Chapter Text
Sunset pinks and reds spill through the windows of Deborah’s private jet as it crosses over ocean to earth and descends, touching down on the single runway just as the last bit of blood-red sun winks away below the horizon line. Ava lifts Cara with both arms around the middle and follows Deborah, who carries Barry with much more grace, down the jet staircase. She drops a squirming Cara on solid ground and together they trail after Deborah towards a massive hunter green SUV parked right there on the tarmac. The Land Rover is outfitted for off-roading with giant tires, a snorkel, cargo roof rack, and winch fixed to the front bumper. There’s fresh mud and wet sand caked in the treads and splattered across the wheel wells, but Deborah doesn’t pay it any mind. She lifts the dogs one at a time onto the back seat while a silent airport attendant loads their suitcases into the trunk, which is really just a narrow lane between two sets of jump seats.
“I wasn’t aware there were safaris on Martha’s Vineyard,” Ava jokes as she opens what she assumes is the passenger side door, confused as Deborah goes to climb in. “Wha–”
Deborah scoffs. “No chance you’re driving.”
“But this–” Ava starts, before realizing the steering wheel Deborah has settled in behind is in fact on the wrong side of the car.
“C’mon, get in. Better to get moving while it’s still light. You’ll see why.”
Ava hurries around to the other side of the car as Deborah turns over the engine. She waves at Jackson, the pilot still in the cockpit, then drives out of the miniscule airport that is cleaved right out of the surrounding woods. She’s totally at ease driving both the stick shift and from the other side of the car, one hand draped along the top of the steering wheel and the other hanging out the window when they’ve reached the main road and a higher gear, fingers dancing on the sea breeze.
Ava can’t help stealing glances across the front seat at Deborah. She is quite the sight driving this mud-spattered truck in her cream heels, pleated slacks, leopard print silk blouse, and chunky jewelry. The radio is off but Deborah hums just loud enough that Ava can recognize the melody over the sound of the air whipping through the open windows. Patsy Cline’s Crazy .
“This is actually my first time here,” Ava says, breaking the companionable silence as she finally looks away from Deborah and out across the ocean speeding by outside her window. There’s just enough residual sunlight warming the space where the ocean meets the sky that the water shifts in cornflower blue. “The Vineyard is too bougie, even for us mainland locals. Hey, do you know the Obamas? I heard something about Barack’s birthday party and I feel like you definitely have the name recognition to get us in.”
“Nah, I turned down the gig to host the Correspondents’ dinner in ‘09 and I guess he never got over it.”
“What?” Ava gapes. “Deborah! What happened to ‘ a gig’s a gig? ’”
“Don’t be thick. I’m a Republican, he was never going to ask me to host.”
“YOU’RE A WHAT ?” Ava screams, reaching with one hand towards the door handle while the other releases the seat belt. There’s no oncoming traffic and she briefly considers the damage she’d take if she tucked and rolled right out of the moving car.
“Oh my god, I’m joking. Get a grip.”
“Oh, thank Barack,” Ava says, clutching at her chest and swallowing down the heart palpitations.
“And no matter how big those mitts of yours are, they wouldn’t break that fall without you breaking your face, you idiot.”
“Some principles are worth risking injury for,” she says, refastening the seat belt.
Deborah snorts, tongue poking between her teeth as their eyes meet sidelong just briefly before Deborah focuses back on the road. That now familiar prickling shiver spreads from the back of Ava’s neck across her shoulder blades, the warm wings of her affection for Deborah relentless in their pursuit for freedom, to spread wide and broad and shameless. It’s getting harder and harder to tamp them these days, to keep them folded and pressed close, safe within the confines of her ribcage. Especially when it feels like no matter the size of the crowds each night on tour, Deborah is performing only for an audience of one.
“Anyways, I don’t live in that part of Martha’s Vineyard,” Deborah explains, though truthfully Ava didn’t think there was any other part of this island aside from rich and bougie. Especially considering Deborah is most certainly both, but Ava drops it, content as has become her habit lately to simply exist by Deborah’s side. She’s just a satellite in her orbit, ready and willing at any moment to be sucked wholly into her gravity, even if the end will most likely come in the form of a fiery explosion.
