all in
It doesn’t seem right, how heavy the frame is in her hand. It should be lighter, somehow. But instead, it weighs heavily on her wrist, makes the muscles ache from the strain of it. Jamie wonders if it has nothing to do with the picture’s physical state at all, and all to do with how absolutely fucking devastating and important it is.
And it’s early, still. Not even 8 o’clock, really, and Dani is in the kitchen ruining two mugs of tea for them both while Jamie starts on some of the boxes that make up the maze they’ve been stumbling through for the last week—since they signed the year-long lease on the studio apartment above the shop.
There hadn’t been any rhyme or reason to picking this box. It was just the nearest one, on the top of the pile by their new mattress. And now she’s sort of wishing she’d picked another.
It’s one of the ones Dani’s mother sent from home—full of things from Dani’s old apartment that she’d left behind when she moved to England—and, really, it’s Dani’s job to be going through this.
Jamie really should have saved herself the effort.
The frame is covered in dust. Jamie runs her thumb along the glass and reveals Dani’s smiling face first, and then Edmund’s. He looks different than how Jamie has been picturing him since she first learned of his existence.
Dani was so torn up, so ashamed about the whole thing—with the added bonus of seeing him around every goddamn corner—that Jamie hadn’t been expecting him to have such kind eyes. Happy and bright behind his glasses. Messy hair and a turtleneck as he and Dani sit on the grass of what looks like a university quad. One of his arms is slung around Dani’s shoulders, pulling her close, and she clutches him just as tightly, that same brilliant gladness reflected in her own expression as in his.
“Okay, I only did two minutes this time, so maybe it won’t taste as burnt,” Dani says as she weaves her way over, two steaming mugs held in her hands. She offers one to Jamie, who finally looks up from the photo to take it.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she teases, speaking past that sharp wedge of something that’s in her lungs. When she blinks, the happy white of Edmund’s smile flashes in the darkness behind her eyelids.
Dani glances down at the photograph and they’re so close—their arms brushing—that Jamie can feel it when everything inside of Dani stops. Her breathing changes.
Jamie winces and sets the photo back in the box with Dani’s old yearbooks and records. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “Your mom sent it.”
She can see the way Dani’s throat bobs as she swallows, then shakes her head. “No, it’s okay,” she says. “You’d think I’d be better at this by now.”
Jamie shakes her head. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to be. Things like these don’t get a quick fix, no matter how much we want one.”
Dani nods, breathing in shakily, and sets her mug down on the nearest tower of boxes so she can rub her face with her hands. Jamie sets her own mug down and wraps her hands around Dani’s upper arms, rubbing the smooth skin revealed by the tank top she’s wearing.
“You look happy in it,” Jamie says, and she hopes like hell that whatever bitter twinge might be in her voice goes unnoticed.
She knows what that emotion is, digging its claws into her veins, and she tries to blink it away. Even though she’s solved the mystery of Dani’s difficult romantic history, it takes a lot of willpower to look emotionless and steady. The last thing she wants is to take over Dani’s necessary grief and turn it sour by her own unmitigated envy.
Because there’s nothing to be jealous of. Not really. Edmund was someone Dani grew up with, was friends with, and loved in her own right. And now he’s gone and it isn’t as if it’s not possible to love again after something like that.
She spent the night before with Dani’s mouth against her neck, hand between her legs, and she has for the past three weeks—since they left Bly—and so there’s nothing to envy or long for. She has it already.
But, as she has every time he’s come up in the conversation, the reminder that Dani was once engaged to someone else—something that Jamie can never really give her—has left her feeling unbalanced and more than a little unsure.
“We were,” Dani whispers, leaning her forehead against Jamie’s, her eyes closed.
“I’m so sorry, Dani,” Jamie says, just as softly. “I didn’t mean to...I know you loved him. Love him, maybe. I didn’t want to upset you.”
With her arms wrapped tightly around the other woman, Jamie looks out at the window behind her, out to the bright-sky morning, and the clouds scattered across it. The studio is bathed in clear, white light, plants Jamie’s collected on their slow journey to America displayed on the counter by the stove, hung from a hook in the ceiling, gathering light and shifting and swaying as the oscillating fan in the kitchen clicks back and forth, waving cool air over Jamie’s suddenly-fevered skin.
Dani pulls away, reaches out for the picture and pulls it back out of the box. Looks down at it. Wistfully. Guiltily. She runs her finger—the pale tip of her forefinger, her rounded and trimmed nail—across where Jamie knows is Edmund’s face. They’re still pressed together, and Jamie can feel the warm and soft heat of Dani against her; can smell the floral shampoo she bought at that supermarket in Maine two weeks back on her hair. It’s in Jamie’s hair, too, she knows, but there is something to the clean scent of Dani’s skin. Jamie remembers the taste of it on her tongue and, for a moment, entertains the idea of leaning forward and kissing Dani right there, in the curve of her neck.
“I did love him,” says Dani. Jamie tilts her head, trying to get a look at the picture again. Her eyes trace the handsome lines of Edmund’s face with a guilty twist in her stomach. “Not the way he wanted me too. But...love all the same.”
Jamie isn’t sure what she’s supposed to say to that. She settles on, “Oh.”
Dani looks up at her, eyes filled with tears that Jamie knows won’t fall. Not right now. “But he was my best friend and I thought—” She swallows, shakes her head, and fixes her eyes on a point over Jamie’s shoulder. “I thought that there was something wrong with me. That I would...grow into feeling…that way about him. Loving him the right way.”
Jamie frowns, taking in Dani’s expression. Reaching up, she cups Dani’s jaw and Dani leans into the touch. And Dani meets her eyes—oh, there it is, there’s her girl—and her expression is so much softer than it was just seconds before.
“But...I didn’t,” she admits. “As happy as I was when we were around each other, when were...being best friends...it doesn’t even begin to compare to how I feel when I’m with you.”
She says this and Jamie’s eyes feel hot and itchy, so she blinks. Swallows. Tries to think of a good response to that but—Dani pulls back a little and kisses her forehead. She can hear the frame drop back into the box, but she can’t see it because she’s too busy fisting the material of Dani’s tank top in her hands and pulling her closer.
“And maybe I should feel...guilty about that,” Dani says next, her lips moving against Jamie’s skin where they’re still pressed. “But it’s hard to feel anything but crazy about you these days.”
She shifts a little and Jamie pulls back just long enough to lean in and press a hard kiss to Dani’s surprised, pursed lips.
And, the thing is—
There’s no hesitation. Dani’s hands grip at Jamie’s hips, pulling her in and making Jamie’s heart feel like it’s been turned inside out—like there is nothing beyond the two of them—right now, right here, for as long as they can be which is—
“I’m pretty crazy about you too, Poppins,” Jamie whispers against the line of Dani’s laugh. And then she kisses her again and Dani kisses her back and—
They lose a good portion of the morning after that, tangled up on their mattress together, reassuring one another with each touch, each kiss, each sigh, that they’re both here. All in.
In the end, the photograph goes in a different box—a shoe box, at the back of the closet in their bedroom. Not forgotten, no, but secured and remembered.
Jamie can live with that. As it turns out—with Dani around—she can live with a lot of things.
...