Maya held her wife for a long time while she cried. She didn’t know what else to do, so she just held her and let her cry. Eventually Carina pulled her head out of Maya’s chest and wiped her face.
“I’m sorry.” Carina said
“No, you don’t have anything to be sorry for. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“This was truly a beautiful day and that in the shower was as I said magical, really magical! It was a shower I’ll never forget! I’m sorry I brought it down.”
“No, you don’t need to be sorry. If we don’t talk about it, we can’t heal it. The shower was magical, and I’ll never forget it either! But what do you need right now? Do you want me to drive you back to the hotel?”
“I would like to go to the hotel. I just need more time before I can be in this apartment. But I would like for you to come with me. We’ve spent so much time apart and I want to shove as much time in together as we can!”
“Okay, we can do that!” They picked up some food and headed to the hotel, mostly silently as they both tried to process everything that had happened that day. The silence mostly continued as they ate but Maya decided she wanted to say something. “Look, we don’t have to discuss this right now. I’m not rushing anything, and we can move at whatever speed you need to. But I just want to put it out there that whenever you’re ready to start thinking about moving back in with me, I’m up for moving if that’s what you want and need. We can find a new place for a fresh start to make our own.”
“Hopefully with time I’ll be able to be there again. I know how much you love that apartment.”
“I do love it. It was my first place. I paid for it with money from my endorsement deals after the Olympics. I bought everything in it and decorated it. I feel like, as weird as this sounds, I became a woman in that apartment. There are so many wonderful memories there. Memories of living there with Andy and parties with the guys from the station and of course most of all our memories there! I feel like I lived an entire life in that apartment. But there is also a lot of heaviness there. I feel like that apartment will forever be connected to my father and his abuse and the trauma around it. It’s like my medal from the Olympics, it’s tarnished. Then there are also the things between us. I’d already been thinking about moving a little. I’d even looked at houses a few times. I don’t know maybe it was just my way of coping and keeping the hope that there was a future for us, but I’d look at houses and dream of living in them with you. I’d dream of making it ours. I’d dream of a big bathtub for us to soak in together. I’d dream of a bedroom that we decorated together, that was our space to be us in every single way. I’d dream of bringing our babies home there and first baths and first foods and learning to walk and eventually them running around the backyard. I love that apartment Carina, but I love you more. I want to be where you are, and I want you to be where you are happy and comfortable and feel safe and good. If that apartment isn’t that place anymore, I have no issue leaving and going wherever you want. Nothing needs to be decided today, I’ll wait as long as you need. But I just wanted you to know, I’m more than willing to move if that’s what you need and want.”
“That’s really sweet and I’ll think about it and see how things go. But that’s good to know that you are willing to move. Right now, I think I need a nap!” Carina said with a smile.
“That sounds good, if you want me to stay!”
“Of course, I want you to stay!” Carina said shaking her head with a smile and Maya couldn’t help but giggle.
“Okay, I just didn’t to assume or cross any boundaries!”
“Just lay down with me, Bella!”
“Okay” They laid in the bed on their sides facing each other. Carina grabbed Maya’s hand. They were quiet for a while, just looking at each other.
“I didn’t know, if you still wanted a baby.” Carina suddenly said
“I do! I know I did a terrible job showing you that I loved you, that I wanted you, and that I still wanted the things we dreamed about but I did and I do and I always will. I still dream of seeing you pregnant and being there with you to do whatever I can as you bring our baby into the world and holding a little you! I knew I wanted it badly, but I didn’t realize how badly I wanted it until I came home to that empty apartment, and I thought I’d lost you and all those dreams for good!”