They’re on a much needed break half way through the tour after a grueling trio of Labor Day weekend shows in Boston. The show is just finally beginning to get traction and all three nights in a row had sold out, a surprising number of college students packing the dark basement club. But it had been months of non-stop shows, lots of them bombs in the beginning, and long stints on the cramped tour bus. Between Damian’s sleep-talking and the claustrophobia of her bunk, Ava hasn’t had a good sleep in months. Not to mention the time Deborah tried to brain her with new age crystals. But whatever, they are past the email now and Deborah is just starting to hit her stride.
Needless to say, they both needed a break from the grind being on the road. And though Deborah offered Ava unfettered access to the PJ and the week to herself to do as she pleased, nothing could beat Deborah’s other off-hand invitation, proposed a week prior after multiple martinis in a New Haven dive bar and what Ava would characterize as very obvious flirting: a week at her house on Martha’s Vineyard, just the two of them, and something about a fishing derby, whatever the hell that meant. Now that Deborah finally stopped torturing her about the email and dropped the lawsuit, the tension and animosity is replaced with an intimacy and trust that Ava had never felt with anyone before. She wants to stay. And it’s at a point now where Ava for sure thinks her feelings (and, frankly, thirst) are no longer unrequited. Deborah is having a harder and harder time trying to hide her own feelings. The unspoken moments when their eyes meet and the understanding is just there come more frequent now. After months of sharing the same space and learning to navigate sharing a life, the lines between them continue to smudge away into nothing.
Ava just wants to be with Deborah. Whether they were working or not. It was really as simple as that.
Plus she’d already put in the Catholic guilt-fueled facetime with her mother in between shows over the weekend and it had gone surprisingly well, without either of them having any semblance of a breakdown. It’s probably because without Ava even having to ask, Deborah hardly left them alone and is the best kind of buffer, navigating the tumult of Ava and Nina’s relationship like a professional. It’s unnerving how Deborah does it so easily now, reading each of Ava’s anxious tells and balming them, sometimes verbal but mostly not: a soft hand settled on a restless thigh under a table, a knowing smirk and eye roll when her mother goes off on another batshit tangent, or lately, a glancing touch on her elbow that feathers down along the length of her forearm before grasping her hand and squeezing quick. How she knows the exact right length of time to leave Ava alone when she needs a vape break and diffuses every moment of tension with the perfect quip, usually turning the attention to herself.
In the end, Ava and Nina managed to both make it through two consecutive days of time together without either of them having a breakdown. A new personal record. Not only did her mother not stress over Ava’s life choices, but she even went so far as to tell Ava she was proud of her after watching Deborah perform.
Ava can’t nail down the exact moment she realized she was in love with Deborah, but she’s sure as hell in deep now, the way that a frog in a pot of slowly heating water never feels how close they are to death until it's too late and the pot’s at a rolling boil. Maybe it would have been better for her mental health to have taken the offered time away. To get some distance. To dip her toes back into what life after this tour will be and to relearn how to be on her own, if and when it comes to that. Because she needs to start considering and eventually facing the possibility of life after Deborah and this tour. But Ava’s never been one to make smart decisions, and sitting in the wrong side of this car, the Atlantic off one shoulder and Deborah off the other, she isn’t at any sort of impasse or regretting her choice. Instead, she’s at peace. The way she’s felt for weeks, sharing Deborah’s life.
“This is really the perfect time to come,” Deborah explains as she downshifts, slowing the car as they enter the narrow streets of downtown Edgartown. It’s all saltbox houses fixed with historical markers, whitewashed shingles and immaculately manicured lush green lawns. “We just missed the mass exodus of douchebags after the holiday weekend. Now it’s just the townies.”
“The Queen of Las Vegas herself moonlighting as a New England townie? You truly are a woman of many multitudes.”
Deborah winks. “And don’t you forget it, baby.”
