Work Text:
1996
(baby i got your number
and i know that you got mine)
They don’t speak on the elevator ride up. Not in the hall outside of his room, or while he searches for his keycard and lets them inside. She’s doesn’t know if his daddy’s money is paying for all of this, or if Steff was able to hold onto to some of his own cash after the judgement, but the room is spectacular. There’s a small, well-stocked bar off to her side, a wide living space with a dining table and seating area in the center. She can see a hall off to her left that she assumes leads to the bedrooms, but the wall of windows is what pulls her forward. She looks out over the city and this high up, all Andie can see is light. Pure white from the businesses around them, neon signs from the clubs and bars below, and beyond that, inky darkness. She can’t make out a single star above.
He’s moving around behind her (taking off his jacket, pulling a rock glass down from the bar, pouring something) but she doesn’t turn to face him until he asks, “Drink?”
She looks to the pool on his balcony, then turns back into the room and walks forward. She takes the heavy glass from his hand, has a sip of something strong, and puts it on the counter. He almost looks the way he did then: slight, a little too pretty to be described as handsome, but the shorter hair he has now helps cut through that softness. She wonders if his lawyer made him do it to look more respectable.
He’d been fired, of course, after the embezzlement came to light. Arrested, ordered to pay fines to the state, restitution to his former employer and given a 100-day jail sentence that had been cut down to 10 on time served. She’d watched it all play out on the nightly news, and looking around now, Andie thinks, not for the first time, how good it must be to have money.
She’d been surprised when he called her after being released, but curious enough to take him up on his offer of dinner. It was nice place, served mostly pasta dishes, half empty this late on a weeknight, and now here they are in his hotel room. He’s flying to Europe tomorrow for an extended stay, and Andie asks herself the same question she inevitably comes back to after more than a few hours in his presence: What am I doing here?
He can see it on her face, but he doesn’t get offended or look ashamed. He wouldn’t be Steff if he did. He only wraps his arm around her middle and pulls her closer, answers the question she never asked out loud. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Then he kisses her and she feels like she’s falling into a warm, dark place. His mouth is familiar against hers. Against Andie’s neck, her collarbone, the pulse point in her wrist. This, she remembers. He tugs both hands behind her back—forcing her into an arch against his chest, his mouth never leaving hers—and walks her backward into his bedroom.
He finally pulls away from her mouth and she sits on the edge of the bed, trying to catch her breath. He keeps his eyes on hers and starts undoing his tie, he lays it across the back of a chair and unbuttons his cuffs, places his cufflinks and Rolex on the bedside table. She bites her bottom lip and follows his lead. Andie pulls down the side zip on her dress, stands and leaves it on the floor where it falls. Her bra and underwear are next. She’s kicking off her sandals when he steps back into her space, wraps one arm around her middle and cups the back of her head with the other.
She lets him kiss her the way he wants to: slow, wet. When all she really wants to do is spin them around, push him back on the bed and ride him until she can’t see straight. Until she’s slick with sweat and want. Until she’s wrung everything she can out of him.
A decade.
She can admit to herself, if not to him, that she’s wanted this since she was 16 years old.
He keeps kissing her and she wants, but this is good. This sensuality. It’s better that they start off slowly. He thumbs her hip bone before slipping his hand between her legs.
Yes, it’s better this way. They have all night.
Afterward, they’re still naked and he’s on his stomach at the foot of the bed, methodically sucking a neat row of hickeys into the flesh of her inner thigh. He’s vicious about it, uses an edge of teeth, leaves behind big purple marks that will stay with her far longer than the ache between her thighs.
She should stop him.
She doesn’t.
She likes it.
The suction, the sting, the glowing heat it leaves behind. She imagines how they’ll look days from now. The marks will be less pleasurable then, true bruises. Her eyes flutter closed at the thought.
Andie touches the top of his head lightly, and he makes a sound in the back of throat that she’s sure she’ll remember until the day she dies. “I can’t think when you do that.” She breathes out, runs her thumb along the shell of his ear.
“I don’t want you to think,” he murmurs back, and something about the way he says that, the way his voice sounds—offhand, hard—or the way his hand clenches against her thigh... It catches in her brain. Then he softens his lips, kisses upward to where she’s throbbing, where she wants his mouth most, and she can’t hold onto the thought.
Later on, as she’s getting out of her car and walking into work, juggling her purse and a cup of coffee, she stops short and watches a plane flying over the freeway.
