Chapter 14

The pavement was uncomfortable against Valerie’s bare feet, but it felt better than the carpet of the trunk had. The sun was too low to warm the night’s chill out of the air, and she was still dressed only in the thin pajamas she’d been wearing. She shivered from the cold, and from the chaotic emotions swirling around in her head. It seemed like a week ago that she had been pacing around her apartment, agonizing over Dana’s contract; the events since then left her dizzy, and incapable of untangling the mess of emotions she was feeling.

The first thing Valerie noticed was the airplane blocking the highway, some thirty feet in front of them. She was too drained to feel surprised by it or to question it— it would not have been her first guess for how Dana had intercepted her; and yet, there it was. Puzzling out the chain of events that lead to this situation seemed like too hard a problem to solve at that moment, and she looked away from the plane, putting it out of her mind.

Valerie stole a glance at the woman next to her, instead; taking in the soft arc of Dana’s jaw, the way the dim morning light settled into the soft curves just below her ear. The smoothness of her skin.. Valerie felt an urge to kiss that spot and to find out what Dana’s skin tasted like-

I smell like car exhaust and gasoline, a bitter voice inside reminded her. The rising sun marked nearly a full day since she’d shaved, and her face would be prickly with facial hair she couldn’t afford to have lasered away. The curve of her own jaw was not perfect and feminine. She felt wretched, and filthy.

She tore her eyes away from Dana, too, and looked down at the asphalt and her feet as she walked. She reminded herself that Dana’s interest in her was that she was a failure with no good options left in life. And yet, here she is, in the middle of nowhere, with an airplane, rescuing me from a worse fate, some other part of her whispered.

She and Dana moved away from the car, and Valerie got her first look at Lucca; they stood illuminated by the car’s headlights, facing the man in the polo shirt. Their eyes flickered for the barest fraction of a second over toward Valerie and Dana as the two moved into sight, but they kept their full attention fixed on the driver.

Lucca was perhaps six inches taller than Dana, but where Dana was built of long lines, subtle curves, and lean muscle, Lucca was… built on a larger scale. They wore grey cargo pants in some rugged canvas and a simple black tank top, plus heavy black lace-up boots that gave an impression of indestructibility, despite that the leather was scuffed and creased. Valerie thought their tattooed biceps might be bigger than her own thighs. They looked strong, to Valerie, but incidentally so— someone that works out and uses their body, yet not someone that obsesses about their physique. They looked to Valerie like they would do more damage with their bare hands than they would with the shotgun.

Valerie found herself already a little intimidated by Lucca’s stature, and her mere physical presence; but as she took in the shotgun they carried and, ultimately, the look of absolutely cold and calculating menace that they oriented toward the man standing on the shoulder, the slightly awed intimidation felt darker and less comfortable.

The fear— terror, she thought— had been slowly abating over the last few minutes, but the raw strength of the anger that rolled off of Lucca gave it new life. She shrank away from them instinctively, pushing herself into Dana’s side as though the tear-dampened folds of the woman’s clothes would somehow shield her. She didn’t cope well around anger, and the situation felt balanced upon a knife edge. She felt a gnawing fear that it would escalate into violence.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay. That’s Lucca,” Dana told her softly, squeezing her shoulder. “…they’re my best friend.”

There was something strange in Dana’s tone that Valerie was too exhausted to make sense of, but there was also confidence and reassurance. She looked back at Lucca and tried to reconcile these facts. They seemed less like a person that could be someone’s friend and more like an avatar of a vengeful goddess. She reminded herself that even though their anger was real, it wasn’t directed at her. It helped only slightly.

Valerie nodded to Dana— not so much in understanding as in tired acceptance— and the two resumed walking. A mystery surfaced in her mind, and she paused, staring at the man that had taken her. She had been chewing the question over, in the dark of the trunk, before she succumbed entirely to fear and helplessness. It remained unanswered.

“Wait,” she murmured to Dana, half-pleading. “I— I need to ask him something.”

Puzzled, Dana gestured open-handed toward Lucca and the man, and Valerie took a few steps closer to the two. The man glanced over at her with a bitter, disgusted look. Lucca still kept their eyes on him.

“How did you find me?”

Valerie was proud of how even her voice was, but the man just sneered, and turned his head away pettily.

Lucca cleared their throat, subtly shifting the shotgun in their hands to emphasize the point.

“Answer her.” Anger crackled behind their words.

The man looked poisonously at Lucca, but turned back to Valerie nonetheless, and spoke.

“We were gettin’ ready to come get you… Helen”— Valerie’s mother— “was awful worried when you kicked out that nice girl Heather,” he explained. “She was real scared you were gonna do something crazy or go hurt yourself.”

Valerie supposed Heather must have talked to her mother after she walked out; playing the victim and feeding her mother a story to make herself look good and make Valerie seem unstable. It was just the final twist of a knife that Valerie had been cut by many, many times. The only surprise was that she hadn’t expected something like that, especially after she’d found, and burned, the letters between the two of them.

“But then you up and moved, and we lost track of ya. Trying to hide?” His tone was patronizing, condescending.

