Chapter 8: Bitter Departure
The coffee burned Agatha’s palm through the cardboard sleeve, a small, focused pain. Rio’s words echoed in the silent elevator of her own building, a taunt and a promise wrapped in steam. ‘I’ll just show up.’ The threshold of her apartment door felt like a border between two countries. She could still smell Rio’s jasmine soap on her skin, beneath the stale city air that clung to her clothes.
She turned the key. The silence inside was total, and heavy.
It was the wrong kind of silence. Not empty, but stifled. The living room was a monument to neglect. A blanket was balled on the couch. Two empty wine glasses sat on the floor, one tipped over. The air tasted of last night’s cigarettes and regret.
Beatrice was a shape under the duvet in their bedroom, a dark mound facing the wall. Agatha stood in the doorway, the to-go cup held like a shield. She watched the slow, simulated rise and fall of Beatrice’s shoulders. She was pretending to be asleep.
“I know you’re awake,” Agatha said. Her voice sounded alien in the stale room.
The mound didn’t move. “You’re home early,” Beatrice mumbled into the pillow, the words thick.
“It’s two in the afternoon.”
“Exactly. Early for you.” Beatrice finally rolled over. Her eyes were puffy, her blonde hair matted on one side. She looked younger and older all at once, a petulant child in a worn-out face. Her gaze swept over Agatha, taking in her clothes from yesterday, the specific dishevelment. A cold understanding settled in her eyes. “Where were you?”
“Out.”
“Out.” Beatrice pushed herself up on her elbows. The sheet pooled around her waist. She wore one of Agatha’s old band t-shirts. “You didn’t come home. I called. I came here. I waited.”
The audacity was breathtaking. Agatha felt a laugh, sharp and brittle, bubble up in her throat. “You waited? After your ‘thing with Marcus’ ran late? After leaving me sitting at the bar for an hour and a half?” She took a step into the room. “Your voicemails were a real tour de emotion, Bee. Concern, blame, dismissal. The classic trilogy.”
“Don’t do that.” Beatrice’s voice hardened. “Don’t use your fucking… analytical bullshit on me. I made an effort. I came here.”
“And you left three drunk, nasty messages because I wasn’t sitting here waiting to forgive you. Again.” Agatha put the coffee down on the dresser with a definitive thud. “I wasn’t here because I was done waiting.”
The words hung in the air, physical things. Beatrice’s face seemed to crumple and then reassemble into something harder. “So that’s it? You just… fuck someone else?”
“You stood me up. You disappeared. What did you think would happen?”
“I thought you were my girlfriend!” Beatrice threw the duvet back, swinging her legs to the floor. “I thought we had fights and we worked through them. I didn’t think you’d go out and get laid the second things got rough.”
“Things are always rough. That’s the whole terrain with you. It’s a constant state of fucking emergency management.” Agatha could hear her own voice, cold and clear, and it scared her a little. This was the cynic she wore as armor, but now it felt like her actual skin. “Last night wasn’t a rough patch. It was the last patch. I was at a bar, alone, on my birthday. You were with Marcus, doing God knows what, and you couldn’t even text to say you’d be late until you were already an hour past the time we agreed.”
Beatrice stood up, eyes flashing. “It’s always about the rules with you, Agatha. The fucking schedule. People aren’t perfect. I’m not perfect.”
“This isn’t about perfection. It’s about basic fucking consideration. It’s about showing up.” Agatha’s hands were shaking. She clenched them. “You don’t show up. Not for me. Not for anything that requires you to think about someone other than yourself for five consecutive minutes.”
“Oh, and she showed up?” Beatrice spat the word. “Whoever you spread your legs for last night? She’s considerate?”
The image of Rio, in her sunlit kitchen, pressing the coffee into her hands, flashed before Agatha’s eyes. The deliberate, possessive touch. The unflinching directness. It wasn’t considerate. It was something else entirely. Primal. Honest.
“It’s not about her,” Agatha said, but it was a weak lie.
“It is!” Beatrice took a step closer. The smell of old wine and sleep was overwhelming. “You’d rather be with some stranger who treats you like a piece of meat than work on something real with me.”
“This isn’t real!” The shout erupted from somewhere deep, tearing the quiet. “This is me banging my head against a wall and you occasionally noticing I have a headache! This is me making all the plans, carrying all the worry, accepting all the half-assed apologies. I’m tired, Beatrice. I am so, so tired of loving you more than you love me.”
The silence that followed was different. Hollowed out. Beatrice stared at her, her defiance leaching away, leaving something raw and frightened underneath. “You don’t mean that.”
Agatha looked at her—at the woman she’d built a life around, whose moods had dictated her own weather for years—and felt nothing but a vast, weary emptiness. “I do.”
She turned and walked out of the bedroom. She didn’t know where to go. The apartment was a cage of shared history. She went to the living room window, staring down at the street without seeing it.
She heard Beatrice moving behind her, slowly. Heard the soft pad of her feet on the floorboards. A hand touched her shoulder, tentative.
“Aggie…” Beatrice’s voice was small, stripped of its earlier anger. “Please. Don’t. Let’s just… talk. We can fix this.”
Agatha didn’t turn. The touch felt like a brand. “There’s nothing to fix. It’s broken. It’s been broken.”
“So you’re just leaving? For her?”
“I’m leaving for me.” As she said it, she knew it was true. Rio was a catalyst, not a cause. A door flung open in a room she’d been suffocating in.
