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"I'm cold," Robin said.
Nancy tried to ignore her, tried not to notice the muffled noise of Robin's bouncing leg, her tapping fingers against the back cover of the book she was meant to be reading, the unmistakable feeling of her eyes boring holes through the side of Nancy's skull.
"I said I'm cold," Robin repeated, drawing out the last word pathetically. Stretching one long leg out across the floor and poking at Nancy with the toe of her sneaker.
"So put your coat on." Nancy didn't even glance up from her book. She knew what she'd see, could have described it from memory down to the last freckle if anybody asked and if she had had precisely the right number of drinks, but at present she was stone cold sober and determined not to be distracted.
"No. Nance." Robin kept nudging Nancy with her foot until she finally gave in and looked up. "My butt is cold. I hate sitting on the floor. First of all it brings back bad memories, but it's also really bad for our backs, you know. It's absolutely ruining my posture."
"Your posture has always been terrible." She grabbed at Robin's foot to get her to stop the prodding, and- "Jesus, Robin. Do all of your shoes have boobs drawn on them?"
Robin wiggled her foot in Nancy's hand until she looked back up and met her eyes. And then she shrugged. "Yes."
"You're ridiculous." Nancy shook her head, to illustrate her annoyance and also to clear away the effects of that obnoxious little smirk on Robin's face. She realized she was still holding Robin's foot in her hand, so she shoved it away for emphasis. "And we have to sit on the floor in the stacks because you keep getting us kicked out of the reading rooms because you are incapable of being quiet."
Robin scooted forward across the floor, her sneakers squeaking loudly, her backpack rattling as she dragged it along. It sounded like it was full of empty cans. Nancy cringed. As if on cue, an empty Dr. Pepper can fell out of the bag and clattered loud across the stone floor.
Nancy watched Robin as she watched the can roll endlessly down the aisle, the soft grinding noise of metal on stone amplified unbearably in the quiet of the library, until it finally came to a stop against a bookcase at the far wall with one decisive little tink.
Robin turned back to Nancy, wide eyed. "Okay, so that was an accident."
"Oh my god," Nancy groaned. She stuck a pencil in her book to mark her page and leaned her forehead against her knees, resting her tired eyes. It was only February, an entire month until midterms, but this semester was already kicking her ass. She felt Robin squeeze in next to her, hip to hip, their backs to Geography and Travel. She turned her head and opened her eyes to find Robin's face right there. "What are you doing?"
"I'm stealing your warmth, like a cat," Robin explained, squeezing in even closer. "In return, I offer companionship."
Nancy gestured to the runaway Dr Pepper can. "And noise, and apparently the honor of cleaning up after you." She leaned back against the bookshelves and sighed.
"I was gonna grab it on the way out," Robin said, her knee ceasing its gentle bouncing against Nancy's leg, her face going slack in a way Nancy hadn't seen in years. An unsureness and a tension they had long since worked through, worked past. "I can just go, if I'm bothering you-"
Nancy's hand shot out before Robin could even finish, grabbing at her arm, fingers fisting in the soft flannel of her shirt.
"I'm sorry," she said, first. She startled herself with the ease of the apology. How quickly it came and how much she meant it. "I don't want you to leave. I'm just... stressed out. And I don't understand how you can just goof off and still get good grades while I'm over here losing my mind. Im just jealous, and tired. And probably hungry."
Robin's look softened, back to something like normal, and Nancy felt her arm relax in her hand.
"Okay for the record, I don't just goof off," Robin said, tilting her head conspiratorially. "I've already read this book twice, once in English and once in Russian. And yeah, I've got a crazy good memory so maybe I don't need to study the same way you do, but, like, writing papers? Actually organizing everything I've read into any coherent shape? It's nightmarish. Apocalyptic, even, and you know I don't say that lightly-"
"I know," Nancy laughed. "You've made me edit a few of them."
"I've never made you do anything and you know it. You're a sadist with a red pen," Robin pressed, jostling Nancy's legs with her knee at the sound of her laughter. "Oh please, don't bother pretending you don't take pleasure in my misery. And if you think my papers are bad? You should see my presentations-"
"Oh my god!" Nancy tugged on Robin's sleeve that she still held bunched up in her hand, a memory coming back suddenly, fully formed. "Sophomore year French class. You just got up there and started talking but nobody had any idea what you were saying."
"Oh no," Robin laughed, dropping her face into her hands before turning and laughing, bright red and blushing. "I think I repressed that memory. God. I was so confident because I was basically fluent already after freshman year, and I had practiced so much. And then I got up there and started talking and you were all just staring at me like I was an alien, and I just, fucking- I panicked."
