The first time Elsa kissed a girl was during her freshman year of college.
It was just after midterms and Jane decided that the occasion called for alcohol, loud music, and the attendance of most of the students living in their building. Elsa protested at first, citing rules against alcohol in the dorms, but quickly caved when she realized that alcohol was exactly what she needed after her grizzly physics exam. Three shots of Jose Cuervo later and Elsa no longer cared that she hardly recognized a single face in their dorm suite; she was more awed by the liquidy way the floor seemed to ripple beneath her feet.
She was stumbling stupidly in the common area with a silly smile plastered on her face, nursing a cup of vodka and orange juice, when a hand latched onto hers and pulled her into one of the rooms. The door shut behind them.
"We're all here." The voice belonging to her captor announced to the small huddle of nervous and giggly teens sitting in a circle on the bedroom floor. It took Elsa a moment of hard focus to realize that it was Jane who had dragged her into the room.
"Scoot over," one of the boys said, and they quickly scrambled to make room for the girls.
Four boys, four girls. Elsa was amazed that they'd all managed to squeeze into the tiny room. Jane set down an empty Corona beer bottle in the middle of the circle and Elsa groaned.
"What are we? Twelve?" Elsa practically bellowed, too drunk to realize how loud she was.
"Absolutely!" Jane grinned and wrapped her arm around Elsa's shoulder. "Time to show off your skills, Miss Hot Lips."
Elsa shot Jane a dirty look and took a large gulp of her drink. As drunk as she was, she wasn't sure she was drunk enough for a game of spin the bottle. But Jane was yet again in the middle of another breakup with her on-again off-again boyfriend, and Elsa had no choice to but ride out the crazy train.
"Okay, everyone. You all know the rules," Jane announced. "Ten seconds on the group's count, any less and you have to drink from the mystery bottle. If you refuse, you have to drink from it twice." She held up a bottle of mystery sludge and passed it around the circle. The liquid was a brownish green with a thick consistency to it, and judging from the nauseated cringes made by each member of the circle, it smelled as awful as it looked.
"Oh god," a wide-eyed short haired brunette exclaimed, crinkling her nose in distaste. "What's in this thing?"
"You don't' want to know," Jane replied impishly. "Trust me on this."
Jane was the first to spin. On her first attempt she impetuously spun too hard and the bottle shot out of the game circle and under the bed. On the try it landed on herself, and she scowled, but the third try was a charm. The bottle landed on a timid library science sophomore named Milo. Handsome, although lanky and bookish, Elsa recognized him as one of the boys that lived in the suite directly across from theirs. A warm blush tinted his cheeks, and Elsa guessed that he probably had little experience with the opposite sex. Milo sat up and crawled toward Jane, a shy smile slowly spreading over his eyes and lips.
It started as a tender kiss, his lips had barely brushed against Jane's, gently easing more pressure. But Jane was far more experienced and much too impatient for a slow build up, and pulled Milo by the collar of his shirt, trapping him in a deep wet kiss. Milo stiffened and his eyes shot open, looking like a petrified schoolgirl. Jane had practically swallowed his mouth with hers.
The group mercifully sped through the count. Jane was not pleased.
"No fair," Elsa's best friend pouted. "You guys counted way too fast!"
Elsa leaned in and hugged Jane in drunken consolation, but mostly to keep her balance. Elsa was already having a difficult time holding her head up and her eyes open.
The next person to spin was a dark-haired freshman named John. He sported a cheap plastic top hat, something he probably picked up at a party store, and wore round black rimmed glasses. The guy didn't live in their building, and Elsa hadn't laid eyes on him prior to the party, but she'd noticed he arrived with Wendy Darling, a sophomore from one of the first floor suits who happened to be sitting next to him.
"Wait, should I be spinning clockwise or counterclockwise?" John pondered out loud, sounding more like he was walking his way through a science experiment.
Wendy slapped his shoulder.
"Just spin the damn bottle."
He spun. And it landed on a horrified Wendy. Elsa suddenly recalled his brief introduction as "John Darling" when he arrived at party.
