An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapter 1 of 3
Hushed breath in the warm hollow of their bed, tracing hands. Tara's knuckles brush against the curve of Jinx's belly, over tight skin as she reaches for her hip. Jinx pulls her closer, cupping the back of Tara's neck. Bottom lip between poignant teeth.
Tara's left gasping, always left gasping, her heart pounding under an open palm.
Jinx traces her cheek. Tara slides her hand down, between thighs gripping her knee. Jinx's hold on her neck tightens.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Water pours down their shoulders like so much rain, and Tara breathes the humidity in and out, open-mouthed.
Warm hands, still against her lower back. Jinx presses her forehead to the front of Tara's shoulder. Eyes closed.
Her hair clings —wet, melted candy— to her head and neck. Tara runs unsteady fingers through it. The weight of Jinx's body, turned inside out so thoroughly, so recently, bores into Tara's chest. It forces her to push back to keep the balance. To hold them up.
Tara's holding Jinx up. She's pretty sure if she leaned back, if she stepped away at all…
She's not stepping away. Tara flattens her palm against the wall, bracing herself as she reaches for the shampoo.
Her hands meet behind Jinx's back, the insides of her elbows nudging against the crown of Jinx's shoulders as Tara scrubs foaming white suds into the palms of her hands. Suds that disappear under the pounding water, so much crystal sugar in hot coffee. Tara adjusts, joints aching awkwardly. She manages to recover, to keep the soap out of the spray.
Lather drips from her palms. Water runs down Jinx's head, rivulets, tributaries. Tara blinks. A downpour. This isn't going to work.
She breathes deeply and presses her cheek to Jinx's hair. "I'm going to move you out of the water," she says, and the sound of her voice explaining this is alien. A foreign tongue. When has Tara ever had to give warning? When has she ever done anything Jinx was not three steps ahead of?
Warm, still hands do not leave Tara's back as Jinx takes a step. Tara quickly follows, keeping their bodies close, feeling suddenly like their skin to skin is as important as any with Kodi.
Kodiak.
Just his name, just the thought of him is enough to send Tara's glance flicking toward the curtain, her heart pounding for the baby monitor and her mouth irrationally dry with worry over the fifteen minutes it's been quiet.
And she would check on him, probably, unnecessary and half-panicked, if Jinx's forehead didn't fall to her collarbone again with a muffled thud that vibrates straight to Tara's skull.
It catches and chokes in Tara's throat. This pending, looming dread, sour-sweet and unswallowable. Her hands pick up where they left off, working the shampoo into Jinx's hair. The slow, massaging strokes give Tara time and some shallow release. Something to do with all that fear creeping toward its fill line.
There's a smooth silkiness to Jinx's hair, a specific texture that Tara's wholly unfamiliar with except on her. But how many people has Tara touched like this, anyway, scrubbing fingernails against skull, smoothing thumbs over slick scalp? (Just one just once, years ago in bed half asleep, holding her breath as she listened to the mountain of his chest rise and fall, her child's hand straying, his body shower fresh…)
Jinx turns her head and Tara's heart jumps. It skips beats, sidewalks, steps and exit signs. The world boils down to a single, microscopic movement, to the here and now slide of skin, and bone, and water.
She kisses the base of Tara's throat. Barely a whisper, barely a touch, mouth mid-slumber hot. She lets her cheek rest against Tara's chest.
She didn't lift her head.
"Are you okay?" Tara breaks, the dread cracking her voice and seeping through its seams. Her hand —her shaking hand— touches Jinx's face.
"Mm-hm."
She replies even, and quiet, and level, and she could fall asleep right here, couldn't she? She's tired, she has every fucking right to be tired, and that's… but Tara's…
Tara steps back into the water, taking Jinx with her, and the odd answering call in her body, muscle tension and give, buzzes in Tara's hands.
Usually, Jinx knows her movements like a heartbeat. And following her, matching their rhythms, is always a conscious decision. Jinx doesn't yield. She doesn't just give.
Tara bites her tongue against a curse, shut up, calm down.
It's been three weeks. It's only been three weeks since everything turned itself inside out, since sterile white and blood, blood red.
Exactly twenty-one days. She strains to hear Kodi's breaths on the monitor, under the pattering water.
It's been three weeks and it was all on Jinx. Tara isn't being fair. She needs to—
She needs to calm down.
