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Nicole had only agreed to make the seven-hundred mile drive, basically due west, into a ‘road trip’ because the idea of getting stranded in the middle of farmland across multiple different states sounded like the worst post high school adventure and anecdote possible. Yeah, it was great, we got stuck in the middle of nowhere, ninety miles from the nearest gas station, and we fucked a lot and died of dehydration in a car overstuffed with clothes and other shit.
Oh, you want us to write a book about the experience? Traveling around ‘middle America’ as two whatever-the-hell-they-were? Fuck off, nobody gets to read or watch her and Jecka maul each other like two wet doves—not ducks.
Except Emily, though that was still vaguely complicated.
Anyway, that’s why Nicole was scowling up at the apparently torturous skyscrapers of Cleveland, as Jecka all but dragged her to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The damned things looked like—oh, right, she didn’t need to just rant and think in her head anymore. So easy to forget that.
“These skyscrapers look like they’re designed to blot out the sun,” grumbled Nicole, shielding her eyes as the clouds seemed to react to her, parting and allowing that stupid yellow star to reflect off of the building across the river like a massive mirror directly into Nicole’s retinas. “Shit, okay, I guess I meant literally direct sunlight!”
“Yeah, it is super depressing here. I can feel it, too.” Jecka tapped her glasses with a smug smirk, and in about thirty seconds they were magically sunglasses. “Aaaaand who’s the stupid bitch now for buying transition lenses? Is it me? No, it’s not me, because I am brilliant and planned ahead for the next forty years of outdoor excursions.”
“I don’t even need glasses; how is that fair?” Nicole rolled her eyes and accidentally looked directly into the sun again. “Dammit, can we stop at Sunglass Hut or something? I swear to God, this city smells more suicidal than I was on my worst days.”
“Stop saying that so loudly and I’ll just let you borrow mine.”
“Are they prescription? Are you trying to get me so dizzy I need to lean on you or else you’ll kick me into the river?”
“That would be the fastest way to rinse you off, but no, they’re just an old pair.”
“Then yeah, fork ‘em over.” Nicole held out her hand, and Jecka did not, in fact, fork them over. “What?”
“Hold still.” Jecka fumbled around in her bag for her camera and quickly snapped a picture of Nicole. “You looked really pretty in that lighting.”
“My corneas are getting sunburned faster than my skin, Jecka.”
“Don’t whine; you’re slightly less cute.” Jecka chuckled and handed her a neon orange pair of sunglasses. “Here you go.”
“Wow, fuck you.” Nicole begrudgingly put the glasses on, and only then realized they were polarized blue lenses. “Fuck you even more, because this is downright sadistic.”
“They suit you.” Jecka snapped another picture before Nicole could shield her face. “Seriously, they don’t look bad. If you want a better pair, you’ll need to buy them yourself.”
“It’s whatever.” Nicole took a very deep breath, now that her eyes were not on fire. “So, it is weird that there’s basically nobody out in the middle of the day, right? Streets being all but deserted is strange?”
“I’m choosing not to think about it. Maybe everyone’s napping or super high at work.” Jecka put her camera back in her bag. “Cleveland does not have the best reputation.”
“Okay, there’s ‘bad’, and then there’s ‘designed by a supervillain’. This is clearly the second one.”
“Just say Lex Luthor. I know you’re thinking Lex Luthor. You know I know you’re thinking Lex Luthor, so just fucking say Lex Luthor.”
“Fine, Lex Luthor,” mocked Nicole, flicking her hands around, mimicking Jecka who immediately started laughing. “What?”
“You look so stupid when you try to make me look bad. It’s adorable.”
“What, because you can’t look bad?”
“Correct.”
“You can look bad.”
“Name one time I ever have.” Jecka grinned. “I’ll save you the trouble of thinking back long and hard, Nicole. It’s never happened.”
“It’ll happen,” grumbled Nicole. “I mean, I don’t want it to, so.” She furrowed her brow. “Wow, that’s a racket you’ve got, isn’t it? The only way for you to look not amazing is if I’m the cause. And I hate the idea of doing that and being that so…” She snickered. “Yeah. Guess you can’t ever look bad.”
“I am basically one of the fundamental laws of physics and the universe, Nicole. They’d put me in textbooks if it wouldn’t start a schism between entire nations of scientific thought.” Jecka spun in front of her, eyes hooded, and whispered directly into her ear. “You are a very lucky girl.”