"That can't possibly count," a nervous Wendy said indignantly, clenching her fists in her lap. "Spin again, John."
Before John could make another grab for the bottle, Jane leaned in and snatched it away.
"Sorry kiddos. But rules are rules." Jane winked and handed Wendy the toxic mystery bottle. Elsa felt her stomach churn as she caught a whiff of it in passing.
"But he's my brother!"
John remained quiet, but his rigid shoulders and tensed jaw exposed his equal apprehension.
"Then drink," Jane replied.
A look passed between Wendy and John and he nodded at her encouragingly. She pressed the bottle to her lips, and slowly tipped it, but wrenched it away before the sludge made its way to her mouth.
"I can't," she whimpered. "It's too disgusting."
She looked to John and mouthed 'I'm sorry' even as the crowd began to chant for them to kiss.
"Time to pucker up!" Naveen obnoxiously called out to the siblings, puckering his lips and making loud kissy noises.
And they did. Wendy looked a shade of green as she tightly pursed her lips and leaned over to her brother, her eyes were squeezed shut. Almost painfully so. John looked even more horrified than Milo had been when he took his turn, but instead of pity, he was faced with a room full of amused and snickering looks.
A wave of chuckles filled the room as the coerced siblings pressed lips.
"…threeee-one thousand, fouuur-one thousand…" the group chorused slowly, to the chagrin of the siblings. James Hawkins snuck a picture on his phone, and Elsa suspected that brother and sister would likely not dare to be seen together on campus for a long while after that night.
"…teeen-one thousand."
The siblings pulled away gasping, clearly having been holding their breaths the entire duration of their wretched kiss.
"Bleach…" Wendy grumbled as she rubbed off her mouth.
"Cyanide…" Her brother bemoaned, doing the same.
Elsa started losing consciousness after that. The game seemed to have gone on without her because she could still hear them laughing and protesting as they continued around the room. She knew the bottle had landed on Jane at least once when Jane moved and Elsa lost her resting shoulder, sending her head plopping to the floor.
She wasn't sure how long she lay there when a hand shook her awake.
"Elsa, get up." Jane urged. "Time to pucker."
Elsa sat up groggily and stared at the bottle on the floor, but couldn't bring it into focus. She rubbed her eyes and opened them, vaguely aware of the snickering as all eyes looked at her.
"My turn to spin?" She reached for the bottle but Jane stopped her hand.
"It's pointed at you, silly."
A second look at the bottle and she realized that it was indeed pointing straight at her.
"Then who…?" She scanned the faces in the circle, most of them looking like they wanted to burst out laughing. James was not-so-stealthily readying the camera on his phone, and Jane was grinning from ear to ear. The only person that didn't look amused was the short-haired brunette with the alarmed green eyes.
"Oh."
Elsa couldn't remember the girl's name but she was quite pretty. Her soft facial features reminded her so much of Anna, something that even Jane had pointed out once before. Up until a week ago the brunette had been quite blond and her hair had been much longer. Some of the boys had started calling her Rapunzel shortly after the Icebreaker Games that were held at the dorms during their first week, and the nickname stuck.
I wonder if that's the reason that she cut her hair.
But she couldn't help but think about how the girl and Anna both had the same full cheeks and doe-eyed expressions; and near identical crinkles on the bridge of the nose when they got anxious.
Elsa took a gulp from Jane's Bacardi drink and got to her knees, crawling forward and inching to meet the girl halfway. Jane's eyes went wide with surprise, half expecting Elsa to make some semblance of a protest first, but that moment never came. The other girl looked a little nervous but managed a small smile, and even rolled her eyes as the boys around them hollered and whooped.
"Ready to do this?" the girl asked timidly.
So much like her, was all Elsa could think in her drunken stupor.
Barely nodding her reply, Elsa leaned forward until their lips met. Bacardi saturated her blood and she was floating now; she reached her hand up, smoothing her fingers over the girl's neck and slowly running them through her hair. Elsa pressed harder, and for the first time, felt the excitement of a kiss. It wasn't just slabs of flesh smacking together in awkward motion, it was butterflies in the stomach and the diffusion of tingling delight over her chest.
