Chapter Text
The first one is probably Toni’s fault, technically, even if Fatin had set her up to do it.
They’re all sitting in a circle on a rug in Fatin and Leah’s dorm room—room 401—two weeks into their first semester at Texas A&M: Nora and Rachel from across the hall in 402, Toni and Martha from one room over in 403, and Dot and Shelby from across from them in room 404. Fatin’s smuggled an entire handle of vodka in, and because they’re still getting to know each other she’s suggested a game of “Truth or Dare”. Toni’d only stuck around for it because Martha’s never played before and had seemed excited about it. And because of the free booze.
She’s surprised Shelby hadn’t bailed as soon as Fatin pulled the bottle out from under her bed; Shelby’s already spent two Sundays at the closest thing they have to an on-campus church and she’s halfway to being friends with their RA, Linh, already. Unfortunately for Toni, Shelby’s next-closest friend after Linh is quickly becoming Martha, which means that Toni frequently returns to her dorm room after classes or basketball practices to find Shelby sitting on her bed studying with Martha.
Toni hasn’t really bothered to hide her distaste for her, which had started with Shelby saying a prayer during their first group meal at the dining hall and had only grown when Dot had explained to her, “Her family’s kind of fucked up, but she’s sweet and she needed a roommate,” which Toni had immediately decoded into, “I’m not her friend and she’s a homophobe but she won’t talk shit to your face or anything.”
Toni knows the type. It’s true that Shelby’s friendly—she could afford to chill out a little with the sunshine and rainbows, actually—but it’s also true that Toni’s noticed the lingering glances from her and the way they’d started after Martha’d mentioned Toni’s ex-girlfriend, Regan.
Anyway, all of this means that when Toni picks dare and Fatin says, “I dare you to kiss the most annoying person in the room,” Fatin knows exactly what she’s doing. It checks out; with each passing day Fatin’s shown herself to be more and more of a certified shit-stirrer.
Rachel reacts first, huffing out, “Dude,” but like it’s funny, like she’s amused by the audacity of it.
Toni plays it cool, refusing to give any attention to Shelby, who’s across the circle from her going paler by the second, and jokes, “Technically, I can make an argument for you, Fatin.” But she knows that isn’t the intent of the dare; Fatin wants her to kiss the person she dislikes the most, and they all know it, and they all know who it is, too. She may as well have said, “I dare you to kiss Shelby,” and doing anything other than exactly that would be Toni punking out on it and admitting she’s too scared to go for it.
Dot stands up, bottle in hand, and goes around the circle refilling their solo cups one by one. Shelby immediately raises hers to her mouth and starts to choke it down, which would be hilarious under any other circumstance, but everyone else is too busy watching Fatin and Toni’s stare-down to pay her any mind. They’re all a little bit tipsy by now, and Toni can feel it in herself, but no amount of alcohol is going to make her comfortable with planting a kiss on Shelby Goodkind.
Fatin arches a challenging eyebrow. “Tick tock. Gotta choose someone, Toni.”
It occurs to Toni that Fatin isn’t actually asking her to kiss Shelby here. Maybe she thinks she is, but what’s definitely going to happen if Toni agrees to it is that she’ll go to Shelby, Shelby will panic and then probably flee the room entirely or something, and Toni will feel embarrassed—and maybe a little hurt, given the reason behind the rejection—that someone would rather quit the game than have to share a peck with her. But Toni doesn’t want to kiss Shelby anyway, and maybe Martha will hang out with Shelby less once she’s a verified homophobe, so it’s not the worst outcome in the world.
The logic is sound, so Toni calls her bluff. “Fine.” She stands, walks to Shelby just as Shelby’s finishing draining her cup, and then extends a hand to her. Surely Shelby knew it was coming, but Toni detects a flicker of hurt in her eyes swirling among the nervousness, like there’d still been some chance that deep down she didn’t drive Toni up the wall on a daily basis.
Still, she takes Toni’s hand and lets Toni pull her to her feet. Shelby sways, unsteady, before centering herself, eyes darting to Toni’s and struggling to focus, and Toni realizes there’s a variable she hadn’t accounted for here: Shelby is drunk.
