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Their wedding bed is damp, one side covered in silt from the river and the minuscule grains of sand. The pillow holds the imprint of a head, faint traces of mud left on the fabric.
The other side has never been slept in.
“Hey,” Gem begins, sitting crisscross on Pearl’s bed, “what’s the likelihood I could make a hot air balloon and fly it out of here?”
Pearl tilts her head, thinking about it. “I bet you could.” She keeps stringing beads onto the necklace she’s making. “You’d have to be careful with the fire, though. Make sure it doesn’t set the whole balloon on fire.”
Gem watches her, selecting beads from the neat piles in front of her to form the pattern she wants, quick and repetitive movements. “Would you come with me?” she asks. She wouldn’t go anywhere without Pearl.
“Obviously, you nugget.” Pearl shoots her a smile, warm and shining. “You thought you could get away with making a hot air balloon and not taking me along?”
“Of course not,” Gem replies lightly. “I’d never.”
“Where would you want to go with it, anyway?”
Gem stretches out on the bed, lying on her stomach with her chin propped on her hands. “A whole bunch of places. You know Grian’s architecture books?” Pearl nods; they’ve spent countless rainy days pouring over those books together. “I want to see all those types of buildings. The Chinese pagodas especially. They look beautiful.”
“Ooh!” Pearl lights up, clapping her hands together excitedly. The string she dropped lands on her lap, sending a few beads rolling off of it and onto the floor. “Can we see the ocean? I’ve always wanted to. It’s so big.”
“Wherever you want,” Gem promises, picturing it clearly: the two of them hanging over the side of the basket, high up among the clouds as they watch the endless blue roil beneath them. She’s never seen it either, but she imagines it’s something like standing at the edge of the empty parking lot by Impulse’s house, only larger and bluer. “Did you know there are these huge trees in California? They can be higher than skyscrapers. I want to see those.”
“We can take turns picking places to go,” Pearl suggests. “We’ll spin a roulette wheel each week.”
“Will the roulette wheel go in the hot air balloon?”
“It’ll be the centerpiece.”
Gem giggles. “What happens when we’ve seen everything?”
Pearl shrugs. “We’ll settle down somewhere together. Our favorite place. We’ll have weekly dinners with everyone to see them and we can brag about everywhere we’ve been.”
“What if we disagree about where to settle down?”
Pearl frowns, brows scrunching together. “You’d get the final say,” she decides. “Since it was your hot air balloon.”
“That’s not fair. It was my idea that I dragged you along on.”
“I wanted to go,” Pearl argues. “It’s better than anything I’d do here. Anyway, what’s the fun if you’re not there?” It’s a fact, to both of them, that anything is always infinitely more enjoyable when they’re together.
Gem thinks for a moment and declares, “We’ll rock-paper-scissors for it.”
Pearl snickers, beads clacking together as she strings them onto her necklace. “Deal,” she says, and Gem feels that promise settle inside of her. She knows that, if she managed to do it, Pearl would go with her happily. She’s struck with the sudden, all-consuming wish that she really could make it possible. For both of them.
On the third day, Pearl realizes that she leaves water where she steps. Tiny puddles of it, gritty with mud and sediment, trailing after her as she moves around their house. She doesn’t even clean them up; just continues on with that walk Pearl knows so well. It’s not quite the same, anymore. She leans too far to one side or the other, like she’s still trying to get used to the concepts of gravity and legs.
Pearl lasts another five days before she snaps. “Can you at least wipe them up?”
Her roommate (roommate, not wife, not love, not partner, not friend, not even her name because it’s not hers) looks up. Her face is a little too amused to actually be confused. It’s another thing Pearl caught onto, although that one was easier to pick up on: she’s not good at emotions, quite yet.
“What?”
“The puddles,” Pearl grits out, upset that she even has to spell it out. Upset that it’s happening at all. “You keep leaving them everywhere, and if you can’t stop it, can you at least wipe them up as you go?”
She smiles, a little too wide and a little too sharp to be the smile Pearl loves. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She’s given up on actually fooling Pearl into believing she doesn’t know what she means; she enjoys provoking her more. “Are you making things up again?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
Pearl scowls, and she simply blinks, tilting her head a millimeter too far to the right. “Pretend to know me. You don’t. If you’re not going to go back to-to whatever you were and give her back to me, then just—leave me alone.”
