Chapter Text
The grass is damp. It leaves small droplets of water clinging to her skin and the back of her blouse. To the left of her face, several white buttons sit in dark contrast to the dark green of the field. Above her, harsh lighting washes over her. Beyond her, Pete and Steph stand stock still, eyes wide and mouths in various expressions of shock.
Max, on his knees, looks down at her like a woodsman who shot his first buck. His eyes gleam like the blade of a knife. A smile curls on his face, sickening and gratified all at once.
There’s an ache between her legs. He has cut her open, taken her very essence from her and left decay in his wake. Her organs may as well be spilling out of her stomach, her blood letting out and mixing in with the mud beneath her. A purging of the soul, making way for something else. Something darker. More sinister.
She doesn’t expect to hate so much, but as she stares up at the boy above her, the feeling washes over her like the great flood, killing everything in its path that hadn’t reached safety.
What parts of her are safe, now? What is left of her that matters?
Nothing really matters. Nothing except for the final death of Max. A reckoning she brought upon herself the moment she walked in on Peter and Steph in that bathroom. The moment she opened her damned mouth. She did this to herself. She is both the lamb and the slaughter. The blade that cut the first sacrificial wound.
She hates Max. She hates those things. She hates herself, too, for getting them into this mess.
And for getting them out.
She pulls her sweater vest over her shirt, not bothering fuss with the remaining buttons nor tucking it in. The waist of her pants feels itchy, and when she does the button it, but clinches her skin. There’s something wet between her legs, and the feeling of it makes her shudder. Peter and Steph stand behind her when she joins them, and they watch as the pits of Hell open up beneath them and drag her waking nightmare away.
All that’s left behind is three teenagers and the grief of who they once were.
The Book burns on the fifty-yard line. Steph pulls a lighter out of her pocket and the pages go up in dark, twisted flames. It’s loud. Louder than burning paper should be. As if it’s screaming into the night air, cursing them as each spell gets devoured by flames and turns to ash. Never to be seen again. Never to be read.
Never to be summoned.
She’d burn the Waylon Place, too, if she could. If it wouldn’t be another crime that could land her in jail. She’s had enough close calls with the police to last her a lifetime, and the thought of spending out her days in a cold prison cell is enough for her to hand the lighter back to Steph to try to leave it all behind. If she’s intentional about It, mindful enough, she can go out of her way to never see that house again. She will never step foot inside, smell the rotting flesh and see the images of blood that stains the edges of her memory. She can forget. She can move on.
She can try, at the very least.
Steph and Pete try. The three of them fall into a simple rhythm as the weeks pass by. Go home, pretend, everything is fine, wear a mask. Meet up after school and sit in each other’s living rooms while some boring movie plays on in the background. In another world, Grace would fight tooth and nail to make sure the move was age appropriate, tasteful, and modest. She would press them into watching the Disney movies or sitcoms she’d grown up on. She would curse them for asking to watch something above a PG rating. She would close her eyes at the gory parts.
Now, she watches blankly as scenes play out on the screen. Another night, another movie. Another dull conversation about school or futures or the past plays out around her.
There’s a vacancy in her body. A ghost of her former self sits on the couch, pressed against the armrest. Pretending. Trying to.
She doesn’t cry. No matter how badly she thinks she should, the tears don’t come. The backs of her eyes burn sometimes, but she blinks and it’s gone. Like a passing cloud or a flash of light. One small glimmer of emotion that flickers in and out of existence. A dying lightbulb fighting its last leg of life, burning out.
“Grace?”
It’s Pete. He looks over at her, hand waving in front of her face as if to grab her attention. “You alright over there?”
“Fine,” she says. She is fine. You know, aside from the gaping hole in her chest and the feeling of free falling through life while everyone around her seems to stand steady on two feet.
“You don’t look fine,” Steph says. She leans over, pressing the back of her hand to Grace’s forehead. The contact feels nice, spreads some warmth into her cool skin. She hadn’t realized she was cold. “No fever.”
“Tired?” Pete asks. He’s already tugging a blanket off the back of the couch. It falls easily across her lap.
“Sure,” she says, entirely unconvincing. Pete catches it too easily, mouth set in a thin line. She’s not really ready to talk about it. Words swirl around in her head, disorganized and chaotic. Feelings get muted in favor of nothing at all. It all feels so empty. And if she thinks too hard about it, she worries she might snap in half. There’s a distant sort of pressure building up. Talking will make it swell. Make her break. It’s too soon.
Pete, thankfully, lets it go. Steph continues looking at her for a moment. Like she’s searching for answers Grace can’t give her. Her brow furrows and she leans in for a moment, as if to do something. What, Grace isn’t sure. “Maybe we should put on something else?”
“No,” Grace says. That’s unimportant. Irrelevant. But maybe the others could think that. If they believe the movie is the problem, it would be an easy solution. Turn it off, turn something else on, fix the issue. Fix Grace.