So while Sober Shelby probably would have bailed, Drunk Shelby, though pale and trembling, takes a deep breath, forces a smile at Toni, and says, “Alright, let’s get it over with, then.”
Everyone sits up a little straighter, watching them, and when Fatin’s eyebrows shoot up Toni realizes that even Fatin hadn’t expected things to play out this way. Toni’s eyes dart to Shelby’s mouth and she can feel the telltale signs of her own growing panic. She’s only ever kissed Regan, and hasn’t exactly been eager to kiss anyone since, while her heart’s still repairing itself.
But before she can let the feeling fester and embarrass herself in front of her new friends, she just says, “Yeah, whatever,” shoves it all down, and then puts a hand on Shelby’s neck and pulls her into a kiss.
Of course her lips are soft, and of course she tastes sweet, like a mix of fruity vodka and vanilla lip gloss; why wouldn’t a probable-homophobe Toni doesn’t want to kiss have a mouth like an angel?
It’s short—maybe five seconds at most—but it’s not half-assed. There’s movement: heads tilting, mouths adjusting to a better fit, Shelby’s heart pounding so hard and fast in her neck that Toni can feel it against the palm of her hand.
Toni pulls away first. Shelby licks her lips as she steps back, and Toni tears her eyes from Shelby’s tongue and announces to the others, “There. Done.”
Fatin picks her jaw up off the floor and looks positively delighted as she agrees, “Mission definitely accomplished. I’m impressed, Shelby.”
Shelby sinks back down to the floor wordlessly, shy and quiet, gaze resolutely pinned to her empty cup as she takes it into her hands, and Dot leans over and quickly refills it for her, like she senses Shelby might need it.
Toni plops down and says flippantly, “Anyway. Nora, Truth or Dare?”
***
Toni hates that she thinks about it.
Things barely change between them; there’s maybe a week of awkwardness where Shelby doesn’t appear in their room as much and barely says a word to Toni at dinners, but they never spoke much beforehand either, so it’s mostly Shelby’s absence from their dorm room that tips Toni off that she feels weird about it. Well, that and Toni’s common sense, obviously, especially because just a couple of hours after the kiss a drunk Dot had made an aside comment to Toni about how shocked she was that Shelby’d gone through with it, given that her parents would probably kill her if they ever found out about it.
Toni’s mostly got a full picture of Shelby’s background by the time she’s known her for a couple of months, and though Dot and Martha have both told Toni it’s a bit harsh to call her a homophobe, Toni’s been more than happy to not take any chances by trying to actively befriend her. They’re cordial. They’re polite acquaintances with mutual friends.
Shelby’s a good kisser.
Toni hates, hates, hates that she thinks about it, so much so that she downloads a few dating apps just because she can’t take that the only people to kiss her have been Regan and then Shelby and that Shelby’s her most recent kiss. She finally lands a date in October and schedules it on a night that Martha has a shift at her new retail job.
There’s no kiss because it doesn’t go well; it’s not disastrous, there’s just no chemistry, and Toni slinks back into her dorm feeling defeated, passes by the cracked-open door of room 404 and hears the unmistakable clink of a bottle.
She pauses, considers the idea of drinking off her disappointment with Dot since Martha isn’t in yet, and then gives the door a short knock and calls out, “Dot?” The door swings open to reveal Shelby with alcohol-flushed cheeks and one hand hidden behind her back. Toni hides her surprise. “Oh.”
“Dottie’s out with Fatin and Leah,” Shelby tells her shyly. “She said they’d be out late.”
“Oh,” Toni says again, awkwardly scratching the back of her head. She looks down and glimpses the barely concealed bottle in Shelby’s hand and can’t help but huff out a laugh. “Are you just, like, drinking alone in here?”
Shelby flushes deeper and lies, “No.”
The sound of footsteps draws Toni’s attention to the other end of the hallway, where Linh’s just appeared, looking down at her phone as she heads in their direction. “Shit,” she hisses, and then pushes her way into Shelby’s room without thinking about it and shuts the door behind herself. She snatches the bottle from Shelby and looks around for a place to hide it, then lamely drops it onto Shelby’s mattress and haphazardly throws the comforter over it.