“If you insist,” the thing that isn’t her says. Everything about it is wrong, like a bad cardboard cutout. You can tell what it’s supposed to look like, but the details got warped, and now it’s just strange.
“And clean up after yourself,” Pearl adds, pushing out her chair to get up from the table. “Since you won’t do anything else useful.”
“D’you reckon I’d be a good pirate?”
The question doesn’t come out of nowhere, not really. Gem seems to have a sixth sense for what Pearl’s thinking, can usually predict her train of thought. She hums, considering her answer as her fingers continue to twist wildflowers together.
“I can see you as one,” she answers, looking up at the girl sitting next to her. They’re in her backyard, the sky gloomy and gray overhead. It’s not flower weather, but she has flowers anyway. “You’d have to get a bandana, though, or your hair would get all in your face.”
Pearl tilts her head, contemplating it. “Couldn’t I just tie it back?”
“Well, sure, but I bet the wind’s really strong at sea. All those little hairs would get loose, and they’re the worst, because you can’t seem to get them out of your face.” She shrugs. “Plus, it just looks cool.”
“Ooh!” Pearl lights up, clapping her hands together. Her bracelets jingle with the movement. “I bet I could have a little charm dangle from it! Right? That’d be a proper pirate look.”
“How would you know? Have you ever seen a pirate?”
She frowns. “Well, no, but Joel’s got all those big books on ‘em with illustrations. Besides,” she waves a hand through the air, and Gem leans back to avoid getting hit, “a ‘proper pirate look’ is a subjective thing.”
Gem giggles. “Is it?”
“Indeed,” Pearl says, nodding seriously. “Pirates don’t follow laws, do they? They’re all a bunch of weirdos. A proper pirate dresses however they want. And my proper pirate look is to have a dangly thing coming off my bandana.”
“Right,” Gem says, stifling a laugh. “I’m sure you’ll be the best dressed pirate to ever exist.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Pearl groans. “That’s too much pressure.”
“Then you’ll be a terribly dressed pirate and everyone will secretly judge you.”
“That’s worse!” she shrieks, and Gem bursts out laughing, doubling over herself as Pearl crosses her arms indignantly. Her braid falls over her shoulder, into her lap, and clever fingers reach out to correct it before she even gets the chance.
“Sorry, sorry,” she wheezes, straightening and wiping her tears away. “You’ll be a perfectly dressed amount of pirate. Very proper. Very intimidating.”
Pearl tries to keep her scowl on her face, but Gem can already see the corners of her mouth twitching. Finally, she sighs and smiles, dropping her arms. “Shush, you nugget. Anyway, it’s not fun to be a pirate if you’re not there too. You’d come with me, right?”
“Of course,” Gem says without thinking. That’s not even something she needs to consider; she’d follow Pearl anywhere.
Pearl beams. “We’d be the most fearsome pirates to ever exist. A terrible twosome.”
“A dynamic duo,” Gem agrees, tying off the wildflowers with a skill earned from making thousands of these. She leans forward and settles the flower crown on Pearl’s hair, fingers brushing against the soft strands. “There. You’re already a perfectly dressed pirate, and you didn’t even need a bandana to do it.”
Pearl blinks, cheeks flushing pink, and takes several moments to respond. “W-well, the bandana wasn’t the most important part,” she manages. “That was the dangly bit.”
Gem thinks for a moment before plucking one last flower and leaning forward to fix its stem around the flower crown. She frowns, struggling to tie the knot, while Pearl remains frozen beneath her. When she finally gets it, she settles back with a smile, the bloom falling down to settle across Pearl’s forehead, just above starlight eyes. “There,” she says, satisfied. “Now you’ve got the dangly thing as well.”
Pearl blinks and seems to come back to herself. “Th-thanks, mate,” she stumbles out. Her hand rises to ghost over the flower. “It’s perfect.”
“Not that it matters anyway,” Gem adds, “but I think you’d be a perfectly dressed pirate no matter what.”
Pearl wakes up one morning to find her making coffee in their kitchen. She’s humming as she moves around, something too high and too lovely to be fully human. It pricks at Pearl’s mind, telling her of the cool shade by a riverbank and sun-drenched shallows and jumping off of tall ledges into cool depths. All of those things she used to love doing with someone in particular. All of those things that leave a sour taste in her mouth, now.
It’s wrong. It’s everything that makes her up, but none of it is natural. There’s something off about every single move she makes, something that poisons the memories Pearl has of her and turns them rotten.
