Archive of Our Own

OVER BLACK

The sound of ocean waves filter in, regular, calming. As the sound continues

 

QUOTE APPEARS:

“I fill my brain with lies to pass the time. And it does pass -- in the blink of an eye. An eye blink in excruciatingly slow motion.”

- I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS

Charlie Kaufman

 

QUOTE FADES OUT WITH THE BLACK

 

EXT. SUNNY BEACH - DAY

A woman sits staring out to sea. She is wearing a beaded necklace of varying colors and pieces, as a child might wear. Prominently placed is a white bead with the letter ‘A’ on it. It has seen better days. Her short and badly cut red hair is caught in the breeze, blowing this way and that as the waves roll over and over again.

Despite the sun, and the bright brilliance of the day, the woman's shoulders are sunk forward, her posture bad. She is pensive, thinking heavily.

The waves continue to sound, but

 

The world spins and Ava grips the railing tight, trying to breathe her way through the last few moments, Deborah’s words resounding in her ear as the sound of her heels move away.

You’ve got your own mountain to climb.

Except it feels like the mountain is coming down on her, left alone as the debris hits, as the lights of the city blur with her tears.

---

She manages to make her way down the stairs, apologizing when people strike up a conversation, when the girl manning the cloakroom asks if she’s okay.

She just needs to leave, down the elevator, down to ground level, before—

It’s not until she’s reaching for her seat belt in the Uber that she realizes she still has the empty champagne glass in her hand.

---

Ruby is there on the couch when she steps inside, the closing door triggering something in Ava’s mind, a need to rid herself of—

She drops the glass on the carpet and claws at her chest and back, trying to find the zippers there, trying to—

“Hang on Ava, hang on—” is said somewhere in between, a figure blurring in front of her, but Ava can’t—

She can’t hang on, sobs bursting from her as the true weight of Deborah’s decision, Deborah’s rejection, collapses on her.

And then she’s nothing but bare skin and a gaping chest wound, kissing Ruby, trying to feel something else, anything else than this.

“Ava, lets just—”

She sinks forward into warm arms, begging openly, begging with her words, with her lips, with her tears.

But Ruby tilts away, enveloping her instead, Ava’s defenses crumbling as she sinks into...

“I love h-her, Rubes—I l-love her, and s-she—"

The world shatters and splits into two.

---

She doesn’t move from Ruby’s couch for three days.

Not until her friend is looking back at her from the open door, Marcus beyond her, a familiar suitcase beside him, missing its wheel.

Left behind in Vegas for the party in LA, her new and extremely expensive carry-on still in Ruby’s spare room, before the world went to shit.

Ava looks up at him and knows he would’ve tried reasoning with…

Would’ve fought for her to remain where she’d wanted to be.

Wherever Deb was.

She thanks him, and hugs him, and knows that they’ll text each other, but not for a while yet.

Not until the dust settles.

“Show her what you’re capable of,” he tells her, before offering her a tight smile and departing.

---

“You want me to go with you?”

Ava looks up from the tennis ball container in her lap to find Ruby, quietly poised in the driver’s seat, the sun hanging low enough behind her to cast her face in a yellowy haze.

“I’m okay…I might be a minute though.”

“Of course—take all the time you need.”

The sounds of the amusement park, of people enjoying the last hour of sunlight in Santa Monica accompany her as she walks toward the water.

Ava thinks of the Grand Canyon, of all the moments she pulled off this lid to scatter a bit more of her father over the world he no longer inhabited.

This is his last resting place, a quarter of an inch left of him. Ava’s pant legs get wet with each wave, as her toes sink further and further into the sand, unable to simply turn her wrist.

Unwilling to let her father go too.

There’s a squeeze of her shoulder then, Ava picturing Deborah there in the split second it takes for her to look up and find no one.

Just a ghost of a memory returning.

Ava forces her muscles to move, and watches as the breeze carries him to the water.

Dunks the container in the sea foam, making sure he is truly gone.

Her eyes sting for days afterward.

---

The heartache settles into something manageable, something that lets her take a breath, see it from a different perspective.

She’s at the beginning of something new, something thrust upon her, but she has to try, because she can’t go back to Waltham.

Cant let herself slip into that mindset.

She won’t get out of it if she does.

She needs to trust that she has the ability to make something of herself again.

She knows Jimmy – and god, even Kayla – have her back, and Ruby’s in no rush to be rid of her, and she has a meeting lined up with Jessica and those execs, but it all just feels like...

It will pale in comparison to Vegas.

To her time spent with Deb.

Ava suspects it always will.

Except there’s a court date in two months, written in huge letters on Ruby’s fridge, and its enough of a neon billboard in the desert for her to aim for.

She wants to have something to show Deborah.

She wants to prove Deborah right.

---

She sets up a google alert.

---

The place ticks off enough of her boxes, except the parking is horrendous on the hill, and the shower head constantly drips.

But it costs less than the rent she gets from her condo, so she somehow makes money from the whole thing, which Marcus congratulates her for via text.

She almost asks how Deb is, but then her doorbell is ringing and she’s setting up her delivered TV and DVR, and she doesn’t need to ask Marcus, because there’s Deborah, in all her HD glory.

Beaming that smile of hers at her viewers, and maybe, Ava thinks, at her as well.

---

Jimmy calls and the neon billboard lights flicker off.

Of course.

Nothing more than a Hail Mary in the never-ending expanse between her and Deborah.

Ava looks out the window at the trees, green blurring with brown and a little bit of blue, and decides:

Now.

Now is the time to let it go.

---

And as much as she does get past it, one foot in front of the other so to speak, punch up job turning into a regular nine to five – or whatever the industry considers a daily shift – its in the quiet moments of the evening, when she pulls out one fork for her Doordash, when she sits in her writing nook in the lounge, when she brushes her teeth and gets into bed alone, that she misses her.

And wonders what might’ve happened, had she been allowed to stay.

---

Vegas Sun: Deborah Vance signs new deal with MGM.

Ava stares at her laptop screen until the words start to blur.

Pulls her phone from her pocket and...

It’s a wall of blue bubbles.

Ava adds another one:

Bit surprised by your new V deal. Figured you would’ve done something in LA? Esp while the ovens hot?

---

It’s easy enough to pretend she can’t get away from LA for Kiki’s birthday, hearing the note of uncertainty in her friends voice when she says Deborah has already RSVP’d.

Easy enough to do the same when Luna’s birthday comes around, she’ll be too busy running around with her friends to miss me spoken as her heart clenches, as she hears the disappointed Yeah, you’re probably right.

Overcompensates with their gift cards, the guilt ice cold in her gut.

Tries to communicate something, a feeling perhaps, when she gets begonias sent on Deb’s birthday, and hydrangeas on the day in July when they first met.

Happy Birthday, D.

A year like no other.

Marcus, kind and thoughtful, sends photos of them in Deborah’s more expensive vase, thanking her for Deb.

It’s not so blatant, but it’s obvious he’s trying to protect her from the blonde’s cold shoulder, felt 270 miles away.

She knows its him when the marigolds arrive in September, marking one year without her father.

Thinking of you today is printed on the florists card, black on gleaming white.

They die beside the TV and the photo of Deborah, points of reference to before, and there and never coming back again.

---

The show premieres to very good numbers for the network, and they trend that night and into the weekend, getting the green light for the back 9.

---

Love the show, pancake. Got a little buzz when I saw yr name in the credits ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Congrats on the show Ava. Mom told me to tell you she and Miss Loretta were howling with laughter. Good job. I’m proud of you

Is there any chance you could pass my number onto Trey Walton? He is 🔥🔥🔥🔥  oh, the show is funny, if you like that sort of thing...

when i laugh at your dumbass show the baby moves. Told Aidan that and now his hand is practically glued to me each Thursday night, so thanks!

Hi Ava, it’s Josefina.  I wanted to tell you how funny the show is each week, but also I miss you.  The dogs do too.  And Deborah, of course.  I told her to get in touch with you to congratulate you when the show started, so I don’t know if that happened?  Anyway, I hope you are well.  I’ll add some photos of the dogs for you to see.

Ava clicks on the attachments, feeling her eyes prickle with tears.

It’s just her period making her emotional.

Yeah.

That.

She takes an edible and waits for it to kick in, before trying again.

A masochist to the end.

Its pretty rde not to txt som1 back when theyv been trying to manetane a frendshp wth u. But whatevs. U do U D. U always do.

---

She wakes in the morning on the couch to her phone beeping, finding a pink post-it note stuck to the screen.

Check yr notepad, it says in a scribble she knows is hers.

Great.

Stoned Ava’s probably written down the recipe for chicken pot pie from Rachel Rays website again.

She’s both surprised and unsurprised to find it’s a page worth of rambling about the kid in the mall, beginning with dot points and ending in one long run on sentence that takes up half the page.

At the top, in heavily drawn letters is the title THE COAT RACK KID.

Stoned Ava is a straight shooter, after all.

She should probably nix that particular terminology from her brain.

Yeah.

The scribblings are a goddamn mess, but there’s enough there for her to have it in the back of her mind that day, while she hands index cards to Taylor, while she’s in the writers meeting, while she’s debating a donut or a fruit bowl at the crafts table.

By the time they’re filming the last episode of the season, she has a character outline for The Kid.

Is adding new things every—

“Enough working,” a voice tells her, and she looks up from her phone to find it’s Ellie, the brunette and very fit grip she’s been flirting with for the last month. “This is a party Av—you’re supposed to be having fun.”

She goes home with her and tries not to imagine blonde hair between her legs, tries not to think of that floor length burgundy dress, or the peak of cleavage in that bathing suit, or the sunlit soaked dream she still has.

But it’s no use.

She does anyway.

Deborah is still there, in the recesses of her mind, in the heat of passion with someone else.

A never ending scratch that won’t ever be itched.

---

She’s a week and a half into a month long break when Jessica calls to say there’s a sudden job opening in Calgary, some wannabe Umbrella Academy/Wynonna Earp thing for Netflix that’s failed the test group screening, that needs to re-shoot the pilot with script improvements now that a cast member has been arrested for drug possession and very publicly gone to rehab/been replaced, and can she be there by Wednesday?

So she goes, and freezes, and the lack of Ellie and any decent weather gives her time to truly concentrate on her job.

It’s too SciFi for her tastes, and the dialogue is corny at best, but she injects some snap, crackle and pop into it, and turns it from a turd into a tiara.

Wins over the studio in the process, much to the chagrin of the showrunner, who pitches a fit when Jessica demands a co-writing credit for her.

He threatens to ruin her name, and she laughs in his face, telling him she’s already done that herself with the Senator Rogers tweet.

