were taking too long to answer so I wasn't sure anymore."
Her eyes curve into slits.
Evan looks like he wants the floorboards to open and swallow him alive.
"I should-" he starts awkwardly. "I should probably-"
"Yeah, you should, Stephen." Paige says.
"Paige, his name is Steven." I hiss, kicking her shin lightly beneath the counter.
She barely reacts. Just keeps staring at me with a hunger she tried and failed to conceal for longer than a few hours.
Smoke bleeds out of my mouth in slow ribbons, vanishing into the dark.
The cigarette trembles between my fingers, because my chest just won't stop convulsing around her.
The lake glitters anyway. Cruelly. Moonlight pours over the water in sheets of silver so luminous, protecting it, caressing it. The lake seems fully encapsulated in the embrace of its lover. The surface of it shifts and sighs beneath, small waves folding into each other like lovers pressing mouths together at the alter.
Everything beautiful eventually learns death.
I tip the bottle back again. Beer spills warm over my tongue, bitter and yeasty and dead. The alcohol should be enough to blunt the edges by now. Combined with the nicotine, with the ache burrowing through my knee, with the exhaustion calcifying around my spine, I should feel quieter inside my own skull.
Instead the lake grows louder.
The crickets grow louder.
Her laugh from earlier keeps resurrecting itself in my ears.
Replay. Replay. Replay. Replay. Replay. Replay. Replay. Replay.
I sit there in the grass with my bad leg stretched crooked before me and think how burial must feel similar to this. Damp earth beneath your body. Weight pressing down from every direction. However, the grass feels like nails in a coffin. No matter how much I try for the soil to reclaim me it keeps reminding me that it's not my time yet.
The smoke rasps down my throat.
I thought all vices could eventually overpower each other if you consumed enough of them. Liquor could dim grief. Cigarettes could calm panic.
But then there's the poison no other poison could ever overpower.
I chose my poison young. Sixteen years old young.
I let it inside me so completely there's no separating where I end and it begins anymore. It lives in the architecture of my nervous system now. In the marrow. In the ruined fibers of my knee. In the phantom weight around my ring finger.
The wind shifts. I smell smoke and lakewater and summer and underneath all of it I still swear I can smell her perfume on my shirt from where she brushed past me earlier inside the diner.
Two years apart and one accidental touch still has my entire nervous system crawling back to her on its knees.
I laugh under my breath and it sounds ugly. Halfway to a sob.
Because tonight, just for one microscopic moment, I got to feel it again.
That ancient monstrous thing living inside me that only ever wakes up for her.
The word arrives involuntarily.
Mine to spend the rest of my life pretending I'm not addicted anymore.
I'm the one who shoved her away bleeding and sobbing and begging me not to disappear.
Yet the moment another man sat too close to her, I wanted to split him open just to see if she still looked at me afterwards with the same adoration she always carries.
I inhale sharply through my nose. The cigarette ember glows violent orange in the dark.
For one second I imagine walking straight into the water until it fills my lungs. Until the cold finally stills all this noise inside me. Like I do every night.
But even then I know exactly what would happen. I'd crawl back out.
I'd crawl out choking and half-dead and still make my way back toward life because I can't bear the thought of her shedding tears over my grave.
"Is this how you live now?" My poison sounds rather nauseated for how much it refuses to retreat from my soul.
I tilt my head just enough to glance over my shoulder.
That's all I allow myself because anything more would become fatal.
She stands beneath the porch light in tall silhouette and enchanting curves. Bare legs. Brown sugar skin. From this angle she almost doesn't look real. She looks remembered. Like something my starving mind invented to survive another winter alone.
Like my last seven minutes.
Azzi Fudd was always too good for this world.
And I forgot–for thirteen years–that I was also a part of this world.
What the fuck am I supposed to say?
Yes, Azzi. This is how I live now.
Are you disgusted enough yet?
Has the rot finally reached your mouth too after all these years of trying to love me through it?
Will you finally preserve whatever parts of yourself I haven't already sunk my teeth into?
Footsteps patter, barely audible against the grass, but my body recognizes them instantly anyway. Every nerve ending in me tightening with need for release like a drop of blood in shark inhabited waters.
She bends down. Blocks out the lake. The moon. Their love affair. The whole shimmering cathedral of night behind her until all that exists is Azzi kneeling between my spread knees while the cigarette burns itself forgotten between my fingers.
My eyelids feel heavy. Every blink slower than the last. The liquor dragging at my bones like oil slick.
