Chapter Text
As middle school came to a close and the transition to high school began, it never bothered Sasha that she and Anne started to branch out and make new friends. They were learning new things about themselves, on the long journey to recovering from the endless physical and mental traumas of Amphibia, and learning how to build healthy relationships outside of each other and Marcy.
Putting it simply, Anne and Sasha were doing well— or rather, as close to well as they could be, considering… everything. But it was still an improvement from the absolute rollercoaster that was their first year back on Earth.
And up until last semester, they’d still had each other, too. They had their new friend groups, but Sasha still spent a few evenings and at least one night a week at Anne’s house, and they hung out most weekends.
But now, after the summer between freshman and sophomore year, Sasha couldn’t remember the last time they’d spent time together one on one.
It wasn’t like they were avoiding or ignoring each other— they always waved in the hallways and still texted now and then. They just each had other connections and responsibilities outside of each other that were taking up more of their time.
Anne had taken on more hours at Thai Go, was spending more time at the Thai Temple connecting with her heritage and community, and was taking tennis more seriously than she had before, practicing most evenings after school when she wasn’t working. And any free time left over usually went to spending time with her parents or her new friend group.
Sasha, on the other hand, couldn’t do cheerleading anymore because of lasting complications from her Amphibia-related injuries. She worked at Thai Go too, but she had to start taking fewer shifts, even without cheerleading taking up a lot of her time, in order to be at home more often after school and on weekends.
Sasha’s baby half-brother was around fourteen months now, and with her mom and stepdad being the trademark not-great-parents they were, taking care of him and her two younger stepsisters mostly fell upon Sasha. Especially at her mom’s house, once returning from Amphibia as an obviously better and more mature person, eldest daughter syndrome had gone into full swing.
Part of her would always resent her parents for putting her in a caretaker position the second they felt they could leave her alone with her siblings without her starting a fight about something or other. And the second she got back from being fucking missing for a year. And at the critical recovery points of the worst physical and emotional traumas of her life.
Her stepmom, Katie, was much better about insisting Sasha have time to still be a kid— so it was mostly at her dad’s that she was able to spend nights at Anne’s. But the rest of her parents seemed to think the siblings she did not ask for, give birth to, or want, were entirely her responsibility, just because she happened to be born first.
Surprising herself, though, once she actually got to know them beyond “parasites that won’t stay out of my fucking room,” Sasha really enjoyed her step and half-siblings. She didn’t appreciate being in charge of them beyond reasonable babysitting requests— which, these days, were sparse. But she could usually have fun with them at least part of the time, when she wasn’t breaking up fights or awkwardly avoiding the constant “Where did you go?” and “How come Marcy stopped coming over?” and “Why do you use a wheelchair sometimes now?” questions.
So in the first months back from Amphibia, overlapping with the final months of the latest pregnancy, Sasha’s mother, Denise, had seen her grow to not hate her siblings, and jumped on the opportunity to dump the baby on her the first moment she could.
Sasha had been absolutely furious to learn her mother was pregnant upon returning home. She had stretched the stitches in her back while tearfully screaming at her accusations of giving up the search for her after barely four months. Losing hope by that point was one thing, but opting to replace her? And it only got worse when she learned they had emptied her room to make the nursery. If they had gotten rid of her things rather than put them in a storage unit, she probably would’ve refused to see her mom ever again.
Up until meeting him for the first time, Sasha hated her unborn brother. She had only agreed to meet him at all with Anne’s encouragement, and a promise that she would come along, too.
Then something cracked the armor around her heart the moment she saw Anne hold him.
And the armor shattered completely when, in an attempt at an apology, they had taken her miserable, not-serious name suggestion, and named him Timothy… naming him unknowingly after the toad that had been more of a parent to Sasha than they ever could.
Anne had barely scooped him from her arms in time as Sasha crashed to her knees and burst into tears.
The second she regained her composure and took him back (after nearly an hour), she swore a silent vow to protect him. She was not going to let this baby turn out like his parents… or like she had once been.
She hadn’t meant to raise him. She had just meant to be there for him.
But apparently by the time they saw her spending time with him unprompted, her mom and stepdad didn’t see it that way. And now that he was walking almost unsupported, he was getting into all kinds of trouble and keeping Sasha’s hands full at all times.
Since she had been helping more with the kids and had less time to herself, her time with Anne gradually dwindled. Now they rarely saw each other outside school and overlapping shifts at Thai Go, and even those interactions stopped feeling as much like they had grown up together and instead felt like they were just casual classmates and coworkers.
She knew it was healthy for both of them to expand their social circles. She was having fun doing it for the most part too, and so was Anne. Nobody could deny that.