“And then?” Valerie asked, slightly glad that she was feeling more angry and annoyed, in that moment, than frightened.

“Yer ma got a call from the Subaru people, last week, sayin’ there was some kind of power loss thing and did they wanna schedule service. She gave ’em this sob story about how the car had been stolen and could they please help her find it.” The man smirked. “Only cost about fifty bucks to turn tracking back on and there ya go.”

Valerie’s parents had helped her buy the car, when she first moved to Bend to attend college. They had co-signed on the loan, and were listed on most of the paperwork. Her relationship with them had been better, back then; it had never been great. They never saw eye-to-eye on politics or religion, and they always seemed to think it was a rebellious phase she’d grow out of; but in the mean time she’d been a passable student and she stayed out of trouble. It wasn’t until she came out to them as trans - and a lesbian, on top of that - that the relationship had fractured apart entirely.

She had never thought to check who was listed on the roadside service system. When Dana had pulled the battery cable, she realized, it had triggered a service alert. She’d had to reconnect the battery that night when Dana had let her go. The service company must have called her phone while she was separated from it over the weekend, and when she didn’t answer, called her mother as the alternate. Valerie hugged her arms around herself, and turned back to Dana.

Dana wore a shocked expression, mingled with guilt. She met Valerie’s eyes.

Valerie thought, then, that Dana expected to be blamed for all of this; but Valerie merely felt sad, now; scared, and resigned. Part of her wanted to rage at the woman, for being a link in this particular chain of events, but she didn’t have the energy. It was just a thing that happened; she had long since given up questioning why things so often happened to her. She had worked so hard to create distance from her parents, to build safety for herself; and she was the one that had failed, not Dana.

“Can we get out of here?”

The resignation in Valerie’s voice— perhaps the complete lack of recrimination— seemed to bring Dana back into that moment.

Dana helped Valerie up into the plane, getting her settled and buckled in on the rear bench. She stepped back down and walked over to Lucca’s side. Valerie watched through the plane’s windows, relishing in the feeling of relative safety.

“Throw her your wallet,” Lucca gruffly commanded the man, gesturing with one elbow towards Dana. “Slowly.”

He reached one hand down to his back pocket, and pulled out a brown leather billfold. He tossed it underhanded to Dana, who let it land at her feet without making an attempt to catch it.

Dana picked up the wallet and started rifling through it. She plucked out a card that Valerie couldn’t make out, and then tossed the wallet back in the direction of the car. Her aim was not great, and some of the contents scattered as it hit the ground.

“Hey-” the man began protesting, but Lucca cut him off.

“We know who you are, where you live. We tracked you here, and I’m sure you can imagine what we could’ve done if we’d wanted to. If you show your face within a hundred miles of me or the girl, you won’t have to imagine. Don’t come back.”

They stared at him coolly for a few moments, before speaking again.

“Dee, toss him the handcuffs. Then throw the keys somewhere back on the other side of the highway.”

Dana had better aim with the cuffs than she did the wallet, and they clattered to the ground just a foot or two to the man’s right. She put as much as she could into throwing the keys — handcuff keys and car keys alike — off to the side of the road; Valerie lost track of where they went, and didn’t hear them land.

“Behind your back,” Lucca ordered the man, nodding to the cuffs. “Then once we’re gone you can go find your keys. I don’t recommend you move a single step until we’re gone, but damn do I hope you try.”

Valerie picked up a dark undercurrent to their last words; she tried not to think about it. She heard the clicking as the man closed the cuffs around his wrists, and watched Lucca order him to turn around, making sure he wasn’t trying to trick them.

“Let’s go,” Lucca told Dana, nodding their head back toward the plane.

Dana unstrapped the pistol from around her thigh, and stowed it back in the black duffel bag. She hesitated for a moment, and then climbed into the rear row next to Valerie.

Lucca did the same with the shotgun a moment later, taking time to clear the shell from the chamber and empty its internal magazine. Lucca disarmed did not seem any less dangerous, to Valerie. They re-locked the trigger locks on both guns and stowed the duffel back under the seats. While the man glared at the trio sullenly, Lucca climbed into the pilot’s seat, pulled the plane’s door closed, and began flipping switches.

Valerie’s heart raced from being so close to Dana. Their thighs brushed just from the closeness of the seat, and it felt electric. The rescue, totally unexpected and wildly dramatic, left her feeling light-headed, suffused with a thrumming emotion she couldn’t easily identify; a confusing mix of disbelief, wonder, gratitude, and sadness. She could scarcely believe that all of this had been done on her behalf; nobody had ever done so much for her before and she doubted anyone ever would again. It hurt, like the blood rushing back into her feet had hurt.

The unease, fear, and trauma of the preceding night still lurked underneath this, and the bruised ache in her ankles helped ground her. She reminded herself again that this woman didn’t care about her— that Dana wasn’t her friend.

I’m just a project to her, Valerie thought to herself, looking out the window as the plane just started to roll. And that’s even if she still wants anything to do with me.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that threatened to spill out. She was asleep before the plane was even properly in the air, slumped against Dana’s shoulder and snoring softly. She only stirred awake hours later when she heard Lucca’s voice in her headset getting clearance and landing instructions.