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Chapter Text

Agatha Harkness’ 6th and final relationship scandal and the total breakdown of the IT system at the fashion magazine for which she’d worked for two years as editor and chief are, on their face, two wholly unrelated incidents. Later on, Rio will have her doubts. 

The whole thing just feels too weirdly kismet. First, there’s the girl that gives the interview about dating Agatha. It’s not exactly the splash that she is perhaps hoping it will be, because by number 6 there is no longer any doubt as to whether Agatha likes to love ‘em and leave ‘em, nor that she likes them 25 years old and emotionally unstable.

There is also no doubt as to how Agatha is going to react, which is to say that she’s not going to react. Agatha Harkness, youngest editor-in-chief of their magazine at a tender 38, has had a half dozen women so compelled by her assholery that they tattle on her to some news publication. Still, she’s never once even admitted that she’s gay. Even when asked. Directly.

“Imagine being one of Agatha Harkness’ girls,” Billy says to Rio the morning that the story breaks, which is, of course, still a long time before Rio becomes the 7th such girl. They’re having breakfast together in the kitchen of their tiny apartment, and he’s reading her the highlights off of a Reddit thread. “You have a whole thing with her, and then when Vogue asks her about her sexuality she says that she won’t give in to scandalous rumours about her personal life. Ouch.”

“In my dreams,” Rio sighs, in a tone that is half-joke, half-real wistfulness, “I guess I’m too old for her though.”

The 6th is the most notable because Agatha does say something. Or, rather, she does something. She takes 2 weeks off of work to attend a yoga retreat. She has never taken any time off of work in all the time that Rio has been in that IT room, which is a good long while. 

The mood in the office is celebratory. Agatha does not have a reputation for being particularly kind, per se, or gracious. Rio doesn’t throw around words like evil. But others do.

“I don’t know. I kind of miss her. Is that weird?” Jen and Billy each give her a disbelieving look over their trays of employee cafeteria food, and then exchange a glance with each other.

“Yes.” Jen says, “You’ve never spoken to her.”

True. True also that Rio has a little crush persevering, which maybe makes her no better than those 6 girls that Agatha had snubbed, nor any of the others that came before them. There’s something about a woman being slightly older, much more poised, and extremely evil. Thinking about it makes Rio’s leg jiggle like an excited dog.

Two weeks go by, and Agatha is gone. And then, on the evening before her return, the entire magazine IT system goes down while Rio sleeps in a rodeo t-shirt and briefs, playing rain noises on her phone to cover the sounds of the City. Despite knowing that there is no logical way for it to have been her fault, when Billy tells her about it the next morning before they leave for work, she feels a little stab of anxiety, as if it had been her that had done it.

Later, she will wonder if this was not fear, but only the sweet cosmic shiver of things to come.

She and Billy take the subway together to Battery Park and then each depart on their own path through a yellow wood on the sidewalk outside the entrance; she to the office and he to Starbucks. 

In the elevator, she stands in the back corner, the only occupant not wearing business casual separates. There are suits and skirts of modest length. And then there’s Rio, in dark wash jeans and a gold chain that Billy had lovingly dubbed her Tony Soprano.

The doors slide toward shut. Rio is thinking about the shitshow waiting for her on the 25th floor not with panic, but an oil slick kind of curiosity. The whole system crashed. A rare thrilling day to be working in IT.

Just before the elevator doors touch, an arm strikes out and propels them apart as if by use of the force. In truth, Rio thinks that she can feel Agatha Harkness long before she sees the manicured edges of her nails, like a shockwave. She shrinks back further into her corner, desperate to be seen and be invisible all at once. 

Agatha clacks onto the elevator with her face buried deep in a laptop. She always somehow looks just a hair better than everybody else in any room she’s in, even under the auspices of a fashion magazine. It’s as if she has a crystal ball that she peers into every morning to see the appearances of others so that she can make herself stand out just an inch more, “Why the fuck can’t I see today’s cover proposal?” She asks seemingly every person on the elevator. The doors shut like a mouth.

“System’s down.” Says a man behind her in a suit, drinking coffee. Agatha doesn’t look up at him. 

“Does IT know about it?”

“IT knows.” Says the man. Agatha finally turns. She looks at his coffee. 

“Can I have that?” She says and, incredibly, he hands it to her. She takes a sip. Winces, hands it back, “This is disgusting. Tell those subterranean nerd virgins in IT that unless they can invent a time machine and fix this 5 hours ago, I want to see them all in my office for a spanking.”

The elevator stops at the 25th floor. Rio has honest to God butterflies in her stomach. “I can tell them some of that.” The man says, as Rio slips invisibly from the back of the elevator. Agatha doesn’t even turn her head as Rio brushes by her arm, out the doors, and rounds the corner hallway into the IT room.

Alice and Jen are already there, and they’re already panicking. It’s a big room with no windows and stacks of humming, whirring machines, something that Rio thinks Harlan Ellison would have liked. She drops her messenger bag on the ratty couch in the corner, then her body.

“Nice of you to finally show up.” Says Jen. She’s sitting at one of the desktop computers, lanyard dangling from her neck and Alice hovering behind her. Rio wrinkles her nose. Rude. It’s only 9:30.