She’ll be steering clear of The CW anyway, which is where he’ll be headed, for sure.

---

LA warms her bones once more, but Ellie’s moved on to a different show during the hiatus, and it simply fizzles out.

No harm, no heartache.

And Ava decides she’ll use it in her favor.

Really knuckle down.

She has a vibrator and an internet connection, anyway.

And QVC.

---

Her phone vibrates early on Christmas morning, and keeps vibrating as she pointedly tries to get back to sleep, knowing the blue screen beam will wake her completely if she looks.

There’s only so many hours she can spend with her mother, and she’s not about to kick it off prematurely.

It happens again, and she growls out a loud fuck, hurting her wrist on the cat litter edge as she misjudges her childhood room in the dark.

But the pain dissipates as she takes in the endless photos of a blanketed bundle of red hair and mucky, pale skin, the smallest of fingers peaking out.

Aidan Damas Jnr weighs 8 pound 14 ounces, and Ava can hear the depth of the miracle that is him in his father’s voice, breaking over words, apologizing repeatedly.

“I’m so, so, so happy for you guys,” Ava says, wiping at her eyes. “And hey, one less date to remember, am I right?”

When the last photo comes through three hours later while she’s eating her mother’s burnt omelette, it takes all of her strength not to burst into tears right there at the kitchen table.

Across the hospital room is Deborah, sitting in a chair and very much in her own world, lovingly gazing down at her grandson in her arms.

Ava gets it printed out when she gets home, setting it in a thrift store frame before adding it to its predecessor by the TV.

Continuing the masochism.

---

She becomes somewhat of a punch up queen for the studio over the next half a year, spending a few short days on pilot scripts that have been greenlit for production, to other garbage ones that not even Carrie Fisher, rest in peace, could fix.

It’s steady work, and varied enough that she doesn’t get bored.

The Coat Rack Kid morphs into half a screenplay in the spaces in between, while Benson’s Brewery is nominated for Emmy’s in the Lead Actress and Outstanding Writing categories.

Her name is included in the latter, the episode hailed as essential viewing by all the publications, and it feels like a celebration for her and her co-workers hard work.

Her mother calls, and Marcus and Kiki too, as well as DJ, who congratulates her and in the same breath says she’s over breastfeeding and this chunk of a kid can have the powdered shit.

“I miss you guys,” Ava tells her, suddenly forgetting that they’re not like her and Kiki, that they don’t have a friendship like—

“We miss you too. Aidan, and...”

Ava hears the Mom in the silence, in the way it extends down the line.

“How is she?” Ava asks softly.

“She’s good.” There’s a long moment, before, “You know how she is.”

Ava does, and doesn’t really anymore.

“Will you say hello for me the next time you see her? She’s not really much of a texter, is she?”

“No, she’s not. I’ll do that for you. Listen, I gotta go feed this garbage disposal kid of mine...”

It’s a blow off and she knows it. Won’t think any less of her friend for it.

“Of course, I’ll leave you be—”

“Congrats on the nomination again Ava—maybe one day you can shout Aidan and me to a movie premiere or something...”

“Yeah, sounds like a plan. Take care, yeah?”

DJ says she will and then that is that.

She spends the rest of the afternoon fielding calls and doing phone interviews, staring at her screenplay, trying to keep her voice even when she’s asked about working with the great Deborah Vance, as if they’re still friends that communicate, as if Deborah still gives a damn about her.

---

The Kid takes a backseat while she, Sudi, Sabrina and Steven promote the show and schmooze up to the right people.

And it suddenly becomes a business venture, not unlike the time when Deborah had to take her special to the networks, and still be rejected before changing course. Ava knows it’s a part of the industry, a part of what’s expected of her, but when she’s pulled into a PR meeting for referencing the acronym ASSS that the twitter nerds coined for her and her fellow writers, well...

It grates.

Once the opportunity presents itself, she pounces. Benson's Brewery makes Michelle Obama’s list of unmissable TV, and Ava retweets the article, tagging the goddess and asking if she thinks the acronym is funny.

The answer is yes, with a green heart emoji, and twitter all but explodes with validation, proving the PR people wrong.

Just be mindful of who you piss off, Taylor texts her later that night, while her name is still trending.

Marcus reiterates the advice, and Ava knows if he’s made the effort to call her, then she should heed it.

She’s made her point.

Twitter redemption story complete.

---

And then she’s slipping into her Marc Jacobs light blue suit, a homage to Cate in Oceans, adding pics to the ‘gram, and working the red carpet with her friends. Getting interviewed by the beauty that is Laverne Cox, and having a blast with Marc Malkin, and trying not to die when Sarah Paulson compliments her.

It’s both a blur and a burn of moments, and if it doesn’t happen again then she’ll be okay with it.

Emmy nominee will always precede her name.

She’ll have made something of herself.

Something for Deborah to see.

Their leading lady Daisy Ridley wins for Outstanding Lead Actress, crying about having a career resurgence in comedy television, and the best cast and crew a washed up Blockbuster actress could hope for and it’s sweet and endearing and Ava loves her dearly for it.

And then through the haze of happiness and champagne, Zoe Kravitz and Danny DeVito are announced to the stage, and Ava knows it’s her and her friends’ turn.

“There’s a whole thing on the teleprompter, but we’ve just been told to keep this short...”

Danny pauses and says nothing, laughter tittering across the room, the joke made.

Zoe smiles cautiously. “Here are the nominees for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series.”

The screen behind them comes up with clips from Keeley Jones, Lacey’s Day Parade, Helium Schmealium, Lump Briscuit, and of course Benson.

“And the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series goes to...”

Ava holds her breath—

“Ashley Nicole Black and Dan Goor for Keeley Jones: Those Aren’t Lemons.”

The room erupts around them and Ava schools her face into happiness, clapping as she watches the team two tables over go nuts. She spots Juno Temple and Jason Sudeikis in there somewhere, as Ashley and Dan take to the stage.

And she’s happy for them, she truly is, but the cold weight of disappointment sinks down into her gut, reminding her of the last time it occurred, holding onto a railing as a set of heels disappeared off into the night, taking the world with them.

It stays with her as they all get back to it, as she debates plot points on different colored post-its and eats too many donuts, cancelling yoga with Ruby to sit in her empty apartment and feel the walls close in.

---

Comprehension of the situation doesn’t come quickly.

But she slips enough for Ruby to notice, for her friend to turn up one day to find the lounge room in disarray and used takeaway cartons spread out over the kitchen table.

“Ava, are you spiraling again?”

“I’m busy with work, just because I haven’t cleaned—”

“Its not just that and you know it. Your Mom called to say—”

Ava laughs because if anyone would know, it would be Nina conniption queen Daniels.

Ruby’s face pinches in that specific way it used to, when they were together and clashing and...

Well, sure, the place is a mess, and the jokes aren’t landing at work and she keeps getting vetoed on stuff, and...and the stupid screenplay is hot garbage that no one will be interested—

“Ava, come back.”

“Why? What’s so good about the present moment? What’s so good about making do in LA? There’s traffic everywhere and my script is fucking horseshit and the woman I loved bailed on me.”

“And there’s another one standing here in front of you, trying to make sure you don’t get so low that I have to hide the sharp objects.”

Ava stares at Ruby. Not this again. “I told you I was drunk when that happened. Plus I’m not stuck at college any—”

“You’re clearly not coping with something. There’s scratch marks on your arm.”

She looks down at it and huffs out a laugh.

Nothing would ever come close to the marks she’d made with her nails in high school, misdiagnosed with eczema and an iron deficiency instead of the chronic...

Fuck.

Fuck.

And it’s not like her legs give out or anything, because she’s too focused on not giving Ruby the ammunition, but if she folds down into the couch heavier than intended, then...

That’s fine.

Everything is...

It’s fine.

Its just pale.

She can handle pale.

Everything is—

She feels a weight settle beside her. One hand taking her own and the other moving to her arm.

Gentle fingers caressing.

Her friend looks up and Ava sees the tears there. The worry etched in her face.

“Rubes...”

“You’ve cancelled yoga three times.”

“I know. Sorry.” Ava tries for a laugh with, “I really, really hate doing the chaturanga.”

Ruby exhales a sharp breath and drops her head, letting out a sob.

And it’s that night all over again, except it’s Ava pulling Ruby into her arms, and there’s no begging, but Ava can feel it radiating from Ruby nonetheless:

I love you, and need you to be okay.

Ava knows she needs to listen, before this gets any worse.

“I’ll book a doctor’s appointment—but I might need someone responsible to hold my hand?”

Ruby tilts her head to look her in the eyes, shaking it with what Ava knows is bewildered adoration, before the movement turns into a nod.

“You got it.”

Ava lifts her fingers up and wipes softly at Ruby’s cheeks, feeling the moment soften.

Their foreheads align slowly as Ava watches Ruby close her eyes.

Knows what she feels for Ruby and what Ruby feels for her are two separate things.

A mismatch.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she is.

She truly is.

“’S’okay...” Ruby whispers back. “Just want you back to being yourself.”

“Laughing about Yoga Tristan’s obviously stuffed crutch area?”

Ruby snorts, and leans back. “Stop it.”

“What? He clearly wanted people to see it!”

---

She gets a prescription for Lexapro.

The insomnia is the same as last time, leaving her yawning throughout the day, but it gives her time to write, gives her a task as she waits for her head to lighten.

“It’s good, Avs,” Ruby tells her, setting the laptop on the coffee table. “I like how it jumps between the kid and the older versions of her. How the necklace ties them together. That’s clever. But what happened to all the people at the start? Alien abduction?”

Ava flops down beside her on the blue couch, mirroring her friends position, offering her the popcorn bowl. “Its not really the point – it’s more about how the kid loses the world after hiding in the coat rack, and how she navigates that loss in the mall while growing up.” Ava throws a piece at her mouth, missing, then digs it out to eat. “Although I still don’t know if the whole endless supply of food and working plumbing is a huge plot hole or not.”

Ruby chews a bit of popcorn. “Well, the fact that there’s a white void surrounding the outside of the mall kinda suggests she’s no longer in Kansas anymore. So maybe its just a fact. Surrealism, or whatever. It’s not like Kate Winslet and Jimbo could actually have their minds wiped, right?”

Ava grins. “A Kaufman comparison. High praise. Maybe I will add that quote from the Jessie Buckley one at the start. I doubt legal will like it.”

Ruby holds up a buttery nugget, ready to aim. Ava nods and opens her mouth and Ruby hits the target.

“You know what I’d like? Adding script consultant to my resume.”

“Well, as long as you’re not expecting 4 million for it like you got for the third installment of She Says Revenge, then sure. Still a terrible name for a movie.”

