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Leah, contrary to popular belief, didn’t want to be Fatin’s girlfriend.
It’s a joke that cycles round the second island – or it’s commentary disguised by a joke. Shelby started it, Leah can’t prove it, but she’s sure of it.
Shelby makes some offhand comment about Fatin sneaking into Leah’s room every night and suddenly everyone is talking about them as though they are something more.
Most of them don’t actually believe it (Leah thinks) but the comments keep coming. It starts with just Shelby and Dot, spreads to Martha and Rachel. Toni’s the last to join in, though Leah thinks that’s more because of how the joke originated, and less because of Toni herself.
The second Toni starts, she becomes the worst offender – though Rachel is a good competitor. She always is.
The boys, after a slow and awkward start filled with uncomfortable glances and stiffening shoulders, join in too.
Not all of them.
Raf avoids the topic of Fatin and Leah like the plague, Henry thinks he’s above it all (until he accidentally let’s slip a “just fuck already” when Fatin – jokingly – calls Leah “babe”) and Bo is too kind to tease them.
Fatin embraces it more than anyone else. She strings an arm around Leah’s shoulder, comments on Leah’s “totally fuckable” body, and her eyes. She calls Leah “babe” more than she calls Leah by her name, and Leah, despite all her protestations, enjoys it.
Of course she does.
It’s attention – attention from Fatin.
She drinks it in eagerly regardless of how it poisons her.
Her mind both reprimands and coaxes her.
It deludes her into thinking this could be more: this could be real; the comments could be based in truth; Fatin’s lingering touches could be born out of feelings; Fatin proclaiming her love could be genuine.
Then Leah’s mind reminds her that she’s an idiot: she’s not Fatin’s type; she’s not loveable; she’s not worthy.
The mental war leaves her at an impasse. She accepts Fatin’s touches, her overtures, her words, but she doesn’t reciprocate (much). She lets Fatin doze off on her shoulder when they’re all in the common area. She shares her rations with Fatin. She leaves the door to her room unlocked and waits eagerly until Fatin shuffles under the covers besides her.
It’s a nice preoccupation to have. It gives Leah momentary reprieve from the darkness. It removes her paranoia (if only for a second).
She thinks that’s why Shelby started it.
It relieves the tension in the room.
If they’re all joking about Leah and Fatin’s borderline co-dependency – which, for the record, is an unfair accusation. Yes, Leah and Fatin are codependent, but so are all the rest of them. That’s what happens when a sociopath traps you on a island together. You bond – they’re not thinking about how fucked they all are.
Leah’s optimism fluctuates.
Some days she convinces herself that Ian is helping; that he’s gotten in touch with the FBI; that they believe him; that there’s armies looking for them.
Other days she reminds herself that it’s been two weeks and two days since Gretchen escaped from her clutches. Sixteen days. Surely they’d have been found by now. If people were looking for them…
There’s only so many islands in the world. On Dot’s instructions they’d made several variations of ‘SOS’ and ‘help’ signs around the island, big, bold and altogether unmissable.
If people were looking for them, they’d have been found.
So no one was looking.
That was the conclusion Leah fell to most days. The pessimism was more natural to her than the optimism.
It was Fatin she sought out when she was lowest – or Fatin sought her out.
She could find strength in all the girls. She calmed herself in the stories Martha and Toni told her about when they were younger. She laughed at Dot’s scathing commentary of the boys’ performance, and her judgements of which of them would go furthest in Survivor. She found peace in Shelby’s quiet reflection, her gentleness and positivity that everything would be okay. She let Rachel lead her around the island, finding wood to chop and carve into more distractions.
But it was Fatin who lifted her up the most.
The others quietened the voice in her head, Fatin soothed it.
Fatin was also the only one Leah could trust.
She knew there would be an insider. Someone on this island was working for Gretchen. Maybe more than one. Her suspicions switched from girl to girl, boy to boy on a daily basis.
It was Shelby, because Shelby didn’t want to go back home.
It was Dot, because she was the only one who had met Gretchen.
It was Martha, because she was the most susceptible.
