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helenaheissner · 8 days

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Love During Robot Fighting Time: Chapter 18

Faith

Six Months Ago

“What do you think of this one?” I asked Zeke, stepping out of the changing room in the store on the Santa Monica Promenade. I wore a blue sequin dress that offered a small peak at my budding cleavage and stopped just above the knees, alongside navy platform heels and opal earrings with a matching necklace.

Zeke blinked, looking up from his JSA trade paperback as he sat in a stark metal chair in the white-painted section of changing rooms cut off from the rest of the store. An old show tune I didn’t recognize played on the overhead speaker. He looked at me carefully, as if considering his words.

“Well?” I said, waiting for his opinion, disappointed he wasn’t checking out my legs or my boobs. Dammit, weren’t guys supposed to be unsubtle? No fair.

“How in the hell do you intend to walk in those stilts?” he finally said.

“Really? That’s all you’ve got to say?” I said.

“You look gorgeous,” Zeke said.

I stammered.

“But seriously- how can you walk in those?”

I cocked (heh) a cocky (heheheheh) grin and put a hand on my hip and said, “Oh I’m gonna do more than walk in these things.” I swayed my hips as I sauntered over to him and offered him a hand up with a hammy flourish. “I’m gonna DANCE!”

“You cannot be serious,” he said, in monotone.

“I’m as serious as a delinquent student loan payment, Underhill,” I said. “Now dance with me, boy.”

“I have no idea how to dance, Faithy,” he laughed awkwardly.

“Then I’ll show you how,” I said. “C’mon. It’ll be good for our gimmick.”

He sighed, then took my hand and stood up.

“Now put your hands on my hips,” I said.

“W-what?”

“Just do it, you baby,” I said.

Then, as if on cue, the song on the overhead speaker changed to ‘La Vie En Rose.’ Couldn’t have asked for a better bit of serendipity.

With that, I walked him through the steps of the Waltz- nothing too complicated, but still- his hands on my body, the two of us moving as one while I hummed a tune. I felt more connected to him than I had before, like our hearts were beating in sync, like together we were finally keeping rhythm with the turn of the world. And he had that goofy grin on his face the whole time, which as far as I was concerned made him the most handsome man in the world.

***

Present Day

I drove, and I drove, and I drove, until I found myself in Gardena. The sun was still high in the sky, but the heat was beginning to dissipate for the day as I parked in front of Olivia’s two-story building. I locked the Star-Rocket Racer and stomped up to Olivia’s apartment, hoping to God she was home.

I knocked, and the subsequent thirty seconds I spent waiting were some of the longest and most painful of my entire life. My heart was racing, my hands shaking, my whole world feeling like it was slipping away.

I can’t believe I told him.

I can’t believe I’d expected the conversation to go any other way than how it did.

And the hell was Kate thinking?!

Finally, the door opened, and my ex-girlfriend stood on the other side. “Hey? What’s up?”

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

She beckoned me inside without hesitation and sat me on the couch and brought me a glass of water. “Drink,” she commanded.

I downed it all in one go, then looked around. Olivia’s place was nice- clean red couches atop a carpeted floor, Japanese landscape paintings hanging from the walls, a mahogany coffee table and a maplewood dinner table. Everything was clean and polished, just like she was. Just like she’d always been. I admired it about her- it was honestly a big part of why I’d chosen the gimmick that I had.

“What’s going on?” she asked, sitting on a plush chair next to the couch.

I told her. Everything.

“Oh, wow,” was her response.

“Yeah,” I said, wincing as my voice dropped into a low growl.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve just made the biggest mistake of my life.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why?’ You know perfectly well why!”

“No, I really don’t. It sounds like he took it relatively well.”

“Yeah, but now things are super awkward, like you said they’d be,” I pointed out.

“You don’t actually know that, though,” Olivia said. “You walked away from him.”

“I’m pretty sure-”

“You can’t make assumptions about things like this,” Olivia said. “Take it from me. I assumed that you would never wanna speak to me again after… I did what I did. But we’re talking right now. I could have made that happen any time in the last year. But I was too stubborn and too proud and too scared to face you and apologize.”

I buried my face in my hands. “Shit.”

“I gotta admit though,” Olivia said, running her fingers over her glass of water, “I’m pissed at Calloway for putting you in that position.”

“I mean… I kinda put myself in that position.”

“Okay, but like… Calloway goaded you,” she said, clenching and unclenching her fists. “Like she always does. She’s unbelievable, the way she makes people do crazy shit is so freaking annoying.”

“That’s not what happened- did you even listen to what I said?” I asked.

“Of course I listened- and I heard that she forced your hand.”