"...fouuuuuuuuuuuuuur…"
Until she kissed this girl, she hadn't realized just how unwelcome the rasp of stubble felt on her cheeks and her mouth. Even a close shave could not mimic the splendor of silken skin; too scathed and toughened from years of shaving.
This is what I've been missing.
She pressed deeper still, and her partner let out a startled squeak when Elsa pushed her way into her mouth. More alcohol pumped into her brain, and she was on an existential plane; blown by the realization that she could taste colors, and that the kiss she was consumed in tasted a lot like a tangy cerise.
"...seeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvveeennn…"
Somewhere in her mind, a grassy meadow sprouted on a powdery white cloud and threads of fresh cut grass feathered down over her. Elsa couldn't remember whose lips were attached to her own, and yet the memory of that earthy fragrance fueled her persistence.
"...teeeen."
And just like that, those soft and dainty lips were lost to her. Elsa dropped back and landed against Jane, unaware that the room had grown silent. She mumbled something before she passed out in Jane's lap.
All eyes turned to Jane, whose expression teetered between wide-eyed astonishment and confusion.
The green-eyed girl with the bright flushed face and swollen lips cleared her throat but she couldn't bring herself to say a word. Only James seemed unperturbed as he shamelessly snapped a picture of Elsa.
"Anna?" Wendy finally broke the awkward silence, repeating Elsa's last word. She turned to Jane and dared to ask the question that was on everyone's mind. "Exactly who is this Anna?"
~X~
Jane hadn't wasted any time booking her flight to Aarondale after Zan was completely moved into hers and Elsa's apartment. As soon as his last box was unpacked, Zan took off on his cross country skateboarding journey, desperate to garner enough attention for an invite to the X Games. And Jane had no intention of joining him. Not that he ever insisted. She had never been capable of mustering up enthusiasm for the sport, and whenever Elsa had attended events with them in the past she noticed that Zan couldn't bear Jane's tortured animal look, just begging to be put out of her misery.
The last time Jane had been in Aarondale was Christmas before last, when her parents announced they were divorcing. Her mother moved in with her boyfriend, Will Clayton, an arrogant wilderness guide from Montana, and her father relocated back to Oxford after accepting a teaching post as the new head of the Anthropology department. It surprised Elsa that Jane hadn't seemed all that upset about it. Unlike Elsa, Jane actually got along with both her parents.
She was glad to have her friend around. But as much as Elsa looked forward to seeing Jane after the awkward week at her uncle's farm, she had also been bracing herself from the moment the plane landed.
"Not a word from you!" Elsa warned as she helped Jane with her luggage into the trunk of the car. Jane already had that look in her eye; a dam of a thousand questions just waiting to burst.
"I didn't say anything."
"But I know you, Jane. We've been best friends since before the Stone Age. Not even your mom or your fiancé can claim to know you as well as I do. And you got those crazy eyes that are just dying to pry into my business."
"Well, you're mistaken," Jane huffed and gave her an indignant look before they got in the car.
The car ride back to Aarondale from the airport would be at least an hour in normal traffic and without any pit stops. They weren't on the road for more than five minutes when Jane started fidgeting with the radio dial.
"Stop doing that." Elsa swatted her hand away.
"Please just tell me that you're seeing someone," Jane pleaded.
Elsa glanced down at the speedometer and considered risking a speeding ticket to trim down the duration of their drive.
"Are you planning on nagging me about this the entire ride back?"
"If I have to, yes."
Elsa groaned loudly.
Jane rolled her eyes.
"It's not my fault that I sound like a broken record, you know," Jane insisted, giving Elsa her most conceitedly pragmatic look. "I'm practically an old married woman now—"
"You got engaged just two weeks ago."
"—and I've been dating the same guy for nearly 6 years."
"During most of that time you two were broken up and seeing other people," Elsa replied flippantly, unable to contain the amusement that crept into her eyes and onto the corners of her mouth. "You spent winter break in Cabo guzzling down margaritas with a local guy named Marco."
"Ugh! I'm gonna hit you Elsa Aarons!" Jane whined, playfully grabbing and shaking her friend's shoulder. "You're completely missing my point."