---
1991
(oh life, it's bigger
it's bigger than you)
She’s down on her knees, pinning a customer’s hem into place, when he comes into the shop. She stops what she’s doing and stares. She shouldn’t be this surprised by his presence—his grandfather still lives in that big house on the nice side of town and Steff only moved an hour or so away—but she’s somehow managed to avoid him for five years. Since after graduation.
She looks away for a moment and when she returns her gaze, he’s looking back at her, his face unreadable behind a pair of reflective shades. The owner, Tanya, points at Andie and says something she can’t make out. He nods, his eyes never leaving hers, before he turns towards the dressing rooms. She watches until he disappears into the back room.
She finishes up with her current customer and sends her to change back into her street clothes. Andie brings the receipt up to the counter, and when she turns, Steff is there, waiting. She points him towards her section and he steps up on the pedestal without a word. She almost thinks he’ll stay quiet, that he’ll leave and it’ll be okay, but nothing has worked out for Andie for years, why should this be any different?
“Is this what you do? Is this your full-time job, I mean?”
Andie’s got a mouth full of pins and it gives her a legitimate reason for ignoring the question. She marks off the place she’ll hem his slacks with a piece of chalk, measures his back with the palm of her hands before taking in some material at either side of his shirt. She puts the leftover pins in her pocket and licks her lips. “You can change back now.”
He only hesitates once before stepping down and heading to the back. She waits until he’s around the corner before bringing his receipt up to the counter and slipping out back for a short break. She figures he’ll be paid up and gone by the time she goes back in; what she doesn’t anticipate is Steff slipping through the door behind her. “Your boss told me you were out here when I said I was an old high school friend.”
“Friend?”
“Hmm,” he says. They both stare out into the line of trees behind the strip mall her job is located in before he pulls a small notepad out of his pocket. He scribbles something and hands it over. “I’ll be there around lunchtime if you want to stop by.” With that, he leaves her to her break.
When she walks up to his table, he glances up over the paper he’s reading. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.” He doesn’t look surprised to see her.
“I have to eat somewhere.” He nods and she takes a seat, orders, and watches him read his paper until their food arrives. They start eating without saying another word until, “Why are you here?”
He puts his fork down and dabs at his mouth with a napkin. “I had an interview this morning. If it goes well, I’ll be moving home. Afterward, I wanted to get some things altered and I heard your boss had a good shop. I was surprised to see you.”
“Not as surprised as I was to see you.”
“You never answered my question earlier—that’s where you work now?”
“Along with a part-time job in a restaurant, yes. I’m only slightly less gross and poor than I was in high school.”
“But the scholarship…”
“What about it,” she asks, not making this easy for him. Plenty of people would write the subject off at her tone, but not Steff. He puts his elbows on the table and leans in, looks even more curious.
“What happened?”
She could tell him to go to hell, throw her drink in his face, storm off. She could lie.
She tells him the truth instead.
“My dad. I left home and he went from being depressed and unemployed to being a depressed and unemployed drunk. He got into an accident, aged about twenty years in the space of three, and I had to drop out of college to take care of him. I visit every Thursday. He doesn’t know who I am half the time.”
Steff takes a sip of his water, looks at her and says, “Well shit,” in that flippant way of his, sunglasses almost hanging off the tip of his nose, mouth slightly open and all of it combined together just… She starts to laugh. At her life, at all the things she wanted and will probably never have—she’s laughing so hard now it’s difficult to breathe and he pats her back. He looks as close to concerned as he ever has in her presence. When she finally stops, he pushes his glass of water over and she empties it in two gulps.
“I guess I’ll pay for lunch then,” he mutters.
That only makes her laugh more.
He goes home after that and she returns to work. Pins more hems, takes in more dresses, laughs with her coworkers. Tries not to think too deeply about that soft look in his eyes and the feel of his hand on her back.
---
1997
(i could be another fool or an exception to the rule
you tell me the morning after)
She’s drifting off to sleep when he says, “Blane’s married now you know,” out of nowhere, and when she opens her eyes, he’s watching her closely, waiting for a reaction he won’t get. She loved Blane and they had tried everything to make it work, but when Andie said goodbye to him for the last time, she meant it. She doesn’t think of him anymore.
“I’m happy,” she says, and Steff has a look like he doesn’t believe her. Moments like this make her remember the smug bastard he was in high school. The know-it-all jerk who thought a girl like her would ever want someone like him. That look…it makes her think maybe she does still hate him, just a little.
“You’re happy?”
“Yes. Some people are capable of being happy for others.”
He eyes her at that, but doesn’t rise to the bait.
“He’s doing pretty well. A partner in his law firm. They had a kid a little while ago too, I think.”
“You think?”
