Chapter Text
Ash Tray
Nicole didn’t expect anything interesting to happen tonight.
Her mom had left an hour ago, wearing heels too high and perfume too strong for something as innocent as a “meeting” with the female principal. Sure. Right. Totally professional. Late-night administrative bonding. Lesbian extracurriculars. Whatever.
Nicole didn’t care.
Her mom’s love life was like expired yogurt. It didn’t stop from going downhill when her dad killed himself and it won’t stop now. She didn’t want to think about it.
Normally, Nicole would’ve taken the empty house as a sign from the universe to collapse into bed with her mom’s pills and her apathy and do the “emotionally dead girl aesthetic” until she passed out.
But tonight, something annoyed her into doing the opposite.
Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was the tiny, itchy feeling in her chest she pretended wasn’t there.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she grabbed her phone.
:come over
Sent to: Jecka.
No explanation. No punctuation. Just an impulsive decision she’d probably regret.
Jecka replied instantly:
:omw.
Of course she was.
Anything was better than staying in that house with her asshole father, stomping around like every footstep was a personal threat from God. The divorce made him angrier than usual, and now the whole house smelled like bitterness and stale beer.
So fifteen minutes later, Jecka walked into Nicole’s bedroom like she owned the place. She didn’t knock. She didn’t say hi. She just dropped her bag on the floor and flopped onto the bed like she was auditioning for Most Dramatic Girl in America.
“Bitch, are you watching MythBusters again?” she groaned into the pillow.
Nicole crossed her arms. “It’s better than fucking Small Ville.”
“No,” Jecka said, rolling onto her back. “It’s only better for guys who wear cargo shorts .”
Nicole didn’t laugh. But she didn’t tell her to leave either.
Jecka noticed.
She always noticed.
She sat up, eyes scanning Nicole like she was trying to solve a puzzle that didn’t want to be solved.
“You look awful,” Jecka said, because she was incapable of kindness.
“You look worse,” Nicole shot back, because she was incapable of losing.
Jecka smirked.
“Missed me?”
Nicole felt her face heat, a microscopic, humiliating reaction she hoped wasn’t visible.
“No,” she said flatly. “I just couldn’t think of any other hot bitch to invite.”
“Liar.”
The word hung in the air like smoke.
Nicole didn’t respond.
Jecka swung her legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up straighter, slightly closer, like her proximity was a weapon. “So what’s the plan? Self-destruction? Emotional sabotage? Talking shit about girls who did nothing to us until we feel alive again?”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “Please. The fact those bitches go to our school pisses me off.”
“Right,” Jecka said, leaning in.
* * *
They decide to open window so they can smoke cigarettes without Nicole’s obese-bitch- brother smelling it and rating on them. Jecka cracked the window open with her elbow and leaned out onto the ledge of Nicole’s bedroom vanity, the chipped white paint catching on her hoodie sleeve. With one practiced motion, she flicked a lighter. The flame snapped to life, tiny and defiant in the dim room.The end of her cigarette glowed orange as she pulled in a breath. Her lips wrapped around the filter, soft but cracked from winter air, the kind of lips that always looked like they were either about to kiss someone or insult them. Probably the latter.
Nicole didn’t say anything.
She just watched.
Jecka’s silhouette was sharp under the weak lamp: narrow shoulders, messy, long blonde hair falling into her face, the curve of her jawline illuminated every time the lighter sparked. Her cut up t-shirt oversized, pink, stained from something she never explained. hung off one shoulder like it had given up trying to stay on her properly. Black tiny shorts, the pockets half-filled with god-knows-what: gum wrappers, a lighter, resentment.
Nicole herself wore a black tank top and pajama shorts. Just the pair she put on when she didn’t think anyone would see her. The tank exposed the pale skin of her arms, thin and fragile-looking in the low light. On her wrists sat scars that were visible, faint lines, uneven and inconsistent, like someone had scribbled over her skin with a dull blade. She did it to feel something, to stop feeling, and for attention all at once. She hated the way they whispered things she didn’t want Jecka or anyone else to hear. Even though they gave her the sexiest emo girl aesthetic. Jecka passed Nicole the cigarette.Their legs tangling together.