"I get your point, Jane." Elsa asserted gently, though her nerves were beginning to fray. "It's the same point you've been trying to make for years, but I just don't—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't have the time. You're too busy studying for exams, or you have your internships, and now it's your Master's program." Jane exhaled loudly. "Elsa, I'm sorry sweetie, but even the cleverest of minds made the time to date. Even Einstein had a girl."
Elsa scoffed.
"He married his cousin."
"Well, beggars can't be choosers."
Elsa sighed, and eased her foot a fraction harder on the gas.
"I ran into Will Turner a week ago," Elsa confessed, already starting to regret the words that were tumbling out of her mouth. "He said that he's throwing a bonfire at the lake. And quite a few people from our graduating class will be going."
Elsa cast a sideways glance at Jane and wished she'd kept her mouth shut after all. Jane's eyes lit up, and Elsa could already see the wheels turning in her head.
"You're holding something back," Jane accused, her grin already spreading from ear to ear.
"It's nothing really," Elsa coolly replied, her eyes fixed on the road.
"Oh please, it's never not nothing with you."
Elsa could feel Jane's eager stare boring into the side of her head, and she swallowed, feeling a knot beginning to form in the pit of her stomach.
"So?" Jane pressed on.
"He—he wanted to know if I was seeing anyone. He figured that maybe—that maybe we could go…together."
"No way. Shut the front door!" It was the closest that Jane ever came to cursing, a habit she picked up from years of watching the Disney Channel. Jane would never admit it, but she still watched it every evening behind closed doors. And Elsa never told her, but she could hear Jane's television humming from across the hallway even as she sang along to the intro song of Boy Meets World.
"I told him that I'd think about it."
Jane let out a dramatically frustrated groan and rubbed her forehead.
"Why do you always give me hope, then cruelly snatch it away?"
"I do try," Elsa replied, smiling a little to herself. She could always count on Jane to bring the melodrama. "All kidding aside, he's just not my type."
"You have to have a type first before you can start excluding from it," Jane pointed out.
Exactly what qualifications made for her type was a mystery to Elsa, with the exception of a glaringly obvious detail she had never admitted to anyone out loud, not even to Jane. Whenever she pondered what her type might be, the first thing to cross her mind had nothing to do with looks or personality; it was the scent of fresh-cut grass. The memory of it so strong that it filled her and left her aching with nostalgia.
But most recently, whenever she considered it, Anna's face flitted in and out of her thoughts, and that old spark of attraction that she thought to be long dimmed, glimmered back to life.
"You want to go to the bonfire? I'll go if you want to go." Elsa had nothing better to do, and having a few drinks with their old classmates didn't seem so bad with Jane around.
"Yes. Absolutely!" Jane beamed widely. "I just can't wait to see the old gang again." But then she frowned and crinkled her face like she'd tasted something bitter. "Oh god, I just hope that Esmeralda Romani got fat. That hipster gypsy girl was always flirting with Zan just to spite me."
Elsa laughed, it was soft and rippling, and full of amusement. All these years later and Jane had hardly changed at all.
"It's a date then. I'll let Will know that we're coming."
"Wait, you're not planning to go with him?" Jane looked at Elsa like she'd grown a second head. "Have you gone mad?"
"Why would I go with him when I already have a lovely date to keep me company?" Elsa briefly averted her eyes from the road and gave her best friend a look of mock sincerity, fluttering her eyelashes at her.
Jane drew a deep breath and shook her head in resignation.
"Hopeless," she said. "You're completely hopeless."
~X~
With Jane back in town, Elsa had packed up most of her things from the guest bedroom in her aunt and uncle's farmhouse. It hadn't taken her long; she'd arrived with no more than a suitcase and a carry-on bag at the beginning of her stay just a few weeks before. The only thing she'd added to her belongings since then was a leather Aussie hat she purchased at the outlets.
It was a beautiful hat, and she wore it quite well. But it wasn't supposed to belong to her.
After all, It was Anna who saw it first.
