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Lottie thinks she must be having a psychotic episode after not having any for almost 30 years. It’s the only explanation she can conjure up in the moment when she sees a teenage girl sitting on the corner of her bed.
Not just any teenage girl, she soon realizes. Unkempt blonde hair, thick eyeliner, smoky hazel eyes that can only belong to one person—Natalie. Her wife. Or, the younger version of her current wife, at least.
The moment the sight fully registers in her brain, her heart does a series of twitches and flips before it takes a dangerous plunge towards the place where her stomach should be.
The girl is watching her with those eyes that carry all the circumspection and rage Lottie was all too familiar with decades ago.
“Who the fuck are you and why am I here?”
Lottie, who is still rationalizing the situation amid the cognitive dissonance, only buries her head back to the pillow with a low groan and a muffled yet heartfelt, “Shit.”
Natalie as a highschool student is in all ways similar to Natalie as an adult. Just angstier and angrier and much more irrational. Lottie at forty-seven can’t honestly say she misses it.
“You’re lying,” she spats. “You’re Lottie?”
Lottie valiantly fights the urge to roll her eyes and succeeds. “Why would I lie about that?”
“Well, you’re obviously old.”
Lottie knows better than to take the insult at face value. It’s not so much a jab on her age as an honest observation, if the impassive, slightly confused tone is any indication.
“I am,” Lottie agrees, standing up from the bed now. She’s decided it’s better to show than to tell in this particular situation, lest she comes up with convoluted nonsense that would only make the young girl even more hostile than she already is now. “Come, let’s go downstairs.”
Young Natalie stays seated, eyes fixed cautiously on the offered hand and then to Lottie’s face, before rubbing a hand over her eyes. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have taken anything from Kevyn. Especially not those sketchy stuff from no-names on the streets,” she mutters, and while the confession offers Lottie a little bit of relief that this whole thing is not just her hallucination, that the Natalie speaking right now is indeed the same Natalie she knew before, Lottie’s breath still dies in her throat at the insinuation.
“You’re still taking drugs?” she asks, careful and soft, trying not to let hints of accusation and dismay seep into her voice.
The girl merely shoots her a look that tells her she’s failed more than any word can, and doesn’t answer, which Lottie thinks is already an answer in and of itself.
And that expression on her face. She’s seen it before when they were kids, still occasionally sees it from her Natalie in the present, and yet seeing it now does not make Lottie’s heart ache any less.
This girl, no more than seventeen, is staring at Lottie with eyes full of rage and disgust and most predominantly, self-loathing— seemingly furious at everyone and no one at the same time, at everything in the world and nothing at all.
She looks at Lottie like she’s walking on a knife’s edge and even the slightest misstep can send her falling. It’s uncanny. Except her Natalie knows someone is going to catch her now when that happens.
This Natalie, however, does not.
This Natalie, no more than seventeen years old, is at war with herself, with everything and everyone.
This Natalie, Lottie knows, is already halfway to her grave.
After several futile attempts, it took the promise of alcohol to finally coax mini-Natalie out of the room.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Lottie had asked, desperation apparent in her tone, because nothing else seemed to work.
The offer appeared to get a response from the young girl. Lottie almost wanted to grin in victory, even though she was looking at her as though she had committed the biggest crime in humanity.
“Gross.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust and Lottie blinked in disbelief, finding the idea of Natalie hating coffee completely baffling. Her Natalie, the adult one, would never turn down caffeine.
“Okay,” Lottie said patiently. She tried again. “Tea, then?”
Mini-Natalie pursed her lips, surveying her in quiet appraisal, before she asked, “You got anything stronger?”
“You’re underage,” Lottie shut her down quickly. Okay, that was more on brand for Natalie, Lottie thought.
“And if you’re truly the Lottie I know, you’d know that has never stopped me before.”
“I,” she started, then sighed in exasperation (because whether she liked it or not, the kid’s got a point, plus Lottie was getting really desperate), and eventually relented. “Fine.”
So now they find themselves in the kitchen drinking leftover wine that Lottie and her Natalie shared during the holidays. God, she misses her wife.
