Author: Regina
Fandom: Joan of Arcadia
Spoilers: Up to "Silence"
Pairing: Joan/Grace, mild Joan/Adam and Grace/Luke
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Imagine being stuck someplace and having no control over what's happening. Not being able to leave, even if you wanted to." Grace looks at Joan's profile in the dying light of the Girardi's backyard, and thinks she has a pretty good idea of what that feels like. Joan and Grace, the summer after season one.
Disclaimer: If I had any sort of control over this show, it wouldn't have been cancelled.
Note: The title is from the Leonard Cohen song of the same name.
True Love Leaves No Traces
Grace hates summer. She hates the sun, she hates getting weird looks when she wears her jacket, and she hates how damn happy and tan everyone looks. She prefers to spend her summers in her room, reading in the air conditioning with her curtains drawn. When evening came and the sun stopped being so damn sunny she would go for a walk.
Sometimes she went to see Rove in his tiny garage and watch him ignoring the heat of the torch in the already stuffy room, his hands steady as he worked on his art and sweat dripped drown his neck in little rivers. But Adam wasn't around much lately and uncomfortable glances and a sudden, sick new tension surrounds everything when he is. She hasn't asked, she's given him his space, but she's pretty sure that's Joan's fault.
Lately, she's been walking through the park, watching mothers collecting grimy children and nodding to the old lady who always sat on the third bench, throwing bread at nonexistent birds. But mostly, she would just walk in general, feeling the heat from the sidewalk swirling around her ankles as the air brushing her face started to cool off with the sinking sun.
That was her summer, the benefits of free time and lazy days without any of the hassle of overly happy people and oppressive heat. It was her routine, and on some level, Grace liked routine. Which was why she couldn't figure out why the hell she was sitting in the Girardi's backyard, baking in the midday sun and letting Joan drive her ever closer to the brink of insanity.
Stupid, happy Joan. Stupid, happy Joan who is pretending that the beginning of the summer didn't happen at all, and is smiling and tan, and getting progressively tanner, stretched on a towel covered lounge chair in a bikini with the sun glinting off of her oiled skin.
She watches as Joan stretches like a cat and turns onto her stomach, letting out a little sigh. "I love summer."
"You would."
They're at Arcadia's excuse for a beach, a murky lake with a semi-wide strip of sand circling it. There are fat people in small suits, children with dirty faces and loud mouths, and people from school making out when they think no one is looking. Grace is miserable and Joan is oblivious, emerging from the water and quickly wrapping a towel around her body with an almost imperceptible glance around.
"Joan, please," she spits out angrily, and Joan must be having a rare moment of self awareness because she looks down almost guiltily and loosely drapes the towel over her lap as she sits down, shifting sand onto Grace's feet.
"You do know that any body issues you've had, currently have, or will ever have are just the by product of an image obsessed culture that makes girls who wear a size six feel fat, right?" She feels a little bad as soon as the words leave her mouth, because It's not really Joan's fault that she buys into all that shit. Luckily, Joan ignores her.
"You should swim," she says; smoothing her long hair into a messy, wet ponytail that drips cool little drops of lake water all over Grace's arm. "Just once."
"I don't want to."
Joan just shrugs and idly begins to play with the fringe of her jeans, fingers gritty with sand when they brush against Grace's ankle.It's raining, and Grace is happy. She's sitting on Joan's bed, doodling in a notebook and enjoying the sound of raindrops falling on the roof. Joan comes back from downstairs with sodas and a bag of chips.
She sets the snacks on her dresser and manages to stay quiet for all of 15 seconds before she sighs and lets out a grating, "I'm bored."
When Grace doesn't respond, she grabs the food, flops down on the bed, noisily rips open the bag of chips, and begins to crunch. When she's not crunching, she's humming, or fidgeting, and Grace's skull and crossbones suffer a truly disfiguring line through the eye sockets when Joan's leg hits her drawing hand.
"Girardi! Would you stop it? Just listen to the damn rain and relax for a minute. It won't kill you."
Joan sighs and sinks lower on the bed, staring at the ceiling. "I hope it stops raining soon. I wanted to go back to the lake tomorrow."
"I didn't."
"I know. But will you?"
"Maybe. I might have something to do." She doesn't, and she knows that if it's sunny tomorrow she'll be sitting on the sand and watching Joan bob in the murky water.
Joan is going on about something, but Grace is looking at nothing but the notebook in her lap. She's gradually aware of Joan's voice becoming murky and then it's mercifully quiet for a while, and when Grace finally looks over she finds Joan asleep, her hand curled in the covers and a crumb of chip clinging to the corner of her mouth.
When she brushes it off, she lets her hand linger just long enough to cause her to worry.She doesn't realize that she's braiding random pieces of long brown hair until Joan mentions it.
"I didn't know you could do that."
"I'm not a cyborg, Girardi."
"I didn't mean that."
They're lying on a blanket in the backyard, the porch light throwing shadows across their skin and stars and fireflies floating around in the sky. Joan's hair is spread around her head, covering the blanket, and Grace, and snaking into the grass.
"I used to braid my mom's hair," she volunteers suddenly, not even sure why the words are coming out of her mouth.
"You don't talk about her." It's almost a question, but not quite, and Grace doesn't know what she's supposed to say.
"I know," is what she manages.
"You can."
"I know that too."There's a large weeping willow in the back of Grace's yard. When she and Adam were seven, they had discovered that if they parted the branches in just the right place, there was more than enough room underneath to become the official head quarters of Grace and Adam's Super Secret Cool Club. She misses Adam. She wonders if he's over it yet, whatever it is, and if the three of them will ever be able to hang out like they used to. She wonders if she even wants them to.