“I thought I’d lost all of that too! But I still want all of that too and dream of those things too, maybe more than I ever did! When Miranda, Ben, and I went to that clinic I faked being pregnant. I didn’t think it would bother me. I just wanted to catch that clinic giving medical advice. But I brought someone else’s pee with me, and I used that for the pregnancy test. I figured the woman pretending to be a medical professional would read it, but she didn’t. She handed me the pregnancy test and made me read it and I was totally surprised by how heartbroken I felt looking at that positive pregnancy test and I cried. I cried in front of Ben and Miranda and that stupid woman. As I told Ben and Miranda after the stupid woman left, it was my first time seeing a positive pregnancy test and it wasn’t real. They were kind but I felt really alone in that room because they could be sympathetic, but they couldn’t really understand.”
“I’m sorry! I wish I could’ve been there to give you a hug!”
“Me too!” Carina said scooting over closer to her wife. “Can you hold me while I sleep?”
“Of course!” Carina turned over to face the other way and Maya wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close. Carina interlocked her fingers in Maya’s as she let herself melt into her wife. She felt Carina growing still and her breath slowing and she knew she was falling asleep. She stayed awake awhile longer just soaking in the moment, a moment she wasn’t sure she’d ever have again. Her wife was asleep in her arms, and she’d never felt happier or more alive. They woke up a couple of hours later and Maya checked her phone wondering about Ben, and she found a text from Andy. “Andy texted me. Ben has a fractured arm and a couple of fractured ribs. He’s going to be out for a while but he’s okay.”
“I’m so glad he wasn’t seriously hurt!”
“Me too! She’s invited us to go up to the station for supper. They’re having breakfast for supper and they’re going to have a bunch. We don’t have to go if you don’t want to though.”
“No, I want to go! I don’t really feel like I’ve been up there very much lately, since I was only going to do the clinic!”
“Okay, I’ll tell her we will be there!”
They went to the station and saw everyone. They got some food and sat down and Vic sat down by them.
“Well, hello you two! You seem to be doing well!” Vic said smiling at them.
“We are doing much better!” Carina said smiling at Vic as she remembered the conversation they’d had not long ago.
“Good, I’m glad!”
“Why aren’t you sitting with your guy?”
“Because I can’t stand to look at him right now, let alone talk to him! It’s better if we stay at opposite ends of the table for now!” Vic said as they all watched him laughing and joking with the woman who was Ben's sub.
“Oh boy!” Maya said.
“Yeah, but I’m happy for you guys!”
“Thank you!” They continued to eat and talk to Vic and eventually Andy. It felt good for all of them. Maya got up and to put up her and Carina’s dishes away. Carina expected her to come right back but she didn’t. She thought she’d gone to the bathroom but when Maya still didn’t come back, she decided to go look for her. She looked in the lounge and the locker room and the bunks and the gym. She looked in the barn. But she couldn’t find her. She was about to pull out her phone and call her, when she thought of one more place to look. The roof. She hadn’t been up there since their fight. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go back up there. She wasn’t even sure Maya would be up there. But after a minute or so of looking at the stairs, she decided to go up. When she opened the door, she found Maya standing by the edge looking out at the skyline. She was so lost in her thoughts she didn’t hear Carina come out. Carina tried to read her face to figure out what she was thinking but she found her face completely unreadable. Carina walked up beside her, and Maya finally realized she was there.
“I’ve been looking for you!” Carina said with a little smile and Maya offered a small smile, but Carina knew her wife well enough to know that smile was hiding something.
“I just needed some peace and quiet and some air.” Maya said
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? I need you to be honest with me.”
“I’m okay, I promise, or I will be. When I went to throw our plates away, I had this sudden feeling of déjà vu because the last time we were up here when I was off, I…blew up our life.”
“What?”
“The night of Pru’s party is the night I blackmailed Ross and Sullivan. It just suddenly felt so similar, and it made me feel a lot of things.”
“Oh”
“Yeah but I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that. I’ll save it for Diane.”
“I want to hear about it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay. You can tell me to stop if it’s too much.”
“Okay.”