She breathes. Tara makes herself fucking breathe and wraps her arms around wet skin, soft, soft, memorized skin that glides familiar under her fingertips. She tucks Jinx to her chest and presses her mouth to soapy hair. Her heart thunders, throbbing hot in her chest triple the tempo of Jinx's slow, even breaths. They're ocean waves, pushing and receding against Tara's ribcage, steady as sleep. Can Jinx feel the worry blooming red and raw in Tara's mouth?
"I have you," Tara whispers, shaky to her own ears in the shower stall echo. "Okay?"
Jinx sweeps her thumb just barely, almost absently, over Tara's back. An inch-long arc.
And Tara's trying to inhale-exhale normally, and she wouldn't even be worried except that she isn't sure Jinx has said a real word since Tara set Kodi in her arms for the first time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the beginning it was all a haze, anyway, discharged from the clinic and the car seat was all wrong and that was Tara's fault and they had to fix it for her. And driving was murder, traffic was murder and Kodiak, brand-new Kodiak was terrified, and after a couple minutes in the four lane stop-and-go they had to pull over so Jinx could get in the backseat with him.
Tara's hands were shaking. The wheel of her Jeep, her car, felt warped and cold.
Then it was home, but Tara doesn't remember day one, two, three, etc… She remembers the kitchen, half past three a.m. Blinking at the red stove clock and forgetting what she was doing there. She remembers waking in panic because someone was screaming, and waking in a sweat when he wasn't.
She remembers things that didn't happen. She remembers standing in the water. Under the boiling sun. In the hospital again, endless halls and her hands, her hands, her hands…
She remembers waking up so many times she wasn't sure what was day and what was night and who she was and what was going on and she remembers warm, soft hands on her cheeks. She remembers slow fingers in her hair and she remembers sobbing until she couldn't breathe.
…There wasn't really any room to… think. There wasn't even time to feel.
She remembers one morning.
Waking up and wrestling out of bed, sweaty and cold. She remembers Kodi, and the changing table, and quiet plastic-y velcro, and lifting his ankles to swap diapers. She remembers fastening the new one, unfastening, refastening it. Smoothing the strange synthetic not-quite-fiber and…
Tara blinked and she could feel her hands and there was soft, impossibly soft, velvety almost brown skin beneath her fingertips. Kodi, his bare tummy tensing under her hand as he arched to kick out a leg. And when did… When did his umbilical stump heal? When did it…
Tara reached for the tiny crater where it had been. He squirmed. She jerked her hand back.
Maybe she shouldn't. Maybe it was still sensitive, maybe it wasn't done healing.
But it was close, and he— he…
Tara blinked and she was standing in her bedroom. Kodi's tummy was bare. She was looking at her baby. And she realized he had to be cold.
One hand on his chest, hold him in place as she fished for a onesie. The quiet wooden roll of the top dresser drawer, cleared out then devoted to much tinier clothes than the rest. Her fingers finding gentle, tight-woven cotton.
Tara worked Kodi carefully into the head hole, the sleeves, buttoning him up and straightening to look at him and she remembered buying it. The onesie. Months ago, when he was still an idea partially formed, when she could only reach him through the warm wall of Jinx's rounding belly.
Tara had to have done this a million times. Woken up. Changed Kodi. Then fed him, or burped him, or rocked him to sleep, or all of the above and then all over again, every night, all night.
She bought him this onesie. Frogs and toads.
Tara looked up, and it wasn't night.
Sun fought against thick curtains. The haze of its warmth sat heavy, drowsy against the east wall, and Tara was crossing the room. She and Kodi were opening the curtains to the day. Cracking a window to the ocean. Salt finding their skin.
Fresh air filled Tara's head and lifted the hairs on her arms. It swept in and out of her lungs, no effort required to breathe. The blur of morning fog drifted in the distance, heavy on the water, but on the beach below the sun gleamed, bits of sand glistening like glass. Seagulls cried and wailed, hurling insults in their never ending clan battles for fish.
California. Tara stood on a quiet sliver of Californian coast, in her bedroom, holding her baby.
She looked over her shoulder at the bed.
Tangled sheets. A pillow slumped on the floor. Jinx slept with her mouth open and the comforter folded over and under and around her legs. Brow furrowed beneath the sudden rush of light. Her hair in her mouth. Her shoulders bare between tank top and bra straps, and Tara felt several things at once, and all of them hurt a little bit the same.
She was beautiful.