"You didn't stop talking, oh my God," Nancy could barely breathe from laughing. "And we didn't- I mean, nobody in that class spoke French. I don't think even the teacher understood what you were saying. It was supposed to be like a 5 minute presentation or something, right? And you went for the entire period, until the bell rang, and you just, like, shut your mouth and left the room."
Robin was smiling, her eyes dancing over Nancy's face. "So you did know who I was, after all."
"Hmm?" Nancy was catching her breath, wiping a tear from her eye. Caught off guard a little by the question.
"At Starcourt. You were all-" she dropped her voice into something deep and dramatic- "Who are you and what are you doing in my mall?"
"I don't sound like that."
"I was admittedly on a lot of drugs at the time, but I swear that's what you sounded like to me."
"Well regardless," Nancy said. She was laughing again, softer this time, as she tried to remember that moment. It was a little amazing that she could think of that time and laugh at all. She wondered when that had happened. "There was a lot going on that night, obviously. That whole week. Year, even."
"Okay okay, I get it." Robin's tone of voice was teasing but her eyes were understanding. "You had some stuff going on. It's understandable."
"No, it was rude," Nancy insisted. "But there was no... I mean I wasn't expecting to see you. Maybe it was the uniform. The whole Popeye look, it was..." She trailed off, blushing a little despite herself.
"Ridiculous, I know." Robin rolled her eyes, but she smiled in some distant kind of way, like these memories had somehow become fond ones for her too, at least a little.
"No!" Nancy pushed at Robin's shoulder, finally letting go of her sleeve. She thought about grabbing it again. "It was cute. It was adorable, if slightly impractical for fighting a giant flesh monster. I just meant it wasn't your usual style." She did grab Robin's sleeve again, to tug on it, to make her point.
"Yeah, makes sense," Robin looked down at Nancy's hand, and back up at her face. Smirked that half-cocky little grin again that made Nancy lose her place, made her laugh and shake her head. "Maybe I'll bring back the sailor suit this spring. Honestly the lesbians of Boston could probably use some fashion inspiration."
"I like the way you dress," Nancy said. She liked the way Robin looked in her clothes, liked the feeling of flannel in her hand, liked the broken in softness of the sweatshirts Robin offered her when she got cold. She liked the sailor suit too, she knew, and she smiled at the absurdity. She supposed she'd probably like whatever Robin was wearing. She sighed. "Why are you here, anyway?"
Robin looked genuinely confused. "It's Tuesday, Nance. We always study on Tuesdays."
"It's Valentine's day."
"So?"
"So shouldn't you be with..." Nancy couldn't remember her name, the girl Robin had been seeing. She hadn't met her yet, and she didn't really want to, which was probably an even bigger sign that she was a terrible friend than not remembering the girl's name.
Robin cringed. "Janine."
"Janine, right," Nancy nodded. "What, is that not happening anymore?"
"The fact that you don't even know her name should tell you how serious that was," Robin said.
It was actually hard to tell how serious anything was with Robin. She picked up girlfriends the same way she picked up interests and hobbies and conversation topics, with intensity and excitement and the sort of boundless joy of a brand new thing, at least until something else came along and pulled her focus. Some things stuck, most didn't. But she always showed up at the library on Tuesdays.
"What happened?" Nancy asked, aiming for gentleness but landing somewhere closer to interrogation. She was curious, eager for information, now that the question was less dangerous. Now that the answer seemed unlikely to be we're desperately happy and we eloped to Las Vegas and we'd like to ask you to be godmother to our rescue pitbull, Anita.
"God, I don't want to talk about it, it's so embarrassing." Robin dropped her head into her hands dramatically.
Now Nancy was really curious, and she was reasonably certain that Robin did want to talk about it, that she would get to it eventually and talk about it at length if Nancy played a willing enough audience. She was always a willing audience to Robin, that was the problem. She should be studying but she just wanted to listen to the raspy stage whisper of Robin's voice, just wanted to hear her say I'm single.
"Oh come on, now you have to tell me." Nancy shook Robin by the shoulder and felt her relax into it, melting, loose-limbed like a ragdoll, groaning in imaginary misery. It was addicting, teasing her. "Was it a sex thing?"
"What? No! God, what even would that be?" Robin laughed, looking back up. She scrunched up her freckled nose and shook her head, trying maybe to imagine a scenario that would qualify. "Like what are you picturing right now? Whatever it is I promise you the reality is way less fun than that."
"Robin," Nancy pushed, firmer this time but incapable of holding in all of her laughter at Robin's histrionics.
