Chapter Two

Dearest Schrodinger,

I must admit, I am completely smitten.

Astrid shines through in every word I write these days. Her essence is in my articles, her spirit in my poetry. Her tint is even visible on my fanfics. They may predominantly feature males, but they're about her.

Everything is about her.

Is this love? Am I writing about love? How generic.

Cheers,

Hollis

I found another love letter. This is what I decided to proclaim them, although whether the object of said love was me or the cat, I couldn't say.

This time, it was scribbled on a loose sheet of paper, folded up and forgotten in her makeup drawer. I was on a quest for lip balm and came across the little square of paper among her hoarder's nest of lipstick tubes and stale mascara.

Why did I unfold it? Because I'm a nosy asshole. I can admit this about myself.

“Did you find any?” Holly called from the kitchen, a cabinet door banging shut shortly thereafter.

“No.” I refolded the note and shoved it into the pocket of my jeans as I walked out to join her.

Holly was wearing an apron that was designed to look like Wonder Woman's outfit, her hair tied up in a messy bun that was starting to fall apart. “Sorry, sweetheart. You can look in my purse if you want, there might be some in there.”

I perched on one of the barstools across the counter from her. “It's okay, I'll survive.” Giving up was really the only option at this point. Holly had a habit of sticking whatever she was holding into pockets, drawers, and cupboards at random. I was constantly finding old receipts, half empty packs of gum, little notebooks with nonsense written every few pages. Organization never seemed to be a priority for her.

Leaning on my elbows, I watched my girlfriend work. She was making enchiladas for dinner. I found it soothing to watch the process, her systematic approach to everything she did. Holly was one of those people who could create a perfect flavor without glancing at a recipe. It never ceased to fascinate me, as my foray into the world of cooking was one of the more stressful periods of my life. I would study recipes obsessively, measure my ingredients with intense concentration, watch the seconds tick by on the clock. And still, everything I attempted to make was a disaster.

“Where's Lloyd?” I asked, having observed that she was only making enough for two. Usually she cooked dinner for all three of us, and while she and I ate in front of the television, he would take his plate into his room and shut the door. I assume this was to avoid me. It was upsetting every single time.

Holly took two beers out of the fridge and popped off the caps. “He's working a double shift today,” she said as she set mine in front of me. I took a swig, nodding. Lloyd worked with Holly in the cosmetics department of an upscale department store downtown; she applied makeup while he sold cologne at the next counter over. That was where they met two years ago, shortly before getting an apartment together.

Actually, that was where Holly had met me, as well. One day, while she was working, I stopped by her counter to ask for an application to the department store. They weren't hiring, but we got to talking, and she ended up asking for my number. Adorable, I know.

“So I was talking to Barb at Daily Pop, and she said they might be looking to hire some freelancers onto their actual staff,” Holly said as she brought over two heaping plates and slid onto the stool next to me. The cosmetics counter was her day job, but her actual career was writing freelance pieces for several websites and blogs.

I choked a bit on the giant bite I had been shoving in my mouth. “What? Hollis Meredith Ballard, you fucking rockstar! That's fantastic!”

Holly rolled her eyes. “Settle down, champ. She didn't offer me a position or anything.”

I rolled my eyes right back. “Still, I doubt she would have mentioned it if they weren't considering you,” I said. Seriously, they would be insane not to think of her. Holly's submissions were always brilliant, and her articles consistently garnered the most hits. She was a genius.

“Well, I do hope you're right.” She reached out to squeeze my hand, giving me one of those tiny smiles that told me just how much my support truly meant to her. “So, are we doing Van Gogh tonight?”

I sighed through a bite of tortilla. “Yeah, you know we are. I'm so mad at myself though. I still don't have a piece ready.” Maybe I never would. Maybe it was time to admit that slam wasn't for me.

Holly reached out to snap her fingers in front of my face. “Stop that. I have never known anyone to be as rude as you are to yourself,” she said, frowning at me. “You are a triumph to this world, Astrid. It's okay if your inner slam poet isn't ready to be introduced to the general public.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” I wrinkled my nose at her. The woman was always right, and she fucking knew it.

“Going to the open mics is inspiring, isn't it? Even if you aren't up on stage. The ideas that are flowing up there, it's such a beautiful thing. Don't be so hard on yourself that you start hating what you love.” Holly took a self-satisfied drink of her beer.