“I know, I know,” grumbled Nicole, fighting a blush and failing, crossing her arms. “Jecka, Jesus Chist, middle America, you oversexed dumbass.”
“Oh, shit.” Jecka pulled away and righted her posture, looking yeah, totally straight, great cover, nobody saw that. “Not my fault you’re that pretty.”
“Are you saying I was asking for it?”
“Weren’t you?”
“Wow, now we’re definitely in middle America.” Nicole rolled her eyes. “Where else can you be that casual about date and martial rape?”
“Okay, we’re not married, and I don’t care how funny the joke is to imply that we are, but Big Ten schools are also places where people are that casual about it,” replied Jecka, instantly, raising a brow. “Did you somehow forget that?”
“In my blitz and rush to leave the DMV, yes, I kinda did,” admitted Nicole, grimacing. “Look, it’s been a really long time since I’ve been able to feel anything, let alone something remotely similar to happiness, so I forgot how dumb it makes you. Still adjusting.”
“You were so excited to leave with me that you forgot about some of the eternal horrors of the world?” Jecka’s smile widened, and she got that look in her eye. The one she had in the morning, at night, and when they were alone. When everything and everyone else fell away. “That means a lot.”
“Oh, come on, that wasn’t that sappy.”
“It kinda was, but mostly it’s because that’s how I feel when I’m with you, Nicole.” Jecka reached out for her hand, and then stopped herself, and Nicole did not need to be inside her brain to know how much her heart had just tightened from that. Nicole’s had, too. “Like everything’s horrifying and disgusting, but it’s not so bad, since you make it seem a lot less scary.”
“Riiight. I remember now.” Nicole chuckled. “Kinda fucked up that happiness can be described as ‘the living nightmare of existing isn’t so bad with you around’.”
“I prefer to think of it as ‘realistically romantic’.”
“Punch buggy blue,” blurted Jecka, jabbing Nicole in the arm despite driving on the interstate, knocking Nicole out of her groove because she was strumming her guitar for the first time in years. “That’s fifteen.”
“I’m still not playing this with you,” groaned Nicole, testing her strings. Yeah, still good. “It’s not even a fun road trip game! There’s no skill involved, and it’s just an excuse to punch people!”
“That’s what losers say.” Jecka grinned. “Come on. If you play, I’ll reset the score. Give you a fair shot.”
“I’ll think about it.” Nicole strummed again, calluses not nearly all that gone, and tried to force herself to reconnect old, buried muscle memory. “What if we—”
“Punch buggy yellow!” whooped Jecka, jabbing Nicole again, and again knocking her out of her groove. “That’s sixteen.”
“Why is this fun for you?!”
“Because you’re taking forever to serenade me from point A to point B, Nicole. Be the artistic girlfriend and make me swoon,” demanded Jecka. “If you don’t, I’ll just keep playing punch buggy—white!” She jabbed Nicole again. “Wow, there are a lot of VW Beetles on the road.”
“Your perception of a relationship confuses the shit out of me,” grumbled Nicole. “This isn’t a party trick and I haven’t really done this in forever.”
“You played for Emily.”
“Yeah, in the twelve hours we were broken up; she was basically having a mental breakdown, Jecka. And I was kind of a hostage. Sort of.”
“Great, well, you’re definitely a hostage now, since I’m driving the car.” Jecka flashed her a wink. “Or am I suddenly not good enough inspiration for you?”
“Trust me, that’s definitely not the problem.” Nicole smirked and chuckled. “Okay, okay, gimme a minute.” She took a breath, closed her eyes, and got about two notes into something before getting jabbed in the arm again to ‘punch buggy red’. “Goddamnit, Jecka!”
“I’m done! I’m done.” Jecka giggled into a loud laugh. “I promise. I promise.”
“I’m just going to be waiting for it the whole trip!”
“I know, that’s half the fun. Keeps you motivated and on your toes.”
Long, long, long ago, Nicole had at one time attended some kid’s birthday party at this stupid looking fake castle outside of Baltimore. It was this big event theater, except the twist was that you’d sit there for a couple hours and watch medieval knights and shit jousting and fight each other and you’d eat ‘period accurate’ food that tasted terrible. And half the audience would be dressed up in fancy clothes to join in on the ‘fun’.