But she couldn’t get over the constant nagging feeling that something was just… missing.
As much as she genuinely enjoyed her new friends, there was always something tugging her thoughts back to Anne and Marcy.
Marcy had been on her own healing journey and paving her own way in Connecticut, and though the three still kept in touch, contact with her had diminished greatly over the past several months as well. Sasha missed her, of course— badly— but the distance was unavoidable, and they had begun to get used to her not being a physical aspect of their lives as often as she had once been, and as often as they wished she could be.
It was harder knowing that Anne was still around, but seemingly just out of reach. She saw her almost every day, if not at school then at work, but opposing the physical distance between Sasha, Anne and Marcy, there seemed to have grown a metaphorical distance between Sasha and Anne.
And if she was honest with herself, Sasha knew it wasn’t just their busy schedules and their new platonic relationships keeping them apart.
Despite recognizing that she wasn’t only interested in boys at some point during the latter half of their year in Amphibia, Sasha had adamantly refused to think about it. She had been too busy keeping an entire town alive and drowning in self-loathing to deal with a sexuality crisis on top of everything else.
But upon returning home, the thoughts became increasingly difficult to avoid, and eventually Sasha had to face the music and come to terms with being bisexual. Anne, Marcy, and their parents all reacted positively, and were consistent in supporting her.
Her own parents were another story (except Katie, who was as supportive as always). They weren’t happy about it, but eventually got over the fact that Sasha liked girls. The problem that remained to this day was that they didn’t understand why she refused to ‘pick one,’ and insisted that liking both wasn’t an option. And forget about liking anyone that wasn’t a boy or girl. It had taken years for them to even call Anne by the right name and pronouns, and even now she was pretty sure they only really did because Sasha would refuse to speak for them and sometimes refuse to come home for days each time they didn’t.
Katie, as well as Sasha’s siblings, always respected Anne and stood by Sasha when she came out as well (even the ones that her parents insisted were “too young to have an opinion”), which felt good, even though they were mostly overshadowed by the lack of support from her biological parents and stepdad.
But Sasha had never let their opinion get in the way of exploring this new side of herself. And thankfully, outside of three of her four parents, she had a very sturdy support group.
She had been on dates ever since coming out last year, but she was never really into into anyone. She wasn’t using them or leading them on— nothing of the sort, but mostly using the experiences as opportunities to learn about herself and what she was interested in and attracted to. She always made it known early on that she wasn’t looking for anything too serious, and let them decide for themselves if that matched what they were looking for. She was only fourteen at the time, after all, and only fifteen now— there was no need to settle down or do anything more than casual dates anytime soon.
And any semblance of ‘relationship’ Sasha might’ve had before Amphibia really didn’t count, she had come to realize. She was just as attached to her friends as they were to her, but she had undeniably been the most popular and had the most connections outside of Anne and Marcy, so she’d found herself on what probably qualified as dates a few times and just thought that meant they were together. And back then, maybe it did. But in hindsight, Sasha calling the boys in question her ‘boyfriend’ and letting someone call her his ‘girlfriend’ never actually meant anything at the prime age of eleven or twelve. Sasha had liked the boys, sure (or maybe she should phrase it as ‘tolerated them more than the average person’), but it had never really led to anything, nor did she particularly care for it to.
On the other hand, Anne and Marcy had consciously known they weren’t interested in boys for much of their whole lives— and for Anne, almost as long as she had known she wasn’t one, even.
Marcy had been out for several years now— they must’ve been about ten or eleven when she told them?— but she never seemed to care much about dating or romance in general. She had always been more focused on the trio’s friendship than potentially looking for anything outside of if, be it platonic or romantic. She never thought she would need anyone else, so she saw no reason to.
Of course, now that she was physically separated from Anne and Sasha, she had started to branch out more. For the first time in her life, Marcy was working on herself, and building healthy platonic connections outside of their trio. She seemed content, and was enjoying herself and her time with her new friends… all things considered. Romance was even less a priority for her than it had been before, she had told them at one point last year, and she felt like she still had a way to go before she’d be able to let anybody in like that after everything that had happened. She was recovering, though, and she was as happy as she could be, and that was all that really mattered to them.
Anne hadn’t actively pursued anything either while growing up, but her romantic tendencies were more obvious than Marcy and Sasha’s. She was more into dating magazines and cheesy romance movies than either of her friends, but never seemed to care much about finding anyone for herself. Like Marcy, she had been so codependent on just their friend group that she didn’t feel the need to find fulfillment anywhere else, either platonic or romantic.
