Fine For Now
They’ve settled into their summer routine within a week: Every night, one of them (usually Laura) sneaks over to the other’s house and they set off downtown until around 3. They’ve likely spent at least two hundred dollars at the Wallflower by now, not that they’re keeping track (or receipts). After the place closes at ten, they go out and wander the streets for hours or stargaze or otherwise be cliches (something Carmilla harps about to no end). It’s what she’s used to, what she won’t admit she loves but what is infinitely better than either of their home lives (or lack thereof). But it feels different, hurts a little more when Laura presses close to her on a threadbare blanket on the sand and demands Carmilla trace the galaxies for the umpteenth time, when she threads a mysteriously acquired dandelion into Carmilla’s hair, just behind her ear, fingers tickling her skin, steps back and admires her handiwork with a grin so infectious that Carmilla can’t bring herself to take it out. It’s worth it, she reminds herself. Whatever she has to do to keep Laura dragging her along like a lovesick puppy.
Their birthdays pass uneventfully. Tides rise and fall. Laura drags her ass up the hill to church every Sunday and every once in a while, Carmilla has to deal with the fallout of Papa Hollis’s sermons. Carmilla avoids her mother with a surprising amount of success; Laura hides things from her father and tries to pretend it doesn’t matter to her. Laura ends up in Carmilla’s bed most nights, and she can’t stop herself from wanting it to mean more, wishing that phrase meant something else. She ticks off day after day on a calendar she doesn’t keep, watching every sunrise-and-subsequent-set pass during which she follows after Laura wherever she goes.
It’s the day of the Supreme Court ruling and Carmilla’s just finished striping her forearm in rainbow colors, vibrant lines of ink curling around radius and ulna, when Laura texts her.
Creampuff (9:16): Can you come save me?
Creampuff (9:17): Dad just found out about the ruling and he’s being awful
And the left sleeve of Carmilla’s leather jacket is tugged over all those lines of color.
Laura’s father stopped being surprised by Carmilla showing up at his doorstep long ago. He doesn’t even blink when he opens the door, just ushers her in. “Laura’s upstairs,” he says, returning to his seat at the dining room table. “She seemed upset about something earlier,” he calls after her, and the worry is clear in his voice.
Carmilla knows there’s no malice behind his homophobia. He’s not out to burn all the pride flags or the people that wave them; he’s just one of the millions swept along in the unfortunate tide of intolerance that stems from misunderstanding. A few mistranslated lines in an old book are what keep him from acceptance, and it makes her more sad than anything else. It makes her pity him.
But Laura can’t be as removed as she is. She can’t detach meaning from the words he says, can’t pity her father. And that’s why Carmilla goes up to Laura’s room and knocks softly at the door and lets her cry on her shoulder, hands her tissues and takes her downtown, where a block or two of stores are flying pride flags.
She takes the now-weakly smiling Laura to the Wallflower, where LaFontaine and Perry (left to run the cafe by themselves (perhaps an unwise decision)) are blaring Macklemore’s Same Love and trying to bake a seven-layer rainbow cake (emphasis on trying).
Laura’s grinning when she dabs red frosting onto Carmilla’s nose and laughing when Carmilla chases her out of the kitchen, trying to return the favor in saffron-yellow. She's buzzing with happiness by the time the four of them sample whatever it is they’ve created, and they all manage to keep down a bite of all the colors despite the fact that the consistency is about that of a mattress.
Carmilla watches and actually smiles when Laura tells Perry and LaFontaine that the celebration’s a bit more personal than simply support for her, and, as expected, they’ve over the moon about it, though she suspects LaFontaine’s more excited about all the resulting puns they’ll get to make. Not that any of them see her smile, because she’d never live that down.
The red tinge is gone from Laura’s eyes when she lets Carmilla paint a multi-colored (non-frosting) rose on her cheek that fortunately washes away in the cold surf. By the time they’re spread-eagled on the beach under the stars, Carmilla thinks it’s all but forgotten when Laura brings it up, calm, almost serene.
“I’m not mad at him,” she says softly. “I just wish it didn’t have to be like this. I wish I could take a girl to homecoming and have him make a too-big deal of it but in the good way, and take too many pictures and warn me not to stay out too late and I wish he’d do all the things he’d do if I went with a boy.”
“I know, cupcake. I know.” Homecoming might be an absolute waste of money and time, but Laura’s always loved those sappy high school cliches too much to realize it.
She imagines it for a moment, Laura going to homecoming with a girl and her father being the Santa/Papa Bear figure he usually is, so endearing he’s even gotten through to Carmilla. Though every time she tries to picture Laura with a girl other than herself, it brings a stab of pain she wishes she could shake but knows she never will.
July passes blissfully, like the very top of the Ferris wheel that is summer vacation, the one that, in August, will swing their spirits low to the ground again for nine months.
They camp out on the beach to watch the fireworks, the dizzying bursts of color mirrored on the oddly still water, and, after everyone else has gone home, try to set off a few that LaFontaine rigged themselves before having to run madly for higher ground when things go very quickly wrong and their entire supply goes up in multicolored flames.
Carmilla’s mother is, by some miracle, perpetually traveling to some conference or other, having tucked all her meticulously ironed pantsuits and jetted off to Seattle or DC or God knows where, God knows who cares. The meals she doesn’t spend with Laura consist of pantry fodder, but she’d live off Top Ramen and Oreos if it meant she had the large, drafty house all to herself (and Will, though he was often away making his own stupid decisions). Things seem in a beautiful stasis for a while, and it doesn’t matter if Laura doesn’t know that Carmilla’s in love with her, because, for once, everything else seems to be okay.
It’s just before their sophomore year begins that something else enters their equation. Something Carmilla can’t stand, something that she knows won’t just be something for long.
There’s a party on the beach, extending into the time of their usual wanderings, and somehow, Laura convinces her to go. There’s shitty pop music and it’s a cold night and it takes forever to get the bonfire started, but Laura seems happy, so it doesn’t really matter.
At least until Clifford comes along.
She’s a giant mass of long legs and red hair and- is that war paint?- and Carmilla’s not sure how she found them but she’s towering over them all of a sudden, black lines across her cheeks and down her nose, gazing down at Laura.
She introduces herself as Danny (Carmilla thinks she’ll stick to Clifford) and in a few minutes she and Laura are talking rapid-fire about something she tuned out too long ago to care about. They leave after a while, traversing the streets once again, with Clifford’s number in Laura’s phone and with her name to come up a few times in conversation.
As for an explanation for the war paint, she never gets one.
Carmilla hates her right from that first moment, and she doesn’t quite figure out why until past midnight. They’re back in Carmilla’s room early for once, Laura’s head in her lap, watching Orange is the New Black (per Laura’s demand) on her laptop, and Carmilla’s puzzling over just why she can’t stand the newest ginger in their lives. Her typical disdain for most people doesn’t extend this far without reason, she thinks.
And then it hits her. Sure, she’s yet another too-happy spirit, a too-bright ray of sunshine peeking into Carmilla’s darkened windows, but she hates Danny for one reason.
The way she looked at Laura is exactly the same way Carmilla does (minus the war paint, of course).
And not only does that spur hatred, but it makes her afraid.