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“I’m trying to make your life easier.”
“Oh. Well then, kill yourself.”
“That isn’t funny,” Ava says, shocked that Deborah would sink so low, and then feels her stomach drop out of her body when she realizes what that means.
Deborah is always funny when she wants to be. So if it isn’t funny, she isn’t joking. And if she’s not joking, she must have really meant it.
She didn’t mean it, Ava tells herself later that night, huddled against the headboard of the bed in her obscenely expensive hotel room. Her knees are pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around them, the short nails of her left hand digging deep into her right wrist.
Deborah’s said a lot of vicious things to Ava in the past. She’s done a lot of vicious things to Ava in the past. And she’s mad right now, boiling mad, so mad Ava can practically see volcanoes erupting in those blue, blue eyes every time Deborah deigns to look at her.
But Deborah also knows Ava better than anyone else. She knows that Ava has always felt like the loneliest person in the world. She knows that suicide is a wolf that’s stalked Ava her entire life, held at bay through drugs and inappropriate tweets and clever jokes and the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, she’ll find a place where she’s really wanted.
Ava looks around and sees a different hotel room. At the Palmetto. She remembers unlocking the door, coffees in hand, the morning after a fever dream of a night and finding the window smashed and George gone.
She wonders if George felt this way. Like nothing matters. Like maybe it’s time to just stop trying. Like no one would miss her if she were gone.
The woman she loves, the woman she’s in love with, told her to kill herself today.
She didn’t mean it, she tells herself again, and knows it’s a lie.
She squeezes a little tighter, feels her blunt nails break the skin. The sting is almost pleasant. She thinks about how she’d do it, if she did it. Thinks about how easy it would be.
Her phone rings.
Moving in slow motion, she reaches beside herself blindly, fumbling around the sheets for a moment before extracting it. Her thumb swipes to answer, then she drops it on the pillow next to her head and resumes her grip on her wrist, feeling the pads of her fingers slide against the warmth seeping from small puncture wounds.
There’s silence for a long time. Ava vaguely wonders if she maybe hung up by accident, or maybe it’s a telemarketer who got disconnected. She wonders how many pills are on the counter in the bathroom.
“I didn’t mean it.”
At first, Ava thinks she’s imagining Deborah’s tinny voice.
“Ava, I didn’t mean it.”
Ava blinks, coming back to herself a little, and puts the phone on speaker so she can hear better. She thinks about arguing, saying Yeah, you did, actually, but she doesn’t have the energy to fight with Deborah. Not anymore. Not ever again.
She’s done.
“I give up,” she says in a monotone. “You can hire Steve back.”
“Fuck Steve,” Deborah snaps. A horn blares—she must be driving. “Did you hear what I said?”
Kill yourself.
“Yeah. I heard.”
“We’ve got too much work to do for me to waste my time with any other head writer,” Deborah says swiftly. “And anyway, we’re screwed by the Times piece. You and I are stuck together.”
Ava closes her eyes. “Not anymore. You don’t have to be stuck with me anymore.”
She’d truly thought she was doing what she had to to help both Deborah and herself, but clearly it was a mistake. She should have taken the assistant-to-the-head-writer job. Or maybe she should have taken the hint when Deborah said she didn’t care about losing her and just bowed out of Deborah’s life gracefully.
She pulls up the Notes app on her phone and starts typing a resignation letter. She wonders if Rob will be too nervous to open mail from her after the panties incident. Oh, well.
Deborah says something to someone else. Ava’s not listening.
“I took a look at some of those writers you pulled for me,” Deborah says quickly. Why is she talking so fast? A button dings. “They aren’t all awful, I suppose. I don’t think any of them are likely to cuss me out and threaten to take a shit on my lawn, so they can’t be that good—”
The call drops and Deborah is gone. Ava thinks there might have been a compliment buried in what she just said. That’s nice. It’ll be nice if the last thing Deborah says to her isn’t terribly unkind.
She imagines moving back home to Waltham, but of course she couldn’t even if she wanted to. Her mom has Priya now, the perfect tenant-slash-replacement-daughter. And really, Waltham’s the only place lonelier than LA.