I swallowed my last bite of rice and glared at her. “You're right, okay? Is that what you want to hear? You're right. Of course we're going.” Irritation filled my voice, but Holly just smiled.

Chapter One

Dearest Schrodinger,

I met a girl today, and my heart started beating.

Up until today, I kind of assumed my heart was beating just because I am a person and people are supposed to have beating hearts. I was wrong. I know that I was wrong, because I met a girl today, and I could feel my heart as it began to pump life through my body. I was not alive before this girl.

I am now.

Her name is Astrid Cooper, and she is a child of the stars.

Cheers,

Hollis

When I found the first letter, I was on a hunt. There was a pen in one of Holly's drawers, I was sure of it. And yet, despite my confidence in this fact, the search was going nowhere. “Are you positive that I'll find one in your desk?” I called out to her, exasperated.

Her reply sounded distracted at best. “Yeah, there's definitely one in there.”

“Are you sure?” I was no longer convinced.

The unmistakable sound of her aggressive typing style was the only response. Sighing, I yanked open another drawer. Why did her desk need so many doors, anyway? Heavens.

Having exhausted my options, I made my way over to her bedside table. Sliding open the top drawer, I pumped a fist into the air to celebrate my victory. It was like the ballpoint pen had materialized from my sheer desperation.

It was when I was picking up said pen that I noticed my name, scrawled in Holly's familiar hand on the page of an open notebook that was sitting inside the drawer. Curious, I picked it up to investigate.

I wasn't trying to be nosy. I would just like to make that very clear. I had no intention of invading Holly's privacy. There was not a single trace of malice in my heart. But, I did. I read it.

And honestly, it didn't seem like any sort of massive deal at the time. I wasn't struck by a shifting of tectonic plates, the world itself irrevocably altered. When I read that initial letter, I just smiled and put the notebook back in its drawer. It was just one of those inexplicable Holly things, adorable and quirky and lovable. I loved to love her, and I loved all of the unexpected ways that she caused this love to surge all over again. Reading her journal entry from the day that we met was just one in a long line of these delightful eccentricities.

Feeling a burst of affection, I headed back into the living room and found her sitting on the couch, legs folded underneath her and laptop perched on her lap. A ribbon of heat rippled through my abdomen as I walked over to my girlfriend of six months, gently set aside her computer, and climbed into her lap.

A slow smile played at Holly's lips. “I was kind of working on something,” she told me.

I ran a finger along her collarbone. “Oh, no. How silly of me, to interrupt your work. I owe you the deepest of apologies,” I said, before pressing my lips to the spot on her skin, just above her collar.

Holly's fingers ran through my hair, flexing slightly to pull my face up to her own. Her lips were soft as they met mine. Soft, but insistent. My mouth smiled into hers.

“Common space.” His flat voice was the equivalent of a cold shower. I sighed, glancing over at the source. Lloyd was leaning against the frame of his newly opened bedroom door, appraising us with dead eyes behind his signature glittering purple glasses.

Peeling myself off of her lap, I straightened my shirt and sat primly on the open seat next to her. Holly's roommate had this way of making me feel completely crass, like there was something wrong with me and he was shouldering all of the shame on my behalf.

Seemingly oblivious to the tension, Holly had already retrieved her laptop. “Sorry, L. You're welcome to watch TV or whatever, if you want,” she said absently, her gaze never wavering from her computer screen.

“Obviously.” Lloyd straightened his entire being as he scoffed. He was one of those eerily thin people who are all angles in a way that makes them seem like their spines might simply snap in half. It didn't help that he stood with consistently flawless posture, just to be a dick about it.

I fidgeted with the uneven hem of my mustard circle skirt as the resident third wheel took a seat in his leather armchair. It wasn't that Lloyd was a bad person or anything, of course not. It just made me really uncomfortable that he clearly disapproved of me, and Holly made no visible effort to make him be civil.

The television came to life, and Lloyd immediately began switching the channel. Instead of just flipping through the guide like a normal person, he practiced the ancient method of changing the channel rapid fire, never pausing to process what any of them were even airing. It drove me positively bananas.

On the verge of losing my cool, I grabbed Holly's hand. “Want to go work in your room?” I asked, willing her to pick up on my queues.

