Chapter Text
Zosia had never woken up standing up before. She’d also never woken up in the apartment of a stranger. She’d made a point not to. But then, she supposed, whatever this was wasn’t exactly waking up. She had some sense that her body had been up and about for a while. It was disorienting, to say the least. Even more disorienting was the short blonde woman in front of her, standing far too close for comfort.
Zosia reached behind her to steady herself, her hand coming to rest against the frame of a door. It was coated in some sort of metal mesh. The whole door was, and the wall around it. She looked curiously at it.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the stranger warned in English, American accented.
Zosia thought for a minute, her brain having to shift into second language gear. Her mother had told her she would really know she was fluent when she started to dream in English. Maybe that’s what this was—a dream.
“What?” she asked the stranger.
“If you go out that door, I’m not sure you’ll come back in,” the woman said, finally leaning back.
“What do you mean by that?” Zosia asked cautiously. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
“New Mexico,” the woman said, as if that was helpful to Zosia. “In the States. The United States. Would you lock the door behind you?”
“Why..?” Zosia asked.
She wasn’t sure she liked this woman. Why should she lock herself in with her? And if it was so important to the woman, why couldn’t she do it herself? The woman seemed unfazed by her suspicion, if a bit miffed. She took a seat on the arm of a couch and crossed her arms.
“If you’ll come sit down, I can do my best to explain,” she said. When Zosia didn’t move, she added, “If you shut and lock the door, surely you realize you can also unlock and open it whenever you want.”
“Unless it’s a trick,” Zosia countered.
“What can I do to make you think it’s not a trick?” the woman asked, smacking her hands on the tops of her thighs and leaning forward, impatient.
“Let me go outside,” Zosia said.
The woman pursed her lips.
“It would be very… disappointing for me if you did that. I’ve put a lot of work into this meeting. I’m not even sure it was a good idea yet. But I’d like to find out.”
“Who are you?” Zosia asked. “Why do you want to meet with me so badly?”
“Well, I had to see if this would work on someone, and I don’t really have anyone else.”
The woman shifted uncomfortably. Zosia was intrigued by this, even if she was still wary. Still, she'd been in dangerous situations before, ones far more precarious than whatever the hell this was, with people far scarier than this short blonde American woman, prickly as she was. Gingerly, she reached back and clicked the lock behind her.
“What’s going on?” she asked again, squaring her shoulders but not coming any closer to the woman.
“I really think you should sit down for this,” the woman said.
“I think I will be fine,” Zosia said stubbornly.
“Trust me on this,” the woman said. “It’s going to sound pretty fucking crazy, and I doubt you’re going to like it.”
“Trust?” Zosia forced a humorless laugh. “That’s a pretty tall order. I don’t know anything about you.”
The woman considered this. She nodded, though it seemed mostly to herself.
“Okay, uh, what do you want to know?”
“To start, your name,” Zosia said. “And then maybe, I don’t know, why you’re here, what you do, a fun fact about yourself, things like that.”
The woman gave her an incredulous look.
“You wanna do fucking icebreakers right now?”
“Ice breakers..?” Zosia asked.
The woman sighed.
“Right. Nevermind. I’ll drop the turns of phrase. I really should consider myself lucky you speak English at all. The little bit of Polish I learned is fucking awful.” She pressed her hands into the arm of the couch and leaned back. “Well, I’m Carol. I used to be a semi-popular romantasy writer, though there isn’t much use for that these days. I’m here because I have nowhere else to go, and a fun fact about me I guess is that I’m a functioning alcoholic—though I guess that depends on your definition of functioning.”
“Alcholic,” Zosia repeated, trying to understand. “Like you have trouble with alcohol, right? You drink it too much?”
“I drink it too much, yeah,” the woman, Carol, confirmed.
“That fact is not very fun,” Zosia said.
Carol just shrugged. She was odd, Zosia thought. Surly.
“Well I’m-“ she started, but Carol cut her off.
“Zosia,” she said. “I know.”
Zosia felt her eyebrows knit together. Her brow felt stiff, as if she hadn’t made a frustrated expression in some time.
“If you already know my name, why have you not used it?” she asked.
“Because I happen to know how fucking creepy it is for people you don’t know at all to act like they’re on a first name basis with you,” Carol said. “Please, sit. I know you’re confused.”
Zosia felt a sharp drop of dread in the pit of her stomach. She had the sense that whatever she was about to hear was only going to get worse. Whatever it was, though, she didn’t seem to have much choice if she wanted to find out more. Besides, Carol didn’t seem like she was dangerous. Prickly as she was, she was smaller than Zosia, hardly capable of overpowering her. It would be difficult to hide a weapon in the outfit she was wearing, tight denim pants and a tank top. Her boots however…
Carol watched Zosia’s eyes flicker to her feet. She sighed and took off her boots, shaking them dramatically to prove her point.
“I’m not armed, I swear,” she said. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
“How do you know I’m not armed?” Zosia asked. She felt it was a fair question, considering she didn’t even know.
She patted her pants pockets. Only then did it occur to her to look down at herself. She was wearing tweed trousers and a light billowy blouse under a cardigan.
“I’m making a very educated guess,” Carol said.
“Whose clothes are these?” Zosia asked, her dread morphing into a flickering panic as she felt more viscerally that, not only did she not remember putting them on, she didn’t even recognize them. She ran a nervous hand through her hair and found it longer than she remembered. “And whose hair is this? My hair is not like this?”
Carol’s lips pursed even tighter than before. She gave Zosia a pitying look.
“This is the part where you start to realize why I wanted you to sit down.”
Zosia nodded. Her heart pounded in her chest. Whatever her feelings about this strange woman, it seemed she was the only one who could offer Zosia any sense of clarity or relief. She sat on the armchair opposite Carol, as far from her as she could be. Carol seemed disappointed by the distance, but she didn’t comment on it.
“I don’t even know where I should start,” she confessed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“You’re asking me a question?” Zosia said, but she still thought hard about it. “Morocco,” she answered. “I was living in Morocco.” As her memories came flooding back to her, she hoped Carol didn’t ask her any followup questions.
Carol shook her head in disbelief.
“I can’t believe they flew you in from fucking Morocco.”
“Who are they?” Zosia asked.
Carol hesitated.
“I guess I should just rip the bandaid off,” she said. “They are everyone in the world. About three months ago, a virus was released into the air that caused everyone to become psychically linked to one another. Or die trying.”
She smiled ruefully, as if there was something cruelly funny about that. Zosia suspected she’d lost someone, but given what she was hearing, she hardly had the bandwidth to be particularly empathetic.
“They call this event the Joining,” Carol continues, “and they won’t stop until it’s finished. There are certain people, me and twelve others scattered across the globe, who are immune to the virus, and the goal is to use our stem cells to force us to join the… collective, I guess.”
