Holly

Lisa tells you there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Rachel's a little kinder. Rachel tells you maybe it's better this way. After all, she was the one you called the day everything started, really started. The one you called frantically after leaving the precinct with your folder clutched to your chest and your bruised lips still tingling. Rachel's the one who knows how far you'd already fallen, how already the sound and flash of sirens made you cross your fingers and hope that Gail is okay.

But after three weeks, after three weeks of silence and waiting and wondering, even Rachel's ready to push you to move on, move forward. She digs into her vast web of smart, funny, available, sane lesbians and sets you up on dates almost every other night. Lisa keeps inviting you out to lunch and dinner and talking about her friend Claire, or her cousin's ex-Michelle, or her favorite scrub nurse Gertrude, who despite the old-fashioned name, Lisa assures you, has an excellent rack and is supposed to be a stallion in the sack. Lisa doesn't answer when you ask whether a lesbian can be a stallion, just rolls her eyes and signals the waiter for another martini.

It's all too much.

You feel like you're being bombarded, like you're being attacked on every front.

Gail's silence is a heaviness in your life. You wrap it around you while you sleep, and for a moment, when you wake, you forget. For a moment, you think the weight of it this new loneliness is her. Her legs tangled with yours, her hand on your breast, her hot breath at your neck. You turn into the space where she used to be, and every morning the cold, empty space beside you on the bed is brand new.

Every morning you forget, and every morning, her absence breaks your heart again.

And now Lisa and Rachel are united in their attempts to get you to move on from your hot, cranky, blonde cop. They're expecting you to laugh at someone else's jokes, kiss someone else's cheek, invite someone else into your home.

Someone who isn't Gail.

And you'd love to, you really would. You'd love to go to dinner with the cute girl you met at the bookstore, or with the lab tech you met at one of Lisa's wine and cheese get-togethers, or even one of the women your friends are always trying to set you up with. But you can't.

You can't.

Because none of them, none of them are Gail.

None of them roll their eyes when you remind them that donuts are not a food group, or moan and groan about going on a morning run but then race you for the last hundred meters before collapsing onto the ground, breathless, and teasing you for losing. None of them snore in just that perfect way when you wake up before them on Sunday mornings, or wrap their arms around you from behind in the shower, and nuzzle into the nape of your neck.

None of them are so delicately shy in bed, so beautiful and uncertain that they're doing the right thing, that they're pleasing you. None of them dance their fingers over the bumps and ridges of your spine, like they still can't believe they're allowed to touch you, to know you. Or cry out in surprise and wonder when you bring them to orgasm, like no one had ever taken the time to take care of her before.

None of them carry the burdens that Gail does, none of them are haunted by ghosts all too real and tangible to believe. None of them are as strong as her, as brave, as dedicated. None of them strap on a gun and a shield and wear them like they've become a part of their skin, their bone, their blood.

None of them are Gail.

"She's just another girl," Lisa says, and pours you another glass of wine.

"She's just another girl," Rachel says, and hugs you tight before parting.

"She's just another girl," you say, and lay on your back in your big, empty bed.

The trouble is, she's not.

The trouble is, you're lying.

And you know it.

All of your friends say it's over, that it's time for you to forget her, to move on to someone else.

But you know they're wrong.

Gail's not just another girl.

Gail's the only girl.

Gail

Your friends are supportive, yes, but they're also assholes.

The gist of their advice for you can be summed up in two sentences: "Stop being an idiot. And call Holly."

It's not that easy.

It can't be that easy.

Because you walked out. Her friends were jerks, and she didn't defend you when Lisa focused in on the biggest insecurity you have in your relationship with Holly. The fact that you're not good enough, that you're never good enough.

But you walked out and you didn't look back. And with every message on your phone, every text, you felt her slipping further away from you.

Now you don't know if she'd even take your call, if she'd even open her door to you.

Nobody ever warned you about self-fulfilling prophecies.

When you finally see her again, when your paths finally cross, you realize that this is the person you want to change for, to be better for.

You realize this in the breath you realize that you're too late, that you've run out of second chances.

She's seeing someone.

Now you're just another girl she used to know.

Now Oliver pats you on the back when he catches you on the way out of the locker room.

Now Dov brings you a drink at the bar and doesn't say anything as you toss the shot back.

Now Nick looks at you with those stupid, sad eyes, and you can hear the pity in his voice when he says your name.

They know, they all know.

You lost the best thing that ever happened to you.

Now, you figure, there's no reason to want to be better. Now there's no one to be worth of. Nobody, you hear her voice in your head, except yourself.

Maybe, you think one night as you settle into your big, new bed in your quiet, lonely apartment, maybe that's all she would have wanted of you anyway.

Chloe calls it "Operation Getting Over Holly."

Steve calls it "A Peck Finally Grows Up."

You start going to your therapist again, and this time you talk. You really talk.

You stop coasting, and think, really think, about what you want. Who you want to become.

You submit your application for detective again, and this time you care about what happens next. You start answering your mother's phone calls, and you unpack all the boxes in your brand new apartment.

And when you see Holly, because one of the first steps you'd taken was to stop avoiding her, you smile, and you ask her how she is.

One day, one day Holly calls out your name from down the hall at the precinct, and you turn. She's still beautiful, still the woman you love, still the most wonderful person you've ever met.

There's a folder clutched to her chest, and she's mumbling things so quietly you can barely hear, but she pulls you into an empty observation room and your heart skips a beat. The memory of a first kiss overwhelms your thoughts, and for a moment you feel all the fear and awed desire of that first brush of your lips over hers.

And then it's not a memory anymore.

Then she's kissing you, just as she always kissed you. Her hands are tickling at the short hairs on the base of your neck, and yours are clutching at the lapels of her jacket.

You never want to let go.

You pray that you'll never have to.

"Holly," you say when you pull apart, "what is this? What's going on?"

She tells you she's missed you, and leans in to kiss at the corner of your mouth.

But you're better now, you're worthy, and you can't let this go.

"What about …" you say, words trailing off into her mouth as she covers your lips with her own.

"It's over," she answers, "we broke up. She's no one, just another girl. I want you, Gail."

She kisses you again, brown eyes open wide.

"I love you, Gail."