It had been all but obvious to anyone who knew her that Anne didn’t like boys, but it wasn’t until Amphibia gave her the opportunity for serious self-reflection that she really put a label to it and let it sink in. She came out as a lesbian in eighth grade, shortly after returning and a year before Sasha did, but it wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone at that point.
She was far from obsessed with finding a partner, but she had seemed more open to it and excited about the premise once she began to genuinely recover from grieving Amphibia. She’d dated casually here and there, and Sasha’s opinions about Anne’s dates were widely positive. Even still, much like Sasha, Anne had never exactly qualified any of those instances as serious, so she never seemed to get too attached or torn up when they inevitably didn’t last.
But now there was one girl who seemed to be sticking around.
And, as luck would have it, Sasha did not like her.
Anne was more than capable of making her own decisions. She had every right to hang out with, associate with, and date whoever she wanted. It wasn’t Sasha’s place to judge or control her, nor would she attempt to ever again.
But something about Addison gave Sasha a bad feeling.
Like, ‘bitter taste in her mouth and pit in her stomach at the mere thought of her’ kind of bad feeling.
Sasha had long given up denying that her sexuality crisis in Amphibia started when she realized the way she felt about Anne ultimately boiled down to ‘madly in love with her.’ Anne had been her gay awakening long before she knew what a crush even was, much less the concept of sexuality or that she had one of her own to figure out.
But just having her friendship back, stronger and healthier than ever, had been more than Sasha could have ever dreamed of. Even before Anne and the Plantars found a way back to Amphibia, she had decided that if by some miracle Anne gave her another chance, then the opportunity to be her friend again was the extent of what she would ever ask of her.
Her friendship with Anne and Marcy was the most valuable thing in the world to her. In a way, she felt they were all she had left, both of Amphibia and the simplicities of life before it… the good ones, anyway. She cherished and respected them both too much as her friends to let her feelings for Anne jeopardize the closeness her trio shared with one another.
And it had been a philosophy she’d stuck by from the day Anne returned to Wartwood until now, back on Earth, as Sasha stood watching her laughing with her new friends down the hall between periods… fingers interlocked with Addison’s, and head leaning on her shoulder.
So it was hard to know if the bad feeling could be chalked up to jelousy, or if it was legitimate, and Sasha didn’t dare risk upsetting Anne by warning her. The last thing she wanted was for her to think she was trying to police her relationships and tell her what to do. And, again, she wasn’t.
Not only that, but voicing her suspicions could clue Anne into Sasha’s feelings for her.
Yeah, it was definitely better to keep her mouth shut.
But the tugging feeling in Anne’s direction was painfully difficult to ignore, and for some reason today she felt it especially hard to take her eyes away. Nausea knotted in her gut as Addison lifted their hands and pressed a kiss to Anne’s knuckles. Sasha scowled, something burning in her chest as she saw red creep onto Anne’s face and heard a flustered, breathy laugh escape her throat.
“Y’okay, Sash?” Yasmin, one of Sasha’s friends, nudged her, seeing her sneering off in a seemingly random direction. They followed Sasha’s gaze until it landed on Anne and Addison, then sighed. “You gotta get over her, dude.”
“This isn’t about my feelings.” Sasha muttered cryptically, meaning to shoot them a glare, but couldn’t tear her eyes away.
“Sure,” Yasmin rolled their eyes, but their tone was light. “You’d be completely fine if she was dating anyone else, but it’s just Addison you don’t like. Right.”
Sasha didn’t feel like arguing, but deep down, she was pretty sure that was actually true. This was the first of Anne’s partners she had ever had a problem with; she had her feelings under control to where, generally speaking, she didn’t view Anne dating as a threat or an insult. She was happy enough as her friend not to mind much that Anne didn’t see her as anything more. It really was just Addison.
But then she balked, questioning herself again. This was the first of her partners Sasha didn’t like, but it was also Anne’s first quasi-serious relationship. The relationship that had made her start to pull away, and left Sasha insecure in their friendship.
Was she really just jealous…?
Interrupting her mini-crisis, the bell suddenly blared overhead and made Sasha flinch. She saw Anne flinch at the same time down the hall, then frowned as Addison rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to say something. Though Sasha couldn’t read her lips, she could infer by her expression it was a quip that was probably meant to be playful, but instead it made Anne look at the ground uncomfortably.
Sasha narrowed her eyes.
Though they had grown to love Amphibia enough for Anne to legitimately die to protect it, there was still no denying that constant giant bug attacks, and eventually robot attacks and literal actual war left behind its fair amount of mental scars, as well as the obvious physical ones. All three of the girls were still extremely jumpy and very rarely let their guards down or kept their backs turned to anyone for long— both literally, in Marcy and Sasha’s cases especially, and figuratively for all three.