She knows that at the moment she is showing Joan her childhood, and it's not as scary as she thought. Joan isn't laughing at the makeshift clubhouse. Her eyes and mouth and whole body are smiling, and she grabs Grace's hand and hurries her along into the opening.
There had been more than enough room when she was little, but Grace was no longer seven and Joan is even taller than she is, and now they sat pressed tightly side-to-side in the small space. Joan was fidgety in the heat and each time she moved Grace became acutely aware of all the places their bodies touched. Shoulders, arms, elbows, hips, thighs, feet, like a silent mantra repeated religiously in her head.
"Why was Adam the secretary?" She moves again, brushing dirt off of her arm, and Grace almost doesn't notice the hitch in her voice when she says his name.
Shoulders, arms, elbows, hips, thighs, feet.
"Because, it was my tree and I wanted to be everything else," her voice sounds a bit hoarse now, and she can't figure out why.
"What was the point of this club?" She flicks her hair over her shoulder, but it lands on Grace's instead and all she can think of is apple shampoo.
Shoulders, arms, elbows, hips, thighs, feet.
"I don't know. Nothing really. We just hung out and stuff."
"We had a treehouse where we used to live. It was there when we moved in, but my mom wouldn't let us play in it because I was accident-prone and Luke was always tripping over his own feet. We finally wore her down, but the first time we went up I fell through a weak floor board."
"Did you hurt yourself?"
"No, Luke pulled me back through. But then he fell and broke his arm and we weren't allowed back in the tree house ever again. We also weren't allowed around trees in general for a while, but that's just because my mom is weird." She leans her head against the tree trunk and begins to idly toy with the strings of the bow on her tank top.
Shoulders, arms, elbows, hips, thighs, feet.
"I like it here," she announces, sitting up suddenly. Now it is only hips, thighs, feet, and Grace can't tear her eyes away from the bead of sweat making its way down Joan's throat and heading towards the neck of her top.
"Yeah?" Her voice sounds like a pitiful croak, but Joan doesn't seem to notice, only settles back down against the tree, (shoulders, arms, elbows, hips, thighs, feet), and rests her head on Grace's shoulder.
"Yeah. It's like it's just us. Like the world just kind of stopped, and we never have to leave if we don't want to."
Her voice is just sad enough to notice, and Grace has no idea what to do.Grace has caught a lightening bug in a jar, and she watches as it flitters frantically against the glass.
"It's going to hurt itself," Joan says.
"No it's not. I used to do this all the time."
"Look at it. It's beating itself against the glass, trying to get out. How would you like it?"
"It's just a bug," she says, but she opens the lid and lets it out anyway. They both tilt their heads to the sky and watch it fly away, Joan's eyes following the tiny light and Grace's eyes following Joan.
"It must be horrible, being trapped like that."
"I let it go, didn't I?"
"I know. I just mean in general. Imagine being stuck someplace and having no control over what's happening. Not being able to leave, even if you wanted to."
Grace looks at Joan's profile in the dying light of the Girardi's backyard, and thinks she has a pretty good idea of what that feels like.Grace wears one of Joan's tank tops, and a pair of her pajama bottoms. Joan has on a t-shirt and not much else, and Grace is cursing herself for agreeing to yet another impromptu sleepover.
"Will you put on pants, Girardi? I'm not in the mood for a peepshow," she snaps, harsher than intended.
Joan throws a quick glance downward and blushes, reaching into her dresser drawer for a pair of shorts. "Sorry," she says, quietly.
"I didn't mean it like that."
"Mean it like what?" She's stepped into the shorts, and heads to sit on the end of her bed.
"Like anything, I guess. I don't know." Grace joins her on the bed, and before she can stop herself says, "Why do you do that, anyway?"
"Do what?"
"You always look at yourself when you think other people are watching you. You do it at the lake all the time, and sometimes in your backyard when you're tanning, and just now."
Joan looks down, effectively hiding her face behind a curtain of hair. "I don't know. I just think too hard about the way I look sometimes. I know you think it's stupid, and media and fashion and image and blah blah blibbity blah, but I do. Everyone does." Her voice is so low Grace has to fight the urge to lean in closer.
"That's stupid. There's nothing wrong with the way you look, Girardi," she says in what she hopes is an even tone. Her voice is fighting to either take on the old, familiar rough edge, or go soft and low. She can't decide at the moment which would be more damning.
Joan just scoots higher on the bed and crawls under the covers, before uttering a quick, "Yeah. I know."
But Grace doesn't think she does.She's been sleeping over for almost a week straight. Luke has been at geek camp since the second week of summer vacation and won't be coming back until the last. Kevin works long hours at the paper, Mrs. Girardi is teaching summer art classes, and Mr. Girardi is working around the clock on a case he won't talk about. Joan told her that the last time they all ate any sort of meal together had been nearly a month ago. Each night when she tries to go home, Joan, a bit too eagerly, explains how her mom and dad don't mind, and said mom chirps her agreement while cleaning the dinner plates.
Grace offered to help her one time. She dried the dishes as they were handed to her, and when they were through Mrs. Girardi thanked her and gave her a half hug while pointedly telling Joan it was nice to have some help.
She smelled like A Mom, like cooking spices and faded perfume. Grace had to bite back sudden tears and make herself let go.
Tonight they eat delivery pizza by themselves at the dining room table. Mrs. Girardi is at school preparing for some art class the next day that involved tin foil and blowtorches, and Grace is sharply reminded of Adam each time she thinks of it. Joan is too. She can tell from the way she's avoiding the subject.