They queue behind a few other cars down by the harbor and as Deborah shifts into neutral, Ava resists laying her hand against Deborah’s over the gearshift. Instead she sandwiches them both beneath her thighs, pinning them against the worn leather seat. Three of the cars ahead drive right onto what she thinks is a dock, but turns out to be a small ferry, the weight of the cars rocking it forward and backward.
Deborah is answering her question before it’s even fully formed or spoken.
“We’re out on Chappaquiddick,” she nods across the short channel of water between them and the opposite shore. “‘ 527 feet between worlds. ’ At least, that’s what the merchandise says. It’s a very famous ferry,” she shrugs at Ava’s mounting confusion.
“You’re telling me we are on an island and about to ferry onto another island?”
“Yup.” Deborah reaches across Ava’s lap to fish through the glove box and pulls out a laminated orange ferry pass stamped ‘Resident’. “There’s no bridge. This is the only way on and off.”
“And here I thought this car could swim us across.”
“That comes later,” Deborah deadpans before the facade breaks and she’s grinning wickedly.
“Oh god, you’re serious,” Ava realizes, turning in her seat and hoping there’s a life vest stored somewhere in this monstrosity because she is absolutely not drowning before they finish this tour and nab a comedy special on whatever streaming service shells out enough cash to satiate Marcus. “Well, at least you guys can swim,” Ava mumbles, reaching to scratch at the ears of both dogs who crane forward to meet her half way, their tongues lolling out as her nails rake under their chins. Ava squares back up towards Deborah, still incredibly thrown off by the wheel being on the wrong damn side of the car. “Will you at least write my obituary?”
“Sure, honey. I can see the headline now: ‘ Pale Sad Local Ginger Writer Drowns Despite Flippers for Hands .’”
“Nice.”
“Deborah!” A tall and lanky teenage boy with sunken cheeks pockmarked with acne scars and a faded salt-crusted Boston Bruins hat pulled low over his brow approaches, smile baring a mouth full of metal braces. “Back in town just in time for the derby, I see. Like clockwork!”
“Hey, Seth,” Deborah greets with a familiar easy smile. “You know I wouldn’t miss it. How’s the family? Did your uncle–”
“Dead. Good fucking riddance.”
Deborah lets a signature cackle and the familiar warmth returns, radiating from the back of Ava’s neck and moving down along her chest and torso. For someone so famous, Deborah can be so in tune with even the most innocuous relationships in her life. From her drivers to the plane staff, the gardeners and pool cleaners, the housekeepers and personal shoppers. Even this local kid taking tickets at the Chappaquiddick Ferry. Ava doesn’t know how she does it, but Deborah just has this way of making everyone feel seen and like they really matter–at least, as long as they stay on her good side–and Ava knows better than anyone how intoxicating that attention can be.
Deborah and Seth exchange more small talk about fishing that sails over Ava’s head before he waves Deborah forward and onto the empty ferry. She’s friendly with the captain too, a stout older and graying woman with hunched shoulders and tan but weathered and heavily wrinkled skin who looks like she just stepped out of the Perfect Storm. She’s got a faded maroon flannel knotted around her waist and smells like cigarettes as she leans in through the open window to hug Deborah, their conversation hushed and brief. The trip takes all of two minutes once they’ve pushed off, the boat puttering across the short distance between opposing shores.
They file off the ferry then onto land, following the single paved road into the meat of the island for a few minutes before forking off onto a street of packed dirt leading into the woods and riddled with potholes that Deborah doesn’t put much effort into avoiding. Good thing the dogs are strapped in.
“D, I’m getting serious horror movie vibes here.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Deborah flicks on the high beams as they lose the final dregs of daylight, blue deepening to black. Eventually the trees peter out and fade into sand dunes that flank each side of the road.
“Oh my god. I figured it out!” Ava throws her hand across the car and clutches at Deborah’s forearm. “Is this–”
“The Kennedy bridge? Sure is.”
As the Land Rover starts over the narrow bridge, wide enough only for a single car, Ava pulls slack into her seatbelt, folds one leg under and drapes her torso halfway out the rolled-down window. She stares down into the black water as if she might see the sunken car or ghostly corpse of a young woman still there just beneath the surface. “My mom literally would not shut up about this when that movie came out. Like, that asshole got plastered, drove a car off this bridge, killed a woman, and went on to become a senator for almost fifty years?”