“So… everyone is one?” Zosia said. “Except for you and twelve others?”
“Yes,” Carol confirmed. She thought for a second, her face suddenly darkening. “Eleven now, actually…” Her eyes were cloudy and distant. She forced herself back into the moment, back in front of Zosia. “And whatever you’re imagining right now, it’s even freakier.”
“And I’m not one of these… others… am I?” Zosia asked, the dread and the panic merging to become a new emotion, more terrible than she had ever known she could feel.
She felt stupid as soon as she said it. Of course she wasn’t. That’s why she was here, wearing different clothes and having different hair in a completely different country.
“No, you’re not,” Carol said, more softly than she’d been speaking.
“But you… you are?” Zosia confirmed.
“Yep,” Carol said, the p popping on her tongue. She was trying and failing to seem casual about it.
“That’s very convenient for you,” Zosia said, distrusting.
“Believe me, it’s been anything but,” Carol griped. “But you’re welcome to walk out that door right now if you don’t believe me. But with everything I just told you, is it worth the risk?”
It was an excellent point, or at the very least, a convincing lie and a strong deterrent. Zosia had, after all, found herself in the strangest of circumstances, dressed the strangest of ways, with absolutely no clue how she’d gotten there. She looked up towards the ceiling, her blood rushing in her ears.
“So for these three months, I have been..?”
Zosia felt sick. Three months. Three months of her body being piloted by whatever this new consciousness was. It was hard for it to feel like a joining when she couldn’t retain any of the memory independently, when she came back into herself dressed in clothes she’d never even seen before, in a state she’d never even once thought about visiting. The whole idea of it was bizarre and uncanny.
Carol reached for her, but she must’ve thought better of it. She sat back, watching Zosia with wide eyes and pursed lips. Zosia couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or grateful for the space.
“I can’t imagine how this must feel for you,” Carol said. “Hell, I’ve been terrified of just the idea of it since the first night it happened.”
Zosia said nothing. She stared straight ahead at the coffee table, at Carol’s hands, folding in her lap and fidgeting. They made her notice the tremor in her own hands. She gripped the arms of her chair for support, the plush lining melting silkily against her sweaty palms.
“I’m sorry to ask right now, but did you say something about your hair before?” Carol said.
She looked both reticent and curious, but it seemed the curiosity had won out. Zosia laughed despite the fact that she was fighting off a panic attack, or perhaps because of it. The laugh burst shakily from her throat.
“This cannot be my hair,” she answered, tugging at the end a bit too hard. “It was much shorter. I know it’s been a few months, but it is not possible it could grow this fast.”
Carol’s brow furrowed. She got up from her perch on the armrest and crouched down in front of Zosia, her fingers running up a few strands of Zosia’s hair. Zosia almost leaned away, slightly put off by the closeness of the other woman, by her daring to touch her, even in a way so slight and gentle. She didn’t, though.
Carol’s hand reached high in Zosia’s hair before she found what she was looking for. Zosia studied Carol’s face as she made her discovery, the way she sucked her bottom lip in, her tongue darting out the corner of her mouth just slightly, the way her brow crinkled further in an exasperated kind of understanding. There was a safety in Zosia’s staring, until Carol was meeting her eyes, wanting to share, and then there wasn’t.
Zosia’s breath caught in her throat under the strength of Carol’s gaze. She felt Carol’s thumb and forefinger pinch around something in her hair.
“Extensions,” Carol said. “They gave you extensions.”
Zosia had been so caught up in studying Carol, like the muscles in her face could reveal some secret she was keeping, maybe from herself as much as from Zosia, that she forgot how horrified she was at the idea of her own bodysnatching. Zosia brought her hand to her head, just beside Carol’s, feeling the place where Carol had parted her hair, their fingers brushing. Sure enough, there were tiny keratin bonds, laying uniform in a ring around her scalp. The horror came rushing back to her.
“Zosia,” Carol said cautiously.
Zosia was only vaguely aware of Carol looking right at her, Carol leaning in to search for hidden answers in her eyes.
“Why would they give me these?” she said, put off by the way her own voice sounded leaving her mouth. “I just don’t understand. How is this useful? What do they do?”
“They do a lot of research,” Carol said unhelpfully.
Zosia didn’t care the slightest bit about research right now.
“I don’t want these anymore,” she said, yanking at a few of the extensions. “These are not me. I just want to be me.”
Carol cringed, her fingers wrapping around Zosia’s wrist, holding it in place, putting a firm stop to her yanking.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said. “You’ll damage your hair. And then they sort of win, right?”
Zosia narrowed her eyes and twisted her wrist violently out of Carol’s grasp.
“What should I do then?”
“We can get them out,” Carol said. She retrieved a bottle of vodka from the bar cart against the wall and held it out to Zosia. “With this. It’s 180 proof. We just need cotton balls and a comb. I bet there are some in the bathroom.”
“Where is that?” Zosia asked. She could use a moment to herself, and maybe a mirror. “I can look for them.”
“First door on the left,” Carol said, pointing down a narrow hallway that only had one door on the left anyway.
Zosia nodded gratefully and finally pushed herself up from her arm chair. Her legs were numb. They carried her into the bathroom almost unconsciously. It was a relief to see them in the mirror above the sink, to confirm that they were still firmly attached to her body in the same places she was familiar with.
It gave Zosia no pleasure to see that her extensions were seamless, matching the shade and sheen of her natural hair to a t. If she didn’t know her, she never would’ve guessed they were there. It was nice to see her face, though, which was exactly the same as she had left it. She made a few faces at herself, vowing never again to take for granted the way her eyes rolled and her lips curled and her jaw set.
She crouched down to poke around in the cabinet under the sink, easily finding a bag of cotton balls and a bag of dollar store plastic combs in a low drawer. She was about to take them out to Carol when she felt a sudden urge to pee. Whether it was brought on by actual biological need or a psychological itch for something she could do in her own body, easily and successfully, she didn’t know.
It was strangely comforting to pee. It forced her to relax, to release something, anything. It was nice to let go of fluids the hivemind had put in her body. Zosia wondered if there was still more her body had to process. When had been the last time she'd had something to drink? Or something to eat? How long would it take for her to shed every skin cell that had touched something she couldn't remember? She remembered hearing that it took the human body seven years to regenerate all its cells. Maybe after seven years she could feel like she belonged to herself again.
Pulling her pants back up, she noticed that she was wearing a lacy blue thong. Startled, she kept her pants undone and hanging loosely on her hips. She stared down at it, at the way the thin high cut waistband stretched up and across her hips, and was overcome by an emotion she couldn’t put into words. She reached back to lock the door behind her, frustrated when it wouldn’t even click fully shut. The latch was blocked by thin metal mesh not unlike what she had seen on the front door before. She frowned. How had she not noticed that earlier?