In front of her, Steph’s choice of movie plays out. It’s something old, the special effects wearing down over time in favor of better graphics and advanced technology. Grace hasn’t seen the movie before and with her lack of protesting, it was an easy choice to put it on. Steph had called it a comfort movie. They have very different ideas of comfort.
Two teenagers are already dead, and two more have snuck off to have sex in an empty cabin. It’s not terribly graphic but she isn’t exactly prepared to see a woman pull her pants down so freely on screen. Nor is she prepared for the way her heart kicks in her chest at the sight of her. Still, Grace doesn’t turn away as whoever the character is lays on the bed and her lover climbs on top of her.
They make it look so easy. Just a simple thing two people do with each other for the pure enjoyment of it. A show on screen for the viewers. Drama written to justify the upcoming gore that feels inevitable.
Sex and death. They seem to go together. Both in the movies and in real life.
The thought makes her stomach churn as she watches yet another teen die. The arrow pierces his skin like a knife through rubber. It looks nothing like how mangled flesh looks in real life. Nothing like the images of floorboards jutting out from Max’s chest looked, or how her own hatchet had cut his flesh.
She blinks hard, and the memory fades. The movie passes by. More people die, just like in real life.
It ends on a cliffhanger; one Grace doesn’t find appealing at all. It’s the set up for the franchise, one Steph had said drags on for decades in both good and bad ways. Pete says it’s unnecessary. It sort of is.
“It’s a cult classic,” Steph says. Her and Pete move around the room, throwing out cans of soda and folding blankets. Grace sits in her spot, unmoving while they clean up.
“Yeah, I guess,” Pete says back. He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s terrible, though.”
“No, it’s fantastic.” Steph throws a pillow at him. It misses, landing on the empty space of the couch right beside Grace. “It’s got everything. Blood, sex, and nostalgia.”
“Sure.” Pete sounds entirely unconvinced, but he’s got a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “What’d you think, Grace?”
Grace picks idly at the skin at the edge of her thumb. It wasn’t a good movie, but the thought of disappointing Steph feels a little weird. She had been excited to watch it, practically bounding on her knees when Pete finally relented. She doesn’t really understand why she likes it so much. It had left a strange feeling in Grace’s chest. Something about the lack of realism in it mixed with how it brings up things Grace would rather not think about. Death. Sex. Unassuming teenagers. Real and not real at the same time. Too close to home, but she doesn’t want to say that.
“The setups for the deaths were a bit much,” Grace settles on. “I mean, was the sex really necessary? Mrs. Voorhees could have just killed them all while they slept.”
Steph laughs like Grace says something funny. It doesn’t feel funny. “That’s just a trope. You know, whoever fucks in horror movies always dies.”
Pete’s quick with the way he jams his elbow into her ribs. “Steph.”
“What?” She hisses, wincing slightly. The back of her hand finds his stomach in retaliation. Then, she looks at Grace. “Oh.”
The change in her tone feels wrong. Like Grace is being pitied. She doesn’t want it, nor does she deserve it. “It’s fine,” Grace says.
“Are you sure?” Pete asks. He sits down next to her, a respectable distance from where she is. He looks like he wants to reach out and place his hand on her thigh. She’d rather he didn’t. “We can talk about it, if you want to.”
She doesn’t want to.
“Yeah,” Steph agrees. “I mean, movies are just movies. They’re nothing like real life. That’s what makes them so fun. You can lose yourself in the absurdity of it all.”
Grace hates how small she feels. Under the weight of both of their gazes, she feels like a little kid. Like some naive grade schooler who stumbled upon something she doesn’t understand. Part of her wishes she didn’t understand. Part of her wishes it didn’t resonate.
“It doesn’t feel that absurd.”
Steph sits on the arm of the couch. She’s close enough that Grace can feel her body heat as she leans slightly over. “Sex doesn’t kill people. It’s just sex.”
Just sex. Just her most intimate moment and vulnerable state shared with a literal monster. Flesh on flesh in twisted movements and a panicked blur. The catalyst for the end of their nightmare.
“It killed Max,” Grace says. She leaves the other part unsaid. The part of how it could have killed her, too. The part about how she was always told it would. How she’s shocked it didn’t.
“No. It wasn’t that. Max would have died if any of us made the sacrifice. It was a deal we made together. You’re just the one who finished it. If it had been anything else you cherished, he still would have died,” Pete says. “Besides, I’d hardly call it killing him. He was already dead.”
“Yeah.” Steph’s hand comes out to cover hers, stopping the way she tears small pieces of skill off until she bleeds. “It’s not a death sentence.”
In some ways, it feels like one. In others, it feels like nothing at all. Just a fact of life. A thing she did that she’s forced to come to terms with.
She nods simply, standing up and ignoring the way they both look at her. Steph’s hand falls easily from hers and she misses the contact. The room is mostly clean, so she busies herself with organizing the table and turning off the television. She should get home. It’s getting late and her parents will worry if she cuts it too close to curfew. “Thanks for having me, Pete.”
“Grace,” Steph says.
Whatever she meant to say gets cut off. “Goodnight, guys.”
