Chapter 1: Rain-Soaked Confession
The rain was a cold, needling spray against the windowpane. Inside, Robin Buckley was debating the nutritional merits of plain popcorn versus the psychological necessity of the extra butter flavoring when the knocking started.
It wasn’t the friendly rat-a-tat-tat of Steve stopping by to complain about his hair. This was persistent, urgent, a drumming of knuckles against wood that didn’t let up. She muted the TV, the silence that followed somehow worse, filled only by the frantic rhythm from her front door.
She peered through the peephole, a distorted fisheye view of her porch. The flickering overhead light strobed, casting jumpy shadows. And there, in the center of it, was Nancy Wheeler.
Robin’s breath hitched. Nancy was… she was…
The chain lock rattled as Robin fumbled with it, her fingers suddenly clumsy. The deadbolt turned with a heavy thunk. She pulled the door open, a gust of damp, metallic-tasting air rushing in.
“Nancy? What in the—”
The question died, evaporating like the mist curling off Nancy’s skin. She was naked. Not in a towel, not in a shirt snatched from the floor. Just naked. Rainwater slicked her shoulder-length brown hair dark, plastering it to her neck and forehead. Droplets traced paths over her collarbones, between her breasts, down the plane of her stomach. Her skin was gooseflesh, her nipples tight and pebbled from the cold. But her eyes… those piercing blue eyes weren’t confused or lost. They were blazing, fixed on Robin with a desperate, consuming intensity. Her whole body trembled.
“Robin.” Her voice was a scrape, raw and thin.
“Jesus, Nance, you’re—” Robin started to shrug out of her oversized flannel shirt, her mind a white-noise scream of what the hell what the hell.
Nancy moved then. She stepped across the threshold, bare feet leaving wet prints on the linoleum. She didn’t take the offered shirt. Instead, her hands came up, cold and dripping, and framed Robin’s face. The shock of the touch was electric.
Then Nancy was kissing her.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a collision, a search. Nancy’s mouth was hot and desperate against hers, her body pressing Robin back until her shoulder blades hit the wall beside the doorframe with a soft thud. The chill of Nancy’s skin seeped through Robin’s t-shirt, a shocking contrast to the heat of her mouth. Robin could smell the rain on her, the faint, clean scent of her shampoo, and underneath it, something else—the sharp, acrid hint of fear-sweat.
Robin’s hands flew up, hovering awkwardly at Nancy’s slick, cool hips. Every nerve in her body was firing. This was the fever dream, the forbidden fantasy that kept her up some nights, played in loops behind her eyes when she let her guard down. Nancy Wheeler, in her arms, kissing her like she was drowning and Robin was air.
But it was all wrong.
She broke the kiss, turning her head to the side. Nancy’s lips grazed her cheek, her breath coming in ragged, shivering gasps.
“Stop. Nancy, stop,” Robin managed, her own voice unsteady. “What are you doing?”
Nancy didn’t pull back. She rested her forehead against Robin’s temple, her whole weight leaning into her. The trembling was constant now, a fine, violent vibration. “I need to feel something,” she whispered, the words muffled against Robin’s skin. “I need… I need to not be in my head. Please.”
The ‘please’ undid Robin. It was so small, so broken.
She finally let her hands settle, not pulling Nancy closer, but holding her steady. Her palms registered the dip of her waist, the curve of her spine. Real. She was so heartbreakingly real. “You’re freezing. You’re shaking.”
“I don’t care.” Nancy’s fingers twisted in the fabric of Robin’s shirt. “Make me not care.”
Robin closed her eyes, wrestling with the storm inside her. The want was a physical ache, a pull deep in her gut. To just give in, to let Nancy use her, to finally touch all those places she’d only ever mapped in glances. It would be so easy.
And it would be the worst thing she could possibly do.
“No,” Robin said, the word firm. She pushed back gently, creating a scant few inches of space between them. Nancy’s eyes flew open, wide with a mix of hurt and wild defiance. “Not like this. You’re not… you’re not here, Nance. You’re somewhere else, and I’m not a life raft. I’m your friend.”
She finally got the flannel shirt off her own shoulders and wrapped it around Nancy, guiding her arms into the sleeves. Nancy stood compliant, like a child, the fight draining out of her as suddenly as it had ignited. She looked down at the buttons, confused, as Robin fastened the top one.
“Come on,” Robin said softly, taking her by the hand. Her skin was starting to warm. “Let’s get you dry.”
She led her to the bathroom, sat her on the closed lid of the toilet, and grabbed a clean towel from the rack. She knelt and began to dry Nancy’s legs, the practical motion calming her own racing heart. The terrycloth moved over calves, ankles, the delicate bones of her feet. Nancy watched, silent, her earlier fire guttering into embers.
“Was it a dream?” Robin asked, not looking up. “The… the Upside Down stuff?”
“No dream,” Nancy said, her voice flat. “It’s never a dream. It’s just… quiet. And then the quiet gets too loud. My skin feels like it’s not mine. I look at my hands and I think… these held a gun. These pressed down on a chest wound. I needed to feel like this body was for something else. For… pleasure. Or just feeling. Anything but that.”
Robin stood, draping the damp towel over the edge of the sink. She cupped Nancy’s face again, this time with a tenderness that made Nancy’s eyes well up. “This body got you out. It carried you. It’s yours. Don’t punish it.”
A single tear broke free and tracked through the drying rain on Nancy’s cheek. Robin caught it with her thumb.
“I tried to go to Jonathan,” Nancy confessed, the words barely audible. “I drove halfway to his apartment. I just sat in the car. And I knew I couldn’t. It would have been the same. Using him. It’s all… tangled up with him now. The bad stuff. I needed it to be simple. I needed it to be…”
“Me?” Robin finished, her heart doing a complicated, painful flip.
Nancy just nodded, her gaze dropping to the floor.
Robin took a deep breath. The temptation was still there, a live wire in the room. But it was quieter now, banked by something fiercer. Protectiveness. Friendship. A love that was, unfortunately, not simple at all.
“Okay,” Robin said. “Here’s the deal. You’re staying here tonight. You’re putting on my most heinous sweatpants. We’re going to make that terrible popcorn with extra butter, and we’re going to watch something so stupid it will chemically erase your brain. And you’re not going to be alone with the quiet.”
Nancy looked up, a fragile, real hope flickering in her eyes. “And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow we figure it out. One thing at a time.” Robin offered a hand. “Deal?”
Nancy stared at her hand, then slowly slipped her own into it. Her grip was firm, anchoring. “Deal.”
Robin pulled her to her feet. As they moved from the bright bathroom back into the soft gloom of the apartment, Nancy kept hold of her hand. She didn’t let go as Robin rooted through a drawer for clothes, didn’t let go as the popcorn started popping in the microwave, filling the small kitchen with its buttery scent. She only released her to pull on the borrowed sweatpants, immediately seeking out Robin’s hand again once they were settled on the couch, a bowl of popcorn between them.
The movie was inane, a slapstick comedy Steve had left behind. Twenty minutes in, Nancy’s head found Robin’s shoulder. Her breathing deepened, slowed. The tremors had finally stopped.
Robin stared at the flickering screen, not seeing it. She felt the weight of Nancy against her, the warmth of her through the layers of fabric. The want was still there, a sweet, hopeless ache. But it was joined by something else, something solid and certain.
This was where she was meant to be tonight. Not as a fantasy, but as a friend. It was enough. For now, with the rain whispering against the windows and Nancy Wheeler safe and sleeping on her shoulder, it was more than enough.