She was far too curious to let that stop her investigation. Standing in front of the mirror, she slowly unbuttoned her shirt to reveal a matching lacy blue bra, sheer and flimsy and devastatingly sexy. Thinking of the mostly shut door, she quickly closed her shirt and buttoned her pants.
She swallowed hard and allowed the implication to hit her. Then, she marched back out to Carol, proud of herself for remembering to bring the cotton balls and combs along with her even in her anger and confusion.
“Oh great, you found s–” Carol started, but Zosia cut her off.
“Did she come here to see you?” she demanded.
Carol looked like she knew she was caught in something, but also like she wasn’t quite sure what that something was.
“They did,” she said evenly. “Why do you ask?”
“Why am I wearing lingerie?” Zosia asked back, an effective answer.
Carol bit her lip sheepishly and looked somewhere to the left of Zosia’s waist.
“Well this is just the worst possible way for this to come up,” she said, still refusing to look directly at Zosia.
“What exactly did she think she was coming here for?” Zosia asked, almost numb to her own implicit suggestion.
Carol didn’t say anything. Zosia took a deep breath.
“Did she, or they, or I, or whatever… did you have a relationship with them?”
“Yes,” Carol said. “We, uh… We were… I’m sorry, okay?” She looked more miserable than Zosia felt, if that was even possible. “If it helps you to understand, they had my wife’s memories, and they used them—they used her to get to me. When I was with them, it was like… it was like being with Helen again, but freer. More open. But also, it wasn't? It was like being with a ghost, but more. It was like being…”
Zosia watched Carol try to wrap her own head around what had happened to her, around how she could’ve allowed everything that had happened to happen. She watched Carol physically shake it off.
“I don’t know,” Carol finally said. “Anyway, not that that’s an excuse.”
Zosia shook her head in disbelief.
“That’s actually the best excuse I have ever heard,” she said quietly, then louder, “Honestly, fuck you for being just as much a victim in all this. I…”
She trailed off. Every second, she was starting to feel like both more and less of a real person. There was an impulse to rationalize the whole situation through the lens of a blackout or a bender or a manic episode, to feel like all that she had been doing had still been her, even if she wasn’t in her right mind. But that wasn’t the truth, and she knew it.
She hadn’t woken up weak, or aching, or hungover; she had stepped out of what seemed like a beautiful trance, a little foggy but no worse for wear. Arguably, she was better. Her joints were loose, her muscles relaxed. She moved with ease, even if Zosia still felt clumsy, like relearning to drive in a car very clearly beloved by its previous owner.
Her body had a history without her.
“Whatever you did, it wasn’t with me. And as strange as it feels to know that whoever it was you were with was living in my body, it seems like you had a… connection with them. It wasn’t about me.”
Carol stood awkwardly for a moment, her hands fidgeting around the bottle of vodka. She seemed to make some sort of decision, and she took the cotton balls and the bag of combs from Zosia and set them on the coffee table. She held onto the vodka.
“Go check the freezer in the kitchen,” she said.
“Why?” Zosia asked, frustrated that just when Carol was starting to make sense to her, she was throwing her for such a loop.
“Just do it,” Carol said, quiet but firm.
Sighing, Zosa stepped into the kitchen area. Carol didn’t follow her. Even though the kitchen and living area of the apartment were open concept, the fridge was tucked in the corner of the kitchen behind the row of cabinets, obscuring her from Carl’s line of sight. Did Carol want to give her privacy for this? What could be in the freezer that she needed to see? Her kidney in a bag? A human head?
Steeling herself, Zosia pulled open the freezer door and was brought face to face with boxes and cartons of different varieties of mango ice cream. Her mouth watered at the mere suggestion of the flavor. She felt a flutter of joy as simple and constant as her youth had allowed. Carol must’ve stocked it for her, but how could she have known?
Cautiously, she stepped back out into the open air and stood behind the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room, her hands coming to rest against the cool granite of the countertop. The way Carol looked at her made it clear she knew that Zosia had seen what she had wanted to show her. Zosia had seen it, and she had known what it meant. She didn’t know how to feel. She didn’t know what to ask.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d like best,” Carol said. “I hope I got something you like.”
“You did,” Zosia said simply. She took a moment to herself before she asked, “How did you know?”
“I asked them,” Carol said. “I wanted to… Part of me wanted you to be you. I couldn’t help but want it, at least a little bit, the same way I couldn’t help but not want things to change. So it was a little about you. How could it not be?”
“Knowing someone’s favorite food does not mean you know them, Carol,” Zosia snapped. “They may have fed you fun facts about my life, stories even, but that was not me.”
Carol fidgeted, stewing in her guilt, needing to say something else to Zosia, to explain herself, to defend herself, to present herself for whatever punishment Zosia saw fit for the crime of loving someone else in Zosia’s body and feeling like that made her the littlest bit entitled to Zosia herself. Zosia pressed her hands harder into the cold granite.
“Why did they send you to me?” she finally asked.
“My wife–” Carol started, but Zosia cut her off.
“You told me about your wife. But do you not have any family?”
Carol looked uneasy, maybe because she knew the way the hurt flashed across her face at a question like that and resented it, resented herself for it. Zosia thought about her own fraught familial relationships. If Zosia were in Carol’s position, who would they send for her? Would they pick a total stranger for her too?
“You seem like a very lonely person,” she noted.
Carol shrugged.
“I had Helen.”
“And Helen’s family?” Zosia asked.
“They liked me well enough,” Carol said lightly, but then she added, “I did love them. Or I guess, I do love them, wherever they are. It’s just, seeing her with them, how much they were able to… well, even having them be like that with me, it always made me sort of…”
Sad, Zosia filled in. Or jealous, or abandoned. Or lonely. Carol laughed humorlessly and shook her head, mostly to herself.
“I don’t know why or how I’m telling you any of this,” she said. “I’m usually much more..”
“Guarded?” Zosia suggested.
“Unapproachable. And rude,” Carol said flatly.
Zosia laughed despite herself. She caught herself leaning forward, as if she wanted to share her laughter with Carol, as if she might’ve leaned fondly into Carol’s shoulder under other circumstances.
“Why do you think they chose me?” she asked, realizing what the most likely answer was as she said it and instantly feeling it go to her head. “Did all of the combined brains of the human race decide I am the hottest woman in the world?”
Carol forced a laugh but said nothing. She looked down at her feet. Zosia narrowed her eyes.
“You know exactly why they sent me, don’t you?”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come up just yet,” Carol admitted, “but I came prepared.”