“And The Coat Rack Kid isn’t?” Ruby smiles and then laughs, and Ava knows she’s simply amusing herself.

She holds a popcorn bit up and throws it right at her friend, hitting an unprepared Ruby on the nose.

“Oh, that’s how it is? Abusing an employee already? Okay, Ava O. Russell.”

Ava hangs her mouth open in outrage, and Ruby grins, grabbing a handful and shoving the lot in the redheads mouth. She does her best not to choke on them as humor bubbles up through her throat.

As soon as she swallows, she asks, “So you think I have something? I know it’s only half done, but something feels off with it still—like it’s missing a piece or something.”

Ruby’s eyebrows knit together. “Is that a general observation or are you still a little wonky with...everything?”

She supposes Ruby has a point. Her head needs to settle into its medicated state, and she knows it’ll be another month or two before the benefits start to show.

Its a work in progress, just like the script.

Funny how things work out that way.

---

Things settle, and the jokes start flowing better at work, and she starts walking around the neighborhood for the change of scenery.

And she’s on one of these walks, remembering how unfit she’d been when her and Ruby had been a thing, and those two boys she’d accidentally scared with her fire hydrant face, when it dawns on her.

The kid needs to walk into the void at the end.

A leap of faith into the unknown, unsure of what would greet her, but still doing it.

A life lived by herself in the mall, learning to process her loneliness, would lead to the revelation that it had been a good adventure, but she had to step into something else, despite her fear. Despite it scaring her.

Ava’s calves are burning by the time she makes it up her hill, kicking off her shoes at the door, mind already on the sentences she needs to type out, before—

---

She gets it all down, the kids journey from queer misfit hiding from her overly critical mother for nine hours, to brave and lonesome adult choosing the unknown, the white void, instead of the no future, no expectations and no one else option she’s experienced for years and years and years.

A little too close to her own bones, to Deb’s decision and her having to start over, but...

Maybe Mark Twain was right.

Maybe there was wealth to be found in the well known. Meaning in experience.

Something is still off though.

Some pertinent part.

The kid was destined for the void, for the leap of faith at the end, that much she knew, because the character and storyline deserved some catharsis, even if she’d deliberately left her fate unknown.

But there was that puzzle piece yet to be slotted in, some sliver of plot point or change of structure that needed to be found.

It was something to think about after Thursday, once she’d gotten through her meeting with Bill Hader.

She cant do much more tonight.

Ava brushes her teeth and gets into her sweats, before climbing into bed. Takes her meds and drinks some water, even though she knows she’ll have to get up in the night.

There’s a car alarm going off a few blocks away, and as she stares up at the darkened ceiling she thinks of the silence of the mansion guestroom, and the serenity of that early morning she’d walked down to Deb’s pond and sat on the jetty.

The bed gets colder, emptier with each memory, her brain refusing to shut off.

You gotta let it go.

But time means nothing to her heart.

And neither does her need for sleep.

---

Bill is enthusiastic about his new TV project, a major departure from Barry, and raves about her work, even the stupid SciFi show that got canned anyway.

She exits the meeting with a job offer, and it’s fucking Bill Hader, but it means getting out of her contract and leaving Benson’s and...

Putting The Coat Rack Kid away.

A collaborative endeavor, Bill had called it.

Free reign at HBO.

Big budget.

A chance to make something really—

“You gonna make sweet, sweet love with Barry, baby girl?”

Kayla.

She’s just about to answer when Jimmy does it for her, leaving her once again with her thoughts as they walk back to the car park.

She’d be able to move, and maybe get a new car.

Putting in a few good years at HBO would give her some strong name recognition, that would lead to bigger projects, and maybe into movies.

Maybe back to The Kid.

It was a process that needed to be worked through.

She thinks of that bar and the basketball game playing, Deborah drinking her white wine, her father’s ashes found.

The two of them holding onto a concept, trusting in it despite Ava’s self destructive email and Deborah’s legal ramifications. Still believing that something was there, that maybe...

It’s gone now.

It’s gone.

Done.

It’s hers now, alone.

---

She signs on the dotted line three weeks before Christmas.

Secures herself a future.

Deletes her twitter account, just in case.

---

The place on Mount Olympus is too big, with way too many fleetwood windows and an infinity pool she won’t be caught dead in, but it’s on HBO’s dime, so she does her best to settle in.

Invites her mother for Christmas in a moment of weakness, or loneliness, or maybe self-sabotage.

Spends a whole lot of time pulling her away from the view of the city, her mother unusually reflective, softened somehow.

“Your father would be very proud of you,” is said in one of these moments, the two of them sharing a bottle of red outside on the balcony lounge.

“What about you, Mom?” she asks, adding a little laugh in her tipsiness, or perhaps to protect herself. “Proud of me yet?”

And her mother looks at her like its been true this entire time, and says with conviction, “Always.”

Fifteen minutes later, she’s being told off for loading the dishwasher wrong.

Swings and roundabouts.

She’ll take what she can get.

A kiss to her cheek and a wave goodbye in her driveway, with a promise to come home for her birthday.

---

The call comes during a writing session with Bill in late January, Ava glancing quickly at her phone before rejecting it.

“You need to take it, Av?” he asks, and she shakes her head.

“Just my mom. There’ll be some supposed catastrophe she’ll chew my ear off about, so I’ll call her back.”

“Moms are the worst,” he adds, grinning that silly little grin she finds charming.

Yes.

She’ll call her when she gets home.

---

The world spins off its axis as soon as she sees the sombre faces of the police officers at her door, their words muffled under the beat of blood in her ears as she tries to—

And then she’s suddenly on her designer couch, in her designer rental, words filtering back in, Is there someone we can call? and This must be a terrible shock to you registering.

Her Mom.

Her—

“Deborah.”

No, that’s not—

“Ruby. Ruby—where’s my phone?” Ava moves to stand, before something stops her.

The policewoman.

“Miss Daniels, you have your phone. Let me call your friends, honey.”

It’s in her hand.

It’s in her goddamn—

She was supposed to call her mom.

She was supposed to…

Inexplicably she’s clicking on the voicemail, holding it up and…

Oh Ava, pick up your fucking phone—my head is pounding and I need you t—

She hears a thump, and—

And—

And—

The silence slips through her ear and into her head, numbing everything it reaches.

Deadening the heart below.

---

(Ava won’t recall her phone being taken from her, or the gentle, considered way the woman holds her hand while calling Ruby, out on a third date with Tasha.)

(Ava won’t recall the second one made to a woman in her MGM dressing room, 270 miles away, gazing at her reflection as she waits for the voicemail to save, before listening like she always does.)

(Ava won’t know Ruby runs three red lights as she races back from Koreatown, swearing in Spanish when she hits the inevitable traffic build up.)

(Ava won’t know Deborah leaves her Rolls in a no parking zone at the airport, still dressed in her show clothes, suddenly ill and unable to perform.)

(Ava is somewhere else entirely.)

---

The waves crash over and over again, the sun blazing on her skin.

She’s going to burn.

She stays still, not moving, watching the water spill up onto the beach.

Feels the weight of a singular beaded necklace against her, bits broken and damaged with time.

She waits for the scene to fragment, blue water to painted white glass, the hum of the artificial lights louder than ever.

The mall.

The tally marks there, black, red, and blue, pink for ten days until the kid had grown sick of the color.

Rows and rows and rows of them.

Thousands of lines, depicting time passed, days gotten through.

A pivotal scene in the screenplay.

Ava stares at them, picturing the camera panning around slowly, to other painted white walls, markings there as well. Panning around until it returns to the kid, now an old grey haired lady, and hunched.

Necklace gripped in her hand.

Worn every day in this place, a reminder of what came before.

A childhood.

Filled with worry and sadness and never quite measuring up to what her mother wanted her to be.

But hers to remember anyway.

Hers to recall in crushing clarity when the enormity of her predicament had been perceived.

Stuck in the mall, by herself, with no way out, or back, or through.

The world no longer making sense, illogical and out of whack.

The loneliness seeping in.

The grief.

Ava sits there, in the spot of the coat rack kid, because the process is the same.

She fills up her days with things to do and endless words, just like the kid, the young woman, the grey haired lady.

She fills them up to beat back the inevitable fact of her solitary existence.

She had a father and a mother and had to draw faces on pillows for company.

And now—

Ava stands, letting the necklace fall, knowing she won’t hear it hit the floor.

She has a destination in mind.

---

(Ava will not remember standing from her designer couch just as Ruby gets there, her friend rushing from the door towards her. She will not remember being embraced, held at arm’s length and worried over. She will answer Ruby’s questions in a monotone and one word answers, as if she is present in the room.)

(But she is not.)

(She will be taking the stairs when Ruby is distracted by the cops, who have places to be and donuts to eat, and if Ava were present, she would understand the temptation.)

(Ava will not know she finds a black marker in her bedside drawer. Ava will not know she picks up both pillows from her bed, gleaming white.)

(She will be walking out through the fleetwood windows of her bedroom when Ruby finds her way, the sensor lights turning on to illuminate the balcony. She will continue past the table tennis table and bar, the sprawling lights of LA off in the distance, and sit where her mother had sat at Christmas.)

(Ava will not see Ruby following, trying to understand, trying to figure out what needs to be done.)

(Ava draws on her pillows, and says I’m fine, and she will not know just how scared Ruby is in that moment.)

(Because Ruby remembers. Ruby has seen that emptiness in hazel eyes before. She remembers arguments and red arms and alcohol. Watching Ava closely and loving her always. But Ruby needs help with this now, because Ava is sitting on a balcony barely communicating, and the fall is less than eight feet away, and there’s too many sharp edges now.)

(Ava won’t remember Ruby sitting there, very still, one eye on Ava and the other on Ava’s phone contacts as she scrolls down.)

(Ava will pause for the briefest of moments in her drawing of her father when something gets through, some long lost voice her mind knows, muffled in it’s delivery.)

(But then it is lost.)

---

Ava walks down the corridors of the mall, taking in the drawings and paintings of the kid. Simple sketches of frogs and butterflies, making way for more detailed work, dragons and wizards and robots, to the most extraordinary landscape murals, city skyscrapers, and the perfect rendition of a house in suburban Boston.

A house she knew well.

The kids home.

There’s care in the paint strokes. Tenderness in the detail.

More love in the painting than the kid had ever felt in her brief time there.

It was an overcompensation; a misremembered memory, triggered by absence.

A lie.

But it was what the kid needed at the time, no longer a kid but an adult now, with time on her hands.

Holding onto the past to get through the present.

---

(Ava won’t remember finishing her rudimentary drawings of her parents, and sitting them together on the balcony lounge, overlooking the view.)