“You’ll never guess who I saw in the elevator.”

“Jesus?” Says Alice without looking up, then points to something on Jen’s screen. Jen shoos her hand away. 

“Agatha Harkness,” Rio slouches low on the couch, knocking her knees wide and smiling, “She said if we don’t fix this yesterday we’re all getting a spanking. So I think maybe we should leave it.”

Jen finally does look up, one perfect eyebrow arched, “You’re a real sicko, Vidal. I don’t think we tell you that enough.”

“Probably not.” Rio agrees jovially. At just that moment, Billy blusters in the door, all drama, coffee cup in hand.

“Every time I go to that Starbucks, I’m like, ‘I need to order early on the app’, then I never do. What’s wrong with me?” He tosses his jacket stage left and joins Jen and Alice at the desktop, “What did I miss?”

“Rio thirsting after Agatha Trunchbull.”

“Agatha is hot, unfortunately.” Bill says somewhat begrudgingly, “But Rio, this is not well-adjusted behavior.”

“There’s nothing wrong with fantasy.” Alice interjects lightly, trying to mediate.

Rio says, “You know, I think if she got to know me—” Groans cut her off, and then Jen saying:

“She won’t even admit that she’s gay for a New York City Ballet dancer. You think she would go for you, Rio Vidal of Cobb, Oklahoma?” Jenn raises an eyebrow, “IT service provider who plays Elden Ring in her spare time.”

“Maybe.” Chirps Rio. Hope does, after all, spring eternal. 

Billy sighs, “Rio, it’s not even that she won’t sleep with you because she isn’t gay. She won’t sleep with you because she thinks you’re shit on the bottom of her Louboutin. Is that better or worse?”

Jen and Alice say, “Worse,” At the same time Rio says, “Way, way better.” 

“Fuck!” Says Jen, throwing her hands up, “I can’t do this anymore. Alice, take a spin.” They play a small round of musical chairs, Jen and Alice switching, Alice’s fingers starting to fly over the keyboard.

Billy says, “They’re going to fire all of us, aren’t they?”

“Not if Rio screws the editor in chief.” Jen replies, “Maybe we should be pulling for her.”

“Rio’s target audience is girls who have logged at least 500 hours in Baldur’s Gate III.” Alice looks up from the computer screen, giving Billy and Jen each a serious look in turn, “I’ve really enjoyed these last few years working with you guys.”

“Okay, okay, out of the way,” Rio has had enough of absorbing the negative vibes in the room and rises from the sofa, shooing everybody away from the desktop. She sits down in the chair and cracks her knuckles, then approaches the code.

It is a little tricky. But at the end of the day, fixing a computer issue is much the same as touching a lover: you caress, you whisper sweet nothings, you stroke until they give up their secrets. And the system does, eventually. It runs smooth and clean, and when Rio says to Billy, “Go try to access the file system.” He says, “It’s up again.” And a ripple of almost disappointed energy runs through the IT room.

“Here I thought today was going to be interesting.” Jen grumbles, slumping back into her desk chair so hard that it swings a little. She picks up her Dunkin cold brew, now mostly melted ice, and sips it with the straw between her pointer and middle fingers, “Back to teaching geriatrics how to turn a Word file into a PDF.”

“I’ll write the email to the 30th floor,” Says Alice, then, to Rio, “Thanks, shero.”

Rio figures that maybe she should have fixed it less quickly, because the rest of the day is monotonous slop. Alice turns on the radio and they all spread out into their respective spaces, fixing laptops and taking support calls. 

She’s on one such call, phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear, when the man from the elevator enters the IT room. “Yup. Uh huh,” Rio is saying, snapping a piece of gum between her teeth, “And then you right click it. What does it say?” She turns to Billy, puts a finger gun to her temple, and figuratively blows her brains out.

“Excuse me?” All heads turn to the man, who looks nervous and out of place, like an intrepid traveler in a foreign country. Alice turns the radio down.

“That fixed it?” Rio says, looking at the man, snapping her gum, “Alright then, have a good day.” She cradles the phone.

“I’m here to speak to—” The man’s eyes flick between them, as if he can’t decide which person he’s looking for, “—the—whichever one of you fixed the system.”

Everybody points at Rio, selling her out immediately. She shoots a glare to Billy, the biggest traitor among them, “I guess that’s me.” She says.

The man continues, “Agatha Harkness wants to see you.” Rio coughs, then accidentally swallows her gum with an audible gulp. Billy, who must hear it, shoots an alarmed look in her direction.

“Did she—uh, did she say why?” Asks Rio, straightening the hem of her shirt and resisting the urge to sniff it. She knew she’d picked a bad day to take something out of the laundry pile. 

The man throws up his arms. His face grows red, “Does it matter?” He asks. No, in Rio’s estimation, it really doesn’t. Half-nervous, half-curious, she rises to follow the man out the door.

As she passes Billy, he frantically mouths Tony Soprano and motions to his shirt collar. 

Rio tucks her chain in. 

The elevator ride up to the 30th floor is silent. Rio wonders if this man is Agatha’s assistant or if he’s simply been poached for the day. His face is still bright red from their conversation and he continually passes a hand over his receding hairline.