Robin took a deep breath. "Okay. She..." Her voice trailed off quickly into a garbled whisper, unintelligible even to Nancy's keen ears, practiced as they were at picking out Robin's voice in a crowd.
"Can you repeat that?" She asked. "I'm even less fluent in mumbling than I am in french."
"She's a republican!" Robin half shouted.
"Shhhhhh!" sounded from somewhere on the other side of the bookshelf.
"Sorry!" Robin yelled, and got another "Shhhhhhh!" in response.
Nancy winced and lowered her voice to something barely above a whisper, trying to set a good example. "How can she be gay and be a republican?"
"That's what I said!" Even Robin's whisper was loud.
Nancy laughed and pressed a finger to Robin's lips to shush her, her hand acting independently of her brain. A reflex, magnetic. Robin's eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed, and she laughed once, nervously, when Nancy pulled her hand back as if it burned. Nancy couldn't keep her hands to herself lately, she found she didn't really want to.
Robin cleared her throat and kept talking. "Honestly I probably shouldn't be surprised, she's friends with my roommate."
Nancy hacked out a laugh, too loud by far. "Robin, seriously? Every time I hang out in your room I find religious pamphlets in my coat pockets afterwards." There was probably at least one in her coat right now, probably more in her backpack. If she turned her textbooks upside down and fanned the pages, she was sure a few would fall out. They spent a lot of time hanging out in Robin's room.
Robin smiled and leaned back against the bookshelves, shoulder to shoulder now. "She leaves those under my pillow too, she must order them in bulk. And I swear I woke up to her doing an exorcism on me. She claimed she was just waking me up from a nightmare? But she did it by splashing holy water on my face, which, knowing her that might actually have been the closest thing she had at hand. But still."
"You're stalling," Nancy said, soft. Not really even that concerned anymore with the details of this most recent breakup, mostly just enjoying watching Robin winding up, warming up.
"Oh, right, so anyway. I don't even remember specifically what we were talking about but at some point I said something along the lines of-" Robin started talking and Nancy stopped listening. Stopped listening to the words, at least, luxuriating mostly in the peaks and valleys of Robin's voice as she worked her way through the story, in watching the broad gestures of her hands and the dramatic shifts of her facial expressions. Not for the first time, Nancy was struck a little silly by all of the ways that Robin Buckley was lovely. "-and then she was like I don't know if I can date somebody who calls me a nazi and I was like well I definitely can't date somebody who is a nazi. So."
Robin was looking at her now like she expected a response.
"When?" She asked, her voice choked up a bit with wanting. She cleared her throat and tried again. "When did this happen?"
Robin shrugged like this was somebody else's story, like it didn't matter at all. "A couple weeks ago?"
"And you didn't tell me? We see each other like every other day." Nancy was torn, irrationally, between some actual little shard of hurt at Robin not telling her everything, all the time and the real and undeniable fact that they really did see each other like every other day. That if it mattered she probably would have heard about it. That through all the dating and breaking up, through all the girls, Robin always showed up at the library on Tuesdays.
"It wasn't a big deal, okay?" Robin echoed Nancy's own thoughts, reassuring. "You don't tell me about everybody you break up with."
Nancy had to laugh at that. "I don't break up with anybody, Robin. I don't go out with anybody. I'm single. I've been single."
"But people ask you out all the time. Like, even in line at Dunkin Donuts. I can't take you anywhere." Robin leaned into her, her full lanky weight knocking Nancy half over until she recovered and shoved back.
"I don't want to go out with the guys at Dunkin Donuts," Nancy sighed. It was a shame. Boston was a whole town full of guys at Dunkin Donuts. If that was anybody's type they must be cleaning up around here. "Valentine's day is stupid, anyway."
"I used to like it," Robin said. "I mean not in high school obviously, that was the worst day of the year. At least on Presidential Fitness Test day the boys weren't wearing cologne. But like, when we were kids it was fun. Everybody got valentines, everybody got candy. It was nice."
"Yeah," Nancy said, remembering again, another thing lost and found. "We were in the same class in third grade, do you remember?"
"Yeah, how could I forget?" Robin laughed, quiet for once. "You smacked Jimmy Gizzarelli because he made fun of my valentines."
"You made them yourself, I thought that was so cool," Nancy remembered. An eight year old Robin Buckley, already tall for her age, even skinnier back then, all scraped knees and elbows, blushing and handing Nancy a raggedy red construction paper heart with a sticker of a kitten on it, not quite covering up something written in blue marker underneath.