(She will stand once more, and walk straight past Ruby, heading back the way she came. She will not hear Ruby’s gentle requests to please snap out of this, or comprehend how close Ruby sticks by her, the balcony edge right there, the glass railing so easy to jump over.)

(Ava will not remember stumbling on the lip of the fleetwood window back into her bedroom, destination ingrained.)

---

The coat rack.

Still there in the department store, the same clothes hanging on it, mid-2000’s fashion made ugly with the passage of time.

Except it’s changed somehow.

Something is there that shouldn’t be.

She’s been a regular guest of the coat rack. Hidden in its darkened depths so many times over the years, wishing to be taken elsewhere, praying to a God her parents believed in but she did not for one miracle, one thing, one change of circumstance, to feel better, to feel happy, to feel something.

She knows this place inside and out.

And really, it’s no surprise.

Because of course it would be there.

Her double zipped dress, bought by Deborah and worn for Deborah and when she knew for certain she loved Deborah.

And it’s...

---

(Ava will know on some level why she walks into her walk in closet in the dark. Why she finds what she’s looking for, hidden in its protective cover, hanging at the very back. Why she opens it up, pulls it from its hanger and feels it between her fingers. Why her legs no longer hold her up, the wall taking her weight as she slips down it to the floor.)

(Ava will know on some level that Ruby is near, sitting in the dark with her, talking to her quietly, trying to bring her back properly.)

(That time passes.)

(That a familiar male voice is a little further away now, a voice that’s helped her, and seen to her needs, and whose Hail Mary gave her—)

(But Ava holds onto the coat rack still, unwilling to let the world in, unwilling to push the clothes aside and let reality in.)

---

The kid climbs in between the clothes, wanting a moment’s peace, a moment without her mother in her ear about the pillowcases or why she can’t be more like Mary and Denise next door, or her scabby arm from when she fell off her bike a week ago.

And she gets said moment, letting the sounds of the mall dull and then disappear, letting the tightness in her shoulders and chest go, at peace.

She is free.

And then, somehow, it snaps, the sounds of the world rushing back to her ears, the serenity gone.

The kid clambers out through the clothes, noting the police officers standing around, their heads turning her way, and then...

Her mother, screeching.

Her mother, slapping her face.

Her mother inspecting her bleeding arm, scratched—

Her mother, all through dinner and breakfast and invading what little space she has left. Picked up from school and dropped off at school and doctors appointments to find out what could’ve possibly kept her hiding for nine hours while they looked for her. Yelling at her father, the walls of the house too thin for the kid not to hear:

Something is wrong with her, Dennis.

Her mother.

Her mother.

Her mom.

Her mom.

Her—

---

(Ava stays in the coat rack, because she is safe there.)

(The world is quiet and her head is quiet and she can draw and paint, and write in the margins of the books at Barnes & Noble, and find music and tv and movies that speak to her, and tally mark time going by, and dream of the good bits and miss the good bits and never have to be hurt by the bad bits again.)

(She can dream of a rooftop and a blonde in a burgundy dress. Gaze into those endless blue eyes and let her hand slip along the railing until it meets the one it’s made for.)

(She can tell her.)

(She can say somewhere along the way I fell for you and wherever you go I want to follow.)

(And she can freeze frame it right there, right as the spark of affection for her appears in Deborah’s eyes, because Deb isn’t quite there yet, she’s got years and years of baggage to work through, but Ava can dream.)

(Ava has the greatest imagination of anyone in Tinsel town, and she can live on that pause of possibility for the rest of time.)

(She can stay where she’s safe.)

Except...

There’s a sound off in the distance, like something shutting.

(Ava ignores it, focusing on the upturn of Deborah’s lips, half-smile in static. The warmth contained within—)

Footsteps closer, closing in on...

(She moves forward into Deborah’s space, feeling the coat rack shrink around her, something deep in her gut telling her to—)

The voices are nearer, and clearer, their words rushed, and—

(Ava unfreezes the moment because the world is coming now, and she doesn’t think she can hold it off any longer, and she just wants Deborah, because Deborah is strong and knows how to weather the storm. Knows how to stand up against the terrifying weight of it all, and come through the other side.

“You were so young when you lost them,” Ava says. “What am I supposed to do?”

Deborah’s hand lifts to her cheek, and Ava leans into it as the blonde smiles softly, sadly, lovingly.

“Let it hit you, Ava. No more hiding away.”)

The night sky snaps to gleaming white and Ava finds herself—

“Come back, Ava. Come on, honey. You’ve scared Ruby and Jimmy enough now. You’re scaring me...”

It’s just the void.

It’s just the rest of it all, now.

Ava blinks in the artificial light of her walk in closet.

Deborah is there, hand soft along her cheek, blue eyes watery.

There’s a pinching at her leg and she looks down to find it’s Deborah’s other hand, squeezing her thigh through the material of the dress.

The hand lets go, but it still hurts.

It hurts everywhere—

A heaviness is pressing on Ava’s chest and she knows from experience that it is grief.

The enormity of her predicament has been perceived.

She looks up in search of Deborah, and finds her there.

“My mom died,” Ava says through her pain, eyes watering as they stay on Deb, as she fights for what little control she has left.

“I know, baby.”

Ava can see she understands.

“My m-mom died,” she says again, the sob spilling out of her then, and another, and—

She’s wrapped up and held as she cries, as the debris of death crashes down on her, aware of it all.

---

Ava stirs at the sound of a door shutting, hearing running water in the haze of sleep, before sinking back to—

Something shifts near her and Ava wakes a little more, hearing a quiet curse and then a faint creak across the room.

Someone.

And all at once she remembers.

Her mom.

Ava squeezes her eyes closed, trying to avoid the knowledge of it.

But she can’t.

She can’t have a repeat of...

The softness of the predawn light is creeping through the partly open doors.

A figure stands there on the balcony, framed once more, this time facing away, toward the city.

Deborah, wig removed now, slicked back hair, fur coat on.

Ava sits up carefully, taking note of a still sleeping Ruby on the right side of the bed.

Ava can feel the warmth from the empty spot to her left.

They have stayed with her.

They have stayed.

She draws the sheets to one side and slips the other way, her ankles cracking as they take the weight of her body.

She aches right down to her bones.

Suspects that it’ll be this way for some time.

Deborah turns her way as she steps through the doors, Ava noticing the shine of her freshly cleansed face.

“I woke you, didn’t I?”

Ava nods and settles beside her, leaning her hips against the glass.

“Sorry—had to get that muck off me.” There’s a pause, before Deborah continues with, “Good shower pressure. Incredible view too.”

Ava turns and looks out over the city, ill defined this early in the day, or perhaps she just isn’t...

She’s got so much to organize. She’ll have to call funeral homes back in Waltham, try and not stress over the exorbitant pricing, try and find her mom’s will. Put the house on the market when the time comes, get someone in to clean the—

“I can hear your mind whirring from here,” a voice says quietly, and Ava looks up to find Deborah already regarding her, eyes soft, but the thin line of her lips indicating her concern.

“Sorry—still trying to process...”

Her mother is dead. Her father is dead. And she’s...

She’s cold.

The exposed skin of her arms has prickled and Ava shivers, and she can hear her mother telling her to put another layer on before she catches—

She startles at the sudden movement near her, suddenly alone at the railing, and her heart lurches, mind racing back to the last time, champagne glass still in her hand...

Her eyes tear up, and she brushes at them furiously.

But then Deborah's back, the fleetwood doors closed now, wrapping the throw blanket from the foot of Ava’s bed around her shoulders. Ava watches her face as Deborah’s attention stays on the blue, making sure the material is secured around her to provide warmth. There’s a quick glance up, then down again, and Ava knows it’s done out of kindness. Sympathy. A need for Ava to have some privacy with her emotions.

She stays close, nonetheless.

“How did you know?” Ava asks, lifting her hands up to hold the blanket closed.

Two hands burrow back into fur pockets. “I got a voicemail from your number fifteen minutes before my show.”

“But you ignore your phone when you’re...” Ava lets the sentence go as she realizes. “You screen my calls.”

“I do.”

The admission is swift, and surprising.

Ava feels the knowledge of it sink deep into her gut.

She’s left so many on Deb’s phone.

Text messages too.

Hurt by the silence she’d received in return.

It adds to the ache that won’t go away.

She thinks she’d probably be angry if she could muster up the energy.

If her mom wasn’t in a steel drawer, waiting to be—

Her throat grows tight, her tears accumulating, the world blurring.

But she feels an arm go round her, the press of a hand on her lower back, and Ava lets out a shuddering breath as she leans forward into the hold.

“You’ll be okay,” Deborah tells her, and there’s conviction in her voice, the kind Ava remembers trusting.

The kind used on the Sunset Tower rooftop nearly two years ago.

Less than two miles away.

She drives past it at least once a week.

The thought disappears as a thumb curves wetness along her cheekbone, as the bluest of eyes glisten in solidarity.

“I miss you,” Ava whispers.

Deborah takes her words in, and Ava hopes for something, anything to tell her it was mutual, that her feelings were—

“I can guarantee you it pales in comparison to how much I miss you.”

Her breath leaves her at the choice of words, at the sudden intensity of Deborah’s gaze.

The weight bearing down on her chest lifts infinitesimally, and it’s enough.

Its enough.

The hand at her cheek disappears, Ava welcoming the feel of it around her, encasing her in safety and warmth.

She lets go of the blanket edges and slips her hands underneath fur toward a stable waist. Latches onto the blouse there. Sees the subtle widening of eyes, worry blooming.

“I’m here, Ava.”

It’s meant to reassure her, but she needs something solid, something she can feel between her fingers.

“S-sorry. Just making sure.”

Deborah sighs, and Ava drops her head forward, squeezing her eyelids shut.

The tears come anyway, leaking from her eyes like they might never stop. Like they’ll cascade there forever, right down her face.

Lips graze the skin above her nose, and stay there, and Ava thinks about missed opportunities and how she should’ve answered her mother’s call, and the very real fact that she won’t ever even get to argue with her again. That the universe has decided there’s no more need for Nina Patricia Daniels on this earth. That Ava had gotten her fill with their lengthy square peg in a round hole battles.

Why didn’t she just answer?

What would it have cost her? Half an hour of her time?

Ten minutes?

Five?

One goddamn minute.

She could’ve helped, could’ve called 911 or...

Not let that moment go.

Not let that...

Moment go.

Ava tilts her head up, nose brushing skin as she kisses Deborah’s bottom lip, her own parting as she comprehends what she’s done.

Holds herself still, a breath away from Deborah, a breath she can’t seem to inhale.