When the doors open, they make their way through the maze of desks and mannequins and whiteboards in the open floor plan of the office. Rio has taken enough support calls up here to know that, by 2 PM, the magazine is at the peak of its human energy. The latecomers arrived and the newcomers not yet gone. It thrums.

At the threshold, the man glances once at Rio nervously, as if he cannot believe this is who he’s delivering to Agatha — a self aware cat bringing a dead mouse to the doorstep of its owner — then raps once against the door.

“Ms. Harkness?” He calls, “I have the woman from IT for you.”

There’s a long pause, and then, “Come in.”

Rio has a moment of vertigo entering Agatha’s office, which is as large as the IT room and twice as palatial. It’s shrouded in curated clutter - a leather couch against one of the walls, mannequins, sketches pinned to corkboard — that parts for Agatha’s desk like the red sea. 

And Agatha at that desk, still the best-dressed person in the room, her wild hair swept over one shoulder. The New York City skyline is haloing her from the wall to wall windows behind her. She has her chin resting lightly on a bent wrist, finger tapping its underside, and does not look up when the door shuts behind Rio and the man.

Rio shifts her weight from foot to foot. She feels more nervous now than she did when she found out that the computer system was down.

“Rio,” The man says, gesturing to Rio, “Was the person who—”

Agatha is now typing on her computer. She holds one finger up to silence the man, continues, hits a final key, then turns to them. 

“Sorry,” She says, “Lots of emails to catch up on after it took IT 12 hours to fix our computers.” Her eyes finally flick up, first to the man, and then to Rio, “Is this her?”

“Yes,” The man says, “Rio ran the code that brought the file system back online this morning.”

Agatha studies her for a moment, unimpressed. Rio isn’t sure what she’s expecting—maybe a hey, thanks? But instead Agatha only looks back at her screen, a bored expression on her face, “Next time, do it faster.” She says in summation, which Rio understands to be their cue to leave.

The man turns and opens the door, gesturing for Rio to step out. He looks relieved, as if he’d expected the meeting to end in bloodshed. But before they can exit, Agatha stops them.

“One more thing,” She says, without looking up, but pointing exactly at Rio as if she has a third eye through which she is seeing her, “From now on,” She continues, delivering her edict, “Rachel’s the only one I want working on my computer. Okay?” 

*

It’s a delicious threat that does not bear fruit for several days. That night in their little shoebox apartment overlooking the M train, Rio tells Billy about it and he dies laughing. 

“She definitely wants to fuck me, right?” Rio says, and Billy laughs harder, “She called me Rachel. My name starts with an R. So, I mean. You tell me.”

Later, Rio goes to her bedroom and puts on her rodeo t-shirt. She turns on her rain noises, then huffs and puts in her headphones and turns on some music. Plastic Jesus, Tia Blake. She hates the way New York City sounds. In all truth, she hates New York City. She’d hated Cambridge, too. 

Rio hasn’t been able to think of a place she’d like in years. The last time she remembers having been truly happy she’d been with her grandfather in Cobb, watching as he showed her something in the engine of the car they were fixing together, the radio crooning on in the background. 

But she’s old enough now to understand that this is a memory and not a place she can return to. She’s too broke to buy a car to fix and hates working in IT too much to get a better job. She has learned, however, that people will send her their computers for free, and even send her a couple hundred bucks to fix them. 

That’s almost as good. Some nights she just needs to be deep in the guts of something—taking it apart, putting it back together. That night, she takes out a laptop and flips it upside down on her desk, taking her screwdriver to pry it open. Her music stirs on in her ears. She glances up and looks around her bedroom.

A gaming PC and a queen sized bed with blue plaid sheets. Art on the walls from old horror movies, candles on the windowsill with their wax melted into the chipped paint. Her windows painted shut by the landlord. The lights of the M train passing by in 10 minute increments in the distance.

Not for the first time, she thinks I am so far from where I’m supposed to be. The thought makes her stomach clench together tight like a fist. She chews on her bottom lip, then she turns back to the computer. 

*

The first personal call from Agatha Harkness comes so much later that Rio has almost forgotten about it entirely. And she is sure that Agatha has forgotten about it.

She’s reclined in her desk chair with her eyes closed when the phone rings. Rio gropes for it without opening them.

“IT, this is Rio speaking.” She answers, suppressing a yawn. 

“Her email isn’t syncing.” Says the man on the other end of the line, in a voice that tickles the back of Rio’s brain with familiarity. She opens one eye, pops up in her chair, and wiggles the mouse on her computer to wake it up.

“Do you have a ticket number?” 

“It’s for Agatha Harkness,” The man hisses, “She needs you on the 30th floor, right now.”

Agatha does not seem any more interested in Rio’s presence than she was the first time. She is already prickling with irritation when Rio enters her office, standing from her desk almost immediately and gesturing toward the computer. 

“This damn thing is on my last nerves,” She says before collapsing onto the leather sofa. Rio isn’t sure if she’s supposed to stand in the doorway, or go fix the computer, or what, but Agatha doesn’t move to stop her when she takes a few steps toward the desk, so Rio continues on and sits in Agatha’s chair.