Her deep green eyes met mine in surprise. “Uh, I guess?”

Lloyd looked on as I pulled Holly to her feet. “Try to keep it down in there,” he said, disdain turning his voice into something ugly. She didn't even seem to hear him, just led me into her room and collapsed on the bed while I firmly shut her door.

“Oh, oops. Is it okay that I shut it with Schrodinger in here?” I asked, spotting the orange maine coon ball of fur on her pillow.

Holly looked over at him and smiled fondly, reaching out to smooth the tufts on the top of his head. “Yeah, he's okay in the box.” This was a typical Holly answer. She thought Lloyd was a genius for the name, but seemed to consider herself to be the spoiled cat's owner. I had no idea how her roommate felt about this, but then again, it's not like I exactly cared about his feelings.

She resumed her frantic typing, leaving me to my own devices. I sighed and pulled her pen out of my pocket, settling myself down next to her and flipping open my notebook. We spent most of our time sitting in a companionable silence, working on our own separate projects but using each other's presence for comfort. Our relationship had fallen into a serene sort of routine, but it was one that I felt I could adore every day for the rest of my life.

“What are you working on?” I asked, glancing at her laptop screen.

Holly finished typing whatever sentence she had been writing and rolled over onto her back. “I don't know, I was watching this episode of Old Folks' Home, you know that reality show? And I just started thinking about what these two guys would have been like if they had met when they were our age, and started experimenting with each other.”

I reached out to smooth her hair. She had the softest hair in the world, I could never stop touching it. “More dudes, huh?” My tone was teasing, but I rolled my eyes to myself.

“Yeah, it's turning out pretty hot, actually.” Holly glanced at the blank page in front of me. “What about you, what are you scheming over there?” She said this like she was confident in my brilliance, like the page was empty because I was just perfecting an already flawless idea before eternalizing it in ink.

I sighed, doodling a little flower in the corner. “I don't know. I mean, I know I want to work on a piece about being bi, but I don't know where to begin.” My current fascination was slam poetry. Holly had been dutifully attending the open mic at the Van Gogh Cafe with me every Thursday for weeks, but I still hadn't produced anything of my own to perform.

She pushed her laptop to the side so that she could face me, folding her hands in her lap. “Want to bounce any ideas off me? I'm rubber, baby.”

Closing my eyes, I attempted to put into action some of the tricks I had picked up during my meditation phase. Clearing my mind was proving to be as impossible as ever, even as I scrunched up my face with the effort.

“Hey.” Holly cupped my face in her hands, forcing me to give up and look at her. “It's okay to have a little writer's block. Sometimes the best thing to do is just take a break, focus on something else, come back to it with fresh eyes.”

I frowned at her laptop, feeling myself pouting but not particularly giving a shit. “What am I supposed to do while you write? Jumping jacks?” I was being annoying, but after six months, she was used to it.

Holly just looked at me for a beat, face perfectly calm. “Okay, so it's like that.” She pulled her computer back into her lap and began typing, apparently having decided the best strategy was to ignore me completely.

Message received. I hopped to my feet, grabbing my jacket from a hook on the wall and throwing my purse over my shoulder. “You're right, I'm sorry. I'm just feeling a little restless.” I leaned over to kiss her forehead, and she smiled. “I'm going to head home, I wanted to call Oakley tonight anyway.”

“Okay, sweetheart. Talk later?” She didn't even pause to look at me, fingers flying across the keyboard without missing a beat. And they say romance is dead.

The drive back to my apartment was only twenty minutes in light traffic, but I'm a firm believer that every minute should be used to its fullest potential.

Oakley answered my call on the second ring. “Hey lady, how you living?”

I could feel the tension leave my face. “Ugh, I think I may have just gotten into a fight with Holly.”

“You think?” It was easy to picture her eyebrows lifting to her hairline.

“I don't know man, we've reached this place where it's impossible to tell anymore. Someone will say something snarky, and then we sort of gloss over it and move on. Is it a fight? Are we fine? Is she mad at me? Am I pissed off? It's hard to say.”

There was a pause while Oakley absorbed this. “Coop, that's really dumb,” was her supportive best-friend perspective on the matter.

I exhaled slowly through my nose. “I know.”

“Okay. Well, since you haven't asked, I guess you don't want to hear about the video we uploaded today.”