Everyone in town— probably in all of LA— knew the trio had been through something big, seeing as they had… well, vanished into thin air for a year, and came back visibly scarred and haunted. Addison had moved here after they returned and after Marcy moved away, so she wasn't present during the period where they were actively missing, and was generally kept in the dark about what exactly happened, not unlike most of the populace. However, she’d been made more than aware that Anne was in the process of recovering from massive trauma and she needed to tread lightly around her.
Even if she was joking, Addison shouldn’t tease her— or anyone— for being jumpy. Especially if she knew they had something bigger going on behind the scenes, which Anne obviously did. Sasha’s frown deepened.
“You coming, Sash?” Nico, another of Sasha’s friends who shared her next class, called over to her.
Sasha lifted her head; her friend group was breaking off in their own respective directions to head to fourth period.
“I’ll catch up.” Sasha called back to him, and Nico nodded before heading on his way.
Looking back over in Anne’s direction, she felt a short flare of alarm as she saw that her group was doing the same, and that Anne and Addison— still holding hands— had started walking in the opposite direction.
The longing in her chest finally tumbled up out of her throat before she could stop it.
“Anne?”
Within an instant so casual it caught Sasha off-guard, Anne turned around and dropped Addison’s hand. “Yeah?”
Sasha just stared for a moment, mouth half-open and bone-dry. She clamped her jaw shut and gulped, shooting a sheepish glance at Addison, and then back to Anne— the former of whom was staring with furrowed brows down at their hands: disconnected without a moment’s hesitation the second Sasha spoke to her girlfriend.
After a couple more of Sasha’s brief glances between the two, Anne got the hint. “Oh,” she said, then turned to her partner. “Addy, can you, um… Can you give us a minute?”
Addison lifted her head from looking at their hands, and narrowed mistrustful eyes at Anne in a way that made Sasha’s face drop and her skin crawl.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Anne jibed, as if this was normal. Sasha frowned even more. “I’ll catch up.” She nudged her away, and Addison grumbled something under her breath before obliging.
Anne turned to face Sasha again once she had turned the corner. “So what’s—”
“Are we still friends?” Sasha cut her off without meaning to, then cringed and dropped her chin to stare at the ground. She looked tense, as if bracing herself for the worst response.
Anne suddenly understood, and she softened. “Sashy,” She found her legs moving toward her until stopping with less than a foot between them. Sasha’s hands gripped the handles of her crutches so hard they trembled, but it ceased when Anne gently took them in her own. “Of course we’re still friends.”
She squeezed Sasha’s hand, then threaded their fingers and swung them lightly back and forth. Sasha heaved a huge sigh of relief.
“After everything we’ve been through, I can’t imagine a scenario where we wouldn’t be.” There was a somberness to Anne’s voice and a sad smile on her face, but there was no denying how genuine she sounded.
“Yeah,” Sasha exhaled as she processed Anne’s words and let relief settle on her shoulders. “Yeah, okay. Sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess I was being paranoid.”
Anne tilted her head thoughtfully, examining Sasha’s expression. “Don’t be sorry. What brought this on?”
Sighing again, Sasha shrugged. “I don’t know. I just… I’ve barely seen you lately. I know we’ve been busy with school and work and family, and we’re having fun with our new friends, and you with… with Addison….” She trailed off, looking a bit sheepish and unsure what to say next.
“Addison, huh?” Anne took a step back and stuffed her hands in her pockets, cocking a brow. “Is the Sasha Waybright jealous of my girlfriend?” She teased, entirely joking. But Sasha stiffened.
“No,” she protested, much too quickly, and all of a sudden she seemed to be very interested in the floor. She opened and closed her mouth several times, but any further words appeared to be frozen at the back of her throat.
The playful smirk on Anne’s face faltered. She knew Sasha well enough to tell when she was lying, and she blatantly was. So she was jealous of Addison.
But in a short passing thought that was equal parts wonderful, terrible, and everything in between, Anne realized that Sasha’s face and hesitance to continue raised an unanswerable question of what she was jealous of: the fact that Addy generally got more of her attention nowadays… or the fact that she was dating someone, period.
Annoyingly, instinctively, unwelcomely, Anne’s heart skipped a beat.
She roughly shoved the thought down with a flare of irritation and a pang of guilt. Come on, she scolded herself. Why are we even going there? You’re not a lovestruck little kid anymore.
Anne had, genuinely, completely moved on. She would always love Sasha, but the weight of being in love with her was long lifted.