It’s still warm from her body, which is definitely a normal thing for Rio to notice and feel a little thrill from. On the couch, Agatha is flipping through a stack of sketches, brow furrowed in something between consternation and frustration. 

There are a few minutes of tense silence. Rio is, at first, too invigorated by being in Agatha’s office, alone with Agatha herself, to focus on diagnosing the issue. Before she can start, there’s a small noise from the direction of the sofa that startles her from her thoughts.

Agatha squeaks. Rio’s eyes slide over to her and she sees that her cheeks have reddened, though she hasn’t looked away from her sketches. Another squeaking noise.

Rio realizes with a flutter that she has the hiccups. Agatha hiccups again and Rio’s eyes dart back to the computer, frightened to be caught noticing her. She clicks around aimlessly for a few more seconds, then grows tired of pretending what’s happening isn’t happening, and says:

“My grandma told me that if you hold your breath and swallow six times, they go away.” She lets her gaze creep back over to Agatha, who is still pretending she doesn’t exist. “Food for thought.”

Agatha says nothing and does not acknowledge the comment. But there are a few seconds of silence, and Rio can see her chest stilling and her throat bobbing. Once, twice, three times — another hiccup — and then she tries again. Rio observes this transact with a kind of odd, hot blooded intensity. 

Finally, her throat moves six times, and Rio can hear her exhale a long breath through her nose. More silence. Rio’s mouth twitches with a smile.

“Did it work?” She asks, and Agatha finally snaps her gaze to her, hard and heavy.

“Are you almost finished?” Agatha asks, “Or do I have to call somebody else in here to do the job?”

“Ah, no.” Rio clicks twice and rises from the chair. Agatha had just needed to refresh Outlook, but she doesn’t say this, “You’re all good. If you need anything else, you know where to find me.”

You know where to find me? Rio winces at the eager tilt of her own voice. Agatha, anyway, almost certainly has no idea where in the world Rio is at any given moment.

“Thanks, Randy,” Agatha says dryly, “This has been a blast.”

“It’s Rio, actually.” Rio blurts. She resists the urge to tug the hem of her t-shirt, a nervous habit she hasn’t indulged in since childhood, “It’s Rio, not Randy.”

Agatha looks up at her, and for the first time Rio senses that she’s really looking at her. Not through her or around her. It’s not a pleasant feeling, even if Agatha’s stare lacks some of its characteristic steel. It’s like being touched on a too-sensitive part of her body. Rio wants to recoil from it.

“Rio what?” Agatha asks, setting her sketches to the side. Her eyes are narrowed, squinting.

“Rio Vidal.”

“Rio Vidal,” She parrots, then raises her eyebrows and reclines back against the touch, “‘River of Life’, right? How twee. Were your parents poets?”

Rio can tell by her tone of voice that this is neither a compliment nor a genuine inquiry into Rio’s life, but she responds with, “I’m from Oklahoma,” An answer that does not address Agatha’s question nor touch on any subject that she has even a passing modicum of interest in. Still, Rio soldiers on, “Not much poetry in Oklahoma.”

“That so?”

“They were school teachers. Well, they’re dead, so…” Rio sucks her teeth and shrugs, concluding the winding road of her answer. Agatha, at least, seems so confused by this that she has forgotten to be angry that she’s had to hear it. She picks her sketches back up and scratches her cheek, shaking her head somewhat. 

“Well, thanks, Rio Vidal.” She says, exaggerating the syllables in Rio’s name. Rio can’t tell if it’s meant to be unkind. Even if it is, she kind of likes the way it sounds, “Of Oklahoma, where there is no poetry, with dead parents. Is that better?”

Rio folds her lips together, irritation stirring in her. “Just call my desk if you need something else, okay?”

Agatha doesn’t even look back up at her. She’s already been dismissed. 

*

Back in the IT room, Alice asks, “Are we all getting a spanking?”

And Rio says, “Amazing news, I took all of your spankings on your behalf. I accept gratitude in the form of Ven—” She is cut off by boos and groans, and a wadded up piece of paper flying at her head.

*

The next time Rio goes to Agatha’s office, Agatha is already sitting on the couch. She has one leg crossed over the other, calf resting on her knee, and an arm spread over the back.

“Joy Harjo.” She says when Rio enters, shutting the door behind her. Rio glances over her shoulder as if another person has slipped in at the same time, “From Tulsa, was a U.S. Poet Laureate.”

“Okay?” Rio’s eyes dart around the room as if she’s going to find the answer to this conversation in Agatha’s framed artwork.

“Have you heard of her?”

“I—no, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Uh,” Rio folds her lips in, shrugs, “Not much of a reader.”

Agatha holds her gaze for one hard second, like this conversation is a test and Rio had just given a C- performance. “My computer won’t update.” She says, taking out her phone and beginning to tap something on the screen with her thumbs. Rio nods once and goes to the desk, clearing her throat as she begins to work. She tries to relax, but Agatha’s energy is big. It fills the room with a prickling sense of anxiety. 

“So what do you do?” Agatha asks her, “If you don’t read?”

