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“How can I show you that I mean it?” Carmen asked into the darkness, into the rubble Lola was becoming.
“Mean what?” Lola managed, voice too thin and fragile to be hers. Lola didn’t whisper, she thundered, and yet there she was… She was glass — thin and useless against the storm.
“That I like you Lola. That I like being around you because you’re not just irritatingly sexy, you're smart and funny and fearless and I want to get to know so much more about you. The real you. What kind of ammunition can I give you so you can see that my feelings are real?” She let go of Lola’s hand to cup her face. “I’ll give it to you. Whatever it is. I’ll give you the code to my destruction because I’m willing to take the risk that you won’t use it. Because I’m sure that you’re feeling what I’m feeling, and it scares the shit out of you. But that doesn’t make it any less real.”
Carmen’s hands were so warm on Lola’s cheeks.
“I want to be with you,” Carmen vowed so earnestly, Lola didn’t have a comeback for it in her arsenal. “No more games. No more bullshit. I want to date you. I like you,” she repeated, like Lola’s silence was due to a breakdown in communication rather than the nuclear destruction of her reality.
Carmen ran her thumbs over Lola’s cheek bones before pulling away, before giving her permission to flee this unexpected proposal. This surrender.
“You can take that admission and shove it in my face and have the ultimate last laugh for all eternity. Because I’m out. You win. You were the baddest bitch. All I care about is getting to know more of the real you beneath the armor. The person willing to drive when I’m sick. To clear out a pharmacy shelf for me just because—”
Lola reached out for her. Pulling her in when she should turn and leave. Tangling her fingers in her soft hair when she should choose self-preservation. Gripping the nape of her neck and pulling her to her lips when she should tell her there was nothing more to her beneath the surface.
Without the words to return Carmen’s sentiments, Lola kissed her. Her lips met Carmen’s tentatively, the contact electric in the way external shock defibrillators are electric and just as lifesaving.
She cradled Carmen’s face, her touch shaky, reverent. The tenderness of her own movements terrified Lola. She’d been someone else since she stepped out of her room, and she couldn’t be held accountable for what this version of herself did.
Lola was trembling, laid bare. None of her usual swagger and bluster coming to protect her. Just nerves exposed and raw as she kissed Carmen like she was something precious. Something she didn’t deserve to hold.
Carmen’s hands on her waist grounded Lola just enough to press closer. Carmen’s kiss was life. That was what it was. Carmen was breathing life into her, into them both. And though it shook her to her core, she couldn’t make herself stop. Couldn’t find her footing. Couldn’t stop feeling like she was in free fall, the ground rushing up to meet her while she plummeted. The illusion of a parachute shattered when her frantic tugging on the ripcord didn’t slow her descent.
She kissed Carmen like she was drowning. Like only the air from Carmen’s lungs could save her. Like this was the first breath she had ever taken. It was too much.
Lola pulled back but didn’t run. Gliding her hands down Carmen’s arms, she covered her hands with hers and squeezed them.
“Oh, God,” Carmen whispered. “I just made a total fool—”
“You didn’t,” Lola promised, but it was all she could say around the knot in her throat. She squeezed her hands tighter, wishing she could send her some clearer signal. “I want… this is something—”
“It’s a lot,” Carmen mercifully put into words for her. “You need a minute to process?”
Lola nodded, never having felt so grateful for someone finishing her sentence in her life.
“It’s not that I’ve misread this whole thing and you’re really only interested in some spectacular angry sex with me?”
Lola breathed a tiny laugh and pressed her forehead to Carmen’s — the gentlest way to convey her feelings at her disposal. “No,” she promised in a voice so small she couldn’t believe Carmen had heard her.
“There’s no rush,” Carmen promised without a trace of judgment.
Enveloped in a feeling so warm it left no space for shame, Lola couldn’t muster being embarrassed for her stunted communication skills. But it was like Carmen understood that she didn’t have the language for this and she didn’t seem to be annoyed with her.
“Do you trust me?” Carmen asked, her halting tone giving away that she understood the magnitude of the question.
Lola’s stomach tightened. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Her muscles twitched and her brain sent every flight signal to her body that it had. She should run. She should say no. She should give in to the voice telling her that she wasn’t worthy of a moment like this. Of a person who would be willing to get to know her after seeing her at her worst.
But for once, Lola didn’t listen to that voice. For once, she heard the lie on its forked tongue. Carmen’s touch, her kiss, her kindness. Those felt more real than the poison she was pushing out of her veins. The chance at something different was more alluring than the fear of failure.
“Yes,” Lola replied into the dark, into Carmen’s lips. She said it loud enough to scare off the panic tugging at her guts and crawling up her back. “I trust you.”
Lola slipped back into her own room, the one she hadn’t bothered to lock, heart pounding. She leaned against the closed door, overwhelmed.
Carmen’s confession had blindsided her. Lola pressed her fingers to her still-tingling lips, trying to make sense of the torrent of emotions swirling through her.
She paced the small space, too restless to even think about sleeping now. Her mind raced, replaying every charged moment with Carmen. Every hostile clash, every passionate encounter.
It was all jumbled together, woven through with new context. Lola saw it now for what it was — an intoxicating dance they’d been locked in from the start. One where the steps were slowly bringing them closer without Lola’s notice until it was too late. Until she was too tangled to break free.