“We don’t talk much anymore. We never really recovered after prom. You know, he was my best friend, but I’m pretty sure he hated me half the time. He always was a better person—smarter too.”
Even though she’s naked in bed with this man, Andie isn’t blind. Not completely anyway. She knows what he’s saying was true then and is most likely still true now. He laughs a little and lies back. “Then again, you didn’t like me either.”
“No, I didn’t,” she agrees, ignoring the way he tenses up at the words because he already knew that and she’s not done talking yet. “But I would catch you watching me sometimes and you’d have this look… It made me almost want to believe that you were a good guy. Then you’d slide over and start talking about your conquests and how I should be grateful for your attention and I’d remember why I hated you.”
He doesn’t say anything to that, and when she looks over at him, he staring at the ceiling, his mouth a flat line, but he never let’s go of her hand.
---
2000
(and i feel like a newborn (kicking and screaming))
They’re arguing, but that’s always been the case. He wants to leave, to start over someplace new. To finally give themselves a real chance at seeing what this thing between them is. She can’t go, her father is here and so Andie is here. But he won’t listen.
“You don’t know when to quit, Steff. You never did.”
“You don’t owe him shit!” he screams, pacing across the floor of his living room, arms flailing. “When do you get to live your own life, Andie?”
“If you—” Loved me.
She can feel it on the tip of her tongue and so can he. Steff stops pacing and watches her in that way he does, waiting for her to say it, but she can’t. “If you cared about me, you wouldn’t dangle this when you know I can’t take it.”
“But you can! We can leave. I’ll set him up somewhere and we can just get out of here. We can go and never look back.”
“I don’t need you to set him up anywhere,” she says, frustrated with him. “I’ve been handling everything for over a decade. I don’t need your money.”
“Why are you so obsessed with my money?” He sounds as angry with her as she does with him. “I think you care about it more than I do.”
She’s sure of it actually, but her father was all she had for so long. He struggled so hard to care for her and she can’t let someone swoop in and take him from her. Not even Steff. Especially not Steff. “If you think I would ever just up and leave my dad like that, like she did, you don’t know me at all.”
“Maybe your mom wasn’t so bad, Andie.” And the sound of his voice…she readies herself for a kick to the gut. “Maybe she just recognized a lost cause when she saw one.” Andie opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. Her eyes are starting to water; she just tries to breathe through the pain. Even Steff recognizes he’s gone too far. He starts towards her before stopping, stuffs his hands in his pockets and takes a breath.
“I love you,” he says and it’s not a bolt in the dark or a revelation or surprising in any way because she loves him too. She has for years. Maybe for longer than either of them is aware. They love each other and it doesn’t change a goddamn thing.
“I can’t leave,” and this is what it is. The only answer she can give him. “That’s not who I am. That’s not who I want to be.” He looks like he expected that answer and she wonders why they keep arguing over things they already know—why they don’t just cut their losses. Why they never will. He sits next to her.
“What now?”
She doesn’t know.
---
1993
(the past is gone but something might be found
to take its place)
“Andie?”
Richard’s still asleep next to her and she makes sure he wasn’t disturbed by the ring before contemplating the voice on the other end of the line. “Steff?”
“Andie! How have you been?”
She looks at the clock, confused by how chatty he sounds at 2 AM, confused that he’s called at all. She narrows her eyes and sits up on the side of the bed; they’re not close enough for a friendly late night talk, but they’re familiar enough to dispense with niceties. “Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?”
“Why are you whispering?” he asks, mimicking her low tone. “Have I interrupted something?” The question isn’t mocking or jealous or even curious really. He obviously doesn’t care what she was doing. It’s just his line, something he has to ask in order to get to the real reason he called
Andie pulls on her robe and walks out into the hall, gently closing the door behind her. “What do you want?”
“To talk. It’s been a while.”
“Well I’m kind of busy right now. Why don’t you call back tomorrow?”
The line crackles with silence. “You never give an inch do you?” he finally asks, sounding like he respects and resents her for it.
She licks her lips, annoyed and worried by his tone. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I needed to talk. You’re the only person I’ve ever been able to talk to.”
“But you don’t talk to me, Steff.”
“I think about talking to you. I think about it all the time.”
And she has no idea how to respond to that. Andie slides down the wall and rests her forehead in her hands. “Just go to sleep. Whatever’s wrong, you’ll be all right.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“Steff—”
“How’s your father.” The gentle tone is gone now, and she imagines him sitting in a wingback chair in the dark of his apartment, getting comfortable, settling in for a fight.
“He’s fine.”
“Is he?”
