A/N: Sorry this took so long. When your personal and professional lives go BOOM at same time, it stalls the writing. But it's the end of the semester, so WOOT updates coming. Hopefully, this reminds us all where we were at and, probably, is gonna earn me some punches. Read, review, enjoy!
She should have just knocked.
Lord knows, she tried to. Her hand hovered there, in the air, her fingers curled into a fist. You know, for the knocking, not for punching (that would be later) and not for… other things (damn Amy and her damn Pornhub account and yeah, like that was the only thing Sophie had to curse her roomie for now.)
She wanted to move it forward, she really did, but she just couldn't or wouldn't and so she just didn't and yeah, sometimes Sophie felt like that was the story of her life. Two steps forward and maybe no steps back but at least five to the side and, hell, let's all do a little do-si-do, ring around the rosey, we all fall down.
And that was before she dialed the Goddamned phone.
Before that, Sophie wanted nothing more than to rap her knuckles against the hardwood of Reagan's door, knock knock knock guess who's here, hope you still feel like forgetting cause I could really help you with that, if you'd like.
Sophie would've liked. Sophie would've loved.
But somehow, even the thought of all that forgetting - which was mostly thoughts of kissing and cuddling and… other stuff, not all of which she needed Amy's Pornhub Premium access to imagine properly - wasn't quite enough to make Sophie's hand actually move and that was quickly turning from something of a minor inconvenience into something more like a long-term problem.
Like a standing in the hall looking like a fool and oh, please don't let any of Reagan's neighbors come out right now problem.
Those thoughts - the kissing and cuddling and Pornhubbing thoughts - somehow hadn't been enough when she'd first arrived at Reagan's door and actually tried to knock, only to end up damn near dislocating her shoulder when she whipped her arm away from the door at the last minute. And they hadn't been enough three minutes after that, when she'd tried again but her hand went all limp like an inch from the surface of the door and, what had looked promising at first, ended up as less of a knock and more of a slap.
And a feeble one at that. Like not even as hard as Becky the waitress had slapped her ass and nowhere near as enjoyable and… oh, just fucking great… now she was thinking of Reagan and ass slaps and that was so not helping.
Even those thoughts, of Reagan and asses and Reagan's asses (she only had the one, really, but oh, what a one) still weren't enough two minutes after the slap that really wasn't, or one minute after that or thirty seconds after that and yes, Sophie checked the clock on her phone after every miserable failure, so all those numbers?
Fucking exact.
And so, some ten minutes and twenty seconds (and counting) after the first time, Sophie found herself standing there with her hand hanging in the air - and really, who knew air got that heavy that quickly - and she felt all kinds of uncomfortable and awkward and she was sure she looked absolutely ridiculous and all she really wanted to do, besides the knocking, was to yank her phone from pocket and dial Amy in the desperate hope that, somehow, her best friend could talk her down.
Or, you know, come and knock for her. Either way, really.
Of course, the problem with that - besides her dialing hand hanging in the air like some sort of modern art bullshit (and besides the things she didn't know yet) - was the actual reaching Amy, because Sophie had called her five times already that morning without an answer and that meant that Amy had, most likely, lost her phone (again) or, equally likely, it was on the floor somewhere.
Just, you know, not their floor.
It was on a floor, under some random (or entirely not random) bed or couch that held some random girl (and please, please, please don't let it be Elsie again, Sophie thought, though, in hindsight, Elsie would have been so much better) and until Amy actually moved from said couch or bed and not just in it, Sophie knew from experience that she wasn't going to get an answer, so there was really no point in trying.
And, oh, if she'd only remembered that, you know, later.
So, for the moment, she was on her own, just her and her hand and Reagan's door and oh, how she hoped (prayed, really, like with a 'Dear God, it's me, Sophie' and everything) that door didn't suddenly spring open all on its own cause how silly would she look then?
About five percent sillier, she thought. Maybe. Ten percent if, you know, Reagan was actually on the other side of the door when it opened. And that number, Sophie was sure, could easily spike, could go one hundred in a hurry if there was someone else on the other side when it opened. Someone hotter and saner than her and just as good at forgetting and far better at knocking.
That didn't limit the list much.
And oh, it could happen. Sure, Sophie was pretty sure that she and Reagan seemed to have a little something-something going on, but come on. This was Reagan.