She wants to ask. Wants to ask a million questions that won't stop running through her mind. What happened in that hospital room? Why is it the one thing you won't talk to me about? Is it why I'm here, whey we're here? Am I Replacement Rove? If he came back tomorrow, would you forget that this summer even happened? What IS happening? All running around her head like rats in a maze, hitting corners that hurt but going back anyway. She knows she'll never ask, anyway, so she decides that biting her tongue may just be the best course of action. She bears down so hard she draws blood.
She brings their plates to the sink and covertly spits, turning on the faucet and watching the red swirl away."Grace, Grace, Grace, Grace, GRAAAACEEE!"
She's starteled awake to find Joan bouncing on the bed beside her, frantically shaking her shoulders and calling out her name.
"Get up, get up, get up, get up!"
Grace slaps at her and turns over to burrow deeper into the covers. "Lemme alone. It's like six in the morning."
She feels the bed shift and Joan leans over to look in her face. "No it's not! It's ten and I want breakfast."
"Oh, God, morning breath, Girardi. Seriously. And cook your own damn breakfast. I didn't agree to be your maid just because I slept here."
"I can't cook my own breakfast! Remember the omelet fiasco? My mom made me promise never to cook when she wasn't here again."
"Then what's the problem?" She flips onto her back with a sigh, knowing she's not going to shut Joan up anytime soon. "You can't cook. You're not allowed. So no breakfast that requires cooking. Doesn't your family believe in pop tarts?"
"Of course. But I want an omelet!" Joan is staring at her with a glint in her eye that can't be good. "And my mom never said that you couldn't cook! So . . .cook me an omelet!"
"No."
"Yes!"
"Joan, NO!" She pulls the covers over her head in a last ditch attempt to get Joan out of the room. It's deceivingly quiet for a moment before a weight hits Grace's chest and the covers are dragged from her face to reveal a smiling, pleading eyed Joan.
"Pleeeeaaassseee? Omelet, omelet, omelet, pleeeeaaaaasssee?"
She's bouncing around and looking like a damn puppy, and Grace finds herself unable to say no. "Look, if I make you an omelet will you shut the shit up?" In response, she gets an excited squeal and a mouthful of hair as Joan's arms wrap themselves around her neck.
With a sigh, Grace detangles herself from Joan's arms and hair and groggily heads for the kitchen. As an afterthought, she throws over her shoulder, "I was serious about that morning breath, Girardi."They're lying beneath an old oak tree in the park, watching the clouds through the branches.
"That one looks kind of like Friedman," Joan says, pointing skyward.
"And here I was trying to go all summer without thinking about him. Thanks, Girardi."
"Glad to be of service."
"I understand though," Grace says, her voice taking on the practiced lilt of teasing.
"Understand what?" Joan sits up and glances down at Grace, her hair falling to tickle Grace's shoulder.
"Your preoccupation with Friedman," she sits up to stare Joan in the eye and very seriously finishes, "The whole school has noticed all the unresolved sexual tension between you two."
She watches as Joan's eyes go wide, and before she knows it she has a lapful of squealing girl, hair falling all around and soft slaps raining down on Grace's shoulders as Joan's weight forces them to the ground.
"Eww, eww, eww! Grace, that is seriously demented!" She sits up giggling, her cheeks flushed and her face lit up with a grin, and Grace is so preoccupied with the sound of her laugh that she doesn't even realize Joan is straddling her until she squirms a bit, pushing her thighs closer against Grace's hips. "Besides, no one thinks I'm dating Friedman! They think we're luhvahs," she says with mock seriousness, her voice going into a pitch perfect imitation of her mothers on the last word. "Embroiled in a torrid lesbian affair, sneaking off to the girls room to make out between classes!" She brings a hand to her chest in mock horror. "Scandal!"
Joan is giggling and raising her eyebrows, and every time she moves even a little bit their bodies get pressed closer together in all kinds of places that are both very, very right and horribly wrong at the same time. Grace's breath hitches, and as she looks up at Joan, backlit and beautiful above her, she's never wanted something so badly in her entire life.
Joan has stopped laughing, and is looking down at her expectantly. For a fleeting moment, she thinks that she must be unbelievably transparent. Joan has just taken one look at her and seen everything written all over her face. "Yeah? So what if they're right?" Then she realizes she's supposed to say something here, something sarcastic or mean or supporting the feminist agenda, so she forces herself to laugh and say, "Yeah Girardi, and should those same people walk by right now and see you straddling me in the park, I'm sure it would put those rumors right to rest."
Joan laughs again, and moves off of her, flopping back down beside her on the grass. Their arms are brushing, and Grace can't decide if she's relieved or disappointed.They're sitting in the Girardi living room, watching what Joan fondly referred to as, "Luke's geek movies. Just don't tell him I watched them of my own free will."
"You go, Lego! Give the elephants hell!"
"Legolas, Joan. And they're not elephants," she crunches down on a mouthful of popcorn, and tries to push down her annoyance.
"Whatever! Look at him go!"
She feels the urge to spit the popcorn out and launch into a full-scale verbal assault. She knows Joan doesn't mean anything by it. She just thinks Orlando Bloom is pretty, and could care less about the mythology of Tolkien or the storyline at all. Grace knows this. She knows this, and knows she shouldn't be pissed, but she can't help it. Just like she can't help getting pissed when Joan stretches her legs across her lap and nearly kicks the popcorn bowl that rests there to the floor.
"I'm not an extension of your sofa, Girardi. Stay on your own fucking cushion, okay?"