She set the vodka on the table and reached for a tote bag that leaned up against the couch. Zosia watched curiously. It seemed mostly empty, but whatever was in it was heavy enough that the bag swung harshly in the air when Carol lifted it by its handles. She reached inside, but then she stopped.
“I want you to know that I did not ask for this,” she said. “This is just something they did. Someone they thought I’d like.”
She pulled out a hardcover book and passed it to Zosia across the kitchen counter.
“It’s a copy of one of my books,” Carol informed her.
“What, am I supposed to be her?” Zosia asked, looking at the woman on the cover with the beautifully flowing hair.
If she was, the hivemind had made a very poor match. Her hair was much lighter than Zosia’s, with a reddish tint, and her features were far too delicate. Her eyes flickered to the man she was holding onto, her fingers curled gently against his shoulder. She looked up at Carol, her eyebrows raised, her tongue poking out of her mouth just a little, prepared for teasing.
“Or am I supposed to be this handsome devil?”
Carol rolled her eyes. Zosia could tell she felt insecure about it, even if, as she had made sure to point out, it hadn’t been her idea.
“Why?” Zosia asked, looking back down at the illustration. It was honestly surreal how much he did look like her. “Who is he?”
“He is Raban,” Carol said with no small amount of fanfare, “the swoonworthy pirate love interest for my protagonist. He has developed a fanatic following of middle aged straight women, and when I had first started writing Wycaro, he was a woman.”
Zosia couldn’t help but smile at the new information, at how perfect it all was. She glanced up at Carol, debating how much to share, but Carol was looking away again.
It was hard not to feel for the woman standing in front of her. It was hard just to look at the sad angle of her chin, the way she curled in on herself as if her high hunched shoulders could shield her from the rejection she anticipated every time she bared just a little bit of herself to someone new, and not want to reach out the way one would to a lost child on a street corner.
“Maybe you should’ve kept it like that,” Zosia said, trying a joke instead of a hug. “I’m much better looking than him.”
“That I can agree with,” Carol joked back, but her voice was rough.
Zosia looked back down at the book, and then back up at Carol. The more she tried to piece it all together, the more horrifying it seemed, for Carol as much as for her.
“So your wife died during this joining, and left you all alone, and then they used me for your primary source of communication with them because I looked like the good looking love interest from your series of novels, but the female version of him you originally imagined, both to prove that they know you as intimately as your wife, maybe even to suggest they love you the same, and because they hoped you would be attracted to me. And then they used your wife’s memories to… manipulate you into following in love with them in my body?”
Carol nodded, her lips pursed, looking a bit like an embarrassed, angry turtle. Zosia found herself leaning forward again.
“I know it all sounds laughably pathetic, but you can still be mad at me,” Carol said.
She leaned away.
“I know,” Zosia said back. “And I am, a little. But I just… You cannot be responsible for all of this. They are just as responsible, if not more so. They are the ones who have been dressing me up every day, and flying me all around the world, and having me do research or whatever the fuck you were trying to tell me about earlier. This is… the tip of the iceberg, you know?”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” Carol said dismissively.
She looked more ashamed than Zosia had known a person was capable of. Zosia didn’t know how to wrap her mind around the sheer willpower this woman had that managed to coexist with a staggering level of personal shame.
“Maybe I am,” Zosia conceded. “But so what? Do you think you deserve to hate yourself?”
“Now that’s a loaded question,” Carol said.
She stalked back into the living room and slumped onto the couch. She picked up the vodka and pretended to examine it. Then, she took a long swig straight from the bottle. .
“Why did you save me? Zosia asked, following after her, the word save coming out of her mouth before she could think better of it. Really, though, it was true. If it weren’t for Carol, she would still be buried deep somewhere in her own mind. She sat down gingerly beside Carol on the couch. “It seems like you had a good going for yourself.”
“It’s complicated,” Carol said, that guilt clouding her face again.
“How did you do it?” Zosia asked. “Break me out of… the collective?”
Carol pointed to the metal mesh Zosia had noticed earlier. Looking more closely at everything, she saw that it extended up across the vast expanse of ceiling. Looking down, she saw that it even coated the floor.
“Everyone in the collective communicates through their bodies’ electromagnetic fields, so me and this guy, Manousos–he’s this security officer for this storage locker place in Paraguay–have been researching more about that, and I found out that you can create a dead zone for cell signal and radio and wifi and stuff through this thing called a Faraday cage. It’s basically this box made out of metal wire that disrupts electromagnetic waves. So I borrowed this apartment, and I lined it with the wiring all the way around. I had to coat the walls on both sides and go over the door frames to make sure there were no gaps. Apparently that’s, like, a big deal. I wasn’t even sure it was going to work until…”
“Until I closed the door,” Zosia said, beginning to understand, even through all the sciency second-language terms.
Carol nodded. She looked back down at the bottle of vodka in her hands. Zosia had the sudden urge to reach out and take it from her, to stop her before she took another long swig. She did the next best thing and opened the bag of cotton balls.
“Here, let me help you,” Carol said, pouring some vodka onto a cotton ball.
Zosia allowed Carol to re-part her hair and gently pat the damp cotton ball against a few of the bonds in Zosia’s hair.
“How do you know to do this?” Zosia asked, even if she was grateful.
She watched Carol smile, fond and diffident.
“I did theater tech in high school,” she said, “and I had this friend who was big into the acting part, and she wanted the lead so badly our junior year that she got extensions for the audition.”
“Did she get the part?” Zosia asked.
Carol’s smile shifted into more of a smirk.
“Let’s just say I had to learn how to help her take them out pretty fast.”
She put the cotton ball to the side and began to comb where she had started. Zosia’s hair tugged, but it wasn’t painful. Carol made sure of that, holding it at the root and working patiently on the glue until the first few extensions were falling into Zosia’s lap.
“She still got a big part though,” Carol said. “Even if it wasn’t the one she wanted. And…” She hesitated and tensed up, the comb stuttering against the tough part at the top of the extensions. With a deep breath and a conscious full body release, Carol continued, “helping her with the extensions got me my first kiss, so it wasn’t all bad.”
“That’s sweet,” Zosia said.
“It was,” Carol said, but her face darkened again. “That is, until my mom found out about it and shipped me off to conversion therapy. Do they have that in Poland?”
Zosia gave her a look. She tried to make it at least a little light hearted, but the way she held the empty space above her tongue felt harsh.
“Of course you do,” Carol said quickly, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have even had to ask.”
“Fortunately I was never sent there,” Zosia said flippantly.
She watched Carol’s eyes widen. She liked it. It occurred to her that Carol had considered that Zosia, the real Zosia, wasn’t like her, and that she could have a much worse reaction upon finding out not just what Carol had done but that she was like that at all. And she had still wanted to wake her up. She had still picked her.