She doesn’t know who she hates more for it; herself or the other.
“What are you doing?” she asks, leaning against the entrance to the kitchen with her arms crossed. There’s an undertone of bitterness in her voice, today; she’s really not in the mood for her games. Pearl’s back is sore from another night on the floor, she’s exhausted of pretending, she misses her best friend, she’s sharing their home and their life with a stranger that acts like it knows her, and she’s really not in the mood.
The other her looks up, and does a good job of faking surprise. Pearl knows what every single emotion on her face looks like, though. That, and she isn’t adept at acting human. The shock is just a little too overblown, and her smile shows through the cracks in her facade.
Sometimes Pearl thinks she wants her to know, wants her to see the imperfections so she’ll know just what she took from her. Not as if Pearl could ever forget, when it wears her fucking face everywhere.
“Oh! Good morning! I’m making coffee!” She blinks at her, too slow and too still to be human. “Did you want some?”
Pearl scoffs. “Like I’m going to eat anything you make.”
“That’s rude. I’m not that bad a cook.”
“I told you to stop doing that,” Pearl grumbles, moving further into the kitchen to yank the fridge open. At first they shared this house with Grian, but then he’d moved into the cramped flat above the bakery with Joel and Jimmy, and it was just the two of them.
And now it’s just Pearl.
Funny, how that happens.
“Do what?”
“Pretend to know me. Pretend to be her.” Pearl closes the fridge door and glares at her; she just blinks again, too slow and too still. “You’re not. It’s bad enough you pretend to be around everyone else. Just…just stop.”
It blinks again, eyes too green and too wide and far, far too shiny to be normal. Nothing even close to the eyes Pearl loves, even if no one else seems to notice anything wrong with them.
Some days, most of them, it feels like Pearl is the only one who knew her at all. Not even her own brother notices something is wrong. It feels like she’s going crazy, seeing the tiny idiosyncrasies that no one else does. Like she’s just making it all up.
Some days Pearl wonders if it wants her to feel that way.
“I don’t know what you mean, Pearl,” she says, but that smile is back on her face. It’s smug. That’s the only way to describe it. Smugness seems to be the only emotion she actually understands.
“I don’t care what you do or don’t know,” Pearl bites out, irritation brewing under her skin. “Whatever you are, you’re not my best friend, and I can tell, so either fuck off to wherever you came from and give her back, or go steal someone else’s face. Quit living in our house, quit eating our food, because I know you don’t fucking need to, and quit pretending you know me, because you definitely don’t.”
It isn’t smiling anymore. It just stares at her with those uncanny eyes, head cocked ever so slightly, red curls falling around its shoulders in a painfully familiar way. Pearl holds its gaze with a scowl.
Finally, it says, “I can’t give her back. She doesn’t exist anymore.”
Pearl’s scowl falls off her face in an instant, taken aback. She blinks a few times, feeling the sharp burn of tears behind her eyes. Surely she misheard it. Right? “Wh-what? What do you mean, she doesn’t exist anymore?”
It tilts its head, too slow, too far. “I mean,” it repeats like it’s explaining something to a child, and Pearl bristles, “that she doesn’t exist anymore. I’m the only version of her that’s left.” Its eyes don’t leave hers as it says, “She’s gone.”
Pearl takes a shaky step back, and then another, needing to get out of this conversation before she starts crying or screaming or both. Or until she freezes, forgets how to breathe and how to move and how to do anything at all, until she wastes away and dies right there in the kitchen while the other her watches.
She feels its stare burning into her back as she goes.
“Would you ever want to become a knight?” Pearl asks, the two of them tucked away into the branches of the apple tree in Gem’s backyard. From anyone else, it’d be out-of-the-blue, but this is Gem and Pearl, so instead it makes perfect sense. She hums, thinking about it.
“What kind of knight?”
Pearl frowns, tilting her head and considering it. It’s a rare sunny day, and the light filters through the leaves sheltering them both to cast her in a strange pattern of gold and green. There shouldn’t be anything particularly special about it—she’s Pearl, honey brown hair streaked with blond and blue eyes lit up like starlight—but Gem’s breath catches anyway. “I dunno. Definitely a really brave one. Are there specific kinds of knights?”
“I’m not brave,” Gem protests.
Pearl rolls her eyes. “Shush, you nugget. You’re the bravest person I know.”