“Toni—” Shelby starts, but Toni’s too busy making it back to the door and answering the knock at it to acknowledge her.
“Hey!” Linh seems a little surprised to see her and immediately looks past her to Shelby. “Well, Shelby, I came here to keep you company, but I see you already have some. Did you change your mind about doing something for your birthday, after all?”
Toni watches Shelby’s cheeks turn red. “Um… not really. But that’s okay. I appreciate the gift.”
Linh sends her a sly smile and Toni realizes where the bottle must’ve come from. “No worries. Just shoot me a text if you wanna hang. Maybe this weekend, then?”
“Definitely.” Shelby nods eagerly and Linh takes her leave.
Toni shuts the door behind her and rounds on Shelby. “Okay, did I just imagine that shit, or did our RA slip you alcohol?”
Shelby retrieves the bottle and offers it to Toni with a small smile. “Would you like to share?”
Half an hour later, they’re sprawled out on Shelby’s floor together, drunk and giddy and too-close as Shelby regales her with tales of her high school ex-boyfriend, Andrew. “I did not expect it to be so wet, or so… tongue-y. There was a spot on my skirt afterward that I’m like, eighty-percent sure was drool.” Toni’s laughing so hard her stomach hurts and only taking breaks to swig at the bottle, but when Shelby finishes, “And anyway, that’s how I spent my last birthday, so I think that one’s worse by default,” Toni’s smile fades.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone this year?” she wonders. “Dot and the others would’ve taken you out or something. It’s a Friday night. They’re out right now.”
Shelby shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders. “I didn’t want to bother them.” Then she gets a little quieter and adds, “I don’t think those girls like me very much, anyway.”
Toni considers it. Dot’s friendly to Shelby the way a roommate should be, but they’re not exactly attached at the hip. Fatin spends time alone with Shelby, but she’s a social butterfly and is mostly the same way with everyone. Leah, Rachel, and Nora seem even less connected to Shelby. “Martha likes you,” Toni settles on eventually. “She’d ditch her shift in a second to come hang if she knew. Want me to text her?”
“That’s alright.” Shelby reaches out for the bottle and Toni passes it to her. She drinks and then says, “Anyway, tell me about your worst kiss.”
Toni snorts. “Thankfully, I’ve only had great kisses.” It seems to take a few seconds for the comment to sink into both of their sluggish brains, and then Shelby seems awfully interested in the label on the bottle and Toni’s eyes are searching skyward, taking in the decorations on the walls. Shelby’s got some art with a Bible verse on it hanging right above her bed.
Shelby breaks the tension first with a quiet, “Well, that’s good.”
“Guess I’m lucky,” Toni agrees, and then takes the bottle back and drinks just to be doing something. When she’s done, she clears her throat. “So, I’m guessing you got tired of being drooled on, dumped Andrew, and had a better time with someone else?”
Shelby looks away. “Well, I’ve only kissed th—two people.”
“Andrew and…?” Toni assumes she doesn’t count, but when Shelby looks at her strangely, confusion and embarrassment etched into her expression, she realizes that she does. “Oh. Right.” She tries to push past the moment with a forced laugh and a joke: “So, I’m obviously your best kiss, then. Kinda depressing.” When Shelby just stares at her for a beat too long and then moves closer, Toni adds nervously, “Cause it lasted like five seconds.”
Shelby’s only retrieving the bottle, it turns out, but there’s something heavy in her gaze that hadn’t been there before. “You’re the one who ended it so quickly.”
Toni blinks rapidly as Shelby swallows a mouthful of vodka, trying to keep her vision clear. “Yeah.” She doesn’t know what else she’s supposed to say.
Shelby takes her time setting the bottle aside, like she’s steeling herself, and then her eyes are on Toni’s again and they’re still heavy but they’re a shade darker now too. She doesn’t say anything, just shifts even closer until they’re inches apart, looks down at Toni’s lips, and then cups Toni’s cheek in her hand and leans in.
Butterflies join the alcohol in Toni’s stomach as soon as their lips touch, and she presses forward gently, not nearly in her right mind enough to think about complexities like “Should I make it so obvious that I want this?” or “What the fuck does this even mean?”
