2019
Alex tells her again and again how much she loves her.
"No, I fucking love you." She says. It's really, really early on a Sunday morning and they lay together in Piper's bed in a tangle of warm limbs and wrinkled sheets. Make-up sex or reunion sex, whichever it was, had been lovely. They fall asleep again after Piper crassly orders Alex to sit on her damn face.
"I'm your prison butch top and you're gonna do what I say." Piper growls, already embarrassed by the stupidity of her statement. She turns sheepish. "Too soon?"
"A bit too soon. Maybe never for that one, ok?" Alex chuckles though and does indeed climb up on the bed.
Afterward, Piper watches the sun rise while Alex sleeps on her shoulder. She feels luckier than she thought she ever might.
2005
Someone, somewhere, had begun a countdown.
In exactly eighteen days, Piper would leave the woman she loved. Nothing was forever and everything was forever.
Her dreams became really, really odd. A lot of zombies and lost gifts given to her by Alex. In one dream, Piper floated off on a river, shouting at Alex behind her,
"Take care of my laundry dammit!"
They went on vacation (sort of), ate and drank all they could, and threw their dirty clothes into the hallway without worry.
They managed to spend entire days on the beach, without interruption, and read books together, lounging in their long chairs. The drinks didn't stop flowing they left frequently for swims in the cobalt blue waters. Piper slipped a hand into Alex's bathing suit and they floated in the waves as she got her laughing girlfriend off.
"People can see us." Alex muttered, still snickering, burying her reddening face in Piper's neck.
"Let them watch. Big pervs." Piper liked the power she felt when Alex was in her hand, full and warm and swelling until she whimpered and trembled uncontrollably.
No matter how good their time together—and it was good—it was also bitter-sweetly racing toward a finish line neither could quite see yet.
Years later, Piper would know that the end wasn't just inevitable because of Alex's drug running. Instead, she'll start to think of their temporary departure as though it were a piece of an internal clock, pushing them both a little closer to their destiny.
Prison Daze
It's funny, for Alex, to hear about Piper's law degree. Alex been reading voraciously herself, nothing for an educational institution but enough to spark some imagination about what she might do when she's out of this dark hole.
When she hears more about Piper's studies, Alex feels like someone has poured warm water down her shirt. She's proud of Piper. And she's a bit envious, but only because she wants to live up to whatever new bar has been set.
She starts to scrawl notes to go with the stories that fill her head when she's drifting off to sleep. There are pages of description, about the color and textures of the cinderblock walls that surround them. And then she begins to really dream, in what seems to be vivid color, that shifts and changes as she paints scenes in her mind. Her stories keep her company.
Alex tries to write a story about the first time she shot up. She was in a sort of ill-advised threeway with two of her usual runners—old friends who had offered to take the sting out of her breakup—and while she went down on one woman, the other slid the needle in. It was stupid but it kept her from screaming anywhere but internally at the feelings and scents and sounds of women who weren't Piper.
"God, she really messed you up good…" But the sympathy in her lover's voice was undermined by the firm hand on the back of her head.
"Why not…" Alex kept thinking. Sex used to be so easy. She could use it as it suited her. But when the feeling of Piper's hand on her cheek and her hair against Alex's lips rushed…
…Well. Thankfully, the junk rushed in place of those memories. It met with them and pushed them into the cold.
She'd try over the years to think less and less of Piper. It wouldn't work out all that well. And when given the chance, she'd weigh her options, consider the possibilities, and hope against hope that the one place they'd send Piper would be the same as the one they'd send her to. That way, she wouldn't be so so alone behind these cool dusty walls.
Alex knows that she is still in love with Piper. That much is obvious. But the fact that it never really went away…this is a new and unwelcome revelation. Unwelcome simply because there is, as before, nothing she can do about their separation.
2005
Piper thought a lot about that day. The day she left Alex behind.
She went to parties and spent time with friends and she maintained her resolve. She would not call the person who was supposed to love her but who was all too willing to put her in harm's way.
"She wanted me to carry money. Again." Piper was drunk and perching dangerously on the end of Polly's couch. She was also really, really sad, but she disguised it as anger. The story was told again as well. Polly got sick of it, but she wouldn't let on. "She'd better not call!" The last word muted as her voice cracked and her eyes grew hot with unshed tears.
A small part of her mind warned her: don't tell this particular story too loudly. But what could she do? It was a part of her life and it was over now.
It wasn't like she was going to get caught for it so long after the fact.
"I was stupid and naïve and young." She told the story to the tall lanky real estate agent whose apartment she was sort of temporarily staying at (at least while they were sleeping together).
"Uh huh." Carina laughed and rolled a joint, lighting it while they both splayed out on the couch in their underwear. Her dealer was a small-time guy who ran for a couple of hippie growers in Vancouver, so the heroin thing just seemed foreign and unbelievable to her.
Piper also spent time with her brother who vowed, more than once, to stay the hell out of her drama. Still, he was the only one who really got it.
"You love her, it's ok." He sighed and waited while Piper got herself under control. She sobbed for something like half an hour straight. Finally, he got up and got them both beers, sitting closer this time in case she needed to lean or something.
2019
Piper is laying sort of half propped against the ledge beneath the window where they've shoved the bed. It's just as though Alex never left. They're carrying on and nothing has changed. Except that everything has changed.
Her legs are splayed out and her shirt is halfway up so that she can see the baby bump just starting to form. She can't see it entirely because Alex seems fascinated with measuring its height.
"You're having a girl, for sure," Alex does a wicked good impression of her own mother's accent.
"Look at us," Piper mutters and pokes at an old stain on her well-worn t-shirt. "We're lazing about in jogging pants and we aren't even hung over."
"We're getting old. Also, you shouldn't drink in your condition."
Piper snickers. "Stop calling it a condition. And stop poking my belly. Do you have a fetish now or what?"
"Pregnant Piper fetish." Alex leans upward and kisses Piper's neck. "And yes. Yes, I do." She kisses her again.
They're just a minute into a really good make-out session when Cal calls. Piper ignores her cell in favor of taking Alex's shirt off but then her brother calls again. And again. She picks up and shoves a blanket over Alex's chest.
"Yesssssss? This had better be good…" She hears him say something about a dog. His voice breaks in and out of a bad connection and he calls her dude a half dozen times before she can get a word in to let him know that he needs to speak up. "There? You want us to come there? Today?" Her voice gets a little shrill when she suddenly realizes that her brother is trying to give her a dog as a present.
"It's canine therapy!" Cal shouts into the phone when their connection improves. Alex hears it and her eyebrows go up.
They borrow Polly's car for the drive to Cal's place. While Piper makes arrangements, Alex runs out for an inexplicable amount of snack food, all of which is part of some mega-health pregnancy diet she's been reading about. Polly drives the car over, taking a good half hour to do so, in exchange for a promise of future babysitting and the use of Piper's apartment when it's empty.
"You're weird, but I love you." Piper says, kissing her friend on the cheek and shooing her away. Polly and Alex exchange a quick wave before the former disappears inside. Still, she revels in her own version of freedom when the car keys are in hand.