Attack Decay Sustain Release

"Alright," Vivian said, "now, I'm not very good with this yet, but I can figure some things out. Let's see. Should I just play anything, or something we can sing to?"

"Something we can sing," Ashley sang, with a little twirl. "Can you play Let It Go!"

Vivian winced and bit her lip. "Sing a little bit of it for me?"

Ashley immediately launched into a spirited-but-tuneless a capella version of the theme song to Frozen. When Tiffany joined in, the tune became a little more recognizable. Vivian would have loved to have been able to guess at some of the chords involved, but the best she could do was to hunt down enough notes of the main throughline, one every fourth or fifth lyric, to resemble the melody. On the second time through she added a few more notes, and her playing started to resemble the real thing. Vaguely, maybe, and from a distance. Ashley began to dance more than she was singing, but Tiffany kept going at full volume. Top of her lungs.

Vivian was too focused to enjoy it. Playing took too much of her attention, but she could hear the joy in their laughter, and it pulled at something. Not so very long before, Vivian had actively believed that in order for a thing to be meaningful, it had to hurt. That the only way to love something was to suffer for it. It didn't occur to her, there in that room with her nieces, that things could be different, but the seed settled into the soil, and rain clouds were on the horizon.

She stopped playing, abruptly, at the sound of the front door closing.

"Girls, can you wait here?"

"Okay!"

"And not touch anything?" she added, unable to hide the fear.

"Fiiiiiine!"

Vivian set the guitar down gently, and hustled out into the hall and to the kitchen. Lucia saw her coming, and gave her a sloppy grin. "Heeeeeey."

Vivian caught her just before Lucia kissed her, and it was agony to stop it before it happened. She tilted her head this way and that, trying to look Lucia directly in the eye, and sighed. Dilated pupils. "You can't be here right now," she hissed.

"Ummm," the Latina snickered, "I live here. I think I'm allowed."

"No, my nieces are here!"

"Aww!" Lucia's uneven grin grew into a smile, but Vivian stopped her before she could get their attention.

"No! I finally got my brother to let me watch them. It was a huge fight! If they get here to pick them up, and you're lit up like this? I'll never see them again."

"Viv, come on!" she said, grasping Vivian's shoulders and giving her a gentle shake. "Lighten up! It's me!"

Vivian shook her head. "Can you just... find somewhere else to be for, like, an hour? They'll be gone by then."

"Vivian," she repeated, narrowing her eyes, but Vivian was unmoved.

"Please, Luc. This is important. For me."

Lucia frowned, but could only hold Vivian's gaze for a few seconds before looking down and nodded. "Yeah. Okay. I'll, uh... I'll head down to the Waffle House." She turned and reached for the door.

"I hate seeing you like this," Vivian whispered.

This time, Lucia couldn't meet her gaze at all. She just stared at Vivian's feet looking perplexed, nodded once, and left.

Vivian stared at the door for a long minute afterwards, barely keeping the tears at bay.

"Aunt Vee?"

Vivian quickly wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Yeah. Yeah."

"Is your friend okay?"

"No," Vivian said. "I don't think so."

"Is she sick?"

Vivian ran her fingers through her straight, black hair, and held the mass of it together near the back of her head. "Kind of." She carefully lowered herself to her knees and held her arms out, and both girls ran up to hug her. "Lucy really likes...candy."

"Mommy says too much candy will rot our brains!" Ashley said, emphatically.

Vivian nodded. "Yeah, it's not good for her. You know how when your sister has a little too much sugar, she goes a little crazy?"

Both of them nodded. Again, she couldn't be sure how much they were really understanding.

Ashley said, "Can we watch Ponies on your phone again?"

Vivian nodded, kissed the tops of their little blonde heads, and led them back to the couch.

"Can you teach me to play?" Tiffany asked, as they all got settled into place.

"Guitar?"

"Yeah."

"We'll have to ask your mom. If it's okay with her, then yeah. I... probably know enough to stay ahead of you, and we'll learn some things together."

Tiffany nodded. The two of them leaned in tightly on either side of her, and Vivian gave them a big hug before pulling out her phone and loading up Netflix again.

***

It was nearly midnight when Lucia stumbled back through the door, laughing and singing to herself. Vivian put down her bass just in time to hear a heavy thump. No battle plans ever survive first contact.