It feels good, so she keeps going, opens her mouth against Shelby’s and feels Shelby’s hand at her back gripping her harder as Toni presses her down to the floor and leans over her. They kiss hard and fast, breathing heavily, and Toni’s shocked by how strong the want is; she hasn’t wanted anyone like this since Regan and she’s feeling it now for some religious girl she’s barely known for two months. They usually hardly speak to each other.
But Shelby speaks to her now, in gasps and moans and breathy sighs, and there are little things that betray her inexperience, reactions to Toni kissing down her neck that tell Toni Shelby’s never let someone kiss her there before. It’s that, finally, that breaks the spell and has Toni pulling up and looking down at her and slurring, “We should stop.”
Shelby’s flushed red and her lips are swollen and her chest is heaving and she looks hot when she gives Toni a wide-eyed, flustered nod, like she hadn’t expected this to turn into a full-blown makeout session either.
Toni’s too overwhelmed by it all, so she just slides the bottle back to Shelby, stumbles to her feet, and then leaves.
***
Shelby stays hot, unfortunately. Toni can’t unsexualize her in her mind, and she desperately tries: she thinks of Shelby praying at meals, the way she says “sweet baby Jesus” or gets excited about shit Toni thinks is dumb or brings embarrassing custom-made signs when Martha has her tag along to Toni’s basketball games.
Shelby’s awful things suddenly matter less to Toni, her annoying things are cute, and her neutral existence is now attractive, and Toni loathes it. Especially because Shelby ignores her again after their second kiss, and then in early November when she finally does mention it—once, when they’re alone—she has the audacity to call it “that silly thing we did”. The day that happens, Toni’s angry for the rest of it but hides it well, and then is shocked at herself when tears spring to her eyes that night as she’s trying to fall asleep.
She’s not in denial about it, even if she hates it; she knows what’s happening here. She’s got a little bit of a crush on a mildly bicurious straight girl—the worst straight girl she could have a crush on. Shelby’s definitely just having some fun drinking and rebelling and kissing girls now that she’s finally out from under her parents, and the fact that Toni knows this and still feels what she feels makes her feel weak.
She is weak, she knows, because she lets it happen again anyway a month after the last time, right before they all go home for Thanksgiving Break. Fatin gets her first invite to a frat party and has them all tag along, and Shelby is practically frat boy bait, so of course they’re all over her right away, stumbling over themselves to offer her drinks and compliments. Toni makes sure Martha’s sticking close to Shelby to keep her safe, and then finds the nearest keg and starts pounding drinks with the goal of getting through this night as painlessly as possible.
Once she’s sufficiently hammered, she finds solitude in an empty bedroom and wanders around inside, staring at pictures of people she’ll never meet, and answers a text from Martha asking her where she is without thinking much of it. But when the door opens a minute later, it’s Shelby stumbling inside, not Martha, evidently having abandoned her legion of drunken suitors to come find Toni instead.
She closes the door behind herself and Toni says, warily, “Hey.” Shelby doesn’t respond, just locks the door with a click, and when she looks at Toni something clicks in Toni’s head too, so suddenly and so clearly that she isn’t sure why she hadn’t seriously considered it before. “Oh. You don’t want them.”
Shelby goes to her quickly and grasps her hips with trembling hands, presses her harshly into the dresser behind her and kisses her until Toni’s head spins. “No,” Shelby pants into her mouth, biting her lip, tasting her tongue.
Toni forgets this night, and Shelby lets her.
***
Though Shelby only kisses Toni when she’s drunk, she doesn’t kiss her every time she’s drunk, and so when Toni can only remember a dare and a single makeout session Shelby called silly, and when they have several more alcohol-fueled parties or hangouts and nothing happens, she starts to think she’s in the clear.
It’s been months, and yes, Shelby is attractive, and they’re getting along fine now—especially with Martha usually there to keep the peace between them—but Toni’s stupid crush is just that, and Shelby’s smile making her stomach flip every now and then is mostly just an inconvenience she can ignore.
Their second semester does hand them a shared History class, which means that they spend an hour in a lecture hall together every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and that they become study partners before their first test, and all of that’s fine, even when Fatin catches them up late studying in the dorm’s break room the week of that test and insists they try a bottle of wine a senior boy bought her.