—
It’s not as if it’s something she can stop thinking about. And thinking always leads to talking, in some ways. Even when she doesn’t want to. Even when she knows she shouldn’t. She should bury it, jam it under the floorboards and never look at it again.
She never could just shut up.
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t do it,” Grace admits.
They’re sitting across from each other at Beanies. Two drinks sit in front of them, cooling off slightly. Steph with her mocha, extra shot of espresso, and Grace with a hot chocolate Steph had bought for her. She didn’t even bother asking what Grace wanted, just placed the order and slid the cup over quietly once they sat down.
Grace has only ever had hot chocolate on very special occasions. Usually Christmas morning, after church and breakfast but before presents. Always homemade, cut with water and with all the marshmallows picked out. This one is made with whole milk and has a hefty amount of whipped cream on the top of it. It’s loaded with more sugar than Grace has ever had in a single sitting. They mirror each other as they sip.
“I get that.”
The drink is warm on her tongue. Sweet. The texture of it sits heavy in every corner of her mouth. It’s a weird sensation and she’s not sure if she likes it. “Do you?”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s an easy thing to think. You gave up what you cherished most. It’s okay to miss it,” Steph says. She’s calm when she speaks, voice even. As if she knows the answers to every question swirling around.
It doesn’t feel that easy. It feels like a betrayal to both of them. Wishing she didn’t sleep with Max implies she wishes Steph shot Peter. Or that Peter shot her. Or that either of them shot Grace. Either way she spins it, it sounds like a deathwish. Like keeping her chastity was more important than any of them being alive. The guilt of it all but eats her up.
“It feels stupid.” It feels selfish, actually, but she leaves that unsaid.
“It’s not.”
Grace frowns. “It’s just sex.” Steph had said so. Just sex. Just the thing she’s been told all her life will send her to Hell. Just the thing that God would shun her for doing out of wedlock. If her parents knew, they’d shun her, too. Her entire world would crumble in front of her. More than it already has.
Sex is only the thing that she apparently cherishes more than any of their lives.
God had told her to value it. He and everyone around her for years and years had told her that it was an important, special thing to keep safe. And when she begged him for help, he left her wordless and teary eyed on her knees. She begged and begged and begged for days and he didn’t answer. He left her out to dry, clothing on a line forgotten out and weathered down. Ripped apart by storms washing over.
And in his silence, she sacrificed. She lost.
What does that make her?
“It was important to you.”
It feels weird to have Steph validate her like this. To be so gentle and so kind. For a long, long while she didn’t even know Steph was capable of kindness. It had only been harsh glares and cutting words. Teenage hatred before they even truly understood the feeling.
Grace thinks she hated her once upon a time. The way Steph acted, so Godless and rebellious. She spit in the face of order. Spit in the face of Grace. Everything she did was an affront to faith and Grace couldn’t stand it.
Now, though, she can’t imagine hating her. Not when Steph is looking at her like this.
She doesn’t say anything. Just lets the noise of the coffee shop fill the space between them. In front of her, her hot chocolate cools. Steph doesn’t say anything, either. She just sips her mocha and fiddles with a napkin on the table. Grace watches the motion, sees the way Steph’s lips curl around the lid and her throat moves with her swallow.
Steph has had sex before. She’s mentioned it off hand during class, seeing a boy for a few months only to break it off and start with another. She bragged about it and lamented about it and gossiped about it. She’s no stranger to sex and she seems so unaffected by it. Like it’s easy for her to give something away like that. Like it’s meaningless.
It is meaningless, Grace thinks. Now that she’s done it, and has some space from it, she’s starting to see it a little more clearly for what it is. Just two bodies coming together and then coming apart. She wasn’t dragged into Hell for sleeping with Max. The world didn’t stop spinning and she didn’t stop breathing. She’s still just Grace, underneath the carnage. The shame and truth of it all mixes together. Oil and water.
It must have been a different experience for Steph, if she kept going back for more. If she kept doing it so easily. She talks about it like it’s nothing at all. Grace wants to believe that, but the contradictions sit heavy in her chest.
Steph’s hand inches across the table, finding hers where it rests on the cheap wood. An olive branch. A moment of reassurance. Something Grace is both distressed and comforted by. Their fingers twine together easily, and she returns the soft smile thrown her way.
Steph can be kind when she means to. Just like how she can be cruel. At the end of the day, Grace is thankful for it. She says what she means. The kind of person who can easily be trusted because they wear it all on their sleeve.
“You’re more than just what other people taught you to be,” Steph says. Her fingers twitch and tighten as she says it, wrapping easily around Grace’s. The touch is something she can find solace in if she focuses long enough on it. Warmth that seeps into her cold hands. Outside, the clouds are dark. The early winter sun threatens to set too early. Darkness is around the corner, stretching out for too long. Daylight is only a dream these days.
Steph’s words ring out a little hollow. “I don’t think I know who I am.”
“You’re Grace Chasity.”