Trying not to let the feelings of yearning fester, Lottie opts to focus her attention on the young girl in front of her, clearly fascinated by the place. Mini-Natalie looks around the house with wide eyes, gaze darting between the elegant glass chandelier that hangs over the center, the full-sized grand piano, and the large couch with incongruous cat needle cushions Misty have gifted them on Christmas.
“Is this your place?” she asks in quiet awe.
Ours, she wants to say. “Yes,” she says instead.
“Cool. You were always pretty rich so I guess that makes sense.”
Lottie is too fixated over the fact that this is the first time she has heard something from the girl besides the usual scoffing and derisive comments that she has no heart to rectify the statement.
The house was in fact bought with her own money and Nat’s, and certainly not her parents’, but that’s neither here nor there when Lottie can see the fascination and wonder in mini-Natalie’s eyes. A small sign that amidst all the suffering she has endured, the Natalie of the present is still buried in there somewhere.
Feeling more hopeful now, Lottie nods and then smiles at her. “Let me show you something.”
“Woah, did we win Nationals?”
Mini-Natalie examines a framed picture of the Yellowjackets winning the high school football nationals tournament in 1996. Lottie knows every pixel of the photo by now; Jackie at the center holding the large gold trophy, Tai’s arms wrapped around Van’s neck, Lottie holding the ball while Nat’s elbow is propped on her shoulder— everybody with the biggest smiles on their faces.
“Yes, we certainly did,” Lottie answers, almost wistfully.
“Can’t wait to tell everybody. They’ll either lose their shit or think I’m high as fuck,” she says with mirth and Lottie can’t help but laugh.
Before she can say anything though, she sees the girl’s smile drop as she scans the remaining photos on the table. Lottie knows she’s found the picture. The one picture Lottie wanted to show her the most. Anxiety thrums in her veins.
The girl hums, after a few moments. “Oh, I figured it was something like that,” Natalie says, dropping the frame onto the desk and tucking her hands into her pockets.
“You— you figured?”
Mini-Natalie cuts her eyes to where Lottie is quietly, instinctively fiddling with the ring on her finger and Lottie blurts out a little “oh”.
“Yeah, I can also tell from the way you say my— her name.” She pauses awkwardly, staring back down at the photograph, which a random tourist had taken on their 2nd anniversary. Lottie has her arms around older-Natalie’s waist and they’re both candidly laughing towards the camera. “You’re… together, yeah? With the, um, other me?”
“Married, yes,” she says, succinct, then as an afterthought, she adds, “It got legalized in 2013.”
Lottie doesn’t know what she expects as a response to the weighted revelation, but it certainly isn’t the younger girl snorting in muted amusement before bursting into full-blown laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Lottie asks, head tilted to the side in confusion.
Eventually, the laughter dies down and mini-Natalie is now merely regarding her with the tiniest quirk of her lips. “It’s just… I would’ve never guessed in a million years that I,” she stops for a moment, then corrects herself, “Or another version of me, would get married to one of her friends. Very female friends at that.”
“Yes, well, life isn't exactly predictable, is it?” She can't stop herself from sounding indignant now. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“The gay stuff? Of course not,” the girl says, and the words are laced with satisfaction. “If anything, it just says I got good taste.”
“So, you're not upset?” Lottie wants to confirm, because she had always been under the impression that she was Natalie’s first in that regard, that she was merely a deviation in regards to the rest of Natalie’s sexual history. “That you’re with me, I mean. Or that another version of you is in love with me.”
The look that mini-Natalie shoots her is one that Lottie is intimately familiar with, given that older-Natalie wears it whenever she has done or said something particularly dense.
She just sidesteps the question with a shrug and a murmur of, “I’ve always thought you were hot.”
Which, while flattering, doesn't really provide a definite answer to the original question.
Lottie finds herself smiling nonetheless, a little pleased with the turn of events, despite how disconcerting and preposterous this whole day is.
Charlotte Matthews is not a quitter, never has been. But as she scours the depths of the internet trying to make sense of this situation and subsequently coming up with nothing, she is well-prepared to concede defeat.
Not to say she hasn’t tried everything; she has. She even called Misty.
“If you wake up to a younger version of your significant other, what would you do?” she had asked without preamble. She was in the bathroom (definitely not hiding from the younger version of her significant other in question) when the impulse to call a friend had taken over.
She heard a muffled ‘excuse me, I have to take this’ on the other end of the line before Misty finally addressed her. “What? Lottie, are you drunk?”
