All The Summers Between Us | TSITP

Strobe Lights & Truth.

Shots arrived like tiny assignments. Tequila burned clean; lime bit back; the salt on Lydia's wrist tasted like the ocean they kept pretending wasn't following them.

They danced.

Taylor hair-whipped her way toward the front; Belly laughed so hard she had to lean on her; Denise moved like she'd learned to find the beat in a room that didn't want to give it freely. Lydia let herself be pulled into the current. The lights chased themselves across her face—red, blue, white—painting her into a hundred versions in a minute.

She closed her eyes.

And the club fell away.

Bathtub water lapping against porcelain; Conrad swearing under his breath as the soap stung the cut on his shin.

"Hold still," she'd said, kneeling on tile, fingers sure.

"You're terrible at gentle," he'd said, grinning, wincing, loving her anyway.

"I'm excellent at gentle," she'd argued, and dabbed at the blood until the word gentle meant doing the thing that hurt so he wouldn't have to.

————

Steam on the kitchen windows; flour on his forearm; the sound of a timer and his laughter braided together.

"Trust the dough," he'd read off the card, like a prayer Susannah wrote for days like this.

"Trust you," she'd said without thinking, and he hadn't looked up because looking up would have made it too true.

————

Peaches in a paper bag breathing sugar; the road shoulder dust-soft; juice slipping down her wrist.

"Eat it," he'd said, and she had, and the world narrowed to the sound of her own breath and the sweet burn in her mouth.

He'd stepped in, white shirt custody of her mess, thumb and cotton against her chin.

"Hold still," he'd murmured, and she had, because stillness was the only thing that would keep her from tipping forward into him.

————

Two bodies asleep at either end of the couch, legs tangled in the middle like the truth always found a way to touch something. His hand heavy on her ankle, safety that didn't ask.

————

The boardwalk years ago, sun on their shoulders, salt on their tongues, hands almost held over and over until the almost made a shape out of air.

————

The bass came back like a door slamming. Lydia's eyes popped open to lights too bright, bodies too close, sound too much.

She was already moving before thought caught up—"Bathroom," she said to no one, to everyone—shouldering through heat and perfume and strangers' laughter.

————

Inside the tiled echo of the restroom, the mirror multiplied her into a set of girls she didn't recognise. She grabbed the edge of the sink with both hands.

The room was too small; her chest was too tight; her heart had decided to sprint without telling her legs. Fingers tingled—pins—and—needles panic drawing borders around her skin.

The sound of air wouldn't go in.

In—three. Out—four. Wasn't that the trick? Her body didn't care about math.