"You're drowning yourself in cigarettes and alcohol. Aren't you tired yet?" She whispers.
Smoke curls between us like a barrier.
Her hands rise slowly toward my face, hesitant at first, like she's approaching a wounded animal liable to bite. Then her palms cradle my jaw like I'm the most precious thing she's ever held. Something inside me tears open so violently I nearly fold in half from it.
Nobody should touch me this gently.
Azzi holds my face like it belongs inside a reliquary. Like I am something sacred enough to preserve despite all the evidence otherwise. Her thumbs brush beneath my eyes and I realize dimly that my skin is cold compared to hers.
"Why can't you just..." Her voice fractures softly. "Why can't you come back and drown in me instead, P?"
Offered to me like communion.
"Like you always used to." A tear slips down her cheek, twinkling in the moonlight, and the sight of it drives me rabid.
I put that grief there. Just because I couldn't handle another setback.
I want to take the cigarette and press the ember straight into my sockets until the sight disappears forever.
But I can't stop looking.
Her face hovers inches from mine and I think suddenly, horribly, of devotion. Of wolves starving through winter. Of churches filled with people begging to be forgiven for wanting too much.
Azzi has always loved me like resurrection was possible.
And I have always loved her like a famine.
But there are no miracles for sinners.
Her hands tremble against my face.
Tiny cracks beneath the skin. The kind that happen right before glass gives out completely.
"Talk to me," she whispers.
I look away toward the sky because I can't survive looking at her head-on for much longer. The moon hangs heavy, full and protective over the lake. Graceful and bright and unreachable. Like heaven probably is for people like me.
"There's nothin' left to say, Az."
"That's bullshit." The curse cracks out of her so sharply it almost startles me.
Azzi never used to swear like that unless she was pushed all the way to the edge.
"You disappear for two years," she says, voice shaking harder now, "then you act like I'm still yours in the diner. You say nothing on the drive over and disappear into your room like you finished filming a movie and you don't have to act anymore." She inches closer, wetting her bottom lip. "You drink, you smoke and then you sit out here talking like you're already dead."
"That's because I fuckin' am."
The silence afterward feels enormous.
Her hands slip from my face.
I immediately miss them so badly it gives me whiplash as I choke on a sob. "No." Her head shakes once. Then again, harder. "No, you don't get to do that."
"Azzi." My voice comes out scraped hollow. "Look a'me."
"No." I gesture vaguely toward myself with the cigarette. "Look a'me and you'll know I died in that game."
"You remember who I used to be. You love who I used to be. The one who died that day. That's the problem."
"You really think I'm like that?" She staggers backward a step, and the tiny tassels on her anklet chime.
"Well, I'm not." Her voice snaps like rope pulled too tight. "Because I love every version of you, Paige. The golden one. The broken one. The cruel one. The one trying so hard to disappear into nothingness." Tears glitter on her face. "And as long as I love you, dying is not a decision you get to make."
Then suddenly she's pointing at herself, nail digging hard against her sternum like she's trying to crack herself open.
"IT'S MINE!" she screams.
The sound tears across the lake so raw the trees throw it back at us in echoes.
"You handed me your life years ago, remember?" Her voice breaks, but she keeps going anyway, relentless in the way only Azzi has ever been with me. "You handed me your death too."
Twenty years old. Bodies tangled in the back of my car. Whispering forevers with the blind arrogance of people too young to understand how expensive love eventually becomes.
Back then it sounded romantic. Now it's been crushed with regret.
"You don't get it." I rasp.
The words rip out louder than intended.
Sharp enough to slice open the night.
Her chest rises and falls rapidly. Her eyes gleam wet and furious and devastated all at once. Then suddenly her face goes still. Her trembling lips relax into a thin line. She gulps down a wave of unsaid words.
My stomach drops and I get to my feet, almost falling over with the force of my movements.
She steps backward toward the dock.
The lake water laps softly against the wood beneath her heels. "What're you doin'?" My pulse roars. "Az!"
She grabs the hem of her shirt revealing her bare chest. For one disorienting second my brain can't process what's happening. Her shorts and underwear go next. She strips fast and gracelessly, like anger's taken control of her limbs, tossing clothes onto the dock boards piece by piece.
She laughs once, breathless and disbelieving. Looking over her shoulder and then back at me. "You want to pretend that you're dead so badly, don't you? This martyrdom."
