Page 79 of Quiver

“You don’t even need to be an armchair psychologist to figure that out. I basically yelled as much at you right before the first group lesson.”

“Ah, you ‘hate her because you can’t hate me’?” Fletcher smiled. The content itself wasn’t funny, but the delivery was classic Kye. “Had you been practicing that line?”

“No, totally off the cuff. I hadn’t even realized the truth of it until it came flying out of my mouth, but my conviction led to a compelling performance, no?”

“Very much. You left my head spinning. Honestly, there’s still a lot I don’t understand,” Fletcher said. “To be fair, I didn’t let myself wonder too much, because doing so would require me to admit I cared about what you felt, and after what happened in the hayloft, I couldn’t do that and stay sane, so I refused to wonder.”

“You’ll have to explain to me how you do that sometime. The wondering wrecks me on a regular basis.”

“I may not be as great at it as I initially thought, because in the truck yesterday I couldn’t stop myself.” She sighed. “I never expected to die, not really, but for the first time it hit me that I could, and damned if I didn’t wonder about all of it. Where you’d been, who you’d become, what had driven you back, what I’d missed, and yes, a time where you learned about me and Ava.”

Kylie scooched down to lie on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Her eyes focused on something even farther away, like she may be watching some old movie in her head, but her voice was still clear and close as she began to summarize the plot for Fletcher. “It was almost six years ago. Everything in Hollywood had been so bad. Honestly, nothing about Hollywood was ever great, but that’s a way worse story. The point is I finally cracked. I decided in grand, dramatic fashion I wasn’t going to do any of it anymore. I didn’t tell anyone, not my agent, not my parents, not my friends. I packed a bag and took the first plane across the country, rented a car, and drove toward you.”

“Me?” Fletcher could barely squeak out the word.

“Don’t ask me why. There were a million reasons, and neither one of us has the strength to hash them out, but in that moment, you were my north star. Only, you weren’t. You were Ava’s. It was winter, and my rented MINI Cooper couldn’t make it up your driveway, so I parked by the road like some creepy stalker and trudged toward the house. I made it almost to the barn when I heard laughing.”

Fletcher closed her eyes and held in a groan. “And you saw us together.”

“Something inside of me broke. I crumbled, Fletch. I know it sounds vain and stupid, but it never occurred to me you’d be with someone else. I couldn’t even process it when she was standing right in front of me. I mean, I’d tried. I dated, I’d been with other people, but it had always been such a wretched disaster. I think part of me twisted things around so much I believed you had to be just as miserable. How could you be the one for me if I wasn’t the one for you?”

“You know Ava and I were kind of disaster, too, at least as a romantic couple.”

“I do now. She cleared that up yesterday, and I think she’d tried to do so earlier, but I couldn’t hear it. I’d spent years in a flat-out trauma spiral around what I’d seen, standing cold and shattered and lost enough to come crawling up your driveway only to find you in some other woman’s arms.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, any of it. She couldn’t imagine Kylie coming back to her even though she understood that was effectively what had happened this time around, too, though neither of them fully admitted as much. Everything had been about their jobs, the movie, the archery, at least in the forefront. She’d steadfastly refused to swivel her focus enough to see anything at the periphery or consider the undercurrents of why Kylie had felt safe turning to her, or why she’d let her. She supposed those explanations she’d avoided also played a key role in several of the things that’d transpired between them from the hayloft to the hospital, and she suspected Kylie wasn’t the only one who’d let things spiral.

“Anyway,” Kylie continued, “I ran back to New York. I reinvented myself on Broadway, or at least I tried to. If you’d moved on, I would, too, if for no other reason than to spite you. I pulled on all the anger that’d fueled me in those early years and added a healthy sense of betrayal and used it to slit open all my old scars. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t logical. It was strong enough to propel me forward until I believed everything happened for a reason. I got so good at telling myself that lie, I didn’t even question it until I saw her on Christmas Eve and suffered the desire to commit cold-blooded murder.”

Fletcher shivered at the image and the chill in Kylie’s voice. “You know you don’t have to shank her now, though, right?”

“I know.” There was still the subtlest hint of disappointment in her tone. “It was easier when I believed homicide might be a viable solution. Without that option, I’m forced to admit I’ve got other things I have to deal with, and none of them seem as simple or satisfying.”

“Now, that I understand,” Fletcher said with conviction.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, I hadn’t considered murder outright, but I let myself believe if I could just get rid of you again, I’d be able to go back to the way things were.”

“And now?”

“Pretty sure we shattered that illusion last week, but now I’m not even sure I want to go back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never considered myself a coward, or someone who runs from a challenge, but that might be exactly what I’ve done with you. There’s clearly a lot I haven’t dealt with where you’re concerned, and I don’t love the idea of it springing up to catch me off guard again in another ten years.”

Kylie curled onto her side. “So, what are we suggesting?”

“I don’t have any plans or answers, but what we’re doing right now seems like a new thing, maybe a good thing.”

Kylie yawned as she nodded. “An exhausting thing.”

“You haven’t slept yet, have you?”

“They didn’t give me any of the pills they gave you, which seems a little rude now.”

Fletcher smiled down at her. “Offensive, really, but maybe it goes back to the idea that if at least one of us isn’t a little wrecked, neither of us makes progress.”