“It wasn’t planned ahead of time. It wasn’t even thought out, obviously. I had no idea Ross was even going to be there. I’m not going to say it hadn’t crossed my mind but there was no plan. I felt like I was drowning in the anger and pain and frustration over my demotion. My father’s voice played in my head for months like a broken record “Are you really going to just let this go?” “Only a loser wouldn’t fight for what’s fair!” “You’re losing and you need to fix it any way you can!” “Maybe if you won’t do everything you can to fight for it, you didn’t deserve to captain after all!” “You’re losing and no one loves losers!” and there were a thousand other things to go with it. Of course, none of that excuses what I did next but in the place I was at it felt like I was righting a wrong. What I was really doing, was lighting the fuse on a bomb that blew up my entire life and nearly cost me everything. I’d give anything, literally anything, to go back to that night and make a different decision. I broke everything that night. I opened pandora’s box and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to close it. I likely blew up any chance I have of ever being captain again. I made my work environment a thousand times worse. But worst of all I blew up our marriage. I broke the heart and trust of the one person I love and need and want most…for what? I mean I loved being captain but when I look at the mess around me that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to completely cleanup, that job wasn’t worth all of this. It wasn’t worth any of this.” Tears glistened on Maya’s face. Carina wanted to reach out and wipe them away and hug her wife, but she sensed Maya needed to get this out. “When I look back at that night and who I became after that I can’t help but wonder if they were right. If I never deserved to be captain. Maybe I was a horrible captain who deserved to be demoted. I loved being Captain. It was hard, especially at first when no one wanted me to be Captain. But they came around and we worked like a well-oiled machine. There were hiccups of course but it was good for awhile there or it felt good to me. But I made one decision to go against a chief who had no issue letting a child die and I lost it all. I didn’t think there was anyway it would be permanent. I thought surely someone would see that all I was doing was saving that child, but they didn’t, and I didn’t know how to deal with it at all. I didn’t process it. I didn’t let myself feel sad or broken over it. I just let the anger and my father’s voice take over. I let the one thing I feared most happen, I became him. I became angry and ruthless and cruel. There was so much I didn’t understand, and I didn’t know how to stop it. There was part of me that knew you were right when you said I needed help but admitting that scared the hell out of me. It was bad enough I’d been demoted but to admit the demotion destroyed me, just made me feel like an even bigger loser. But I became an even bigger loser by not getting help and letting everything spiral completely out of control to a point that I almost died. Why couldn’t I just accept the help sooner? Why did I have to let it get so bad? Why did I have to completely break us before I realized what was going on? Why did I have to almost die and watch you walk out of that hospital room to finally wake the hell up? I mean honestly some days when I look back at who I became I feel like a monster. I feel like maybe what I deserve is to be alone so I can’t hurt anyone. But then I look at you and I see the way you look at me. I see the love in your eyes for me and I know if someone as sweet and good and amazing as you can see enough good in me to love me the way you do, maybe I’m not a monster. But when I see the pain in your face like earlier and I see how I broke you, it’s hard not to feel like one.” She said. They were both crying now. Carina wrapped her arms around her wife and hugged her close. She let her cry for awhile and she cried with her. With how consuming her pain had been, it was easy to forget that her wife was hurting too. It was easy to forget this all started because she had been hurt by someone who shouldn’t have ever hurt her when she was far too young to understand the damage, he was doing to her.