She can't help but feel bad at the hurt look that flickers swiftly across Joan's face, and the way she quickly pulls herself as far into her corner of the couch as she can get. Maybe she should feel bad. It's not like it's Joan's fault. She didn't ask for Grace to have all these stupid feelings she can't do anything about. It's not like Grace asked for them either, but they're there all the same. A hyper awareness of Joan's every move; a hypersensitivity to Joan's every touch. She's acting like a fucking lovesick teenager, and it's pissing her off.
"Are you mad at me?" Joan's voice is low, with touch of hurt just beneath the surface.
"No."
"But you've been acting different."
"So what. I have to run my behavior by you for approval now?" She's getting more and more angry and she can't make herself stop. Joan is just sitting there all wounded and big eyed, biting her bottom lip and refusing to pull up the tank top strap that always falls down her shoulder.
"No! Grace, I just mean . .is something wrong? You can tell me."
She's looking at Grace so honestly and openly that for a second, she considers it. Considers just grabbing her by the shoulders and saying "Hey, Joan. Guess what? That whole thing where you thought I was straight because I had a moment of insanity where I thought I could deal with your brother? Just a fluke! All those times you wore that green bathing suit? I thought I was going to go absolutely out of my mind if I didn't run my hand across that bare patch it leaves on your back! Every time I sleep over, I stay awake half the night focusing on all the places our bodies are touching, and what you look like when you sleep! All of these things are making me increasingly angry, and instead of all this adding up to insanity, I think it's adding up to what I guess is love. Isn't that great? Isn't it just peachy fucking keen? I'm so glad I told you, now I can just go on up to your parent's room and hope your dad's left his gun laying around so I can take care of this little problem!" She imagines the look on Joan's face, and has to fight the urge to either hit something or break into hysterical giggles.
"Grace?" Her name on Joan's lips is pleading, a little desperate.
"What?" She snaps so forcefully that Joan recoils, just a little.
"Do you want to talk about something?" Joan's voice is a little shaky.
"No. No, I do not want to talk about something. I do not want to talk about anything, Joan, so just leave me alone."
It doesn't feel like she's in her own body as she gets up and walks toward the door.
"Grace, where are you going?" Joan sounds like she's crying, but Grace can't make herself turn around. She just tells herself she doesn't care as she reaches the door.
"Somewhere else," she says as she slams the door shut behind her.
She makes it halfway home before she starts to cry, stops to punch a tree a few times for good measure, and turns back around.When she walks back into the living room, she doesn't mention Joan's puffy, red eyes and runny nose.
She just sits back down on the couch, pulls Joan's legs back across her lap, hands her what's left of the popcorn, and rewinds the movie to where they left off.
Joan never mentions her bloody knuckles, just gets up after a moment or two and returns with a wet cloth and band-aids.
Grace scrubs a little harder than is necessary, and grits her teeth against the sting.
She wakes up later that night to Joan crying. Grace is not good at crying. She doesn't know what to do, what to say, how to make it stop. She slowly lifts a shaking hand, and rests it awkwardly on Joan's shoulder. She is completely unprepared when Joan turns herself immediately to rest her head on Grace's shoulder and wiggles bit by bit into her arms.
The sleeve of her t-shirt is getting damp and Joan is pressed against her and sleep warm skin and lukewarm tears are the only things in the world. Grace doesn't know how she's supposed to respond to this. She tries patting her back, but it seems to have no effect. Neither does rubbing her arm. Finally she reaches a hesitant hand to tangle in that damn hair, which is knotted from sleep and wet with tears in places. Joan whimpers a bit, and it takes Grace a moment to realize that she's talking.
"I'm sorry." It's muffled against her shoulder, and Joan only buries her head deeper after she says it.
"For what?"
She can't understand the reply at all, so she reluctantly pulls away from Joan and looks down at her. "What are you talking about?"
"I don't know." Joan's voice sounds small, and suddenly she looks very young. "You're mad at me."
"I'm not."
"You are. I don't know why but I do know! Please don't be Grace. Just tell me what I did." Her voice is almost pleading now, and it starts a strange ache deep within Grace's stomach.
"Stop it! You didn't do anything!" Her voice comes out louder and sharper than intended. She hadn't even realized she was angry. "Not angry. Scared." Bullshit.
"I don't know what I'd do if you hated me."
With that, the pleading edge is gone and Joan is looking straight into Grace's eyes and this whole thing is starting to freak her right the fuck out. Maybe a little scared, after all.
"I mean it." Now her voice was taken on a distinct edge. It's the voice she uses when she really, really wants Grace to go to the lake, or stay over, or take part in some ridiculous baking experiment. "I don't . . . Adam, he . . . Grace, you're all I have. Please don't be mad at me."
Her head swirls and she almost lets herself ask. "For now? All you have for now, until Adam comes back?" She bites her tongue so hard she's sure she's bitten through it.
"I'm not mad at you, Joan."
"Promise?"
Grace just nods her head and sinks down into the covers, motioning for Joan to do the same. "Go to bed, okay?"
Joan does, with her head back on Grace's shoulder, and one hand just barely fisted in the hem of her t-shirt.
Joan squirms a bit, and her knuckles brush against Grace's stomach, and she can hardly breathe. "It's all okay?" Joan murmurs sleepily, her lips so close to Grace's neck she swears she can feel them brush the skin.
"Everything's fine."
And with that lie, Grace is awake all night, focusing on the overwhelming nearness of Joan, and how very not fine things currently are.She's decided that she's monumentally stupid. It has to be a side effect of getting mixed up with Joan in the first place, because she would have never been bobbing in a dark, cold lake at three in the morning of her own accord.