"Luc?" Vivian said, as she stuck her head out into the halls. Some of Lucia's drum equipment was stacked on the floor. It was maybe a third of Lucia's live kit, so she tucked herself back into their practice space and waited. A minute later, Lucia returned a second time. A second heavy thump, and then singing and laughing retreated back out into the night.

This time, Vivian planted herself at the end of the hall.

"Heeeeeeeeeeey," Lucia said, smiling broadly as she came through the door with the bass drum in her hands and a gear bag over her shoulder. "Are we all clear?"

"Yeah," she said. "They're... they're gone."

The Latina dropped her gear, shut the door, and sauntered toward her. "Good, because they don't make earmuffs big enough to hide the noise we're gonna make."

Vivian's stomach twisted itself into a bow knot. Her crush was looking at her, and wanting her. Coming toward her. It was agony to clear her throat and say, "Luc, no," even as the shorter woman reached her arms around Vivian's waist and started to kiss her. She could tell, from her breath, that Lucia had not gone to the Waffle House at all.

"It's okay," Lucia whispered into the kiss. "I know you want to. We can fool around."

There was no audience. They weren't kissing because it would turn Kevin on, or any of their friends. They weren't kissing because a threesome had simply evolved that way. This wasn't a drunken dare, or a bet, or a show. It was just the two of them. Finally.

Vivian reached back, took hold of Lucia's wrists, and pulled them back around. It was easier to do that than to stop kissing her. All of her breath left her, and her voice was an ineffective tool to stop what was happening. At any given moment, half of her body was giving in, kissing back, or holding her.

Lucia giggled in that way she did, a rapidfire purring paired with her crooked grin, and something inside of Vivian shriveled and died.

"I know you're still not back at full strength," she said softly, her voice low and husky. "All you have to do is lie down. I'll take care of you tonight."

"I don't just want tonight," Vivian said. Her whole rib cage burst open, leaving her heart exposed as it thumped. "I don't just want to fool around."

Lucia was undeterred. She tried to interrupt Vivian with a feather touch; a light brush here, and a soft caress there.

"Luc, please," she managed. "I want this too much."

Lucia planted kisses along her neck line and down to her collarbone. "Then what's the problem?"

"I don't just want to hook up while you're wasted." Vivian tried to lean into her, using her forehead to push Lucia away, because her hands were too busy responding in other ways. It was beyond her to make her body behave after so many years of wanting and hoping and praying and waiting. She could push Lucia away, or she could talk to her. Not both. "I want more than this."

"Oh," Lucia laughed. "More sounds like fun too."

"I want to wake up with you," Vivian slurred. The nibbling on her earlobe, as a hand moved up under her shirt, was devastating. "Not just tomorrow. Every day. Forever."

"You can sleep in my bed," Lucia teased. "I already told you that you could."

Vivian felt herself pushed back flat against the wall, and her body writhed in tortured ecstasy. "I want to be with you," Vivian whined. "Not just a hookup."

At this, Lucia slowed. She didn't pause, but her attention was clearly divided.

"Being this close to you is killing me. Knowing it would just be tonight is killing me."

"I don't understand," Lucia said, hoarsely.

"Seeing you like this is killing me."

"I thought you wanted this."

"I do," Vivian sobbed. "I do, but I don't want this just because you're drunk, or high, or whatever brought this on. I want you to want this like I want this, and it is killing me."

Full stop.

"And you," she said, crying openly now. "Yo-you always dabbled. We always dabbled, but you have been ripping through coke like it's a race, and I... I know why! I get it!"

Lucia stared hard at her. "He... asked me," she said, her own voice losing its steadiness. "He asked me to go with him. A stupid taco run. It was supposed to be me."

Vivian wrapped her arms around Lucia, but the wiry little Latina immediately began to fight it.

"No!" she cried. "I don't want your pity! It was supposed to be me!"

"I know," Vivian said, trying to fight through it.

"No!" Lucia screamed, and this time she pushed.

She had always been stronger, despite being smaller, but the difference between them was so much more pronounced now. Vivian bounced off the wall and crumpled to the floor.

Lucia pulled at her hair, knuckles whitening as she heaved. "He couldn't drive! He should never have been driving! He was out of his mind!"

Vivan sat up as Lucia paced feverishly into the kitchen and back.

"It should have been me," she said, over and over.