"The one I gave you was cool at least, I put my favorite cat sticker on it," Robin laughed. "I was already a little in love with you before that, but after you punched that jerk I knew I was definitely onto something. And you gave me the best Valentine I had ever seen, so. I would have married you, I think, if you had asked me in the third grade."
"It was the..." Nancy thought back, trying not to dwell too much on that, trying to remember instead what it was, what it could have been. Some little premade cardstock pack of valentines they picked up at Melvald's. Oh. "Really? That was my favorite one, too. It reminded me of you. The alligator, right?"
"No," Robin insisted. "It was a crocodile. Wearing sunglasses, on a skateboard, and it said You're One Cool Crocodile!" She lowered her voice into a cartoony growl, apparently the voice of a Cool Crocodile. "In retrospect I'm not sure how that's even a valentine? But I loved it though, it was perfect."
"I picked that one for you specifically because you liked crocodiles, you used to wear that hat." Nancy gestured at her head, as if Robin didn't know where hats went. She had been adorable in that stupid hat.
"Actually that was an alligator," Robin corrected. "You can tell by the shape of their heads and if you can see their bottom teeth when their mouths are closed. Among other things. I got it from my Grandpa in Florida."
"Oh," Nancy frowned, embarrassingly disappointed at her eight year old self for her lack of research. "I'm sorry."
"Are you kidding me, I loved it," Robin said. She was smiling like she meant it, eyes sparkling in the fading afternoon light streaming in the high windows. "Alligators and crocodiles are different, but I liked both. And after that I was definitely team crocodile."
Nancy snaked her arm under Robin's and grabbed her hand, just for the hell of it, just to hold it.
"Do you still have the hat?" She asked, not overly concerned with the answer, more interested in the warm weight of Robin's hand in hers.
"Nope," Robin said. She looked down at their entwined hands and smiled, the tension in her brow betraying something. "I still have the valentine though."
"Where?" Nancy couldn't stop herself from asking.
"That's a secret." Robin cut off Nancy's protest, reaching across her body to press a finger to her lips now, and she blushed again but didn't pull away. It was effective. Nancy felt entirely frozen in place. Robin laughed. "Hey, I don't know everything about you. Where do you keep your guns, huh?"
"Under my mattress," Nancy said without hesitation, painfully aware of the feeling of Robin's finger on lips as they moved.
"Oh," Robin said. She let her hand drop from Nancy's face and cleared her throat. "Well fine, it's tucked in the pages of my copy of The Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Invisible Dog. Probably along with some Jesus pamphlets at this point."
They were both quiet now. Nancy thinking about Robin's hand in hers, her lips still tingling at the ghost of Robin's fingertip. She stared at their fingers intertwined.
"I have a confession to make," Nancy admitted. "I ruined the one you gave me. I tried to peel off the sticker to see what was written underneath it, but I only managed to rip the sticker and tear the top layer of paper off. I felt so guilty. I cried for so long my mom panicked and took me to McDonald's to distract me."
"Did it work?" Robin asked, smiling like an inside joke.
"Briefly," Nancy nodded, laughing quietly. "I tried to fix it when I got home, tried glue everything back. I only made it worse. I think my mom must have thrown it away."
"Ouch." Robin feigned getting shot in the chest, but she didn't drop Nancy's hand. "You could have just asked me."
"You would have told me?" Nancy tried to joke. "After you went to such great pains to cover it up?"
"Yeah, Nance," Robin sighed, a resigned kind of smile on her face. "I would have done anything you asked me to. I'm telling you, I was gone. Ever since the first day of kindergarten when you said you liked my freckles. "
"I do like your freckles." She loved Robin's freckles. They made her look like summer even in February.
Robin shook her head and looked back down at their hands. "I know. You tell me all the time when you're drunk."
"Yeah. I'm sorry," Nancy said. She summoned up some silly bit of courage, not the big showy kind she'd used for killing monsters, just the mundane little bravery needed for terrifying ordeals like giving your best friend a sincere compliment. It would be so much less scary if she meant it less. "I like them when I'm sober too, I'm just not as good at... saying it, I guess."
"Oh. I mean, it's fine. I mean. Thanks." Robin shook her head and laughed softly. "I'm hungry," she said.
"Come to the dining hall with me," Nancy offered, squeezing Robin's hand. "My treat."
"Buying me dinner on Valentine's day?" Robin arched her brows and whistled, too loud. "Nancy Wheeler, are you asking me to be your valentine?"
