Chapter Text
The door to the faculty room slams open, the handle hitting a well-worn mark on the wall, and Agatha Harkness makes a beeline for the coffee pot, all but elbowing a student teacher out of the way to get to it first. With barely contained rage she fills a coffee-stained Westview High mug to the brim with what’s left in the pot. When the student teacher eyes her she gives a half-hearted shrug and makes her way to the couch where Jen Kale is sitting, nursing her morning tea.
“Wow, you’re even more chipper than usual this morning,” Jen says drily, fiddling with a long, dangling earring.
“I hate when you drink that tea in here, it smells like a foot,” Agatha sneers, gulping down her coffee much faster than anyone should be able to drink something so hot.
“It’s yerba matte,” Jen intones with her self-satisfied air.
Agatha makes a face. “That’s only the second worst thing I’ve heard all day.”
Jen says nothing. Agatha stares her down. In the near decade they have worked together, Agatha has learned that Jen never rises to bait, forcing her to share more and more of her own personal life until, against all her efforts, they became something resembling friends.
“If you must know,” Agatha says after a moment, “I got a call this morning from a debt collector who said that apparently I have an unpaid line of credit to the tune of five grand.”
“I thought you kicked your online shopping thing,” Jen says almost sympathetically, the first bit of it Agatha’s received all morning.
“It’s not me,” Agatha emphasizes, annoyed. “It’s been open for over a year and someone fucking stole my identity and opened it in my name.”
Jen scoffs. “You didn’t notice five k missing from your bank account?”
“It’s my—“ Agatha lowers her voice and speaks out the side of her mouth, “—other account.”
“Oh, the one where you put your dead mother’s social security checks,” Jen says, full volume.
Agatha slaps her arm, glancing around the faculty room. They haven’t drawn any eyes, as far as she can tell. But being a high school teacher is surprisingly like, well, high school, and she can never be too careful.
“Please, no one here is judging,” Jen says, unfazed by her alarm. “We’re all teachers, we know how much we make.”
“Exactly,” Agatha continues. “And now I’m out five grand and I can’t report it—“
“Because you’ve been cashing your dead mother’s social security checks for twenty years,” Jen supplies oh so helpfully.
Agatha sighs and feels a headache forming behind her eyes, and it’s not at all lessened when one of her students approaches her, a large stack of papers in hand.
“Billy, why are you in here?” Agatha sighs. “I told you, Mrs. Hart said I can’t let you use my copier code to print your zines anymore.”
“Oh, these aren’t my zines,” Billy says cheerfully. “They’re posters for auditions for the school play.”
Agatha tries to muster a smile but it feels more like a grimace, and beside her, Jen gives a half-hearted thumbs up.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he continues. “But Ms. Harkness, are you trying to figure out who stole your identity?”
Agatha huffs, her face flushing. Ever since he’d taken her freshman English class three years ago, Billy has taken it upon himself to treat her like his fun aunt, which she has no interest in being. She’s not anyone’s fun anything. “Billy, you might want to stay out of this one,” she manages as gently as she can at 7:30 in the morning, which is not very gently at all.
“I can come to your classroom during lunch and show you, if you want,” he offers, undeterred as always by her candor. “I learned a lot about cybersecurity when someone hacked my finsta last year.”
“You can find out who stole her identity?” Jen asks, sipping her horrid tea.
“It might not actually be that hard,” Billy continues. “With my alternate VPN I should be able to get around the school’s firewall because a lot of the sites I use are not exactly what you’d call kosher.”
Agatha holds up a hand and makes a face. “Stop. You know I don’t understand all that computer nerd stuff.”
But Agatha can’t think of a good enough reason to say no, and Billy eats lunch in her classroom practically every day anyway. She almost feels bad for him, but she does very much want to find out who the fuck stole her identity. And he does kind of bring it upon himself, with the zines and everything.
“Fine,” she sighs with a wave of her hand, finishing her coffee.
So a few hours later, he bounds into her classroom, fighting his way through the sea of freshman trying to flee from 9th grade English.
“Parker, no vaping!” Agatha calls out over their heads. A middle finger rises out of the crowd of students.
“I don’t understand your generation,” Agatha sighs as Billy sidles up to her desk and pulls out his laptop.
“Me either,” he says, typing away.
Agatha is overcome with a sickening wave of fondness for him, not for the first time. Billy was one of her only students who seemed to take a genuine interest in her creative writing class, the highlight of her week. His parents had died some years earlier, when she’d first had him in class, but he’d shown amazing resilience. She’d wondered then and still wonders now what it must be like to mourn the loss of a parent.
“Okay,” he says slowly, then flips his laptop around to show her. “You said the bank told you the withdrawals were coming from a bank in Newark?”
“Yeah, First Bank of Newark, the Broad Street location,” Agatha says, reading off an email she’d had to practically coerce the bank teller to send her this morning.
Billy presses a key on his laptop and a video starts to play, grainy footage from what Agatha has to assume is a security camera at the bank.
“You found this on the internet?” Agatha asks, putting on her glasses to squint at the screen.
“Sort of,” Billy says.
A dark-haired woman approaches the counter with a withdrawal slip and waits impatiently, her fingers drumming on the countertop. The teller disappears for a moment, and the woman sighs, turning to lean against the counter, and giving the camera a direct view of her face.
“Pause it,” Agatha commands, and Billy taps another key on his computer. The screen freezes. Billy taps again and the screen zooms in, filling the frame with the woman’s face.
“Always wanted to do that,” Billy whispers conspiratorially.
Agatha stares at his computer. She’d assumed the only people who committed identity theft were loser computer nerds, snot-nosed incels with nothing better to do than fuck with people’s lives. But this woman is, by all accounts, and certainly by Agatha’s, very pretty. Dark hair, big dark eyes, a roguish mouth twisted into a displeased pout at being made to wait.
“Now how do we figure out who she is?” Agatha asks.