Zosia’s thoughts were interrupted by a very polite knock on the door. Carol’s hands stuttered again in Zosia’s hair, just as she knocked a few more extensions out and onto the couch. Wordlessly, she handed the comb and the vodka to Zosia and slunk towards the door.
“Carol?” a voice called out. “Are you in there?”
“Uh, yep,” Carol said, standing just half a foot from the door with her hands on her hips.
“Is Zosia in there with you?” the voice asked, patient, chipper even. “We can’t seem to find her.”
“You can’t find her?” Carol asked. “How is that possible? I thought you guys were, like, all connected and shit.”
There was no response for a long while. Carol stared at the door like she was looking into someone’s eyes.
Finally, the voice said, “We know she’s in there, Carol. We’d just like her back, if that’s alright with you.”
“What if that’s not alright with me?” Carol said.
There was another long pause.
“Zosia?” the voice tried. “May we speak with you?”
Carol turned around to face her.
“You don’t have to talk to them, Zosia.”
Zosia was surprised at the way her heart rate picked up, at the nauseating wave of panic that washed over her at what seemed to be a very calm situation with a very reasonable being.
“You and me, we have agency,” Carol continued. “That’s what they’ve been telling me the whole time. They can’t interfere with what we do,” she smiled, tight-lipped and bitter, “except, of course, to change us into them. But other than that, while we’re not them, we have agency. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Zosia nodded. She decided to trust Carol. Hesitantly, she called out to the voice behind the door.
“I think I’m good in here,” she said.
“We’re sorry to hear that,” the voice replied. “Still, we’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. For our research. We’re still trying to figure out how all this works.”
“What, so you can figure out how to change her back?” Carol interrupted. She was still looking at Zosia, her back stiff, her body primed to jump into some sort of action. It occurred to Zosia that she was being protective, not just of her agenda but of Zosia herself. “Not fucking likely.”
“May we just ask if she remembers what it’s like?” the voice said. “Her experiences became ours when we joined, but we’ve been unsure if our experiences would stay hers if she were to be… separated.”
“No,” Zosia said. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Thank you for answering,” the voice said. “We have a few more questions we’d like to ask, but we understand that you two would probably like some space for now. Just dial zero on any landline phone if you’d like to speak more, to answer our questions or to ask your own. Goodbye, Zosia. Goodbye, Carol. We’ll be in touch.”
And with that, the voice was gone.
Carol sat back down on the couch and resumed her task of removing Zosia’s hair extensions, like that exchange had been completely normal. All Zosia could do was hope that it had been stranger than usual, at least to a degree, or that the getting used to it happened quickly.
"So those are the others," Carol said. "Eerie, huh? Like, Twlight Zone stuff."
"Eerie," Zosia agreed, thinking of the tone in the voice again, like an airline stewardess.
“So, uh, what were you doing in Morocco?” Carol said, avoidant, pressing another alcoholic cotton ball to Zosia’s head. “You are from Poland, aren’t you? They told me Gdansk.”
“Yes, I grew up there,” Zosia said, trying to be casual. “I moved to Morocco about six years ago..?”
“Why?” Carol asked, unfortunately.
“For work,” Zosia said elusively.
She turned away from Carol under the pretense of giving her a better angle to remove the hair extensions.
“What kind of work?” Carol asked. “Don’t tell me you write speculative romantic historical fiction, too?”
“No, nothing like that,” Zosia said. “I’m an exporter.”
“What kind of things do you export?”
The teeth of the comb lightly grazed Zosia’s scalp. Carol’s thumb rested against the crown of Zosia’s head as she held onto the roots of her hair. It was warm.
“Oh, you know,” Zosia said. “Just… crops.”
“Crops?” Carol asked. Zosia got the sense she had picked up on her reluctance. “What kind of crops?”
Figuring there was no reason to bother with discretion under the circumstances, Zosia decided she would tell Carol the truth. It wasn’t exactly like there were police at the end of the world, let alone extradition officers. Plus, Carol, who she had already seen gulp down vodka like it was water, hardly seemed like a narc.
“Hashish,” she answered.
“What the hell is hashish?” Carol asked.
“Cannabis resin. It’s like an extract. Very potent.”
“Oh you mean hash,” Carol said. “I’m familiar with hash. I used to melt that shit down and put it in brownies and shit. Great high.”
“Yes, we have a lot of satisfied customers,” Zosia said.
“And what exactly is your role in this whole operation?” Carol asked. “How do you export it?”
“Most of our customer base is international,” Zosia explained. “People who have less access to it. I work on the ships that make the deliveries. I’m an expert negotiator.”
Carol laughed, loud and sudden.
“That’s just rich.” She leaned around Zosia’s shoulder to look at her. “So you’re a fucking pirate?”
“I’m not a pirate,” Zosia said indignantly.
“Yes you are!” Carol insisted. “You deal drugs on the high seas! You’ve made it very clear that what you’re doing is hardly legal, and you’re doing it on a boat. That makes you a goddamn fucking pirate. They really did find me a real life Raban.”
Zosia wanted to be mad, to protest further, but the entire situation was just too good. It was like the hivemind had played a big joke on Carol, on the both of them. She found herself grinning, utterly amused.
“I guess I am,” she said and felt like laughing.
They were interrupted again, this time by a ringing phone. Carol rolled her eyes and got up to answer it.
“What now?” she asked, but then her face softened. “Oh, it’s you. Yeah, she’s here, and she’s her.” She made eye contact with Zosia and acted exasperated, but she was smiling. “Yes, venga, que exciting or whatever. Let me ask her. No, I’m not going to make her. You know why it’s important that we ask.” She put her hand over the receiver. “Zosia, I have Manny on the phone. He wants to talk to you.”
“Manny?” Zosia asked.
“Yeah, that Paraguayan guy I mentioned earlier. From the storage unit place. Well actually, he’s Colombian, but he was living in Paraguay.”
“Oh, him,” Zosia said. “So he’s like you?”
“He’s like us,” Carol confirmed.
Zosia nodded and accepted the cordless phone that Carol held out to her.
“Hello?” she inquired. “Am I speaking with Manny?”
“Manousos,” the man on the other end of the line corrected. “She calls me that–I don’t like it.”
It was clear he wanted Zosia to apologize for the nickname. She didn’t.
“You wanted to speak with me?” she asked.
“Yes,” Manousos said. “I have questions about your… new situation. First, are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” Zosia asked back. “I’m not exactly thrilled about this new world, or about my place in it for the last three months, which I’m sure you can imagine.”
“But your body is okay?” Manousos asked, seeming uninterested in her new angst. “Your head feels good?”