"Yes," Nancy said, automatic, unhesitating. She was surprised for a split second by her own decisiveness, disoriented momentarily by the sudden clarity. But it was obvious, now that she had said it. Alligators were different than crocodiles. Jesus might have died for Nancy's sins but she had certainly never asked him to. Her guns were safe under her mattress and she was safe with Robin Buckley, who talked too much and too loud and had freckles on her face and who always showed up to the library on Tuesdays. "If you want to be."
Robin's joking smile stayed frozen on her face as her eyes cycled through varying stages of confusion. Nancy was ready to take it all back, and she moved to take her hand back too, but Robin held fast to it.
"Hey, wait. No. Yes. I would. I do. Want that, I mean-"
Robin would talk all night if Nancy let her, she knew. And she would listen all night if Robin wanted to talk. But just this once there was something more important than talking and listening, a switch that needed to be fully flipped, after which they could have all the time in the world for talking. So Nancy shushed her again, with her own lips this time. She could feel Robin's surprise, her tension and her nerves, and then she felt it all melt away under her mouth into the softness and warmth she had come to expect.
They stayed that way only for a few seconds, barely long enough to seal a deal, and then Nancy backed off just far enough to look into Robin's eyes and check. Searching for any hint of regret or upset or some little seed of let-her-down-easy, any sign at all to pack up her books and run. All she saw was blown-out wonder, a half-drunk contentment, and the spooling mania of a Robin Buckley who was ready to start talking again.
"Whoa," is all Robin said in that first instant, her fingers clenching onto Nancy's for dear life. And then she smiled, big and stupid, happy. "But I'm not putting out for dining hall chicken piccata, Wheeler. It's Valentine's day. You better wine me and dine me."
"Who said anything about putting out?" Nancy scoffed. The ease of them settling back like it had never left, like this had always been the way things were meant to go. "On the first date? Who do you think I am?"
Robin shrugged, cocky now again. Playful. "I think you're a modern, liberated, confident woman with at least one gun under her mattress who isn't beholden to 1950's societal norms. I think you just kissed me in the library, and you liked it. And anyway, there's bound to be a parallel universe in which you actually asked me what it said under the sticker on that valentine and we've been dating since third grade. It might be a first date in this timeline, but compared to them? We've got some catching up to do."
"There are probably a lot of universes where one or both of us are dead," Nancy mused. Maybe a little dark for their current situation but mathematically it seemed pretty likely given everything they'd been through.
Robin seemed unbothered by the tone shift. "That's an even better reason. Think of all of our dead counterparts in the multiverse who will never get the chance to be together. We've gotta do it for them, or what kind of heroes even are we?"
"I have never claimed to be a hero," Nancy said.
Robin fluttered her eyelashes, aiming maybe for damsel in distress but landing firmly on sarcastic little shit. "You're my hero."
"Oh my God," Nancy laughed. "Sex for the good of humanity, sure. Why not. But you won't put out for dining hall food, huh? That's where your heroism ends?"
"Oh, no I totally will," Robin nodded. "That was a bluff. I am precisely that easy. I just thought you might appreciate the illusion of a challenge."
"You know me so well," Nancy deadpanned, packing up her books. "Fine. Come on. We can't go to mine, though. My roommate just got dumped by some frat boy, I'm pretty sure it would be a betrayal of some wave of feminism if I kicked her out of her own room on Valentine's day. Any chance Cindy has a hot date with a respectable Catholic boy tonight?"
Robin winced and stood up. "God, do those even exist?" She shook her head and pulled Nancy up by her hand. "No way, I'm pretty sure she doesn't believe in dating before marriage."
"Well I guess we're out of luck," Nancy laughed as they headed towards the exit. She watched as Robin bent down to pick up her errant Dr. Pepper can on the way out. "You'll have to settle for just the chicken piccata."
"No way, we can kick her out," Robin insisted, shivering as they stepped out into the cold. "What's she gonna do, call the pope on us? We're well outside of his jurisdiction. And this is the triumphant culmination of almost three years of hard work, are we really going to let Cindy O'Keefe stop us?"
"I'm sorry, what are you talking about?" Nancy laughed, letting Robin swing her hand as she gestured dramatically.
"Nancy Wheeler," Robin stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, much to the annoyance of everybody else trying to walk. Nancy pulled them against the side of the building, out of the way. Robin laughed, that gorgeous lopsided grin back on her face. "I have been annoying you in libraries since spring break 1986. It's called courtship. I'm a romantic."
"Hmm," Nancy hummed. She wanted to pull Robin down and kiss her right there, but it was still early and the street was bustling and busy, She settled for squeezing her hand, bringing it up and kissing her knuckles, the rings on Robin's fingers cold against her skin. "Tell that to the pope."