Author's Note: Seriously, the more I hear from you all, the more excited I am to put up the rest. Please keep letting me know your thoughts and what you like! I've spent so much time working on this that it's awesome knowing what catches people's attention. ;) And here we go!
Chapter 8: I Deserve a Stay, a Second Thought
Jamie lay there below them, her extremities numb, her heart racing. She realized that at some point she had even stopped swallowing. They were quiet for a while; there were no more words, but a few quiet kisses, some gentle rustling. Should she lay there and wait for them to get dressed and move, as they surely would before the boys came back? ...Unless the boys already knew? The possibility occurred to Jamie that everyone knew, and thought that she didn't.
The sounds of them above her were now indelibly integrated, in her mind, into the mosaic that was already there, made up of pictures and fragments of them in the barn together, in the hotel when she'd been drugged, and later, with Tegan's smashed nose. They were missing pieces that fit into the incomplete picture she'd developed over years of following them that was slowly beginning to make sense. And in her mind, she didn't know if it was wrong or right or neither, but she had started to believe that it was possible for two people to literally be made for each other.
After a few quiet minutes, she heard a movement, and a soft, sleepy grunt.
"Oh," came Sara's voice. "Damn, I fell asleep. . ."
"Uh oh, me too, almost. We'd better get up. . ."
There was rustling and the pulling on of clothes, some soft laughter. Sara did not run away; Tegan did not need to call after her.
"Where's my -" Tegan's voice,
"Here," Sara replied, with a laugh, as they dressed, and then one of them dropped from the bunk. Jamie could see, through her curtain, the shape of a body standing next to the bunk, as she again strained not to move.
"Bye," Tegan said sadly, and they kissed again. Sara crossed to the other side and climbed into her own bunk. Jamie stayed as quiet and still as she could until she heard Tegan's breathing above her grow deep and steady. She strained to hear some sign that Sara was asleep too and once she heard it, she allowed herself one quiet sigh of relief. Shortly after, she was asleep.
The week that followed was the happiest so far. On stage, they were funny together; they laughed at each other's jokes, helped each other's anecdotes. Gone were the sharp jabs and angry retorts of the previous weeks. Off stage, their interaction was easy, harmonious. There was still sadness underneath it, but the intense push-and-pull had subsided. Jamie was standing right beneath Tegan the night that Sara, from her keyboard, told an anecdote about the recent death of a famous Canadian musician who had spent a lifetime touring and making music with her sister. When Sara said there was no one else she'd rather be doing this with for the rest of her life than Tegan, Jamie couldn't help but get a tight shot of Tegan's face while she fiddled with her tuning pegs as her face flushed with embarrassed happiness and her eyes shone slightly. Even the fanbians, obsessing over the YouTube videos, commented endlessly about how sweet they were to each other those days. Jamie hoped it would last forever.
...
"Okay," Johnny said, crunching on an ice cube from his cherry coke, "best car chase." There were a few ummmmms around the booth. Ted looked at Jamie, who shrugged, taking a bite of her grilled cheese sandwich.
"Haha, I have no idea. . . The Italian Job?" she said, and received a pleased wink from Ted.
"Bullitt," Shaun said, and Johnny nodded his approval.
"Mmmhmmm," he said, his mouth full.
"How about Ronin?" Sara suggested, to the surprise and pleasure of the boys.
"All right!" Ted said, giving her a high five.
"Okay, best dramatic pause," Ted asked.
"That's easy," Tegan said. "Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction when-"
"Oh, yeah yeah! Yeah! When he's telling the story of the watch to the little kid -"
"He carried the hunk of metal up his ass!" Tegan exclaimed, and Sara laughed.
"Haha!" Sara said, "Yeah, totally. Okay, ummmm. . ."
"Jamie, are you seven?" Ted asked with a grin.
"Hmm? What?"
"Grilled cheese?"
"Shut up. It's comfort food," she said.
"You tell him, Jamie," Tegan said, nudging her. Damn it, Jamie thought. Why do I still have to blush every time she touches me?