It was Toni, because if Martha – or any of them – were threatened, Toni would stop at nothing to save them.
It was Rachel, because she was Nora’s sister.
It was any one of the boys, because Leah knew none of them enough to trust them.
But it wasn’t Fatin.
Fatin was the one she turned to with her suspicions every time. Fatin was the one she’d whisper to late at night.
Fatin – unlike on the first island – entertained Leah this time.
She voiced her own concerns, her own suspicions, her own paranoia.
She cast the blame towards the boys most of the time, less willing than Leah to see one of the girls as an enemy.
They both reckoned that it was different this time anyway. If Gretchen had an insider – and Leah only said ‘if’ on Fatin’s request – then maybe it didn’t matter.
If it was Shelby, she was manipulated. If it was Dot, she was manipulated. If it was Martha, she was manipulated. If it was Toni, she was manipulated. If it was Rachel, she was manipulated.
It wasn’t fair.
The island, the experiment, it wasn’t fair, but none of them were to blame.
Gretchen earnt that.
Gretchen, Faber, Young, all the people who worked for them, who funded them. In between suspicions, and pessimism, Leah lusted for the future where she would be able to condemn them. She would stand in court and make sure that they were all imprisoned. She wanted them to suffer.
Perhaps less than Fatin, who’s words and daydreams were vicious to the point where Leah was honestly impressed. Fatin’s creativity for revenge surpassed even Leah’s.
Leah kind of loved that about her.
And she did – love Fatin.
She loved Fatin. She was in love with Fatin.
The emotions consumed her more when she was away from the island. Once they weren’t fighting for their lives – once Leah was no longer forced to fight her own mind – Leah saw it with startling clarity.
It had always lingered. From Day 6 to the day they were extracted, Leah had always seen Fatin differently.
Fatin was Leah’s partner, her confidante, her foil.
So, even when Leah was certain she was in love with Fatin. Even when Leah knew she had never, and would never love anyone as significantly, as powerfully, as brilliantly, as she loved Fatin. Even when there were no eyes on them, no comments about them, no cameras and no experiments. Even when they were safe, and free, and climbing back towards some pretence of normality, Leah didn’t want to date Fatin.
It trivialised their undefined relationship.
“Girlfriends” sounded so insignificant.
Leah cringed at the idea of it.
Her parents had asked once about the nature of her relationship with Fatin. The cautious interrogation had come after Fatin spent three consecutive weeks sleeping in their house, sharing Leah’s bed and space and time.
Leah had just shrugged. “No.” She wasn’t Fatin’s girlfriend. But “yes” she was in love with Fatin.
“No and yes,” Leah had said, “yes and no.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You never will,” Leah had replied.
That was the effect of the island. It had divided Leah – and the others – from the rest of society. Every relationship she had had before, needed to be relearnt, redefined.
Her parents tried, but they didn’t understand.
Ian tried, but he didn’t understand.
Her therapist tried, but she didn’t understand.
Fatin understood. She understood Leah in a way no one did. In a way no one ever had – despite Leah’s illusions about Jeff. In a way that no one ever would, no one ever could.
But more than that, Fatin understood the island. She understood how it was both a prison and a sanctuary all in one. She understood that it took, and it gave.
Everyone else though it was all bad. Ian, her parents, police, lawyers. They didn’t recognise that it had given Leah the most important thing in the world.
Fatin.
Fatin who not only understood Leah and the island, but understood how the island – the islands – shaped Leah, how they changed her. Even the other girls didn’t understand that fully. They saw Leah dark. They saw Leah suicidal. But they didn’t understand the paranoia, they weren’t invited into that side of Leah’s life. Fatin was.
Whether it was bedroom windows, or front doors, or her mind, Fatin was always invited into wherever Leah was.
Leah used to think her relationship was delicate.
Beyond the strain of the islands, beyond the fights, and the scars, and the hurt, Leah thought it would be the return to reality that would destroy them. She thought that there was no way their relationship would survive the Bay, would survive their school, would survive their lives – their real lives, the ones which were untouched by Gretchen and the island.
