The brunette had been assaulted by Cherry as soon as she'd entered the bookshop, in spite of how inconspicuous she'd tried to move, due to that fucking bell hanging over the door. She had tried to walk swiftly towards the far end of the store to busy herself with anything she could come up with, wanting to find refuge between the stacks as if they were tall grass in a field, but her friend hadn't let her. Nosy reporters surely had nothing on Cherry, who had started questioning her about Piper, wanting to know if something had happened between them, and if so, what. When not even death threats had dissuaded the redheaded interrogator, Alex had rolled her eyes and told her that they had simply gone to the pub.

"Like you needed to get that woman drunk," Cherry had scoffed at her.

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"Come on, Alex! There were, like, puppies and unicorns pouring out of her eyes every single time she looked at you! Don't tell me you didn't notice. Oh, and don't get me started on the way you look at her."

"Fuck me," Alex had muttered under her breath, and turned around to rearrange a shelf that had been in perfect order. Earlier, Cherry had compared them to "a mute soap opera", and the woman didn't know the half of it, or the gravity of certain past events, or else she wouldn't be such an eager advocate, not even giving Alex a hard time for being absent from work.

"And don't pretend you're not gonna see her again."

With that, Cherry had finally left her alone, and Alex had been free to knock her forehead against the spines of the rearranged books several times. She had returned to the pub later, after closing up the store, to avoid the dilemma, with the Guinness coaster burning inside her pocket. She'd been perfectly conscious of the irony of having Piper's number now, after how it had bothered her before that the blonde knew how to find her while she couldn't. Well, now she could, and it hadn't felt a whole lot like being in control. Piper would surely state something like "What goes around comes around," and it did, except that it came around to bite you on the ass.

Alex had sat down on a stool at the bar, ordered a beer, and made a half-hearted effort at obtaining some company. That had been dead easy, because people required no effort - or rather, she was good at reading them, figuring out what they wanted, and presenting herself as a more than acceptable answer. She knew how to be extremely sociable without giving others more than a tiny percentage of herself; the rest was all flash, but they liked it - they liked her, just like Piper had fallen for it back in the day. If she chose to, she would never be alone. Soon she'd found herself sitting at a booth with a mixed group, hoping that their animated conversation and random hooting would be able to deafen everything that had been going on in the private quarters of her brain, but it hadn't, so she had gone back home - by herself, of course. She hadn't even tried to pretend that a mere quickie with a stranger could be a sufficient distraction; it wouldn't have been worth it. So Alex had closed the door to her little room, kicked off her boots, and jumped on the bed, covering her freezing arms with a blanket. Then, she had rummaged her pockets and extracted her cell phone and the slightly wrinkled, infamous coaster, glaring from one item to the other for a while. She shouldn't trust Piper. She shouldn't. The reality of the thing was that all that time hadn't been enough to forgive or forget, so why keep poking at it? Wasn't it a waste of time?

"Fuck," Alex had whispered, as she'd remembered her own words from long ago, in prison, about having a connection with someone, about how it never really went away. Okay, but one could always stop feeding the fire, cutting Piper off like she had indeed done in prison, regardless of the ways in which Cherry claimed they looked at each other.

It had been a long time since the brunette had indulged in the act of picturing herself with Piper, since it was a very unhealthy practice which only ended up making her feel more empty that before. Her top priority had to be to take good care of herself, and yet she'd closed her eyes and brought back every detail she'd been able to remember about this new Piper, because she had bumped into her during three radically different moments of their lives, and it had mattered very little, really, for Alex's heart had responded in the same way.

Wading across an ocean of shit was no fun, though. Sighing, Alex had dialed the number and waited, feeling a very annoying pang of fear as soon as she'd heard the phone ringing at the other side of the line. She'd started to tell herself that if Piper didn't pick up on the second or third ring she would hang up and never try again, and never meet up again. Those weak, childish thoughts had only angered her further, as did her own relief upon hearing Piper's soft "Hello", so it had taken her a minute to stop behaving like a petulant asshole.