"That you can't be resurrected. That you can't play again or love again." Her chest rises violently, sweat glistening against brown skin like she's burning from the inside out. "Coming back would mean living through it again. The rehab. The doubts and the pain of not giving up again. The humiliation of sitting frozen on the sidelines, trying to smile while everybody else keeps becoming who they're supposed to be."
She knows about the nights spent staring at old game footage until my chest collapsed inward. Knows about the way I stopped watching basketball entirely because hearing sneakers squeak against hardwood started feeling like mourning.
"It would mean waking up every day and wondering if your body still belongs to you." She runs a palm under her eyes, messily wiping away the tears. "Wondering if your knee's gonna hold. Wondering if the world's looking at you with admiration or pity."
"Princess, just listen to me-" I rush forward and trip over my own steps falling onto the grass. Grass tears against my palms. Dirt wedges beneath my nails.
"The pity kills you the most, doesn't it?" She hiccups. "Your family. Your teammates. Everybody looking at you like some tragic charity case."
Something cold hollows out my stomach.
"If the old you is truly dead... then you won't follow me."
By the time I step on the dock she's–
The seventy-foot-deep lake swallows her whole.
Water erupts upward in volcanic spray before collapsing inward again with a heavy smack. My body jerks towards the edge looking for her.
Just ripples spreading across black water and then the water returning back to its slumber.
Every organ inside me turns to static.
My body falls into apoptosis. "Azzi! Come back to me. PLEASE."
I wrench my shirt over my head so violently the fabric catches around my wrists. I reach for my sweats and stop.
Even now some sick shame roots me in place for half a second too long.
The thought is grotesque. Absurd. She might be drowning and I'm still trying to hide what surviving cost me.
The lake hits like a car crash.
My senses vaporize on impact but the adrenaline mutilates any pain before it fully forms.
I open my eyes underwater.
The world below the surface is not silence.
A crushing, sentient thing.
The lake folds around me like a fist closing.
Cold floods my nose, my ears, the back of my throat. My eyes squint against the dark but I see nothing except ruptured strips of moonlight. My lungs convulse instantly, body already demanding air, but breathing has never been stronger than her name.
My arms thrash through the water. Blindly. Fingers clawing through blackness thick as tar.
Something slides across my hand.
Please. Please. Please. Please.
Thick and slick beneath my fingers. I grab it hard enough my knuckles ache and surge forward through the water. My palm crashes against the back of her skull.
Her body jerks. For one catastrophic heartbeat she keeps sinking. Then her arms snap around my waist.
The force of her colliding into me sends us spinning underwater. Her forehead slams beneath my chin. Her fingers hook into my ribs. Hair tangles around my arm, around my throat, around us both like dark riverweed trying to tether me to her forever.
And I know.
With certainty.
If this water takes her, it takes me too.
Not metaphorically.
Not poetically.
I tighten my arm around her middle and kick upward. Pain rips through my body so viciously it nearly blacks my vision out again. White agony shearing up my thigh. But terror is stronger than damaged ligaments. Terror makes monsters out of people.
We claw toward the surface together.
Air detonates into my lungs. I choke on it instantly.
A sound rips out that exorcises me. Water pours down my face as I gasp and gasp and gasp again. Beside me Azzi coughs hard, curling toward me instinctively, one arm still wrapped around my waist so tightly it almost bruises.
Our faces are inches apart.
Her eyes are wide.
Terrified.
Alive.
Something inside me caves in completely.
My hands fly to her face before I even realize I'm moving. "Are you okay?" The words come out shredded. "Are you okay? Az—look at me—fuck—are you okay?"
I can't stop touching her.
My hands keep sweeping over her cheeks, pushing soaked strands away from her face only for more to stick there again. Her baby hairs are pasted across her forehead. Water clings to her lashes in trembling droplets. Her mouth opens around broken breaths and a sob tears out of me.
"You-" My voice collapses. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
She tries to answer but another cough tears through her instead.
Forehead crashing against hers.
My entire body is shaking now. Not from the cold. From the ten seconds she vanished beneath the surface and took my fucking soul down there with her.
"You don't get to do that to me," I whisper raggedly. "You don't get to scare me like that."
Her breathing finally starts evening out against my mouth. Harsh. Warm. Alive.
Then her hands grabs mine and pull it out from the water.
She presses my palm over her heart.
That undoes me more than the drowning did.
Because it's beating. Hard and fast.
My face contorts in agony as another sob tumbles out of me. Azzi just stares at me breathing hard, eyes glossy and mouth stretched into a wide smile.