Reagan.
Sophie was more than pretty sure Reagan could 'catch more snatch' (fucking Amy and her fucking 'we're going to reclaim our language and our words and this, that, and the other things from the patriarchy' lesbian film club friends) than her and Amy combined. It was still so totally and utterly inconceivable to Sophie that there were actually two - two! - women out there that had once chosen someone else over Reagan. To her, that made about as much sense as guacamole (seriously, that shade of green?) or people who drowned chocolate chip pancakes in maple syrup (really, Amy?) or someone who didn't like Harry Potter.
It was just wrong.
Sophie leaned forward - apparently the only direction her concreted to the fucking floor feet would allow - and rested her forehead against the door. Also, apparently, she could actually touch the door that way and yes, she did wonder, if only for a second, if banging her head against the wood in frustration would count as knocking.
Knocking her out, maybe. But not 'little Reagan, little Reagan, let me in' (and there was no hair on her chinnie chin chin) (or anywhere) (besides, you know, her head) and so Sophie just stood there, arm up, head down, and sighed.
This, she thought, is fucking ridiculous. This, she considered, is just about the dumbest thing I've done, at least this week. It was just a door, just a knock, just Reagan.
Except it wasn't just anything. It wasn't just a door. It was the last barrier - the last physical one, at least - standing between her and something (or someone) she actually wanted. And it was so not just a knock. The knock was the signal, the knock was her announcing, maybe not to the world, but at least to the woman on the other side of the not-just-a-door, that she was that something. That knock on that door was Sophie coming out all over again, and not like she did with every Becky in every stall or hall or under the bleachers or wherever.
Those were her body and this was something inside her body, something beating and pumping and - right in that moment - racing and quivering and trembling and knocking on that door wasn't just knocking.
It was handing that thing inside her to someone else.
And Sophie didn't know how the fuck do that.
Though, she was pretty sure it didn't actually involve fucking. At least not at first.
But, more than anything, it so so so wasn't just Reagan. Not when Reagan was going to have that part of her, not when Reagan was talking about forgetting, actually saying the words - 'I'm ready to forget' - and then following that up with the kissing. And, it should be noted, that in Sophie's mind, it wasn't kissing.
It was Kissing.
It was kissing with a capital 'K' and italics and exclamation points and a metric fuckload of 'oh, I have to tell Amy about this later' but then, in the end, keeping it to herself cause she wasn't ready to share, not even with Amy, and it was thinking about that, about all Reagan's forgetting and the capital-K kissing and the all to herself of it all that had left Sophie there, in the hallway, hand hanging in the fucking air with things that she couldn't even start to understand absolutely earthquaking her heart.
But it still wasn't enough to make her knock.
And that was, Sophie knew, beginning to border on the ridiculous. Or, maybe, it was already past bordering, maybe it was already an entire army, trampling the 'border' and storming the fucking castle, catapults and ladders and armored soldiers on horseback battering down the drawbridge and no, she didn't have even the first fucking clue where that had come from - she'd always been fuck all with metaphors - but what she did know, beyond any question, was that this? All of this standing and leaning and not knocking and making the simplest gesture in the history of gestures into some grand fucking drama?
That was so against the rules...
Rule #19: No woman, not even the right woman, is worth wrecking yourself over and so there will be no wrecking or embarrassing or stupidly grand romantic drama. Ever.
Rule #19-A: If either roommate is ever unsure what constitutes 'drama', consider WWKD (What Would Karma Do?).
Rule #19-B: If whatever you're doing would fall anywhere between 'let's be lesbians' and 'salt to my fucking pepper' on the AYKMRNA ('Are you kidding me, right now, Ashcroft?', copyright L. Cooper) scale then it equals drama and you - yes, you, Amy - need to turn the fuck around and walk away.
Rule #19-C: And don't think you're off the hook either, Sophie. Or do we need to bring up Beth Morris and the billions of bouquets incident?
Sophie shuddered (and no, that didn't count as a knock) in the hall. No. No need to go there.
Not ever.
Her hand fell uselessly to her side and Sophie sagged against the door, cursing her own stupidity. It might not have been a romantic serenade and there wasn't a bouquet in sight, but this… ALL of this… it would almost certainly qualify as 'wrecking' and oh, it was fucking drama, cause it was tying her up in knots and not in any of the ways she usually enjoyed.