"What's wrong, Jamie?" Shaun teased. "Why are you in need of comfort?" I don't know where to start, she thought.
"Because you guys are teasing me about my sandwich," she said wryly, and they laughed.
"Aha! See what she did there?" Ted asked.
Tegan reached across the table to wipe a bit of mustard off the corner of Sara's mouth with her thumb. Jamie's eyes quickly flicked up and met Ted's. Was that a knowing look he just gave me? Jamie wondered. She reflected on her own life, asking herself if she would ever wipe mustard off of her sister's face with her fingers, and the answer was a quick and certainno. Did the boys know? They must know... They couldn't know!
...
After the show that night, Jamie went to check some footage on her computer backstage while the band gathered up their gear. In a hallway near the back of the venue, near an open double door, she found a wooden bench to sit her computer on, and parked there while the crew and the band cleaned up.
She looked up to see Sara, camera in hand, head to head with Tegan, who still had a guitar slung over her shoulder. It was in the middle of this easy interaction that a girl came in who Jamie vaguely recognized but didn't know why. She was small, perhaps as short as the twins, with a dark, asymmetrical haircut. Skinny jeans, low boots, a knit cap. She looked, Jamie thought, a little like Sara.
"Well, hey," she said in a voice that managed to both be friendly and make Jamie nervous at the same time. Tegan and Sara both turned to face her and for a moment, their faces were twin expressions of somewhat dismayed surprise. The colour drained from Sara's lips and cheeks.
"Oh, hi. . ." Tegan said, switching to a false friendly mode, but her brow creased and she looked distinctly uncomfortable. Jamie's eyes hovered over her keyboard, frozen. She glanced at Ted, who raised his eyebrows. "What are you doing here?" Tegan asked in a forced friendly voice again.
"Well, I guess you're not talking to me now or answering my calls so I thought I would find you. . ." Jamie looked at the boys, wondering what they would do, whether they would leave or not. They were gathering up their stuff, talking to each other, but staying near. The three of them had somewhat dark expressions on their faces. If they stay, Jamie thought, I'm staying too.
"Yeah, I don't know," Tegan said, moving her capo from one fret to another. "I guess I didn't really think I needed to talk to you that much after you, you know, fucked my sister." The girl glanced at Sara, who looked ill. Sara awkwardly tried to maneuver her way to the door. "Oh, were you going somewhere?" Tegan asked her, and Sara stopped.
"Uh, I..." she started.
"Don't be so passive aggressive," the girl said. "You can leave her out of this."
"What was that? Oh, you're calling me passive aggressive? Well, allow me to retort," Tegan said, with a comic tone that made Johnny snort, involuntarily. The boys shushed him hurriedly and he reddened and looked away. Jamie didn't know whether this was funny or awful. Her stomach lurched and she wished that she'd had fruit salad for brunch instead.
"Tegan-" Sara started, reaching out a hand to touch Tegan's arm, but Tegan rolled her shoulder away from Sara's touch.
"No, you just wait," Tegan said, her voice rising, turning back to the girl. "What do you want? What are you doing here?"
"Well, I hadn't heard from you and I was worried and I thought we should talk. . ." the girl said, with a shrug, hands jammed into the pockets of her green military jacket.
"Talk about what?" Tegan asked. "About fucking my sister? Okay, let's talk about that."
"Okay, well," the girl said defensively. "You played a part in that, too-"
"Oh, I played a part in you being a fucking slut-"
"Tegan," Sara said again, her voice thick.
"Stop," Tegan said, one hand raised to halt Sara.
"Okay, so, I'm a slut because I slept with someone? We weren't having sex, Tegan. I mean, I wasn't," she said suggestively.
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Tegan asked incredulously.
"Well you were clearly involved elsewhere. Why do you think I went looking for someone else -"
Jamie held her breath, glancing at Sara who was pale and looked like she might pass out.
"Because you're a fucking dirty slut, that's why!"