“No. I know it sounds crazy,” Lottie admitted and sighed, exhaustion catching up to her. She half-considered divulging all the details but some part of her had told her it wouldn’t be a good idea and would only fuel the accusation further. “Just. Hypothetically. What would you do?”
“I would think I got hammered last night. Figuratively or literally. Either way, I’ll take an Advil.”
“Misty,” Lottie growled in warning.
“Okay, chill,” Misty said, before scrambling for something. “Uh, I guess I’d ask Reddit?”
Lottie nodded, momentarily forgetting the woman couldn’t see her. She took a mental note to carry out the suggestion later; she figured asking strangers on the internet might just work (spoiler: it did not and her post got taken down by the moderators minutes later after a handful of downvotes).
“You don’t think it’s some kind of space-time anomaly or something in that vein?” Lottie thought about Interstellar and all those other science-fiction movies she got roped into watching.
Misty had laughed then, and if she were there with her, Lottie thought she would have given her the most incredulous look.
“I’m an underpaid nurse, Lot, not Einstein, no matter how much I think I can rock a mustache.”
The call ended a minute after that, when Misty was called to tend to some patient, leaving Lottie to stare at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror, resigned to her fate, whatever that may be.
“Hey, any luck?” Mini-Natalie asks her, looking up from the iPhone she had borrowed (“You’re saying this little thing can do everything?” she had asked after seeing Lottie use it earlier).
“No.” Lottie gingerly folds her reading glasses and leaves it on the desk before she stands up to stretch her taut muscles from sitting down for so long. After hearing a quiet ‘oh’, Lottie tries to muster her most hopeful smile. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out soon. If not today, then maybe tomorrow.”
“Okay.” And just as Lottie thought the girl would return to playing a particularly difficult level of Candy Crush, she puts the phone down and sits a little straighter on the couch. “Can I ask you something?”
Lottie blinks, slightly confounded and taken aback by the obvious gravity underlying the question. “Sure," she answers tentatively.
She sees the younger one gnawing on her bottom lip then, seemingly reconsidering it. Lottie doesn’t push, and a beat later, she finally comes to a decision and speaks.
“What’s your Natalie like?”
It’s a loaded question and Lottie realizes she doesn’t really know where to begin or how to properly condense her wife’s qualities. So, when she takes a seat beside the girl and silence consumes them for awhile, mini-Natalie awkwardly clears her throat.
“Uh, sorry, that was a weird thing to ask,” she says, looking a bit paler than usual.
Lottie shakes her head, smothering a chuckle, and dares to place a hand on the younger one’s shoulder. “No, not at all. I just never really had to answer that out loud before and I was thinking about what to say.”
For a long moment, Natalie simply stares at the hand that’s resting on her shoulder, and then up at Lottie’s face, who keeps her expression as honest and open as possible.
Lottie isn’t certain what the girl sees but whatever it is, it makes her look away with a faint flush. “If your Natalie is anything like me, then I know she doesn’t deserve you.”
“My Natalie is far from perfect,” she starts, managing a weak smile, even though she catches the way mini-Natalie’s face slightly contorts in disappointment. “She’s messed up a lot, far more than I can count. Went to rehab multiple times.”
The girl visibly winces but Lottie carries on, bringing the conversation to a lighter route. “Leaves a lot of hair in the shower, too. And, God, she constantly does things that she knows will annoy me. Oh, she’s far from perfect.”
“Then, why’d you marry her?” From the tone itself, Lottie can tell she’s clearly taken umbrage, possibly offended on behalf of her alternate older version.
“Because I’m not perfect, too. And Nat knows that.” Lottie thinks about the times she had to go to therapy. Times where Nat would have to hold her at night after a particularly bad nightmare. Times where Nat would have to ground her to reality.
“Our life is far from perfect, but it is ours and it is enough and neither of us would trade it for anything else. And we both think we deserve each other.”
When she notices the girl in front of her swallow roughly, a single tear streaking down her cheek, Lottie reaches out to wipe it gently with her hand.
“I know your life is not perfect, Natalie, but it is yours,” she says, softly. “You didn’t choose it, but perhaps you can learn to love it.”
Like my Natalie did, hangs unspoken.
