Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
F rom the moment Tori walked into Mia’s house on Sunday morning with coffee and croissants, she’d known something was off. Mia had greeted her with a kiss at the door, but then she’d gone off to the small pool house to sort through stuff. Considering that Mia had made absolutely zero progress inside the house, and the pool house was full of old stuff even her mom didn’t want, Tori was sure she was avoiding her.
It had been too much. They’d moved too fast. Mia was freaked out. Tori had freaked her out.
A spiked mass of acrid regret roiled in Tori’s belly when she stepped outside to the pool. The mid-morning air was hot and humid and immediately made her regret wearing jeans. Made her regret having gotten carried away on the phone the night before and made everything fucking weird. Made her regret having fumbled her chance by being impatient.
Standing at the door of the pool house, Mia wiped sweat off her flushed forehead with the back of her arm. In shorts and a V-neck, Mia was so heartbreakingly cute with all her freckles on display.
Ugh. Fuck.
“Hey, I’m going to go,” Tori said, ready to bolt before she made things worse.
Maybe if Mia wasn’t looking at her, she wouldn’t feel embarrassed or uncomfortable or whatever was going on. She’d give Mia space and what little time they had left, and Mia would let her know when she was ready to talk. If she was ready.
Hazel eyes blinding in the sun, Mia nodded. “Good idea.”
Two words shredded Tori from the inside out. She tried to absorb the impact. Tried not to let rejection and remorse and dread lasso her chest with barbed wire. Tried not to cry until she fled to her car.
“I think I need a break from the house, anyway.” Mia tossed an empty box through the door of the pool house that looked unchanged over decades, and slammed it behind her. “How about we go see your place? I’m unconvinced you don’t just live in your fancy office.” She tugged Tori closer by the hem of her shirt and lifted onto her tiptoes to kiss her. “Just give me a minute to shower.”
Relief collided with confusion while Tori watched Mia meander into the house. There was absolutely something going on in Mia’s head—maybe her mom or the divorce—but it wasn’t about Tori. About what they’d done, or sort of done, last night. Legs unsteady from the whiplash, she followed Mia inside.
In the car, Mia reached for Tori’s hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. She interlaced their fingers and dropped their hands into her lap while she scrolled through her phone, lamenting that it was too hot to take the top off Tori’s Jeep.
Tori sat there, pulse dancing in her throat, trying to absorb the casual intimacy of Mia’s touch. Trying to pretend that her whole body hadn’t leaned into the small gesture.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Mia said when she walked into Tori’s loft half an hour later. “But I guess this is kind of it.”
Instead of heading for the brown leather couch near the uncovered windows bathing the open space in light, Mia went for the kitchen. While Tori leaned against the counter with a smirk on her face, Mia opened her fridge.
After making a borderline judgmental sound, Mia looked between the fridge contents and Tori. “You know this is borderline American Psycho , right?”
“Having food in a place intended for food storage?” Tori crossed her arms over her chest and pretended she didn’t know what Mia meant. “Wild,” she deadpanned.
Mia’s brightening expression cleared the lingering unease in Tori’s belly. “I don’t know a single person whose fridge looks like a damn storefront for cold-pressed juices and pre-packaged meal delivery services. Look at this.” She did a grand sweeping gesture at a thing Tori looked at every day. “You don’t even own condiments!”
Tori laughed. “I’m sorry you came over here to ogle my ketchup and are leaving disappointed.”
Closing the door, Mia turned away from the fridge. She was wearing an increasingly familiar expression—sharp, possessive, vaguely predatory—when she stalked toward Tori.
“This whole place is giving bachelor pad, you know?” Mia’s question was obviously rhetorical. “Like you got used to love-struck women cooking for you and never learned how to do it for yourself.”
Unable to suppress her grin, Tori pulled Mia into her space, widening her stance to make room for Mia as she wrapped her arms around her waist. She interlaced her fingers so she wouldn’t be tempted to run her hands over Mia’s ass, which looked incredible in a thin, floral sundress.
“It’s just food,” Tori said, gaze fixed on Mia looking up at her. Fixed on her favorite freckles scattered over her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, fading over her orbital bone. The scar on her eyebrow and the eyes that reminded Tori of rain-drenched forests. Green and brown and lush with unknowable secrets.
“Where’s the passion in that?” Mia’s voice trailed away like Tori’s attention dropping to her lips, parted and soft and inviting her in.
Tori had never cared less about a topic in her life. She leaned down, finding Mia’s mouth with hers. Instead of pulling her into the kiss like a slow current, Mia was a riptide. An inescapable force dragging a willing Tori into watery depths.