She was drooling on the pillow again.
She was exhausted.
Tara didn't think she could wake her. She didn't think anyone could.
She didn't think she wanted to.
Tara closed the window anyway, opened the one in the living room and got a Kodi a bottle. She bounced him, pacing slow circles through the carpet until he fell asleep. Slumber-leaden weight in her arms, and it…
It was really nice, honestly. Knowing that he and Jinx were both passed out in their home, dead to the world and getting the rest they needed, and that Tara was… was there.
Listening to the world wake up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tara started to feel better. It could have been the fresh air, or having time to adjust, or maybe something just clicked in her brain, but she was there. All of the sudden Tara was there.
She kept the windows open, she checked one of the baby care books lying around and it seemed to be okay and she thought Kodi might even like it. And had they been out to get groceries?? Had they spoken to their friends at all?
It'd worry Tara more that she didn't know, that she didn't really remember the storyline of (consulting a calendar) the last two-ish weeks (May 17th, his birthday was the 17th of May. May 17th…) But she was a little busy, being a little ridiculously thrilled to be there now. They should go to the grocery store.
It took Tara one and a half days to figure out she and Jinx were on completely different schedules,
(catching her hand in the kitchen, sunny 2 pm, Tara's breath catching behind her smile. "Good morning." Met with blank, blinking grogginess. Tara let her go.)
and another night to figure out why.
Kodi wouldn't take a bottle at night. He was harder to soothe, cried louder and longer, and even if Tara got there first…
"Sorry," she whispered, somewhere between four am and five, letting Jinx take him from her arms. Feeling like she could cry. Like she should. Jinx had already been up to feed him twice, and one of those times was just half an hour ago, and…
Jinx lifted her hand and brushed her knuckles against Tara's cheek.
Gentle as a kiss, and something in Tara wanted to buckle, a six lane freeway crumbling into the bay. Frantic to catch Jinx's eye.
But it was a half-second half-smile. Jinx turned away. Humming something Tara didn't know, tipping her head to rest it against Kodi's as she walked him to the window and back.
…It wasn't forever. This wouldn't be forever. He should start to wake and sleep more on a schedule, in a month and some days, Tara'd found a chart, and they just had to…
Was this what Tara should be doing? Was she doing it right? Up with Kodi in the day, diaper changes, always more diaper changes, bottles and burping him and turning ovals on the balcony letting the ocean roar pull him back to sleep. Slinking into the edge of the city for takeout and making sure there was always something in the fridge and she was worried, again, about whether Jinx was really eating enough, but it was kind of hard to tell when Tara never fucking saw her.
Their warehouse-turned-home, their bedroom, their baby, it was all theirs and they never saw each other.
Not forever. Tara took that thought and bottled it, holding the cool glass to her face over and over throughout the week.
Every book scattered across their living room promised that this would not last forever.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's laundry draped across the couch and coffee table when Tara's official Titan communicator blares to life on the kitchen counter. She lunges to cut it off.
"Hey, Tara!" it chimes against her ear, but she is staring at Kodi in his playpen. Willing the motion of his chest to stay even. His eyes closed.
She doesn't breathe until long seconds have passed and all he does is squirm a little, furrowing his brow.
The communicator tries again. "Hey—"
"Why are you calling me? You know I'm on leave," Tara hisses, turning her back to Kodi. Shielding him from the noise. "What do you want?"
"I know, I know! But you, uh—" Gar's voice is hesitant, clumsy, and Tara closes her eyes to keep from ending the call right now. She can't deal with his hangups today. This week. This month. "You weren't answering your phone."
Tara lets out a long breath. "Right."
. . .
"So…" Gar coughs. "How's, um, how's parenthood treating you?"
"It's— interesting." Tara realizes, looking at Kodiak, that Gar might be the only person she's spoken to in weeks. Besides Kodi, of course. Tara crosses the room and touches his arm, rubbing his tiny hand between her thumb and fingers. She'd set the playpen up in the living room to be his crib during the day. "It's a lot."
"Yeah. Haha. I bet it is."
. . .
Tara clears her throat. "So… Was there a reason you…?"
"No! Nah, I just— I wanted to check in on you. And your— and the—" Stumbling hard enough to make Tara wince. Fumbling just as hard to recover. "You guys! See how you, um, all are doing."
Yeah. He still can't say it.