“Me and my roommate hang out a lot,” Rio says, going for honesty. It’s not like she can lose any ground in Agatha’s estimation of her, being as she started at subterranean nerd virgin, “We play video games and stuff. I fix computers in my spare time.”

The update has started, but it’s going to take a few minutes. Agatha is listening to what Rio is saying, but she has a look on her face like she wishes she wasn’t. “How thrilling.”

Rio can’t help herself. She rolls her eyes, “Why did you ask if you don’t care?” She replies testily, “What do you do in your spare time, read Joan Didion and rub caviar on your gums?”

Yeah, it might have been a tad much. Agatha’s mouth drops open somewhat, but she snaps it shut just as quickly, as if she doesn’t want Rio to have the satisfaction of seeing her surprised. Rio figures she might have just lost her job over a dumb cocaine joke, but Agatha seems to melt into the couch instead, her posture relaxing.

“I thought you said you weren’t much of a reader.”

“I read some.”

“I know,” Agatha says, “You graduated from Harvard. I just wonder why you would lie about it.”

Rio’s chest clenches. She straightens in her chair, rolling her shoulders, tugging her top lip with her teeth. Agatha’s eyes sharpen, almost predatory, as if excited to have regained the upper hand after briefly having almost lost it. 

“You’ve been reading my employee file?”

“Just your resume. I was curious,” Agatha tilts her head, “Transferred from Southeastern Oklahoma State University in the bustling metropolis of Durant, Oklahoma, to Harvard, where you graduated cum laude with a degree in data science. Attended the Google Engineering Practicum, several other similarly prestigious jobs, and then…” She trails off, “…arrived here, in a middling IT support job at a magazine.”

Rio stares at her, “I genuinely don’t know who Joy Harjo is.” 

Agatha snorts, “Yeah, too busy playing…what is it these days, Magic the Gathering, aren’t you?”

A hot feeling flashes in Rio’s chest. The computer dings, signaling that the update has finished, and she snatches her messenger bag from the floor, rising from the chair. “Update’s done. And by the way, for future reference,” She takes Agatha’s gaze by force and holds it, “It doesn’t take a Harvard graduate to figure out how to refresh your Outlook or get a routine update to start. From now on, if you need help, you can call somebody else in IT.”

Agatha sits up straighter on the couch, “No,” She says, her voice bright with stubbornness, “I asked for you.”

Rio stares at her for a moment, body simmering with indignity. Then, she drops her bag and sits back at Agatha’s desk, in Agatha’s chair. Agatha seems to clock this, eyes moving with Rio’s body, “You think I’m beneath you,” Rio says, “Because I’m a ‘subterranean nerd virgin’,” She uses finger quotes and does not miss the way Agatha’s face flashes when she hears her own words parroted back to her, “Who plays video games and fixes computers in my spare time. And the fucked up thing for you is that you’re partially right,” Agatha shifts a little in her chair and tugs almost absentmindedly at the fabric of her pants, “But you already figured out, I think, that I don’t need this job. I could quit right now and make 3, 4 times this salary in a matter of weeks. So what are you going to do if I don’t come back up here, Agatha, fire me?”

Agatha’s nostrils flair, “Partially right?”

Rio laughs once, leans partway across the desk. Puts her elbows on it like it’s hers and she owns it, “I’m far from a virgin.”

Agatha finally breaks their gaze, taking in a breath through her nose and tucking some hair behind her ear. She’s flustered, Rio realizes, and feels something hot that is not anger rise in her stomach. “So what do you want to come back up here, Rio? For me to get on my knees and beg for your forgiveness for being so mean to you?”

Rio thinks about Agatha begging on her knees. She thinks about the bob of her throat as she’d swallowed back those hiccups. Her mind feels cloudy, then it clears again, “Yeah,” She says, “I want you to say you’re sorry.”

Agatha regards her, face hard. Her brain is going so fast Rio can almost hear it whirring. She sticks her tongue into her cheek and says, finally, “I want you to give me your number. Your personal phone number. And I want to be able to call you, day or night, if I need help.”

“I just told you I don’t care about this job.”

“No,” Agatha says. Her voice is raspy now, low and curious, “But I think you do care about me saying that I’m sorry.”

Rio blinks and shifts in the chair. How, she wonders, did this turn into a negotiation so quickly? But Agatha isn’t wrong. She’s bent out of shape for that apology. 

She leans over the desk and extends a hand out, palm up. Agatha pauses, but she hands over her phone after a moment, navigated to the new contact page. Rio plugs in her number and hands it back.

Agatha is standing in front of her then, phone in her hand. There are flyaway hairs sticking out at her temples and her blouse, which had probably cost more than Rio’s monthly rent, is ever so slightly askew. They stand in a silence so long that Rio considers for a moment that she may renege.

“I’m sorry,” Agatha says finally, slowly, eyes so serious they’ve turned almost black, “Rio.” She says her name like a cherry on top, like a little extra she’s adding in just for Rio. And fuck her, it sort of works. 

“Apology accepted,” Rio croaks. She’d had the upper hand—what 30 seconds ago? But now it’s all advantage to Agatha. And Agatha smiles, too, like she knows this. Rio is sure that she’s felt the shift of power just as Rio had. 