I was turning into the parking spot nearest my apartment building. “Is it really Thursday already? Sorry darling, I'm all out of whack this week.”

Oakley ran a popular channel on one of those video sharing websites. It was called Jezebel, and she uploaded videos twice a week. On Mondays, she made educational video blogs about feminism, and then on Thursdays, she and her brother filmed themselves trying out a stereotypically gendered activity. “Yeah, it's fine. We knitted little hats.”

“Aw, that sounds precious.”

“You know, it really was. You should watch it. Ollie picked it up pretty quickly.” Oliver was Oakley's brother, a year younger than us. The three of us had been inseparable since preschool.

I turned off the engine and tossed my sunglasses into the cup holder. “I'll bet he did. Okay, I'm heading inside now. I'll call you back after I watch it.”

Letting myself into my apartment, I made the rounds to water each of my half-dead succulents before settling down onto my futon, laptop on the coffee table in front of me. I lived in a studio, but it was cute and cozy and mine. I adored it.

Oakley's video was exactly as advertised. She and Oliver discussed societal hatred of femininity, one of their favorite topics, while Ollie knit a perfect little hat for my niece. His sister, on the other hand, ripped apart her monstrosity four times before abandoning it entirely.

“Thoughts?” Oakley's voice filled my apartment the moment our video call connected.

I snorted. “My goodness, you're eager. Also, you're a noble and triumphant goddess. Is that what you wanted to hear?” She nodded seriously, inspecting the burgundy polish she was applying to her fingernails. “Does Ed know about the hat?”

Oakley glanced up at me, blowing gently on her thumbnail. “Of course, Ollie already gave it to him. Rigby looks really cute in it. I'll make sure to get a picture of her for you.”

This hurt my heart a little. When I graduated high school, I decided to sew my wild oats in a land far, far away, enrolling at the University of Washington and moving across the country. There was something mystical about the Pacific Northwest that I completely fell in love with, and after obtaining a degree in sociology, I decided to stay.

My dearly beloveds, on the other hand, remained firmly in Ohio. Oliver and Oakley went to the state school in Athens, where my brother Edison was attending grad school. They all saw each other on a near-daily basis. And here I was, lounging in my pathetic shoebox of an apartment, alone.

No. Not alone. I was in a happy and fulfilling relationship.

“Astrid?”

I snapped to attention at my name. “Huh?”

Oakley was staring at me, perfectly waxed eyebrow raised. “You look like you're wallowing. Are you wallowing?” This was how she referred to my brief respites of self-pity. That's the problem with knowing someone for half of your life. One look at you, and they can tell when you're being the least attractive version of yourself.

“No, I'm not wallowing. I just... I don't know. I miss you.”

She screwed the cap onto her nail polish and set it aside, looking a little concerned. “I miss you too, Coop. Desperately.”

“I know. But it's just like, well, I'm missing Rigby's life. You're there, and Ollie is there, and I'm not. Her own flesh and blood aunt, and I doubt she's even seen a picture of me.” This was true. Rigby was already three months old, and I still hadn't found the finances to fly home for a visit to meet her.

Oakley frowned at me, indignant. “Hey, dude. What the fuck are you talking about? Of course she's seen pictures of you. I show her that dumb video of you singing from my twenty-first birthday every single time I see her. I want her to hear your voice, and she does. Plus haven't you video chatted with them?”

This was also true. “Okay, yeah. You're right. I talk to them all the time,” I admitted, feeling a bit sheepish. “I don't know, Oak. I guess I'm just in a mood.”

“You should make a video. It might help you get some of those thoughts out.” This was always her advice. When Oakley first began making video blogs, back when we were sixteen, I had a channel of my own. I actually got really obsessed with the whole online video community before she knew anything about it, but after about a year, I got burned out. And then her channel exploded.

I loved that people cared about what my best friend had to say, but still. Talking to a camera just wasn't for me.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, because I'm a liar.

Oakley just sighed, visibly letting it go. “Whatever. Are you ready?” she asked, holding up the remote to her television.

I held up mine in response. “Always.” We both clicked the power button and clicked through our respective library of recordings until we found what we needed. “Play?” I prompted.

“Play.” And then we did, pressing the same button thousands of miles apart to watch our favorite show together, the closest thing we had to sitting in the same room.