2019
"Try to imagine your cervix as though it were a great, glowing portal, deep in space, with endless possibility for creation or destruction or..."
"Cal. Shut the hell up." Piper breathes and breathes, out of frustration more than pain. She has none of the endorphins she'd been promised. And Cal won't stop talking about portals. And Alex looks freaked out. Again. A mirror, really, of what Piper herself is feeling.
"This is real. This is real life, Pipes. Embrace it."
"Dude, could you do a smoothie run?" Alex nudges him out the door. Neri is dozing in the corner of the room and he wakes her to come for the run, reading Alex's expression appropriately.
The air is stale and warm and Alex props a window before moving back to their bed where she lays on her side, propping the backs of Piper's thighs on her leg. She can get better access this way. Her hand soothes Piper's aching hips.
"Do we call the midwife yet?" Alex's voice is super casual.
Still, Piper glares. "Not yet. I'm not in the mood for any other woman seeing my cooch. Just you." Piper pats Alex's hand in a friendly sort of way. "Can you do that thing with your thumb? I want to get off."
"So romantic," Alex chuckles, her hand already where needed. The sarongs Piper uses over her breasts and waist move easily aside.
2015
When Alex can't sleep, she imagines Piper next to her and pretends that they are totally past everything finally. Sure, it's super fucked up, because Piper is still in prison and it is really, really Alex's doing. But home, always an elusive thing, feels better when she imagines the woman who walked out of her life ten years ago and walked right back in.
She tries on the third night of insomnia, to masturbate, because that usually works. She thinks about Piper. About their first month of living together and how much time they'd spent in bed. Alex stops, halfway between sliding a finger against her clit and another inside, just a little. The memories are too fucking sad. It had been calming though—remembering better days. And it makes Piper's rare and surprising phone call an even happier occasion, one week later.
Alex asks, "You want the long version or the short version?" Because her treachery begs for boundaries of whatever kind. And Piper, disappointingly, demands the short version.
"…oh, so it's like that…" She only has a minute to tell the quickest version of her side of the story. It's good to hear the other woman's voice even if she hadn't bought enough fucking credit for the call. She feels less lonely. And the glass of wine in her hand feels like something she'll share soon. Soon-ish, anyway.
2019
Being around her family seems to strip Piper of all of her newfound confidence. She'd gone from applying for new jobs with a wave of surety that yes, finally, she'd found her path, to being interrogated about the financial wisdom of working at a low wage job in a controversial non-profit—with a baby on the way—with a focus on issues related to 'those women' back in the prison she'd supposedly escaped.
"Mother, I didn't escape, I served my sentence." Beside a deceptively calm Piper, sits Alex, whose eyes peer worriedly through dark glasses.
Piper notes the way Alex's lips twist in a nervous grimace. It's sort of adorable, how polite she is with Piper's parents.
"Oh Piper. Give up this charitable project. At least until you can qualify for a mortgage." Her mother is already heavily into the Merlot. Around her, the others start to shout ideas, to argue, to instruct Piper on exactly how she should 'recover from her ordeal.' And then, Alex and Piper's first real family dinner takes a really weird turn. Because for her brother and sister-in-law, agendas are more finely tuned in on her pregnancy.
But by the time Piper realizes what's happening, she's been scheduled to give birth in a tent in the woods or the bathtub in her childhood bedroom's en suite.
Her mother is going on and on about the latter.
"Piper, you loved that tub, you used to spend hours in there, making up stories…"
But simultaneous to her rambling, is Neri's offer for a birthing plan. Her birthing tub rental is apparently already sitting outside her and Cal's trailor.
Piper's oddly impressed and mouths a quiet "wow," at the whole thing.
"Can we split the placenta?" Cal asked loudly. When Alex looks totally weirded out, he holds up his hands and says "naw, dude, all yours, I just wondered…"
"I'm not eating it." Alex looks, in fact, pale at the thought. When Piper meets her eyes she has one of those old waves of panic, that maybe this couldn't last, that Alex was about to bolt or do something to alter the situation dramatically...because isn't that what Alex does?
"Pipes!" Alex interrupts what had been completely on the verge of being a fully-grown panic attack.
"Just hormones. I'm fine." Piper manages to say breathlessly. But no, the anxiety she'd developed during her first days of prison does come back and it isn't 'hormonal'. She gestures over one shoulder with a big, fake grin. "Bathroom. Gotta pee. Again." It's a relief, in more ways than one, when she manages to get herself behind a locked door.
The truth is that she's five months along with only two OBGYN appointments beneath her belt. And she hates the guy. And she's just started work for fuck's sake. She'd started at a non-profit the week before, doing admin and advocacy work for women in prison and she doesn't want to leave. They need the money and she likes having a sense of purpose again. But her plans are not well thought out and she's freaking out and how the hell is she even having this kid?
Her law degree is starting to feel like a badge of humiliation. Petitioning the courts to even get to the bar exam was one thing but now...
She hears her father outside the door and pauses in her breathing exercises.
And her father is being super weird. He'd been quiet throughout dinner, only occasionally shooting thoughtful looks at Alex from time to time.
It takes half an hour for her to decide to venture out from the bathroom. And when she does, she hears her father speaking quietly to someone in the foyer
"Celeste would have wanted…" Piper can't make out the rest of what he said. But she does hear, "I don't want you to worry about money."
Piper plasters herself to the wall beside where her girlfriend and her father are having an apparently civil conversation. She hears something next about his 'friend in publishing' which…who was that? Another of his many girlfriends? She snorts with manic laughter and slaps a hand over her mouth.
"Princess? Come in here." He doesn't sound surprised, just nervous. And he calls her Princess, like he isn't sure it's ok anymore. Which it isn't, but somehow it's oddly comforting.