Her face heats at the compliment, but she shoves down the tangle of feelings that rise in her chest. “That’s a blatant lie,” she giggles. “You know Grian.”
“He’s not brave, he’s just impulsive,” Pearl waves away. “And anyway, even if he was, you’d still be the bravest person I know. Quit arguing with me. I’m always right.”
“You are?” Gem teases, raising a skeptical eyebrow. Pearl huffs, going to cross her arms before remembering that they’re steadying her on the branch. Her bracelets jangle as she holds onto the bark again and settles for scowling at Gem.
“You didn’t answer my question, either. Are there different knights?”
Gem thinks for a moment before shrugging. “It feels like there should be, shouldn’t there? Like, bodyguards and everything?”
Pearl frowns. “That sounds like a load of work just to keep one stupid castle safe. How would you even decide who’s who? ‘This guy’s my bodyguard because he’s better than the rest of you, and everyone else can do whatever as long as it’s knightly.’ Sounds like a broken system to me.”
Gem laughs, head leaning forward so her curls slip over her shoulder to dangle around her face. Quick fingers tuck them back before she can do it herself. “I don’t think it works like that,” she giggles.
“Well, I’m not a king, so I wouldn’t know,” Pearl dismisses. “And neither are you, so you wouldn’t know either. We’re both right.”
“We’re both wrong, too,” she points out, straightening up in time for Pearl to level an accusing look at her. She adds, “But we can ask Joe or Impulse or someone. I’m sure one of them knows about knights and kingdoms and whatever.”
“I bet Ren would know,” Pearl mutters. “He’s always pretending to be a king.”
Gem hums. “I think he’s compensating for something,” she says, and Pearl snickers. Gem nudges her foot with her own. “What about you? Would you be a knight?”
Pearl tilts her head, thinking the question over. “Nah. I think I’d rather be a princess. I can rule the kingdom and be super smart and diplomatic and everything.”
“I’ll be your knight then,” Gem says. “I’ll defend you from assassins while you write up an economic reform.” She inclines her head in a semblance of a bow and Pearl laughs, tapping her on each shoulder.
“I hereby name you Lady Gem, the bravest and noblest knight in all the land, my sworn protector.” She grins, and Gem feels a swarm of butterflies spring to life in her stomach. It’s just as joking as everything else they say, because it’s how they work: one of them proposes some magical fantasy life for them to escape into, and the other swears to follow them no matter where they go.
But hearing my sworn protector from Pearl and the bright smile she’s giving her, framed in the tree like this, their little haven of leaves and branches, feels so much more intimate than anything else. Gem is struck by the sudden thought that Pearl is really pretty.
She manages to stammer out, “I’ll protect you from anything,” and cringes. She already said that.
Thankfully, Pearl makes no comment, cheeks flushing pink. She looks down suddenly and Gem tries to get her heart and head back in order. It’s just Pearl, her best friend, who pretended to be a wolf when she was younger and wants to grow wings one day.
The same Pearl who stays with Gem when she’s sick to make her laugh, who entertains every random thought she blurts out, who once traced Gem’s freckles and told her they were constellations across her cheeks after Ren and Martyn made her feel bad about them. Who makes any room brighter and any awful thing infinitely more manageable when she’s there.
Gem’s heart does a funny flip-flop in her chest. She swallows and kicks Pearl’s ankle to stop thinking about it, and Pearl looks up at her with pink cheeks and a curious head tilt. “W-who else would be a knight?” she says, tripping over her words, just to get them to talk about something.
Pearl blinks, which is not cute at all, and tilts her head, turning the question over. “False would, of course, because she does all of those jiu jitsu classes and sport-y things. I bet she already knows how to use a sword.” She brightens, straightening excitedly. “She can teach you to use one so you can protect me properly!”
“Hey!” Gem objects, “If I’m your knight, I already know how to use a sword!”
“Right, right, my mistake,” Pearl giggles.
Gem pouts for a moment longer, until Pearl nudges her foot with her own, and Gem retaliates. They get into a game of footsie in the tree, and Gem puts any fluttery feelings for her best friend out of her head.
Pearl tries to avoid going out with her. Not that she can stand to be in their house, either, the house they bought with Grian and planned to share together once they were married. But going out, being with their friends who smile and laugh with that…with her, and don’t notice anything is wrong, makes her want to claw at her skin and scream at them. Don’t you see it? Look at her! She’s not right! Why can’t you see it?