When Vivian got to her feet she tried to approach Lucia again, but Lucia was even more worked up this time and Vivian got another, harder shove for her efforts. Again, she tumbled to the floor and cried out, and this time Lucia seemed to have noticed what she'd done.

"Oh God," she said, as she rushed to Vivian's side. "I can't, you see? This is why I can't! Look what I do!" She hesitantly proffered a hand, and took a fistful of her own hair in the other.

"You can't... hide from pain like this, Luc," Vivian said, as she took the Latina's arm and pulled herself up. "I lay awake every night, thinking the same thing. I should have been the one driving."

"You were worse than he was!" Lucia screeched, her cheeks splotched with color. She grabbed the front of Vivian's shirt and shook her. "You could barely walk to the car!"

Vivian looked her dead in the eye, and said, "And you were out of your mind. None of us should have been out there."

Lucia lost her balance, and fell back against the wall as she cried. Vivian got herself up onto her knees, and drew Lucia's entire, hunched body into an embrace. They cried, and they held each other.

Some time later, they got each other up and moved to the bedroom. They stayed in each other's arms. Vivian had avoided a lot of things by focusing on what was in front of her to get through each moment, but the breaking point had arrived. She cried more than she had ever cried in her life, and Lucia did the same beside her. Every time it seemed like she was going to sink under completely Lucia was there to pull her back up, and she did the same. They held onto each other to stay afloat.

She'd needed it. She'd needed the release more than sex, or companionship. More than air. As the worst of it washed away on a tide of tears, she was left with the warmth of her friend. They clung to each other so tightly that there wasn't even room for sweat between them. They whispered truths and secrets, the kinds of things that hurt to say out loud, the kinds of things that couldn't even be hinted at in the light of day, and when the tide rolled back in they buoyed one another.

They survived the night because of each other.

***

Vivian woke up late the next morning, and her head ached. The room was intolerably bright. The sun was nearly overhead, and its light streamed in unobstructed. The first thing she noticed was that she was naked. The second thing she noticed was that every part of her body hurt. It was a painful kind of exhaustion, like a muscle clenched too long had finally started to let go. The third thing she noticed was Lucia, her hair mussed and her body bared as well, asleep on her shoulder.

Much of the previous night was a blur. Her thinking brain had shut off at some point. She dug the flat of her palm into her eye, hoping to distract herself from the pain with other pain, to no effect. She didn't want to disturb Lucia, but it couldn't be helped. Once she started trying to extricate herself, Lucia rolled over and grabbed a pillow. Vivian was left staring at her friend's back side, and the smooth curves of her waist and hips. Dense, tattooed sleeves covered most of her arms, and angel wings connected them across her upper back. Bare feet tucked just below her cheeks.

Vivian went to the bathroom, to take care of her needs. Her mind remained blank, focused on her efforts and actions, though she was aware of what she was avoiding. She couldn't help being aware of avoiding it. Lucia was still sleeping when she padded, barefoot, into the kitchen.

She needed a cup of coffee, and she needed water. As she drank, it occurred to her that Lucia might need those things too. She had to brew a fresh pot, and that took a solid ten minutes.

Lucia was sitting up in bed, elbow on her knee and forehead in her palm, when Vivian returned. She took the water first, drinking greedily while Vivian put the coffee on the makeshift nightstand. And then Vivian sat down on the bed.

The body has many needs. They come in many forms. Some are tangible, and some are not. Some are greater than others, and take precedence, but in the end they are all needed. The body dies without them. One moment, Vivian was sitting next to Lucia, tenderly brushing hair back from her beautiful face, and in the next she was underneath her. The sheets got tangled up between, and they kicked at them furiously. Thrashing.

Vivian needed this, and from the frantic, fearful look in Lucia's eye she didn't think she was alone in that. That look said a lot to her. Volumes.

Their legs entwined tightly, like roots curling and squeezing. The feeling of Lucia's thigh buried against her core was only eclipsed by the heat of Lucia's against her own thigh. Their bodies pushed and pulled, finding resistance and compliance in equal parts, and always that look in Lucia's eye urging her onward. Sweat poured off both of them in a torrent.

At a pained gasp, Lucia wrapped her arms tightly around Vivian and rolled, and Vivian kissed her thanks in a line from lip to lips as she turned around. There had been a quiet bliss being trapped in Lucia's strong embrace, but her body had limitations that Lucia's did not and she found that being on top was much less tiring. As she settled down on top of her, head buried between Lucia's thighs and with a tongue worrying earnestly between her own folds, Vivian sank into a glorious haze.