“That’s the hard part,” Billy says, flipping his laptop back around, as if hacking into a bank’s security system or whatever the hell he’d just done was easy. “Deepfakes have made reverse image search basically unusable for this sort of thing but the fact that we know she’s in New Jersey definitely helps us…”
He trails off as he clicks and types, and Agatha slumps back in her desk chair. She pulls her lunch out of her desk and picks disinterestedly at her sandwich and chips, especially after she realizes she and Billy are eating almost the exact same thing. She’s not sure when she became a fifty-year-old woman with the eating habits of a teenage boy. She almost asks him about the school play to distract herself but thinks better of it.
“Okay, this looks promising,” Billy says slowly after a few minutes. He turns his laptop around to face Agatha again and the screen displays a Facebook profile. Finally, a name.
“Rio Vidal,” she says aloud. She takes the computer and clicks around. In her profile photo she flashes a mischievous smile with teeth, her hair pulled into a ponytail that brushes her shoulders. Agatha clicks through the next few photos, watching her age in reverse. In the next photo Rio wears a sharp navy colored suit with a white collared shirt underneath, unbuttoned just a little lower than necessary. Agatha swallows. In the one after that, she’s in a t-shirt and athletic shorts with a running number pinned to her waist, throwing up a peace sign to the camera and looking like it’s a breeze, like she runs a half marathon every morning. The next picture is a selfie, Rio’s heavy-lidded eyes smudged with eyeliner. Her tongue sticks out of her mouth and she wears a Slayerfest ‘98 shirt. Agatha smirks.
“Lives in Newark, originally from Delaware,” Billy intones, reading over her shoulder. “Single,” he throws out there.
Agatha turns and glares at him. “I’m not gonna let you eat in here anymore if you keep talking,” she threatens.
“Well you’re welcome for finding the very beautiful woman who stole your identity.”
“I can revoke your letter of recommendation any time,” Agatha drawls, and that finally, mercifully, shuts him up.
She scrolls through Rio’s profile a bit longer, absently clicking around, making sure not to linger too long on any photos, in case Billy gets any ideas. She clicks on the friends tab in Rio’s profile, and at the same time, she and Billy gasp.
//
“How do you know her?” Agatha shouts over the din of dismissal chaos in the hallway.
“We went to college together,” Alice shouts back, leaning against a locker.
“And was she in the habit of stealing people’s identities back then too?”
“No, she was totally normal.” Alice frowns and corrects herself. “Well, more than normal. One of those people who’s annoyingly good at everything. Super smart, plays piano, does roller derby. She’s single, by the way, if you were—“
“I wasn’t,” Agatha says emphatically. “Why does everybody keep saying that?”
Alice gives her a look that’s almost too friendly and Agatha stares her down. “I’m just saying, if you want me to make an introduction, I can,” Alice says, holding up her hands in surrender.
And that’s how Agatha finds herself driving to a nauseatingly cute breakfast place on Sunday morning, Alice babbling away in the passenger seat.
“I can’t believe she responded, I kind of thought she’d forgotten about me,” Alice says.
“You weren’t close?”
Alice shrugs, adjusting her feathery hair in the rearview mirror. “We had a lot of friends in common but didn’t really run in the same circles.”
“Don’t do that thing where you pretend to get a phone call and leave me alone with her,” Agatha instructs. “I’m trying to confront the woman who stole my identity, not have a brunch date.”
“Are you wearing lipstick?” Alice asks, reaching to touch Agatha’s face. Agatha slaps her hand away.
“It’s… tinted chapstick,” she mutters.
There is a line wrapped around the corner when they arrive but Alice has made them a reservation, so they slip past the people bundled up for the first chilly weekend of the fall. The restaurant is too warm, radiators hissing to life for the first time in months as the host shows them to a table in the corner by a window. Agatha takes off her coat and fidgets with her necklace.
“She says she’s walking up,” Alice says, glancing at her phone, then looking around the restaurant. Agatha purposely does not look, because she’s not anxious for a reason she can’t explain, because this is not anything close to a date.
But then there she is, Rio Vidal. She strides confidently to their table, briefly waving at Alice. She’s wearing an oversized hoodie that says Devil Roller Derby and a pair of loose athletic joggers. Even dressed down Agatha can’t deny that she’s incredibly attractive. Which would matter if she was here for any other reason than getting her money. Which she’s not. So it doesn’t matter.
Rio pulls Alice into a side hug and then looks Agatha up and down appraisingly. Agatha feels warm under her gaze but she can’t look away either.
“Hello,” she says, her voice low and playful. “I’m Rio.”
“Rio, I think you know my friend, actually,” Alice says as Rio makes her way to the other side of the table and into her seat. “This is Agatha Harkness.”
Rio lands in the chair hard and her mouth falls open, brown eyes huge. “Really?” she says, smiling a little too wide.
“Really really,” Agatha says, plastering on her own simper.
“I’m gonna run to the bathroom real quick,” Alice says, that bitch. “If they ask I just want water.”
“Oh I’m sure you do,” Agatha says as she goes, shooting her a death glare.
“Alice was always so subtle,” Rio sighs fondly, and Agatha wants to strangle her.
“As a heart attack,” she growls. Is that a phrase? Subtle as a heart attack? She can’t remember. Her brain seems to be short circuiting because Rio’s tongue is poking into her cheek and she’s narrowing her eyes like a cat stalking its prey.
“I gotta admit, you’re not what I expected,” Rio says once they’re alone. She leans back in her chair like someone who has five thousand dollars that aren’t theirs would.
“What did you expect?” Agatha asks, bristling.
“Honestly? I pick people with old timey names because they’re usually octogenarians who don’t pay close attention to their finances.” Rio says this like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “So I wasn’t expecting…” she waves her hand in between them. “This.”
“What’s—“ Agatha mocks the gesture, “—this?”
“Well, you’re hot.” Rio crosses her arms as she looks Agatha up and down again in that hungry way. Agatha is wearing a black sweater and jeans, nothing crazy, and she feels exposed, taken off guard by this entire interaction. She crosses her arms over her chest to mirror Rio but then realizes it’s pushing her breasts up, so she puts her arms down again with a breathless toss of her hair over her shoulder. Rio watches all of this with her cat-like grin, her face nearly splitting in half with it.