Zosia huffed. She didn’t like her feelings being brushed aside so quickly by this obnoxiously pragmatic man.
“Physically I am okay, yes,” she said.
Carol settled quietly back beside her and began to finish removing her extensions.
“Good,” Manousos said. “And you remember? Or not?”
“Or not,” Zosia answered. “The last thing I remember is being on my way to…” she glanced at Carol, “...work. And then I woke up here, in this apartment, with your friend.”
“Did you have convulsions?” he asked.
“What?”
Carol leaned in and took the phone from Zosia, putting it on speakerphone, and handed it back to her.
“Convulsions?” Manousos tried again. “When you woke up. Or trembling?”
“...no?” Zosia answered, very confused and irked that he didn’t at least try to explain.
“Manny, amigo, you have to contextualize that,” Carol said. She looked back at Zosia as she combed a few more extensions out of her hair. “When people get infected, or joined, or whatever, they seize up until their brain is properly connected to the hive mind. Same thing happens if you yell in their faces. We don’t know why. It seems like loud noises might interfere with that electromagnetic communication I was telling you about earlier.”
“And you thought that could happen to me when I separated?” Zosia asked.
“Yes,” Manousos answered.
“Is that why you were standing so close?” Zosia asked Carol. “In case I started seizing? You were going to catch me?”
“I was gonna try,” Carol said, then more softly, “I was worried about it.”
Zosia felt a tug in her stomach, something like gratitude, but it was more than that. It was odd, to be cared for so tenderly by someone who was a complete stranger to her.
“Jesucristo,” Manousos muttered.
“She didn’t have any convulsions,” Carol said quickly. “Something about the sharp cut off of the connection was different than the noise interference. Which is awesome. Maybe they don’t all have to seize up like that to come out of it.”
“When one of them seizes, they all seize?” Zosia asked, the weight of what they had risked for her fully hitting her.
Carol said nothing. She focused completely on the cotton ball she pressed to the extensions just above Zosia’s temple, but Zosia saw her lip wobble and the slow, troubled blink of her eyes.
“Yes,” Manousos answered after a beat. “It is… awesome… that this did not happen, to you or to anyone. And you are thinking clearly?”
“Yes,” Zosia answered.
“Carol did the memory exercises with you?”
“I asked her what she last remembered,” Carol said. “She told me she was in Morocco. But honestly, man, even though she’s taking the whole thing exceptionally well, you’re expecting a lot from her all at once.”
“Carol, we talked about-” Manousos started, but Carol cut him off.
“I know, I know. But she only just woke up, and she’s already had to deal with you and with them already. And don’t ask, we’ll talk about that later. Just know it was fine, and they are not forcing their way in any time soon.”
The last extension fell to the couch, and Carol began to clean them up. Zosia could practically hear Manousos’ frown through the phone.
“Oh,” was all he said in response to Carol. “Well, how is your senses? You see and hear well?”
“Yes,” Zosia answered.
“And smell, taste? Carol offered you something to eat, to test, yes?”
“I suppose,” Zosia said, thinking of the ice cream. “I haven’t eaten it yet. But all of that seems normal. I feel normal.”
“And touch? You feel everything you need to?” Manousos asked, then muttered, “Quien sabe para que necesitarías eso, ustedes dos, solas…”
“Hey!” Carol snapped. “That’s enough interviewing por ahora, okay? Hablamos luego, ¿claro?”
“Claro que si,” Manousos said with a heavy sigh. It was clear he and Carol butted heads a lot, that he was used to her demands and knew when to pick his battles, that she knew the same about him. “We are glad to have you, Zosia.”
He hung up before Zosia could respond, leaving her and Carol alone again.
“Bit of a one track mind, Manny,” Carol said.
“I can tell,” Zosia said back. “I think I will do that taste test he wants. I’m hungry. Do you have anything besides mango ice cream? I know I can't leave here, but would you mind getting us some dinner?”
“We have plenty to eat here,” Carol said, but she evaded Zosia’s gaze.
Zosia’s brow furrowed in suspicion.
“What if you don’t have what I want? Do you think those people, the others, would bring it to us? They said we could just dial zero.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with dialing zero,” Carol quipped.
“Well, could we?” Zosia pressed.
“What, we just busted you out of mind jail and now you wanna be picky?” Carol tried to joke, but her smile was ungenuine and fading fast.
“What are you not telling me?” Zosia asked.
Carol looked down at her lap, her brow creasing and her lips folding into that guilty tight line that was becoming very familiar to Zosia already. Zosia was tired of Carol looking down. She reached out, as if it were an instinct, and tilted Carol’s face up towards her, her fingers cradling Carol’s jaw far more gently than the situation called for.
“What is it?” she insisted.
Carol’s mouth fell the slightest bit open, surprised at Zosia’s touch. Her eyes flickered to Zosia’s wrist. Zosia let go, but she crossed her arms, trying to convey the same urgency, trying to demand that Carol answer her, and that she look at her when she did.
“I’m not sure what will happen if I open the door,” Carol admitted. “If I left, or if they brought us something, and I had to retrieve it, I just don’t know…”
“What do you mean?” Zosia asked, her pulse already starting to pick up again. “Do you think I could switch back? Become one of them again?”
Carol gave her a sad, hesitant look.
“I don’t know,” she repeated.
“I don’t want to go back,” Zosia said, her voice shrill and trembling. “I don’t want to be one of them.”
“I don’t want you to, either,” Carol assured her. “And I won’t try anything you don’t want me to. Like I said, the kitchen is stocked, and I have things here–some clothes, toothbrushes, other stuff–and whoever used to live here left all their stuff behind. I won’t open that door until you say it’s okay.”
“What if I never say it’s okay?” Zosia said.
“Then I’ll never open it,” Carol said.
Zosia was struck by how decisively she said it. She couldn’t help but believe that Carol really meant it.
“What if we run out of food?” she asked, needing to push anyway, or at the very least, to voice her own anxieties.
“I’m sure the threat of starvation would make you pretty brave,” Carol said dismissively.
“And if it does not?”
Carol cocked her head to the side. She blinked slowly at Zosia and shrugged.
“I guess we starve, then.”
It was flippant, but it was weighty all the same. Zosia felt her face settle into something taut, probing. Her expression seemed to set Carol slightly on edge, but it didn’t knock her off course.
“It’s not like I have much left to live for,” Carol said, crossing her arms. “Actually, the burden of decision being on someone else for once sounds really nice. We’ll open the door when you say we will.”
“That man on the phone, Manousos, I don’t think he will be happy about that.”
They both knew it was true. Even if he and Carol were a team, it was clear he had a different approach than she did, and a wildly different outlook.
“He’s not the boss of me,” Carol said, and that was that.