She thought they were too different.
They worked on the island. They worked under pain, and under duress. They were born out of a need to survive.
Leah wasn’t sure they existed when they weren’t fighting for their lives.
But they did.
It had – perhaps counterintuitively – helped that Fatin’s parents were assholes.
They’d shown up at the airport and that had been about it as far as support was concerned.
Fatin snuck out of their house every night to come to Leah’s, until at one point she stopped sneaking out and just left.
Now Leah’s bedroom was Leah and Fatin’s bedroom. There were stacked bookshelves, and cardigans and sweaters strewn across the furniture, disposables from when Leah had briefly gotten into photography when she was fourteen pinned to her wall, and fairy lights that hadn’t been touched since Leah put them up when she was twelve.
There was also a slightly dusty cello case, a few new jewellery boxes (which, judging from the necklaces on Leah/Fatin’s desk were likely empty), a framed ‘ice cream sundae’ t-shirt, as well as a poster of Ben Folds Five that they hadn’t gotten around to putting up on the wall yet.
Leah loved it.
She’d always grown up the epitome of an only child. She hated it when her dog played with other kids at the park. She refused to share books (even though, admittedly, that was the point of a library). She hated when her cousins visited and she had to share her room.
She matured out of a lot of it, though some selfishness lingered, and then the island happened and the idea of not sharing was inconceivable. Leah had never questioned it for a second. It didn’t matter how much her stomach burned from hunger, she would always split the portions equally, and willingly. Fatin’s clothes were rotated around camp on a daily basis. On the second island, Leah’s room became the main base of operations for the girls, a safe place away from the boys’ prying ears.
Her parents were confused when she came back.
Leah doesn’t know why.
She’d changed. Of course she had. Who wouldn’t under those circumstances.
Besides, there’s nothing like nearly dying a few times to make you realise how silly it is to be possessive over something as insignificant as a book, or even a dog.
There were only two things Leah was possessive about.
Her cardigan.
And Fatin.
Nothing else mattered. Especially not her room.
Leah preferred it like this anyway. It was a mixture of her and Fatin, a physical representation of their relationship.
Relationship, not friendship.
Because Leah was in love with Fatin. And Fatin was – for whatever reason – in love with Leah.
Leah was blind to many things, but she couldn’t miss the way Fatin’s eyes lingered, the way Fatin gravitated towards Leah as though there was some magnetic pull between them, the way Fatin grounded herself by finding Leah’s hand.
Then again, perhaps she would’ve missed it, if Fatin hadn’t said otherwise.
Leah, however, was expecting something along the lines of “I love you,” and not “we should get married”.
The words took longer to say then people might have thought.
Perhaps because they were so irrelevant.
Leah didn’t tell Fatin she was in love with her, and Fatin didn’t tell Leah she was in love with her, they both just existed as the other half of a whole. They showed their feelings, brazenly, without compromise, without fear. Because after everything they’d been through, this was the last thing Leah would fear.
She’d used to think her relationship with Fatin was delicate. But she’d been proven wrong again and again, and now Leah trusts her relationship with Fatin as much as she trust Fatin herself.
She knows that nothing can come between them.
They just are.
It amazes Leah that nobody else sees it.
Even the other girls – bar Shelby, who has developed a scarily accurate sixth sense when it comes to romantic chemistry – don’t seem to see it, and they’re the ones who know Leah and Fatin the best.
But just like Fatin’s parents, just like Ian, just like their classmates, the people they become friends with at university, the people Fatin performs with, the girls don’t see it.
The jokes remain, of course. They’re a fixture of their dynamic at this point.
And Leah and Fatin embrace it even more confidently than on the second island.
Years pass and Fatin’s arm still drapes itself over Leah’s shoulder. Fatin still calls Leah “babe” and Leah doesn’t stop herself from staring at Fatin – honestly, she doesn’t understand how no one else does. They flirt and dance and let their hands linger, and it all disguises itself under the pretence of a joke
Leah – truthfully – loves it.
It amuses her.