“Helps to come from a rich and famous political family, huh?” Deborah slows the car so Ava can gape. “What do you like to say? Watch whiteness work?”
“Seriously. The fuck.”
“Plus he was innocent. No guardrails back then.”
“Ew, Deborah. That is also fucked.”
Deborah shrugs. “Just saying, that’s what happened.”
“We need to have a serious talk about your defense of shitty white men.”
“Christ. At least save it for after vacation, would you?”
Ava grumbles but doesn’t push it further. At least not while Deborah still can drive them into the ocean and drown her, just like that poor woman.
Deborah continues on a bit further before the worn creaking wood of the bridge disappears and she drives right onto the sand, following previous tracks that have already cut through the dunes.
“Um, Deborah–” Ava warns, gripping the arm rest and passenger side door with equal strength as the sand shifts beneath the wheels and the truck lurches. Deborah smirks with one side of her mouth and pushes her tongue up against her front lip, looking directly at Ava as she flicks a switch above her head, turning on a light bar that spans the length along the top of the windshield and further illuminates their way in the increasing darkness.
“Not the most traditional driveway, I know,” Deborah says, continuing on straight through the dunes before making a left at the water to follow the shoreline. Ava can hear the sounds of the waves through her still open window. If she opened the door, she’d roll right into the water.
“Regretting your choices now?”
“Need I remind you–”
“You can’t swim? No, I’m more than aware of that, hon. Don’t worry, you’re safe.”
The with me stays unsaid, but it’s an invisible undercurrent between them.
The implication burrows into the center of Ava’s chest and eases her anxiety as Deborah gracefully shifts between the low gears and maneuvers through the wet sand where the tide has receded. They follow the beach for another mile or so before veering in the direction of a house not far off, softly lit from within with warm yellow light.
It’s a relatively small (by Deborah’s standards at least) two story house, clapped in weather-beaten cedar shingles with wide expansive windows and large white-washed wooden porches that wrap around both stories offering sweeping ocean views.
“It’s beautiful,” Ava says as Deborah pulls up to a two car garage that is separate from the main house and cuts the engine.
“I’ve had it for over twenty years now. Bought it when I hit a thousand shows at the Palmetto. And every time I come out here, I think I should be here more often than I am.”
“Well it only takes an airplane, two ferries, one homicide bridge and driving on the fucking beach to get here so, you know, supes convenient.”
“You’re funny.”
Ava wags her eyebrows. “That’s why you keep me around, remember?”
And this right here, bantering with Deborah in a parked car when it feels like there’s nowhere else they’d rather be, that’s why Ava stayed. Because she's addicted to these moments. To the happiness she feels by Deborah’s side, even when they’re doing nothing at all.
“Thank you again,” Ava says, watching Deborah across the front seat as she scrutinizes the property, no doubt making sure everything is in order. “For inviting me.” Deborah opens her mouth to speak, but Ava cuts in first. “And you can save the joke about me having no friends, you asshole. You don’t have to rub it in.”
Deborah pretends to be offended. “It was going to be good.”
Ava hums. “Always is.”
“But you’re welcome,” Deborah says, turning finally to read Ava’s earnest expression and rolling her eyes. “Oh don’t get all sappy on me already, we just got here.”
The driveway is covered in dusty ground seashells that crunch under the soles of Ava’s Vans as she juggles all their luggage and trails after Barry, Cara, and Deborah up to the front porch. She kicks her shoes off on the welcome mat which reads Wipe your Paws and follows Deborah inside.
This house is such a stark contrast to the museum-like feel of the Cheesecake Factory, and it actually reminds Ava so much of the house she grew up in back in Waltham. There’s no marble floors or ornate crown moldings, but worn and polished original hardwood floors, dark wooden furniture, and a large and very comfortable looking L-shaped leather couch that faces a large wood-burning fireplace. It’s tastefully decorated and perfectly curated, still full of what Ava assumes is very expensive art and countless bouquets of fresh flowers, this is still a Deborah Vance property after all, but Ava isn’t afraid her clumsy ass will take out any priceless artifacts if she makes one wrong move.