Then a warm nose is slipping back and against the tip of hers, feather light, once, twice, three times.

It calms her.

“When things are...better, we’ll talk about this.”

Ava opens her eyes and sees ocean blue, sees that Deborah is committed to her words.

That she’ll be a safe harbor in the storm.

“Also, not to make this about me,” Deborah says, ghost of amusement in her tone, “but I’d like you to know that we can enter The Amazing Race now.”

It takes Ava longer than it should, but then the conversation comes back to her, in Deborah’s bedroom, and—

“You flew coach?”

“I did. Delta’s peanuts are terrible. And I autographed thirteen sick...”

Ava feels her tears spill once more, helpless to stop them, stammering out an apology as she’s gripped by two warring feelings.

Loss and love.

“Oh honey...”

Arms tighten their hold of her, and Ava drops the rest of the way to a fur lapel.

“I’m so sorry this happened. She was...” Deborah pauses for a long moment. “Exceptionally entertaining.”

It does the trick.

Ava snorts in her tears.

“And by that, I mean she was...”

“B-batshit crazy?” Ava finishes, unsure if she’s chuckling or sobbing.

Maybe both.

“Well, yes. I see you’ve kept your true blue honesty. Which is rather apt, since Dianna told me three months ago I’d sleep with two women.”

Ava lifts her head to look Deborah in the eye, tears and all. “D-did she predict one of them would look like Little Orph—L-little...”

But the weight of it crushes her ability to...

The amusement vanishes, leaving only the loss, and Ava is overwhelmed once more.

She is the coat rack kid again.

But this time she’s not alone.

---

Deborah Vance cancels upcoming MGM show dates for family reasons: ‘I will be back'

---

She calls the number of the neighbor four houses down that found her mom outside by the car.

Barefoot and already gone.

Already...

Ava hears the sequence of events, takes their words on board, but cannot relay them afterward to Marcus and Jimmy, no matter how hard she tries to concentrate.

All she knows is they have Mr Cream Pie for now.

That their story matched up with the one the police gave her.

A significant cardiac event or aneurysm.

Likely the latter.

Barefoot and sprinkled with snow.

---

Deborah stays.

They all come and go, but Deborah stays.

Gets her to laugh when she needs it, and offers her a shoulder to cry on when she needs that as well.

She says nothing about the photos by the TV.

---

Marcus organizes a P.J for them from LAX to Logan, Ava falling asleep for the first time ever while in the air.

It seems like a minor miracle to her until she’s unlocking the front door of her parents house and it suddenly opens, Josefina ushering them in.

“Quick, quick, come out of the cold—remind me never to come back to Boston in February again.”

The living room's never looked smaller with her friends in it, and Ava bursts into tears, welcoming Kiki’s arms around her.

“Ah, I don’t think I’ve done a group hug since high school,” Ruby says, “but I think maybe Ava might need one?”

There’s a hum of agreement and Ava feels the pressing of bodies in, warming her aching bones.

She hurts a little less.

Forgets it momentarily when Aidan and DJ get her to sit and offer her a wiggling little redhead to meet.

“Well—our paths finally cross, Master Damas. Aren’t you just the spitting image of your father?”

AJ smiles up at her dopily and Ava’s head feels lighter somehow, like the world might tilt back onto its axis if she just waits it out.

“That’s his I’m about to shit my diaper look,” DJ says. “You’re about to be hit with skunk level stink out, so prepare yourselves everybody.”

Ava catches Damien very deliberately disappear into the hall, chuckling under her breath.

Looks across the room to find Deborah leaning against the kitchen door frame, ostensibly listening to Josefina talk, with her eyes already on Ava. They widen a little when Ava catches her, then crinkle.

Which is when the skunk smell hits her.

“Oh god, that is vile.”

Ava gags and a very distinctive cackle joins AJ’s giggle.

She doesn’t need to look to know who it’s coming from.

---

The house is warm and full of bodies that night, air mattresses blown up and the sofa bed in the basement cleared of the vibamin boxes she still has to return, or burn, or—

“You’re scratching Ava,” Deborah says from her bed.

Fuck.

She squeezes her hand into a fist, then tucks it underneath her butt, the plastic of the mattress squeaking.

She won’t be getting much sleep tonight.

At least her mother’s endless bed sheets and blankets have finally been put to use.

Thirty years worth of stuff to—

“Whirring like a dishwasher again,” Deborah interrupts. “I can hear your diva cup clanging around.”

Ava laughs, the sound reverberating off her four walls.

The silence slips in slowly once more, Ava listening to Deborah’s breathing as she stares up at her ceiling.

So many nights of her life spent this way.

Spent feeling this way.

“My mom thought my depression was an iron deficiency.”

Ava says it quietly, mostly to the air above her, but wanting — needing — Deborah to hear it as well.

To fill in the gaps, she supposes.

“Mom’s miss the important stuff sometimes.”

Ava can hear the weight in Deborah’s tone.

Her heart aches for her.

She’s not sure if it will ever stop hurting.

“I hated her for it. Hated that I had to...nullify myself to keep her happy. To keep the peace. I don’t think I was ever truly myself around her.”

Her mind stays on the sentence.

Then her bed is moving, sheets shuffling around, the darkened edge of a pillow hanging over the side as an arm reaches for...

Ava pulls her hand out, the air mattress sounding, and takes the one offered to her.

This is a new thing they’ve been doing since Deb turned up without a second thought or change of clothing. Finding one another physically in the whirlwind of her grief.

Deborah is peering at her in the dark, Ava unable to make much of her out.

But she knows there’s care in her gaze. Compassion.

A recognition of her.

“I don’t think she ever saw me the way you did.”

Its the truth, spoken into the space between them.

Deborah squeezes her hand. “I still do.” A pause. “See you that way, I mean. I feel like that’s...”

Ava waits.

“I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.”

“You once joked that Grace Kelly needed to retake her drivers license.”

“But I didn’t know her, did I? I know you, and your mother by proxy.”

“What were you going to say then?”

“Its on your mom. It’s on her for not seeing how special you are. It’s on her, Ava, not you.”

The words sink in, and...

She doesn’t know what to do with them. She doesn’t know what to do with a lifetime of disconnection and her mother remembering it differently than her.

Proud and nothing like it at all.

There’s nowhere to go with—

“Forty-two years later and they still won’t let me in their fake fucking country.”

Ava has to backtrack to catch up. Realizes it’s Deborah trying to lighten the mood.

She loves her for it.

“Why don’t you trade places with their princess? I’m sure she’d jump at the chance to get the fuck out of there again.”

“No thank you. I gave up being married to ball-sacks when I divorced Frank.”

“And yet you continued to fuck with a certain casino owner who shall remain nameless.”

Laughter titters from Deborah. “Walked into that one, didn’t I?”

“You did, but you get a pass for being here.”

Ava senses a smile is sent her way.

The banter quietens between them, Deborah’s head tilting the way of their joined hands. Ava feels fingers slip in and out of hers, warm and gentle skin along her own.

A connection.

Ava grins to herself and counts, “Three, two, one...”

“Still gargantuan,” Deborah finishes the joke, the two of them laughing.

Ava’s missed this.

The easiness of their link.

The humor and the heart underneath it.

The heat simmering away in the lowest part of her gut.

All of it leaking into the open wound of her chest.

Perhaps filling it.

Perhaps—

“We should get some sleep,” Deborah softly says.

“Yeah.”

She waits for the inevitable releasing of her fingers. For Deb to roll over.

For the link to be broken.

But Deborah adjusts herself instead, shoulder off the bed now so Ava can lower their hands to the bed sheet.

“You’ll wreck your back.”

“Its already wrecked from that sardine can of a flight. And all the mattress jumping.”

Ava tsks a humorous note into the air. “Makes you sound like you’ve been sleeping around.”

“Only one man in my life right now, and he still shits himself.”

Ava cringes at the memory of that smell. “So a step up from Marty then?”

Deborah snorts. “Yes. Leagues above.”

The photo of Deborah with AJ from last Christmas comes to the forefront of her thoughts. The inevitable way her eyes would drift to it when watching Deborah in that Philly studio. The comfort of knowing that the world had expanded for the blonde as well.

A thumb is caressing her skin back and forth.

“D?”

“Hmm?”

“You think you have a predilection for redheads?”

A low chuckle. “Just the cheeky ones who refuse to go to sleep when they need their fourteen hours.”

“More like ten hours over four days, but who’s counting?”

“All the more reason to zip it.”

Deborah does have a point.

She lets the silence in, eyes on the ceiling.

Feels that thumb brush back and forth for a long time, before it stills.

And still she stares.

Diva cup thumping around on heavy duty.

---

Her mother’s body is transferred to the funeral home the next day.

She’s offered the opportunity to see her one last time, and politely declines.

She wants the memory of her mother waving goodbye to her to remain as is.

The end point to her time with her.

She concentrates on the remainder of the funeral arrangements and packing up the house with her friends. Learns of Luna’s recent boyfriend drama, Marcus’s foray into the pottery making scene, Damien’s new non-binary love Max, Aidan’s absolute disgust of mint flavoured anything, and the fingernail mishap that had nearly ended Deborah’s diaper changing days.

“My daughter has a flair for the dramatic,” Deborah tells her when she gets the story from the horses mouth.

“I wonder where she got that from,” Ava laughs.

But Deborah’s concentration has moved to the marks Ava has made on her right forearm, visible for the first time today now that she’s dressed for bed.

“It looks worse than it is.”

“It needs the cream again,” Deborah tells her, leaning back over Ava’s bed to the shelf where her nightly routine of toners and moisturizers have been set up.

“You’re wasting seven hundred dollar Aloe Vera on me—there really isn’t a need, D.”

“Be quiet and give me your arm.”

It’s not up for discussion, Ava knows.

Hasn’t been for the past few days.

She’s reminded each time of a night on the Caribbean, polish brushed onto one set of nails, before it all went to shit.

The cream is cool, Deborah’s fingers gentle as they massage her skin.

“Pretty endearing, if you ask me,” Ava says quietly.

Deborah looks at her through her lashes. “Its just a wound that needs healing.”

“No—respecting your grandson’s backside so much that you’d rid yourself of something so...Deborah Vance-y.”

The woman pauses in her ministrations to look up properly. “It wasn’t a hard choice, Ava. I drew blood, so it wasn’t going to happen again. Not to someone I love.”

Deborah looks down at Ava’s arm, tracing a particular scrape with her finger, feather light, gentle.

Ava aches for her.

“He’s lucky to have you for a grandmother.”

Deborah slides her hand around the curve of Ava’s arm and squeezes. Does not look up.