But here she was, with a smiling Joan splashing around beside her.
"I told you you'd like it!"
"What exactly did I do that implied I liked this?"
"Well, you haven't left yet," Joan says with a grin.
Suddenly, she ducks under the water and Grace feels a sharp tug at her ankles. The next thing she knows, she's breaking surface, spitting lake water, and holding a squirmy Joan underwater.
When she lets go, Joan comes up giggling and launches herself at Grace, slick arms wrapping themselves around her shoulders and long hair sticking to her face. "You liiiiike it!" Joan singsongs, wiggling around in a makeshift dance that does nothing but press her body closer, and Grace is starting to get that familiar, tingly feeling in her stomach.
She pushes away from Joan and sinks under the water. When she opens her eyes, she still sees black all around, and wonders how long it takes to drown if you don't fight it. Her lungs are just starting to burn when Joan's pale hand glides through the water in front of her face. She pushes upward and breaks the surface, grimacing just a little when she gasps in her first breath of air.
Joan is floating on her back about two feet away, looking ghostly and content. Grace doesn't know how long she stares, but she starts when Joan's voice breaks the silence.
"I like it here. I like it better like this, though, without all the people. Just you and me and your newfound love of swimming."
"I don't like the swimming, I like the silence," she says, hoping Joan will take a hint.
But, this is Joan. Joan doesn't understand subtlety.
"Not me. I've tried the silence, but you can get lost there, you know? All you have to listen to are your thoughts."
"Dear diary, should I wear pink lip-gloss or red lip-gloss today?" she snarks before she can help herself.
Joan turns from her back to bob in the water and laughs, but Grace is pretty sure she also sees a flash of hurt cross her features.
Joan is quiet for awhile and instead of being thankful, Grace just becomes morbidly curious. "What do you think about? Adam?"
Joan looks surprised, and Grace doesn't blame her. They've gotten very adept at ghosting around the issue of Adam, or Joan's hospital stay, or what happened that night. Joan's willingness to skate around the issue only further reinforced Grace's theory that whatever happened had been something big, too big for even Joan to want to discuss to death, like usual.
After recovering from her initial shock, Joan nods and quietly says, "Sometimes."
"Have you talked to him?" She wonders who has taken over her vocal cords, because what sort of answer does she really expect to get? Even if Joan hasn't talked to him, she wants to. It's written all over her face and it hurts much more than Grace expected it to.
"No. He called, at the beginning of the summer. Have you? Talked to him, I mean."
Grace has to force down the bitter laugh that is begging to accompany her answer of, "No, Joan. I've been with you all summer, remember?"
Joan looks for all the world like this was a fact she was just realizing. "Oh. Right." She opens her mouth to speak, closes it again, and then, in a rush, says, "You don't have to pick, or anything. I know you and Adam have been friends forever, and all, and if you don't want to hang out anymore, that's cool."
Grace feels suddenly defensive, and more than a little angry. "Dude, please. If I wanted to talk to Adam, I would." Joan looks far too comforted by that statement, so for spiteful reasons she doesn't totally understand, Grace adds, "Besides, I can't pick sides when I don't know what the hell is going on."
She turns onto her back and lets herself float, looking up at the sky and willing her body away from Joan. It's a while before Joan speaks again and when she does it's very quiet and in an even tone that gives the whole thing away before she even starts. "It's nothing. That whole thing was just hard on me, and Adam didn't really get it, I guess. I don't know."
Joan shrugges lightly and starts towards the shore. Grace watches her arms cut through the water for a while before following. She doesn't really get it either.The next day, Grace visits Adam. She shows up announced, like always, and finds him in the garage, like always. He lifts his mask and nods at her, and for a minute it's like the entire summer, the entire year, never happened. As she sits on a stool and watches him weld bits of rebar together, for a minute, she can almost believe that it didn't. They're just Grace and Adam, who are best friends without even trying, and there's no Joan yet, nothing that's come between them so quickly and effectively that neither even noticed until it was too late.
But there is Joan. There's Joan now, and Adam is a little taller, a little fuller through the shoulders. His hands are rougher and his eyes are a little more haunted, even though Grace didn't think that was possible. The changes in his stature are all nature's fault, his art and his job are to blame for his newly callused hands, but those eyes are all Joan's fault. Sometimes she thinks hers look the same way.
Grace remembers sitting in this garage every day for nearly a month after his mom died. Sometimes he would work, and she would watch, but mostly he just sat next to her for hours on end. Shoulders barely brushing, never pressing but keeping constant contact. She was afraid he was going to slip away. She looks at him now, as he puts down his blowtorch and sits on a stool across the table from her. The distance between them seems to stretch for miles and miles, and for a minute, Grace lets herself hate Joan.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
She knows it's coming before he even asks it, but it still hits her juts a little harder than it should when he asks, trying for casual and coming off hurried, "How's Joan?"
She's caught between wanting to lie to protect him, and being honest to hurt him. "Oh, she's fine, Adam! Having a little trouble dealing with the Lyme Disease and whatever the hell happened between the two of you, but for the most part, she's eating cookies and listening to shitty pop music and throwing some quality homosexual undertones my way!"
That wouldn't go over very well.
"Well, she doesn't sleep well at night, always a nightmare even though she rarely remembers them. She used to say your name now and then, but now she mostly just whimpers a little, and asks someone where they went, and why they won't talk to her. She's pretending everything is fine while she uses me as your replacement, just until you two start speaking again. That really kind of sucks for me, because, you see, I'm in love with your ex-girlfriend, Rove."
This was hopeless. She finally settled on a simple, "Fine."