It was a blip. A decade-long blip. A blip she couldn’t even remember the start of because they had been so young, she could admit that. But a blip all the same. Months and months and months of self reflection and discussion in therapy had proven she was over it. She had cried, really cried, tears of relief when she realized she finally felt like she could move on. There was genuinely no question in Anne’s mind.
It was pretty rude, honestly, that her heart’s first instinct was still to freak the hell out, just because Sasha vaguely, debatably implied there could be a nonzero chance of being jealous she was with someone else. She took a deep breath, telling her brain to be gentle with herself. Years of feeling that strongly about people hadn’t gone away easily, she had long learned. But every reminder that nothing had ever come of it still wore on her over time.
Instead of dwelling on it, she prompted to take one of Sasha’s hands again and speak instead.
“Talk to me, Sash.”
“I miss you,” she blurted immediately. “I love my new friends, and I know you love yours. And… and Addison, I’m sure.”
Anne reddened, and was once again annoyed by her body’s visceral response: ‘No, I don’t. I don’t love her.’ She bit back the sudden urge to protest out loud, guilt plaguing her. Her instinct hadn’t even humored her by throwing in a ‘yet’ at the end, only rushed to reassure Sasha against something that surely didn’t actually matter to her.
Sure, she did like Addison. But it just hadn’t been long enough where she could say she loved her.
…Yet, of course.
After all, it took a lot for Anne to fall in love. She’d only ever done it twice, and those people were—
No. Those people were. Were as in past tense in love with them, as in she didn’t feel that way anymore, and that was the end of the statement. She had moved on, genuinely, she reminded that stupid part of her brain that still defaulted to them.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we branched out. Frog knows how dangerous our codependency was before. I’m not saying I want to go back to that or that we should. But….” Sasha hesitated, and Anne could see her eyes clouding. “I still… I still miss you. I miss you and Marcy all the time. So bad that sometimes I don’t know what to do with myself. I guess I’m just… scared that things will never be the same. The same in the good ways.”
Anne wilted a little bit, nostalgic sorrow pricking at her heart. “They… they might not ever be exactly the same. You’re right,” she admitted, absentmindedly brushing her thumb back and forth across Sasha’s knuckles. “But we’ve learned by now that change is inevitable, Sashy. Just because we don’t spend as much time together anymore will never mean I don’t care about you.”
“I know.” Sasha sighed, but she didn’t look particularly comforted.
Anne frowned. She took a tiny step closer. “Do you remember what I told Marcy? When she…?”
The gaze of the girl across from her grew even more distant and cloudy, but she nodded. She was silently relieved Sasha had known what she meant and she didn’t have to finish her sentence. Talking about Marcy’s possession was brutal on all three of them, so they usually tried to avoid it outside of therapy.
“‘Nothing— not distance, or time, can break the bond that we share. Because nothing can take away the memories of the time we spent together.’” With no effort whatsoever, she echoed the exact words Anne had spoken to Marcy that day almost a year and a half ago now.
Heart aching in her chest, Anne gulped. “And it’s still true,” she promised, tilting her head down to catch Sasha’s eye. Sasha nodded, but couldn’t hold her gaze very long, and her friend frowned. “But I miss you, too. Both of you. A lot."
That seemed to brighten her, and Sasha lifted her head, eyes glittering with hesitant promise. “You do?”
“Of course I do,” Anne scoffed. “Branching out and drifting apart are entirely different things, and I don’t want us to drift apart, either. You and Marcy are still major parts of my life. You always have been, and you always will be. I’m just sorry I did anything that ever made you question otherwise.”
“You didn’t. You have every right to make connections with other people, and you deserve to.” Sasha told her. “I’m not asking ‘cause I want to hold you back. I just… get insecure.”
“You couldn’t hold me back, even if you wanted to,” Anne quipped good-naturedly. “We’ve done that to each other enough already.”
“No kidding,” Sasha laughed, finally meeting Anne’s gaze with a gleam in her eye.
It was at that moment Anne realized how close together they were. She cleared her throat, taking a step back and shoving her hands back in her pockets.
Sasha couldn't deny a twinge of disappointment as Anne let go of her hands and took a step back, but she said nothing. Anne, however, seemed to get shy all of a sudden, something hidden in her features that Sasha didn’t know how to read.
“Do you… do you want to eat lunch together?”
Sasha felt her heart lift in her chest. “Really…?”
“Yeah,” Anne shrugged, kicking at the ground. “It’s Wednesday, so we could stop by work. If… If you want.”