(Fucking Pornhub)
It wasn't making her nervous - she didn't do that, remember? - but it was making her… uneasy and fretful and concerned and… contemplative. Yes, that was it. Contemplative. Sophie was contemplating herself all the fuck over the place and God, there was just no need.
Fuck what she said. Fuck what she thought.
It was just a door and just a knock and Reagan was just a girl. Maybe… maybe she could be more than that, but right now… OK, maybe she was still just something, but maybe not just a girl (thank you, Gwen Stefani) because girl was not the word.
Sophie liked to be specific about her words. Words, her mother always told her, had power, and sometimes (read: all the times), Sophie wished her mother had remembered the power of her own words, you know, before she'd used some of them to her own daughter or (barely) under her breath, so she could claim said daughter wouldn't hear them.
Words like 'queer' and 'gay', words that might have sorta maybe been… OK… on their own, but since they were followed by words like 'trash' and 'filth' and 'where the fuck did I go wrong', that might have sorta kinda taken some (read: all) of the OK out of it.
(And spoiler alert: under her breath or over it, Sophie heard every word.)
But this wasn't about her mom or her mom's words, it was about Reagan and that other word, the one that Sophie knew was so not even close to being the right word.
Girl.
Reagan was no girl. Sophie knew that. And if you didn't believe her?
You could ask Amy.
"She's a woman, you know?" Sophie told her roomie, the same night she came back early from the date that didn't happen, when Reagan suddenly seemed… out of sorts… and had to bail, and yes, that was another thing that would seem much different later. "Reagan's nothing like the girls around here, she's so much… more."
That hardly seemed an adequate word to Sophie - as if one such small word could ever do Reagan justice - but Amy nodded like she understood, even though that was just not possible, because it (read: Reagan) wasn't something you could really grasp second hand. It - she - was something you needed to experience and,unfortunately for Amy, experiencing Reagan first hand just wasn't in the cards for her.
(Ah… irony. Such a bitch.) (Kinda like Amy.)
"She's a woman," Sophie repeated and Amy nodded some more, still without actually saying anything and yes, she was being remarkably quiet, even for her, and Sophie noticed, sort of, but since all that really did was give her license to keep the Reagan lovin' train right on rollin', she let it slide. "And it's not just the age thing," she said, quickly skipping over the fact that Reagan being older was actually, you know, a huge fucking turn on.
Like a panty dropping take me right there on the floor or against the door or bend me over backwards on Amy's bed cause, really, the where didn't matter kinda turn on.
"I mean, I know you get that," Sophie said and Amy nodded, again. "Your ex from high school was older, though, clearly, she was not a woman. Not with all that immature biphobic 'I'ma gonna let you finish telling me how you feel but then still dump your ass cause you drunkenly fucked a dude once' bullshit."
Amy started rooting through their mini-fridge, finding a beer and cracking it open. She downed half of it in one swallow and stared at the bottle like she was considering marrying it or, at least, having it's babies, and Sophie made a quick mental note to not bring up 'the ex' again.
"Woman just fits her, you know?" she asked, trying to talk her way through her suddenly growing concern as Amy finished off the beer and went back for seconds. "It's the perfect word. It fits her, like an exquisitely tailored suit. Hugging tight to her curves - and lemme tell you, there are curves - in all the right spots and it's like this shot of masculinity out to the world, but then she totally goes and subverts it and reclaims it all with this perfect feminine underpinning."
Amy nodded. And drank. Mostly drank. The nod might have been more of a 'let me bend my head down so I can get more force behind the tip back so I can down this one in only one gulp'.
"Guess you paid attention in Women's Studies after all," Amy muttered as she dropped the empty in their recycling and reached back into the fridge. "And not just to that girl sitting in front of you."
Ah, yes. Her. . her.
"Very funny," Sophie said. She leaned against the bed and fidgeted with her phone. There was a moment (or several) when she considered an emergency 9-1-1 to Lauren cause that was beer four - and Amy was holding beer five in her lap before she'd even finished four - and that couldn't be good. "But it's true. And then there's the math of it all."