Fatin drinks it with them for the first hour but then leaves to go to bed, and Toni cradles the bottle of wine to her chest and fills their cups when they run out, their study guides abandoned by the time 3AM hits.
“It was fine,” Toni says, because Shelby’s just asked her about her Christmas. They’re relaxing on a couch together, their knees almost touching. “I just went back to Marty’s. No foster fam now that I’m 18.”
Shelby looks confused. “Foster family?”
Toni blushes. “Oh. Uh, I just figured Marty told you.”
“No.” Shelby shakes her head and gives her a look Toni’s long-since gotten tired of seeing from people.
“Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m good.” Before Shelby can respond, Toni adds, “I bet your family goes all-out. Decorations all over the yard, Jesus in a manger in the living room and shit.”
Shelby finishes her cup and Toni pours her more. “Not quite, but you’re not far off.”
“Have you missed them?” Toni wonders, because she doesn’t really have a family of her own to miss but she does miss Bernice sometimes, so she imagines it must be even worse for Shelby.
Shelby thinks the question over. “Maybe. Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t.” She hesitates. “It’s… different. Being here without them.”
Toni forces a laugh. “Feeling nostalgic for your pageant days?”
“No,” Shelby huffs out, wincing, and then she looks sheepish, like she regrets reacting so strongly. Toni raises an eyebrow. “It’s just… it was a lot. So, no, I don’t miss that.” She looks into her cup and then murmurs, “I don’t miss most of it.”
Toni studies her, really thinking about it now. She’d always assumed Shelby’d liked church, and the pageants, and everything else that came with being raised the way she had been. “It must be nice to finally not have anyone to answer to,” she decides. “You can just do what you want.”
“I still see them,” Shelby reminds her. “Breaks, weekends every now and then. Summer. I still have to be who they want.”
“Yeah, but…” Toni cracks a smile. “It’s not like they’d know, technically, if you skipped a sermon every now and then. Or did something they…” Her smile falters, and she almost doesn’t say it, but the alcohol removes her inhibitions just enough that it slips out: “...Wouldn’t approve of.”
Shelby blinks at her and then looks away. “I didn’t think I had it in me,” she admits quietly. “After… Just, after some things that happened back home.”
“Didn’t have what in you?” Toni asks with furrowed eyebrows.
Shelby breathes it out quickly, setting the words free. “To kiss you.”
Toni swallows hard, staring, but Shelby won’t look at her now. “It was silly,” she reminds her shortly, guarded.
Shelby lifts her head and presses her lips tight into a forced smile, her eyes suddenly watery, glassy. “I know I’m not being very kind to you, Toni.”
One of Toni’s fists clenches at her side. “I don’t understand.”
Shelby just shakes her head. “I don’t think there’s a single person I care about that I haven’t hurt, so I guess it makes sense that it wouldn’t change here, either. But I’m trying.”
A sudden hot ball of frustration builds in Toni’s chest and she bites out, “Stop fucking speaking in code, Shelby, I don’t—”
Shelby kisses her softly this time, a gentle hand cradling the back of her neck, and Toni melts into it on instinct, trying not to think about the wine she can taste on Shelby’s lips, trying to focus on the heat of Shelby’s body as she shifts closer, on the slow, hungry way she teases Toni’s lips apart, on the dizzying scent of her shampoo. Toni’s heart is warm and full but the soaring music she hears in her head has a sour note in it somewhere that she can’t quite place.
“Toni.” Shelby drags her mouth to Toni’s ear. “I don’t want to mess you up,” she confesses quietly, like she’s pleading with her to hear her, to understand, and Toni does understand, finally. She understands a little too well.
Shelby presses a soft kiss to her neck, moving lower, and Toni squeezes her eyes shut tight and thinks of her own fragile heart, still freshly scarred over from Regan, and says, “We shouldn’t do this.”
Shelby leaves quickly, wiping her eyes as she goes, and Toni crawls into bed later with tear-streaked cheeks of her own while Martha slumbers just feet away.
By the end of the month, Shelby has a boyfriend. Toni isn’t surprised.
