small ghost looks to the future

"Hey, Cassie! Wait!"

Victoria chased after her, stumbling, just a little. Her shoes were untied. Clearly she'd rushed out to meet Cassie before she'd gotten too far.

"You're leaving?" she said when she caught up, halfway breathless. "I'll walk with you."

Cassie froze. This had never happened before.

"Oh," she said, "Yeah, sure. Of course."

She was so used to making this afterparty trek alone, having left everyone else still mid-party, that she wasn't sure how to fill the quiet. Happily, Victoria was clearly drunk and bubbling over with conversation to share.

"Oh, the moon is so full tonight," Victoria said, slurring just a bit on the so. Cassie startled a little when Victoria lurched forward to grab her hand. It was smaller than hers, softer, her skin cooler somehow despite the humidity.

"You know," she continued, swinging both of their arms so gladly, like she no longer cared where her arm ended and Cassie's began, "I always thought it was a little romantic that there's a carpal named after the moon. Like, sure, I get it, it's crescent shaped, but lunate. It's beautiful isn't it? Like having some tiny bit of the universe inside your wrist."

If there was ever a time that Cassie wanted to put Victoria into a Mason jar with holes in the lid (to shake her like a bug), this was it. There had been myriad other times when she'd considered it, but this was firmly, firmly it. She wanted to crack open her skull and understand how she saw the world. That said, she understood in that moment that if she did take a peek into Victoria Javadi's mind, she would see that she sought to understand the world as it aligned with textbook descriptions. Her heart ached with this knowledge, knowing that so much of her world existed as fringe cases, not-so concise as an MCAT exam question scenario. Not something that might come up in lecture, but nonetheless undeniably real.

Cassie thought about untangling her fingers from Victoria's, about letting her down gently, but something stopped her. Maybe it was as simple as the kindness of her touch given so freely. She wasn't sure, but she let her grip hold.

"I always thought the great saphenous sounded like a wizard name," she offered weakly. It didn't connect at all to what Victoria had been talking about; in fact, it was not even in the same region of the human body, but she thought maybe Victoria might understand.

"Ugh, great saphenous," Victoria groaned, like the etymology of the vein's name was the bane of her existence, "Like, yeah, whatever, it means "hidden" in Arabic, and "evident" in Greek, but all I see is saph like sapph like sapphic like there's a big lesbian vein in your upper thigh."

"Yeah," Cassie replied. Her spit felt warm in her mouth. God, she thought, hand still grasped firmly in Victoria's hand. Fuck, she thought, I'm going to kiss her, aren't I?

"Yeah," Victoria repeated, apparently not noticing Cassie's agony. "Anyway. Um, I noticed you at the party and…you really just sort of let people come to you, don't you?"

It was true: Cassie did usually choose a spot to camp out as soon as she arrived anywhere, whether the end of a cough or a choice bit of wall to lead against with her comically large water bottle (that someone, inevitably, asked about, assuming it was filled with vodka or some other rank shit, like she were some frat boy guarding her buzz). She liked to stay barnacled to the spot for as long as she could tolerate, letting faces filter pass, letting conversation wash over her.

"I like to think of myself as a sort of axis that the party rotates around," she winked with confidence she couldn't quite summon. She hoped Victoria didn't notice (a part of her desperately wanted her to think that Cassie was cool.)

But Victoria nodded, considering. "I was watching you —" her eyes widened, hearing herself, "I mean, not like a creep or anything. Just, like, I noticed you, is all. People like you."

Cassie read the shift in tone and gave Victoria's arm a little swing out of sync. 

"Hey," she said reassuringly, "People like you. You're just new…ish."

"And a bit of a freak."

"Who isn't a bit of a freak?" Cassie replied amicably. She jostled her shoulder against Victoria's never letting her hand go. "People like you. I like you."

Victoria digested this quietly, then glanced around. They'd been walking for a while.

"You parked really far away," she said.

"Oh," Cassie laughed. "We passed my car ages ago."