Their school allowed students to leave campus for lunch every Wednesday if they wanted, so long as they weren’t late coming back a certain number of times or otherwise had any disciplinary issues for that quarter. Anne, nor Addy or any of her newer friends had cars yet, so they would usually just walk to the town center behind the school. Sasha did have a car, though, which meant they could drive to Thai Go instead. Surely Addy and her other friends wouldn’t mind if she went with someone else this week, and she knew her parents would be happy to see her and Sasha spending time together again outside of work.
“Yeah,” Sasha breathed. “I… I’d like that.”
“Cool.” A grin widened on Anne’s face. “And maybe we can work out a schedule for hanging out more often again while we’re there.”
Sasha nodded and Anne nodded back, their smiles mirrored. A silence followed, but much to the relief of both girls, it was a comfortable, natural one— like nothing had changed.
Suddenly, Sasha steadied herself on her feet and tossed her crutches up against the lockers. Anne was caught by surprise for a split second before realizing what she was doing. She felt her whole body lift with insurmountable relief as Sasha practically lunged forward to scoop her into her arms. On instinct, she reciprocated the embrace and nuzzled her face into the crook of her friend’s neck, leaning into her and clutching the fabric of her shirt to hold her as tightly as she could.
The familiar smell and feeling and warmth of Sasha flooded Anne’s senses and she felt herself melt into her arms.
Tears stung the backs of Sasha’s eyes as Anne softened against her, but she blinked them away, tucking her nose into her curls.
“I missed you,” Anne sighed into her shoulder.
“I missed you, too.” Sasha croaked, willing her voice steady.
“Meet you outside building one at the start of A Lunch?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
“Cool.” Anne said again, squeezing her tightly for another long moment before loosening her grip. “I gotta go for now, though.”
“Right. Me too.” Sasha pulled away quickly, staring at the ground, but then she staggered. Her face screwed up in a wince as she put weight on her left foot.
“Heel giving you trouble again…?” Anne shot an anxious glance down and reached to grab for her crutches.
A thick, jagged scar stretched across the back of her heel to the area on top of her foot currently hidden beneath her sock. Darcy had launched a flaming dagger at her foot during their battle, damaging (but thankfully, not tearing) her Achilles tendon, slicing and severely burning the skin across her outer ankle as well. If she hadn’t been wearing her boots, the injury could’ve been much worse.
But her ankle and back injuries were still having lasting negative effects on her mobility. Sasha used forearm crutches or a cane to get around when her wounds would act up, which was usually between one to three days a week, and occasionally she used a wheelchair during really painful flare-ups. However, she was still in physical therapy last Anne knew, and learning to rely less on the mobility aids as time went on.
Sasha puffed out a labored breath as her friend held her crutches steady to slip her forearms back into them. “Yeah,” she answered, pain fading from her expression as she shifted the weight back off her foot and onto the crutches. “But PT is still helping. And obviously it’s improved a lot since we hung out last.”
Shuddering, Anne nodded. “I remember how bad it was those first few months,” she muttered with a wince. “I’m just glad it is improving. I was honestly pretty worried for a while there.”
“Me too—” Sasha conceded, and at that moment the warning bell sounded overhead. Both girls jumped, then softened simultaneously once registering the noise was harmless, sharing a tiredly bemused glance. “So, um… Building one, right?”
“Right,” Anne smiled again. “I’ll see you later, Sashy.”
With that, they turned and waved at each other before heading off in their separate directions. But neither could deny the weight they felt had been lifted off their shoulders.
Anne leapt a foot backwards, however, as she rounded the corner and almost walked into Addy there waiting for her. She instinctively reached behind her back for her sword, but loosened when she felt only her backpack and saw that it was only her girlfriend. She frowned when she saw the look on her face, though.
“What’s wrong?”
“You could’ve at least asked before making plans to go to lunch with someone else.” Addy muttered, arms crossed, with a look of indignance on her face.
A weird twinge flickered in the pit of Anne’s gut. “Were you listening to us?”
“Well, yeah,” Addy rolled her eyes. “What’d you expect?”
Anne huffed. “I expected you to give us some privacy like I asked you to, not to lurk around the corner eavesdropping,” she told her, measuredly calm but obviously annoyed. She took another step back and flexed her fists around the straps of her backpack. “What’s the big deal? I eat lunch with you guys every day. Who says I need your permission to take one day to eat with my childhood best friend instead?”
She regretted her defensive tone, though, when she saw the look on Addy’s face. “I thought you’d understand,” she said, wounded. “I’m just paranoid. After… y’know.”
Anne sighed. This was not the first time an interaction like this had occurred.