“I don’t really think that that’s fair to her,” I said.

“Why are you so concerned with what’s fair to her? She stole your man and now she’s ruining your relationship with your best friend.”

“He’s not actually my man, though, and he never has been,” I said. “And I ruined it myself through my own cowardice- Kate doesn’t really have that much to do with it.”

“I just… Don’t believe that,” Olivia shook her head.

The water of my sorrow froze into a solid glacier of anger. She was making this about… But why was she…

No, I know why. It’s simple: petulance. You’ve always had a problem with that, Olivia.

“Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said, letting the glacier gather more mass.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Did you take that picture of Kate two weeks back?”

Olivia balked, then looked away from me, then back to me. She sat on her hands and furrowed her brow and said,“I don’t see how that’s relevant to the current conversation.”

The glacier devoured more and more of the water, expanding in size each second. “Answer the question.”

“You seriously think I would do that?”

“I think you really, really hate Kate because she wounded your pride,” I said. “And I get that, I used to be the same way-”

“So what changed?”

“Kate did,” I said. “A lot.”

“Uh-huh. She’s changed so much that she’s put you in this state.”

“You still haven’t answered my question, Olivia,” I said.

“No!” she shouted suddenly. “I didn’t take the picture. Eileen Portman did- I tried to convince her to delete it, to not post it, because quite honestly Calloway is the center of attention too much already, but she wanted to do it for the sake of psychological warfare. She’s a huge bitch. I haven’t even spoken to her since that happened because frankly I’m disgusted with her. I’m disgusted with a lot of people right now.”

I breathed in and out. The glacier slowly began to melt. “Okay. Okay. I’ll accept that. Thank you.”

“I… You’re welcome,” she said. “Look, I’m sorry for fixating on Calloway- I know I need to stop doing that, she just gets under my skin.”

“You might actually like her if you got to know her,” I said.

“I don’t particularly WANT to get to know her,” Olivia said.

The glacier expanded once more. What was it about that, about what she was saying, that was pissing me off so much? It didn’t make sense- I should be depressed, angst-ridden, ready to humiliate myself and beg Olivia to let me rebound with her for an evening of pity-sex. But every second I was here, I was getting more and more FURIOUS about how she refused to think about anything other than her rivalry with Kate. And yeah, Kate had definitely poured gasoline on that fire, but it seemed like every time I talked to Olivia, or heard about Olivia, she was bitching about Kate, but Kate didn’t talk about Olivia at all. She barely spared a thought for her in any capacity after the call-out she’d pulled a few weeks back. The call-out that had given her a panic attack and the final push she’d needed to escape from her eggshell.

I couldn’t help but think it was revealing on both their parts.

“I should go,” I said after a moment’s silence. “I need to hash things out with Zeke- we both need to get our heads back in the game, if nothing else.”

“A-are you sure?” Olivia said, sounding genuinely surprised.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure. Have a nice night, Liv. I’ll see you at work on Friday.”

Nothing made sense. I’d come here hoping for something resembling clarity and only left vastly more confused than when I’d started. I climbed into the Star-Rocket Racer and checked my phone before turning the car on.

One new message from Kate.

‘Can you come over to my place?’

I stared at it for five minutes, the ice in my chest melting and dissolving back into my blood, before I finally responded with a simple ‘k.’

The drive over was a long, slow, silent march through rush hour traffic, but as the sun began to set I finally parked in the lot behind Surf Turf Apparel. I knocked, and Mrs. Calloway answered. “They’re upstairs, waiting for you,” she said, beckoning me inside.

Oh God, both of them?! Okay, deep breaths, Faith. Time to stop running, time to stop being a damn coward, and face the music.

As I ascended the stairs, I heard music: ‘La Vie En Rose’ by Edith Pilaf. I entered the living room and saw Zeke and Kate waltzing… BADLY. Kate kept stepping on Zeke’s feet, and Zeke seemed to have no idea where to put his hands on someone who was much taller than I was. They both looked like they were in constant danger of falling over onto the floor.

“You’re here!” Kate said, breaking away from Zeke and wrapping her arms around me.

I didn’t question it, or hesitate, I just accepted it and hugged back. “Yeah. What’s, uh, what’s going on here?”

“My dancing lesson!” Kate beamed, pumping up and down on the balls of her feet. “Will you teach me? Zeke’s not the best instructor.”

“Understatement,” he laughed, taking a seat on the couch. “Please help this poor young woman- this is one of those situations where I can’t give her what she needs, beyond moral support.”

I choked back tears. “Okay. But you owe me a dance for this, Underhill.”