“Great,” Replies Agatha, “Now get the hell out of my chair.”

*

“I really think I’m going to go for it.” Rio says that night, while they’re sitting on the couch playing something on the Xbox. Billy doesn’t look away from the screen.

“Go for what?”

“Agatha,” Says Rio, “I’m going to go for it with Agatha.”

“You’re the most delusional person I’ve ever met,” Says Billy, his voice fond, “Don’t tell Jen, but I’m rooting for you.”

*

The next morning, in the elevator, Agatha gets on after Rio once again. She’s not holding a laptop this time, but her nose is stuck in her phone. Rio is shrunk into the corner, unnoticed. 

But when they get to the 25th floor and Rio attempts to slither by, Agatha’s eyes go to her and catch. She uses her hand to hold the doors open before they can close on Rio’s back.

“Did you read her?” She asks Rio, to the alarm of every person standing on the elevator. Agatha isn’t paying them any attention, though. Her sole focus is on Rio.

“Who?”

“Harjo.”

“No, I—” But Agatha has already rolled her eyes and moved her hand, and the doors are shutting. Rio stutters, caught of guard, “Wait a second—” 

The doors have already shut, and Agatha is gone.

*

Later, in the IT room, Alice asks her what she’s working on.

“I’m reading poetry,” Rio replies glumly, head in her hands, staring at the bright white screen of poetryfoundation.org. Wondering what’s become of her, that she’s trying this hard to get into the pants of a woman who seems, at best, mildly humiliated by her connection to Rio. Or maybe that’s the whole point. Good God, Rio’s tastes have skewed weird in her old age.

“She’s going through something,” Stage whispers Billy, and Rio rolls her eyes.

“I can hear you,” She says. Alice reaches over to the radio and turns the music up. Rio turns from the computer screen to her phone screen like there’s going to be a text there from a 212 number with test questions about There Was a Time. She sighs with disgust at herself.

Agatha doesn’t text her that day, nor the day after. 

But Rio knows that the time is going to come. She feels sure of it. Why make such a show of taking Rio’s number if she’s not going to use it?

*

SOS come to my office

Rio stares down at the now lit-up face of her phone. It’s late, Rio is the only person working the swing shift that night - 12 to 9 - and she’s turned all the lights off except the one over her desk area. The glow cast by the phone looms large.

How do you know I’m in the building rn? She taps back, surprised when the reply is almost instant.

Do you need me to send a car?

Based on the Christian Grey nature of Agatha’s response, Rio sort of expects there to be a real big actual emergency. Chinese hackers stealing Agatha’s credit card information. The computer gaining sentience and commanding Agatha to kill. 

When she arrives in Agatha’s office after walking past a group of nervous looking junior reporters huddled around the desk, knocking once before pushing the door open, Agatha is standing in the middle with her cell phone to her ear and the other hand on her forehead. Rio shuts the door softly behind herself.

Agatha’s only acknowledgement of her presence is a sloppy, frantic hand gesture to the computer. Rio salutes and goes to sit in the chair.

“Yes, mother, yes,” Agatha is saying, pacing in front of the desk. Rio sees that she’s in her stocking feet, which makes her look about an inch shorter and much smaller than how she’s used to seeing her, “I’ll get right on that.” A look to Rio, an eye roll. Rio suppresses a smile. Then Agatha’s face crumples into a frown and she turns away, covering her face with a hand, “No, I don’t really want to talk about that right now. No. No. I said not right now. When I come home next week — sure, maybe. No. Yes. Okay, okay, goodbye mother. Yes. Okay, goodbye.”

Agatha hangs up the phone with a jab of her thumb and an ill tempered grunt. Rio clears her throat. 

“So, I’m actually going to need you to log in…” She says, “…with your password.”

Agatha again rolls her eyes and goes over to Rio’s side of the desk. When she bends over beside her to type her password onto the screen, the fabric of her blouse brushes Rio’s arm, and Rio catches a hint of her perfume. Something spicy, with the stirrings of sweat breaking through underneath from a full day of living. She has to focus long and hard on keeping her eyes on the screen and not the woman next to her.

“There.” Agatha says. Instead of moving to the leather couch, she leans against the desk next to Rio’s chair, arms folded over her chest. Rio runs her tongue over her lips. Shifts in the chair. Wonders if Agatha is feeling anything like Rio is feeling.

“So what’s the problem?”

“Google isn’t loading at all,” Agatha has her head tilted back and her eyes shut like she’s trying to reach a meditative state. 

“Okay…” Rio lets the word trail long, clicks around some. Juts out her lower lip and nods, “Did you consider it’s possibly because you weren’t connected to the internet?” She asks, before connecting to the wifi and pulling up Google.

“Fuck,” Agatha says, putting her head in her hands, “I need a drink.”

Rio considers how best to approach this situation. She has done her job and now technically could excuse herself, but there’s clearly something going on here beyond a wifi connection, and she feels desperate to know what it is. She turns to Agatha, “Hey, so…everything okay?”

Agatha doesn’t answer for a few long seconds, then removes her head from her hands with a deep inhale of breath. When she turns to Rio, her face is flushed and her hair askew, “Do you think this seems like a nice job?” She asks. Rio squints, points to the desk she’s sitting at.