Beatrice’s hand fell away. The air shifted. The self-pity curdled back into something defensive, mean. “Fine. Go. Run off to your bitch. See how long it lasts before she gets bored with your fucking constant analysis of everything. You’re exhausting, Agatha. You think you’re so deep, but you’re just… cold.”
Agatha finally turned. She looked at Beatrice, really looked, and saw a stranger. A beautiful, tragic, selfish stranger. “Okay,” she said simply.
She walked to the hall closet, pulled out her old leather duffel bag, and started moving through the apartment. She didn’t take much. A few clothes from her drawer, her toiletries from the bathroom, her laptop and a handful of books that were unequivocally hers. Beatrice watched from the doorway, arms crossed, a statue of wounded pride.
When the bag was zipped, Agatha hefted it. It was light. Lighter than she expected.
“Where will you go?” The question was barely audible.
“I don’t know.”
Agatha walked to the door. She paused, her hand on the knob. She didn’t look back. “Goodbye, Beatrice.”
The click of the latch behind her was the loudest sound she’d ever heard.
She walked for blocks, the duffel strap cutting into her shoulder, the city noise a merciful blur. She didn’t cry. She felt scoured clean, hollowed out, terrifyingly light. The coffee Rio had given her was stone cold in her hand. She took a sip of the bitter dregs.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A new text. Not Beatrice.
Rio: The hesitation is taking too long.
A wild, reckless laugh escaped her, startling a pigeon on the sidewalk. She typed back, her fingers clumsy.
Agatha: There’s no more hesitation. Just a duffel bag and a serious need for a drink.
The three dots appeared immediately. Then:
Rio: Address. Now.
She sent her location from the corner of 7th and Granville. She leaned against a brick wall, the rough texture solid against her back, and waited. The surrender was complete. She had no plan, no home, no girlfriend. All she had was a phone and a promise from a near-stranger who saw right through her.
A sleek, black car pulled to the curb ten minutes later. The window slid down. Rio looked out, her dark eyes taking in Agatha, the duffel bag, the expression on her face. She didn’t smile. She just nodded toward the passenger seat.
“Get in.”
The car interior smelled of leather and her. Rio didn’t speak as she pulled into traffic. Her hand reached over, not for Agatha’s hand, but to rest on her thigh, a firm, anchoring weight. They drove in silence to a modern loft building in a part of town Agatha rarely visited. Rio’s space. Private.
The elevator opened directly into the loft. It was vast, all exposed brick and steel beams, one wall nothing but windows showing a skyline beginning to sparkle with evening lights. It was meticulously curated, fiercely clean, and utterly impersonal.
Rio took her bag and dropped it by a long, minimalist sofa. Then she turned, catching Agatha’s face in her hands. Her gaze was searching, intense.
“Tell me,” she commanded, quiet.
“It’s over. I left.” The words were ash in her mouth.
Rio’s thumb brushed her cheek. “Good.”
And then Rio kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming, a confirmation. A searing brand that said mine now. Agatha kissed her back with a desperate, furious hunger, her hands fisting in Rio’s shirt. All the tension, the grief, the terrifying freedom—it all channeled into the meeting of their mouths, a clash of teeth and tongue.
Rio broke the kiss, breathing hard. “I need to feel it,” she rasped. “That she’s gone. That this is real.”
She walked Agatha backwards until her legs hit the edge of a wide, low platform bed. She pushed her down onto the cool, grey linen. Rio didn’t undress her slowly. She yanked Agatha’s jeans and underwear down her hips in one rough motion, leaving them tangled around her knees. She unzipped her own trousers, shoving them down just enough.
There was no preamble. Rio’s body was a hot, crushing weight. She pinned Agatha’s wrists above her head with one strong hand. Her other hand guided herself, pressing the thick, urgent heat of her against Agatha’s entrance.
“Look at me,” Rio growled.
Agatha’s eyes flew open, locking with hers. Rio’s were black, fathomless, filled with a possession that was almost violence.
She pushed inside. It was a sudden, breathtaking stretch, a filling so complete it stole the air from Agatha’s lungs. She cried out, a ragged, broken sound.
“She never fucked you like this, did she?” Rio’s voice was a low, relentless thrum against her ear. She began to move, deep, punishing strokes that pushed Agatha up the bed. “She never made you feel owned.”
Agatha could only shake her head, her body a live wire, every nerve-ending screaming. The pleasure was edged with pain, with catharsis, with a profound sense of annihilation. Beatrice was being fucked out of her, cell by cell. Rio’s rhythm was brutal, exacting, a physical exorcism.
“You’re mine now,” Rio chanted, her breath hot. “This cunt is mine. This stubborn, brilliant, beautiful mind is mine. You don’t get to take it back.”
Agatha came with a sob, a convulsive, uncontrollable wave that felt like her bones were shattering. Rio didn’t stop, fucking her through the violent pulses, her own release hitting with a guttural groan, her body locking rigid as she drove into her one last, deep time, spilling inside her.
They collapsed, a mess of sweat and rushed clothing. Rio’s weight was crushing, anchoring. Agatha’s jeans were still rucked around her thighs. The room smelled of sex and salt and resolve.
Slowly, Rio rolled off. She lay beside her, staring at the high, dark ceiling. Her hand found Agatha’s, lacing their fingers together in the space between them.
“Stay,” Rio said. Not a question. A statement.
Agatha, her body humming, her heart a raw, open wound, looked at their joined hands. At the unfamiliar ceiling. At the unknown future stretching out in the dark.
“Okay,” she whispered.
And for the first time all day, she believed it.