Agatha scoffs, exasperated. “What’s happening here?”
“I’m attracted to you,” Rio says, monotone. “Do you really find that so hard to believe?”
“You stole my identity!” Agatha says, loud enough that the couple at the next table over turns to look at them. “Mind your own business!” Agatha snaps at them.
Rio tries to hide a laugh but fails, her head dipping forward and her long lashes brushing her cheeks. Agatha’s stomach does backflips.
She manages to regain her composure enough to say, “This isn’t funny! You stole five thousand dollars from me and have probably tanked my credit, which I’ve worked very hard to rebuild, not that it’s any of your business.”
“I know. The online shopping.” Rio sucks her teeth. “It’ll get ya.”
“I’m a public school teacher, do you have any idea how much I make?”
“Enough that you didn’t notice five thousand missing dollars.”
“Well that’s because—“ Agatha stops herself before she tells this woman the only thing she doesn’t already know about her finances.
But it’s too late. The wheels in Rio’s twisted little mind are turning, Agatha can see it as she leans in and rests her elbows on the table. “If you went to all this trouble to track me down yourself,” Rio begins, her voice low, “there’s a reason you haven’t already reported the fraud to your bank. You’re not supposed to have that money.”
Agatha shifts in her chair, once again squirming under Rio’s stare. Where the hell is their server anyway?
“Where is that money from, Agatha?” Rio asks, and Agatha feels a shiver run down her spine when Rio says her name.
“Okay, Miss Marple,” Agatha snarks, trying to ignore the flush rising in her cheeks.
Rio chuckles at the name calling, then sits up straight. “Wait, is that why you have an old woman’s name? Are you named after Agatha Christie?”
Agatha can only stare, mouth agape. No one has ever asked her that before and Rio is, of course, right, and becoming more and more maddening by the minute, a fact the younger woman seems acutely aware of.
“Look,” Rio says finally, a set in her jaw that indicates she thinks she’s won—she hasn’t. “You don’t have to tell me where the money came from. But I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give it all back to you, with interest even, if you go on a date with me.”
For the second time in thirty seconds Agatha is rendered speechless, an event so rare that she can’t remember the last time it happened.
“Just think about it,” Rio says with a shrug, like she’s just asked Agatha to split an appetizer, like she isn’t the most brazen woman Agatha’s ever met.
At that moment, Alice returns from the bathroom with a fuss, blaming a long line and the brunch crowd.
“They still haven’t taken our order?” she huffs, ruffling her bangs.
“No,” Agatha says, glaring at Rio. It’s her fault somehow, Agatha just can’t figure out how yet.
“Gosh, it is crowded in here,” Rio says, glancing around. “And hot.” In one swift movement she takes her hoodie off over her head, giving Agatha a glimpse at the majority of her abdomen as she does so.
“For the love of god,” Agatha mutters under her breath, and across the table, Rio flashes a toothy smile.
//
Agatha does think about Rio’s offer, and after a ride home that mostly consists of her berating a not at all sorry Alice, house chores that take longer than she wants, and finally grading a stack of papers she’s been avoiding, she texts Rio at the number she entered into her phone outside of the breakfast place that morning.
Fine. One date.
I mean, she isn’t getting any younger. Why not go on one date with one incredibly attractive woman a decade younger than her, probably, to get back five thousand dollars? What did she have to lose? She’d already lost five thousand dollars.
Rio’s response comes almost immediately. Two smiley faces. Then, Tuesday?
School night. Friday.
Agatha doesn’t care that it’s a school night, actually. But she needs time to mentally prepare and to pick something to wear that won’t have Rio ogling her like she was at breakfast. Or maybe something that will. She hasn’t decided yet.
It’s a date
Don’t sound so smug
How can you sound smug over text?
I’m sure you’d find a way
I’ll pick a place. For Friday
Nowhere fancy. No dim lighting. And not one of those places where it’s $18 for a burger with no fries
Yes ma’am
Don’t call me ma’am
Yes Agatha
Somehow that’s so much worse. Or better. Agatha hasn’t decided yet.
//
The week creeps by and Agatha finds, much to her disgust, that she is looking forward to Friday. Not because of Rio, she tells herself, but because it’s a change in her usual routine. It’s not her and Lilia’s occasional book club wine nights, it’s not Survivor Wednesdays at Jen and Alice’s. It’s something new, something different besides taking an edible and falling asleep on the couch watching a nature documentary.
“What are you going to wear?” Jen asks as they eat lunch on Friday, her voice sing-songy in the way that it is when she’s smug about something.
Agatha leans back in the folding chair in Alice’s office, pushing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Ugh, can we not do this?”
“Where is she taking you?” Alice asks.
“She’s not taking me anywhere, she’s not a greaser picking up a girl in a poodle skirt,” Agatha snips, though now she can’t get the image of greaser Rio out of her head. But Alice and Jen are still staring at her with big, expectant our-chronically-single-friend-finally-has-a-date eyes so she huffs and pulls out her phone to remember the name of the place where she is meeting Rio tonight.
“Oh, we’ve been there,” Alice says immediately. She looks fondly at Jen. “That’s the place with the—“
“Oh yeah, I remember,” Jen says, a rare wistful look in her eye.
“Well whatever happy memories you have of this place are not getting recreated tonight,” Agatha assures them, reaffixing the lid to her Tupperware and standing from her chair. “We’re having dinner, I’m getting my money back, and I’m never seeing Rio Vidal ever again.”
Agatha repeats it to herself like a mantra as she gets ready that evening, throwing her hair up in a clip and finally settling on a pair of jeans and a black blouse that’s a little too nice to wear to work. She’s not trying to look sexy but she doesn’t want to look like a schlub either.
She looks herself in the mirror in the entryway and says under her breath, “We’re having dinner, I’m getting my money back, and I’m never seeing Rio Vidal ever again.”