"Math?" Amy asked or, really, half asked cause it was pretty clear the only math she was concerned with was the number of beers left and the number of doors she'd have to go knocking on to find more.
Sophie nodded. "She's three years older and that, technically, makes her an adult. And it's not just the math. There's the… living… of it all, too. She's got her own place and a job, and neither of those are firsts for her." At the moment, Sophie was too focused on the beers and she couldn't remember all of Reagan's other jobs. Waitress and cashier and appointment setter and there was something with music but it kept slipping her mind…
But the jobs she could remember, just the sheer number of them, that said something about Reagan, about how well she handled being on her own, about how mature she was. And, yes, Sophie knew those were all just textbook, those were just the bullshit of a patriarchal society gone mad, telling women what they needed to do to be real, what made them who they were.
Tumblr girl told her that.
Or something like it. Sophie had only been half listening to her and that half was the ear not covered by a thigh and it was way more interested in the moans and the directions - as in 'right there' and 'harder' and 'oh fuck, yeah, just like that' - than she was in another lecture on what made a woman a woman.
So, yeah, Reagan was a woman and so not a girl. Even Amy agreed, even if it was after beer five and three-quarters of the way into beer six, as Sophie tucked her into bed and Amy looked up at her, all serious like and whispered.
"Reagan's awesome. She's… and she's… and…" Amy's eyes fluttered shut and there was this smile on her face that Sophie had never seen as she mumbled out "I love her" and Sophie?
Well, she just laughed.
Drunk Amy was funny.
And that night, Sophie went to bed content and happy and amused at her roommate and not at all worried that Reagan had bailed or that that was a sign of anything and, for the first time in such a long time, the thought of the future made her smile.
It was enough to make her forget her own rule, the one she never shared with Amy.
Rule #0: Never trust it. Never trust anything. It will bite you, baby girl. Right when you least expect it and not in the fun way that leaves a little mark you can remember it by.
She'd forgotten that rule a lot, Sophie realized. Pretty much right from 'Hi, I'm Amy… oh… wait… you knew that…' And that, she finally contemplated her way around to, was what she needed right then and right there.
She was like Reagan. She needed to forget. And forgetting?
That was a job for Amy.
Sophie fished her phone from her pocket and dialed Amy without looking. Come on, she thought, pick up.
If you wanna be my lover…
"Hello?"
That voice, the one on the other end of the line, that wasn't Amy. And Sophie had heard it, she'd heard the fucking Spice Girls (and the irony of that damn ringtone was already far too cartoon anvil to the fucking head obvious) and that… oh, fuck….
That was a horror movie.
The call is coming from inside the house.
The line went dead and Sophie stared at her phone in her hand and then at the door and then back at her phone again and no… this wasn't, this couldn't be what she was already starting to think it was cause that just wasn't… she knew they wouldn't… Amy wouldn't.
The fact that Sophie was suddenly not at all sure what Reagan would or wouldn't was not lost on her at all.
But Amy…
She dialed the phone again, watching the contact screen light up with Blondie #1 and Amy's goofy grin in the picture they'd taken the first night they ever went for noodles and son of a bitch why did thinking about that already fucking hurt?
If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends…
Oh. Right. That was why.
There was no answer this time, the call going straight to voicemail and the Spice Girls going silent behind the door, but the silence didn't last, it was quickly replaced. Or, more accurately, it was shattered, busted into a thousand tiny pieces - every one a stabbing, jabbing, cutting fragment, digging into her - by Sophie's tiny fist (still not for punching, but now so much closer than before) as she rained it down on Reagan's door.
The door swung open, the way she'd imagined it over and over again - sort of - just as Sophie hit redial. Reagan stood there, her hair a mess and her clothes askew and her eyes… oh fuck, her eyes… they were broken. Red rimmed and bloodshot and she'd clearly either been drunk or crying or both and she looked for all the world like she'd just been dumped - cause she kinda had - and Sophie felt a twinge of pity.
Until the Girls sang out from her hand.
If you wanna be -
The silence returned as Reagan tapped the phone, rejecting the call - and yes, that seemed just a bit too appropriate - her eyes flicking between the caller ID and the other phone, the one Sophie clung to.
"You," Reagan said softly. "You're Blondie."
"Number two," Sophie said. "Apparently, in more ways than one."