“I’ll always be ready to dance with you, Faithy,” he said. He winced. “Sorry, I meant Faith-”

“No, it’s fine,” I said, cracking a smile. “You can still call me that. I like it.”

“Okay,” he said, that goofy grin that made me fall for him sprouting on his face.

I turned to Kate and offered her my hand, “Will you take this waltz with me, mademoiselle?”

“Oui, d’accord!” Kate said, wiggling with joy.

I tilted my head at her.

“What?” she said. “I took French in high school.”

“Fair enough,” I chuckled.

I put my hands on her hips and she put hers around my neck, and I walked her through the steps of the dance. The song changed, yet it remained the same, switching to an English cover I’d heard before:

“Hold me close and hold me fast

This magic spell you cast

This is La Vie En Rose

When you kiss me Heaven sighs

And though I close my eyes

I see La Vie En Rose.”

“Did he put you up to this?” I said to her, struggling to break eye contact with those big baby blues.

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head playfully. “All me. Except the song. That was his doing.”

“I figured as much,” I said, before looking over to him sitting on the couch with naked affection emanating from his face and posture. “I’m amazed you remembered that detail, with the song and everything.”

“How could I forget our first dance?” he said.

It was all he needed to say, and it made my heart sing and my soul shine.

And at the same time, as I turned my gaze back to my current dance partner, something… Stirred within me. Something long neglected. Kate had done all this for me. In her own home, no less. After already going out of her way to help me prepare for my next fight, after putting up with my crap all day, after letting me confess my feelings to her boyfriend, all she could think about was… Was helping me. I used to look down on her, condescendingly think that of course I was a better person than her, but… Honestly, I wished I was anywhere near as good as she was.

Except for dancing. I was definitely better at dancing than she was. She kept stepping on my feet and nearly falling over for two songs in a row, but by the third, by the time ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ started playing, she began to fall into the rhythm, her body moving in time with mine, flowing together like two tributaries joining into a single river. And as we got closer and closer, there was a moment where something flipped on for me like a light switch and I…

… And my gaze drifted from her eyes to her lips, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to kiss her.

For good or for ill, that was when Zeke stood up and said, “Mind if I cut in? I have an apology to deliver.”

“Not one bit,” Kate said, pulling away. She was lying, though. I could see it in her downcast expression and slumped shoulders- she was hurting herself, trying to fix things between Zeke and I while not paying any heed to what it might do to her relationship.

Because she… Because she sincerely thought it was the right thing to do, because she thought I had a better claim on Zeke than she did.

I grabbed her by the back of her top and said, “Wait.”

Zeke looked back and forth between the two of us, the proverbial deer in headlights torn between fight, flight, and freeze. I drew a deep breath. It was time to stop being a damn coward. “Why don’t the three of us… All dance together?”

Zeke blinked rapidly.

Kate, however… Well, she’d never been one to hesitate. “I’d love that!”

“Y-you would?” Zeke stammered.

“I like dancing with you,” she said to him, taking him by the wrist in one hand. Then she turned to me and grabbed my wrist in her other hand and said, “And with you as well.”

I could have cried. I could have sang. But all I wanted to do was dance. And I knew I wanted to dance with both of them, preferably at the same time. Even if you’d put a gun to my head and forced me to pick one, at that point, on that night, in that room, I honestly don’t think I would have been able to.

“It’s… It’s a little unorthodox. What you’re suggesting,” Zeke said.

“It doesn’t have to… Mean anything, outside this room, or after tonight, if that’s not what you two want,” Faith said. “It can just be… A dance. We can just see how it goes. I-i-f you’re both feeling up to it.”

Zeke’s mouth couldn’t seem to close all the way, and his eyes were unwilling to blink. His adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he gulped, and I felt the slight tremble in his hands. He felt guilty, I could sense it. Like he was in an impossible position, like if he waded out any further into this water he’d wind up losing himself and turning into his father. But I didn’t believe that. He was a better man than the one who’d raised him, and he wanted to do right by the women in his life. “Okay,” he whispered.

“Okay?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and even.

“OKAY!” Kate squealed. God, she was adorable.

Fly Me to the Moon shifted into a cover song version, the lyrics starting over and the melody changing to a simple acoustic guitar rendition. The three of us stumbled around on the living room floor together as we tried to figure out how this would work, the three of us all at once, keeping time and trying to stop our limbs from knotting together like a pretzel. So we didn’t put too much pressure on it- we simply kept track of our own movements, and kept our eyes on each other. Three tributaries flowing into one river, joining in a single flow towards a single point.

“Fill my heart with song and let me sing forevermore

You are all I long for

All I worship and adore

In other words, please be true

In other words, I love you.”

***

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