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That’s what makes her do it. Because August doesn’t do this type of thing, but Jane is outside.
“Oh fuck,” August mutters, and she grabs Jane’s hand.
She clears the gap from one car to the next in a breath, a scream caught high in the back of her throat, and then her feet are on metal.
She did it. She made it across.
August crashes into Jane’s chest, and Jane catches her around the waist like she did the day the lights went out, the day August thought she’d blown it for good. Jane laughs, and on a hysterical burst of adrenaline, August laughs too, her raincoat flying around them.
Here they are. Two sets of sneakers on a scrap of metal. Two girls in the middle of a hurricane, tearing down the line. She’s looking up at Jane, and Jane’s looking down at her, and August feels her everywhere, even the places she’s not touching, pressed close as the world roars on.
“See?” she says. But she’s looking at August’s mouth when she says it. “You did it.”
And August thinks, as she tips her chin up, that here, in the space between subway cars, right on the edge of where Jane exists, is where Jane’s finally going to kiss her for real. No pretense. No memories. But because she wants to. Her fingers are spreading on August’s waist, digging into the fabric of her jacket, and—
“Come on,” Jane says, yanking the door open, and they tumble into the next car.
Jane pulls her half-running past unbothered commuters, dodging poles and standing passengers until they reach the next door. They jump from one car to the next, out one door and in another, until it stops being so terrifying to step off, until August barely even hesitates before taking her hand.
“Okay,” Jane says, when they get to their seventh changeover. “You first.”
August turns, eyes wide. That isn’t what she signed up for.
“What?”
“You trusted me, right?” August nods. “Now trust yourself.”
August turns to the next train car. Her brain chooses this moment to remind her that forty-eight people died in subway accidents in 2016. She doesn’t think she can do this without Jane standing there to catch her if she slips, and she’s really not interested in going down in history as a delay on the Q while someone calls the medical examiner.
She trusted Jane, though. She trusted Jane and her time on this train and that cocky grin to get her there safely. Why can’t she do the same for herself? She’s learned this train backward and forward. The Q is home, and August is the girl with the knife picking its stops apart one by one. She doesn’t believe in things. But she can believe in that.
She steps off.
“Hell yeah!” Jane crows from behind when she makes it. She doesn’t wait for August’s hand, hopping across and onto the platform. “That’s my girl!”
Jane slides the door open, and on the other side, August collapses into the nearest seat.
“Holy shit,” August says, panting. “Holy shit, I can’t believe I did that.”
Jane leans on a pole to catch her breath. “You did. And that is what you need to trust in. Because you got what you need. And sometimes, the universe has your back.”
August inhales once, exhales. She looks at Jane, forty-five years away from where she’s supposed to be, and yeah, she guesses in some ways, the universe does have her back.
“So,” Jane says, “let’s take it down to one thing. What scares you the most?”
August thinks about it as her lungs level back out.
“I—” she attempts. “I don’t know who I am.”
Jane snorts, raising an eyebrow. “Well, that makes fuckin’ two of us.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Stop, okay? For five minutes, let’s pretend everything else doesn’t matter, and I’m me, and you’re you, and we’re sitting on this train, and we’re figuring it out. Can you do that?”
August grits her teeth. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Jane says. “Now, listen to me.”