Called itself ‘Medieval Times’. It was boring. Loud. Obnoxious. The kid was an asshole. Dad picked her up and they got ice cream, except it was closed, so he just took her back to Mom. Awesome night. Great memory.
Apparently, it was a nationwide chain of fake castles, not that Nicole cared. All of that was only relevant since, outside of a couple movies and many lectures she wasn’t paying attention to in many history classes, that was her only frame of reference for what in the fucking hell Jecka had somehow discovered and dragged them to by driving north instead of their intended south.
A Renaissance Fair. A giant fairground where everyone talked like it was five hundred years ago, dressed like it was five hundred years ago, and had stalls, and games, and kids everywhere, and other random crap about feudalism, probably. And fresh food. And jousting in full armor again. Except, everyone working the fair seemed to have showered that morning, so it wasn’t as accurate as it claimed to be.
“Okay, listen, I just thought this would be neat to do, since when are we ever going to want to be in the area again,” whispered Jecka, clearly just as out of her depth. “I did not expect to find a localized Pride parade that doesn’t move and is somehow both more and less gay.”
“Break that one down for me, because how in the world is this anything like—” Nicole stopped dead in her tracks as she saw a fully armored lady knight ride off with someone who sure looked like a real princess, circling the jousting track with trumpets blasting some sort of victory tune. “That’s just one example.”
“There’s literally a sonnet contest and all of the competitors are guys, right over there.” Jecka didn’t point, but nudged Nicole towards the—yeah. Yup, that is exactly what it was. A bunch of well dressed dudes trying to charm the possibly literal pants off a very fancifully dressed guy. “I’m not really sure how this makes sense.”
“Well, it’s like, dress-up, right? Same basic principle.”
“I guess.” Jecka took a few pictures of the fairground with her camera. “It’s cool, though. Everybody here seems excited. Not even in a sad, desperate way, but.” She hummed. “Sincere.”
“Yeah.” Nicole briefly glanced around them as they stepped out of the way of the main thoroughfare traffic, families and kids, and couples of basically every kind she could think of walking along. As if everything was totally normal. “Pride parades are like this?”
“I keep forgetting you’ve never been. No, this is way better.” Jecka chuckled, taking more pictures. “At those, you have to kind of remember why there’s a parade in the first place, and then there’s always bigots in the parade, and around the parade, and it’s not actually…” She sighed. “It’s not safe. Does a phenomenal job of making it look like it, but it’s not.”
“You have done a complete one-eighty about this since I met you.”
“Not really. I just focused on the parts that were good. Or, at least, the parts that made me feel like I wasn’t a freak, until I opened my ears a little more.” Jecka took more pictures. “You see a girl make out with a girl, then make out with a guy, then another girl, and me, all I think is how much fun they’re all having.” She pinched her brow, letting her camera hang from the strap. “Half the crowd may as well be throwing rocks for being a liar and a traitor, that kind of thing.”
“For—” Nicole really tried to figure out what the hell that connection even was, and how it happened. “Wait, for what? Did you skip like two hours of context there? You jumped from ‘girl makes out with people’ to ‘girl is stoned to death at pride parade’.”
“She made out with a guy.”
“And a girl. Two girls.”
“Yeah, that’s a big party foul for the rainbow collective. No switching sides. No playing for both teams. No ‘experimentation’,” said Jecka, with very exaggerated air quotes. “You are either one of them, or not. Like a lightswitch.”
“So, according to them, you’re straight?” Nicole screwed up her face. “I can’t be understanding this correctly.”
“It’s more like…” Jecka chewed on her lip and adjusted her glasses. “I’m gay when I’m dating you. And when I’m dating a guy, I’m straight.”
“That makes no fucking sense. Why would any of that magically go away?”
“Nicole, that’s exactly what you said when you were dating Ari, and it’s not like I corrected you. None of this is easy.”
“Okay, well, I was dumber back then, since what you’re talking about is even stupider than I was.”
“Congratulations, you somehow have more empathy than—I don’t know. A lot of people. Anyway, that’s why Pride parades aren’t actually safe even when you’re in the dead center. Not for me, at least. I think. I don’t feel safe, whatever the hell I am. Maybe you would?”
“If it’s not safe for you, then screw that, I’ll make it unsafe for me even if it isn’t already.”