Carol baked a frozen pizza for dinner, pulling it out from behind all the ice cream. In the time it took to cook, Zosia managed to calm down significantly. She wasn't sure if she was accepting her new reality, or if she was just too tired from the stress of the day to dedicate further energy to a proper panic attack. She felt better with the hair extensions undone and buried in the trash.
When the pizza was ready, they settled back in the living room. The way Carol picked the olives off her slices made it clear that it was leftover from whoever had owned the apartment before the joining. She had found a couple bottles of wine on top of the fridge and selected a nice red for them as well. Zosia preferred that to the vodka, preferred the way Carol held her long stemmed glass to the way her fingers clutched desperately around the bottle. It was nice to have the pretense of elegance, even if it made her feel a little guilty to accept the glass Carol poured for her.
“You clearly are not trying to impress me,” Zosia said, nibbling on pizza crust.
She looked pointedly at the cardboard pizza box on the table, which Carol had opted to put the pizza back in, using it as their joint plate.
“Busting you out of zombie-mode and giving you your life back wasn’t impressive enough?” Carol asked. She took a languid sip of wine, then gestured to the metal lining all around them. “I’ll have you know it took me three straight days to put all this up, and longer researching it beforehand.”
“I know I was worth it,” Zosia said, feeling looser from the wine but still surprised by how flirtatious it came across.
Carol seemed surprised, too. She ducked her head shyly.
“I’ll tell you one thing, you’re probably a better person than me.”
“Why do you say that?” Zosia asked.
Carol smirked, self deprecatory.
“You took much, much less time to ask me my name.”
Zosia returned her smirk, just to be friendly, but as they were looking at each other, neither of them eating or drinking, just looking, something shifted. Carol’s eyes were bright, like stars in a clear sky. Zosia thought it was a travesty that they could ever lose that brightness. She cleared her throat.
“I think I’ll have some ice cream now,” she said. “And you, too.”
“What if I don’t like mango?” Carol said.
“The universe would not be so cruel as to stick me with someone who doesn’t like mango,” Zosia said.
“It wouldn’t,” Carol agreed.
Zosia picked out the most expensive looking carton of ice cream. She considered portioning it into two bowls just to spite Carol and her reluctance to do any dishes, but she didn’t. Something in her wanted to share a pint with two spoons.
“Great choice,” Carol said, graciously accepting the spoon Zosia held out to her.
She took a big, invasive scoop the second Zosia got the container open. Zosia raised her eyebrows.
“What?” Carol asked around her mouthful of ice cream.
“You didn’t want to let me have the first bite?” Zosia asked.
She enjoyed the way Carol’s mouth stopped moving and her eyes widened. She enjoyed even more her guilty swallow.
“I guess I didn’t think about it,” she said.
“Well it was rude,” Zosia said, not because she really cared all that much but because she wanted to make Carol squirm a little more.
“Well I’m sorry,” Carol said. Her tone said she didn’t mean it, but her eyes said she did.
Zosia gave her a small, chastising smile and scooped her own bite of ice cream, small, dainty even, just to mess with Carol further.
“I can’t believe you’re a fucking pirate,” Carol said. “In real life. In the 21st century.”
“I’m not a pirate!” Zosia protested.
“A drug dealer, then,” Carol said. “Is that better?”
“I’m an exporter,” Zosia said, loading her spoon up with more ice cream.
“There ya go,” Carol said. “A proper bite.”
Zosia finally brought the spoon to her mouth. As soon as the ice cream hit her tongue, she felt light and satisfied. Her eyes closed involuntarily, and she was unable to stop from moaning in delight at the bright taste of the mango and the way the dessert melted creamily in her mouth. When she opened them, Carol was looking at her in a way that made her almost blush. She pulled the spoon out from between her lips and looked at Carol the whole time. Carol gulped, and Zosia felt her own heart start to pick up.
Carol physically shook off whatever had come over her. Zosia felt a strange twinge of pride at the effect she was having. She also felt a deep sense of loss, like Carol’s staring was just another reminder of her own missing history. Unsure of how to express any of this to Carol, or even if she wanted to, she settled on carving out another spoonful of ice cream.
“Should we watch a movie?” Carol asked. “All the internet is down forever now, but I brought some DVDs.”
“You still have DVDs?” Zosia asked, amused.
Carol frowned at her.
“Even before all this happened, I was not going to pay $150 across eight streaming services just to watch the same things I’ll always want to watch. When they took Will and Grace off of Netflix, I cancelled it and vowed to never bother with it again.”
“Fine, fine, show me your wonderful DVDs,” Zosia said.
Carol presented her with a robust collection, mostly movies but a few television box sets, a collection she had dubbed the essentials, which led Zosia to believe there were even more at her personal home. She spread them out across the coffee table and gave Zosia complete control. Well, nearly complete.
“We are not watching Pirates of the Caribbean," she said. “Especially not today. I don’t even know why I brought that one.”
“Oh, come on, have a sense of humor,” Zosia said and got up to pop the DVD in the player herself.
Zosia had never seen Pirates of the Caribbean. She had to admit, it was quite entertaining. There were a few anachronisms and a number of small inaccuracies with the sailing aspects, but Zosia supposed those were only troubling to viewers who had spent a significant amount of time on ships, so she let them slide.
They finished the ice cream by the time the main character, the fiery daughter of a colonial governor called Elizabeth, was taken aboard the haunted pirate ship. Zosia liked Elizabeth, with her strong will and her aplomb, as well as her refusal to take any shit from any of the pirates, ghost or otherwise. She must not have liked her enough to stay awake, though, because the next thing she knew, someone was prodding her in the side.
“Zosia,” she heard Carol say. “I think it might be time for bed.”
Zosia squinted her eyes open and grimaced. The TV screen emitted a low glow from the paused black credits screen. She groaned and lolled her head to look up at Carol, only then realizing that she was slumped into Carol’s body, her head resting against Carol’s chest and her hip pressed into Carol’s thigh. She was practically in her lap. Carol seemed like she wanted to put some distance between them, but at the same time she seemed reluctant to deny a half-asleep Zosia the support.
Zosia sat up slowly. Carol really was something else, saving her life and giving her shit. She’d never seen someone fail so hard at pretending not to care so much.
Carol took the opportunity to scoot off of the couch. She went to the linen closet and pulled a set of sheets. She set them on the couch cushion where she had been sitting.
“The bedroom is down the hall,” she said. “Literally straight ahead, right at the end. You can’t miss it.”
“You’re sleeping out here?” Zosia asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” Carol said, like she was just a house guest of Zosia’s who had stayed over too late or gotten too drunk to drive rather than someone who had meticulously planned to spend a long while, possibly forever, in this apartment, too afraid of what could happen if she opened the door. “It’s a one bedroom. My bad for picking it, really. Putting all the wire up just seemed really hard and tedious, and I didn’t want to deal with a bigger place. You should be glad it’s not a studio.”