Adam just nodded and shrugged his shoulders a bit. "Cool."
"Yeah."
It isn't the easy kind of one word response anymore. She hated this. She tries to pretend her eyes are blurring because of the sweat dripping down her forehead instead of her tears, and stands up hurridly.
"I gotta go. I'll talk to you later, dude."
Adam just nods, and on her way out Grace gets a good look at what he's been working on, an angel made of chicken wire with rebar wings and aluminum X's welded across the eyes.She can't quite make herself go back to Joan's house, even though there are shitty rented movies and microwave popcorn and the low hum of refrigerated air. She hates Joan's taste in movies. Joan puts too much salt on the popcorn and she lies over the floor vent.
She walks towards the park almost automatically, nodding to the bird lady as she passes by the bench. She has on her jacket, and the late august sun is stifling, but she can't bring herself to take it off. She already feels too exposed, like every one who looks at her can tell exactly what she's thinking. The mother with the squirming baby and drooping ponytail thinks she's pathetic, pining over possibilities that will never be realized. The shirtless guy playing Frisbee can't believe she'd be stupid enough to put herself in this situation in the first place, and she can't disagree. The mismatched girl with the antennae headband even pauses to give her a pitying glance before turning back to her game of paddleball.
Grace just pulls her jacket even tighter around her body and passes on the park, her feet turning back towards the Girardi house of their own free will.
"School starts in two weeks."
Grace is sprawled across the end of Joan's bed, trying to ignore the way Joan's feet are tucked under her knees, and she almost jumps when Joan's voice cuts through the silence.
Grace just nods, and goes back to counting the seconds between the thunder and lightning that is crashing outside. She doesn't want to think about school starting. School means Luke, and Adam, and a return to routine that didn't include Grace and Joan vs. The World. School meant that whatever they were doing, whatever little niche they had both unconsciously carved for themselves here in Joan's bedroom, was over and done with.
The storm had come from nowhere, with angry black skies that blanketed everything in early evening darkness.
Joan turns on her side, and her toes wiggle deeper into the crook of Grace's knee.
They've been stuck inside for hours, and the combination of boredom and close proximity to Joan was making Grace restless and angry. She sprung from the end of the bed suddenly and stomped to Joan's window, throwing it open and watching the rain flow off the edge of the roof in angry rivers.
Joan comes to stand behind her, pressing her body far too close. It's a big window. When she says, "I wish it would all just go away," her breath ghosts over Grace's ear and makes her heart pound as loud as the raindrops hammering the roof.
"Yeah. Me too." Her voice is shaking, and Joan isn't moving, and she wishes Joan knew that they were talking about two totally different things.
She grabs onto the windowsill and pushes her head out of the window in a last ditch attempt to make her breathing settle to a regular rate. She's too far away to feel any actual rain, and the air outside is muggy and heavy, pressing down on her from the front and Joan is still pressed against her back, and Grace had the sudden and intense urge to cry.
She's been feeling that way a lot lately.
"Because you're weak," hisses the voice in the back of her mind.
"Because I'm SCARED!" she screams back to it.
Well. That's not much better.
A sudden booming crash of thunder catches her off guard, (she had forgot to keep counting anything but Joan's breathes against her neck), and Joan is suddenly clinging to her side, pressed full bodied against her with her lips buried somewhere in Grace's hair, and It hurts to even think.
She pulls back suddenly and mutters a sheepish, "Sorry. Thunder scares me," before walking back to the bed. Grace shuts the window with a bang, and can't understand why she's so pleased when she sees Joan jump.The next night, they're rummaging through the shed for some sort of childhood vestige that Grace is absolutely sure Joan doesn't really need. She wasn't exactly listening when Joan explained what the hell they were doing, all she processed was that it was a fuzzy something with a stupid name, and it wasn't like Joan didn't have enough fucking stuffed animals in her room already. They made Grace nervous, she felt like they were watching her while she slept. She liked to tell herself that this was why she found it so hard to sleep in Joan's bed. She also liked to tell herself that she was full of shit.
Joan was rummaging through boxes, throwing dust into the air around her head, rambling a mile a minute about nothing at all. Grace has learned that if she listens to snippets here and there, she can pretty much follow along. All Joan really wanted was for someone to listen to the important stuff, anyway, and Grace does. She knows that Luke used to threaten to dissect this Fuzzy Something when Joan was mean to him, and that she couldn't sleep without it until she was 10 years old, and how did he end up in a box?
It's on the tip of her tongue to tell Joan that she grew up, but she realizes at the last minute that it's not true. Instead she just shrugs, and that seems like enough of an answer for Joan, who goes back to sending up tiny little dust clouds that sometimes match up with the tiny little pants she lets out when she moves a heavy box.
Grace doesn't help. It's too close and too stuffy in this place, and sometimes her feelings make more sense from far away. She's sitting on Luke's workbench instead, twisting a bit of scrap wire around her finger. She wonders what Luke was making with it. She wonders what Adam could make with it. Joan never creates anything but confusion.
Luke is coming back in six days. She's pretty sure the feeling in her stomach at that thought is entirely dread, but she's having a hard time trusting any of her feelings anymore. Her mind tries to pull up kissing him on that street, and the way he had held her face in his hands, and how he had the same smirk as Joan, and she's once again amazed her utter lack of control over her own central nervous system. Luke had soft lips. Joan was never without chapstick.
Joan's cry of "oomph!" snaps her out of her musings on 5'6" vs. 6'1' and curves vs. angles, and she looks over to see Joan sprawled on the garage floor, the contents of a box spread everywhere, and a Fuzzy Something gripped triumphantly in her hand.