It’s like a trope from a book she reads. She’s always been invested in secret relationships – it’s likely, in part, what drew her towards Jeff; the forbidden nature of it all – and even if her and Fatin aren’t secretly fucking in their shared apartment they moved into when they went to university, or kissing in darkened corridors, they’re still together.
Leah knows it. Fatin knows it.
It’s an unspoken truth – to speak it would trivialise it.
Much of their relationship exists on silent understandings. It’s, admittedly, a dangerous game. There’s far too much possibility for miscommunication – especially with Leah’s history of letting her mind play tricks on her. But – somehow – it works.
Leah knows it.
It’s blatant in the way Fatin laughs when Dot asks her if she’s fucked anyone recently; it’s clear in the way Leah’s novels unravel, each dynamic a poor imitation of hers and Fatin’s – because really, it’s impossible to put their relationship into words, it would trivialise it if she could.
It’s was obvious in the way neither of them, for a second, considered going to different universities, or not living together. It’s obvious in the way neither of them talks about the future without talking about the other.
It was undeniable in the way Fatin had kissed Leah on her twenty-first birthday, alone in their one-bedroom apartment after Leah had blown out the candle on the cupcake Fatin had bought and looked at Fatin pointedly when Fatin had asked Leah what she’d wished for.
So, really, it shouldn’t have come to a surprise when Fatin, tipsy on wine, says “we should get married”.
But, it does.
“What?” Leah replies, Fatin’s words barely processing.
“We should get married,” Fatin says confidently.
“Married?”
“Yep,” Fatin shrugs.
“Are we not too young?” Leah says, because they’re twenty-one. Fatin’s only been legally drinking wine for three months now; Leah’s only been legally drinking for two months. Of course, they’ve both been drinking far longer than that. Leah has a scar hidden by her hair that’s proof of that.
Really, the car came out of nowhere. It was definitely not Leah’s fault.
“We’re older than everyone else our age,” Fatin replies.
“True,” Leah acknowledges. It’s a Friday night and most of their peers are at this or that party on campus, but Leah and Fatin are alone in their apartment, halfway through a bottle of wine, blankets over their legs and a cooking show, of all things, playing on Fatin’s laptop.
“So?” Fatin raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, right,” Leah pauses, then grins widely. ‘Wife’ sounds so much better than ‘girlfriend’.
“Is that a yes?” Fatin sounds amused.
Leah nods. “Of course it is,” she says, because really, this was inevitable, even if no one else could see it.
“I’m thinking a small ceremony-”
“On some beach somewhere-”
“With just our girls-”
“And maybe your brothers-”
“Or…” Fatin closes her laptop, putting it to the floor and shuffling around until she’s facing Leah properly. “How about just us?”
“Just us?”
“Well, we’d need a witness, but anyone will do. We can just go to city hall, and get we’re married.”
“Just us,” Leah repeats, smiling.
“Yeah,” Fatin says fondly. Then her eyes glint mischievously, “And then we show up to the next reunion, you flash that bling and boom, surprise the fuck out of them.”
Leah laughs, “Sounds like a plan.”
“Dottie’s going to faint seeing Fatin Jadmani all domesticated.”
“Right, because you’ve been so wild the last few years.” Leah pokes her.
“I’ll have you know that last weekend I pulled an all-nighter practicing my fingering–”
“Your cello.”
“On Wednesday I stayed up all night with this chick even though I had a nine am the next morning and she was screaming the entire night–”
Leah takes the cushion out from behind her and hits Fatin with it, “I just don’t like paranormal horror movies!”
Fatin laughs, ducking out of the way of Leah’s attack, “Yeah,” she says, tone more serious, “I think Dot will be surprised. I think they all will.”
Leah frowns. “Are you worried?”
Fatin readjusts her position on the couch, “I don’t know. I just wonder what they’ll think.”
Leah hums contemplatively, “I think… they’ll keep making jokes about how co-dependent we are, and they’ll laugh at us a bit for not just dating like normal people–”
“Dating is just so ugh.”