On that same weekend that Elsa had arrived at the farm, Anna and Kristoff had made plans to drive out to the Corona Valley Outlet Mall, an hour south from Aarondale. Aunt Jenn had insisted that Elsa go too.
"The young should stick with the young," her aunt had said as she coaxed a reluctant Elsa to climb into Kristoff's truck, and sit right next to Anna. "Besides, we're gonna be off at the auction all afternoon. So go on. Unwind and have a good time."
Despite her calm outward demeanor, Elsa had been completely knotted up inside, her heart clenching every Anna's arm bumped against hers during the hour long drive.
As soon as they had arrived, they made plans to regroup in front of the theater by three. But they didn't split off until they hit the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, when Anna and Kristoff started tussling playfully over a piece of chocolate. Elsa had been the one to excuse herself, saying that there was a book she wanted to buy.
"You sure you don't wanna get something sweet?" Kristoff had asked wistfully. "I'm buyin'."
"No, but thank you," she'd replied politely, slipping into a closed-mouth smile.
After she turned to leave she heard Anna's loud boisterous laugh as she and Kristoff resumed their play-fighting over a chocolate brownie. Touching and pulling at each other unabashedly. They looked just like a couple of lovebirds.
But there was no book she was looking for, so she wandered the shops for the next hour, wishing 3 o'clock would come faster. An hour later she'd stumbled upon Anna at the Boot Barn, and quietly watched with amusement and fascination as her self-conscious cousin scanned the store before she furtively pulled off her cap and tried on the leather Aussie that had been on the display in front of her.
Anna had cast another glance around the store before she turned to face a large mirror. Elsa could clearly see Anna's reflection from where she stood. Nervous and embarrassed, Anna tugged at the brim of the hat and adjusted it comfortably over her braids. Satisfied, she dared to smile meekly at her reflection, and for that moment Anna seemed to be standing straighter and taller, her chest pushed out and her eyes beaming with radiance. She looked absolutely and adorably breathtaking.
But the moment didn't last.
It had been broken by a Kristoff, who had unknowingly brushed past Elsa, holding his stomach as he broke into a booming laughter. He flicked at the brim of the hat with his fingers, tipping it forward over Anna's eyes. Mortified, she practically yanked it off when she saw Kristoff's reflection in the mirror.
In that same instance, Elsa had turned away and grabbed a nearby book, absurdly pulling it open over her face. She dared not make any sudden moves, unsure whether or not they had spotted her as well.
"You look so weird with that hat," Elsa had heard Kristoff say, his loud voice attracting a few onlookers from the other end of the store. "Like you're trying to be a girl, or something."
Daring to steal another look, Elsa had turned back, holding the ridiculous book over her face, and caught the injured look in Anna's eyes. It had only been there for a split second before her face hardened and she rolled her eyes.
"I am amazed at your stunning inability to differentiate between the sexes," Anna snarked. "Of course I am a girl, you jackass. And it's a unisex hat."
She threw the hat at his head, but he ducked, and it landed on the floor.
"Oh, you know what I mean," Kristoff told Anna as the two began to make their way out of the store. "Girlish things just don't suit you, and it made you look kind of girly. That's not really you."
Once they had disappeared, Elsa picked up the hat and dusted it off. She tried it on, doing her best to mimic the expression she'd seen on Anna, and it surprised her just how well it suited her. One look at the price tag, and she realized that Anna wouldn't have been able to buy it for herself, even if Kristoff hadn't hassled her about it.
An hour later, when the three of them were headed back to the farm, Elsa had made sure that the hat was perfectly tucked away from prying eyes in her oversized shopping bag. It wasn't really her usual style, but she hadn't intended it for herself when she paid for it at the checkout.
She meant to give it to her when they got back to the house. She'd held it behind her back, trembling slightly as she sought out the right words while she stood at her door way, but the right words never came, nothing but a half whispered 'goodnight.'
The days quickly turned to weeks. Weeks. And she still had not given her that hat.