“But is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Grace isn’t sure. If she really values her purity over her friends, does that make her a good person? If she killed a man in cold blood, is she still favored in the eyes of God? If people really know what she did, what she’s capable of, they would not love her. They would not accept her as easily as Steph seems to.
Maybe they’re both broken.
“It’s whatever you want it to be.”
Grace wants to be good. She wants it so badly, but she’s not sure if she believes that’s true.
It’s becoming easier and easier to question everything around her. To question herself. The teachings of her pastors and parents. Of God. If she tries, she can even question Steph. If she’s been lied to before, it’d be easy to lie to her again.
Stephanie doesn’t lie, she reminds herself.
Maybe Grace is naive. Gullible. Easy to manipulate. She sure feels that way. She feels small and useless and evil. There’s violence in ignorance. The stories she would tell herself to justify her actions— this is an act of God— or to absolve her of her sins— it’s God’s plan! They all feel so dumb.
Naive, stupid girl.
“Grace,” Steph says, “you can be a little misguided sometimes, but you’re not a bad person. You’re just a person.”
“Just a person,” she repeats.
A person. A human. With flaws and sins and loose morals, apparently. She takes another sip of her cocoa, and it settles in her stomach. The weight of it is both comforting and suffocating.
—
Winter in Michigan is a cold affair. The wind from the lake tears across the land and the precipitation makes the clouds heavy with snow that hasn’t fallen. The atmosphere is thick. Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s just Grace.
She got one of Steph’s hoodies on, tucked under her winter coat for extra warmth. Her hands are tight balls in her pockets, and there’s a light blue beanie on top of her head to keep her ears warm. The hood of Steph’s car is cold under her thighs. Steph herself seems unbothered, just a jean jacket on her shoulders and her hands exposed as she brings a cigarette up to her lips.
Grace kind of wants a drag of it but can’t bring herself to unsheathe her hands. The nicotine high isn’t worth the way her fingers hurt from the wind.
They keep finding themselves like this. Just the two of them, tucked away in little corners of Hatchetfield. If Grace were more honest with herself, she’d admit she likes it. She might even crave it. Being together with all three of them is nice, don’t get her wrong. There’s a building familiarity in their dynamic that she has come to trust in a weird way. Predictable. Soft. Movies and shows she still doesn’t care about, conversations she doesn’t always listen to, but safe, nonetheless.
Pete is nice. He’s soft and sweet and caring, but Grace doesn’t always feel like she can talk to him. Not about things that really matter. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a boy, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s not her, but when he’s around she finds herself chewing on her words a little more carefully. Censored and intentional with the way she speaks. He’s careful, so she’s careful, too. But she needs to talk. It’s exhausting holding it all in.
With Steph, it’s just different.
Steph is not careful. She’s brutal and harsh and honest. She challenges Grace. Grace needs that like she needs oxygen.
“Do you ever think about the before?”
“All the time,” Steph answers.
Before feels so far away. It almost feels like it never existed. Like those versions of Grace, Steph, and Pete are just dreams in some fairytale book her parents used to read her as a kid. She can’t even access those old thoughts and feelings. Before feels impossible. “If none of it ever happened, do you think we’d be friends?”
Steph brings the cigarette up to her mouth and Grace watches with a sick sort of curiosity as she wraps her lips around it. Her throat tightens with the inhale, chest stilling as the smoke settles in her lungs. She holds it for a moment before breathing out in one steady steam. It dances around them. “No.”
A single word shouldn’t hurt, but it does. The Grace from before probably wouldn’t be hurt by it, but the Grace right now is. She can’t really imagine a life without Steph. She can hardly remember not having her like this.
“You were an asshole,” Steph goes on. “I was, too. Still am, but for some reason you stuck around.”
“You’re not an asshole,” Grace says. Steph is, but Grace doesn’t like the word. She doesn’t even like the way it tastes in her mouth, foreign syllabus acidic. “I’m glad I stuck around.”
“I don’t think any of us could do this alone.”
The cigarette burns out at some point, and Steph snubs it on the bottom of her shoe once she notices. In front of them, the lake continues to roll in gentle waves. Everything that once meant something is now twisted up and distorted. There’s only one other car parked in the lot, and Grace can see two people walking along the shoreline. They look content, unbothered. Like there isn’t a single care in the world. The sight almost makes her bitter. It’s unfair that other people just get to live their lives. That they don’t know.
“The world just keeps moving,” Grace says, “like nothing happened. I should be able to do that, too. Just move on, I think.”
“It’s not that simple,” Steph says. “I don’t think we just wake up and go back to normal. I don’t know if we’ll ever go back to normal.”
“I don’t even know what normal was,” Grace says back. “I think it’s worse being the only ones who know. You, me, and Pete. It’s like some sort of delusion.”
A burden they’re forced to carry.
“The whole thing feels like a fucked-up fever dream. The kind you get when you have the flu.”
Grace snorts. “Yeah.”
“I think Grace from before would shit bricks if she could see you now,” Steph says. “She’d definitely think she came down with something. No way in Hell she would be caught sitting with me out by the lake without trying to save my soul.”