There’s tons of windows on each floor, some that span from floor to ceiling that face both the ocean in the front and thick woods to the back. A soda machine in the kitchen, because of course there is. Ava’s room is the spare right next to Deborah’s, both of which share the large balcony that wraps around the upper story and boasts the best view of the house, directly out towards the Atlantic. Ava barely sets down her backpack before she’s kicking off her shoes, slipping into a slightly too large but very comfortable pair of sherpa-lined moccasins that are set neatly inside the closet, and settling in one of the rocking chairs outside. It’s too dark out to see, but she can hear the distant rush of waves and she can’t wait to sit out here in the light of day.
After a few minutes, the sliding glass door to Deborah’s bedroom opens and both dogs spill out, then Deborah herself, a soft blue woven blanket draped over her forearm, one hand holding a pair of wine glasses and the other a chilled bottle of Sauvignon blanc by the neck. She’s changed from silk into soft cotton, lost all the jewelry and her hair piece. She looks so beautiful. Ava scratches at the ears of both dogs that have plopped by her feet as Deborah settles into the adjacent rocker and pours two generous glasses.
“Cheers,” Deborah says, holding up her glass.
“My dad used to always say, ‘Here’s to us, good people are scarce.’”
“Here, here.” Deborah holds Ava’s gaze as the glasses clink together beneath the softened light of the full moon. There’s a sparse layer of low clouds that dim its brightness and obstruct most of the stars.
They sip quietly to the sound of the distant ocean waves and chorus of crickets and cicadas littering the surrounding woods. Ava basks in perfection of this moment and that same thought is back again: she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Be with anyone else.
Well, except maybe her dad, if she got one last chance with him. He would love this place. She should’ve just said yes when he offered to fly to Vegas all those months ago. The regret is still sharp and bitter at the back of her throat, even after all this time.
“Miss him?” Deborah asks as Ava’s head falls back against the chair, her chin tilted up towards the sky. Somehow Deborah just knows.
“Yeah.” Ava pauses, looking back towards Deborah who is turned slightly in the rocker, her body curling towards Ava. “But more so since we’ve been here. It kind of breaks my fucking heart that we lived so close and hardly ever went anywhere, you know? Camping a few times in New Hampshire, but I don’t think he ever–” Ava tries to swallow against a tight throat. Tries to breathe through it. “Don’t think he ever came here. I googled it, we’re literally a hundred and three miles from my parent’s house. And a lot of that is ocean.”
“What made you want to leave?”
“Massachusetts? You’ve met my mother.” Ava delivers it like a punchline, even though she’s completely serious.
Deborah chuckles softly. “Fair enough.”
“The second I realized going to college meant I could leave this place, I was already gone. I know it hurt him, even though he knew it was what I wanted. He couldn’t help feeling I was leaving him behind. And I can’t blame him,” Ava shrugs, “because I was.”
Deborah delicately swirls the wine in her glass. “That’s just part of it, I think. You raise your kid and want the best for them, whatever that means.” Her gaze is far away now. “But it’s hard when that means they grow away from you.”
It’s weird to think that Ava and DJ had such starkly different childhoods and both ended up so royally fucked up. DJ grew up on the road with hardly anything constant while Ava felt so very stuck in the smallness of suburban Massachusetts. She often wonders if Deborah regrets how her career affected her only child, but Ava had all the stability in the world and she felt just as trapped and alone as DJ did.
“What do you think you would’ve done if you never made it in comedy?”
“I don’t know,” Deborah answers, taking a sip while she considers it. Ava loves the stains her lipstick always leaves behind on the rim, and that Deborah almost always makes a point to drink from the same place, leaving only a single mark. “Sometimes it feels like performing is the only thing I’ve ever been any good at. Clearly it wasn’t being a wife. Or a mother.”
“Do you think you were a bad wife?”
Deborah laughs. It’s small, bitter, and painful. Ava categorizes it as one of her least favorite, only slightly behind when Deborah is laughing at the expense of someone else’s pain. “I’d say ‘ask my ex-husband,’ but I’m glad that asshole is dead. He’d certainly tell you I was.”