“What is wrong with you?” she seethes through her teeth. “Did you call just to mess with me? Make yourself feel better because you’re rich and sad? Go bother someone else.” Her anger goes as quickly as it appears and suddenly, she feels like crying; she hates him for knowing exactly which buttons to push.
“I just think about you sometimes,” he says quietly. “I think about how hard you studied and everything you wanted and I just… I think about you.”
Andie wishes he’d never called, that he didn’t sound so sincere, that she never met him in the first place. He's always been able to make her say things she'll regret. Even though he’s an asshole, even though a not so small part of her wants to kill him for this—for making her hurt just because he’s in pain—she begins to speak. Maybe Steff is her only one, too. “He’s okay.” She clenches her hands. “Sometimes—sometimes I wish he’d…”
“What,” Steff prompts, smelling blood. She knows she can tell him the truth. That, out of everyone, he’s maybe the only person who wouldn’t judge her. That he will gladly take it. Take everything ugly and selfish and angry inside of her and hold it close without reservation. If only because it makes her more like him. “Tell me,” he begs at her silence. “You can tell me anything.”
She gets up onto shaky legs, walks back into her bedroom and gently sets the phone in its cradle. She’s exhausted, bone deep tired when she climbs back into bed, but she knows she won’t be getting any sleep that night.
The next time Andie sees Steff, he’s on the evening news.
---
1986
(the future’s so bright,
i gotta wear shades)
The last person she expects to see sitting at the bar is Steff.
Andie stops short; Cats isn’t the usual haunt of richies and preps, yet here he is. Alone and sipping something brightly colored. She’s alone too—Duckie’s trapped outside with the bouncer, Jena's with her family and Iona is at work—but he sticks out like a sore thumb in his button down and khakis. His eyes dart around the room restlessly until they land on her and his mouth twitches upward in a slow grin. She sighs at that look, seriously considers just turning on her heel and going home for the night, but this is her place, her side of town, her bar. After graduation today, who knows when she’ll be able to come back again. He’s not going to run her out of here. She gives him a look that acknowledges his existence while also telling him to give her a wide berth and walks toward the other side of the room. Andie grabs a seat against the wall, orders a drink and stakes the place out. The waitress brings her order over and she’s halfway through it when he finally makes his way over.
“Hello, Andie.” He points to the seat next to her. “Do you mind?”
“Yes—”
He sits anyway, watching her with a tipsy grin. “Nice dress.”
“I’m not gonna sleep with you.”
“Jesus,” he says, laughing. “You’ve got a one track mind don’t you?”
She’s kind of embarrassed but she can see him watching her from the corner of his eye. “I wasn’t really thinking about sleep anyway.”
“I’m not doing that with you either.”
“Do you do that with anyone?” He leans into her personal space and she can feel his breath against her ear, smell the liquor. “Have you ever done that with anyone?”
She has, once, with a boy from the neighborhood. It happened in her backyard under the stars. She still sees him around every now and then. They always say hello. Andie’s not telling Steff any of that, though. She just rolls her eyes and sips more from her drink.
“My car’s around back.”
“Okay?” There’s something inside of her then. Something small and traitorous and beginning to glow hot. “What do I care?”
He shrugs. “Just so you know,” and she narrows her eyes.
“Are you sitting so close to me because you know none of your friends are here?”
“Have you refrained from telling me to get lost because none of yours are either?”
She narrows her eyes at him and he looks back, smiling brighter and brighter as the minute’s tick by. She realizes then that this is something she’s actually thinking about, something real, something on the verge of happening. Andie looks around the room again and only sees strangers. “What about Benny?”
He glares at her like she’s a particular brand of idiot he rarely comes across. “She hated you more than she wanted me. We already ended it. There were no tears.”
He seems like he has some feelings about that, but she doesn’t ask. Andie takes a breath and another sip of her drink. “Blane?”
“Has he called you?” When she doesn’t answer, Steff scoffs. “I didn’t think so. He’s a good guy, he just… he cares what other people think and his parents won't be happy about you.”
“So I should just let you screw me in the backseat of your car?”
He leans back and looks at her, slips his arm around her back. “I saw you first.”
“And you get first dibs?”
“You tell me.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re still here.”
Andie studies him, tries to take his measure and comes up short. “You would really be okay with that? Me being with you only because I’m angry with him?”
His mouth turns down, “I’ve been asking you out since freshman year. I don’t care why you do it as long as it gets done.”
That seems honest, but there’s something else there. Something soft that hurts and bleeds. She shouldn’t poke it, but he tried so hard to destroy what she and Blane could have had. She can’t help herself. “What an amazing friend you are.”