"Grace? Meet Archibald!"Four days before Luke comes home, Adam shows up in the backyard. Joan is stretched out on a lawn chair giving herself skin cancer and Grace is pressed against the wall of the house, trying to keep her body in the thin strip of shadow the roof provides. Adam walks right past her without realizing she's there, his eyes fixed on Joan and the parts of her skin that glisten as the sun hits them. He clears his throat and she squints up at him, shooting up so fast she nearly falls of her chair when she distinguishes him from the glare.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," she replies, and Grace can see her eyes light up.
She feels sick to her stomach, and when she springs up and slams the backdoor behind her, Adam is sitting on the end of Joan's lawn chair, and neither even notice she's left.
Her feet pound their way up the stairs, and her eyes hurt from holding back tears she doesn't want to be crying. The thought of Joan's room only makes her stomach twist tighter, so she turns around and takes the steps to Luke's room two at a time.
She can see them from his window. Adam keeps letting his hand flutter to Joan's arm before pulling away again, and Joan's mouth is turning up at the corner, just barely. It's the way she smiles when she's not sure if she should be happy or not. She smiles at Grace like that almost every day.
She watches as Adam strokes a piece of hair away from Joan's forehead.
She turns from the window and kicks Luke's wall so hard that a framed photo of Einstein falls to the floor and shatters. Grace looks at her wavering reflection in the shattered glass and lets herself cry, but only for a moment.She's hastily stuffing her things into a grocery sack when Joan walks in the door.
"Grace?"
Shut up.
Almost every shirt she owned was scattered somewhere around Joan's room. Her tiger shirt was hanging on the back of a chair, and her favorite pair of jeans was folded in the seat. She shouldn't have been spending so much fucking time here to warrant her entire wardrobe finding a new home.
"Grace?"
Her eyes were starting to sting again and yeah, right. Not now.
Her jacket was downstairs on the coat rack. Where was her brush? Joan was always fucking losing it and she had to go.
"Grace?"
"WHAT?" She doesn't realize she screamed it until she feels her throat tickle. Joan looks like she's been slapped, but her lips are swollen and her eyes are still dancing and Grace doesn't want to be here anymore.
"Where are you going?" Her voice is quiet, timid, and it only pisses Grace off more. Since when does Joan Girardi of all fucking people walk on eggshells around her?
"Home," she says through her teeth, careful to keep her voice at an even level.
"Don't you want to stay? Mom's going to be home in time to make dinner, she promised fried chicken." Her voice is pleading, but what the fuck ever. Rove's back. She's not needed.
"No, I need to get home. I'll see you later." She tries to walk instead of run for the door, fuck her brush she can buy a new one, but Joan steps in her way, in her space again because she just can't ever leave well enough alone.
"Grace, what's wrong? Are you okay?"
Grace starts to laugh. She tries to stop, but she can't help herself. Loud and bitter and right in Joan's face because she is very not okay. She doesn't know what she is anymore. She pushes past Joan a little harder than necessary, and ignores the crack in Joan's voice when she calls after her.Joan leaves nine messages over the course of two days.
Beep. Grace, it's Joan, do you want to do something today? Call me back.
Beep. Grace, pick up! I'm bored.
Beep. Grace, it's me again. I'm going to a movie with Adam, want to come?
Beep. Grace, come on! What's up with you?
Beep. Fine, whatever. Look, you left your brush and your green shirt. Come get them, we'll go to the park.
Beep. I know you hate the park. We can go destroy public property or damn the man or something.
Beep. Grace? Come on, we only have a week of summer left. I miss you.
Beep. It's been two days. Come ON, Grace, what's going on? Luke's coming home tomorrow, we're going to have lasagna! He told me to ask you to come.
Beep. Grace would you just pick up and tal--
"What, Girardi?" Grace finally picked up with a sigh.
"There you are! What's going on?"
"I'm pursuing an exciting new career from the comfort of my own home."
"Would you stop talking in spam mail? Come on, let's go do something."
"You too can increase the size of your penis in just five days."
"Grace." She's annoyed now. Grace knows because this is Joan and she's not very good at hiding her emotions in the first place, much less from her.
"What?"
"Would you just tell me what's going on?"
"Nothing's going on. I just needed some time to myself, okay? Not everyone's world revolves around you." She almost spits that last part into the phone, and she can see the look on Joan's face in her mind, hurt and confused and entirely too fucking satisfying right now.
"Grace --"
She hangs up before Joan can finish.At the noon the next day, she's sitting under the willow in her back yard and crying. She's sweating, too, because she refuses to take off her jacket and there's no air circulation and fucking Joan.
Not just Joan. Adam. Joan and Adam. She doesn't know anymore, really, who she's crying over. She doesn't have Adam anymore, and she'd never really have him again. She knew that would happen, because hormones ruin everything and even though no one ever loves you like your best friend loves you, the girlfriend always wins in the end. She was prepared for that, she really was. She just wasn't prepared for the girlfriend to be Joan.
She wasn't prepared for Joan at all, all open and emotional and flaky and everything Grace hated so why couldn't she just fucking stay away?
The fact that Joan was parting the willow branches and sitting down next to her didn't help.
"Are you crying?"
"No! FUCK!" She's lying, and Joan knows she's lying, because how couldn't she? Her eyes are red and puffy and her nose is running and she looks like shit. She sniffs, and rubs her sleeve across her eyes. Oww. FUCK. She still has her jacket on and buckles hurt.
"Grace, what's WRONG?" Joan is concerned, and close, and Grace can smell her shampoo.
"Can't you leave well enough alone for once, Girardi?"