“This…”

“Yes, this,” Agatha gestures wide to the office, “Editor in chief of one of the world’s preeminent fashion publications. Do you think that this is a prestigious job to have?”

“Yes, yeah. Sure.” Rio shrugs.

“And if, say, your child did it, would you be proud of them?” Agatha asks sharply, “Or would you call them on the phone to harangue them about not getting a college internship at Marie Claire 20 years ago?”

Rio blinks, “Well,” She says, “I guess it would depend on if they liked it. My kid, I mean. Do they like being editor in chief of a magazine? If yes, then sure, I’d be proud,” She shrugs, “I don’t know anything about Marie Claire.”

Agatha stares at her for a moment, face bright red. Then, she hiccups again, and turns away.

Rio tries for maybe a fraction of a second to hold back her smile, then fails, “Does this happen a lot?”

“I get them when I’m stressed. I always have.” Agatha sucks in a breath and holds it, swallowing. Rio can’t help but to linger on how delightfully, distractingly human the whole thing is. Or on how Agatha is still using her grandmother’s remedy. 

Agatha exhales, “That’s very gentle parenting of you.”

“To care whether my hypothetical child likes their job?” Rio raises her eyebrow, “Do you like this job?”

“I like being important. Just like everybody else.”

Rio shrugs, “I don’t care about being important.”

“Oh, please. You went to Harvard.”

“I don’t.” Again, Agatha is giving her that penetrating look. The overstimulating one, like a hand touching you long after you’ve finished, when every nerve is already on fire. Rio licks her lips, chest heavy with anticipation, “I was raised by my grandparents, on their ranch. My whole childhood, that’s all I wanted to be. A rancher like my granddad. Out there, totally anonymous, but part of the cycle,” Beside her, Agatha’s eyelashes flutter, “Life, death. Again and again, every season. There’s just something about it.”

Agatha considers her. Her tongue darts out and touches her lower lip. When did the air in the office get so heavy? It feels like somebody messed with the thermostat, “My mother would hate you.” Agatha says in a voice that is definitely an octave lower than it was before. It does not sound like an insult.

“Thanks?” Rio replies. She clears her throat.

“So you were, what—a 4H girl?” Agatha asks, her voice low and raspy like it was the last time they’d been in this office together, alone. The question makes Rio shift in her chair. She feels like a child who had insisted they could swim but then started drowning as soon as they’d reached the deep end of the pool. 

“Yes.” She replies, and Agatha smiles.

“And you were the best at it, I imagine?” She continues. Rio can feel the heft of Agatha’s attention. It’s warm and laser sharp. She’s being seen, she realizes. She’s being noticed. “I bet the other kids hated to see your name on the roster with theirs.”

Rio considers lying. Instead, she says, “Yes.” 

“And then something happened,” Agatha says, her gaze darting between Rio’s eyes, “And here you are.”

The heat in her chest reaches a boiling point. She needs to do something, stop herself from being sucked totally into the vortex Agatha is creating. Rio rises from the chair and goes to stand in front of Agatha, who straightens her posture. Her hands go to brace themselves on the desk behind her, her chin lifting somewhat defiantly. 

“Is there something else you need?” Rio asks, “Or were you going to send a car just for me to come here and connect your wifi?”

“Most people would be too scared to talk to me like this.”

Rio takes a step in, so that their chests and hips are almost touching, almost flush. Agatha sucks in a breath, “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Rio admits, “Do you want me to stop?”

A moment of contemplation passes over Agatha’s face, but in the end, she shakes her head. Rio takes another step closer, and then they are touching. Rio’s body is against Agatha’s body and Agatha’s body is against the desk. She can feel Agatha’s intake of breath when it comes. She can feel Agatha’s little, telling shiver.

Rio tucks a lock of brunette hair behind Agatha’s ear. She takes in the shell of it, the little earring freckle she has on her lobe. Then, she leans in and places a kiss right against the arch of her cheek.

Agatha’s body melts, one arm going up to clutch at Rio’s shoulders, the other keeping herself braced against the desk. Rio kisses her again, higher, then sucks the lobe of her ear in the mouth, feeling the expensive gold stud clack against her teeth.

“This,” Agatha shudders, “Is humiliating.”

“Thanks, I’m having a nice time too.” Rio is too busy running her tongue along the ridge of Agatha’s ear to be truly offended. One of her hands goes to Agatha’s knee, right beneath the hem of her skirt. Agatha takes it and pushes it under, until Rio’s hand is right over the front of her underwear. They feel like lace. This time, Rio is the one who trembles.

“You’re awfully worked up for somebody who’s being humiliated. Or maybe—” Rio laughs throatily and moves to pull Agatha’s underwear down, but then Agatha says,

“Stop,” And then, “Look at me.”

Rio does with the quickness of a well-trained dog. She drinks in Agatha’s blown out pupils, her flushed face. “Only over, don’t go under.” Picking up on what she’s saying, Rio slowly moves her hand back to the front of Agatha’s underwear. She presses her fingers experimentally, rubs in a circle. The fabric is soaked, her fingers are wet without having made any contact with the skin beneath. She can feel the hard ridge of her clit, and it only takes a minute before the fabric slips between her folds, sodden and almost useless. 