Staying shut up in their house is the lesser of two evils. The not-her seems to enjoy going out just as much as the real-her does—did—so at least Pearl doesn’t spend extended amounts of time in her presence. She tries to avoid her as much as possible, truthfully.
If she stays around her for too long, she isn't sure what she’d do, and that scares her. She doesn’t want to know what would happen to either of them if her composure snapped. Pearl has never really been an impulsive person, but being around her is like someone is dragging a saw over her nerves. She’d rather not push it.
It doesn’t stop the buzzing under her skin every time she sees her, acting like nothing is wrong, like she isn’t wearing another person’s face, like she didn’t steal the person Pearl loves most and refuses to give her back. Every movement she makes, every expression that flickers across her face, every sound that slips out of her is just another reminder that she isn’t her; too stilted or too big or just slightly different.
Maybe it’s only noticeable to Pearl, who spent the better part of twenty-six years memorizing her down to the shape of her lips when Pearl kisses her and which arm she leans on when she’s trying to be casual. But it feels like a neon sign, pointing to the thing wearing her: IMPOSTER! A sign that only Pearl can read.
She feels insane with it, that maybe she’s the one who’s wrong and everyone else is right, and there’s nothing there after all. Maybe she dreamed that day at the river and all the days and inaccuracies after. Maybe she dreamed all of it.
Pearl wants, more than anything, for that to be the case. She’s never wanted to be wrong more in her life. But then the thing will say “hello” or smile or blink.
And Pearl knows she isn’t.
Strangely, it’s Joe that notices her behavior first—Pearl’s, that is. Joe is uncannily observant, but not even he can see something wrong with a supernatural creature that doesn’t want to be noticed. He visits one day when she’s out doing who knows what. Something Pearl can’t stand to watch or be around, like everything else she does.
Pearl opens the door to see Joe standing there, smiling banally. “Howdy, Pearl,” they say. “May I come in?”
Pearl moves aside to let them into the house without protest. As far as company goes, Joe certainly isn’t the worst, although they’re easier to understand when Cleo’s around. They step into the crowded hall, hands in their pockets, and Pearl closes the door behind them.
“Do you want anything?” she asks finally, after a moment of standing there awkwardly. She likes Joe, but she can’t remember the last time they were one-on-one. She used to have her best friend to help her with these types of things, to defuse any situation and soothe Pearl’s nerves. “To drink, I meant,” she adds on hastily. “That…sounded rude, sorry.”
“That’s alright,” Joe says kindly, because he’s done more awkward things than sound rude by accident. “Do you have any lemonade by chance?”
Pearl leads the way into the kitchen, feeling something prickle along her skin as she remembers the last conversation she had in here. “Not that I know of, sorry.” She opens the fridge just to double check and is startled by the lack of food in there. She hasn’t gone shopping in weeks, now that she thinks of it; she’s been mostly living on toast and ramen, because it doesn’t take much effort to make or to eat.
“Then I’d like some water, please. Dehydration is dangerous, you know.” He settles himself at the table, three chairs still around it even though two—no. Even though only one person lives here now.
Pearl makes a vague hum of general agreement as she fills two glasses with water and brings them to the table. Joe takes his with a nod of thanks. Pearl taps her fingers along the side of hers, wondering why he’s here. Not that people never visit her, of course, but it’s rare that they come in the middle of the day when it’s a Sunday, and Joe has never dropped by out of the blue before.
“What’s going on with you?” they say, startling Pearl out of her thoughts.
“Hm?”
Joe takes a sip of water and sets the glass back down, tilting it slightly to catch the light. “What’s going on with you?” they repeat.
Where to start? Oh, you know, nothing much, just that I’ve been living with a bad replica of the love of my life because it stole her face and can’t give it back, and no one else seems to notice but me, and I think the only reason I can is because I saw it happen. Pearl keeps her eyes on the rainbow formed by light fracturing through Joe’s water and says, “Not a lot, to be honest.”
She tries to summon up the more sociable part of her, but that part is buried today. She can’t make herself talk about anything else, because all she’s been doing is puttering around the endless rooms, trying to find something that fills the gaping hole in her where there used to be light and love.
Luckily, Joe doesn’t seem to mind that she isn’t saying more. “Sometimes stillness is good for us. Gives us an opportunity to think.”