Addison’s last girlfriend had cheated on her with one of her best friends, and it crushed her. She was still recovering from the betrayals. Anne knew all too well the complexities of moving past trauma, and she really wanted to help Addy get through it, but she couldn’t help but be wary of the less-than-healthy behaviors the experience had instilled in her partner. She hadn’t been like this when they met, or even when they started dating, but as more time went on, Anne was all too aware that something about Addy was… changing.
She was determined to see past it and work through the process with her, though. After all, she had changed Sasha, and Marcy in some ways, too— who was to say she couldn’t do it again? Addy wasn’t all that different, right?
“I’m sorry I snapped, I shouldn’t have done that. What I was trying to say,” Anne began carefully, softening her body language to come across as less hostile. “is that I’m doing my best to accommodate what you need from me, and I know how hard overcoming a betrayal is. But there’s a line between wanting my loyalty and wanting to control me to keep it. I have never given you any reason not to trust me. So as much as I do understand— I really do— I can’t let everything I do revolve around one person or one group. I've learned that the hard way. I’m still my own person. I need to be able to make decisions for myself and have a life and relationships outside of ours— without you constantly assuming I’m doing anything to deceive you, or that I want to leave you because of it. If I ever do something that worries you, then tell me so we can work through it. But I can’t be guilty until proven innocent for our whole relationship, and you can’t lurk around corners waiting for me to do something wrong. For both of our sakes. Does that make sense?”
She thought she had worded herself nicely, but Addison just looked at her with an annoyance that made her eyes border on a glare, and made her wonder if she’d even heard a word she said. “You stopped holding my hand when she said your name.”
Anne blinked at her. “I did?” She genuinely didn’t remember doing that, but Addy scoffed in disbelief.
“The second she called you.”
Anne shrugged. “That doesn’t mean anything,” Her skin crawled, feeling interrogated and uncomfortable under Addison’s glare, even though she was telling the truth. “I didn’t do it on purpose. But I can understand why that might bother you, so I’m sorry— I won’t do it again.”
Crossing her arms again, Addy furrowed her brow, unimpressed. “What about those nicknames you were calling her? Can you explain that?” Her tone wasn’t nearly as sharp or accusing as her expression, but Anne still shrunk back under her icy gaze even though she knew she wasn’t actually doing anything wrong.
“Everyone calls her that.”
“Everyone calls her Sash. You called her Sashy, too.”
Anne bit back a huff of irritation. Had she literally been listening to everything? “Yeah…? So what?”
“I’ve never heard anyone else call her Sashy.”
“She only lets me and Marcy call her that,” Anne grumbled, bristling at the underlying hostility in her girlfriend’s voice. Hearing someone else call her their nickname for Sasha was making annoyance and protectiveness square her shoulders, despite her better judgment. “It’s been our nickname for her since we were little.”
Addy sighed, her eyes losing their focus. “Stuff like exclusive nicknames… That’s always how it starts, Anne.”
I’m not going to give up my best friend of ten years just because my girlfriend of four months is insecure! She wanted to snap, but wisely held her tongue. There was definitely a point she wouldn’t have, but in that moment she was relieved to know better now.
Instead, Anne drew in a deep breath. “I think you’re reading too much into this,” she began, calmly and honestly. “Sasha, Marcy and I have been best friends since we were five years old, and Marcy and I since we were three. The three of us have been through a lot together. A lot. Just because you came around more recently and didn’t see most of that doesn’t erase that history. So yeah, you’re gonna hear about them a lot. We were closer than a lot of friends are in a lot of ways, and we still are, but that doesn’t mean we were ever anything more.”
She did feel the slightest bit guilty leaving out the ‘Okay fine, I was in love with both of them for almost a decade’ part. She never liked excluding details— it always felt like she was shirking the truth. But knowing that would just make Addison see them as even more of a threat when there was genuinely no reason for her to, she figured it was probably best to skip that.
And she wasn’t lying. They never were anything more than best friends. Of course, there had been a long time she hoped they would be someday. But as far as she knew, that hope had never been reciprocated. Sasha being jealous of Addison was really the first moment that made her wonder otherwise, and that had been short-lived. But even if any of her feelings were reciprocated by either of her friends, none of the three had certainly ever acted on anything.
“Nicknames and affection and all that shit can be platonic, y’know,” Anne reminded her gently. “Not everyone has ulterior motives. Some people just love their friends.”
That part was true, and she believed it with her whole heart. Even if for her, loving her friends did mean something else for a while, it didn’t mean that was true for everybody, or that she didn’t truly love them platonically with every fiber of her being.