//
They walk up to the restaurant at the same time, and Agatha’s usual very strong self-control wavers when she sees Rio practically dressed like the greaser she’d joked about earlier. Tight black jeans hug her legs—her ass, which Agatha hadn’t gotten a proper look at in her joggers—and she looks effortlessly chic in a white tee and leather jacket.
“You look amazing,” Rio says, hands in her pockets like she doesn’t know what she’ll do with them if they’re not contained.
“You clean up nice,” is all Agatha can think to say, her tongue suddenly thick in her mouth.
Rio holds the door open for her and they enter the surprisingly cute restaurant, a counter order place with a million different sliders and sides. Rio pays and Agatha lets her, because she does owe her, after all.
“Does this meet your criteria?” Rio asks when they sit down with their food.
“Do you want a pat on the head? Do you want to know you’re a good girl?” Agatha teases, feeling relaxed now that they’re seated and the date is actually happening, it’s no longer this looming thing she can pretend she doesn’t care about.
“Not no,” Rio says around a smile. “How was your week?”
Agatha is taken aback by the ease of the question, how natural it feels, but she just shrugs, honesty taking over, or maybe it’s the half a beer on an empty stomach. “Uneventful, like most of my weeks.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Rio says.
“If you’ve spent the last few days harboring some sort of delusion that I’m at all interesting, I hate to burst your bubble,” Agatha says. “But I’m a high school English teacher who’s been a high school English teacher for twenty-five years. I got unironically invested in The Voice and I microdose and I’ll probably never finish the book I’ve been writing for the last five years.”
Rio perks up. “You’re writing a book.” It’s not a question.
Agatha waves a hand. “Again, it’s not as interesting as it sounds.”
“Just let me enjoy the fact that you willingly divulged like, five things about yourself,” Rio says.
“Well now that you said that I don’t want to tell you anything else.” Agatha hears the petulance in her voice but she can’t stop herself. Her palms itch.
“Fine,” says Rio. “We can talk about me.”
“Whatever you do for work they’re not paying you enough if you need to steal people’s identities,” Agatha says, wiping ketchup from the corner of her mouth with a flick of her finger.
“I do consulting for engineering firms,” Rio says. “I started my own company like ten years ago and then sold it. So I don’t need to work, technically, but a girl gets bored, you know?”
“Bored enough to commit identity theft,” Agatha supplies.
Rio at least has the decency to look sheepish. “It’s the only thing that feels like a challenge. I graduated Harvard at twenty. I created and sold a company by thirty. What do you do after that? Where do you go from there?”
Rio almost seems like she’s asking, eyes studying her food very intently all of a sudden.
“I don’t know,” Agatha answers honestly. She takes a sip of her beer. “How do you pass the time? Besides preying on unsuspecting school teachers?”
Rio smirks. “You’re not all teachers. The last guy was a hedge fund manager, if that makes you feel any better.”
“It does,” Agatha says smugly.
“And it makes me feel better when the teacher has a secret savings account,” Rio says, that cocky smile flashing again.
“You aren’t gonna let that go, huh?” Agatha says, resting her elbows on the table.
“Something tells me that money was acquired about as honestly as a hedge fund manager,” Rio says, and it’s a challenge, daring Agatha to say it.
Agatha considers the fact that Rio is maybe the only person who can’t judge her for this, considering their mutually assured destruction, and the fact that she is, despite her best efforts, warm under the gaze of the stupidly beautiful woman across from her.
“It’s my mother’s social security money,” Agatha says finally, after she takes another bite of her food. “My dead mother, I should say.”
Rio laughs, and Agatha finds she loves the sound. “Oh wow, that’s even better than I thought. I was thinking embezzled PTA funds or something.”
“Please, as if I would do something so obvious,” Agatha says with an indulgent toss of her hair. Rio laughs again and Agatha feels something warm ripple in her stomach.
“She must be dead a long time, for it to be that much money,” Rio says after a moment.
“Not long enough,” Agatha says without really thinking, and then pauses picking through her fries when she realizes Rio is staring. “We didn’t get along,” she says with a shrug. “And it was months after she died before I even knew, and that’s when I found the checks and… well.”
Agatha thinks for a moment that she’s shared too much, something too personal, too honest, but then Rio says, “If she didn’t like you she must not have been all that great anyway.”
“Come on,” Agatha groans. She feels her face getting hot and it only makes her angry. God, what is wrong with her? Her first date in over half a decade and she’s got butterflies because a pretty girl is batting her eyes at her.
“You still don’t believe I’m attracted to you,” Rio says, reaching for a napkin. “Which is absurd, by the way, I mean have you seen yourself?”
“I believe you,” Agatha says evenly, fighting the thrumming of her heart from overpowering all her other senses, namely the urge to jump across the table and strangle Rio. Or maybe stick her tongue down her throat. She hasn’t decided yet.
Rio sips her beer and nods thoughtfully. Agatha tries not to notice how long her eyelashes are. “Okay,” Rio says finally.
“Okay,” Agatha says, and they fall into a comfortable silence as they finish their food.
“Busy weekend?” Rio asks as they stroll back to their cars, parked on opposite sides of the street. Her hands are in her pockets again.
“Grading papers, laundry, mowing the lawn,” Agatha answers honestly. “I told you, boring.”
“I bet your lawn mowing outfit isn’t boring,” Rio says with a toothy smile.
“Oh, it’s very butch,” Agatha says, and then she laughs, genuinely, and hates how wonderful it feels.
The evening is unseasonably warm and wet. If it had rained while they were eating she didn’t notice.
“What about you?” she asks, and her arm knocks into Rio’s pleasantly as she elbows her.
Rio looks up sharply, startled at the sudden contact. “Uh—just roller derby on Sunday.”
Had Agatha taken her by surprise, nudging her like that? A thrill goes down her spine at the idea of having the upper hand with Rio, who seems hell bent on keeping her on her toes. Agatha is heady with it as they arrive at her car. She leans against the driver’s door and faces Rio, who looks down at her with a soft smile. Her body feels loose and something akin to anticipation churns in her gut.
“Well I hate to admit it but this was a nice time,” Agatha says. God, why does she sound so breathless?
