There'd been no warning. The gunshot had come out of nowhere and somebody had screamed before she'd even glanced up from her notes. The second gunshot had smashed a window and everything that came after was utter chaos.
Someone had grabbed her and wrenched her to the floor, pinning her there even as she tried to fight against the hold in her confusion. More yelling, one final shot and then a horrible eerie silence. The weight lifting from her back, a hand pulling her up and then the look on Kalinda's face. Shock, first, followed quickly by fear. Pure fear.
A car ride then, the backseat of Will's BMW with Kalinda next to her, telling her it would be all right, telling her not to worry, one hand warm on the back of her neck and the other holding a handkerchief up against her mouth. Staring at the handkerchief, wondering where all the blood was coming from. Wondering when she was going to wake up.
And a hospital room, a white-haired doctor, all bustle and urgency and then...calm. Stillness. Someone stitching up her top lip, wiping some blood from her nose. Somebody getting her some water.
Something that hadn't registered until afterwards: Kalinda had laughed at the doctor's jokes. His well-practised, well-meaning, feeble jokes. She'd been grinning at him, beaming. Lit up like the sun.
Something she hadn't realized until afterwards: Kalinda had thought she'd been shot.
Alicia gazes into her second glass of wine, only half listening as Cary talks about their latest case. They won it easily and tonight is the celebration, only she doesn't feel remotely like celebrating. She feels like going home and hiding. She feels like feeling nothing. Ever since the shooting she's just felt...cold. Empty.
She tunes in a little more when he starts talking about Kalinda. He does that a lot, these days. Before the shooting, too, but now...every other story seems to be about Kalinda. He's in love with her, probably. Working up his courage to ask her out; biding his time.
She takes another sip from her wine.
"She probably hasn't told you this. About a year ago we were working a case and got shot at."
"What?"
"Yeah, I thought she wouldn't have mentioned it." He smiles ruefully.
"You weren't hurt?"
"No, no we were fine. They weren't really shooting at us, we were just caught in the crossfire."
He takes a sip from his beer. He looks older, these days; tiny lines beginning to fold themselves into the corner of his mouth, the delicate skin around his eyes. It suits him, somehow, this new maturity. All grown up.
"And I did the same thing that Kalinda did for you. Except on her. I pulled her down, tried to protect her."
"Wow." She's having trouble picturing that: Kalinda needing protection, Kalinda scared. And then suddenly she sees it: fear in her eyes, abject terror. She tightens her fingers around her glass.
"And afterwards, she thanked me. I was pretty shaken up and she was perfectly calm, just like normal. Just like always. I told her...well. Let's just say I told her something she already knew, and we were...She was going to sleep with me, that night. She would have done, but I stopped it."
"Why?"
"Because it wasn't what she wanted. Not really. She would never have come after me by herself. At the time I just felt...but now I look back and I think...Have you ever done that, Alicia? Slept with someone you didn't really want to sleep with?"
She thinks about it briefly, knowing she doesn't really need to, a numbness seeping around her heart.
"No."
"Me neither."
She thinks of her date for senior prom, the nice, polite boy with the mildly wandering hands who'd stopped the second she asked him to and driven her straight home. Her relief when she knew she could trust him, her gratitude for his apologies.
She thinks of Nick Savarese.
She thinks of Peter.
"When I started working here I thought she was perfect. I thought she was the coolest woman I'd ever met in my life. It's an optical illusion, Alicia. You look at her from a different angle and it's not perfection anymore, the distance, the solitude, never letting anyone in, even the clothes. It's armor, all of it, and if someone needs that much armor..."
She can't look him in the eye. He takes a breath, pauses, and she can feel him watching her. When he finally speaks again his voice is earnest and serious.
"There were 50 people in that room. She was 15 feet away from you. What does that tell you?"
Her heart has begun to thump in her chest; she does her best to ignore it.
"It was a room full of work colleagues. She hardly knows half of them."
"Most of her world was in that room and she chose you. You think she has a group of friends that she spends the weekend with? You think she goes home to the same lover every night? You and me, Will, that's it Alicia, that's all there is. Even if that part's real, if that's really how she likes it, no ties, whatever, that's fine, that's great, but there's no way that she's happy without you. No way in the world, and you know it."
His voice has grown softer, soothing almost, gentle. It's making her want to cry.
"She'll never tell you, not in so many words, you know she won't, but Alicia...she's told you. She's told you and told you and told you and you don't hear her."
The tears come. She doesn't try to wipe them away.
"Why aren't you listening, Alicia? You have so many people in your life who would die for you?"
His voice is so soft now she can hardly bear his tenderness.
"She lied to me," she manages through her tears.
"Yes, she did. It was lie to you or break your heart, so she lied to you and broke her own."
"Why are you doing this?" A strange mix of defeat and hope has begun to grow; she's exhausted and exhilarated all at once.
"Because you two are driving me nuts."
She laughs in surprise, grateful for the relief.
"You're both miserable and both stubborn as hell. I got tired of waiting."
He gets up and starts to put his jacket on.
"Wait, where are you going?"
"Come on. I'll drive you there."
"Drive me where?"
"Her place."
"Her place? Cary..."
He looks at her steadily, a small smile on his face, a kindness in his eyes.
"Come on," he says gently.
She stands up.
Kalinda buzzes her into the building immediately, but it still feels like trespassing. Four years of knowing each other and she's never been invited to her home.
As she walks to her apartment she counts to ten in elephants to give her heart time to relax, her hands time to stop shaking. She knocks on the door once, twice. When it opens she's presented with a Kalinda who's two inches shorter than usual, her high tied up in a ponytail, bare feet and loose trousers. It's a little unnerving to see her look so different so she takes a look around her white apartment and then quickly wishes she hadn't.
"Are you OK? Come in."