“Maya Bishop, you are a lot of things, but you are not a monster. You were never a monster. You were hurting and hurt people hurt people. It doesn’t make the things you did okay, but you didn’t do those things because you are a terrible person or a monster or anything like that. You did them because you weren’t well.” Maya pulled face out of her wife’s neck and looked at her. Carina put her hand on her wife’s face and wiped some tears away. “You were an amazing captain, and you did not deserve to be demoted. You did not deserve to be demoted by email at our wedding. You did not deserve the treatment you received after the demotion. You deserved to have a proper investigation and hearing and to defend yourself. You did what you had to do to do your job and save that kid’s life and that alone shows how much you are not a monster. You deserve to be upset and to grieve for that and that doesn’t make you a loser. You worked hard to get there, and this team was much better for having you as their leader and that was unfairly taken from you. But they can not change that you were an amazing captain. They can’t take that away from you. I believe one day you will get your chance to be captain again because you are amazing at what you do! I never for even a second saw you as a monster. You hurt me. You broke my heart. But I always knew in there…” Carina gently tapped Maya’s chest “… somewhere was the amazing, sweet, loving woman I fell in love with! I knew somewhere underneath the pain and the mental health struggles, was the same woman who got me through the death of my baby brother. Little by little, I’ve watched that woman return to me, and I’ve fallen in love with her all over again! I’m sorry for all that your father put you through. I’m sorry for all the pain he caused you. You didn’t deserve any of that either. But you aren’t him. You were traumatized by him. You were modeled unhealthy ways of handling situations by him. But you are not him. The very fact that you feel so bad about what you did when you weren’t well, tells me that! He never felt bad about hurting you or your brother or your mom. My papa never felt bad about hurting my mama or me or my brother. They are monsters but you are not. You’re doing the work and I know it is hard as hell. I know it feels like it will never end, and things will never be completely good again, but it will. The hard painful work will pay off. You’ll rebuild everything you blew up that night because you are Maya Bishop and you are one of the strongest bravest people I know!”
“Thank you!” She said barely above a whisper
“You’re welcome but I’m only telling the truth!” They hugged for a long time without saying anything. Maya was the first to let go.
“Do you know what the irony of all of this is?”
“What?”
“Since being back after my breakdown, I’ve fallen in love with being a firefighter again. Without the weight of the whole captain thing on my back, I can just do what I’ve always loved to do, fight fires and help people. I never ever want it to become my number one priority again but it’s really nice to enjoy my job again. There is still work to do with some people here of course but it’s nice to truly be able to enjoy what I’m doing again!”
“That makes me really happy, bambina! I’ve noticed you seem happier and lighter here than you have been in a long time!”
“I am! I guess that’s one good thing to come out of this mess!”
“Yeah it is!” Soon they decided they were ready to go. It had been a long emotional day and they were both exhausted. They said their goodbyes and Maya drove them to the hotel and parked.
“Well we’re back, do you want me to walk you up or say goodbye here?”
“I want you to stay with me. I’m not ready to be back in the apartment yet and I don’t know if I ever will be or what I’m going to want to do about that but I want to spend all the time with you that I can. So maybe you can spend the night at the hotel with me a few nights a week if we are both off.”
“I’d love that!”
“Good, me too!” They went upstairs to Carina’s room. She got some clothes for Maya to wear and gave them to her but as she watched her wife start to undress, she was overcome with the need to touch her. She walked up behind her and put her arms around her waist.
“Hey!” Maya said smiling at her
“Ciao Bella! You are so beautiful!” She started to kiss her wife’s neck and a moan slipped from her lips.
“Carina?”
“Yes Bella?”
“Are you sure about this?”
“I am! As I told you earlier, the sex wasn’t the problem. The sex was beautiful, and healing and I don’t regret it at all, and I want to have sex with my wife again!”
“Okay” It didn’t take long for clothes to be lying about and heavy breathing and moans to fill the air. They spent the next couple of hours lost in each other until they could barely stay awake. They ended up cuddled together, Carina’s head on Maya’s chest and Maya’s arms around her and their legs intertwined. They didn’t say anything for a long time and Carina thought maybe Maya was asleep.
“Bella, are you awake?”
“Barely”
“Thank you for the most memorable second first date ever!” Carina said making them both laugh.
“You’re welcome!”
“Maya?”
“Yes?”
“I love you!” Carina said as she looked into those beautiful blue eyes.
“I love you!” Maya said. Soon Carina was snoring, and Maya was barely holding on herself. She kissed her wife’s head and smelled her hair. She didn’t know what the future held. She didn’t know if they would be living in their apartment again or somewhere else. She didn’t really care. As long as she had that amazing, beautiful woman in her arms, it didn’t matter. She would follow that woman to ends of the earth and live in a tent if that’s what she wanted. “You’re safe with me, love!” She whispered before sleep pulled her under too.