Zosia looked at the throw pillows on the couch, at the light blanket folded over the armchair.
“At least come and get a real pillow,” she said. “I’m sure there is more than one on the bed.”
Carol shrugged and led Zosia down the hall. The bedroom was small, cramped, even with how sparse it was. All that was in it was the bed, a dresser, and a desk with a pathetic looking office chair. On the desk was a novelty mug full of pins and a small lamp that could be reached from the bed. The bedspread was green and plush, and above the bed, there was a tacked up poster from the tour of some indie artist Zosia had never heard of.
Carol tucked a pillow under her arm.
“I hope you get some rest,” she said awkwardly. “It seems like you really need it.”
She turned to leave. Something in Zosia needed to stop her, needed to keep herself from being alone. It was a strange need. Zosia had never had trouble being alone before, but here in this uncanny new world, she found the idea of Carol leaving her to sleep behind a closed door off-putting, even if she was just going to be on the couch. Did she not trust her enough to believe she wouldn’t try to open the door in Zosia’s sleep? Or did she trust her too much already, so much that she could fall asleep more easily knowing Carol was near?
She couldn’t decide which possibility was more terrifying. Still, she couldn’t help but say, “Carol, wait.”
Carol looked back at her, holding the pillow against her chest with her forearm.
“You should not have to sleep on the couch,” Zosia said.
“I don’t mind,” Carol said. “You really shouldn’t have to sleep on the couch. Wait until I tell you how they had you sleeping before. Here’s a hint: it was on a mat on the floor.”
Zosia felt that same sharp pang she did every time Carol mentioned a bit of her past that she couldn’t remember, a bit of the past that didn’t really belong to her. She was too tired to let it get in the way of her need.
“No, what I mean is, you can sleep in here,” she said. “With me.”
“Oh,” Carol said. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to… I don’t know. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
“I mean, it’s not as though we haven’t shared a bed before,” Zosia said. “Is it?”
“No, we have,” Carol said, but the way she said it made it clear Zosia had misstepped. “But like you said, that wasn’t… you. And that’s part of why I feel like now I shouldn’t–”
“I will not be uncomfortable,” Zosia assured her.
Carol visibly relented. Her shoulders slouched, and her jaw relaxed. She tossed the pillow back onto the bed.
“I’m going to get ready real quick,” she said. “My pajamas are in my bag in the living room.” She gave Zosia a long look. “I’ll be back.”
Alone, Zosia decided she had better change too. She found sweatpants in the bottom drawer of the dresser. They seemed like they would be too big for her, but that was certainly better than too small. There were t-shirts in the middle drawer. She didn’t feel very comfortable at the idea of borrowing the clothes of someone she had never even met, and a deep sadness struck her when she thought of them out there in the new world, buried away under some new consciousness that steered their body, that probably had them sleeping on a mat on the floor when their bed was right here. Ultimately, though, she figured the clothes she was wearing were just as foreign to her. They could’ve belonged to someone else, too.
When she stripped, she was reminded of the lingerie. There was a full length mirror on the back of the closet door. She stared at herself in it, her eyes trailing over the thin embroidery that stretched across the cups of her bra, just barely disrupting the see-through quality of the tulle. It seemed almost a shame to waste what had clearly been so lovingly picked for Carol, to cover it with someone else’s baggy clothes.
She was just about to unclasp her bra when she spotted something on her back, a patch of rough skin. She turned to the side, trying her best to get a good look at it without turning her head too far. Her fingers brushed the ridge of the scar. She frowned at it. It certainly hadn’t been there before.
Carol returned just then, wearing her own set of sweats and a t-shirt. Her face was freshly washed, and her feet were bare. When she saw Zosia standing there in her underwear, examining the scar, she stopped in her tracks.
“What is this?” Zosia asked, rubbing the skin just under her obtrusive new blemish.
Carol stared back at Zosia like a deer in headlights. Her silence was deafening. Zosia narrowed her eyes.
“Don’t tell me you had something to do with this too?”
Carol shifted her weight.
“There was an incident with a hand grenade,” she said.
“What the fuck could that possibly mean?” Zosia demanded.
Carol took a deep breath.
“I made a sarcastic remark about wanting to blow myself up with a hand grenade, and they took that literally and brought me one. And I was drunk, and stupid, and I thought it had to be fake, right? So I was messing with it, and I accidentally pulled the pin.”
“You aresaying you accidentally blew me up?” Zosia yelled.
She moved towards Carol, getting in her face, drawn to her by desire as much as anger. She didn’t know what to make of this fiery tempered woman who had almost killed her and ostensibly saved her life. All she could do was lean in.
Carol looked up at her. Her heart was pumping so fast and strong that Zosia could see her pulse jumping in her neck. Her pupils were dark.
“What do you want with me?” Zosia asked, more a dare than a question, an implicit do it hanging between them.
Carol’s eyes dipped down her body and back up to her face. Zosia gave the slightest of nods, and just like that, Carol’s hands were on her. They pulled her in by her hips and her ass, Carol’s fingers brushing the band of her thong. Carol kissed her so fiercely that Zosia imagined it didn’t feel too differently from a grenade. Zosia kissed back, needy, surprising Carol with how quickly she slipped her tongue into her mouth.
Carol moaned into Zosia’s open mouth. She careened them forward. Zosia’s knees hit the back of the bed, and she fell back, Carol landing on top of her. Even with the wind briefly knocked from her, Zosia kept on kissing, her own hands reaching to grope Carol’s ass, sliding under the waistband of Carol’s sweatpants, circling back up to push them off. Carol helped her, kicking the pants down her legs and pushing Zosia further up the bed, her knee coming to rest between Zosia’s legs.
She flipped up the cups of Zosia’s bra, her lips falling to Zosia’s neck. Zosia sat up just enough to let Carol unclasp her bra, her abdomen tensing when Carol bit hard into her shoulder and held her up while she sucked a bruise there, soothing it with her tongue before letting Zosia fall back into the mattress. One hand inched up Zosia’s side to cup her breast, thumb brushing across her nipple. Zosia’s legs clamped around Carol’s thigh. Carol smirked and kissed her again. Her other hand played with the ridge of Zosia’s thong, brushing closer and closer to her center.
Zosia paused their kiss. She felt incredibly conscious of the rise and fall of her own chest. Carol’s lips were wet and deliciously swollen.
“I’m not them,” Zosia said, breathless, holding her head back from Carol, needing to say it before anything else happened.
“I know,” Carol said back. “You’re better.”