So Piper saunters—also weirdly—into the hallway. "What you two doing by all the boots and coats?" She nods tersely, putting on her best butch tough dude act. It makes Alex laugh anyway.
"We were discussing the possibility that you both move out here." Her father looks uncertain and he's only telling half the truth.
"Can't. Gotta work in the city." Piper narrows her eyes suspiciously. But she's touched by what comes next, even as she fights her apprehension.
"Well, I'll buy you a house but I won't subsidize you living in a hovel." Her father had pulled out the old chequebook and was finishing something for Alex's eyes only.
"No, uhhh sir, that's ok." Alex tries but it was obviously not her choice. She takes the cheque being shoved into her hand.
His gaze is steely. So Alex takes the cheque.
Piper's jaw falls, for the tenth time that night.
By the time they leave, Neri has an appointment lined up for Piper with a midwife friend of hers. And Piper's mother is behaving normally. Again. Talking about being a grandparent and whatever.
"She gets to try again," Alex decides with a shrug, steering through Piper's old neighborhood.
They arrive at their own front door at 11pm. "Home." Piper breathes the word, clambering out as Alex goes to park.
"Yeah." Alex's voice is small. She hadn't said much on the drive, just reached for Piper's hand a lot and rubbed her own hand over their child's growing mound of a home, like she was making wishes on Piper's pregnant belly.
"Hey, why don't I take a shower," Piper turns and wraps her arms around Alex's neck, kissing a quick and sloppy line along her jaw. "Then I'll eat you out until we both fall asleep." She tugs on Alex's hand and adds, "Or, you can shower with me, then spread oil all over my body so I don't get stretch marks."
"Sounds good." Alex replies, her voice picking up a little finally.
Later, with the door securely locked, and the shower hot and all theirs, she's all kinds of attentive as Piper strips for her, but she tears her own clothes off like it's a chore.
"Babe? What's up?" Piper yawns against Alex's chest as she waits to be turned around in the too-small shower. Her hair is long and when it gets wet it starts to feel heavy. She leans back and stretches her neck, smiling almost sadly for some reason, when Alex starts to kiss her throat.
"I feel..." The words are quiet.
"Yeah?" Piper meets Alex's eyes, urging her on. It's honestly a struggle for Piper to focus on someone else's angst. She knows it. It's not the end of the world. But she's got to get better at this.
"Honestly. It's just all so weird. Prison really did have a bigger impact on you, didn't it? I mean how could it not have. I mean I didn't spend weeks in solitary." Alex blinks thoughtfully, watching Piper soap herself.
Piper is surprised, of course, because of all things they could be talking about...but Alex obviously noticed and worried about more than just the family's lunacy. She thinks about it. "Yeah, I suppose...it's just been a more delayed reaction with you, right? You've been depressed on and off. And ever since those first few days for me, anxiety is routine. Prison breaks people down. There is no reason to believe that it does anything else." Piper thinks of the studies she could cite or the literature from other ex-cons, but she lets her statement float on its own. Instead she says, "let me take care of you tonite. Tomorrow we can discuss the lack of evidence on the effectiveness of prison."
Laughing now in a breathless and sudden burst Alex leans in and kisses her, then runs her hands down along Piper's body. She grins and cups Piper's breasts and says, "these used to be smaller. I miss that, but this is fun also."
"Haha." Piper squeals when Alex tries to twist and pinch her nipples like she's used to. "Honestly, a week ago that'd be fine, but they're weirdly sensitive tonite."
"Gentler then." Alex mutters and lowers her mouth to try other techniques.
They end up in bed quickly after, with Piper laughing at Alex's joking refusals to be tied up. "Well you won't stay still otherwise," Piper grabs those wandering hands and holds them over Alex's head before nipping at her lips. She kisses her long and hard, breathing out a quiet moan through her nose when Alex relaxes against her.
But talking and processing wins out again. Alex, suddenly excellent at the worst sort of chat in bed, starts to ask Piper questions about her father.
"Ok. Ew. Stopping now." Piper withdraws the hand she's been working against Alex's pussy.
"Right, sorry." Alex lays with the back of her hand over her eyes. "Your dad talked to me…well, you saw. And when he asked about the book I was writing and my plans for school eventually… and when I started to talk about it...suddenly it seems so self-indulgent. That's fucked up but I feel guilty for not still being there." She looks carefully at Piper. "And for getting you into all of it. I mean I thought your parents would yell at me or something but their forgiveness makes me face it myself, you know? And there are all these women who didn't get to feel the door smack them on the elbow on their way out. It's as though there's that world and this one and we went through a portal to cross over but now…I want to go back? Is that insane? And meanwhile, your entire family keeps trying to house us." Alex grimaces. "It's like there's this enormous gap between the life I'd imagined before…before all of this…and the limited options of our life together post-prison…and all this weird limbo in between."
Piper concentrates on moving herself to a more comfortable position and grimaces when an idea hits her. "Yeah, about that. I think that they sense that I'm a bit…rudderless. And they're pretty much expressing their terror over my pregnancy through building us a shack in the woods and demanding that we purchase a place near my parents." Piper thinks about it. A thought springs to mind—a memory of one of her and Alex's visits to Alex's aunt's house. It was a cold day in early December and Alex's mother had been there. They'd all spiked their hot chocolate and bundled up to sit on the front porch.
Her nose scrunches and she peers thoughtfully at the stains on their living room ceiling. "He did say once that my grandmother liked him more because of me. Maybe he feels guilty or something. He's been weird since she died. Apparently, I mean I wouldn't know..." She thinks some more about it. His phone calls, and sudden, frequent offers to buy her lunch in the city. He's trying. Maybe that's all it is. Beside her, Alex's breathing evens out so Piper reaches down and covers them both.