After Alex had admitted to living in the shop's backroom, the blonde had gotten all evocative about her ancient dream, and it had been impossible to remain immutable. She had closed her eyes and wondered if they were going to start pulling out stories from the past, from the peak of their romance, because that was a dangerous game: it had the potential of making them either nostalgic or furious, or both. In any case, it would meddle with Alex's balance, she'd pretended not to take the hint, pretended that she hadn't remembered about leaning against the train's window and welcoming Piper against her body, covering her with her own jacket, and kissing her head after inhaling the scent of her hair. She'd thought she'd been doing quite well, in fact, until she'd realized that she'd been calling her "Pipes" for who knew how long. Luckily, the blonde had been on the verge of falling asleep, already in the babbling stage - no bullshit, just nonsense.

What the fuck did she mean by her "tragic flaw" - a mistake she was destined to repeat, a fault in her character? Alex shook her head and instead listened to Piper's breaths getting longer and calmer. It was like everything was slowing down, their body rhythms, and time as a whole, and it felt similar to that old sensation of being the only people left in the world. Taking off her glasses, she became suddenly aware that this was turning out to be a lot more intimate than she had expected. They'd been able to have sex in prison but not engage in other unhurried, perhaps even more intimate things than sex, such as sharing a bed at night, so this was like a weird sort of middle ground. Heartwarming, yes -because with her eyes closed, Alex didn't sense their distance, there was only what she could hear-, and very confusing.

Her gut told her to reject this, to say goodnight and hang up, but apparently there were two different instincts inside her, working one against the other, like that old method of torture which consisted of being pulled apart by horses galloping in different directions. She should quietly say goodnight and hang up, because this felt pleasantly uncomplicated when it really wasn't.

"Hey, you're falling asleep on me."

"No I'm not," Piper claimed, with a drunk-like voice. "You'd know if I were."

Alex opened her eyes and raised her eyebrows in the almost complete darkness of the room. No fucking way. She sat up, set aside the blanket, and waited, with her mind ready to spring into action. However, the blonde didn't add anything; she kept breathing deeply, probably not really conscious of what she had said. Was that better or worse?

Holding the phone between her cheek and her shoulder, Alex undressed and got into bed, her skin feeling acutely sensitive to the coolness of the sheets. She curled up on her side to warm up as quickly as possible and reluctantly closed her eyes again.

"Are you awake?" Alex whispered.

No answer. Relieved, the brunette stopped holding the phone, letting it rest on her temple and cheek. She lost her frown, which was the last remnant of tightness in her body -something like holding on to the edge of a precipice-, and allowed herself to be encompassed by the cocoon of Piper's steady breathing.

When she opened her eyes, the faded beginnings of sunlight were trickling onto the pillow between the blinds' openings. Alex had turned around sometime during the night, and now she was facing the window instead of the door. She rubbed her eyes, acknowledged that she had slept very soundly despite the night's rocky beginnings, and slid her hands along the bed until she found her phone, which she must've discarded at some moment.

The screen informed her that the call had been ended a little bit over an hour before, which made her swear under her breath - firstly, because that was going to cost her a fortune, secondly, because worrying about stupid considerations like money bothered her to no end, and thirdly, because it meant that they had "slept together", so to speak. Piper must've woken up and hung up.

It had felt good, she begrudgingly admitted, while sauntering towards the shower, and quite adolescent as well, although this bore no resemblance to Alex's teenage years. She had surrendered that part of herself which demanded safety and had made the call, and now she had no idea of how to proceed. Eyeing her cell phone like an enemy, Alex started to get dressed.

"Morning," Cherry said, as soon as Alex entered the store through the storage room. "Are we expecting anyone for coffee?"

"Not expecting."

"Doesn't mean that she's not gonna show up."