He finally glances away and Andie sits her drink down, gets to her feet. “Well?”
He seems shocked, stands quickly enough to boost her ego and they weave their way through the crowd to walk out of the back exit together. He opens the door and it’s a warm night, but he holds her close on their way to his car, he even opens the door for her to slide in. He climbs in behind her and now that they’re in the backseat, it’s strange, awkward in a way she would’ve never imagined him to be in a situation like this. It’s so quiet she can think about all the reasons this is a very bad idea.
“Steff—” He kisses her before she can finish.
This isn’t Andie’s first time in the backseat of a boy’s car and Steff’s reputation precedes him. There’s no reason this should be as bad as it is. They’re at complete odds. Too much tongue, too many teeth, they bump noses trying to lean in. He pulls away after a moment, rests his forehead in the curve of her neck and she licks her lips as she decides what to do. This could be her way out. He wouldn’t argue if she said her goodbyes now. Andie could walk away. Chalk this up to a tipsy mistake and move on.
Instead, she lifts his face to hers and kisses him. They work together this time. They try and divine what the other likes, they don’t fight for the upper hand. When he wraps his arms around her, it feels good again, easy. It feels right and natural that she’s here.
It’s sort of like a drug, being with someone you don’t care about. Someone who doesn’t care about you. She doesn’t have to worry over what he’ll think of her afterward, she doesn’t have to temper how hot his mouth is making her, she doesn’t have to worry about him at all. All Andie has to do is take. She pulls him closer and his hands get bolder, running along her sides, just brushing her breasts.
He kisses the side of her mouth, down to her throat and she pulls him down on top of her. “You’re stretching my shirt out,” he says sort of peevishly, but doesn’t move to push her hands away. She can feel him smiling into her neck. He’s hard and she rolls her hips against him without thought. Wanting this. Wanting more.
“Just take it off.”
He runs his hand along her spine, doesn’t tense up or make a noise, but Andie can tell she’s surprised him. He lowers his voice like this is a secret, like he’s trying very hard not to spook her. “Should I?”
And just like that, the spell is broken, what the hell is she doing? Andie tries to sit up, but Steff doesn’t move, too caught up to notice. “I don’t—No. I don’t want you to.”
“Okay, that’s fine. We can just keep kissing.” He rubs her shoulders and smiles. “I like kissing.”
“No, I can’t.” she says pulling away before his lips can touch hers. She tries to straighten herself out, whispers, “What was I thinking?”
That soft look in his eyes starts slipping away and he sits up straight. “What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I said! I shouldn’t be here! I shouldn’t be with you!” Andie pushes her hair out of her face, everything in her going still. “Blane…”
“He said I was a piece of shit,” Steff murmurs. “That night at the prom. He said that you saw through me. That you were above it all.” He gives her a hard look and a harder smile. “I guess we’re on the same level now.”
Her hand moves before she can think to stop it and Andie slaps him across the face. She’s never hit anyone before, never raised more than her voice in anger, and the sound of skin on skin is incredibly loud to her ears. Like a bomb going off. “Steff,” she says quickly. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t?” He asks on a shocked laugh, but his left hand is on her thigh. She stares as the red mark on his cheek gets deeper and angrier, starts to bring her hand up to touch it before pulling back. When she meets his eyes again they’re soft focus, hazy with something she doesn’t quite understand anymore. She wonders how she looks to him. Then he leans forward to try and kiss her.
She pushes him away, says, “I can’t,” and gets out. She walks around the building, gets into her car and when she looks up, he hasn’t followed. Andie drives away.
When she gets home, there’s a message from Blane pinned to the corkboard by the phone. She wonders if Steff called him as soon as he got home, told him everything they did. She wasn’t in the wrong, the logical part of her knows that. She and Blane aren’t exclusive or even really together yet; she doesn’t owe him her faithfulness, but it nags her anyway.
She puts it off until after she’s bathed and eaten. She even considers waiting until tomorrow, but she knows she won’t sleep with this weighing on her. When Andie calls back, she’s ready for just about anything other than what actually happens.
He says he’s sorry for waiting so long to call her, that he had to get some things straight before seeing her again, that he still wants to be together and he doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it. They start speaking more regularly after that, going to movies, taking long drives. She likes the way his eyes light up when they see one another, the way he touches her. Soft, like he can’t believe his luck. And if she ever thinks of that night with Steff, of the look in his eye after she slapped him, of his lips pressed against her throat, it doesn’t matter anyway.
It stays her little secret.