Tara finds herself looking over at the empty bedroom doorway, because this is where Jinx would be lifting her eyebrows. Giving Tara that I told you so look, and she can be pretty rude when it comes to Gar, honestly.
And honestly?
Tara fucking misses that.
"We're fine," she says. "It—"
It hits her like a truck. Like a t-bone at the Interstate 5 exit ramp.
There's a whole lot she fucking misses.
"It— It's just a lot, you know, i-it—"
Her stupid throat catching, stupid, stupid, don't cry, you—
"Tara?" Pitching worry, loud and clear through the phone. "I'll, um… I'm coming over." A sudden statement, decision.
Tara shakes her head. "You don't have to—"
"See you in ten."
"I'll meet you," she recovers quickly. "I have to— We need groceries anyway."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gar's standing in front of the All Fresh, waving his arm in the air the moment he sees her car. Tara parks and ducks behind the Jeep and focuses, tries to focus on unclipping the carrier from its base. They have one of those two-in-one car seats, so they can take Kodi out of the car without waking him up, or bring him places all tucked into the seat that supports his head and offers an easy handle.
It's weird. It's bulky. There will be aisles and people with carts and suddenly the fear is hot and wet in Tara's throat. Who came up with this? What if she bumps him into something? What if she—
"Hey," Gar says, and there he is, all smile and wiry shoulders under his hoodie. Complete with a familiar snaggletooth that drains some of the tension from Tara's chest.
"Hey," she says quietly, a hand on Kodi's harness. The other stilled as she stares at the seat and tries to figure out what she's missing. "I need to get this off the, uh…"
Gently, Gar nudges her aside and leans over Kodi, craning his neck to see the other side of the car seat base. Something clicks and he rebounds with a grin. The carrier comes up into Tara's hand.
"I—" She glances at Gar. "Thanks."
"All in a day's work." He laces his hands behind his head. "Dude, that is one freakin' cute kid."
"You think?" Tara looks at Kodi, and he has his tiny hands wound into fists, a scowl on his squishy little face. He looks like he's thinking about crying, and Tara fumbles for his paci.
"Hello?" Laughing, Gar slams the car door. "Have you seen that nose? Dude." His eyebrows waggle. "He looks just like you."
He isn't even right. Kodi's way more Jinx than he is Tara. But this might—
It might be the first time all month Tara's felt like smiling.
Gar wrestles a cart free for them, and it makes sense, putting Kodi up there where even if he gets jostled it won't be him getting shaken, just the cart underneath him. It's a good idea. Tara finds a way to make the carrier and the cart basket mesh. She flexes her fingers on the handle.
"So…" Gar gestures grandly to the colorful aisles. "What do we need?"
…The only food Tara really knows how to make is mac 'n cheese, and three kinds of eggs.
"Um, forgot the list."
"No sweat." Gar stuffs his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker and shrugs, flashing his teeth again. With a pang, Tara watches the glimpse of sharp white and wonders what Jinx is doing right now. She was just up, about to shower when Tara left, did she find the note…? Tara wanted to kiss her. So bad. Just real quick, just to make sure everything is okay, she doesn't care that her teeth aren't brushed yet, she just… Tara kissed her hair instead, and she didn't care that it was greasy, and Jinx sort of exhaled, sort of leaned into her, and Tara wanted to stay. Wanted to find out what that meant but her phone kept going off in her pocket, and Kodi was already buckled in and not happy about it and while she was trying to make up her mind the bathroom door was already latching with a quiet click.
Tara wrote her a note.
Gar is still talking.
"…just the thing. This way, mis amigos!"
Three aisles in. Gar walks backwards, hands clasped behind his head. Kodi is sleeping fitfully and frowning fiercely around the pacifier ring. They have maybe ten minutes. Tara's probably going to have to get him figured out —diaper and bottle and everything— in the middle of All Fresh, or maybe hand off the cart and take him to the car. She's— She's glad she isn't doing this alone.
Gar gives Tara an avocado and Tara watches his face. The way he moves his hands when he talks, the way he pauses to run neat fingernails through carefully styled hair. She wonders how put together he had to be to forget about falling apart when she left him.
He's never going to ask, he's never going to even bring her up, but Tara has to. She needs— he's her friend and she has to.
"I don't know what to do about Jinx," Tara says into the middle of his guacamole sales pitch, and the grocery store falls silent. Over there, in the aisles, there's the click of cart wheels and the murmur of shoppers and the cashier punch of barcodes. But in their five feet of produce, there is silence.
