Chapter 15

The door to Valerie’s apartment stood ajar when she and Dana finally stepped up to the threshold. Valerie pushed it open cautiously, but there was no sign that anyone else had been there since she had been taken the evening before. There was nothing inside worth stealing, in any case.

The security chain still dangled from the door, the wood sliver of torn-out doorframe hanging from it. Valerie worried for a moment about the effect that would have on her security deposit. She exhaled shakily, and stepped over the threshold. Dana stood waiting just outside the door, seeming suddenly hesitant to intrude.

Valerie looked around the small living room, and found that it felt foreign to her, and strange. The shadows, dim rooms, and closed closet doors seemed sinister. The feeble sense of safety she had been desperately cultivating in that place was gone. She couldn’t imagine finding rest there, or comfort; couldn’t imagine turning the lights off and closing her eyes. She couldn’t remember if she owned a baseball bat that she might be able to sleep with.

Her thoughts were less jumbled after the few hours of rest she’d managed in the plane, even if the emotions behind them remained just as complex. She turned back to Dana, and tried and failed to find the words— and the strength— to ask for what she wanted.

“Well, this.. is me. I guess you know that.” She said, instead, and rubbed the back of her neck. “Thanks.. thank you.. for.. the ride, you know.. For helping me. I don’t…” know what I would have done, she thought; but couldn’t finish the statement. She did know, and it was grim.

Valerie was sure that her emotions, her discomfort, and her desire to be anywhere but there must have been screaming out of her as she faced Dana; but the woman only seemed slightly puzzled. She stepped up just to the threshold, but didn’t quite enter the apartment.

“I couldn’t let someone like that take you,” Dana eventually offered back, something like an explanation. “You’re welcome. Of course.”

They fell silent. The part of Valerie that was skeptical of Dana and her motives, and aware of how little she knew about the woman struggled against the part of her that saw Dana as the only person in her life that seemed to care about her at all, and neither side could win out.

Maybe I am just a project, she wondered, but wouldn’t that be better than nothing?

Dana seemed uncertain about what to say, but still she ultimately spoke first, taking half a step back, outside and out of the doorway.

“I’ll let you get some rest. You can text me whenever..” She began to turn away.

“Wait-” Valerie spoke before she realized that she’d made a decision. “Wait. I.. uhm..” The words stuck in her throat.

“What is it?” Dana turned back, fully facing Valerie with those dark, intoxicating eyes of hers.

Valerie tried again to get out what she wanted to say, and failed again. She chewed on her lower lip, and didn’t notice the way Dana’s eyes gleamed at the gesture.

“Can, uhm.. can I pay you? For the gas, for the plane? And the car?” Dana had rented a car out of the Oakland airport in order to drive her back home across the bay. “I, uhm.. it might take me a little time.”

She didn’t really know what she was saying, and had no clue how much it all cost, anyway. She frowned, her brow creased with stress and worry. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to afford rent this month, much less find the spare cash to pay for a plane flight and a rental car.

“No,” Dana replied, simply. There was a soft radiance in the single word, but it was also firm, and resolute. No, we both know you can’t, Dana seemed to say, but also No, I won’t allow it.

The softness in Dana’s voice took Valerie off guard. It was the same soft note that had helped bring her back to herself in those last few moments in the car trunk. Kindness, she thought, and curiosity, generosity, understanding- like Dana actually cared what Valerie had to say. She couldn’t remember the last time it felt like someone really wanted to know what she had to say. She felt one of the two warring sides in her throw up its hands in surrender, even if she didn’t fully trust her own perceptions.

Valerie thought maybe she was hearing what she desperately wanted to hear; but she also maybe didn’t care if she was.

“I don’t want to stay here..” she said, and then paused. The statement was weighted with a question, but she felt too unsure to ask it outright. She felt suddenly very small, and ungrateful— like she was answering generosity with a request for more.

“I can drive you to a hotel?” Dana offered. “I’m sure there’s one with a room nearby.”

Valerie almost laughed at the notion she could afford a hotel. She chewed more on her lower lip, and took a step towards Dana. She was still barefoot; Dana was taller in the first place, and the boots she wore made her taller still, if only by an inch or two. Valerie had to look up to meet her eyes.

“I..” Valerie started, feeling a pang of emotion in her heart, fear and vulnerability dancing in her chest. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Dana didn’t respond immediately. Valerie thought she seemed surprised, and.. something else that she couldn’t recognize. She reasoned that Dana was just looking for the words to say no, and she took half a step back, her expression collapsing.

“N— never mind..” she started, stammering slightly. She felt shattered, and she exhaled heavily and started to turn away.

“I’m no angel, Valerie.” Dana couldn’t keep the guilt and sadness out of her voice. “This is all my fault. I could’ve just helped you. It would’ve been easy. Instead, I..”