"No, Tegan," the girl said in a loud, slow, condescending voice. "Because for a change I wanted to fuck someone who wanted to fuck me too!" Tegan blinked.
"What?"
"You know, I don't know what goes on in that fucked up head of yours, but there's something wrong with you, Tegan, there's something missing," the girl yelled, her tone pure derision. Jamie felt blood pounding in her ears.
"Something m. . . I think, maybe, that you're confused about that a little and actually that it's you who are missing something and what you are missing is a conscience," Tegan said, her voice escalating, her screaming thoughts tripping her up. The boys were staying deliberately close by, Jamie noted. Ted was subtly circling around to get closer to the angry girl, while Shaun and Johnny sorted through their gear, keeping an eye on Tegan and Sara. In case it gets violent? Jamie wondered.
"This is insane," Sara said, her voice trembling. "I'm going to go-."
"Oh right," the girl said sarcastically. "It's just like you to try to run away as soon as something gets a little tough." Run run run, Jamie thought, involuntarily.
"Don't fucking talk to her like that," Tegan said, shrill. The girl laughed once, mirthlessly. Jamie was instantly reminded of Ted's words: "But just try fucking with one of them and see what the other one does. . ."
"Oh, haha, God. Sara has said the same things about you-"
"Casey, please," Sara said, tensely.
"That's a really cheap tactic. Really tacky," Tegan said dismissively.
"Well, you know, I defended you. I said maybe you were just straight or. . . asexual or something, I don't know. A way to explain why you were interested in me for like ten seconds and then-"
"Oh, so whoever doesn't want to fuck you must be asexual?"
"This is so stupid," Sara said, anxiously.
"What was it you said, Sara? Remind me. Ummmm, 'if Tegan can't get her shit together, girls will just keep leaving her,' I think it was. And you know, she was right. You have to figure your shit out if you ever want a normal relationship!"
Tegan stared at Casey and said nothing, a pause longer than Christopher Walken's in Pulp Fiction by what felt like a good twenty seconds. Her face was red, her eyes shiny.
"Normal," she said, flatly.
"Come on, Tegan," Sara said, a note of desperation in her voice that made Jamie's heart ache.
"No," Tegan said, pointing a finger at Sara's face for a moment, and then turning the same finger, slowly, to Casey. "You," she said, slowly, her voice low but shaking, "are a fucking. . . lying. . . cheating. . . whore," she finished, with a bitter laugh. "So you can fuck whoever you want! Maybe you two. . ." Tegan gestured to Casey and a very pale Sara, "can fuck each other, how does that sound?"
"Tegan, it wasn't-"
"And you," Tegan said, leveling her finger again at Sara. Sara didn't say a word or make a move as Tegan just stared at her for a moment, failing to hide the pain in her face, "break my fucking heart." Sara's mouth dropped open, and panic washed over her face.
"Tegan, I didn't-" she said, her voice little more than a whisper. She took half a step forward and reached out for Tegan, who pulled back, violently, swinging the guitar strap off of her neck.
"Don't you fucking touch me! I'm not normal, remember!" she shouted as the tears spilled over at last. With a sharp exclamation of fuck! she threw the guitar on the floor and ran out the door. Sara, a hand over her mouth, followed.
"Sara-" Casey started.
"No," Sara said angrily, pushing past her.
"Uh," Casey said, a shocked look on her face as she glanced at Jamie and the boys. "Fuck," she said, starting in the direction that the twins had gone. Jamie quickly stood and grabbed the girl's jacket.
"No, leave them alone," she said, shaking her head. The girl looked at Jamie, as if seeing her for the first time, pulled her arm free, and hurried off in the other direction.
Jamie watched her turn and run off, and looked at Ted.
"Do you think. . ." she started, hesitantly.
"We should follow them," Ted said, knowingly or unknowingly finishing Jamie's thought. "We're just going to check on them," Ted said to Shaun.
"Okay, we're scheduled to leave in twenty minutes. I'll hold the crew," Shaun said.
"I guess we could just go on the road without the girls," Johnny said. "We're the real draw."