“I guess that’s true,” Pearl says.
“How have you been, Pearl?” Joe asks, leaning forward. The question feels more intense than their last one did, and Pearl is suddenly pinned by their eyes.
She squirms slightly in her seat under the weight of their stare. “Fine,” she mutters, looking down.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Joe begins, which is never a good way to start a sentence, “but you don’t look well. Now, I’m all for a bit of retreating from the outside world every now and again—gives me time to think, like I said—but you haven’t left your house much in a month. Are you alright?”
Pearl keeps her eyes on the table. “I’m fine.” She’s never been worse, really, but she can’t tell him that. There’s a dread inside of her, a horrifying knowledge of what she witnessed, the grief that comes with it and the aching of absence. And the worst part is that no one else knows. She can’t tell them, because she’d sound crazy. But it’s there. She sees it.
It’s driving her a little bit mad. She’s starting to think that might be the point.
“There’s a theory somewhere out there,” Joe says, “that people are more likely to deflect when they don’t want to answer questions because they’re worried the answers will alienate them.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s a logical thought process,” Pearl says. “Not a theory.”
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “Either way, I don’t suppose it’d be of any relevance in this conversation, would it?”
A smile tugs up Pearl’s lips. Joe is Joe; of course he’d come here because he noticed something wrong. “Do you often suspect people are avoiding answers because they don’t want to sound crazy?”
“I make a point to see the strangest side of life possible,” he says casually. “That tends to mean being drawn toward the odder explanations of things and experiences.”
“That sounds very enjoyable.” Pearl means it, too. Joe has a strange way of speaking that cuts straight to the heart and draws out the genuine side of everyone around him. He’s honest in everything he says, sometimes painfully so. It makes it easier to be honest in return.
Not about this, though. Pearl isn’t even fully honest with herself.
“Thank you,” Joe responds. “Cleo finds it annoying, but I think it adds a perspective to the world not often seen through. And isn’t that all you can really ask for in life? A new way to look at things?”
“In some contexts, yes,” Pearl says, thinking of that day at the river that her life was changed forever. She would give anything to be as blissfully ignorant as she was before then. “Sometimes it can be painful, though.”
“Pain isn’t always a bad thing,” Joe hums. “It hurts, but it can mean change is coming as well, and that’s a necessary fact of living. One day you may look back and be grateful for what you’ve gone through to turn you into the person you are today.”
Pearl can’t imagine ever being happy for losing her love, but she doesn’t say that. Instead, she says, “That’s very insightful, Joe.”
He chuckles. “It’s a curse of mine to find meaning in the mundane day-to-day.” They sit in silence for a moment, waters undrunk between them, before he adds, “You can talk to me about anything, you know.” It’s said with enough offhandedness to sound casual, but something about his tone makes it less flippant and more sincere. A genuine offer for whenever she wants to accept it, with no pressure if she never wants to.
“Thanks, Joe,” Pearl responds softly. “I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think too hard,” they warn. “Spiralling is never good.”
Pearl’s lips tick up in a small smile, and they finish the visit chatting about the latest philosophy Joe’s discovered, their new hobby in pottery, the translation they’re working on for some Greek myth. It’s comforting—it’s a little like how it was before, talking about everything and nothing.
When Joe leaves, the house goes back to being empty and haunted. Pearl hadn’t even realized the feeling had left until it returns full force, and she is suddenly made aware of it. The lonely echo in her heart cries out into the void left: Where are you?! Where did you go?
There’s no reply.
“Whatcha doing in here?” Gem asks, appearing in the doorway to the barn. Pearl startles, brush fumbling out of her hands and onto the floor. The horse she was using it on snorts, unimpressed.
“Jeez, mate, give me a warning next time!” She presses a hand to her heart, kneeling down to pick up the brush. “You could kill someone like that.”
“Sorry,” Gem says, not appearing the least bit sorry. “Whatcha doing here?”
“Yeah, yeah. I heard you the first time.” Pearl looks over at her, just beyond the shade of the barn. It’s foggy today; tendrils curl around Gem’s ankles, reaching for the straw-covered floor. Gem is a blaze of color against the dim light, brighter than her surroundings. Or maybe that’s just Pearl’s own biases speaking. She turns back to the black horse flank, cheeks flushing pink. “I’m brushing Climb 10, what does it look like?”