And then a week ago, the idea came to her. She didn't have to personally hand it to her at all. Elsa quietly crept into Anna's room after breakfast, right after everyone had gone out to start unloading bales of hay off of the trucks. She'd set the hat on top of Anna's pillow, and couldn't suppress a smile when she noticed how neatly the bed was made and yet, how messy the rest of the room was. Jeans, shirts, and boots were scattered all over the room.
By lunch, she had forgotten all about the hat. That is, until Anna came downstairs holding it in her hands.
"I think this is yours," Anna said as she held it out to Elsa. "My mom must've put it in my room by accident. Sorry about that." She smiled apologetically, waiting for Elsa to take it from her hands.
"Right," Elsa replied slowly as she took it back, realizing that there had been no flicker of recognition in her cousin's eyes. Anna had completely forgotten that hat.
"It's a nice hat though," Anna went on. "You should wear it sometime. I bet it looks really good on you."
And just like that, the moment had passed.
~X~
They didn't go straight to her family ranch from the airport.
Elsa and Jane took a detour back to the farm after Elsa realized that she'd left her packed bags up in the guest room. She had only meant to run up and grab them, then head right out, but Anna was lurking in the dimly lit hallway and Elsa suddenly forgot why she's rushed up the stairs so deliberately in the first place.
"You're leaving us already?" Anna asked awkwardly. She chewed her lower lip and slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Anna looked restless the way she shifted where she stood, the balls of her bare feet rubbing in circles on the floor, and her hands practically burrowing into her pockets. She couldn't keep still.
"For now. Yes."
"You usually stay through the summer."
"I do, but Jane's here, so…"
"Yeah, Jane's here," Anna echoed.
There was something there that wasn't there a week ago. Elsa could already feel the change between them and a charge of energy in the air. Anna should have hated her after that kiss in the barn, she'd certainly been angry enough just after.
Elsa had never been so scared. Afraid that Anna would see that kiss for what it really was. The dirty little secret she'd kept buried in that deep dark basement where she tucked away years of fear and resentment. She had no right to those feelings, the blood that they shared was proof enough of that. And yet—
She touched me.
"You gonna stay there for the rest of the summer?"
"I'm not sure. Nothing's been decided."
"Oh, well… don't stay a stranger," Anna replied, but there was a trace of disappointment in her voice even as she smiled up at Elsa.
That goofy smile again.
"You know," Elsa began slowly, and with the slightest look of hesitation in her eyes. "It's—it's not like you wouldn't be welcome if you wanted to come by the ranch. And we'll probably run into each other at the Rodeo—"
The hallway light switch flicked on and they nearly jumped as their eyes adjusted to the onslaught of bright light.
Jane came leaping up the stairs and latched onto Elsa from behind, shaking her eagerly, squealing and bounding up and down like a child on a sugar high.
"Fooood!" Jane practically sang. "Your aunt just invited us for dinner. Do you know what that means?" She paused and stared impatiently at Elsa, waiting for a reply.
"Food?"
Jane rolled her eyes and laughed.
"Yes food, but more importantly, home cooked food. I haven't had a home cooked meal in ages!"
"But didn't you wanna head back to the house and unwind?"
"Oh, let's stay!" Jane pleaded. "They're gonna barbeque."
Anna giggled and Jane quickly realized her manners.
"Anna! Gosh, just look at you! All grown up."
"I guess I am," Anna shyly replied.
"Something about you seems different though," Jane teasingly mused as she took a step closer to Anna, peering into her face. "Have you gotten taller? Contacts, maybe? Wait, you never wore glasses. Um, a boyfriend, then? Maybe the taste of forbidden love?"
Anna's face flushed a shade of red. The hue slowly tinted her cheeks and spread along the freckled path of her nose and cheekbones. She briefly caught her cousin's eye before she cast her gaze to the ground. Elsa looked away as well, feeling just as embarrassed.
It' probably nothing, she told herself, daring to steal another glance at Anna, remembering the tender way their hands had touched just days before.
Nothing at all.
~X~
Jane wasn't sure if she should think what she thought. It could have been a fabrication of her wild imagination. Like when she imagined—well, fantasized, really—that Zan was an Earl and the heir to a billion dollar empire, except that he was secretly a feral ape man, a Lord of the Jungle with tight and rippling muscles cascading down his body.