“I know.” Valerie cut her off, softly. She couldn’t bare to look at her in that moment. “But, I… I was nobody to you.. There are a million people that need help. A billion. More help than I need. It’s not your fault.”

Valerie risked a glance back at the woman; she took Dana’s tightened lips for skepticism.

“You didn’t hire me into a shitty job,” she continued. She fixed her gaze at the corner where stained beige carpet met scuffed landlord-white wall. “Didn’t rent me an apartment I can barely afford. You didn’t give me a mother that thinks I’m her own, personal..” she gestured vaguely, searching for the right words. “…punishment from god.

“And.. I don’t know. You pulled a battery cable, but how could you have known?” She hugged her arms around her chest. “I didn’t know. Dana, it.. it wasn’t your job to fix any of that, but.. you did come for me. You and Lucca. You didn’t have to. Nobody’s ever..”

Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes; nobody’s ever helped me like that, she couldn’t say. Nobody had ever done a tenth as much. Every day of her life up until then, she had rescued herself, and she’d never managed to do it as well as Dana and Lucca had.

It was hard for her to get the next words out. She thought they were true, but a part of her decried the wrongness of it. She found that that part spoke in her mother’s voice, and she mentally pushed it aside, indignant.

“I know what you wanted,” Valerie continued, “that first night, you know.. I’m not stupid. And I think you doing that would’ve been..”

Her mouth quirks to the side, unsure how to shape the thought into words.

“..I would have liked that.”

“Are you..” It seemed like it was Dana’s turn, for once, to have trouble assembling thoughts. She had seemed resigned during the drive across the bay, an aura of finality, and even fatalism.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight, i-if you..” Valerie turned back to face Dana as she softly spoke, and took a step closer to the woman, just within arm’s reach.

Valerie’s pulse raced with excitement and fear, nervousness at the scale of what she was saying. There was joy and hope in her, feelings she had not heard from in earnest in years; but there was terror, also, as one feels at the top of a roller coaster, when gravity drops away and the world hurtles toward you.

Dana lifted a hand to Valerie’s face, hesitantly at first, but the girl stepped into it, falling silent mid-sentence, her eyes damp and shining. A static spark jumped between them. Dana stroked a thumb along the girl’s cheekbone, hand sliding down and around the side of her neck until her fingers tangled in the colorful but unkempt hair at her nape. If Dana noticed or thought anything of the stubble on the girl’s cheek, she gave no sign of it.

Dana pulled Valerie to her gently, her hands commanding but not forceful. Valerie could easily pull away, or resist- but she stepped in to Dana’s embrace, instead. She felt safe, and a tight knot of fear inside her relaxed, ever so slightly. She’d carried it for so long she had forgotten it was there, an ever-present tightness whispering to her from the dark corners of her mind.

Dana kissed her, their lips warm and soft and pressed together. She ran the tip of her tongue across Valerie’s teeth, and gently bit the girl’s lower lip as she drew back, inhaling her scent deeply.

“You don’t have to be alone,” she whispered, her voice all soft smoke and velvety suede.

Dana’s breath was warm and ticklish against Valerie’s ear, and she melted against the woman. Dana grazed the girl’s earlobe with her teeth, the faintest echo of a bite. Valerie exhaled softly, half in surprise.

Dana twined her fingers through the girl’s hair and pulled her head back, carefully; strong, but not rough. Valerie gasped, a sound that sent Dana’s heart racing. They kissed again, hungrily, Dana’s tongue invading the girl’s mouth as deeply as it could. Then she stepped back, forcing distance between the two of them. She watched Valerie shudder, mouth open, as she blinked back down to the same plane of existence, all wide- and wild-eyed exhilaration.

“Maybe you should put some shoes on,” Dana told her. Valerie smiled, genuine emotion momentarily shining through all of the fear and stress. Dana was smiling, too, with a heat that warmed Valerie in ways she didn’t fully understand.

Dana settled on the couch, charitably bemused as she got her first truly good look at the apartment’s interior. Valerie took a quick shower, rinsing off the dirt and the faint reek of cigarettes and car trunk. The tepid water didn’t fully wash away the memory of everything that had happened, but she felt better afterward, nonetheless. She shaved the stubble from her face, brushed her teeth, and raked fingers through her damp hair.

She dressed in a pair of snug acid washed blue jeans that seemed clean enough, and a chunky and slightly over-sized knitted sweater. It was patchy and threadbare in some places, but she thought it evoked “cute” just barely more than “destitute.” It was a close thing. She finished off the outfit with a pair of knock-off Uggs, scuffed brown suede boots with fake fur trim.

The outfit was cute, and the hungry, predatory look it inspired on Dana’s face made Valerie’s cheeks burn and filled her mind with uncivilized thoughts.