“I had a nice time too,” Rio says, and Agatha can tell she’s trying not to grin.
Agatha fumbles for her keys in her purse and when she looks up again Rio is standing very close to her, her arm reaching out.
“Oh, I’m—“
“Your door,” Rio says, and Agatha sees now that she is reaching for the handle of her car door. “I was going to open the door for you. You know, like a gentleman or whatever.”
“Yes,” Agatha says haltingly, “I know.” She hadn’t known.
She clicks the button on her keys and Rio pulls the handle. “My lady,” she says, dipping into a bow, and Agatha rolls her eyes as she gets into her car. “Get home safe,” Rio says, leaning down, pleasantly close. Agatha can smell her perfume, something crisp.
“Have a good night,” Agatha says tightly, and Rio closes the door. She gives a small wave when Agatha drives away. “What the fuck…” Agatha whispers aloud to herself. Her body is practically vibrating with pent up energy that she can no longer pretend is simply rage at Rio’s mere existence. She is, unfortunately, deeply attracted to her.
At a stoplight a few minutes later, Agatha grabs her phone and types I thought you were going to kiss me, then deletes it. As soon as her message is gone, she sees three dots appear as Rio types something, and her heart thuds hard. The dots linger for a moment but then they disappear. Agatha frowns. The light turns green and she drives home in silence, annoyed at herself for how hopeful she’d felt.
It’s not until later, when she’s brushing her teeth and about to get into bed, that she realizes Rio never said anything about the money. She lurches for her phone, muttering to herself about letting her stupid feelings distract her from the whole point of this evening. But when she checks her banking app it’s all there, every cent, with interest. This pisses her off for some reason, and it takes her hours to fall asleep.
The only thing that helps, after she pushes the thought away over and over, is letting her hand fall between her thighs while she thinks about Rio’s dark eyes. She imagines her tongue tracing circles around her clit until she comes hard, with a shuddering yell. After that, Agatha sleeps soundly.
//
Agatha’s Saturday is, as she promised Rio, uneventful. Over two decades of school mornings have conditioned her to be an early riser, unable to sleep in even on the weekends. She wakes early and makes coffee, then opens the file of the working manuscript for her novel. She stares at the screen for a few minutes, rereading what she wrote last weekend, but can’t bring herself to add anything, feeling grouchy and uninspired. She checks her phone (nothing from Rio, not that she was expecting anything), then closes her laptop and goes outside to rev up the lawnmower, not really caring that it’s too early and her neighbors are probably still asleep.
When she’s done mowing the lawn, she briefly entertains the thought of sending a photo to Rio, her shirt damp with sweat and a grass stain on the knee of her old, tattered jeans. Her hair is in a long messy braid over her shoulder. She takes the photo but doesn’t send it, annoyed at herself for thinking so much about a woman she’s been on one—and will only ever go on one—date with.
“Get it together, Harkness,” she mutters at herself. She doesn’t delete the picture though.
Agatha distracts herself by finally cleaning out the upstairs hall closet, where she’d unceremoniously thrown all of the boys’ discarded things when she and Wanda had broken up. They’d been sitting there—soccer balls and Lego sets and a ridiculous amount of hot wheels—untouched for close to a decade, and she chooses not to think about why she’s finally doing this now. Instead she lets herself feel a sense of accomplishment when she drops them off at the thrift store.
It’s one of those warm fall afternoons not yet tainted by the looming threat of daylight savings, and on the way back home she finds herself stopping by Lilia’s a few streets away, just to see if she’s there. She is, sitting on the porch with a joint, which Agatha is more than happy to be offered.
“It’s happening again,” she tells Lilia, and then she exhales, the smoke hazy in the late afternoon light. “That thing where I deny myself something I want for no reason.”
“Nothing is happening to you, Agatha. You’re doing it,” Lilia says, in that way she has that sounds somehow wise and condescending at the same time.
“Do you think it’s because I was raised catholic?” Agatha asks. She still hasn’t changed out of her yard work clothes and she pulls her flannel tight against her chest to ward off the creeping chill in the air as the sun sinks lower in the sky.
“I think you’re afraid of change,” Lilia says simply.
“I’m not afraid of anything. I just like my life the way it is.” Agatha fiddles with the end of her braid.
Lilia takes a long, slow look at her. “Uh huh.”
“I like my freedom,” Agatha amends, almost a whine.
“And you think you can’t have freedom in a relationship?” Lilia asks. When Agatha glares at her she adds, “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
“No,” Agatha snaps petulantly, taking the blunt back from Lilia. “Yes,” she sighs after another inhale and exhale.
“The woman who stole your identity?”
“I’m gonna kill Alice,” Agatha grits. God, she’s got to stop grinding her teeth. She massages her jaw.
“Do you like her?” Lilia probes.
“She’s beautiful and obsessed with me, so yes, I—“ Agatha sticks her tongue out like she’s tasted something bitter, “—like her.”
“So why not just see where it goes?”
“I’m fifty, Lilia, I can’t exactly be dating for fun.”
“Are you going to wait til sixty to do that?” Lilia asks, and Agatha lets her head fall into her hands with a frustrated grunt. “If you’re going to use me as your therapist I would appreciate it if you at least occasionally took my advice.”
Agatha looks up at her fondly and puts a hand on the arm of the Adirondack chair Lilia is sitting in. “Oh Lilia, you’re so much more than my therapist. You’re also my drug dealer.”
Lilia scoffs, snatching the joint back from Agatha. “Call her. Text her, whatever, I don’t know. Either way, get off my porch. It’s time to cook dinner and I only bought enough for one.”
“Always a pleasure, Lilia,” Agatha says, standing as she brushes off her hands. Lilia sees her off with a wave and Agatha drives the few blocks home, dusk settling over Westview like a warm cloak.
When she gets home she feels light and heady, and while she warms up her leftovers on the stove she takes out her laptop and searches devil roller derby.