“He’ll get all the attention I should’ve given his mother and probably still go off the deep end.”

“Well, that’s redheads for ya.” Ava laughs a little more pronounced than she should at her own joke, but she just wants—

The woman beside her chuckles with her mouth closed, and she gets her wish.

A hand slips into hers, still a little tacky from the cream, and Ava turns it over to admire it.

“I’ve missed that sound,” Deborah says quietly.

Ava feels her heart skip a beat. Doesn’t look up. “I’ve missed you being the reason for it.”

A sigh. “I hope it’s helping.”

“It is.”

You have no idea how much...

She adds, “It always did.”

She gets a fraction more sleep that night.

---

The dress fits two days later.

Ava will wear it one last time.

Too cold for it, of course, even with her best black coat and stockings.

But her retribution.

---

She does her best to talk to everyone individually before the service starts, seeing Bill and Anna arrive, Jimmy with Kayla, her Benson’s family.

Her mother’s Great Aunt Betty is a chatterbox though, and before Ava knows it there’s music playing and her mother’s coffin has arrived.

The sight of it there finalizes it.

Her mother is gone and never coming back.

And just as that fact solidifies in her chest, Ava feels the stabilizing pressure of a hand on her back and the lacing of fingers over hers.

Of another one in between her shoulder blades.

Deborah and Ruby.

She doesn’t remember sitting in the front pew with them, only that she’s suddenly there with them on each side of her, blood thundering in her ears.

“I can’t do this.”

She means it.

“You can and you will,” Deborah says, squeezing her hand.

“You’ve got this, Ava,” Ruby adds.

She cries throughout, listening to the sermon, knowing what photos will come up and what song will be played over them.

Fucking Roxette.

Her Uncle Paul speaks, and then it’s her turn.

She dabs at her face, knowing Kiki’s makeup job is failing at this point and gets up on wonky legs.

Deborah stands with her.

She gets through it somehow.

Stands at the podium in front of her mother’s coffin and delivers the eulogy, humorous in parts, harder in others. Looks to Deborah for strength when she gets overwhelmed, breathing easier when she sees her gentle nod.

Its a blur and a burn of moments, and Ava doesn’t think she fully comes back to her body until she’s saying goodbye to Uncle Paul and Aunt Linda, the last of her family to leave the wake.

She finds Deborah, Josefina and Ruby in the kitchen doing the dishes, the blondes hands in pink dishwashing gloves while her two comrades dry.

“That was the last of them?” Ruby asks.

“Yeah. They love to have a chat, but I guess all Floridians do. Must be the good weather. Or the tax breaks.”

Deborah smiles back at her.

Ava makes a move to pick up a spare dishcloth, but Josefina stops her. “We’re nearly done here—the others are downstairs playing poker and I need you to find out who my main competition is.”

“Oh, guaranteed it’ll be Marcus,” Deborah chimes in, handing a fork to Ruby. “Got a face like granite when it comes to cards, the damn bastard.”

“Oh please, he’s the son you never had,” Josefina counters. “You let him win half the time.”

Deborah argues back and Ava looks at Ruby, who shares an eye roll with her.

“Go on—I’ll take them all out for tapas closer to dinner so you can have some space.”

Ava exhales the whole world, grateful to her friend for knowing what she needs.

But she has one thing to do first.

---

Every footfall on the stairs feels heavier than the last.

She wipes her makeup off in the bathroom, noting the redness in her eyes, wondering if Kiki has any Visine.

Her friends makeup bag is there on the windowsill, but Ava is fresh out of luck.

Seems appropriate for today.

Her QVC zipper pull is where she’d left it this morning, rolled up in a loose circle beside her keyboard.

She flops down on the end of her bed, leaving the cord beside her as she bends down to slip her shoes off.

There’d been a haunted look across Deborah’s face when she’d seen her in the outfit that morning. As if the memory of the party affected her just as much as it had Ava.

“Symbolism and all that,” Ava had told Deb, just before Damien had appeared, breaking the sombre moment.

Two specific and significant moments of her life, linked deliberately together.

She won’t ever think of one without the other.

She thinks too much anyway, if the week's lack of sleep is any indication.

Trauma induced insomnia, she imagines that doctor would say. Added together with her amnesia brought on by significant stressor event and she’s probably ready for a fifty-one fifty.

Maybe when I get back to Cali, she thinks.

The funeral is done now.

She can rest a bit better now...

Yeah.

She’ll close her eyes for ten minutes to combat the heaviness of her eyelids.

Rest them for a little bit, and rally again for her friends.

Ava slips back along the bed until she finds her pillow.

It smells of Deborah’s face cream.

Of course it—

---

She jars awake to the sound of a car horn, the room darkened now, her tiny desk lamp on, skin overly warm.

Fuck.

She’s slept longer than...

Ava sits up and the thing over her slips, and—

It’s Deborah’s fur coat.

She feels her heart quicken as her mind goes back to their moment on her balcony, Deborah’s presence alleviating some of her sorrow.

Those brilliant blue eyes trained on her, like nothing else mattered.

Deborah making sure she ate and showered, and didn’t scratch her arm too much. Deborah letting her cry. Offering a god awful joke to make her laugh.

Present, in a way she hadn’t been for—

The hallway light illuminates and Ava hears footsteps ascending the stairs.

Deborah appears a few seconds later, shoeless, feet stockinged on the carpet.

“Damien woke you with that horn, didn’t he?”

“Eh.” She twists her body around to plant her feet on the floor, feeling the dress bunch up at her thighs. “Slept too long anyway.”

The fur coat should be hiding her...

“You right if I?” Deborah’s hand stays poised for the light switch.

“Sorry, just let me...” She fixes her dress and settles once more. “Go for it.”

She blinks against the sudden light, waiting for her eyes to adjust, smoothing down the fur with her hands. “Thanks for this.”

Deborah shrugs it off, leaning against the door frame with her hand in her pocket. “Figured you needed the rest. Hope you didn’t want Spanish finger food and sangria.”

Ava shakes her head.

She thinks she just wants whatever this is.

Anything with D.

“So...you give your fur coat to every pretty girl you meet?”

She gets a small smile, and what she imagines is a blush across Deborah’s cheeks.

“Only the ones who watch QVC.”

Ava snaps her eyes to the end of her bed where the zip puller should be, but it isn’t there. She looks back at Deborah, who pulls her hand from her pocket and...

Of course.

She should explain. “After you...”

After you broke my heart...

“Ruby snagged the zipper on the material after your party, and...”

Ava trails off again when she notices Deborah react to something in the sentence, something—

Ruby.

A flare of surprise.

Jealousy?

Blue eyes have looked away, down at the...

“Not the way you think, D. Well, not for lack of trying on my part, but—”

“Its not really my business—”

“Well, it kind of is, since I was mostly trying to distract myself from a broken heart that night.”

Her words tilt Deborah’s head up, the blonde finding her gaze once more.

They’ve established the need to discuss this at a later stage, when she feels up to it, but the conversation had ended there, with no specifics. No communication of when’s or how’s, or history.

A deliberate attempt to keep it from getting too...

Close.

Which is the epitome of stupid, horseshit irony, because she’s spent the last twenty-three months missing exactly that.

Missing that with—

“Ava.” Her name, spoken by the only one she wants to hear it from. “You zoned out again.”

“Sorry.” Lord. “Anyway, the zip snagged and it’s been damaged ever since. Barely managed to get it closed this morning.”

“I would’ve helped you, if you’d asked.”

“I know, it was just...a lot to work through, with mom and...sorry.”

“You do that a lot, you know.”

“Talk in incomplete sentences?”

“That I learned to deal with. This apologizing for absolutely no wrongdoing.”

“Sorry, its” – Ava rolls her eyes at herself – “a by-product of living with Nina Daniels.”

“I gathered as much.”

Deborah’s winding the cord around the fingers of her left hand, and Ava watches her, gathering her own info.

Fidgeting.

“Come sit with me.”

There’s a considerable amount of time Deborah does nothing, and something creeps down Ava’s spine, some—

But then Deborah moves, settling beside her.

She fiddles some more with the puller, measuring it in increments, folding it up on itself. Her hands flex, before she drops it down in a pile between them.

Then a glance around the room, before her eyes turn in Ava’s direction.

“This is familiar.”

Ava knows what she means.

A moment stolen in the midst of her father’s wake, warm handshake between them. You’re too good reverberating around her head then, and now.

Deborah a foot away.

Bridging the gap between them with a mercy dash across state borders.

“Why did you do it?”

“You’ll have to be more specific, dear.”

“Fly here—the first time.”

Deborah’s face softens. “Check the breast pocket.” She looks at the fur coat.

Ava turns the thing about until she finds the inside of it, the little bump of discreet pocket with something inside.

A manila slip of folded cardboard, thinned and corners bent, with usage Ava realizes, and—

Her heart stammers to a stop.

I think she will.

xoxo

-Ava

The ink long dry.

Material worn down.

And still saying so much.

“I got through that last show, went home and spent the rest of the night staring at that magazine cover. And that.” Deborah indicates the card. “Marcus told me the next day your father passed, and I knew I couldn’t...leave it like that.”

Ava traces her thumb over the lines of her name.

“I’ve always wondered if the reason I couldn’t get the puzzle pieces to fit that night was because you got under my skin.”

Ava looks up and watches as Deborah shies away, looking down at her lap, and it...

Something is—

“You always did,” Deborah says, voice lower now.  “The very second you walked dirt over my silk rug.”

“Wasn’t intentional,” Ava replies.

The xoxo wasn’t either, but here they are.

Here they...

Ava notices it then.

Deborah’s hands balled into fists so tight her knuckles have gone white.

She hadn’t been shying away from—

She’d been shrinking back.

Deborah’s tone is off when she says, “Neither was breaking your heart. Not then, and...”

The blonde trails off, and she’s still looking away, but Ava hears it crystal clear:

Not now.

No.

No.

Her heart is suddenly in her throat.

“Deborah.”

The flexing of a cheek in reply, eyes elsewhere.

Ava feels a surge of anger at being ignored, at having this about to be—

“Look at me right now or I will rip that wig right off your head.”

It works. Deborah’s head turns her way, fire there in her eyes.

Defiant.

Ava stares back. “What are you doing? You said we’d talk about this.”

“How do you think this plays out Ava? We both go back to LA and live in your designer home with a view? I sit on the couch and wait for you to come home every night? You wait around while I fly to Philly and Vegas and back again? Steal moments in between?”

“Yes, because you’re worth that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You have your show with Bill and the screenplay to finish and shop around for, and the rest of your mountain to climb.”

“And what do you have, D? What happened to the mountain you were on, because from where I’m standing - sitting - it looked like you crawled back to Vegas to regress.”