Exhaustion came and went. Always, the wind returned to fill her sails and drove her onward. When her tongue tired she shifted to her side, resting her head on Lucia's thigh as she slid fingers inside her. Probing. Squeezing. Stroking. When her fingers tired, her tongue had recovered. Hours passed without either one of them opening their eyes for more than a glance at the other. Her lips and pearl were swollen and sore, and even through all of that Lucia still managed to make her climax again and again and again until the pain and pleasure were completely indistinguishable.

They could see the shadow of their own building cast onto others, in the late afternoon, when Lucia's stomach grumbled loudly. Vivian insisted, despite clever and devious pleading on Lucia's part, on going into the kitchen to make them some food, but her efforts were interrupted at every turn by a finger placed here, or kisses placed there. She almost regretted not putting on clothes. Lucia draped over her, mauling her non-stop, and Vivian nearly burned the rice when she gave in, turned around, and followed her back to the table. There, between Lucia's legs, was the peace she had been seeking. Whether she was standing, with those legs wrapped around her waist while they kissed, or kneeling with her tongue buried deep, Vivian knew that her purpose was laid out before her.

When the food was finally ready, they ate quietly, sharing furtive glances. The body has many needs. Vivian kept looking at Lucia's plate, trying to pace her eating so that she wouldn't fall too far behind. She didn't want to be the one that wasn't ready. In the back of her mind, the whole thing still felt so delicate and frail. If she wasn't there, ready to meet Lucia touch for touch, then the moment would pass her by and everything would fall apart. She had to be bulletproof. She had to be perfect.

But then she saw Lucia looking at her own plate, and looking at her own mouth as she chewed, and Vivian thought she saw the same fears. That if she wasn't ready when Vivian was, she would lose her. The same fragility, like even a few wasted moments were too much of a risk.

Vivian didn't bother finishing her plate before getting up, crawling across the table, and settling into Lucia's lap.

***

The bed shifted in the dark, waking Vivian. Next to her, Lucia lurched out from under the covers and into the bathroom.

"Luc," Vivian called. "You okay?"

Lucia merely groaned.

"Are you hungry?"

Lucia groaned again.

Vivian had read a lot in the last couple days about detoxing from cocaine. The reality had been both exactly what she had been expecting and much worse, for all the feelings tangled up in it. She turned on a night light, slipped on a long t-shirt with three-quarter sleeves, and hustled into the kitchen as quickly as she could. She felt like a zombie when she hurried, because it looked so ungainly, but every day was a little bit better; a little bit stronger. Now she just had to do that for someone else.

She made a turkey sandwich, with lettuce and avocado slices, and poured a big glass of milk. She cut the sandwich diagonally, and nodded once. She met Lucia just as the other woman was coming out of the bathroom, and Lucia inhaled it. Barely stopping to chew. Chugged the whole glass.

"Huh," Vivian said, as Lucia crawled back between the sheets. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired," Lucia grumbled. "My brain feels like..."

"Mud? Slush?"

The Latina groaned, and Vivian set the plate and cup on the bureau.

"Stuffed with cotton balls?"

Lucia snapped her finger and pointed vaguely over her shoulder. When Vivian got back into the bed, Lucia rolled over, and her eyes were wide open. Vivian brushed her hair gently aside.

"I'm scared of myself," Lucia whispered.

A lot of things occurred to Vivian to say in response, but none of them were the right thing to say, so she simply continued to run her nails over Lucia's scalp.

"Did I ever tell you about the first time I got high?" Lucia slurred, tiredly.

She shook her head.

"I was fourteen. I'd just come back from mi Abuelas. Guitar lesson." Her eyes unfocused, and her breathing slowed. "My sister, Myrna, was there with her boyfriend."

"Is Myrna the one that joined the Highway Patrol?"

"Border Patrol," Lucia growled.

Vivian nodded and tried to commit that to memory. Lucia's family was big, and it was hard to keep them all straight.

"Anyway, they were drunk. I forget where everyone else was, but it was gonna be a while until they got back. Myrna passed out, and it was just me and him. I liked him. He was cute. We were playing Smash Brothers, I think, when he kissed me."