Hands clasped tight around Mia to keep herself from wandering, Tori deepened their kiss. She was already drunk on the rhythm of Mia’s tongue—on the way she breathed faster and used her teeth like she didn’t know how to get more—when Mia’s hand found the shallow curve of Tori’s side. And then Mia was skimming her ribs, palm searing when she met the side of Tori’s breast.
At the unexpected touch, Tori stilled. She couldn’t control every instinct at once. She was too busy not pulling up Mia’s dress when her thumb found Tori’s hard nipple through her shirt.
Tori’s barely contained desire roared, smashing against its confinement, as Mia’s confidence grew. Even through the material, Mia’s insistent touch sent a hard rush of need pulsing through Tori’s body.
Fingers digging into Mia’s back, Tori didn’t mean to pull her flush against her. Didn’t mean to slip her leg between Mia’s thighs. To guide her hips, urging her to grind against her, to find the friction from her jeans.
With a moaned curse, Mia grabbed Tori’s breast too hard. Hard enough to make Tori wince and break their kiss. Mia let go of her like she’d touched a hot stove.
“Shit, sorry.” Mia leaned away to look at her, face flushed and eyes wide. “Did I do it wrong?”
Tori caught her hand and guided it back. “Just a little less pressure,” she said, kissing Mia’s jaw, then her throat. “You were kind of checking for ripeness. Like a cantaloupe. One with implants.”
Mia furrowed her brow. “You got your boobs done?” Her laugh was a nervous release of energy. “I thought you were just a late bloomer.”
Tori raised an eyebrow. “Technically, I did go to a Dr. Bloom.”
“Shut up! Did you?”
Tori grinned, running her fingers through Mia’s hair. “No. But that would’ve been poetic, right?”
“I hate you,” Mia joked, confident again when she rested her arms on Tori’s shoulders.
Smiling through the gentler kiss, Tori said, “The surgery made my nipples really sensitive, and they never went back to normal.”
Mia bit down on Tori’s bottom lip. “Fuck, that’s hot.” Her nails scraped the back of Tori’s neck a moment before she muttered, “I know I’m making you wait too long.”
“I want to move exactly as fast as you do, Mia,” she promised, kissing her again before straightening. “This is a lot of change.”
Mia gazed up at her for a moment and then shook her head like she’d considered and discarded a hundred responses before she opened her mouth. “In some ways, I guess there’s change,” she conceded. “But I don’t know. In so many other ways… It’s like… It’s like breathing. Effortless and instinctive.” One corner of her mouth twitched into a smile. “Being with you like this… The last week has made me feel the most myself I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Chest expanding, Tori didn’t know how to respond to such a profound compliment before storm clouds rolled in to dim Mia’s expression. “I just want it to be good and I don’t mean to make you wait, but I don’t know?—”
Tori interrupted her by cradling Mia’s jaw. She hoped Mia could really hear her when she said, “We’ll know when it’s right, okay? Don’t overthink it.”
The tension in Mia’s shoulders didn’t drop. Tori could feel all the things she wasn’t saying in the pit tearing open in her stomach. There was no sense in holding back. If Mia was having doubts, it was better to know now. “Is something else bothering you?”
“Why?” Mia volleyed instead of responding.
Tori tilted her head and leaned back against the counter. “It seems after yesterday you’re preoccupied today. And if it’s not that you feel weird about what we?—”
“I don’t feel weird,” she said so fast as if there’d be consequences if she let Tori finish her question. “It’s not that.”
“But it’s something?” Tori wanted to be patient. Wanted to wait for Mia to open up when she was ready. But her gut was telling her to prod, gently and just enough for Mia to understand that she was safe with her. “There’s nothing you can’t tell me, you know?” She ran her thumb over the ridge of Mia’s cheek.
“Maybe we should sit.” Mia was already moving to Tori’s living room.
By the time they sat together on the couch, an energy had materialized out of the ether and wrapped itself around Mia. Dark and heavy and settling in Tori’s own chest like the most vile congestion. Even before Mia spoke, Tori’s aching heart was in her throat.
“There’s, um,” The crack in Mia’s voice ripped Tori’s heart out of her throat and drop-kicked it out the window. “Something that’s starting to feel like a secret.”
Tori held her breath and balled her useless hands into fists. She wanted to peer into Mia’s mind. To know everything without Mia having to utter a single word. All she wanted was to go back in time and choose to have stayed in Mia’s life so that she never needed to be told anything.