The romantic feelings always took a backburner because their friendship was too important to jeopardize. Though they were always there, she’d had the feelings under control and it hadn’t impacted their friendship at all. Being in love with them was never more important to her than loving them, and she would have been more than happy for them to stay nothing more than her best friends forever. As long as they were in her life, that was all she cared about in the end, even if they never wound up feeling the same way about her.
“She is gay, isn’t she?” Addison pressed, narrowing her eyes.
“She’s… She’s bi,” Anne clarified slowly, unperturbed by the direction this might be headed. “You know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“It doesn’t necessarily not mean anything, either.” Her girlfriend muttered.
“Two friends both being sapphic doesn’t automatically make them in love with each other.” Anne told her with a sharpness she hadn’t intended, but it silenced Addison long enough that she realized it had probably been necessary.
We were friends first and we’re both sapphic, and I’m still not in love with you, a voice in the back of her head wanted to snap. She blinked, startled by the harshness of her own mind, then shook it off.
Eventually Addy just grumbled with defiance, glaring off in the direction Sasha had disappeared. “Yeah, sure. But she still gives me a bad vibe. Especially the way you won’t tell me what exactly you’ve been through together, since it was apparently so much.”
Anne flinched back as if her girlfriend had raised a hand to strike her.
Addison knew very well that Anne didn’t like to talk about what happened to her trio before she moved here. She was stunned silent for a moment, hurt that she was being so accusatory about a boundary she usually respected. She joked about her being jumpy once in a while, which bothered her, but not enough to make a big deal about it. This was on a whole other plane, though. Addy’s sarcastic tone raised a question of if she even believed something had happened in the first place. Did she not trust her at all?
“You know that topic is off-limits,” Anne said hoarsely, eyes wide. “I don’t… I hardly talk about it with anyone. Like, only my parents, Marcy and Sasha, and my therapist. It’s not personal. But I can tell you we were never a thing, if that’s what you’re worried about. Me and Sasha or me and Marcy. We never have been.”
Addy huffed, looking away so Anne couldn’t see her roll her eyes. “I don’t know what the deal is with Marcy or why you keep bringing her up. What purpose does it serve to keep clinging to her? She’s not even here.”
Anne tensed, and she bristled in Marcy’s defense. She couldn’t talk about Sasha without talking about Marcy. They were a package deal, even if one of them didn’t live here anymore. Maybe she was reading into it wrong, but Anne did not like Addy’s implication that Marcy wasn’t just as important to her as Sasha was— or even worse, that she should just forget about her? The thought alone made her blood boil, and she felt a small surge of familiar energy rise from her chest, tingle up her neck and down to the tips of her fingers.
“Maybe you never have been a thing,” Addison went on, though, ignoring her obviously offended girlfriend’s body language. “But I see the way Sasha looks at you. What with the constant lingering looks in the hallway and shit. It seems pretty clear to me that she has feelings for you.”
Stiffening with shock and face bursting with heat, Anne snapped. Too far. “Okay, enough, Addison,” she spat before she could reel in her temper, and her eyes briefly flashed a familiar blue. Her girlfriend looked stunned; Anne rarely used her full name. And had her eyes just… changed color? “Don’t be ridiculous. ‘Lingering looks in the hallway.’ Bullshit. Did it ever occur to you that maybe she just misses me, because we’re friends, and I’ve barely seen her for three months, and there’s nothing more to it? I get that Steph cheating really hurt you, but you can’t punish me or my friends for that when we’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Did you ever have feelings for her?” Addison pressed, overcoming her surprise to instead ignore her completely, and take a threatening step forward. Surely she was just seeing the light catch weird in her eyes.
Anne’s jaw dropped, her heart rate spiked, and she took a step back in turn. Her face felt hot to the point where if she wasn’t sure she was visibly red before, she definitely was now, feeling like dozens of eyes were on her even though they were alone. “I-I—”
“I knew it.” Addy sneered, hurt lining her features.
“I didn’t even say anything!”
“You didn’t have to.”
“For fuck’s sake, Addy—” The tardy bell rang over their heads, cutting Anne off and making her jump. She didn’t see her girlfriend roll her eyes at the reaction, and Addison didn’t know how lucky she was that she didn’t. “Listen, I’m done talking about this.” Anne rubbed the bridge of her nose, giving up on her last sentence and trying to reason with her entirely. She wasn’t going to be any later than she already was to keep dragging on this clearly fruitless argument. She turned in the direction of her next class and called back over her shoulder. “I don’t know what to tell you, babe. I can’t make you like Sasha, but I suggest you start getting used to her, and quit treating Marcy like she doesn’t matter just because she’s not here. Those two are my best friends— nothing more, nothing less— and they’re not going anywhere.”