"Uh…" He laughs. Bringing his shoulders to his ears. "What do you mean? What's…"
"She's—" Tara flicks her gaze to the salsa jar tower. The buckets of oranges. The sign above their heads. It's All Fresh! Guaranteed. "I don't really see her and she's not… she hasn't said anything."
His ears twitch. "You're… not talking?"
"No, I mean—" Tara's eyes fly back to him. He lifts his eyebrows in question, and it's really weird, sometimes, when Gar does the same things Jinx would, just a little to the left. It can be totally off-putting. But right now, it just makes Tara miss her. "She's not talking at all."
"Woah." Gar widens his eyes. "Huh. Like, is that normal? After, uh—"
"I don't—" The buzzing chatter outside their five feet, growing louder. "Should— Should I check?"
Words clutter around their heads. The things Jinx doesn't say. The things Gar can't, or won't, refusing to wrap his head and tongue around what's been going on for years right in front of him. He'll coo over Kodi, compliment his nose and hair and eyes and congratulate Tara, but he can't even say the word, won't acknowledge that Jinx is—
"Hey."
Tara jerks her head up. Green shifts into slow focus as Gar closes the distance.
Smiling, he gently takes the avocado from her hand. The soft green shell is puckered with fingertip dents. "Come on. Look at me. You got this, Tara." Gar waves his hands. "I mean, I can't even imagine how scary it is, being totally in charge of this way fragile little dude who needs you for everything, but—!"
He catches Tara's glare and wilts sheepishly.
"Right. Not helping. Um, okay, but…" Gar turns his hands palm up and shrugs. "But you got this. You're gonna be a great mom. You already are, and you'll get better, right? Practice anything and you'll get way better."
Tara steals a glance at the carrier. Kodiak's still sleeping in the shade of that canopy-type thing over the top. His scowl is gone, soft lips pushed together in a little pout around the pacifier, instead. And it strikes Tara, suddenly, just how much that's a face Jinx makes. It's almost out of place. Seeing pieces of her threaded through someone so… small.
Gar's smiling like he's helped, and he has, a little. He's probably right. Tara will get better.
But he… didn't really say anything about Jinx.
Did he?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Grey sky.
The whisper of socks on carpet, Tara calling out. Heart jumping and voice high with hopeful relief. "Wait, are you hungry? I'm—"
Jinx pausing halfway from bedroom to bathroom as if stumbling, as if catching her foot on something sudden between lines of carpet, twisting her head to the sound.
Eye contact.
Tara falters.
Losing nerve and direction and words. A teenager again, taken apart by that cutting gaze, by bubblegum neon pink. Speechless again, all over again. For all different reasons.
Tara gestures helplessly at the oven. She fumbles around her tongue. "Uh." Almost a whisper. "Making pizza."
Jinx runs her hand through her hair. Movement and this moment, all the moments, belong to her. The power to bar sound. To stop time. To steal breath.
She runs her hand through her hair, and for once she doesn't know how heartbreakingly beautiful she is, isn't flaunting it with a grin as she tucks the long side behind her ear. The shaved side of her haircut is getting long too, actually. It's… been a little while. Since she's had the chance to trim it.
As Tara watches, Jinx has run her hand through her hair, parting the strands with fingers that are wound twice, three times over with skill, and strength, and gentleness surprising to people who don't know better, who don't know her, and now she takes a deep breath. Rising shoulders beneath thin t-shirt. She looks at the baseboards glued up against the floor, evidence of this place built long before them, these walls lifted up in preparation years and years before their eyes ever met.
She looks at the baseboards and she nods.
Tara's hands shake stupid on the oven door. On the pizza cutter, trembling in the grip of the California earthquake that is her and she wants to throttle herself.
What is this?? Why are they like this? This is her fault. Tara's making this the big deal it isn't. She's seeing things wrong, misunderstanding, because she knows Jinx. She knows Jinx.
Tara knows the moles on her back, the edge to her voice, the way she is pulling her hair back now because she won't sleep with it up, but she can't stand eating with it down.
Tara knows the texture of the inseam on those shorts (100% cotton soft/rough.) Where the t-shirt hanging from one lightly tattooed shoulder came from (Florida: everglades) because it was Tara's before it was theirs.