Gem giggles, coming into the barn and leaning against the entrance to the stall as she watches Pearl. “I didn’t think Bdubs would actually convince you.”
“What can I say?” Pearl shrugs, running her hand over the horse’s smooth coat. Her bracelets jingle with the motion, and Climb 10 snorts again. It turns out Bdubs’s horse is remarkably judgemental for an animal that poops on the same straw it sleeps on. “I’m a paragon of the people.”
“I don’t think that’s a phrase,” Gem says.
“I’m making it one.”
She laughs again, and Pearl privately celebrates being the cause of it. She thinks Gem’s laugh is one of her favorite sounds, clear and bubbly and infectious. It’s always a tiny victory to be the reason she gets to hear it.
“What’ve you been up to today?” Gem continues, swinging on the stall door to make it move. “I haven’t seen you.”
Pearl rolls her eyes. “It turns out when you decide to be nice for once and offer to take care of Bdubs’s horse for him, he has to spend six hours giving you detailed instructions on how to do everything ‘the right way.’” She scrunches up her nose. “Like there’s a wrong way to fill a water trough.”
“You could spill the water,” Gem suggests. Pearl gives her a look. “Okay, fine, that doesn’t count.”
“I would never spill water in the first place,” Pearl huffs. She would cross her arms, if she didn’t need to keep brushing the horse. As it is, she scowls at Gem, who just laughs, well aware that Pearl’s not actually upset about it.
“Of course,” she giggles, “my bad. You’re super strong and awesome, you’d never spill water.”
“Exactly,” Pearl agrees loftily, ignoring how her heart feels about being called strong and awesome by Gem. No matter how many times she tells it that Gem’s just joking and doesn’t truly mean most of the compliments she showers Pearl with, it never seems to get the message. Stupid, she chides herself.
The barn is quiet for several minutes, broken only by Gem’s humming and the soft shh of the brush over Climb’s coat. Pearl doesn’t mind it; it’s hard to mind anything when she’s with Gem, and besides, they’re just as comfortable to sit in silence as they are to talk for hours. As long as they’re in each others’ company, they’re content.
It’s broken by Gem saying, “What’s it gonna take for you to do me a favor?”
“What?”
“I mean,” she shrugs, something in her tone strange and unknown to Pearl. She sounds almost nervous, but it’s too evasive to be just that. “You’re taking care of Climb 10 for Bdubs. When do I get a favor? I’m your best friend, after all.” She gives Pearl a smile, but it’s not as bright as usual. It’s clear that something’s bothering her, and Pearl can take a wild guess what it is; even if she’s trying to hide it by joking.
Pearl doesn’t know why she tried. They can’t hide anything from each other; they know each other too well.
“All you have to do is ask, mate,” she says, finally finished brushing Climb 10. She hangs the brush on a little hook next to the entrance to the stall and turns to look at Gem. “I reserve the right to say no, though. Don’t need you humiliating me in front of everyone.” As if she could ever say no to Gem; she’s definitely ended up in trouble before because the girl in front of her pouted and said please.
Gem doesn’t laugh like she normally would. She chews her lip for a moment, and then takes a deep breath. “Go on a date with me,” she rushes out, knuckles white around the stall door.
Pearl stops, blinks, processes, blinks again. “Wh-what?” she chokes out, trying her best to ignore the absolute carnival her heart is throwing in her chest. Her entire face is flushed. She—Gem didn’t say that, did she? She’s not just imagining things? Those words are everything she’s wanted to hear since she was twelve years old and realized that other people didn’t think about kissing their best friend, but she never dared to hope that Gem would say them to her.
Surely not. This can’t be happening. Pearl can’t be getting what she’s dreamed of for five years—could she?
Gem looks up at her, those brilliant green eyes meeting hers, steely with determination. “Go on a date with me,” she repeats, calmer, and hastily adds, “If you want to; I wouldn’t force you to—”
“Yes,” Pearl cuts her off, heart hammering in her throat. “I—yeah, sure, I’ll absolutely go on a date with you.”
Gem blinks, and beams brighter than anything Pearl’s ever seen before. She thinks if she doesn’t look away, she’ll be blinded. She thinks she wouldn’t mind, if that smile was the last thing she saw. “Alright. Cool.”
“Cool,” Pearl echoes, feeling lightheaded. She’s going on a date. With Gem. She feels a ridiculous smile start to tug at her mouth.