But as much as Jane wanted to chalk it up to her overly active imagination, her imagination had nothing to with the way Elsa tried not to look at Anna during dinner, or the furtive glances Anna cast in Elsa's direction when her back was turned. And her imagination certainly didn't fabricate that spin-the-bottle game all those many years ago.
"We're going to a bonfire tomorrow night," Jane told Anna and Kristoff after they polished off their plates, all the while peering at Elsa from the corner of her eye. "You guys should come. It's gonna mostly be people from our graduating class, but who doesn't remember Anna? You two were just as inseparable back then."
Kristoff's eyes lit up.
"Oh yeah! I ran into Flynn Rider a few weeks ago and he'd mentioned that he and the guys were thinking of doing something. But that bastard never called me back," Kristoff grumbled, yet it was clear from the good humor in Kristoff's eyes that he wasn't remotely upset.
He slipped an arm around Anna's shoulder and pulled her close.
"You can count on this fantastic duo to make an appearance," he said as he pinched Anna's cheek with his extended hand. Anna took hold of his index and pointer fingers, twisting them with just enough force for Kristoff to cry out.
"Anna, please! I give," he whimpered, his face twisted comically in pain.
"And?"
"No more pinching. I swear."
Anna released his fingers and Kristoff pulled his arm back, cradling his aching hand against his chest.
"Meanie," he muttered, and Anna beamed a wide smile toothy smile at him.
Jane laughed. "I still can't believe you two never dated, and to think that everyone thought you two were an item in high school."
"Vicious rumors," Kristoff asserted in mock exasperation.
"Ugh, that Merida is such a liar!" Jane cried out. "I actually believed her when she said that she saw you two kissing at the drive-in during spring break of our senior year."
Kristoff grinned sheepishly, anxiously glancing at Elsa before he replied.
"Well, that rumor may have actually been true."
Jane's eyes darted between Anna and Kristoff, her brows knit in confusion. Anna's entire body stiffened, and her smile swiftly evaporated from her face. She stared hard at her hands as they rested in her lap, picking at her cuticles. Kristoff didn't seem to notice, he was far more concerned by Elsa's reaction, evidenced by the way he kept searching her eyes.
"But it's true that we were never a couple," Kristoff quickly explained. "We're just good friends. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." He playfully socked Anna on the shoulder. "Right, Butch?"
Anna looked up with a plastic smile and laughed softly.
"Right, Kid."
Elsa had remained quiet the entire time, a diverted outsider looking in. If she was bothered, her bright eyes and softly upturned lips didn't betray her, but Jane didn't miss the way Elsa's nails dug into the table.
Jane felt partly to blame, and still, she wasn't sure about her muddled suspicions, she just knew they needed to talk about something else, anything else, or that table would not survived the night.
"So Anna, tell me," Jane said with an unabashed glint in her eyes. "You wouldn't happen to know if Esmeralda Romani got fat, would you?"
They excused themselves shortly after.
Jane was tempted to question Elsa when they made their way up to the guest room to collect Elsa's things. The words were just begging to come out. Jane was never the kind of person who bit back her words. It had cost her many friendships over the years. Except for Elsa. Elsa had been the only friend who stuck around. Jane could say anything to her and trust that Elsa would understand her neurotic ways.
But she couldn't ask her about this.
Elsa grabbed her suitcase and Jane helped her with the carry-on bag. She stepped into the hallway when she realized that that Elsa had not followed behind her. Jane looked back. Elsa stood at the foot of the bed, looking uncertain as she hesitantly picked up a leather cowboy hat.
"Elsa? You forget something?"
"No," she replied, setting the hat down on the mattress. "It's nothing."
She took a hold of her suitcase and rolled it out the room, flicking off the light switch on her way out the door.
...to be continued.
Author's Note: I'm enjoying this story too much to end it so soon, so I'll continue with it a while longer. Next chapter will be the bonfire...perhaps a good time for a little lakeside brawl...dunno, maybe. Like it? Hate it? Lukewarm about it? Feel free not to hold back any punches.