“I’ve had,” she pressed her hand to her belly and Tori watched an unspeakable grief crest in her eyes a moment before she closed them, “losses.”
“Oh, Mia,” Tori breathed. She reached out, taking Mia’s clammy hand in hers. She tried to say she was sorry, but Mia spoke first and she didn’t want to interrupt her.
“They both happened early,” she explained, trying and failing to console herself.
She gripped Tori’s hand tighter, blunt nails leaving divots in Tori’s skin. There was nothing Tori wouldn’t give to absorb the pain emanating from Mia in choking waves.
“I don’t know why people say that like it’s less of a loss. Even in the support groups. There’s this hierarchy of grief and somehow just because they were only a few weeks along, I should be able to get over it faster. Or at all. Or, I mean—I don’t even know what I mean.” She shook her head, eyes glistening when she looked at Tori again. “Honestly, I hate thinking about it. And I hate talking about it even more than that.”
Tori watched in abject heartbreak as Mia clenched her jaw. Watched in helpless silence while Mia visibly wrestled down her pain. Watched her stuff it back into the hole it had escaped from.
“It seems only fair that you know that about me, so you can hightail it the fuck out of this mess,” she managed before her voice cracked again.
Tori didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just squeezed Mia’s hand hoping to anchor her. “I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice was soft, but didn’t waver. “You could give me every painful thing you’ve ever carried, and I’d still be standing right here, Mia. If this works out between us or not, I’ll never leave?—”
“This gets to be a lot, Tori.” Mia’s words were so raw, so anguished. “People understand for a little while, but then it’s like, move on . Get over it . It wasn’t like I lost a?—”
“Hey.” Tori scooted closer and put her arm around Mia, pulling her into her side like she could protect her from the outside despite knowing the war was waging within. “I’m so incredibly sorry for what you’ve been through. That anyone made you feel like your grief isn’t real.” She hunted for the right words. “That you’ve felt like you have to carry anything in silence or alone?—”
Mia crumpled into her, head buried against Tori’s neck. Tori didn’t rush her. Didn’t fill the silence with empty platitudes. She just held Mia close until she was ready to talk again.
“I never understood the concept of loss before.” Mia picked at a loose thread on the hem of her dress without lifting her head from Tori’s shoulder. “Like that word… Loss. It’s like whoever made it up was warning us it’s not just death—you lose part of yourself too. I’m not who I was, Tori. I feel like I’ve been beaten down by wanting something I’ll never have. By being suffocated in venomous encouragement like you can try again . Like we’re talking about replaceable—” A sob cut her short. “Like the toll it takes doesn’t?—”
Mia turned her body into Tori and cried. Cried like she might excise the pain from her heart if she could empty her tears. Tori couldn’t hold her tight enough, but she could keep her own emotions under control. She could hold her fast and fierce and show her she’d never tire of keeping her afloat.
“And I’m just so angry,” Mia confessed, like it was some heinous crime. “I’m angry that I couldn’t hard work my way into this. That I couldn’t want it bad enough to make it happen. That every day someone gets to take their baby home, but I’m carrying some cosmic fucking punishment.”
Tori swallowed hard and tried her best to sound steady when she said, “I’m sorry for what you’ve lost. And I’m so sorry that I can’t fix it. But I can be here. I want to be here.” She kissed her temple and breathed her in. “Please let me.”
“Sometimes I’m afraid I don’t know how.” Mia’s regret vibrated against Tori’s skin, wet with her sorrow. “Eric wasn’t even a bad partner. I just kind of pushed him away.” She didn’t make any move to sit up. “But who can deal with someone who randomly starts crying if they accidentally walk down the baby aisle in an unfamiliar Target?” She took a deep breath like she’d tried to laugh, but only made herself nauseous. “Tori, I think I’m too broken. I think the biggest thing I lost was me.”
“You’re not broken.” Tori wasn’t arguing. She was reminding Mia who she was. “You feel so deeply. Love so fiercely.” Her mouth was dry and her throat suffocatingly tight. “You’re still finding your way back to yourself. That’s not failure. That’s strength.”
“You say that now.”
“I’ll say that always,” Tori swore.
Mia went quiet again, but this time the silence was charged with exhaustion. Modeling long, slow breaths, Tori tried to infuse Mia with a sense of peace. She had never been particularly woo-woo, but she imagined the pain in Mia’s heart easing as if she could manifest it into being.
They stayed like that for a long time. Long enough for Tori’s arm to go numb and the light from the uncovered windows to shift across the floor.
Mia just breathed without crying.
And Tori stayed.