Ava resettles so her body is sideways in the rocker, squared towards Deborah. “I’m asking you.”
“Marriage was different back then.” Deborah keeps her gaze trained forward the way she always does when Ava is poking at the hurt parts. “More traditional, more–”
“Imprisoning?” Ava arches a singular eyebrow and earns a soft and genuine smile. But she can tell Deborah is still safely guarding this part of herself. The delicate piece that Frank smashed to bits when he decided to blow up their life.
“There were expectations, and those I certainly was bad at. That there would always be food on the table when he got home, that he alone was the provider. That the housework and caring for DJ were all me. I had to fight tooth and nail to get any sort of credit for ‘Who’s Making Dinner.’”
“Fucking archaic heterosexual patriarchal bullshit. Holy syllables .”
Deborah laughs again, more genuinely. “You have such a way with words.”
“It’s a gift.”
Ava refills their glasses, letting Deborah continue if she wants. The dogs are now asleep at the foot of her chair, their bodies pressed together against Ava’s slippered feet.
“I never quite fit into that mold. I was always very independent, even from when I was little. I never liked anyone telling me what to do. Like someone else I know.”
This time Ava is the one laughing. “Yeah, no shit. Boss-ass bitch from birth, huh?”
Deborah hums in agreement but there’s pain lingering in her eyes as she takes another long draw from her wine glass. “And God forbid I cast a longer shadow than my husband. Or that I was more successful. It just wasn’t done that way back then.”
“So…” Ava trails off, trying to circle her back around to the original question.
“No,” Deborah admits, looking away and out towards the blackness of the sea. “I don’t think I was a bad wife. I loved my husband. I wanted the best for him, and I thought he wanted the same for me.” The bitter laugh returns. “Fucking idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot, Deborah. You get that, right?”
Ava is met only with strained silence.
“He trampled you. He tried to snuff out your light. And that wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t because you took up too much space or whatever other bullshit you tell yourself to convince yourself you deserved it. You didn’t. Do you hear me? He didn’t deserve you .”
Deborah looks like she’s about to cry.
“And neither does that bitch ass Marty.”
Deborah’s gaze flicks back at the mention of his name and Ava clocks the tears there, but it’s gone just as quickly, the moment too intimate. She waves her free hand in Ava’s direction, as if trying to shoo her away. “Quit making me cry, I’m supposed to be on vacation.”
Ava gasps theatrically. “Think of the wrinkles.”
“Exactly.” Deborah blinks away the moisture and points at her own temple. “Consider the wrinkles, Ava.”
“That should be the name of your next book. It’s a great play on Consider the Lobster .”
Deborah laughs but it’s sad. Sometimes it feels like all she does is stir up Deborah’s pain. She dabs at the soft skin under her eyes with the soft cotton of her sleeve. After a minute, she seems to have regained more of her usual composure.
“Okay, my turn to interrogate, yours to spill. I’ve told you nearly all there is to me by now. Even the playing field.”
Ava is suddenly on her heels. Where should she even start? The inherent loneliness she’s felt for as long as she can remember being alive? The isolation of never feeling enough for anyone or anything? The ADHD and subsequent overmedication into the point of stupefaction that characterized most of her formative years? The clinical depression junior year that her mother belittled as simply her own delusion? For a chronic oversharer, she really has managed to keep a lot of her own trauma pretty close to the chest. But now Deborah is actually digging deeper on her own. Because she wants to know Ava.
She decides to go with the most benign, relatively speaking. She takes a long pull of wine, swallowing against the icy tartness.
“Well, coming to age in an age of multiple economic recessions, a tanked job market, unprecedented wealth inequality–”
Ava looks pointedly and Deborah rolls her eyes. “Don’t start.”
Ava purses her lips, breathing tightly. “Look, I know you’re rich, Deborah, but you’re not billionaire rich. And you’re the one asking me to open up, so maybe for once you could just fucking listen rather than brushing me off as some entitled little prick.”
“You are a little prick.”