"But—"

"But nothing," Cassie said firmly. "I'm having a nice time."

"Okay."

"But if we loop around this block, we'll get back to my car again. I'm sober," Cassie reminded her. "I've been keeping track."

Victoria nodded again, again, again, and Cassie wanted to cup her chin with her free hand to make her stop. She wanted to cup her chin just to touch her face.

She jammed her free hand in her pocket.

"What are you thinking about?" Cassie asked softly, not unkindly, and Victoria stopped walking. She dropped Cassie's hand and met her eyes.

"Mostly I feel stupid," Victoria admitted. "I saw you leaving the party without saying goodbye and I thought she can't just leave, she just can't not say goodbye…but you can, can't you? I don't know why I chased after you."

"You don't?"

Victoria crushed her eyes shut. Grimaced. Dropped Cassie's hand. "No," she admitted, "Of course I do. I wanted to talk to you all night. But you seemed so cool and above everything and I just kept drinking this weird stuff Santos had brought that she kept telling me was 'lesbian moonshine' and I thought, like, maybe that's what liquid courage is supposed to mean? Maybe it's supposed to mean getting so drunk that you uninhibit your frontal lobe enough to say something stupid for once in your life? I mean, actually, I say embarrassing stuff all the time, and I'm embarrassed. But I mean, this is where I can be embarrassing without feeling embarrassed, you know?"

Cassie nodded. She knew. "You haven't said anything stupid yet," she said.

"You say that," Victoria says, a weird frenzy climbing in her voice, pitching it upward, "but I ran out here like it was some Hallmark movie moment—"

"—Hallmark is for straight people—"

"—they have some gay stuff now—"

"—it's still for straight people—"

"Whatever," Victoria huffed out an exasperated sigh. "I just mean that I ran out here thinking, like, maybe if I stopped you, something would happen."Cassie felt that warm spit pooling under her tongue again. "Something like what?" She asked.

"Something like—" Victoria paused, glancing around. "We've passed this house already."

Cassie waved her off. "We passed my car again. Don't worry about it."

Victoria nodded and hugged her arms around herself.

"Something like—?" Cassie gently prodded again, but Victoria just shook her head, folding in on herself.

Cassie stopped walking, which forced Victoria to stop and meet her eyes.

She brought her hands up to Victoria's face, thumb grazing her jawline.

"Something like this?"

Victoria swallowed. "Maybe," she said, holding Cassie's gaze.

Fuck it, Cassie thought. She'd known this would happen the first time they'd walked around this particular block. Might as well lean into fate.

Victoria's lips were soft, and her mouth tasted like a nightmare (Cassie would ask Trinity later, would discover that lesbian moonshine had been an original concoction of everclear and raspberry sourpuss. Cassie realized in the aftermath that it was a small miracle that Victoria had managed to stay upright this far into the night, let alone chase after her.)

Cassie pressed her forehead against Victoria's.

"Your shoes are still untied," she said, gently. Victoria laughed.

"I think if I try to tie them now, I'll fall over and never get back up."

Without another word, Cassie knelt down and tied them for her. Double-knotted them, just to be safe. Victoria couldn't help herself: her hands found the top of Cassie's head, knotted her fingers through her hair while she was still on her knees.

"Don't stand up too fast," Victoria hiccuped softly. "I might fall over."

Cassie took her time. When they were both standing again, she looped her arm through Victoria's and let her lean her head against her shoulder.

"My car's just up ahead," Cassie said. "I can drive you."

"Anywhere?"

Cassie considered. "Anywhere within state lines."

Victoria said something then, rushing her words so that they were merely a slurry of syllables, and immediately buried her face against Cassie's arm.

"Hey," Cassie laughed. "What happened to being so drunk you can't be embarrassed?"

Victoria laughed, too, her mouth opening against Cassie's bare arm.

"My mortification knows no bounds."

"In any case, I think I understood" Cassie guided Victoria toward her car, to the passenger side.