"And without the girls, there'd be fewer insane chicks backstage. . ." they heard Shaun say thoughtfully as they stepped out into the damp night air.
"This way, I think," Jamie said, leading them. There was an ache in her heart that she was just starting to understand. The look on Tegan's face when she said normal. . . Jamie didn't want to see that look on her face again.
"That girl is. . ."
"She's just a bad idea," Ted said.
"I wanted to punch her," Jamie said.
"Ha!" Ted laughed grimly. "I wish you had. I can't do it, but it's fine for chicks to hit each other. Just look at Tegan's nose. . ." They joked, but they were both tense. They walked quickly, through the alley and out to the main road and looked both ways and saw no sign of the twins.
"Haha, yeah. To be fair to Sara, she did have a jacket over her face when it happened. She was just kind of flailing around."
"And she does have a brown belt in karate, so. . ."
"Good thing it isn't a black belt," Jamie said.
"Seriously. God, that must have been an intense thing for you to see. I mean, we've seen some fights but. . ."
"Yeah, it was," Jamie recalled. "I didn't know what the fuck to do. I thought they were going to seriously hurt each other. Where the hell did they go, anyway. . ."
This part of town was a little run down, poorly lit, with a few sketchy looking clubs, a couple of weekly hotels, and not much else. They passed a homeless guy whose hair had become one giant dreadlock that resembled the trunk of an elephant. As they passed, he gave them a toothless grin.
"Spare some change?" he growled in his gravelly voice.
"Sorry," Ted said.
"Fucker," the man said after them as they continued on. "I'll fucking cut you, you fuckers," he muttered, and continued muttering as they walked.
"Nice," Jamie said.
"Yeah, I don't really want to leave them alone out here," Ted said anxiously. "They're like the size of garden gnomes." Jamie chuckled, and felt a rush of affection for Ted, for his love, and obvious loyalty to the girls.
They finally saw them, two small figures in the distance. Tegan was cutting diagonally across a Safeway parking lot, head down, hands in pockets, while Sara rushed after her through the amber glow of the lamp standards.
"There," Ted said as they crossed the street, and followed them across the parking lot. Tegan turned a little as Sara grabbed at the sleeve of her jacket.
"Come on!" they heard the tense, exasperated voice of Sara. "You're just going to listen to her and not to me?"
"What are you going to say, Sara? Tell me about how I'm not normal and there's something missing-"
"I didn't say that! That wasn't at all what I said. Casey said that," Sara said stridently.
"Oh, what was it you said? Girls will keep leaving me if I don't get my shit together? Like who?" Tegan asked intensely, stopping short and spinning around to face Sara, her face shining with tears. They were standing in the middle of the parking lot now, at what Jamie thought was a polite distance, and Jamie suddenly felt a light dusting of panic.
"Um, Ted," she said quickly, taking his arm and coming around in front of him, uncertainly, nervously. It was a reflex to protect their privacy and she didn't know how to accomplish it. "Maybe we should give them a little privacy?"
"Yeah," he said as uncertain as Jamie was, looking around Jamie to keep an eye on them. "The bus leaves in ten minutes though."
"Yeah but. . . they're. . . uh. . ." Jamie was stuck. Ted looked her in the eye.
"It's okay, Jamie."
"But. . ."
"I know," he said, and Jamie looked at him, wide-eyed, reading his expression. He nodded. She put her hand over her mouth. She looked over at them again as Tegan's voice reached them, and the edge of pain in it cut through the conversation Jamie was having with Ted, and through Jamie's heart as well.
"Because, Sara, she didn't know what you really meant!"
"Neither do you, or you wouldn't be acting like this-" Sara said, her voice laced with desperation.
Jamie looked from Ted's face to the fight in the distance. He knew. Wow.
"Do they. . ." she started, walking out onto the minefield tentatively.
"They don't know I know," he said quietly, taking Jamie's arm. "You're right, let's hang back a bit. . ."
They slowly moved away from them, with some reluctance. Ted looked back over his shoulder at them.