“You’re sweet. But, yeah, I dunno. No rush to figure that out. Or go to those. Way more eyes on you than you’d think. You’d think it’d be fun, since they’re supposed to be the ‘same’ eyes, but, no.” Jecka brightened back up. “This, though? This is amazing. We could totally make out right now and nobody would care.”
“Aside from the fact that we’re making out in public.”
“Yeah, but like generally, not in a specific ‘oh, two girls, ew’ or ‘oh, two girls, hot’, or ‘oh, two girls, burn the witch’, or ‘oh, two girls, what if I was number three’ sorta way.”
“Is that fourth one actually common?” Nicole raised a brow and smirked. “Or did you just make that up?”
“It’s what I’d think if I saw us making out.”
“Fair.” Nicole waited. “You’re not gonna?”
“Not right now.”
“But you made a whole thing about it.”
“For me, doing it isn’t even close to the most important part, Nicole.” Jecka’s eyes were so tired, yet so bright all the same. “Feeling like you’re free to, that it’s safe to want to, that matters way more.”
“Guess that makes sense.” Nicole chewed on her lip. “Do you think they’ll serve us alcohol since we’re apparently in the super old and horrible times?”
“Nicole, that ploy where you cross state lines to buy liquor because the drinking age is lower five feet to the left hasn’t been a thing since our parents were our age,” chuckled Jecka. “How do you even know about that?”
“Know about what? I was talking sixteenth century or whatever this is supposed to be.”
“Oh. No, they’re carding everyone.”
“I said there were potholes.” Nicole scowled on the side of the road, sitting on top of Jecka’s Camry, cigarette chomped down on her lips. “I said there were like a million. I kept saying, and you kept driving, because you just had to take another detour.”
“Bitch, I know, okay?!” snapped Jecka, waving her cell in the air, struggling for service. “It’ll take me two seconds to call AAA, and then we can, like, I dunno make out and fuck in the backseat while we wait.”
“It’s filled with our stuff, Jecka. You wanna unpack everything, too? Live here from now on?”
“Oh my God, it happens! This isn’t the end of the world. It’s just one blown tire, we’re fine. Nobody got hurt and we have water, and snacks—we’re like, maybe forty miles from a gas station, we can walk for help and—” She pointed to the very busy interstate, cars zooming past them, her hair whipping around her. “We are clearly not actually alone out here!”
“The only people who pick up hitchhikers are pedophiles and rapists.”
“We’re eighteen.”
“Jesus, fine, murderers and rapists.”
“Can you please get some new material, Nicole? It’s always the same shit! Yes! We know! Life’s a nightmare! Men are monsters and should be castrated or whatever the hell you were going to rant about—is any of that helpful right now?!” snapped Jecka, still pacing back and forth along the length of the car, waving her cell around. “New chapter of our lives, new place, new friends, so why not just—” She perked up. “Oh, finally went through—yes, hi! Hello, thank you so much for answering so quickly!”
Nicole took a drag as she listened to Jecka do her best impersonation of a blonde bimbo, her ‘straight girl’ voice even more high pitched and ditzy than the one she used to use at school. It was kinda cute, in a weird way. How she’d even do the physicality and the mannerisms despite being on the phone. Was Jecka right, though? Should Nicole ‘get new material’? Or was she just pissed and scared and didn’t want to admit it?
Didn’t matter one way or the other, ultimately. They’d get a new tire and be on their way. Soon. Hopefully soon. Being stranded was really fucking scary. Nowhere to run. That eighteen wheeler could just decide to kill them. Or the next one could. Or the next one. Crush them like bugs without slowing down.
“—yes, we’ll stay right here. Oh my God, thank you so much!” Jecka hung up and rolled her eyes, miming out more airheaded dribble and flapping her gums. “I always feel so dirty doing that. Like I was a whore but forgot I was a whore and woke up in some dead mafia don’s bed, and his body’s like, on top of me.” She shrugged and pocketed her cell. “How do I explain it to his bodyguards? Oh, I was just so hot that he fucked himself to a heart attack and died? Nobody would believe that.”
“Everyone would believe it,” said Nicole. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine! It’s fine. I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t have snapped or yelled or whatever. Sorry.” Jecka climbed up onto the roof and sat down beside her. “I just get kinda freaked out by the idea of being stranded or trapped.” She fished a cigarette out of her pack, and Nicole lit it with a lighter. Matchbooks, while more reliable to replace, were not worth the potential accidental arson. “I don’t have a story to go with that. It’s just scary.”