"I'm fine. I just need to talk to you."
"You've been crying."
Kalinda motions for her to sit on the only chair in the room. She does, trying not to think about the emptiness all around her, about solitude and distance and armor. About fear.
"What's wrong? Tell me." Kalinda's studying her face, her brow furrowed with concern, dark eyes full of worry.
"You don't like it when I cry, do you?"
Kalinda looks both pained and confused; there's a hint of anger in her reply.
"Of course I don't."
"No, I mean...I mean you really don't like it."
A silence pervades the room. Kalinda stares at the carpet and when she finally speaks it's in a whisper.
"Of course I don't."
The vehemence in her voice fills her with bravery. She knows this woman's heart.
"I don't want us to be apart anymore."
She smiles slightly at Kalinda's obvious surprise, well aware that her words make them sound like more than friends.
"OK," says Kalinda uncertainly.
"Is that what you want?"
"Yeah," she says. "Yes."
"Good. Good."
They exchange a nervous smile but there's still a tight tension in the room, a sharp awareness of things left unsaid. All of her courage has been used up, though; she tries to wordlessly convey to Kalinda that the final leap has to come from her.
"I thought you were having drinks with Cary tonight?"
Her heart sinks. It's not going to happen: she's not brave enough, not ready, not able. Maybe it's not even true.
"I did."
"You just left him there?"
"No. He drove me here. We'd been talking about you."
Kalinda looks worried. "Yeah?"
She smiles at the concern on her face. "Yeah."
Kalinda nods. She opens her mouth but doesn't speak for three, four, five seconds, and as she searches her eyes she suddenly feels a flash of hope again that she desperately tries to keep under control. She'll never tell you, you know she won't. But she's told you and told you and told you.
"He talks to me about you too, sometimes."
"Does he?"
"Yeah."
"What does he say?"
"He says..." She's fixed her eyes on the floor. Her right hand is balled into a fist. "He thinks that we're happier when we're friends. You and me."
"Well I think that's true."
"Me too," she says quietly. A long pause then. Alicia watches her as if in a dream.
"Sometimes he says that we're not just friends."
She doesn't reply; she can't. She wills her to keep going.
"Sometimes he says that he thinks that it's not platonic. Between us."
She has to swallow twice before she can speak. "And what do you think?"
"I don't know."
Her heart sinks all over again. If they're going to get this far and still fail then she doesn't think she can bear it. The tears start to build in her eyes again, and she must have made a sound because Kalinda's watching her intently.
"I mean, I don't know from, um, from your side. For you."
Gathering all of her depleted strength she manages to make eye contact.
"And for you?"
She looks so pained Alicia wants to reach out and touch her, soothe all of her anxieties away and make it all better.
"What if you don't like my answer?"
"Then we've already established that we're happier when we're friends. And I'll like any answer that's the truth."
"Right." She doesn't sound very convinced; in fact, she sounds pretty terrified. Alicia's heart has begun to thump loudly again, her palms moist. The silence stretches out between them, taut and tense.
And then Kalinda walks over to her, kneels down in front of her, leans forward and gently, ever so gently, kisses her on the cheek.
Their eyes meet and hold. Alicia's heart is thumping wildly, but she's still not sure, still not certain, but then...another kiss, just as gentle, on her other cheek. Another on her forehead. And a final, whisper-soft kiss, the most gentle of them all, on the healing scar on her upper lip.
"You thought I'd been shot," she whispers.
"Yes."
"Thank you for saving me."
A rueful grin. "I hardly saved you. I almost knocked you out."
Tenderly, trying to match Kalinda's gentleness, she brushes a strand of hair from her face.
"I think you save me all the time. I think you might be saving me right now."
She runs her fingers through Kalinda's hair and brushes her palm against the nape of her neck, thrilled to see a small shiver run through the smaller woman's body.
"Ditto."
Her fingers stop moving. "Ditto?" The burst of laughter escapes from her before she can censor it. Kalinda looks mildly aggrieved.
"Shut up. You know what I mean."
The look on her face just fuels her laughter and it's a while before she can get herself under control. The other woman watches her, her expression halfway between warm affection and minor exasperation.
To make it up to her she leans in and initiates a kiss, one that starts slowly but escalates into incipient passion, until Alicia pulls back sharply.
"Ow, damn it." She touches her lip, searching for blood.
"Fuck, I'm sorry, sorry, are you OK? I'm so sorry."
"I'm fine, I'm fine, I just forgot. It's not bleeding."
"I'm sorry."
She's touched to see that Kalinda looks as guilty as hell.
"I'm really fine. We'll just have to wait a bit. There are plenty of other places you can kiss me in the meantime."
It takes a few seconds before she realizes what she's said.
"Not, I mean, I don't mean..." A wicked grin has appeared on Kalinda's face.
"I meant like before, like how you were kissing me before."
"You're blushing." She really is. Just the thought of Kalinda kissing... She's burning up.
"The polite thing to do would be to not point that out."
"I have no manners."
They smile at each other, Alicia's smile widening when she sees Kalinda reaching out a hand to touch her hair but then nervously pulling back.
"You're allowed now," she teases. Kalinda attempts a glare but can't quite pull it off. Alicia takes her hand in hers and gently guides it into her hair, sighing softly as the fingers start to stroke.
"We should buy Cary a drink," says Alicia.
"Mmm." She sounds distracted, her eyes watching her own hand. "Maybe two."
"Yeah. Maybe two." The hand reaches her scalp and starts to rub softly. She tries hard not to moan.
"Don't ever get shot again," Kalinda says quietly, her eyes still fixed on her gently moving hand.
"I didn't get shot."
"Don't ever not get shot again."
She smiles, full of tenderness and warmth. Full of hope. "I promise," she says softly. "Never again."