Emy's 30th birthday party in Montreal, referred to here: [tegan and sara tumblr] /post/4417100836/i-think-i-was-banished. So that would make this...before the previous chapter (chronologically). I wanted to know why Tegan has started sneaking up behind Sara and holding her when drunk, the way I imagined she did here: [youtube]/watch?v=Vrx8l1JYGGQ .
I THINK I WAS BANISHED.
If she concentrates on letting the warming liquid separate her past from her present, she can fall between the spaces. The careful wall disintegrates and she doesn't hear the last thing said in the casual party chatter.
She turns her face with faked attentiveness and allows herself to look. She just wants to touch her. That sounds wrong, as soon as she hears it in her head she recoils and grimaces at herself. Her stomach feels weird. Almost like butterflies. She wants to feel her? ew. But she can clearly and vividly remember the feel of her limbs curled against her pajamed body when they would sneak into one another's rooms at night, usually when their parents were entertaining friends or Sonia would fall asleep on their stepfather's lap in front of a horror movie or some 80's risque show. She would play pretend she was one of them, and slip in beside Sara in her bed, looking around her room in the dark with dilated pupils, trying to make out the details. It was always much tidier than hers, even as children. Sara would pretend to be asleep usually, but it was an agreed-up on rouse and it wouldn't take long for Sara to giggle and wriggle under Tegan's hug and mold herself into the spoon, or roll onto her back and start a whispered conversation. Extra-close so she could feel her breath against her lips, lest they be overheard and get in trouble. The childish giddiness got them worked up all over again, sleep further away than ever. The rebelliousness! She felt so naughty.
What did they talk about? What do children talk about? School? Stories? Did they ever talk about adult things? The future? Their father and his absence? Tegan doesn't know. It's magically erased; the memory of these nights is tenuous and wavering like a reflection on the surface of water. Only the sensation is left behind, at once stronger than any other she can conjure up at a moment's notice. It was the feel; the warm and hairless little calf against her own, the pressure of her breathing moving her torso away from Tegan's chest, then back against it, then away. Steady, rhythmic. Her New Kids On The Block t-shirt, or when they were younger, the flannel of a little girl's floral nightie, would have ridden up in their excited rambling and wiggling. Tegan would be aware of an exposed patch of soft skin heated from the cuddle and the confines of the bed pressed against her own pale stomach. The back of her thin, curveless thighs hot against the front of hers. She resented her sleeping mother in the other room for the imposed separation of their twin rooms. She doesn't understand it's 3AM and she'll be ratty in the morning, as they always were when indulged in sleepovers. She just wants to feel safe like this forever. She imagines with wicked glee being big girls, in their own house and away from their mother's rules and not having to get up for school. She plans to swig coke straight out of the bottle and have McDonald's for dinner every night. She'll stay up as late as she wants, telling ghost stories to the back of Sara's delicate neck into the early hours of every morning. The innocence. And yet not; if she strains and ignores the butterflies Tegan can remember a stabbing pain imagining Sara falling asleep on her future husband in front of the late night movie, head in his lap. She can remember wondering how things worked as you got older, how the husband would feel when Tegan slipped into their warm bed behind her sister. It never occurred to her this would never happen. She felt bad only for the husband. Poor guy. How awful it must be to fall in love with a pretty girl like Sara and have to share her warm, delicious limbs with someone who got there long before you! She felt terribly sorry for him. Tegan's own husband never entered these fantasies, she realises now she never invented one. Sara was hers for the holding, she always had been and she always would be. This little being so like her, and yet so different at the same time. Nothing else that could possibly happen to her in her life worries her, she knows as long as she can fall asleep and wake up with her soul entwined, she will be whole. She smiles rapturously into the fine neck hairs and breathes in.
The blackberry flashes on the counter with a name she doesn't recognise and Sara answers. Tegan is wrenched up mercilessly through the depths to the present like a drowning child. She watches as she wriggles into the future embrace of another and slips away from her.