***
Toni hates him, of course, and doesn’t hide it. She knows most of their friends chalk it up to the fact that he’s a religious frat bro and also a man, but sometimes Martha and Fatin exchange a look while she’s ranting about him and something in the back of Toni’s mind will tell her to cool it, because they look like maybe they know. But if they do figure it out, they don’t say anything.
Shelby gets trashed at her boyfriend’s frat house the next time they have a party, and they’ve barely spoken in weeks so when Toni breaks away from Fatin and the others to use the bathroom and sees Shelby stick a foot in the door before she can close it, Toni knows right away what this is, and that Shelby is weak just like Toni is.
She’s weak enough to let Shelby slip inside and close the door, and even weak enough to let Shelby push her up against the bathroom sink and kiss her with rum on her tongue, but she gives herself just a few seconds of selfish indulgence before she uses the hands on Shelby’s hips to gently shove her away.
Shelby stares at her through half-lidded eyes, and Toni shivers as she runs her tongue over her bottom lip and tastes Shelby’s lip gloss. She’s so drunk, though definitely not as drunk as Shelby, and it takes all of her willpower to remind her, “You can’t do this.”
Shelby looks guilty, and Toni knows she understands the double-meaning loud and clear. “I know.”
If Toni were normal and well-adjusted and had the self-esteem of someone like Dot or Fatin, she’d tell Shelby to leave her alone, because Shelby’s not allowed to use her like this, to have her on standby for when she’s got just enough alcohol in her to be able to put aside the person she has to be for her family.
But Toni is used to no one putting her first, to being used or tossed aside or abandoned, and she’s spent the time since their last kiss thinking about doing it again even if she knows it’s a bad idea. There’s a movie Martha had made her watch once that says we accept the love we think we deserve, and instead of telling Shelby to stay away Toni decides, “Just tell me it won’t mean anything. I can handle my shit from there.”
Shelby nods and lies, “It won’t mean anything,” and Toni kisses her up against the wall, lets Shelby pull her close and rock against her thigh, lets Shelby’s hand slide under her shirt and lets Shelby’s mouth leave marks on her neck.
Then someone knocks on the bathroom door before it can go further than it should, and they go their separate ways like none of it ever happened. When Martha notices Toni’s neck the next morning and asks her about it, playful and teasing, Toni says, “It was just some senior girl at the party; I didn’t even get her name,” and then changes the subject.
***
It’s just making out, at first, always on nights where one of them gets their hands on a bottle of something and one of their dorm rooms is unoccupied for a couple of hours—usually Toni’s, because it’s a lot easier for Shelby to get away from Dot than it is for Toni to make an excuse to separate from Martha. So, sometimes when Martha has a late class or a shift or even a date with a boy, Toni texts Shelby, “I’m free if you are,” and Shelby will sneak over and they’ll drink and sometimes they’ll talk and almost always they’ll wind up on the floor or on Toni’s bed, kissing each other like they’ve been starving for it since the last time.
Toni learns a lot about Shelby during their drunken chats—even just little things, like her favorite movie or how many pageant trophies are sitting in her room back home. But also bigger things, like what happened with Becca, her real first kiss with a girl, and that night is one of the nights they don’t kiss. Instead, Toni just holds Shelby and lets her cry, then puts her to bed in Martha’s bed and lies to Martha when she comes home, “Dot said she might have a guy over tonight, so Shelby needed a place to crash. You can have my bed; I’ll sleep on the floor.”
Toni tells Shelby less than Shelby tells Toni, because Toni’s made it her mission to keep her heart guarded for this, but she does share some things about Regan and their breakup, and about the therapy she’s had since, and about how it’s helped her with the anger but not so much with feeling worthless, unworthy. That particular night, Shelby stops drinking after her confession, looks sick for a moment, and asks Toni if they can just watch a movie instead of kissing, and halfway through she starts crying and apologizing and Toni pretends she doesn’t understand why.
They never talk about Shelby’s boyfriend.
Fatin catches them drinking together one night toward the end of the school year, when they’ve gotten careless and left the door open a crack, and as she takes the bottle and joins them she gives them a soft look and says, “I’m gonna miss you guys next year. We should all keep in touch.” And Toni studies that look, fond but almost pitying, and just knows right then that Fatin really does know. She doubts Shelby told her outright; it’s just that Fatin’s the most observant and emotionally intelligent of them all and she’s always given Shelby more time and attention and grace than the others. Maybe that’s enough to make it obvious.
