I'm not sure what I thought it would be like, loving someone who truly loved me. Loving someone I wanted to be with so desperately. But it was better. Whatever my expectation, being with Pam, feeling her hands, her fingers, her mouth on my body was better than I dared hope. Not just for the feeling, but also the intimacy that came with knowing a person for so long, and now finally knowing her.

And she was kind. My Pammy, so sweet to me, just like she always had been. So patient. I'd spent a long time forgetting what unconditional love felt like, and now she was teaching me again, same as she had the first time.

Though, admittedly with some changes. No…let's call them updates. Wouldn't go as far as to say 'improvements', no, you can't improve on a memory, that's already burned in, seared to your skin with the hot prod of nostalgia.

No matter which way I put it or which convoluted metaphor I mix, intimacy was a welcome change. It was an itch that had needed scratching for some time, but never in my wildest dreams had I thought Pam would ever be back to scratch it.

Pamela Isley kept her promises.

So maybe that's what this was. A promise. Maybe I'd been mistaken before. Maybe we both had. She wasn't promising to leave, but to come back. This right here was the end of a chapter we'd previously left open. Unfinished. Unwritten until right now.

Not that I presumed this moment to be the end of our story, but as I lay there next to her, the sheets pulled around us, held fast in her arms, I almost wished it was.

You know when you're readin' a book or watchin' a film, and for a moment just past the middle everything is going right for the main character? Whenever I'm engrossed in a story, I find myself wishing it would end before the end. In that sweet middle part when life was what they hoped for.

This is what I'd hoped for.

I'd hoped for Pam.

"Were you sad? When you left?" I murmured into the darkness, too tired to truly annunciate.

"Cried myself to sleep most nights in the first month."

"Then what?"

"Then I got angry," Pam told me.

"At who?"

"At God, for making me the way he did."

"You still believe in God?"

"No."

"Then wh—,"

"Because lost girls need a star to yell at, otherwise they're just talking to themselves."

I thought on that for a moment. "I remember you used to talk to your flowers."

"Mm…" Pam nodded, her chin moving against my temple. "I've found they're the best listeners."

I giggled as I propped myself up on my elbow, shifting to look at her. "You're a strange one, you know that, Pam Isley?"

She shrugged. "What's strange about imagination?"

"Nothin'." I smiled softly, lifting my hand to drag a finger from her forehead down the bridge of her nose. "It's funny that you don't believe in God."

"Oh?" Pam raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "And why's that?"

"Because…" I let my finger fall from her lips to her chin, leaning forward as I did. "I think you're his most perfect creation."

She blushed, and just before I kissed her—for a brief moment—I could have sworn her cheeks flushed green rather then red.

Pam would want me to think it was a trick of the light, though.

So it was.

/

We arrived early for the funeral the next day. Seemed Pam hadn't grown out of her obsession with punctuality. I personally liked the idea of getting a bit distracted beforehand, but she said this day was about Harvey.

Somehow, I think Harvey wouldn't mind.

I wore a black dress Selina had sent me from New York the Christmas before, and Pam wore nicely tailored slacks that hugged her figure almost well enough to distract me from my grief.

It was sunny, but Pam refused to wear a hat and cursed when she realized she'd forgotten her sunglasses in the purse she'd evidently left at home. She used one hand to shield her eyes for the 6 block walk to the church and the other to hold mine. I'm sure it would have felt like an out of body experience had Pam not been tethering me so firmly.

We dropped our grip just outside our destination, giving each other a look that acknowledged our sin before walking into the church.

Pam didn't flinch passing through the doorway, and I don't know why, but that made me smile. This Pam wasn't afraid. Not of the sun, nor the wrath of whatever deity her parents claimed had doomed her.

My gait was a bit more hesitant, not because of some religious guilt, but because I instantly spotted Selina near the back, standing next to Bruce and their children and sporting a look that said 'I know exactly what you two did last night'.

I briefly wondered if Harvey would have been avoiding eye contact the same way Bruce was.

The church was full, the townspeople were all dressed in their mourners best, which I found almost morbidly hilarious. Pam seemed to share my sentiment because she leaned down to whisper, "These people, acting like his funeral is the hot ticket in town, the same ones that spat on his shoes because his daddy was trash".

Selina had evidently overheard as we came to stand next to her. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, leaving behind a sickened smirk as she nodded towards the front. "You see Ms. Tate came out this morning?"

"I'm surprised she stopped whipping him long enough to let him get outta this town," Bruce growled out of the side of his mouth.

Pam lifted a program from the back of the pew in front of her. "I'm surprised that wasn't what killed him."

"Please tell me his daddy is dead, Harl," Selina said.

"Mm…mm-mm," I shook my head, nodding discreetly to the stage as an old man hobbled up the stairs towards the microphone that had been set out. "Not yet."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Selina cursed, earning an elbow in the side from Bruce. "Oh, what's he gonna do?" she turned her harsh whisper towards her husband. "Smite me where I stand?"

"Jesus doesn't smite people, Kitty," Pam corrected.

"Oh, who needs you." Selina sulked.

My stomach clenched as I watched Harvey's father—the villain of his childhood, the figure in all his nightmares—take the microphone in one shaky hand.

"Good—good morning," he slurred. "So k—,"

"You know, Harvey never drank after high school," Bruce told us, rescuing us from what was going to be a painful eulogy. "He was absolutely terrified of becoming that."

"He didn't have that in him," I murmured. "Drunk or not."

"You shouldn't have invited that asshole, Bruce," Selina was obviously upset, as her voice came out slightly louder than a whisper, drawing some dirty looks from the people in front of us.

"I didn't," Bruce defended himself. "The community organizers did."

Pam shook her head. "God, I hate this town. If not for Harley's diner, I'd buy the whole thing just to burn it to the ground."

"I'll bring the matches," Selina offered.

I gave Pam's arm a harsh squeeze.

"What?" She hissed. "I said if not for your diner."