"They don't know? You're like a brother to them," Jamie said.
"Maybe that's why I keep it from them," he said with a shrug. "I don't know how they'd feel if they knew that I know. . . God, this is getting confusing," he laughed. "So, pretending I don't know is how I protect them." Jamie battled momentarily with a powerful urge to hug him.
"Do the other guys know?"
"I don't think so," Ted said.
"How did you find out?"
"Well-" he started. "Oh shit."
"But no!" Tegan shouted, hysterically, her voice cracking. "You fucked her! And last night you. . . God!" Tegan pressed her hands against her black eyes.
"Tegan, that has nothing to do with it! Those things have nothing to do with each other-"
"Don't try to fucking do that! They have everything to do with each other-"
"Come on, let's just go around the corner for a second. . . " Jamie said, and Ted followed. "God, this is terrible. . ." Jamie said, thinking about what she had heard from her bunk the night before. From that to this in less than twenty-four hours? "Is there anything we can do, even?" she asked him when they were out of sight around the edge of the building. Ted shook his head, shrugged helplessly.
"But it's fucked up! It's all fucked up and I can't take it!" Tegan wailed. There was a pause, and Jamie and Ted looked at each other, listening, their worry mirroring each other's.
"There was nothing fucked up about. . . last night," Sara said.
"Then why did you do it? She's just. . . nothing and you chose to. . . God, I can't even. . ."
"That was weeks ago-"
"Weeks?"
"I was upset about Emy and I was drunk and . . . it was a fucked up thing to-"
"Oh, yeah? So you fuck up when you're drunk?" Tegan said angrily.
"That's not fair," Sara said.
"Twenty-eight years, Sara" Tegan said. "That's us."
"Tegan, that's. . . nobody else can possibly understand that," Sara said.
"You should have," Tegan said bitterly.
"I do. . ." A pause, as Jamie and Ted stood close together, holding their collective breath. "To say that I love you doesn't even, like, it's not even-"
"But I'm not normal, Sara," Tegan said, her voice thick with bitterness. "There's something missing from me."
"Tegan, wait!" Sara called after her.
"Fuck off," Tegan shot back.
"Go with her," Ted said to Jamie, who wordlessly ran off in Tegan's direction. Jamie ran past Sara, who just stared at the ground where Tegan had been standing. Jamie took a quick look back and saw Ted put his arms around Sara. Satisfied, Jamie followed Tegan.
"Tegan, wait," Jamie called after her, jogging a little to catch up. She reached Tegan's side and matched her stride for a moment. "Hey, slow down," Jamie said gently, and Tegan stopped walking, her eyes still on the ground in front of her, tears sliding unchecked down her cheeks and dripping off of her chin. Now, Jamie realized, was the awkward moment where Tegan would wonder what Jamie had heard, what Jamie suspected. The argument about a cheating girlfriend was reason enough for Tegan to be upset, though. No need to push anything out into the open.
"I'm sorry," Jamie said to her, feeling helpless.
"Thanks," Tegan replied, her voice taut, her face streaming with tears.
"Do you want to. . . " Jamie began, uncertainly. "Can I. . . um. . . Is there anything I can do?" There was no movement at all from Tegan. She stood, hands in pockets, her red eyes on the ground, frozen.
"No, I'm fine," she replied, her voice as placid as the voice of an automated phone directory.
"You're shaking," Jamie pointed out gently.
"No I'm not," Tegan said, shaking.
"You are," Jamie said.
"I don't think I am," Tegan said. Jamie looked at her, small and broken.
"I understand if you want to be alone, but. . . it's kind of sketchy around here," Jamie said. Tegan, still immobile.
"I don't. . ." she said in that same flat tone, "want to be alone."
"Okay," Jamie said. "Let's go back to the bus." Tegan nodded, but didn't move. After a moment, Jamie tentatively turned Tegan's shoulders, directing her. After a moment, Tegan lifted one foot, and then another.
They walked back to the bus in silence.