Deborah huffs and stands, and Ava seizes her hand, holding her right there even as Deborah tries to shake her off.

“Let me go.”

“And have you run again from this?” Ava gets to her feet and latches onto Deborah’s blouse at her hip. “From me? From LA and all those job offers I know you would’ve gotten?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Deborah asks. “Be in the same city as you and spend every waking moment wondering if today was going to be the day our paths crossed again? You weren’t the only one who lost something that night.”

“Because you made the decision to end things!” Ava lets Deborah’s hand go and points her finger at her. “You, Deborah. You don’t get to be pissed off about this.”

“Why not? I had to listen to your voicemails and read your texts and” – Deborah snatches the card from the bed and holds it up – “read this over and over and over again to stop myself from calling you. Because you’re incapable of seeing the bigger picture.”

Ava thinks back to her heartache, and managing to see it from Deb’s perspective. Letting it go.

Making do.

“I’d take up your time and space. Because that’s what I do. We did a whole act about it, Ava. Use that brain I know you have and think about this.”

“No.” Ava lifts her free hand and holds Deb by the waist. “I did that already and it hurt. I said we were good together that night and I meant it. But now that I’ve been without you...we’re better together than apart. I know you know that.” Ava leans into her space. “I know you feel that.”

She sees Deborah still. Blue eyes hold hers, sharp, incredulous.

“You’re an idiot then. I’ve got one foot in the grave and you’re about to debut as head writer with one of the best creatives Hollywood has. We’re on two vastly different paths.” Deborah holds the card up, writing outward. “This is about you now. You’re going to be the one to make history, not me. Why can’t you see that?”

“Because I don’t want history to remember me, I want you to!”

Deborah lifts her head to the ceiling and exhales heavily. Deflates a little on the look back at Ava. Takes the redheads hands from her waist and places the card in them.

Holds them still.

“How could I ever forget you? You’re burned into my eyelids. I’ve thought about you every day for nearly two years. Longer, if I’m being honest with myself.”

Ava feels her hands squeezed.

“I go to bed and dream about you,” Deborah adds. “Dream of that rooftop and you calling me out for being afraid. Owning up to it. Because I am. You got under my skin and buried yourself in my chest and I couldn’t let your talent go to waste in the shadow of mine. I love you too much for that to happen.”

Ava hears it all.

The love there.

The struggle.

The selflessness.

And it snaps something inside her.

She pulls away from those hands and flings the card.

“You’re a coward,” she spits. “You live in black and white. With or without. You deny yourself food and pleasure and love, and for what? Longevity? The Shtick? I said goodbye to my mom today. She had one life to live and spent it in a near constant state of anxiety. Hallucinated whole situations. Should’ve been medicated. Died in the cold alone, because she damaged her—fucked up her daughter so much a five minute phone call seemed like torture. Fucked her up so bad she’s on Lexapro and can’t remember three hours of her life.”

Something softens in Deborah’s eyes, concern springing there, making it hard for Ava to breathe.

Automatic in all likelihood, because the blonde catches herself and squares her jaw.

Warring feelings.

Denying herself this.

“I don’t know what the fuck I was doing but I know you pulled me out of that. Held me and loved me like neither of our lives mattered. As if they would never get in the way of us.” Ava sighs. “The only thing getting in the way of us is you. You flew coach, for fucks sake. That tells me everything I need to know.”

“Which is?” Deborah challenges.

“Your actions speak louder than your words.”

She’s winging it, and she just needs...

The memory comes to her, like a crack of thunder in her head, or maybe because the universe owes her one.

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror at Ruby’s the night of the party. Hoping Deborah would notice the dress and shoes. Sliding that front zipper up, suddenly hoping for hands to slide it down later that night.

Yes.

I would’ve helped you, if you’d asked.

Deborah’s words seal it.

Ava focuses on her, standing within reach.

If she’d truly wanted to go, she would’ve gone downstairs. Would’ve gone out to dinner with everyone, or flown back to Vegas right after the funeral.

Given Ava nothing.

But she’s here.

And Ava knows there’s hope in that.

She straightens her spine, and levels her gaze at Deborah.

Blue eyes hold hers.

“Unzip me.” A beat. “Please.”

Deborah’s eyebrows raise, then her eyes drop to Ava’s chest where the zip is, before springing back up.

“Ava.”

Not a plea, but a warning against this.

“Deborah.”

A counterpoint, because it’s just two zips. Front and—

“Don’t be obnoxious when I’m trying to keep you on the right path. When I’m trying to put you first.”

“Well, you could start doing that by unzipping me from my dress. Since you said you would, if I asked.”

She watches as Deborah realizes she’s right.

“I see you’ve turned into that shark.”

“Probably more a sea slug—colorful but ready to use her toxicity when pushed.”

Deborah’s eyes light with amusement, before its gone. “QVC and The Discovery Channel...you’ve really hit the motherload there.”

“What can I say? I like looking at extraordinary things.”

She waits for the reaction, seeing it in the way Deborah’s cheeks rise and the corners of her lips turn up.

Then the catch by the blonde, schooling her face into something less revealing. Something serious.

Ava knows she needs to do something now.

She finds Deborah’s hands, squeezing them gently before lifting them up towards her chest.

The eyes in front of her drop that way and Ava follows suit, slipping careful fingers over Deborah’s, guiding them to take the zip.

“Ava,” a voice whispers, and she looks up to find eyes impossibly blue.

“It’s just a zip, D.”

It’s not just anything.

Her mouth is suddenly dry, the air between them changing, charged now, and shrinking.

It warms something inside her chest. Flutters something low in her gut.

Deborah’s eyes drop once more, and Ava knows its—

She has just enough time to drop her arms before the zip is being pulled down her chest, slow and steady.

Eyes sharply attuned to the path between her breasts, her heart thumping below.

Achingly deliberate.

Careful.

She thinks her heart might beat right through the open material.

It catches at her stomach and she knows the zip has reached the end of its journey.

Hands remain there.

Eyes too.

Ava waits in the quiet, breath held.

Chest aching by the time Deborah looks up.

“You’re so goddamn young.”

“Never stopped Anna Nicole and J. Howard.”

Deborah snorts. “Knew you were after my money.”

“Nope—just you.”

There was that word again.

Deborah’s hands move up, flattening against the dress at her collarbones.

Ava lifts her hands in reply and slides them around a waist, the movement drawing them closer.

“I can’t be in the way Ava. I won’t have it. I won’t have you...”

Deborah trails off and Ava bites the inside of her cheek.

“Who’s the one talking in incomplete sentences now?”

“Be serious, Ava. I don’t want you to regret this. Regret me.”

Ava can see it in blue eyes. Can see the weight of that possibility bearing down on Deborah.

She has to reassure her.

“The only thing I regret when it comes to you is letting you let me go.”

Ava watches as the knowledge of this, her truth, hits Deborah.

“I had to.”

“I know.”

And Ava does know. She can regret it all she likes, but the other truth, the greater truth is she wouldn’t have made something of herself without the push.

She wouldn’t have Benson’s or those punch up jobs, and the credibility that came with them.

She wouldn’t have been on Bill’s radar.

She wouldn’t have The Coat Rack Kid.

“I’m Emmy nominee Ava Daniels because of you,” she tells Deborah.

The other woman rolls her eyes. “You’re Emmy nominee Ava Daniels because you used your brain. I was unsure if it was plugged in properly, but you proved me wrong.”

Ava thinks of that cancelled court date suddenly, and how she’d been prepared to...

She lets out a laugh and says, “I proved you right. I fucking proved you right.”

Deborah’s nose crinkles at the curse word, but Ava can see she understands.

Its an echo of a memory long gone.

Ava lets it evaporate into the space between them.

They’re still only halfway, and Ava smiles to herself.

“You’ve got one more zip, Deborah Vance.”

Eyebrows narrow a little, before eyes shine. “Ms Daniels, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”

Ava shows her teeth. “I love that Lemonheads song. And yes. Yes, I am.”

“He runs off with Mrs Robinson’s daughter at the end.”

“I know. I’m planning on hitting up DJ after this.”

Deborah cackles and it’s still the best sound Ava’s ever heard.

“Ask me,” she says quickly as the blonde is still laughing.

Deborah quietens, and Ava sees hesitation there.

“Ask me to turn around.”

“You just said goodbye to your Mom a few hours ago.”

“I know.” Water springs to her eyes at the thought. “I just need...” You. “Life is short and we’ve wasted so much time already. I won’t regret it. Ask me.”

She sees something settle in blue eyes.

An acceptance of this.

“Will you turn around?” A beat. “Please.”

Deborah’s voice is low and purposeful, and Ava shivers. She lets go of Deborah’s waist and turns, familiar hands sliding over her bare shoulders.

“You’re gonna have to put some finesse into it,” she says, “because it’s—"

“Are you planning on wearing it again?”

“Well, I was gonna light the thing on fire in my designer BBQ back home when I—”

Ava feels a pull and then something snaps, her spine exposed as the slider splits the rest of the way.

“Or you could do that,” Ava whispers.

There’s no comment from Deborah, only her quickened breathing reaching Ava’s ears.

Something touches the middle of her spine and she freezes, feeling it disappear.

“Sorry...”

“Do it again, D.”

Ava feels it again, the gentle touch of a finger against her skin, sliding down the pathway of her dress.

A closing in of a body.

A deep sigh just behind her.

Then the lightest of pressure at the base of her neck.

Lips.

Soft.

So soft her heart falls out through the wound in her chest.

Deborah breathing against her, paused there in...

Reverence.

Ava’s eyes spill and she tsks, because of course there’s tears.

She’d be able to fill the Canyon with them.

Its just the weight of the day, and Deborah’s gentle care of her.

Just.

She feels hands on her hips, motioning for her to turn back.

Deborah’s eyes show her worry, and Ava aims for a smile to reassure her.

“I’m okay. Just kiss me.”

The blonde nods, and then Ava’s tears are being brushed away by fingers, Deborah leaning in.

Ava meets her halfway, just as she’s always done.

Just as they will from now on.

---

She’s removed from her dress, Deborah kissing her neck and shoulders, hands burning into her skin as Ava fumbles with the buttons of her blouse.

Laughter bubbles up from the blonde and Ava joins her, pulling back. “Help a girl out, would you?”

Deborah steps out of reach. “Go hop in your bed, I need to take my wig off anyway. I’ll be back.”

“If this was a horror movie, you’d be a goner.”

Deborah backs out of the door and stills, regarding her for a long moment.

“I already am.”

Then she’s gone, leaving Ava to try and breathe again.