“Hey, I’m with you. It’s scary. Doesn’t need to have a reason if it just is.” Nicole leaned against her and lazily gestured with her cigarette to the literally endless fields of corn. “It’d be pretty crazy if I had one for, like, corn or something.”
“A traumatic story that is somehow related to crops?” Jecka eyed her very suspiciously. “What the fuck would that even be? Did a corn cob kill your grandparents? You almost starve to death so many times that the idea of having lots of food makes your skin itch?” She scoffed and took a drag. “Most tryhard, emo, and dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”
“Okay, but you came up with it.”
“I was trying to meet you where you were with whatever the hell that idea even is.” Jecka snickered. “I wish we could make out without getting shot or ogled.”
“Yeah, that’s the real shame, isn’t it?” Nicole grinned. “So much time and can’t even have any fun with it.”
“You’re still fun.”
“You’re okay.”
“I am the life of every party and room, Nicole. Do not ever try and deny that again.”
“Fine, okay, jeez.” Nicole took another drag. “Starting to get a little concerned about that self-confidence.”
“I think you meant to say jealous.”
“I didn’t, but, I mean, I am, yeah.”
“I knew we weren’t heading south,” sighed Nicole, even as Jecka bolted out of the car and towards the tiny farmhouse next to a baseball field surrounded by more corn fields right across the border. “Dammit, Jecka, you can’t keep abusing your power as the driver and my shit sense of direction!”
“I absolutely can!” laughed Jecka, jumping up and down outside of the car. “Come on, come on, come on, I want to run through the corn fields and slide into home plate!”
“This is why you demanded we watch this before we left?” Nicole got out of the car and slammed the door behind her, stretching a little. “I can’t even be that pissed at you; that’s just impressive planning. Almost a thousand miles of it.”
“Why would you be mad? You liked Field of Dreams!”
“Okay, sure, but you’d have still done this even if I hated it.”
“I mean…” Jecka smiled. “Even if you hated it, you’d still get to hang out with me.”
“I was already hanging out with you for the last thousand miles.” Nicole shielded her eyes from the sun before putting her good sunglasses on. “How long do you think we’re going to be here? Twenty minutes?”
“Probably less, honestly.” Jecka started taking pictures with her camera. “The field seemed bigger in the movie.”
“Yeah, it kinda did.” Nicole crossed her arms and followed Jecka as she quickly lost steam and enthusiasm for their several hundred mile detour, clearly struggling to make the angles of the photographs compensate for how boring this all actually was. There were maybe ten other people there. All of them super old or super young. “We can just go.”
“If we leave too quickly, you’ll never let me live down how lame this was,” grumbled Jecka, clicking through the photos she’d taken on the back screen of her camera. “Go run the bases or something. It’ll fool people and you into thinking you’re having fun.”
“Why would I do that?” Nicole watched as a little girl, couldn’t be older than seven, ran around the bases over and over again. “I’m not taking that away from her or joining in. This is her domain.”
“Whatever.” Jecka shoved her camera into Nicole’s hands. “Just get a picture of me walking out of the corn field.”
“You really like this movie.” Nicole took a second to remember how the settings worked on the camera and adjusted the focus. “Okay, whenever you’re ready.”
Jecka ran into the cornfield, and she didn’t really disappear since the stalks were pretty far apart to allow people to even do what she was doing easily. She slowly walked back out, and Nicole took a bunch of pictures, trying her absolute best to capture what Jecka might be looking for. She had no idea if she managed it or not.
“Here, let me see.” Jecka took her camera back and started clicking through the photos Nicole had taken. “Oh, wow, these are really good. Thanks.”
“Yeah, no problem.” Nicole furrowed her brow and looked around the very sparsely populated field again. “Why do you like this movie that much?”
“The messaging about second chances, redemption, forgiveness, and estranged parents and children should make it pretty obvious, Nicole. It’s a crowd pleaser, but it’s a very good one.” Jecka sighed and slung her camera strap back over her shoulder. “I thought there’d be some leftover movie magic out here.”
“It’s from, like, the eighties. Even if there was, it’s long gone by now.” Nicole screwed up her face and looked at Jecka, briefly recalling the ending of that movie. “Jecka.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you bring me here hoping that my dad would walk out of a fucking cornfield dressed as an Orioles player?”