//
Roller rinks still exist, apparently, and Agatha arrives at Newark Neon Wheelz the next morning just before 10am. Actually, she’d been in the area since 9:30 but waited in a CVS parking lot because she didn’t want to accidentally run into Rio, on the off chance that Rio would recognize her car. She probably would, Agatha thinks, her stomach churning as she enters the building and is immediately greeted with a familiar smell she didn’t know she missed.
Up front there is a guy selling merch, and she impulse buys an overpriced baseball cap with the team’s logo on it before taking a seat high up in the bleachers on one side of the rink. After a few minutes the teams skate out to a smattering of applause, Rio all arms and legs in a tiny pair of shorts and a tanktop. Agatha swallows. Rio’s helmet and pads are all neon green, making her pop against the more drab colors of her teammates. The announcer introduces the players by their derby names, and Agatha chuckles as Rio is pronounced Della Beware.
Agatha knows nothing about roller derby except what she’d read on Wikipedia this morning in the CVS parking lot, which is enough to glean that Rio is the jammer this round, the one trying to score her team some valuable points. When the game starts she takes off, gliding like it’s the most natural thing in the world as her teammates scrap to keep the other team from catching up to her. She bobs easily through the other players, barely even looking winded as she avoids rogue elbows and arms. Alice had said Rio was annoyingly good at everything, and it appears roller derby is no exception.
The jam ends with Rio scoring several points for her team. The applause is lackluster but Agatha whoops loudly, making several other people in the bleachers turn around and stare. But most importantly, Rio hears her, and her head snaps up to the stands. When she sees Agatha her grin nearly splits her face in two.
In the next jam Rio is a blocker and she goes hard, elbowing her way around the rink with ease. Showoff, Agatha thinks, and feels a thrill knowing Rio is showing off for her.
The game ends sooner than Agatha expects but the Devils win by a landslide, and she exits with the crowd of people leaving the game, making a point to walk slowly, glancing over her shoulder to see if Rio has come out yet. Pathetic. She lingers by the merch table, takes an extra long time using the bathroom, and finally, when she’s stalled long enough that the rink workers are starting to regard her with something much too close to pity, she steps outside and sits on a bench by the entrance. Agatha tells herself she’ll wait five more minutes before admitting this was all just a huge mistake, when the doors to the rink slam open and a throng of players exit, some still in skates, others in street shoes.
She picks Rio out of the crowd quickly, her dark hair bobbing as she laughs at something her teammate said. Not for the first time in her life, Agatha feels as if she is standing just on the outside of some big party, some great joke, but she can’t figure out how to get inside. Her melancholy is shaken when Rio turns her head and catches her eye, giving her a wink. Agatha inclines her head to Rio in a nod, standing lamely with her jacket in her arms as Rio says goodbye to her teammates and works her way through the crowd.
“Hey,” she says warmly, reaching out a gentle hand to squeeze Agatha’s arm. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Me either,” is all Agatha can think to say, her arm hot from Rio’s touch.
“So you had to like, google where we were playing, huh?” Rio says, her body loose, swaying. Her tongue pokes the inside of her cheek. Goddammit.
“Don’t rub it in,” Agatha says, her lips pursing as she tries to restrain her own smile.
“You want to get something to eat? I’m starving,” Rio says. She holds her hands up. “Not a date, of course.”
“Of course not,” Agatha intones, and their bodies fall into step on the walk to Rio’s car.
Rio tosses her gear in the back and when she closes the trunk Agatha takes a step toward her, crowding her against the back of the car.
“Good game,” she says, not sure why her voice is so throaty all of a sudden. Maybe because it feels like her heart is in her esophagus.
“It’s called a bout,” Rio says, but her argument is half-hearted. Her dark eyes roam Agatha’s face hungrily.
“Whatever,” Agatha sighs. She leans in and tilts her head up at the same time Rio tilts hers down, and then they are kissing, mouths open and wet. Agatha’s hands cup Rio’s cheeks and Rio surges into her, gripping her arms, her shoulders, like she needs to hold onto her to stay upright. Their bodies lock together, tongues sliding along each other until they finally part for air, breathless.
“I wanted to do that on Friday,” Rio says, and Agatha looks up at her, wondering why she would say something so stupid and sweet that makes Agatha’s brain feel all funny.
“I thought you were going to,” she manages.
“I almost did,” Rio says, loosening her grip and letting her hand fall to Agatha’s waist.
“Should we eat?” Agatha asks after a moment, though it’s not what she wants to say. Rio nods slowly, like she’s thinking of what to say next.
“We should,” Rio says evenly, her eyes raking Agatha’s face again, making her cheeks feel hot.
“How far do you—“ Agatha clears her throat and starts again. “How far do you live from here?”
“Ten minutes.” Rio’s eyes are so dark they’re almost black.
//
Agatha’s hand grips Rio’s thigh the whole drive to her apartment, her knuckles turning white. Rio doesn’t turn to look at her, eyes fixed on the road ahead like it’ll disappear if she glances over. She finds a good spot in the parking garage and they hurry into the vestibule, Rio nearly stepping on the back of her shoes as she follows her into the elevator. When the doors close Rio presses her into a corner and Agatha moans into her mouth, the pressure of her kisses almost too much to bear. Rio licks a thick line up her neck and sucks at her jaw, making Agatha gasp and throw an arm over her shoulder.
They stumble through the door to Rio’s apartment in the same way, arms and legs knocking together as they try to kiss and walk at the same time. Agatha is distantly aware that the apartment is huge, with tall ceilings and big windows.
Rio guides Agatha by her elbows to her bedroom, shucking off her coat and stepping out of her shoes without missing a step. Agatha goes to remove her own jacket but Rio commands, “uh uh,” against her mouth and does it herself, letting it fall to the floor with a swish.
“Lay down,” Rio says. Agatha does, resisting the urge to argue because she feels heat building between her legs and her mind has turned to mush. Rio lays out long on top of her and kisses her, slowly this time, both of them sinking into the soft cushion of the mattress. She winds her hands in Agatha’s hair, her grip tightening every time Agatha sucks on her bottom lip. Agatha is needy with the sharp pain of it, gasping into Rio’s mouth and rocking her body up, her legs falling open to let Rio’s knee slip between. When her knee makes contact at the crux of her thighs Agatha cries out, making a sound she’d forgotten she was capable of. She grinds into Rio and worries she might come like this, the two of them dry humping like teenagers with all their clothes on.