Grace hides her smile in the way she tugs her knees up to her chest. It’s a funny thing to think about it, if not completely devastating. “Grace from before would have a stroke if she knew half the things I’ve done.”
“What about Grace from now?” Steph asks. She looks over at her curiously, her own smile playing at the corner of her lips. They’re full, painted red with her usual lipstick. Grace tries not to look and wonder anything about them at all.
“Grace from now is still sort of having a stroke.”
“You seem to be doing better,” Steph says. Her smile softens, going from playful to kind.
Is she? She hadn’t really noticed. “I guess.”
“Loosening up. Getting used to the whole normal teenager thing.” Steph looks at her in a weird sort of way. Her eyes catch on the light from the lake and they shine. Grace lets herself stare back, tries to find some sort of meaning in the look that doesn’t really exist. Steph is just looking at her like she normally does. Comforting her like she normally does. Like a good friend. Maybe the only real friend Grace has ever had.
“I’m just following your lead.”
Before Grace would have been convinced following Steph’s lead would send her straight to Hell. Now Grace thinks Hell is less of a place and more of a state of mind.
“Not your smartest move, Chasity.”
“You seem to have it figured out,” Grace says. “You make it look easy. Like you know what you’re doing.”
“No one knows what they’re doing.”
“Yeah, sure, but you don’t even seem scared.”
“It’s not scary once you get used to it,” Steph says. “You just need some more exposure. Keep stepping out of your comfort zone.”
“You bring me out of my comfort zone.” The admission is sudden, and she feels instantly bad for saying it. Like she just admitted something dirty and wrong. Objectively, there’s nothing wrong with it. Steph does bring her out of her comfort zone. She shows her scary movies and buys her hot chocolate and smokes cigarettes around her. Normal teenager things. Sort of. But still, it feels like a secret she should have kept to herself. Like saying it out loud wasn’t the right move.
Steph just keeps smiling at her. Her eyes just keep shining. “I like Grace from now.”
—
Time keeps passing. The world keeps spinning. It’s still bitter, but maybe less so. Like she’s getting used to the taste of it. Acclimating, like going in the water for the first time on a summer day. Except it isn’t summer. And Grace isn’t past it, yet.
“I feel different.”
The room is warm. A low rumble echoes through the space as the central heat kicks on. She can feel warm air wash over her face. The air is too cold outside in the way the first snowfall is only hours away, if the forecast is anything to go by. At home, her parents haven’t turned the heat on yet. They say it’s not quite cold enough, that their electricity bill will thank them by the end of the month if they can be frugal. It makes the sweaters she bought last month get good mileage, wrapping her up in something warm to stave off the chill.
Beside her, Steph hums. “Go on.”
Steph doesn’t need to worry about things like that. Her house is big. The heating bill must be insane but with wealth like hers, petty bills are a distant thought.
“I don’t know. Like someone took all the pieces out of me and put them back together. Nothing really changed on the outside, but I feel different.”
She’s been feeling like this, lately. Different. Not herself. It’s hard to describe on its own. Almost as if the person she was had been carved out of her and all that’s left behind is a hollow shell of a girl. Grace Chasity, the once pure Christian girl of Hatchetfield, dead on the fifty-yard line. And no one knows. No one except Stephanie Lauter and Peter Spankoffski.
She wonders what her shell might be filled with. If it’ll be good or bad.
“You are different, I think,” Steph says. She continues staring up at the ceiling, the low light from her bedside lamp dancing in her reflection. There’s something about her that feels captivating. The way she looks. The way she speaks. Her words are almost like branches and Grace is hanging off of every one of them.
“I am?”
“Yeah.” Steph takes a deep drag of her cigarette. The haze from the smoke makes the light around them look sepia. Without her dad around anymore, she can get away with smoking inside. When she’s ready to sell the house, it’ll get scooped off the market regardless of nicotine stains on the walls. She lives like she hasn’t a care in the world. It’s envious. “I don’t know, you’ve chilled out. Maybe. Or, like, less high strung. I don’t think you’re wrong. It’s just like you’ve mellowed out or something.
That’s one way to put it. Mellowed out sounds too much like a compliment. Grace is more like a tire that’s been deflated. Someone took a serrated blade to her skin and let all the air out. All the heat and passion she once had is drained from her. All that’s left behind is a sort of emptiness. A lost kind of confusion that she doesn’t know what to do with.
She feels like she’s been taken from herself and she doesn’t quite know what to do with that.
“When I made the choice,” she starts, then pauses. Her lower lip worries between her teeth. When she what? Fucked him? Sold her soul to the devil? Let go of her purity and the one thing she cherished above all else? “To sleep with him,” she settles on, “it felt like the right thing to do. And it was worth it, because it saved Pete. I knew I was giving something up, but I didn’t expect to feel so empty after. I thought maybe I’d realize some things. Like why people even like sex so much. It wasn’t as good as everyone made it out to be.”