---

The idea comes to her when she sees the fur coat on the bed, warmth slipping inside her belly.

A turn on for them both.

Yes.

She slips the rest of her undergarments off, pulling the sheets down to the end of the bed, before propping the pillows and herself up to face the door.

Fur coat positioned just so over her body, shoulders and legs bare.

Waiting to be opened up.

---

Deborah appears once more, hair piece gone,  blouse unbuttoned and showing lace underneath.

Ava watches as her mouth opens, faltering in her footsteps.

She’s succeeded.

“I have to warn you—I’m a bit of a sasquatch downstairs, but I figure not a lot of the men you’ve slept with would’ve manscaped, although there was that guy in Memphis...”

“Jason.” Deborah smiles, making her way to the edge of the bed and sitting. “And you’re fishing.”

“Well, I’m assuming he was the last to...”

Ava trails off, suddenly unsure why she cares about this.

“He was.” Deborah goes searching for Ava’s hand, thumb caressing her knuckles. “There was an invisible yardstick with red hair in the way the last few years.”

Ava chuckles. “Sorry about that.”

“How about you? Did anyone volunteer for sasquatch duty?”

“Ellie. Lasted about six weeks. She didn’t really measure up to the Remy-wearing QVC caftan lady I had the hots for. The ol’ vibrator’s been getting the rest of my attention.”

Deborah laughs lightly, pausing for a long moment before, “Mine too.”

“Oo, Deborah. Didn’t think you had it in you. Or in you.” Ava wiggles her brow.

She gets an eye roll.

Then the blue there changes from humored to heated, Deborah leaning in slowly. “I did cut a tree house down with a chainsaw, so I think you’re in good hands, Sasquatch.”

“Well, the carpet kinda matches this fur coat, so don’t be surprised if you get bark chips and leaves in your mouth this—”

Deborah kisses the sentence away and Ava sighs gratefully into it, pulling her body down onto her own.

---

“I did some research,” Deborah murmurs, kissing Ava’s stomach, hand still cupped over a breast. “When Dianna called me.”

Ava catches her gaze. “How to please a woman?”

Deborah nods her chin against Ava’s body. “Lots of erogenous areas down there.” She kisses Ava’s skin purposely, aimlessly. Uses her tongue to lick an expanse around Ava’s navel. “But every woman is different, apparently.”

Deborah looks her way again, holding it. “I need you to teach me what you like.”

The request and the sincere look in Deborah’s eyes makes her throb even more, her hips lifting off the bed with need, skin meeting material.

“Take your clothes off first,” Ava says.

Deborah slips back off the bed and Ava whines at the loss.

Hears the chuckle.

Watches the humor mix with the heat as Deborah strips herself carefully of her clothes.

“You’re hotter than the sun,” Ava tells her when she’s finally bare.

She sees the disbelief flash across Deb’s face, before shoulders square in a show of confidence.

Ava laughs out, “Yass Queen,” grinning like a clown when Deborah shakes her head.

“I’m in love with an idiot.”

“I’m in love with a queen!”

“Oh, for the love of...”

Deborah climbs all the way up her and kisses the laughter right off her lips.

And then she’s sinking once more, kissing Ava’s skin, biting gently and licking, fingers soft and pressing.

“If it’s too wild for your chainsaw, we can—”

“Ssh now, Av. Teach me.”

Ava directs her, sliding her fingers into blonde hair, sighing and moaning at the feel of a velvet tongue against her.

Pivots up toward that mouth, right there and like that falling from her lips, interspersed with instruction, as the ache builds, as—

“I got bark in my mouth,” Deborah says suddenly, unceremoniously wiping her mouth on the inside of Ava’s leg.

“Come up here instead,” Ava gets out, already pulling at her neck.

Deborah crawls up, spitting air, trying to—

Ava cackles, because of course.

“I’ve got your pubes on my tongue and you’re laughing.”

“Sorry—use the pillow.”

Deborah does, and then she’s hovering to the side of Ava.

“If I’d known we’d being doing this tonight I would’ve—”

Deborah kisses her and she tastes herself there, forgetting the apology, tongue licking at Deborah’s.

A hand is slipping down her body, and Ava inhales when fingers find her clit.

“This is better,” Deborah says in between kisses.

Ava draws her hand up to press at Deborah’s nipple, relishing the moan that escapes her love.

“Glad you like,” Ava says, kissing that mouth once more.

---

Her legs are starting to shake with her need, Ava feeling Deborah’s body keening into the side of her as they moan into their kisses.

She needs—

She needs—

Ava reaches down with her hand and slides her fingers over Deborah’s hand, directing her lower...

“Inside me, Deb,” she says.

Blue eyes find hers, holding them as two fingers slip in.

“Okay?” Deb asks softly.

She nods, and draws her fingers to her clit, rolling circles around it.

A head dips down to her neck and sucks there and Ava closes her eyes, concentrating on the feel of Deborah all around her, inside her, loving her, taking care of—

A mouth finds her nipple and teeth tug, Ava crying out.

“Faster,” she says.

It’s infinitesimal, but the fingers inside her do, Ava breathing heavy, moaning, mewling, sliding her fingers against herself, in a bed where she’d been alone, in a room where she’d been melancholy and-

Her eyes water and she blinks the tears away. Loops her spare hand around the back Deborah’s neck, directing her back up, needing to, needing her.

Eyes immediately change, grow concerned.

“Ava—”

“Don’t stop, just—see me. See—”

“I do. I see you—I always did.”

Ava moans.

“I love you,” Deborah tells her.

She can see it so clearly, in a diner, on a bus, in a pool.

Leaf in her hair.

On a rooftop and a balcony.

“I love you too,” Ava says, kissing her.

---

Her hips are lifting from the bed towards those fingers, reaching inside her, reaching for the soul of her, as she rubs furiously at her nub.

“Faster,” she gets out.

Deborah obeys.

She can feel the blondes body pressing against her for purchase, and she thinks of Deb sitting on her face, the thought spurring her on.

“Gonna give you the best orgasm you’ve—”

Deborah kinks her fingers further into her and Ava cries out, eyes closing as she loses herself to—

“Holding you to it.”

Her chin is kissed.

Her neck sucked.

Teeth scrape her skin.

Then her legs are trembling, Deborah right there as her body reaches the peak, her orgasm thundering through her, Ava cursing and Deb, Deb, Deb—

She collapses down as her walls close around fingers, gulping in air, sighing with the after effects as...

Fingers still move inside her, much slower now and Ava peels her eyes open to find blue ones regarding her, forehead sweaty.

“Did I pass?” Deborah asks softly.

Ava nods. “Flying colors. Now climb up on my face,” she takes a breath, “and get ready to have your world well and truly rocked.”

“You sure you don’t need your inhaler?” Deborah jokes, already moving.

“Nope. Just you.”

---

It’s a good thing Ruby shouted their friends to dinner, because Deborah is loud.

Or maybe Ava’s just that good.

“Holy fuck,” Deborah repeats three times as Ava pulls the blankets up over them, laughing.

“You sound like you’ve had a religious experience worthy of Florence Welch.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Deborah says, kissing along Ava’s shoulder, “but you were...god given.”

Ava wraps an arm around Deborah’s waist as they settle on the pillow.

“So...you considering women now, as an option?”

“Well, just the one. Singular, not plural. Paul McCartney’s still up there. If I run into him I’m making a move.”

Ava smiles. “Understandable. If I run into Florence I’m making one too. Although the world might explode with too much redheaded talent in the same bed.”

Deborah snorts. “Bed. Who are you kidding? You’d probably self combust before you got a word out.”

“Says the woman who came in my mouth twice in the space of four minutes. Face it, D. You’ve got it bad.”

Deborah draws her face closer, brushing her nose against Ava’s. “I do. Don’t think Paul can compare anymore.”

Ava kisses her gently, before pulling back. “Neither can Flo.”

“Good. She’s probably still dragging that dead horse around anyway."

Ava huffs. “You little liar!”

“How could I not know who she is? She’s your hall pass. I had to look her up.”

“Right after you googled hall pass, huh?”

“That I knew. Kiki wants to fuck a guy named Timothy Elephant.”

“Olyphant. And believe me when I say you’d wanna fuck him too.”

“Well, now I gotta go get my phone.”

Deborah makes a move to sit up and Ava pulls her back down.

“No, you don’t—”

She kisses her soundly, enough for them to forget Paul and Flo and the grey haired Fox himself.

---

Ava will think back to that moment when Jimmy informs her that Florence and Isabella have signed on to score The Coat Rack Kid, her life seemingly circling around and around and in on itself the last few months.

Bill directing.

Sarah Paulson producing.

Jessie Buckley starring in.

She finds the side mansion foyer full of flowers when she gets home, Deborah poised in the archway on the stairs, like she’s rushed there.

Drama queen, Ava thinks.

“I guess Jimmy told you first.”

“He did,” Deborah says. “You know he’s a pushover when it comes to me.”

“Or you re-signed him a week ago and he’s still in Deborah-pleasing mode?”

Deborah tilts her head in agreement and descends the stairs as Ava tries to find a path to her.

“How many florists did you empty out?”

“Three. I wanted them all to be marigolds but Marcus said it...”

Ava tunes out, mind falling back five years to a September morning, seared forever in remembrance.

Flowers for her father.

“It was you,” Ava says.

Deborah stops at the foot of the stairs and looks at her across the flowers. “I know—I literally just told you Marcus had to go to three different—”

“No. The first anniversary of Dad’s death. You had the marigolds sent, not Marcus.”

Deborah understands. Ava can see the acknowledgement in the way her fist squeezes.

“I thought you knew.”

Ava feels her chest ache for this woman, familiar and suddenly new.

Damn the rest of the...

She walks toward Deborah, knocking over boxes and sending flowers spilling, stumbling a little in her haste.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I just found out my wife has a soft spot for me.”

Deborah huffs. “You just worked that out? Wow, you’re slower than I thought you—”

Ava grabs a hold of her and kisses away the rest of the statement.

“Please tell me there’s no more upstairs,” she says when they part, Deborah pecking at her lips.

“Well—there’s some rose petals on the bed that I can vacuum up.”

She’s already moving out of Ava’s space, holding fast to her hand as she heads for the stairs.

“You with a vacuum? I gotta see this...”

Ava lets herself be led upstairs, happy and in love, past her Emmy and WGA awards, worlds away from a coat rack and the melancholy that kept her there.

The puzzle piece pendant around Deborah’s neck solidifies it.

EXT. SUNNY BEACH - DAY

A woman sits staring out to sea. She is wearing a beaded necklace of varying colors and pieces, as a child might wear. Prominently placed is a white bead with the letter ‘D’ on it.

fin