Page 104 of Quiver

She sat and then leaned back a bit, beside her. “What is there to talk about?”

“I don’t know. You fried my brain by not skulking off and withdrawing. I have no idea what comes next.”

“Kudos to you for admitting it. Look at us being all mature and shit.”

Kylie laughed. “You have a way with words, Bouchard. Want to use them to discuss feelings?”

She pretended to grimace, but, honestly, simply sitting this close to Kylie kept her cringe to a manageable level.

“Need me to start?” Kylie offered.

“Sure. Drama is—I mean, emotions are sort of your bag.”

Kylie bumped her shoulder with her own. “They really are, and I appreciate you deferring to my expertise here, because I’m kind of pissed at your brother even though he didn’t actually say anything dickish. It felt dickish, and you know me, I’m not the kind of woman who wants to be even dick-adjacent.”

Fletcher snorted.

“I’m also wondering if you’re mad at him for needling us about my future plans, or maybe if you’re mad at me because of my future plans, which feel suddenly imminent, and maybe I’m projecting here, but this also feels a lot like twelve years ago when we just stopped being back there, like, three days ago.”

She sighed. That was quite a summary, and like her assessment of Ryder, it felt bad without being actually horrible. Fletcher wasn’t sure either option rang entirely true or false, but she wasn’t sure why.

“This is the part where you talk,” Kylie stage-whispered.

“Oh, my cue huh? Well, I’m not trying to withhold anything, and I’m not angry at anyone. Annoyed, probably. I didn’t like being interrupted rudely, and I don’t like my brother checking up on me or my mother sending him.” She started slowly but picked up speed as she neared her mark. “None of them have any right, and, like, what did they expect to happen? He’d come over and say, ‘Kylie’s going to leave,’ and I’d, what? Be shocked? Come to my senses? Throw you out right now?”

“I think he was offering us a reminder.”

“Like either of us could forget. They must all believe I’m dense, which also annoys me without actually surprising me, but, believe it or not, I knew full well what I was getting into the last few days. Honestly, I knew it from the moment I agreed to work with you.”

Kylie’s smile didn’t look smug so much as wistful. “Any regrets I should know about?”

“No,” she said plainly. “Maybe that’s the only surprising thing, the peace I’ve made with it all, with you, with us and where we are now. I knew you had the potential to wreck me, but I never gave any thought to the prospect of healing.”

“You think we have?”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far, but we finally had the conversation we should have had years ago. I learned things about me and about you. I’ve also found some compassion for who we used to be.”

“What about compassion for who we are now?”

She shrugged and searched her feelings. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s just relief we can both set aside the old narrative that drove me mad for so long.”

Kylie rested her head on her shoulder, and Fletcher fought the old urge to jerk away. “None of that means we get a do-over. This is not some take two on the choices we made when we were basically still scared kids.”

“Not basically. I was absolutely a scared kid.” Kylie sighed. “When I came back here at Christmas, I felt the same way.”

“I understand now, and I hate how we went about everything, but I’m still not sure either of us would trade the lives that came out of it.” She looked around the arena, the light streaming through the windows, her horses, the targets she’d learned to hit with her eyes closed. “I’m proud of what I’ve built.”

Kylie lifted her head to meet her eyes. “You should be. You proved everyone wrong.”

Fletcher tried to glance away, but Kylie caught her chin gently in those skilled fingers and held her close. “You did. Your parents, your brother, your teachers, or whoever else tried to tell you this wasn’t a real job or a real life. You’re thriving.”

“That’s the basic gist of what upset me about Ryder’s little checkup or my parents’ need to send him in the first place. They all keep waiting for me to fail or fall apart. Sometimes I think a part of them would’ve preferred it if I’d followed you to LA all those years ago.”

Kylie laughed. “I’m not sure any of them would’ve gone that far.”

“Maybe not the idea of me playing trophy wife to a movie star. I doubt they would’ve seen that as making a meaningful contribution to society, but then again, they don’t seem to think anything I’m doing now is valuable, either.”

“Then fuck ’em all, right in their stuck-up asses.”