There was this rhyme kids would say during lunch period when she was in elementary school, before she even understood the concept of sex at all. She can only remember the first few lines. Boys get all the pleasure; girls get all the pain. It clung with her, and she had hoped that wasn’t true. When the girls in her class started dating, started having sex, she thought maybe it wasn’t. She’s not deaf. People talk all the time. In the halls, in the locker room before and after gym. They’d trade stories about sleeping with their boyfriends or hookups. About how good Brad or Kyle or Jason was in bed.
Grace would be a liar if she said she wasn’t curious what all the hype was about. It made her dream of her wedding night, when she would finally experience the bliss that others too carelessly gave away. And it would be even better for her, having saved herself. She would be high on love and affection, the knowledge that she did the right thing. That she was pure in the eyes of God.
She would have given herself away and then fall pregnant with a child. She would have built a beautiful family based on the values she once held in such high esteem.
She would have.
She can’t now. Not in the same way. Not anymore. It was all embellished. Maybe it wasn’t as bad for them as it was for Grace, but it certainly couldn’t be as good as they all said it was.
Not that it even matters much anymore, anyway. The false sense of control she had been white knuckling for so long feels insignificant.
It’s an empty feeling, knowing she can’t have it anymore. There’s a hole inside of her she doesn’t know how to fill.
Steph lays beside her, still and patient. More patient than Grace thinks she’s ever been. The air around them feels heavy and fragile. Grace hates that. Hates that she’s this fragile thing, now. Something Steph feels she has to handle with care.
“It was your first time, Grace,” she says after a moment, “it’s fine if it wasn’t that good.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s supposed to be good. It’s for procreation, after all. Just something animals do to make offspring. How we have children.”
Steph laughs. It’s not cynical. More like surprised. “You’re so clinical. It can be good. It’s supposed to be good.”
It feels like Steph’s lying to her, but the way she says it is almost earnest. Stephanie Lauter doesn’t lie, anyway. She’s brutal in her honesty, not holding back for the sake of someone else’s feelings. Even with the miles and miles of eggshells between them, Grace knows Steph wouldn’t lie just to spare her. “It is?”
“If the other person is doing it right, yeah,” she shrugs.
Right. Wrong. Words that are just words with no meaning. No context other than bad. Because it was bad, with Max. It was painful and fast and all too rough for Grace’s liking. It’s her only frame of reference. “As opposed to?”
“Doing it wrong. Being self-obsessed and only caring about getting themselves off. Those people are fucking losers. The worst lays.”
The words settle like bricks in her stomach. They ring out in the memory of what Grace had experienced. Max was selfish. He had devoured her like a starved man. Like Grace was the first meal he’d eaten in weeks. She supposes she was.
“Sex is just sex, Grace. I know it means something to you, but it doesn’t really mean anything to other people.”
It meant something to her. Past tense. Fallacies she had built up in her mind to be beautiful and wonderful. The truest form of love.
Not just… a sacrifice.
“Now that I’ve done it, it doesn’t really mean anything to me anymore, either.”
Steph considers her words, chewing on them like taffy stuck in her teeth. The silence that falls between them feels waterlogged. A sky before a storm. Much like how her eyes look. The green in them swirls around something fierce. Like whatever she’s about to say is something big.
“I think you need a do-over,” she says eventually. “You need to sleep with someone who actually gives a fuck about you. Who wants to make you feel as good as you make them feel.”
There doesn’t feel like a single person in the world who cares about how Grace feels. Not like that. Her parents care in the way all parents should. They want her to be happy and healthy. Pete and Steph care, too, like friends. They make sure she’s okay in the wake of it all. But someone who would care like that? It seems impossible. Who would bother now? “Like who?”
Steph sits up straighter, finally turning to lock eyes with Grace. Her face looks like something set in resolve, like she’s on a mission to prove something. “Like me.”
That doesn’t make sense. Not one lick of it. Steph sits beside her and says things that just bounce around in Grace’s brain. Steph. Steph with her. Her and Steph. Sleeping together. Like Steph cares.
She does. But not like that.
Right?
Besides, that wouldn’t even work. They don’t even have the right parts.
“I don’t get it,” Grace says. She feels stupid with Steph looking at her like that. All doe-eyed and expectant. Like Grace should know what she means or even understand what’s happening. “We’re both girls.”
Steph blinks at her. “Yeah, so?”
“What would be the point of that?”
“Uh,” she flounders for a moment, looking genuinely lost. All at once, she feels like she wants to cry. God, this is so humiliating. “Like I just said, to make you feel good. Your first time sucked.”
“He seemed to enjoy it.”
“Yeah, well, he came. I bet you didn’t.”
“I didn’t what?”
“Come,” Steph says easily. Like a fact. Like she holds all the truths to the universe in that brain of hers. Like she’s smarter than she ever lets on.
She’s smarter than Grace, that’s for sure.
“Girls can do that?”
“Yeah.”
“With other girls?”