She’s got nowhere to go. She looks out the window of her 40th-floor room. Nowhere to go but down, really.
She wonders if George was afraid.
She unfolds herself and slides off of the bed with vague intention. Before she figures out what she’s trying to do, there’s a pounding on her door.
Housekeeping? They’ll come back later if she ignores them.
But the pounding doesn’t stop. “Ava!” Deborah shouts. “I know you’re in there! I lost service in the elevator. Open the damn door!”
Ava blinks in utter confusion. Without her consent, her feet take her to the door. Her right hand reaches out and turns the knob.
Deborah pushes in like a SWAT team invading the home of a domestic terrorist. She’s still in her outfit from earlier in the day, but her wig is askew. There’s something frantic in her eyes as she rakes them up and down Ava’s body as if expecting to see…something. Ava doesn’t know what. Apparently not finding it, Deborah relaxes a little. Ava’s right hand comes up to comb through her hair, and in the same moment they both see that her wrist is smeared with blood.
Deborah lets out a rough, animal noise Ava has never heard before. She reaches out to take Ava’s hand and Ava thinks about that night at Bob Lipka’s house, when Deborah left nail marks on her skin in her fury. She wonders if Deborah’s been sharpening her claws, if she’s going to finish what Ava’s far shorter nails began.
But Deborah’s touch is achingly, confusingly gentle as her thumb strokes over Ava’s skin. Gently, she tugs Ava towards the bathroom. Gently, she pushes her to sit on the toilet lid. She runs some water over a towel and gently, oh so gently, dabs at the blood as if the small cuts are some kind of mortal wound.
“What are you doing here?” Ava croaks, utterly lost.
Deborah’s grip on her hand tightens, but in a grounding way that doesn’t seem intended to cause pain. Ava can’t remember the last time Deborah touched her without intending to hurt her.
“I know you,” Deborah murmurs, an odd little catch in her voice. “I’ve been pretending I don’t. I’ve been telling myself you’re not the person I thought you were, not if you could break my heart the way you did.”
You broke mine first, Ava remembers saying. She remembers thinking that Deborah’s broken heart was the kind she’d had when Marty screwed her and then screwed her over the next morning—painful, but not the kind of pain that would linger. She remembers thinking that her own broken heart was the kind that could be written into a Shakespearean tragedy.
“But I do know you,” Deborah goes on, filling the resounding silence. “I know exactly how to hit you where it hurts, the same way you do for me. And I know—I know that I took it too far. I said something unforgivable.”
Ava looks at the pill bottles on the counter, absently cataloguing their contents. Prozac. Some leftover Oxy from the incident in the woods when she got a million bee stings. A full bottle of Ibuprofen.
Deborah inhales sharply. “Let’s—let’s go back in the other room. Okay, Ava?”
She gives a gentle tug and Ava obediently follows. She clambers back onto the bed and resumes her position, arms wrapped around her legs and ear resting on her knees, face turned away from Deborah. The bed creaks as the other woman sits beside her.
Why is Deborah still here? Come to think of it, why did she come in the first place?
“I was so angry,” Deborah says. “So—so hurt. I didn’t know there was anyone still alive, other than DJ, who could hurt me the way you did.”
She pauses, maybe waiting for a response. Ava stares out the window. She’s already explained herself, her actions, more than once. That she did it for Deborah as much as, or more than, for herself. The last time she tried, Deborah said—that terrible thing she said. So she’s not going to explain again, because she can’t hear something like that again. Not ever again. Not from Deborah.
“What I said. I knew it would mess you up. I knew it would get in your head, and that’s what I wanted to do. But I felt guilty about it the moment I said it, and you know I don’t do guilt.” Deborah chuckles, but it’s a harsh, bitter sound. “Then, beyond the guilt, I started thinking about how you’d react. What those words would do to you. And I got this feeling in my gut that I needed to see you right away. To make sure you didn’t…do anything.”