“That might have been a thought that passed my mind,” admitted Jecka, way too easily. “I mean, you said he was a fan, so—”
“It’s a movie.” Nicole pinched her brow. “It’s a movie. It’s not real. Nobody comes back from the dead.”
“I know that, I just—” Jecka gave her a long look. “What if, you know? What if, by some impossible chance of fate or whatever, this one was real?”
“I never wanted to ‘have a catch’ with my dad, Jecka.”
“If he offered, right now, would you?”
“I mean, sure, because he’d be alive.” Nicole frowned. “You really thought that much about this? About me?”
“Sometimes, you make the impossible seem more plausible, Nicole.” Jecka shrugged. “We got out alive. We got this far. We’ll go further. None of that seemed remotely realistic even six months ago.”
“You think I’m magic,” concluded Nicole. “You think I’m evil and magic.”
“And gorgeous!” Jecka beamed and nodded. “Can’t forget that.”
“I’m not magic, Jecka.”
“I know. I just like pretending. Goes hand in hand with life not seeming so terrifying and horrible all the time.” Jecka quickly snapped a picture of Nicole. “You looked pretty.”
“You’re acting really weird.”
“I am trying so hard not to cry right now,” whispered Jecka. “The ending just destroys me every single time.”
The last leg of the drive took them along the lake, because it was scenic, and it was pretty. And, yeah, they did stop off briefly for ‘the most famous’ pizza that they quickly discovered was a tourist trap before promptly leaving. That place that will not be named was a fraud, and they could find actual deep dish, whatever the hell that turned out to be, later. It wasn’t like they were far from the city.
Another two and a half hours south from there, and they’d finally made it to their big, dumb, hyper-expensive-but-thankfully-paid-for-with-scholarships, school.
A real proper university. With everything digusting and traumatizing that came with it. But, it was free for them, and if they didn’t go, well, shit out of luck for moving up in life. What a fun system that was.
Trading trauma and a mountain of cash for ‘education’. Maybe she really would learn something, though. She had to, right? She kinda wanted to, ever since she got a taste of what successful journalism could be like.
Parking was easy. Unpacking was annoying, but at least they didn’t have to go to different dorms. Rooming together was very high risk, high reward, but it was really hard to discount the benefits of living with Jecka. Biggest one being that she lived with Jecka, which she kinda already did back in the DMV. What could the difference possibly be?
Weird how they both knew how bad of an idea that was, but they still did it anyway.
“Okay.” Jecka took a very deep breath and pulled her hair back tighter. “Are we done? Are we finally done?”
“Your car is empty and your organizational system baffles me, but yeah, everything is where it should be.” Nicole glanced around their tiny ass shared dorm room. Smaller than most prison cells, but it seemed more manageable since they’d pushed the lofted twins together. Not like all that many people would give a shit about two girls fucking on a college campus this big, even if they were in the middle of nowhere. Technically. “I think we’re just here now, yeah.”
“It doesn’t feel real.” Jecka’s eyes shot to hers, flickering and a tiny smile spreading across her lips. “We should test the beds. For safety.”
“Jecka, half the building is still moving in. That’s probably the shittiest introduction we can make as ‘new neighbors’,” chuckled Nicole. “C’mon. You can wait.”
“I don’t want to wait.” Jecka sauntered about two steps, since the room was still very small, and tapped Nicole’s lips. “I want everyone to know who and what they’re dealing with.”
“Dude, chill, seriously.”
“Fine.” Jecka huffed and backed off, crossing her arms. “Excuse me for being super into my girlfriend, yeah, real horrible of me.”
“Did you not see half the floor running around introducing themselves to the other half?” asked Nicole, raising a brow. “That wasn’t just the RA. If we do this, we’re going to get knocks on the door like every two minutes.”
“Oh, I actually totally missed that.” Jecka cleared her throat. “I may have been extremely focused on working as fast and as efficiently as possible so I could get your pants off.”
“We live together, Jecka. We will not be lacking for opportunities.” Nicole snickered and kissed her. “What’s the rush?”
“None of this feels real, Nicole. I just keep worrying I’ll wake up any second and it’ll be the first day of Junior year all over again except you won’t be there,” whispered Jecka. “That I thought all of this up in my stupid delusional brain, because I freaked out that nobody I knew was at lunch except for, I dunno, fucking Kelly, and I had a psychotic break.”