“Yeah.” Steph is crawling on top of her, hands caging her face as she stares down. “Feels real good, too. Like all the tension flooding out of your body and leaving nothing but pleasure behind. It’s the best feeling you could ever feel.”
Grace feels her face warm up in what’s probably the deepest she’s ever blushed. She remembers touching herself once. Completely on accident. It was as if her hand had a mind of its own, drifting between her legs in the bath and pressing into herself. She hadn’t known what she was doing, but her body seemed to like it enough. It was clumsy and inexperienced, much like Grace is at everything she does.
Much like she would be right now.
“I can show you, if you want,” Steph finishes. Her eyes are dark and they all but swallow Grace up as she stares into them. It feels like she’s falling into something bigger than she can bite off. “We don’t have to. Only if you want.”
Does she want? The words alone are enough to peak her temperature. She feels like she’s sweating, trapped between Steph and the downy comforter on her bed.
“I haven’t,” Grace starts. Her voice feels caught in her throat, like she’s being choked from the inside. Panic floods her, then subsides, then comes again stronger. Like waves in an ocean threatening to draw her under. Her hands clench in the loose fabric of Steph’s hoodie, desperate for something to hold onto. “Not since—”
She hasn’t
Not since, not since, not since—
“I know, it’s okay. We don’t have to.”
Steph starts to push off. The small bit of distance set between them makes Grace ache with something she can’t identify. Her hand moves without permission, grabbing her forearm in a silent plea.
“I want to.” She does. She’s surprised by how the force of wanting it slams into her chest. Steph, who lies on top of her with bright eyes and her mouth set into a worried line.
She hadn’t really considered it before. Or, maybe, she hadn’t let herself consider it. Steph wasn’t even an option in her eyes. Only boys like Max or Jason ever showed up in her late-night fantasies. They were all hard lines of muscle and bone, strong hands that would touch her in ways she knew she wasn’t allowed to have.
She’s not sure if it was the boys or if it was the idea of perversion. The way it was something forbidden. An apple tucked away deep in the garden, something she’s never been allowed to taste.
Steph is something forbidden.
“I want to kiss you,” Steph says. “Can I?”
At once, her heart is in her throat. The world almost feels like it’s spinning on its axis, with Steph above her acting as the sun. Her gravitational force is strong, and Grace is but a simple meteor. She can only nod.
She’s slow about it. Intentional. Her lips press against Grace’s with almost little fanfare, slotting them together easily and stilling to give Grace a moment to really feel it. She pulls back slightly, before pressing in again. Grace, for all she is, can hardly wrap her head around the movement. It takes a few moments before she realizes she’s supposed to kiss back. Her jaw works in tiny, uncoordinated movements. Steph, patient as a saint, just meets her there. Kisses her slow and light, giving Grace a chance to become familiar with the motion.
She pulls back again, and when she speaks her lips all but ghost over Grace’s. “How’s that?”
“It’s nice.” It is. Steph’s lips are soft and smooth. The faint flavor of cherry ChapStick lingers there, mixing with the taste of cigarettes and toothpaste. It’s an odd combination, one Grace should be disgusted by, but she finds herself craving more. She presses back in, harder this time, and lets Steph set a quicker pace.
They stay like that for a while, trading kisses that grow hotter with each passing minute. At some point, Steph coaxes her mouth open and slips her tongue inside. It shouldn’t be as good as it is. Grace has seen people kiss before, has turned away from heated make-out sessions between classes in the hall. The sight always filled her with a sort of revulsion she could feel in her bones. Now that she’s on the receiving end of it, especially from someone who clearly knows what they’re doing, she can’t help but spin out.
Steph kisses her like she does everything else: fully and without hesitation.
Grace can only hold on for dear life.
Steph slows them, pulling back and mouthing at her jawline. “Can I try something?”
“Sure?”
“Okay,” Steph says. She pushes up on her arms and looks down at Grace. There’s something saccharine in her eyes hidden behind a layer of heat. Her lips are shiny and red, kiss swollen. “Do you trust me?”
Grace nods, because she does. Steph has never once pushed her too far. Any time she’s even so much as hesitated, Steph has backed off. She knows if Grace backs out from whatever she has in mind, it’ll be okay.
Steph nods back, smile sweet on her face. Her eyes catch in the low lamp light, stars against a night sky. She’s gorgeous.
She says, “I won’t leave a mark,” and presses her lips back to the line of Grace’s jaw. Then again right below, the beginning of a trail down the column of her throat. She stops every now and then, teeth nipping the skin and sending fireworks shooting off in Grace’s belly. She hears herself let out a kind of whine, hands unconsciously clenching in the fabric of her hoodie.
“Feel good?”
“Yeah,” Grace whispers. She doesn’t trust her voice to actually speak. Even the whisper comes out a little pathetic.
Steph kisses again, a little more pressure this time, and then she opens her mouth and draws the skin of her neck in. The way she moves is controlled, as if she’s cataloging information.
Her teeth close lightly and she sucks and God that shouldn’t feel good. It really shouldn’t. But it does. It drives a heady sort of feeling into Grace’s mind, her thoughts going at once fuzzy. “Oh.”