Jinx folds her legs under her on the couch, sinking into the cushion beside Tara's. Next to her, but not. Here, but not. She accepts the plate of pizza and takes a bite. They would be touching, thigh to thigh or shoulders nudging, but they aren't. But Jinx has been sleeping on her own side of the bed.
The warehouse sits in silence.
The rain pours softly, audibly. Lullaby white noise.
Tara looks over and Jinx's movements are smooth, fingers supporting the pizza crust. Careful. Almost thoughtful.
The sky rumbles. It's thunder, a low growl that builds until it shudders through the walls.
Tara lifts her head to see leaves fluttering frantically behind a water-stained window pane, and trees struggling under a westbound wind.
From the corner of her eye, she catches Jinx looking toward the bedroom.
The thunder dies. Brief silence, returned. The gears click in Tara's head, tooth over creeping tooth, slow, too slow. They lock into an understanding just as Kodi begins to cry.
It starts up almost hesitantly, this broken keening sound and Tara drives her hands into the sofa—
She doesn't get up. She doesn't get to.
Jinx has already folded the rest of her slice into her mouth and crossed half the distance between rooms, focused, easy, driven.
"Jinx—" Tara breathes, and Jinx lifts a hand.
Something like a shrug. Something like it's alright, without glancing back. She slips into the bedroom.
And Tara perches on the edge of the couch. Frozen in motion. Muscles still wound under the force of a cry begging for response. Pizza plate on her lap. Lightning flickering across the far wall, splashes of white light. Her hands are cold.
Her hands feel cold.
Thunder rolls again, pressure released, and the car collision in her head powers Tara to her feet, pizza shoved aside on the couch cushions.
She slows at the bedroom doorway.
Dim gray, cluttering the edge of the drawn curtains. No lamplight, easier to get Kodi back to sleep that way. He's curled in on himself, rolled tight and small, arms and legs clenched close to his body. Just like when he was born. Jinx is holding him to her shoulder, hand at the back of his head. Her ear brushing the dark hair lying thin against Kodi's scalp.
…He's so fucking small.
He's still crying, wailing stronger and louder when the thunder grumbles gently at their windows. Quieter when Jinx walks him back and forth across the room. Patient paces at the side of their bed. Bouncing him lightly.
Her hair pulled out of her face in a half ponytail. Kodi gets so red, when he cries like this, and he cries like this a lot, and should they be doing something different? Should they—?
Jinx runs her thumb over his head, mussing wisps of hair. The force and urgency seep slowly, slowly out of Kodi's cries.
"Sh, sh…"
It's a terrifying thing. Because Tara knew that babies cried like that, but it's different when she… When it's her…
Kodi drops to whimpers, and Jinx switches him from against her shoulder to cradled at her chest as she changes course for the bed. Already freeing an arm from her shirt —Tara's shirt— and yeah.
It makes sense.
Why wait for Kodi to wake up in an hour to feed him, when he's awake now, and it's probably going to lull him back to sleep, anyway, and is it weird to be noticing how smooth this is for Jinx? How practiced, setting up one-handed and coaxing Kodi to latch when he's too upset, at first. Is it… weird to be watching at all?
Jinx has been wearing Tara's loose t-shirts. Or the button-up flannels, either of theirs. Any of the comfy stuff in their closet is fair game, anything worn old and soft, but it's mostly Tara's, and she doesn't have to ask, of course.
But Tara would have said yes.
Whatever she needs.
Whatever she wants.
But it's just— It made sense, so she just took them.
The bedroom is dim. The arch of Jinx's cheekbone is frozen in Tara's mind but Tara's frozen in the doorway. Fingers wrapped around a wooden doorframe.
If she thought this was an adjustment… If Tara thought this was hard, if she thought this was a lot—
She doesn't get it. How much it must have been. How much it still is, because there are things falling on Jinx's shoulders that don't fit on anyone else's, and no wonder she doesn't want to touch Tara when Kodi needs so much of it. It's why she…
Oh god.
Things still hurt.
Don't they?
It was like being ripped open, Tara wasn't on the table but she was there and she heard the sounds and they weren't sounds she'd ever heard anyone make, let alone Jinx.
A lot. It was more than a fucking lot and it still is.
It still hurts. It has to still hurt.
Tara isn't doing this right.
Thunder cracks. She looks up, and sees lightning. Kodi's quiet, almost sleeping, and Jinx has handled it again, and Tara stands in the doorway.
She's just standing in the doorway, watching, wishing…
Wishing she was better at this.
