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Teddi watched her over the fruit as she took another bite. Her eyes pinched. Assessing, analyzing, knowing.
“Still mad at me I see.” Another bite, the juices highlighting her bottom lip, an annoying match to her top one.
Vera felt a deep pulse in her gut when her tongue reached out to lick the juice-covered skin. “No, I just don’t know why you’re here.” She threw the truth out with well-practiced indifference while grabbing her bag off the floor. “Are you living here?” Vera lifted her chin as she neared her and turned down the hallway towards the bedrooms.
God, she didn’t know what she’d do if she had to sleep in the same house with her. Ximena would have told her if she’d moved in, she was sure. Then again, she hadn’t exactly wanted to have long, meaningful chats recently.
Soft footfalls followed on the carpet behind. “No, I bought my own place last year, it’s across town.” Turning into her usual room, Vera dropped her things on the bench at the foot of the bed as her heart tried to pump itself into her throat. It felt like a snake trying to regurgitate a still-squirming meal.
“Good. Good for you.” She didn’t want to talk about houses with her. That wasn’t something two women who had once been intimately involved together chatted about. It had been ten years since their last “chat”. While her brain offered a buffet of other topics, she shut them all down. Too many memories that held few answers. Answers too old to matter.
“Thanks. Congratulations to you too, I heard about you getting the D.C. assignment a while ago. I know you’ve wanted that since before you could drive.” Flicking the light on, Vera looked around the bedroom. Ximena had cleaned recently, vacuum marks still crisscrossing the carpet. The bed was made up with the dark green comforter she’d bought on her last visit home. Her eyes darted at something, anything to use as an excuse to end the conversation. Teddi had leisurely filled up the doorway, leaning her shoulder against the frame as if she owned the place.
The large desk by the window still held all the knickknacks she’d left for safekeeping. The black eight ball at the edge seemed to double in size as she picked it up.
“Ask it if we’re going to be together forever.” Teddi laughed as she rolled the eight-ball across her belly and onto Vera’s. They lay shoulder to shoulder, still dazed and sweaty from the sex they just had.
Vera made up a lame excuse to get out of the request, tossing it into her laundry basket instead. She didn’t want to know what it would say. Just the possibility of "NO" from the stupid toy unleashed a whip of fear so sharp she felt it loop itself around her stomach and cinch down like a rope.
The ball had been one of their games. The thing they consulted when making stupid choices. “Should we go camping this weekend?” “It said YES, we’re going.” “Is Vera going to kiss me?” “Will Teddi fall asleep before the end of the movie again?” It was innocent play. Until a moment of desperation had Vera relying on it as a lifeline. As if it really could tell her what she should do when all the dreams she had suddenly came at the cost of one another.
Turning it over, the fortune-telling triangle floated up through the blue liquid. “YES”. That wasn’t what it had said ten years ago. She shook it once more, the sting of those three letters washing away in the dark.
“ASK AGAIN LATER.”
The bed creaked behind her. Teddi plopped herself onto it unceremoniously, lying on her side with her hand in her hair. She wasn’t acting like it had been a decade since the last time they’d seen each other. She supposed it was easy to do so when you were the one who got to choose when and how things ended. A wave of deep exhaustion hit her.
“Thanks, but D.C. isn’t exactly what I imagined at sixteen.” She set the ball back down too hard, sending the pens in a mug rattling.
Teddi’s voice lowered, “You want to talk about it?” She didn’t. Not with her. Not with anyone.
“No, I don’t, Teddi. We don’t have that kind of relationship anymore.”
Something Vera wasn’t prepared to see flitted across her face. Sitting up, Teddi began to speak. “We co-” Cutting her off, the front door swung open, the sound carrying down the hall.
“Hello?” Ximena yelled.
They watched one another, a stilted pause. Teddi leaned forward, shoulders tense, mouth slightly open, as if she was trying to find the right words.
“You here, Vera?” Ximena's voice was closer.
Neither of them looked away. The room seemed to melt, the thickening of the air between something familiar and something foreign. Warm, languid satisfaction filled her at the bone-deep response. She reveled in it, like tasting a dessert she had missed for years dissolving on her tongue.
It was promptly followed by regret.
“Back here,” she replied, breaking the tension between them.
“Hey.” Ximena appeared in the doorway looking exactly the same as the last time they saw one another. Dressed in plain blue scrubs with her long black hair braided back. Instead of barrelling into Vera for a tight hug, she hung back, jostling her keys. Awkwardness stiffened the space between them. Vera reached forward to hug her routinely, unsure of how to begin to mend the space.
“I missed you,” Vera murmured into her hair. Ximena squeezed around her torso. Their identical tawny skin tones blended together. Where Vera’s hair was kept at her jaw, Ximena’s fell nearly to her waist. The soft crinkle of her work scrubs sounded as Vera attempted to inhale. She could just barely make out the scent of the peach lotion she always wore. It was another memory of home she hadn’t realized she missed so much.
“I’ve missed you too,” Her sister admitted, the words getting lost against Vera’s chest. She rested her chin on Ximena’s head and sighed heavily. Another ache revealed itself, a sister-shaped hole in her heart now filled.
“Yo tambien, but I’m going to pass out. I don’t understand how someone so small is so freakishly strong.” Ximena pulled away with an annoyed huff.
“Five seconds and you’re already bullying me. Voy a llamar Papá.” Vera smiled down at her, knowing full well her sister would do it. Looking her over the way she always did, she noted the dark circles around her wide eyes, the new hollows beneath her cheekbones. The near-permanent upward curve of her mouth was pulled down at the edges.
“Are you alright?” Ximena’s straight, dark brows pulled together as her lip trembled. All she could manage to do was shake her head before she dove for Vera again, clinging to her like a lifeline.