Ava ignores this, charging on like always. “The world is burning! The reckless and exploitative mindset of colonizers has literally destroyed our planet. Entire species are wiped out every fucking day! We are literally in the middle of a major extinction event!”
“Well, this at least explains your ongoing campaign against Thanksgiving. I figured between growing up at ground zero for the Pilgrims and the amount of food you can put away, it was a shoe-in for your favorite holiday.”
Damn her for always using humor to deflect. And it just about always working for her.
“Fuck Columbus. And it’s called ‘existential dread.’ Shit can be crippling. I know your generation won’t be here to witness the carnage that’s to come and this all seems like a big joke to you, but I’m not personally looking forward to living through the unprecedented humanitarian crises to come.”
Deborah waves her hand dismissively and it kind of infuriates her. “You’ll be fine, Ms. Los Angeles homeowner.”
“Yeah, that I can barely afford, got a shit deal on, and will be in debt from as long as I live! And if you make a single joke about buying less lattes and avocado toasts I swear to fucking god .”
“Coastal elitist,” Deborah says instead, knowing just how to push her buttons.
“Fucking hack,” Ava counters and watches as it lands, fresh as a slap. “But you know what? I probably will be fine because I’m white, cis, and privileged! But that’s the exact ignorant bullshit mindset that fucking got us here. There is literally no other planet. There is no plan B. Our species on the planetary scale is totally fucked.”
“This feels like a good time to bring up my reusable cup. And that I’ve been thinking about getting solar at the mansion.”
Ava sighs. “We literally flew the PJ here.”
“You know commercial is where I draw the line. And I don’t hear you complaining.”
She unfortunately has Ava there. Flying private truly is life-changing. “I know, D. At least promise me you’ll never get into cryptos.”
“And piss my fortune away into a volatile electronic currency invented by insufferable men in tech? Hardly.” Well, at least they share common ground on the Bitcoin front. “Fad-free portfolio, remember? And what did I say about that nickname?”
Ava shrugs. “Clearly I give zero fucks.”
“Clearly.”
Deborah doesn’t press anymore, probably afraid of getting another earful, so Ava directs them onto safer and more neutral ground.
“So tell me about this derby. The only derbys I know are horseracing and those fucking dinky pine cars the Boy Scouts race. I dropped a basketball on my cousin’s once and shattered it. He ended up giving me my first black eye.” She points to the right one.
“The first? Can’t wait to hear about the others.”
“Oh those are some very good stories.” Ava wags her eyebrows.
“It’s a fishing competition. To see who can catch the biggest fish here on the island. It’s a month long, but I always come for the first week. There are three different categories for three different fish, then daily, weekly, and overall grand prizes. People fly in from all over the world just to fish in it. And they come back every year. Kids, teenagers, adults, you name it. People fish all day, some all night, out in the pitch dark.”
“Haven’t they seen ‘Jaws’?”
Deborah cackles. “Is that why you never learned to swim?”
“That movie was very traumatizing, okay.”
“Well, it’s a whole thing. And I want to win.” Deborah looks wicked over the rim of her wine glass as she takes another sip.
“Of course you do. And here I thought we were aiming for a relaxing vacation.”
“Fishing is my relaxation. It’s like how some people swim laps or do yoga, but I get to murder something.”
Ava just shakes her head. “You got issues, lady.”
“Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it, Miss Mindful Morning Meditation Practice.’”
“Listen, I preach, I don’t practice. Me and long stretches of time alone with my own thoughts? No, thank you. It’s like Sonic the fucking Hedgehog rolling around chasing gold rings up there. The things I can talk myself into, you wouldn’t believe.”
“What the fuck does a hedgehog have to do with anything?”
“Nevermind, Deborah.”
The conversation ebbs and flows from there as the bottle dwindles. Deborah outlines a general plan for the week’s schedule and Ava is content just to listen to her talk. When they finally say goodnight, the dogs sleepily following Deborah inside her bedroom, Ava stays out a few minutes longer to bask in the comfort of this feeling. Of the warmth of the wine in her gut, the taste of salt in the air, and this love she shares with Deborah, so easy and out in the open.