Her hands scrabble at Rio’s torso, her back, trying to get rid of the layers between them. With a chuckle, Rio sits up and pulls her sweatshirt over her head, then her shirt, and unhooks her bra. Agatha pulls her back down and props herself up on her elbows to meet her halfway, taking one of Rio’s dark pink nipples into her mouth. Goosebumps erupt on Rio’s skin and she makes a hissing sound, leaning into Agatha’s mouth as her hand returns to Agatha’s hair, thumb stroking her temple. Agatha sucks the side of one breast, then the other, hoping to leave a little bruise. Rio keens and presses her hips down, sending a jolt through Agatha’s body.
They both sit up, unable to remove Agatha’s clothes fast enough. She fumbles with the buttons on her own sweater, the zipper of her jeans. Rio shucks off her own pants and there is nothing between them now but their flimsy underwear, the soft skin of their bellies pressing together. Rio makes a show of removing Agatha’s underwear, plucking first at the waistband with her teeth, then dragging them down her legs slowly while Agatha’s chest heaves. When Rio finally, finally touches her they both gasp at how wet she is.
“Fuck,” Rio says. She slips a finger inside, then another, and sets a steady rhythm. Agatha’s eyes flutter shut and she has to stop herself from moaning at every thrust, all the nerve endings in her body alive with the feeling of Rio.
“You feel so good,” Rio breathes against the soft skin of her thigh, her teeth teasing the skin there. She kisses a path toward Agatha’s center, and when her mouth finally finds her clit Agatha yells, a wanton sound that fills the room and makes Rio hum against her. The pressure is intense, building inside of her with every dexterous twist of Rio’s hand. When Rio nips at her clit Agatha comes hard, loud, and afterwards she licks the taste of herself from Rio’s lips, her chin, the apple of her cheek.
Rio crawls back up to lay beside her and Agatha flips her over onto her stomach, palm flat at the small of her back. She kisses her once there, hands trailing over the curve of her ass, fingernails gripping just enough to make Rio hiss. Agatha chuckles in her throat and slips two fingers inside her from behind. Rio cries out and pushes herself up on her elbows, craning her torso around to look at Agatha, her eyes wild, but Agatha guides her back down with her hand on Rio’s back.
“Patience,” she hisses, a long finger coming to her lips. Rio buries her face into her pillow with a frustrated moan, but she lets Agatha work her up slowly with curling fingers while Agatha rocks her hips against Rio’s leg. She’s still so wet herself, heady with power and lust watching Rio move beneath her. When she delivers a smack across Rio’s ass she lets Rio square her shoulders and push herself up this time, deepening the angle and turning to look over her shoulder.
Agatha feels overcome with want, and reaches forward to grab a fistful of Rio’s hair. Rio tilts her chin up with a stuttering laugh of pleasure, the column of her neck glowing in the dim light of her bedroom. Agatha wants to sink her teeth into it, to tear her apart, but then Rio’s rhythm falters as her orgasm takes over and her head drops, a long, slow moan ripping from her throat. Agatha comes again, slick against the back of Rio’s leg and then she tumbles down beside her, a pile of hair and sticky fingers as they reach for each other’s faces.
Rio kisses her like she’s trying to consume her and Agatha wants her to, her body loose and free in a way she hasn’t felt in ages. Rio bites her earlobe with a needy whine and Agatha’s hand trails down her stomach, reaching between her thighs to bring her to the edge again and again and again.
Much later, Agatha stumbles out of bed to use the bathroom and Rio murmurs something about getting water. She pads to the kitchen in slow, confident strides. A moment later Agatha hears music playing out in the living room, some vaguely familiar song Alice would definitely know the name of. She takes the waffle knit robe off the back of the door and goes into the living room to find Rio sitting at the gleaming piano that occupies a large corner of the living room. She is naked still, and looks incredibly small against the baby grand, a single red scratch mark down her back.
Agatha goes to her, bare feet silent on the smooth floor, and presses herself against Rio’s back. Rio doesn’t stop playing but she sits up straighter, molding to Agatha’s touch. When the song ends Agatha hums her approval, letting her head fall to rest her cheek atop Rio’s head. Her hair smells like coconut. They breathe together.
“It’s very supervillain of you to have a fancy piano,” Agatha says quietly.
“Thanks. I bought it with all the money from stealing people’s identities,” Rio deadpans. Her fingers ghost over the keys like she’s looking for something.
Later still, Rio makes them a very late lunch slash very early dinner, something with eggs and potatoes and lots of different vegetables that she cuts with surgical precision. Agatha watches from the barstool on the other side of the counter.
“I don’t know about you, but this is one of the better not-dates I’ve been on,” Rio says, laying a plate in front of Agatha. It smells delicious.
“Oh, definitely,” Agatha says, taking a bite. “Top three, at least.”
Rio swats her playfully and comes to sit beside her on the other barstool. “Top three,” she grumbles. “I made you come like seven times.”
Agatha hums a laugh, her body still relaxed in a way she hasn’t felt in years, but she knows they’ll have to break the spell eventually. The sun is already casting long shadows through the tall windows of Rio’s apartment, and the thought of driving back down the parkway to go home makes her lose her appetite.
It’s too real all of a sudden, wrapped in a robe in Rio’s apartment on a Sunday afternoon, playing happy. Or maybe she really is happy and it’s just been so long that she doesn’t trust the sensation. Either way it makes her stomach twist.
“If you have to go you’re not going to hurt my feelings,” Rio says, like she can sense the shift in her energy.
“I’m not—“ Agatha splutters uncharacteristically. Is this who she is around this woman, a blubbering idiot rendered speechless any time she opens her stupid pink mouth? Agatha can’t say what she wants to say, that she feels like a live wire, raw and exposed and crackling. She can’t admit that all this is too much in the best way, like being teased after you’ve already come. She clears her throat and pushes her hair away from her face.