Do anything is such a bland euphemism for the elephant in the room that it forces Ava from her stupor. She lifts her head and turns to look at Deborah, whose body is rigid where she sits beside her.
“You don’t need to be here,” Ava says, voice rough. “You won, okay? It’s not like I’d have ever actually followed through on my threat anyway. Like I said, hire Steve back. You figured out what QPOC stands for on your own—you don’t need me.”
Deborah not so gently grabs Ava by the shoulders and pulls her around so they are facing each other. For the first time tonight, Ava meets Deborah’s eyes. She’s surprised by what she sees there. Deborah doesn’t look angry at all. She looks scared, maybe, with perhaps an undertone of deep sadness. And something else, something Ava can't identify. Ava didn’t know Deborah could still feel something other than rage towards her.
“I do need you,” Deborah says insistently. “Okay, Ava? Are you listening? I’m not willing to lose you. I broke three mailboxes and every speed limit there is on my way here, half-convinced I’d arrive too late. That you would actually do what I said and…” She can’t seem to finish the sentence.
To Ava’s shock, Deborah starts crying.
With a trembling hand, Ava reaches out to touch a tear as it trickles down that perfect face. Blinking, she presses her thumb to her pointer finger, rubbing them together, surprised to find that the warm liquid is real.
Deborah yanks Ava into a tight, almost suffocating, hug.
“I’m still furious,” she whispers, her breath brushing across Ava’s ear. “Give me a little time, okay? I’m an old lady. I’m a little slow. I need time to forgive you. And you—you need time to see if you can forgive me. But, Ava, I need you to hear me right now when I say: I didn’t mean it. If something were to happen to you, it would break me. Nothing would matter. Late Night wouldn’t matter. You are what matters.”
Ava crumples.
Her breathing turns ragged as great, wrenching sobs are torn out of her. She clutches Deborah as if the other woman is the only thing keeping her tethered to the Earth.
“I’m sorry,” Ava says, not even sure exactly what she’s apologizing for. She says it again, and keeps saying it over and over through her tears.
Deborah holds her close and strokes her hair, crying too, murmuring, “I know” and “I’m sorry, too” and “You matter, Ava. You matter to me.”
After an eternity, Ava runs out of tears. Reluctantly, she pulls back to see Deborah’s face. To see if Deborah really does care.
The other woman is a wreck. Her makeup is destroyed. At some point, she must have tossed her wig aside. She looks human and devastated and achingly beautiful.
They gaze at each other in a way Ava doesn't think they've ever looked at each other before. Not when they both could see, at least. Deborah cups Ava’s face in her hands. Ever so slowly, she leans in and brushes her lips across Ava’s.
It feels like forgiveness. It feels like a breath of air for deprived lungs. It feels like a promise.
“I didn’t mean it,” Deborah says.
Ava lets out a soft, nervous laugh. “Of course you didn’t. And I don’t think I would have actually…” She doesn’t finish the thought. She doesn’t truly know what she would have done if Deborah hadn’t come. Maybe nothing. Maybe something.
She’s going to have a lot to unpack when she sees her therapist tomorrow.
Deborah lifts Ava’s right arm and presses a kiss to each of the small cuts, then looks Ava in the eye and says, again, “I didn’t mean it. I could never mean it.”
And Ava can finally bring herself to say what Deborah needs to hear: “I believe you.”
Deborah exhales deeply, relief evident in every line of her body. She tucks a strand of hair behind Ava’s ear. “Lie down, honey. We both need some sleep. Tomorrow—we’ll talk, okay? Really talk. It's going to be okay, Ava. I promise.”
Ava thinks Deborah will leave now, but she doesn’t. She lies down, her body pressed up against Ava's, one arm still wrapped around Ava’s shoulders, apparently willing to skip her makeup removal routine for the first time in her adult life. If that doesn't prove her sincerity, nothing could.
Ava buries her face in the crook of Deborah’s neck, inhaling the comforting aroma of Black Pashmina.
“I didn’t mean it,” Deborah whispers.
“I believe you,” Ava whispers back, and means it, and doesn’t fight the pull of sleep as it takes her away.