“Do—wow, okay.” Nicole paused. “Jecka, how much of your life do you worry is actually a dream or a hallucination? Because this keeps coming up.”
“I know! And it’s—it’s a lot. I know it’s dumb, but—I think about it a lot.”
“It’s not dumb. Would fucking me actually help with that?”
“Probably not, but it’d feel amazing, so there’s no downside to trying.”
“Here.” Nicole pinched her and Jecka instantly smacked her hand away with a frown. “What? I’m proving you’re not hallucinating or sleeping or whatever.”
“That doesn’t help with something this extreme, Nicole!” Jecka rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Let’s go mingle and figure out who’s holding.” She held up a finger and adjusted her glasses. Hottest, smartest, prettiest nerd ever. “The earlier we get in, the better and more reliable as customers we’ll look.”
“Get ourselves started young; very progressive and proactive.” Nicole snorted before she connected a dot and a half. “Uh, Jecka, half the reasons I got fucked up in the first place are back home.”
“Same here, but the other half still exists and I am not ready going cold turkey, nor am I ready for total sobriety.” Jecka smiled. “It’d be kinda nice to just do stuff for fun for once, though, right?”
“I mean…” Nicole shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”
“I do not believe you if you’re saying you want to go sober.”
“I’m not saying that, I just—” Nicole sighed. “We kinda did nothing this whole trip. You realize that, right? All we did was smoke.”
“Yeah, because I had to drive and you tripping while I’m doing all the work would make me feel very lonely and shitty.”
“Was there anything about what we did that would’ve been better high?”
“Well…” Jecka scrunched up her face in deep concentration. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think so. But that doesn’t really apply to college, Nicole.” She blew a raspberry. “We’re back in the land of statistically likely rape and, just, generally people. Thus, we must partake for sanity’s sake.”
“Do we?” Nicole chewed on her cheek. “Jecka, I got this far by trying to not be numb or feel less than nothing anymore.”
“We’re at a party school.”
“I know that, I get it, I’m only saying—” Nicole took her hand. “I liked not having to get high with you. A lot.”
“Yes, and now that we have returned to reality, we’re not the only two people left in the world anymore.” Jecka squeezed her hand. “It’s shitty, but it’s true. If you really want to try and face life sober—”
“One day,” blurted Nicole. “Just one day. Try it for one day. If it sucks, forget I said anything.”
“You actually think we can just live? You really think that?” Jecka chuckled, her eyes crinkling behind her glasses. “God, look at you. One gay ass road trip and suddenly you’re a classical romantic.”
“Gross. You’re ruining this.”
“No, I’m not.” Jecka narrowed her eyes. “We can try it. You just need to fuck me that well.” She shushed Nicole before her mouth even opened. “Not just often, and not just your best. The best anyone could ever do. Forever.” She grinned. “Think you can handle that?”
“Can I handle forcing you to manage your pill addiction by having sex with you?” Nicole blushed, but only a little. “I absolutely can’t. I’ll try, but that is a crazy tall order.”
“Great!” Jecka kissed her and giggled. “We can start right now.”
“This is what I wanted to avoid, but…” Nicole’s eyes shot to their locked door into the hallway as somebody knocked on it and started saying things. Sounded like a pair of girls. “You’re actually okay with this?”
“Let the bitches be jealous.” Jecka climbed up onto the vaulted ‘full’ bed they’d made by smashing the two shitty twins together. “All I care about is you wanting me so bad that you’re willing to play the part of those delightful pharmaceuticals.”
“Not how I saw my first day in college going.” Nicole closed the blinds. “Then again, I never saw myself getting this far in the first place, so, to hell with it.”
“Yeah, yes, very profound, get up here and fuck me!”
“Why are you this horny?” Nicole looked up at Jecka, who was in the middle of tearing her own clothes off. “Dude! You cannot be backed up, it’s been like five hours.”
“Nicole, I want to have sex with my gorgeous college girlfriend,” proclaimed Jecka, reaching down from the bed and grabbing her, practically yanking her up the shitty ladder. “Because that’s what you are now.”
“Oh, yeah. I am.” Nicole smiled. “That’s pretty cool. I hadn’t—”
“You are wearing way too many clothes.”
“Oh my God, fine, okay, fine!”