“It’s very hot when you do that,” Rio says, her mouth full.
“Do what?” Agatha snaps.
“Your whole flustered thing, it’s very charming,” Rio chuckles. “If you’re trying to let me down easy you don’t have to. I’m very realistic about what this is.”
“And what is this, exactly?” Agatha asks, tossing a hand between them.
Rio counts on her fingers. “You’re attracted to me. You don’t want to be attracted to me. But you do want to sleep with me. So we’ll do that for as long as we can until you break my heart or…” She trails off, her thumb jutting out.
“Or what?” Agatha almost sneers, jumping at the opportunity to regain the upper hand.
“Or until you fall in love with me,” Rio says, brazen.
Agatha can only scoff in disbelief, but her stomach drops. “No offense, but I don’t think that will happen,” she says breezily.
Rio nods and goes back to her food. “Okay, Agatha,” she says.
It’s becoming maddening already, how Rio rolls over and shows her belly when Agatha wants to fight, and how she seems bent on riling her up when Agatha tries to disengage.
“You’re so…” Agatha is gritting her teeth so hard she can barely get words out, “…annoying!” She can hear the petulance in her own voice and it makes her sick.
“Good, you’re a quick learner,” Rio says with a devilish smile.
Agatha shoves her so hard Rio nearly falls off her stool. Then Agatha kisses her again before she can think better of it, and as she lifts Rio onto the kitchen countertop she is vaguely aware of the fact that her car isn’t even parked here; she still has to Uber back to the fucking roller rink.
//
“Can you stop doing that?” The girl’s voice cuts through the silence of her classroom, and Agatha jumps at her desk.
“Excuse me?” she asks.
It’s her student Michaela, in the second row. “Can you please stop clicking your pen? We’re like, trying to concentrate on this quiz.”
Agatha suddenly realizes she’s been gripping a pen in her hand and, apparently, clicking it. Which is news to her because she’d been thinking about the sounds Rio made when Agatha had called her a good girl. It had been indulgent of her but what else was she supposed do when Rio sucked her own slickness off Agatha’s fingers so hard it hollowed out her cheeks?
Agatha clears her throat. “Yes. Sorry.”
“You good, Ms. H?” asks Chris, tall for a freshman and always wearing a hat.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Agatha says. She clears her throat again. “Five more minutes.”
Her students mutter their disapproval. Agatha puts her pen down and picks up her phone, which is also a bad idea because Jen has been harassing her since Friday asking how her date went.
What did you talk about?
Did you find out why she stole your identity?
Did she kiss you?
Did she give you the money back?
Got my money and I didn’t even have to put out for it, Agatha replies, which is true, technically. They’d fucked each other’s brains out after she already had the money, so.
But she hides in her classroom during lunch so Jen doesn’t see that she’d had wear a turtleneck sweater this morning when she couldn’t get the bruise on her neck to blend in, even with makeup. Jen is too observant for her own good and would suspect immediately.
So does Billy, apparently. As he walks by her desk before taking his seat for her creative writing seminar, he chuckles, “Nice turtleneck.”
“Hey!” Agatha says sharply. “I’m your teacher, you know.”
Billy gives a sheepish shrug and picks a chair next to Summer, which Agatha immediately finds unusual because he normally sits next to his boyfriend, Teddy. And when Teddy slinks in the door just before the bell rings, he takes a seat in the back. Billy also doesn’t share his writing today, something he’s usually all too eager to do. It’s nothing revelatory, but at least his enthusiasm usually convinces one or two other kids to participate. Without his gusto the seminar drags on slowly, and Agatha catches his eye after class and asks, “Everything okay?”
“I’m your student, you know,” Billy quips, then slings his backpack over his shoulder and walks out.
Agatha sighs and realizes faintly that Rio hasn’t texted her all day. Not that she wants her to. But she sort of expected she would by now.
The text does come, of course, at the worst time, when she and Alice are lined up outside for dismissal. She sees the notification—Rio Vidal 2 iMessages—and immediately shoves her phone back in her pocket.
“So I’m guessing your date went well,” Alice says smugly.
“Did you and Jen just sit around all weekend speculating about my love life?” Agatha snaps.
“Duh,” Alice says. “What else are we supposed to do now that The Voice is on hiatus?”
“Ugh, I know.”
“But it was good?” Alice elbows her.
Agatha signs and almost gives her an a honest answer: that the sex was great and that she’d gone to the derby game—Jen can never know about that, she decides—and that she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Rio fucking Vidal for the past 72 hours but instead she says nothing. She bites her tongue and shakes her head and that seems answer enough for Alice.
“It’s ok if you don’t want to tell me,” she says knowingly. “But I’m very happy for you.”
“Shut up,” Agatha says, crossing her arms and making a face, hoping it hides the traitorous smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
When she gets back inside she finally reads Rio’s text, which is actually a photo and a message. The picture is of her underwear, tan with a strip of lace across the back, and the message reads, you forgot something
Just mail them to me, Agatha replies hastily, face burning at the image of her panties hanging off Rio’s crooked finger.
But I don’t have your address, comes the snarky reply.
I’m sure you could find it if you try hard enough. It’s a challenge, one that Agatha is interested to see if Rio rises to.
She doesn’t get a reply, so she takes her time tidying her classroom, reorganizing returned copies of Fahrenheit 451 and prepping Julius Caesar. Agatha empties her inbox—faculty meeting next week, homecoming chaperone reminders, an incoherent email from a parent begging her to raise his child’s grade—and finally leaves work as the sky is getting pink around the edges.
It’s only when she gets in her car and starts to head home that her phone pings again: Rio Vidal 1 iMessage. Agatha opens it immediately, suspicious.
It’s another photo. In this one, a selfie, Rio grins at her from Agatha’s own front porch, unmistakable with the Afghan thrown over the back of the bench that sits to the side of the door.
“That little—“ But Agatha barely has time to curse Rio’s name before another message comes in.
Honey, I’m home!