Steph pulls off, admiring the slightly pink skin she left behind. “Yeah?”
“What was that?”
“The start of a hickey.” Grace has heard of those. She’s seen them on other people. Each time she would spot a new person with one her stomach sours. Evidence of carnal sin worn proudly on their skin.
And here she is. Engaging in the same activities. Her skin burns hot at once, shame building inside of her.
“Hey,” Steph says. “It’s alright. I told you I won’t leave anything behind. I’m sorry, we don’t have to do it anymore.”
“No!” Grace doesn’t mean to shout, but if she doesn’t speak immediately, she won’t be able to say it. “No, sorry. I want to.” She does. She’s working on it. On letting things go and being more normal. Like Steph. “It’s just. Can we— maybe can we just go slow?”
Steph brushes a loose strand of hair away from her face. Tucks it behind her ear with a sort of gentleness reserved only for her. “Of course.”
Steph pushes back again, that same gentle smile on her face, and Grace finds herself desperate to taste the skin on Steph’s neck. Desperate to try it out for herself.
“Can I?”
“Sure,” Steph says. She rolls off Grace and onto her back, hair splaying out like a halo behind her. For a moment, they lay side by side just staring at each other. Grace takes the moment to steady herself, one big breath at a time. “You okay?”
Right, She should move. “Yeah.” And then she’s rolling over, too, settling herself on top of Steph in an all too new position. So far, she thinks it’s her favorite position. Being on top feels more comfortable, more natural. The only reason she was able to relax when Steph is on top of her is because of the steady trust they’ve build. At first, the pressing weight of her made Grace panic. Made her feel trapped and stuck and horrible. Being on top makes her feel in control.
She also feels a little helpless. Steph is looking up at her with these wide green eyes, all expectant and waiting. And Grace feels like a fish out of water. What is she supposed to be doing? Kissing is easy. It’s just following Steph’s lead.
This, though, is all Grace. She’s supposed to know what to do. Know how to place her lips and move her jaw. It feels impossible. Steph had made her feel so good, but she knows. Grace doesn’t. She just guesses. And follows.
Follower, Grace Chasity. It’s all she’s good for.
“You alright up there?”
No, not really. She feels like a fish out of water. Like a drowning man who doesn’t know how to swim. She’s in over her head.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Just do what feels right,” Steph says. She almost immediately reconsiders her words. Nothing feels right and Steph knows that. “Want me to tell you what to do?”
“Please.”
“Well,” Steph says, voice low in the sort of whisper that makes her dizzy. “Since you asked so nicely. Kiss down my neck.”
Grace allows her lips to connect with the soft skin there. It’s soft. Tender. Delicate in the way that Grace knows if she sunk her teeth in, really meant it when she did it, she could rip her throat apart. It’s intimate. A level of trust not to hurt her. Steph trusts her.
The feeling goes to her head.
“Use your mouth a little more,” Steph instructs. Grace does. She opens her mouth and allows the taste of salt and Steph to enter her system. Without thinking, she drags her teeth down a spot right along her pulse and earns herself a low whine. “That’s good, Gracie.”
Good. That’s good. God, those words shouldn’t make her feel like this. It’s like hot water is pooling itself in the lowest part of her stomach, bleeding out and spreading through the rest of her body.
She does it again and gets the same noise in response, plus a small shudder from Steph. Something about that spot must feel good. It felt good when Steph did it to her, she remembers. It felt even better that last moment, before Grace stopped her.
But that would be just as bad, wouldn’t it? Being the giver of a hickey is no different than being the receiver. It’s all the same sin and if she does this, her actions will be there for the whole world to see.
But maybe it makes no difference. It’s all the same. But Grace is already here, another woman pinned under her as she kisses at her neck and draws out such lovely sounds. It’s all the same.
So why not?
She pulls a small patch of skin into her mouth, savoring the taste of Steph and the way her body arches slightly off the bed. It presses them together even tighter, and Grace tries her best not to notice each curve of her body.
After a moment, she pulls back entirely to admire her work. The skin is a light pink, a little shiny around the edges from her spit. Without thinking, she uses her palm to wipe it away. Steph giggles.
“That felt nice,” she says. “How was it?”
“It’s not very dark,” Grace says, by way of answering.
“Well, you didn’t really suck or bite me too hard. Definitely wouldn’t be dark.”
Grace just blinks at her. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“It won’t hurt, baby. Sometimes the harder you bite, the better it feels.”
“Oh.”
“Wanna try again?
She does. She really, really does. But there’s this funny feeling starting to build that she doesn’t know what to do with. It’s making her head swim and her skin buzz. It’s overwhelming, and the more Steph talks the worse it gets. It’s like she’s slipping out of herself and into someone else. It’s terrifying. “Can we stop for tonight?”
“Of course,” Steph smiles. “Anything you want.”
Anything she wants. Anything.
That’s too much.
Maybe it’s not enough.