“Agreed. Marriage is way cooler.”
“Engagement’s pretty fun,” Fatin grins, “other than the unnecessary assault of cushions.” Then, Fatin gasps, her face suddenly awash with horror. “Dottie’s going to call us U-Haul gays.”
“Don’t worry, she’ll be wearing cargo pants again so you can use that against her,” Leah placates. Fatin nods seriously.
“You know, I am very much in love with you, Leah Rilke.”
Fatin’s told Leah she loves her a hundred times before – maybe more. Sometimes it was in response to a cup of coffee delivered to her in bed, sometimes it was in response to Leah waiting by Fatin’s locker at school, sometimes it was just to provoke a reaction out of the girls.
This time it’s different. Fatin doesn’t just love Leah. She’s in love with Leah.
“I know,” Leah says, lifting her hand and squeezing the tips of Fatin’s fingers. “I am very much in love with you too.”
Leah and Fatin walk into the house they’ve all rented for a weekend. They separate for the customary hugs, and “how are you”s and general excitement of all being back in each other’s company.
It isn’t until their shoes are off, suitcases filed away into their bedroom, and they’re all splayed around in the living room on various couches and chairs that they’re spotted.
“What the fuck!” Toni says abruptly. She points at Leah when everyone turns to look at her.
Leah, sharing a look with Fatin, just smirks, raising her hand and displaying a ring.
“You’re engaged!” Shelby exclaims, already on her feet and making her way over to examine the jewellery.
“Married, actually,” Leah says softly, letting Shelby manhandle her hand as Martha too comes over with an excited squeal.
“Married?” Rachel asks, eyes wide. “Since when! Why didn’t you tell us? I didn’t even know you were dating someone.”
Dot, tearing her eyes away from Leah, looks over at Fatin with sympathy, until she pauses sceptically at the expression on Fatin’s face.
“Wait,” Dot says, eyes narrowed. “No!” she exclaims. “No fucking way.”
Everyone turns to Dot. Fatin just laughs, “Yeah, Dorothy. Look who’s finally been tied down - and not just in the kinky way.”
It takes varying amount of times for everyone to catch up to Dot’s realisation, and when they do everyone’s too shocked to say much. Shelby’s frozen, eyes darting between Leah’s ring and Fatin’s gleeful expression.
“Told you this would be fun,” Fatin mutters to Leah.
“Since when did you two start dating?” Toni asks suspiciously. She’s sharing the same expression as Rachel, both of whom look ready for someone to shout ‘April Fool’s’ or something. It’s June.
“Oh, we skipped that part.” Leah shrugs unapologetically.
“Kinda,” Fatin adds, looking over at Leah.
“Yeah, kind of,” Leah acknowledges, because there were many occasions that could have been called dates if Fatin and Leah decided to give them those labels.
“Come on guys, we’ve been sharing one bed for like three or four years now.”
“I thought that was just island co-dependency,” Martha says quietly.
Fatin shakes her head, “Nope. It was just gay.”
“Oh my god,” Dot starts. “You’re total U-Hauls.”
Fatin turns to Leah sharply, pouting, “I told you she’d say that.”
“And what did I tell you to respond with?” Leah prompts.
“Oh!” Fatin’s eyes light up and she snaps her fingers. “Said the so-called straight girl wearing cargo shorts.”
“Nice one,” Leah teases as Dot says,
“They have good storage!”
“I think y’all are getting sidetracked here,” Shelby intervenes, “you two are married!”
Shelby’s words kickstart everyone. Suddenly Leah and Fatin are getting pulled into hugs with various people, until suddenly it’s such a mess of limbs that they’re all just in one big, slightly sweaty, group hug.
It ends with Fatin and Leah side-by-side, Fatin kissing her wife on the cheek.
“Oh no,” Rachel says as they pull apart, sharing a look of doom with her sister, “I think they’re unleashed now. If they were annoying before…”
Fatin grins proudly, pulling Leah over towards her. “Oh, we’re going to be so much more annoying,” Fatin promises. Leah looks up at her fondly. This is going to be fun.