Page 13 of Quiver

“You were always quiet, but I got the sense you were smart. If you’re a surgeon now, I must’ve pegged you correctly.”

“The smart part, not the quiet part,” Bex said.

“I’m sorry, I can’t place you,” she admitted, knowing for sure she couldn’t have possibly forgotten a woman of Bex’s stature or bone structure.

“No, I doubt we’ve ever crossed paths. I’m a Manhattanite born and bred.”

“What brings you to rural Vermont?”

“Initially, Howie dragged me up for a homespun holiday, but I’ve been splitting time between home and here for my partner, Ava.” Bex leaned back into the doorway of the kitchen. “Hey babe? Come say hi for a sec?”

Bex smiled sweetly, and Kye almost craned her neck to see the woman who warranted such an expression, but when she stepped into the room, both of them froze, and this time the reaction had nothing to do with celebrity.

An uncomfortable sort of recognition passed between them, and Kye held her breath to keep from gasping as a flash of memory shot through her brain.

It didn’t work.

Everything about this woman had haunted her for years. Kye had lain awake in too many otherwise empty beds reliving the moment when she’d trudged, broken and dejected, up Fletcher’s driveway, seeking solace, seeking comfort, ready to grovel as she crawled all the way back to the only person who’d ever felt like home. She hadn’t thought she could sink any lower until the moment her eyes had landed on Fletcher in this woman’s arms.

The emotions rushed up to meet her as fresh and raw as if it were only yesterday that she’d stood there, frozen through, and laid open in her grief. Ashamed, anguished, and ripped open by an unreasonable sense of loss, she’d barely found the strength to limp, bereft, back to a life she no longer wanted to live. The soul-crushing vulnerability of that moment bled through everything that had come since, fueling her anguish and resentment. The sting of betrayal she had no right to feel reverberated through the years, shaking every part of her, and coloring even this idyllic holiday homecoming scene in red and black.

Kylie shivered, feeling cold and small in ways she had sworn she’d never let herself relive. How surreal to see someone she’d never actually met, someone whose name she’d never known until now, to be able to hear the echo of her laughter or recall details of her fingers twirling through dark curls, or the press of her lips against a smooth cheek.

Her face flamed, burning through the iciness that initially gripped her. The room tilted as she fought to stem a choking mix shame, resentment, grief, and disorientation. No. She’d wouldn’t drown, not here. Not again. She rolled all of her sharp, suffocating emotions into a ball, and used it to fuel the same kind of fire she’d used to sustain her for so long. Anger sparked old and familiar, and she welcomed the cover it provided. She might have even surrendered to a kind of rage if not for Bex wrapping an arm easily around this woman’s slender waist and shattering the silence. “Honey, you didn’t tell me you were neighbors with a movie star.”

“I didn’t know I was.” Ava’s smile was clearly forced. “I’ve heard stories, but we’ve never formally met.”

“No, not formally, but I’ve seen you…around,” Kye managed, without meeting her eyes. She focused on the hand on Ava’s waist.

These two were a couple.

Ava and Bex. Bex and Ava. And clearly for at least a year.

She nearly buckled under the relief and didn’t even have it in her to be annoyed about that. It surged through her with an almost palpable solidity. She hadn’t even let herself consciously consider any option where this woman still existed, but releasing those possibilities before they even fully registered made her bones ache, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders after ages of grinding her down.

“Gram thought we might chat about the city,” Bex urged as the silence started to stretch between them again.

“I live in Midtown, but Bex is near the border of Tribeca and the Financial District,” Howie offered. “We cover a lot of ground. I’m sure we have a few favorite spots in common.”

She shook her head, not because she disagreed, but because she couldn’t make her mind conjure up anything close to coordinates with her brain still firing random synapses. “Why don’t you start?”

“Start?” Howie asked. “Um, I guess you probably know the Theater District pretty well.”

“Yes.” She took a deep, steadying breath as the words seeped through the haze. “I’ve been working down there for the last five or six years.”

“There’s nothing like Broadway,” Bex said.

“Or slightly off of it, in my case lately.”

Howie laughed. “I’m all the way up on Forty-Fifth and Third, so you’re still closer than me in every possible way.”

She appreciated him doubling down on her self-deprecating tone. “I was actually not far from there the other day for an audition.”

“Oh really?” His eyes lit up, and she regretted the slip immediately. She didn’t want to relive that moment when she’d just barely found her feet again. She didn’t want to go back there at all.

“Nothing worth getting excited about … which is not to say the film isn’t. I only meant nothing for me to get excited about.” Except she already had, and trying to downplay it now in a roomful of distant strangers and one person who wasn’t distant enough felt more pathetic than she could’ve predicted.

“If it’s not for you, then I can’t imagine it’s a great project,” Bex said amicably. “I’m sure you’ve got impeccable taste.”