The curious thing was that she couldn't decide if those were good or bad news. However, there was one thing she did know, and it was that she'd had quite enough of the fear and the cowering away. This was not who she was, the person her mother had raised. "Get a hang over yourself," she would say. She was a survivor; she was someone who bit back, who fought fire with fire. She had always felt as one with the forces of nature, so who was this confused mess of sensibility and trepidation supposed to be? Was this occasionally bland way of life turning her soft?

No. Alex filled her mug, drank the necessary dose of coffee to jumpstart her brain for day, and made up her mind.

"Shut the fuck up, Cherry," she said coarsely, but her heart was not in it.

Resolutely, she went back to her room, where she found her cell phone still on the bed. Her thumb tapped Piper's number with decision, and she remained standing up, refusing to pace around while she listened to the tone, not unlike a ticking clock.

"Hey." The blonde's voice sounded infuriatingly cheerful. "Good morning. You've surprised me again. Looks like we both fell asleep last night."

"Looks like it." Alex sighed. "Listen, I'm not gonna do that again."

"Why not?" asked Piper, with a radically different tone.

"'Cause I don't know what this is, Piper. I don't know what we're doing, and I don't know what the hell you want from me."

"I'm just moving on instinct. I'm trying to do as I feel. All I know is that last night felt good. Didn't it feel good?"

"Yes," Alex admitted, breathing out heavily. "But that doesn't mean it was good."

They had started to step into a suspiciously grayish area, but luckily, she had learned the difference between the things which made you feel good and the things which were inherently good for your wellbeing. There was an essential immediateness about the former ones which left you with an unpleasant aftertaste. The desperate need to feel good right now because the pain was too much to bear was what had made her fall into addiction, so she had grown a bit wary of ready satisfaction and instant pleasure.

Besides, to her, Piper had always been about more than "now"; she had been different. Sure, at first their relationship could have been about "not yet", as in "I'm not ready to let go of you yet", but soon after embarking on their first trip Alex had understood that it wasn't about "yet" either. It had been more like "I'm not ready to let go of you, not ever". All or nothing. So what was this groping around for whatever felt good that the blonde was advocating for them? Fuck that. No fucking way.

"Can't we just wait and see how it goes? You're the one who told me you never knew what was going to happen. What else am I to expect?" Piper paused. "Can I expect anything else?"

"When I said that, I thought we were gonna be together. Nothing in the world fucking mattered and I thought I could trust you."

"If I could trust you again after all that you did to me, why can't you-?"

"But you don't trust me," Alex interrupted her. "You told me yesterday, that you were afraid I was gonna leave you hanging… again."

"Yes, because trust needs time. We need time."

"Time for what?" she asked, frowning at the blonde's use of the "W" word.

"I don't know, for whatever's going to happen."

"But you don't just let things happen to you, Piper. You make things happen. Take some responsibility."

"You take some responsibility," Piper suddenly spat back. "Why does everything always have to be my fault?"

So now the blonde sounded really fucking enraged, and Alex could only share the emotion, with the fire bubbling under her skin. Feeling immature and ridiculous, as if she was stuck in a silly argument between children, the brunette had started moving nervously around the room, although not really being aware of where she was, not really seeing the walls or the window. She was picturing Piper in front of her, and she knew what the rage would move her to do if the woman had actually been there. It was good that they were talking on the phone and not face to face, because it was as if the warmth she had felt the previous night had entwined with the present anger, an anger born out of the effort of having to step on the brakes for her own sake until Piper decided what the hell she wanted. For all her resentment, Alex knew what she would want to do.

She hadn't wanted to feel so dependent again, ever, and yet here she was.

"I didn't say everything was your fault, Piper."

"But do you think it is?"

"No!" she answered emphatically. "I've just admitted that I kinda left you hanging."

"Okay. Okay." The blonde's voice was back to being level. "So, what do we do now?"

"You wanna let it ride," Alex said, not really answering the question. She could stay on her side of the ditch throwing pebbles at Piper or she could wade across the mud to the other side, where the blonde was standing - the latter option being one which would get her pretty wet and dirty. Throwing her head back in self-frustration, the still damp strands of her hair striking her back, Alex pursed her lips and nodded. Okay.