Sometimes they all shared a bed, lying three by a side, Len, Alex and Hellie. But the best nights were when it was just Alex and Hellie.
They never made love when Len was around. He would have gotten off on it, and that would have sullied the sweetness. (God knows there was enough that he’d taken from them). This—the gasping breaths and sweaty limbs and most of all the rare vulnerability in Alex’s ink black eyes—this was theirs alone. Len could not touch it.
Hellie treasured those moments. In the dark, in Alex’s arms, she felt invincible.
She loved Len, too. Loved him and feared him. Maybe she first learned the twisted taste of love and fear from her father. White picket fences weren’t any protection from that kind of hurt. She got high so she wouldn’t have to think about it.
No matter what Len did—the backhanded compliments and the backhanded slaps—Hellie stayed. Maybe she learned the staying from her mother. She got drunk so she wouldn’t have to think about it either.
Len never hit them with a closed fist. One day, Alex imitated Len’s voice, his puffed chest, mocking his silent demand that they applaud his restraint.
Alex could burn a man with her humor, laser them like an ant under a magnifying glass in the sun. Hellie loved it about her. Alex saved her best jokes for Hellie, muttered asides that got them into trouble with Len more often than not. Hellie was no good at keeping a straight face and Len hated to be left out of a joke, feared being the butt of one. Alex was uncannily good at making up alternate jokes at the expense of someone else to soothe his ego. Hellie marveled at her ability to lie on the fly, at her sly, simmering rage.
“Look at me, such a good human because I won’t punch you in the stomach,” Alex said. Hellie laughed till she cried, until she sat on the floor and her laughter turned suddenly into harsh, gasping sobs. Alex scuttled close to her and apologized, and Hellie hiccuped that it really was funny, her sobs turning to hysterical laughter and back again. Alex held her and murmured hopeful lies about community college and how they were going to get out until Hellie quieted. They sat on the floor for a long time, Hellie’s head on Alex’s shoulder. She could rest her cheek close to her heart and the rattlesnakes decorating her sharp collarbones.
“You’ve got a rattler in you,” Hellie had told Alex, and beamed when Alex inked it onto her skin for good. Her dark eyed, dark humored, rattler love. Alex taught Hellie that anger could be a good thing, that anger could protect you and help you survive.
Hellie didn’t know who protected who, half the time. Somehow they shared the guilt for all that they could not protect each other from. Maybe Alex would have left long ago if Hellie could only make herself leave. Maybe Hellie would never have come home with them, that day on the pier, if it wasn’t for Alex. Maybe their grief and their guilt canceled each other out, and it was a wash in the end.
That final day, she didn’t make a conscious choice to head back to the apartment and the sickening unknown of what Ariel would do to her. It was instinct, it was tradition, it was love. It was simply her turn to protect Alex, just as Alex had protected her before and would again. You rescue me, I rescue you.
They were together in the end, too. When Alex held out her hand, taking it was the easiest choice Hellie had ever made. One last time, she could shelter inside the protective fire that was Alex. Her rattler could bite, and together they destroyed the men who had destroyed them.
Hellie hovered on the edge of after, longing to be gone. But she managed to stay until she’d washed Alex clean. One last rescue for her rattler love.