Nicole takes a drag, the smoke curling between them like second skin.
“How are you and Ari?” Jecka asks, filling in the comfortable silence.
“Bitch why?” Nicole asks confused. Not wanting to talk about her at all. She used her, Jecka got overly emotional about it Because apparently Nicole was ‘abusing her’. Which..she was.Verbally. Doesn’t matter.
”I don’t know…you guys dated for like..a while.”
“Does it look like I’m emotionally scarred?”
Jecka thinks for a moment. Looking up at her best friend’s lips for a moment as well. Nicole raised it to her lips, slow and bored, like smoking was something she’d been doing since birth. The ember lit her face in little flashes, cheekbones sharp, eyes half-lidded, that expression she only wore when she actually felt something but didn’t want to admit it.
“Show-off,” Jecka muttered.
Nicole exhaled smoke like a sigh.
“Don’t pretend you don’t love watching me.”
Jecka almost said she didn’t. Almost.
Instead, she just stared, jaw tight.The room felt thicker every time Nicole took another drag, the air going warm and hazy and way too intimate for two girls who claimed not to care.
Nicole passed the cigarette back, but instead of handing it normally, she leaned close — too close — and Jecka felt her breath against her cheek. She took it, hoping Nicole didn’t notice how her hands shook.
But Nicole always noticed.
Jecka brought the cigarette to her mouth, lips brushing the exact spot Nicole’s had been seconds before. She shouldn’t have let herself think about that. She absolutely did anyway.
Then Nicole: careless, distracted, being the menace she always was, flicked the ash too suddenly.
A sprinkle of glowing orange dust fell.
Straight onto Jecka’s thigh.
She jerked upright with a sharp inhale. “Ow!What the fuck?”
Nicole blinked. “It was ash. You’re not dying.”
“You dropped FIRE on me, you bitch.”
“Sorry,” she said, but so quietly Jecka almost didn’t catch it.
Instead of admitting anything real, Nicole rolled her eyes and leaned back against the headboard , arms crossed.
“You done whining?”
“Oh my god,” Jecka said, rubbing her thigh dramatically, “I’m literally injured.”
Nicole snorted. “If you want attention that bad, just say so.”
“You burned me!”
“Accidentally,” Nicole muttered into her shoulder.
Jecka raised an eyebrow, sensing weakness: rare, precious, dangerous to touch.
“So you feel bad?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
Nicole’s jaw clenched.
And that was all the confirmation Jecka needed. So of course Nicole covered her guilt with the worst thing possible, sarcasm and deflection.
“Oh my god, do you want a kiss or something? Since you’re being such a pussy about it.”
She expected Jecka to shove her.
Or tell her to shut up.
Or throw the cigarette at her face.
But instead, slowly, like she was genuinely considering it Jecka looked up at her. Eyes dark. Expression unreadable.
“…Yeah,” she said.
Nicole felt everything inside her stop.
Freeze.
“…bitch what?”
“You said it.” Jecka shrugged. “So. Yeah.”
Nicole’s throat went dry. For once she didn’t have a comeback ready. Her brain static’d out. Completely.
Jecka leaned in just a little, not touching her, but close enough that Nicole could feel the warmth radiating off her skin.
“You gonna kiss me or not?”
Nicole didn’t move.
Couldn’t. Her heart slammed so painfully she wanted to punch it into silence.
She kept her voice flat, practiced, numb.
“…You’re fucking unbelievable.”
And Jecka smiled ,slow, crooked, and victorious.
“So are you.”
The cigarette burned low between them, forgotten. The room didn’t breathe.
Neither did they. And Nicole realized, horribly, undeniably, that she wanted to kiss her back.