When all their efforts trying to find a solution came to naught, they decided to call it a day and went back to where everything had started.
So, they were lying down in bed that night, feeling both physically and emotionally exhausted, and staring up at nothing in particular, when Lottie notices a silver necklace missing from her nightstand.
“Alright, hand it over,” she pins mini-Natalie with a glare.
The girl only flashes her a quick grin and it involuntarily makes Lottie’s heart stutter a little, because it’s just so utterly Natalie. She fishes around in her pocket before her hand comes up with the necklace and gives it to Lottie.
Lottie places it back on the table right next to the alarm clock. While she’s not completely averse to giving the girl a souvenir, this particular jewelry was a gift from her wife and thus, invaluable. “I almost forgot you were a junior cat burglar.”
Mini-Natalie does not miss a single beat and scoffs, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Lot.”
“What?”
“TJ Maxx? Does that ring a bell?”
The darkness of the room probably isn’t enough to hide the red that flares up her face. “I— What— How did you know about that?” Lottie splutters, ignoring Natalie’s laughter. She feels like a child getting caught for misbehaving again.
“You told us over a game of truth or dare.”
“Ah, well,” Lottie says, resigned and too tired to argue, because of course she did. She tries to justify herself, at least. “I was young and obviously stupid.”
“Don’t worry.” Natalie shrugs. “I thought you were cool for doing it.”
Lottie has nothing to say to that so silence settles over them, neither uncomfortable nor unwelcomed.
Lottie breaks it after a few moments, though, when she hears nothing but breathing and the sounds of nature outside.
“You should lay off the drugs,” she says bluntly and it’s nothing short of an order.
She braces herself for an incensed response from the younger girl, perhaps a precursor to verbal altercation, but Natalie does nothing of the sort.
“Yeah,” she says noncommittally instead. Lottie finds the response acceptable. She’ll take anything she can get.
Before they can fall into silence once more, Lottie makes another request.
“Hang in there.”
She faces her then, gaze meeting her eyes, and for the first time that day, Lottie is profoundly hit with the fact that this young girl, no more than seventeen, will someday grow up to be the woman Lottie is hopelessly in love with.
“Okay.” And for Lottie, that single word is more than enough.
Lottie wakes up to the smell of coffee.
When she opens her eyes, she’s almost disappointed to see Natalie with her short black hair, dressed in a white blouse and maroon cardigan instead of a blonde girl with a pair of ragged jeans and a black leather jacket. Her wife is seated on the same spot where Lottie had first seen mini-Natalie.
Huh. Was it all just a strange, oddly-realistic dream? Lottie can only stare, reduced to a perfect nonplus.
But then her Natalie looks at her with those hazel eyes and smiles in the sweet, goofy way that she only does for Lottie and just like that, relief and happiness outweigh all thoughts about everything that has happened hours earlier, real or not.
“Good morning. There’s breakfast downstairs,” Natalie, her Natalie, says.
Lottie fights the compulsion to say, ‘I’m so glad you’re back’.
“I love you,” Lottie says instead, with utmost sincerity, and takes her hand and tugs her down into a kiss.
The kiss doesn’t last long, with Natalie pulling away and looking down at her, clearly bewildered at the sudden confession.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” Lottie says softly. “I’m just really happy to have you.” She sighs, before she grasps the other woman’s wrist and kisses her palm. “So happy.” Kisses each one of her fingers. “You’re an amazing person and I am in love with you.”
Natalie hums, content, and she cups her face before kissing her again. Again and again and again.
When they have to reluctantly break apart for air, Natalie gets up from the bed, but not without combing her hand through Lottie’s hair and pressing a kiss on her forehead, gentle and kind.
“As much as I love this sudden, and frankly odd, show of affection, I am very hungry. And I’m sure you are too.”
Lottie smiles, shakes her head, but follows her up anyway. “I just had the strangest dream.”
“Oh yeah?” They make their way out the door. “It’s not another nightmare, is it?”
“Well. It involved a younger Natalie and you were a total nightmare at seventeen.”
Older Natalie hits her shoulder, but it’s more playful than indignant. They exchange stories of the past and laughter all the way downstairs, before they share a cup of coffee, enjoying each other’s company.
The bed upstairs is empty, except for the blonde strands of hair on the sheets that went unnoticed.