Toni forces a smile and jokes, “I’ll think about it.”
Their final exams come and go, and the dorm starts to clear out. Dot, Fatin, and Leah make plans to get a three-bedroom apartment together in the Fall at the same complex Toni and Martha are looking at, and Rachel and Nora have already committed to a two-bedroom apartment just down the road. Toni wonders if Shelby has plans to live with her boyfriend, but she’s afraid to ask.
And then one day Martha asks her, “It’s fine if we get a three-bedroom instead next semester, right? Shelby’s still trying to figure out where she’s gonna live and I offered.” And Toni and Shelby get along just fine in front of Martha by now, so she has no reason to say no without confessing everything, so that’s that.
It should change things, because it means they’ll be living together next year, and summer break will be just that—a break before they come back together again, before this thing between them keeps hurtling on with no end in sight. It means that they can no longer tell themselves that this is it, that they can get it out of their systems and then finally get on with their lives next year: Toni can find someone who will fully be hers and Shelby can dig herself further into her closet. No, they’ll be right back in each other’s orbit in a few short months, tempting each other with the proximity all the while. So taking things even further with each other now wouldn’t be a good idea at all.
Toni’s always been ruled by her emotions, though, so when Shelby shows up to Toni’s dorm room with one last bottle and murmurs, “I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye,” the night before she heads back home for the summer, Toni ignores the alarms bells in her head and doesn’t say no. When Shelby guides Toni’s hands to her shirt and then the waistband of her shorts and then the clasp of her bra and whispers, “Touch me,” Toni tries to wall her heart off further before she does. And when Shelby holds Toni close on the bed and warns her, quiet and breathy, “I’ve never…” Toni kisses her through it and swallows her every moan and doesn’t stop until Shelby’s shuddering underneath her, and knows then and there that she’s been lying to herself all year about this.
With Martha out on one final late shift, they touch each other for the longest time, until the sloppy drunk kisses are slow and purposeful, until Shelby’s eyes are sharp and searching when she asks Toni, “Is this okay?” while she strokes Toni between her thighs, until the way their bodies move together has become practiced and coordinated.
Toni lays next to her afterward, her heart beating out of her chest as she brushes a stray hair out of Shelby’s face, and it’s too much, watching Shelby watch her with eyes full of nervous vulnerability and something new and warm and gentle and affectionate. Toni closes her eyes and whispers, “Should we have done that?” even though she already knows the answer.
When she looks again, Shelby’s blinking back tears as she admits, “Maybe not,” which Toni knows actually means definitely not and but I wanted to and also but I’m glad we did.
“And this summer?” Toni asks next, afraid of the answer.
Shelby turns her head to wipe her wet cheek on the pillow and then just says, “You know you don’t owe me anything, Toni.”
It’s not the answer Toni had wanted to hear, but it’s also not a surprising one. “What if I want to?” she asks, and then feels a flash of heat in her stomach and sits up suddenly. Shelby flinches away from her. “What if I want you to owe me, too?” Shelby’s eyes fill with tears all over again and for a moment Toni hates her. She’s tired of getting it, tired of understanding and having empathy and feeling pathetic. “Don’t go back there, Shelby. Marty’s parents have a spare bed.”
“Toni,” Shelby says, and it sounds exactly like please don’t do this.
“You’re choosing it,” Toni accuses her, the heat filling her chest now, encircling her heart, drowning it in angry, painful fire. “You don’t give a fuck about me. If you did, you’d either pick me or let me go.”
“Of course I do,” Shelby says, aghast. She looks wounded as she sits up, the sheet falling away, and seeing her nude now feels the same way it’d felt to hear that sour note in her head all those months ago. “God, Toni—”
“So fucking choose.” Toni squeezes her eyes shut tight, promising herself she won’t cry in front of Shelby now.
“I did,” Shelby murmurs weakly. “I’m trying to. I told you we were saying goodbye.”
Toni feels sick as she dresses herself and storms out, and when she sits in the parking lot and cries alone she promises herself she’ll use the summer to move on.