"No."
Well. At least she was being honest.
"Look, it's just --" She tries to think of the simplest terms, the lowest common denominator of what the fuck was going on, but it's useless. She can hear Joan breathing, and the hair by her ear blows back slightly with every exhale. This is too close. She should have just told her on the phone.
"Grace?"
"God! Give me a second, alright?"
She does, and they sit there in the uncomfortable, sweaty silence for what seems like hours before she finally opens her mouth.
"Do you think having Adam back is going to make everything better?"
She says it abruptly, and Joan is even more taken aback than Grace had imagined.
"What?" Joan's voice is a little shaky.
"Look, I don't know what happened to you this summer. I mean, you've never been normal. It's part of your appeal. But whatever's been going on -- you're just not the same. Something's changed, and judging from the great cold war you've been waging against Rove this summer, he's realized it too."
She gives out a nervous chuckle. "I think those are the most words you've ever said to me, all in a row."
"Joan."
"It's not -- it's just not that easy. It's not something I can -- Grace, please." The desperation in her voice is so real that it almost hurts.
She has to bite her tongue before she talks, to keep from pressing the issue. "Whatever it is, Girardi, you can't just pretend it didn't happen because Adam's talking to you again."
Joan doesn't say anything for a while, just stares at the dirt beneath her. Just as Grace is getting antsy from the silence, she says softly, "Don't stop talking to me. I wouldn't have made it this summer without you. And not just because Adam wasn't there, either, you know that, Grace."
Grace's breath catches a little, and she tries to keep from looking at Joan's face.
"Grace, I get it. Why you are the way you are. Sometimes you just can't deal with stuff, so it's easier not to talk about it at all. I know you think I'm not smart enough to understand that, but I do."
"I never said --" She stops. She's never said it, but she's thought it.
"I get it. That's why I didn't talk to Adam this summer. Not just because of --" she trails of, then starts again, "He doesn't get that I need to do that too, sometimes. You do. It doesn't mean I don't need you anymore because I'm talking to Adam again."
Well, fuck. Maybe Joan is more perceptive than she gives her credit for.
"I don't do well with dependency, Joan."
She doesn't reply, just edges closer and lays her head on Grace's shoulder. They stay that way, sweaty and silent and barely breathing until Joan's shrill cell phone ring cuts through the silence.
"Mom? Yeah, I'm on my way. I don't know. I'll ask. Just -- okay. Bye. I love you, too."
"That was my mom."
"I gathered." Her voice is a little hoarse, and she winces at the way it sounds, hanging in the air between them.
"She said she's going to serve dinner at six, if you want to come."
She doesn't answer.
"Grace? Please come."
Joan doesn't wait for an answer, just tentatively wraps her arms around Grace's shoulders in an awkward hug. When she pulls away, she softly brushes her lips against Grace's cheek, and then crawls from beneath the willow in a stream of bright light and a rustle of branches.When Grace shows up at the Girardi house that evening, she almost forgets to ring the doorbell. It feels awkward and foreign and not at all like she'd spent the last two months of her life there. Mrs. Girardi opens the door with a giant smile and a, "Grace! I'm so glad you came!"
Well, there's no turning back now.
She spots Joan instantly, in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at Adam as he brushes a piece of hair from her forehead.
Nothing was different. Right.
She's trying to decide if she should head for Joan or bolt when Luke comes clomping down the stairs like some sort of hoofed and annoying animal.
"Grace!"
Jesus.
"Hey. How was your summer?" He says it all in one breath and is looking at her like her answer is the most important thing in the world.
He's a little bit taller, if that's possible, and more broad, not that she's noticing, but he's still awkward and annoying and incapable of making any sort of small talk that wasn't a blatant attempt to learn more about her.
"Sucked." That seemed to sum it up nicely.
"Mine was kind of awesome, with all the intellectual pursuits and such. You don't have to stop learning just because you're not in school, you know? That's what I was trying to tell Friedman when--"
"Do you listen to yourself, geek?"
"Right. Sorry."
He blushes a little, and she turns to leave before he starts going off about the mars rover again, for fuck's sake, but he catches her wrist.
"Grace?"
What?
"What?" She shakes her hand from his grasp, annoyed. Clingy must be a Girardi trait or something.
"I got you something. At space camp. We were near the woods and we'd all go hiking sometimes and I found this."
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a somewhat large and very ugly rock. What is it with this kid and rocks? He turns it over, and she sees a tiny pattern imbedded in it.
"It looks like a bird wing, almost. I mean, logically, it's not ancient or anything because most people think it takes millions of years for something to fossilize, but under the right conditions it take as little as ten. But it could be. Ancient."
He's looking at her expectantly, and when he's pleading, his eyes look a lot like Joan's. She glances over at Joan, and meets her eyes immediately. She was watching them.
Joan looks away first, back to Adam, and Grace turns back to Luke. He's started talking about the Jurassic period and rapid rates of fossilization and he has no idea that sometimes you just need to not talk about it.
"Luke? Thank you."
He gives an entirely too self-satisfied grin before taking off into the kitchen, giving Kevin a high five that was in no way covert.
When she realizes she's smiling, she promptly bites the inside of her cheek. Mr. Girardi hollers that the lasagna's done, and she moves towards the door as everyone's heading towards the kitchen, letting herself look back for a second and finding Joan staring right back. They lock eyes for a moment, and then Adam's pulling her towards the kitchen by her hand, and Grace is shutting the front door as quietly as she can.
She takes off towards the park, walking a little faster than she usually would, tracing the lines of the fossil in her pocket as the sun sets behind the trees.