Agatha is making little throaty noises, and is slumped so heavily into the desk that it’s pushed up her skirt from the back, leaving it rucked around her thighs. If Rio looks down, she can see the color of the lace she’s touching. It’s black.

“Put your other hand on my throat,” Agatha says, voice half a whine, and Rio does. She doesn’t squeeze, but she feels the hammering pulse beneath her fingertips. Agatha smiles. She gasps. Her thighs shake.

“You’d do anything I asked you to, wouldn’t you?” Her eyes study Rio’s face, “You’re pathetic.”

Rio stutters only for a half second. Then, she presses her fingers against the fabric harder, moving her arm vigorously enough that she can see her own shoulder working. She applies the barest amount of pressure with the hand on Agatha’s throat, just enough to make the other woman gasp. She brings her mouth to her ear, says:

“Why don’t you want me to go underneath your underwear, Agatha?” Her fingers pressing harder, faster, her other hand still squeezing. For a moment, seeing the way Agatha’s face slackens with pleasure, she feels large. Electric, “Afraid you’ll like it too much?”

Agatha comes a half second later like a whip cracking, her whole body tensing and almost collapsing back onto the desk. Rio leans her body with her, face close to Agatha’s face, and then finally, finally, they’re kissing, Rio drinking the last dregs of her orgasm into her mouth, all tongues and teeth clashing.

“I’m taking these off,” Rio says of the underwear. They’re still kissing, and Agatha is dragging her over her body on the desk as she lays back on it. She nods frantically. 

Rio tries to do it with one hand, the other still exerting gentle pressure on Agatha’s throat, but she ends up ripping them instead. Whatever, same outcome, she thinks as she balls the underwear and prepares to throw it to the side.

Before she can, there’s a knock at the door. “Ms. Harkness?” They spring apart, Rio shooting back into the desk chair and Agatha slipping off the desk to stand on still shaky legs. She straightens her skirt hem. Her mascara is running just slightly under her left eye.

She gives Rio a look as if Rio is going to sell them out to whatever poor unfortunate is at the door right now. Rio raises her hands defensively. Not me.

“Come in.” Agatha calls. Rio is delighted at the raw edge to her voice. 

The door squeaks open. The head of a young brunette woman, probably in her mid-twenties, peeks into view. She looks between Agatha and Rio only once before settling on Agatha.

“Sorry, Ms. Harkness,” She begins haltingly, “I just wanted to let you know that the presentation is ready…”

Agatha pinches her nose with her fingers, “Remind me of your name again.”

“It’s Jilly.”

“And you go by that willingly?” Agatha asks, “Jilly?”

“It’s my name…” Says Jilly quietly, but Agatha has moved on.

“Jilly, what time did I say I’d be available for the presentation?”

“8:30.”

“And what time is it now?”

Jilly refers to the watch on her wrist, “8:17.”

“And are we operating on my time, this evening, do you think—” Agatha asks, rubbing her temples now, taking impressive command of the situation given how absolutely disheveled she looks, “—or yours?”

“Your time, Ms. Harkness.” Jilly says even more quietly, already shrinking back behind the door.

“That’s what I thought. So why don’t you run back to your cohort and tell them that I will be ready to see your presentation in 13 minutes, as discussed. Okay?”

When Jilly has evaporated back into the bullpen, Agatha turns and collapses against the desk again. She takes a deep breath. Rio can once again see the cogs in her head turning. She figures that it’s safer, in this instance, to say nothing.

“This,” Agatha says, gesturing between herself and Rio, “Was a regrettable lapse in judgment.”

Despite the fact that she’d pretty much anticipated this aftermath, it stings a little more than Rio’s ego would like to admit, “Gee,” She says, “Thanks.”

“I’m ovulating and emotionally vulnerable,” Agatha continues. Rio isn’t even sure if she’s still talking to her or herself, “This was a recipe for disaster from the beginning.” She looks to Rio, “This can’t ever happen again.”

“No,” Rio says dumbly. Agatha’s right, of course, and logically speaking Rio no longer has a horse in this race. After all, all she’d wanted to do was sleep with her. And now they had. “No, of course not.”

“Excellent, so,” Agatha straightens her skirt, sniffs, wipes and her mascara. Actively gathers all the bits and pieces of herself that Rio had just scattered all over the surface of her desk, “Please leave now, and uh, I’ll see you next time my wifi won’t connect. Okay?” It’s not quite the patronizing dismissal that she’d given Jilly but it’s not far off. It doesn’t help that Rio is still wound tight from not having come herself. 

She leaves the office back into the bullpen where the frightened junior reporters are still huddled around the desk with their corkboard, whispering to each other. Their eyes lock on Rio as she passes by.

“I wouldn’t take it personally,” One of them says, stopping Rio in her tracks, “Whatever she said to you in there. She always gets like that when her mother calls.”

“Oh,” Rio realizes that she, too, must be flushed and disheveled from what had happened in Agatha’s office. They probably assumed she’d been crying. She blinks, “Thanks, I guess.”

“What’s that?” Jilly points to her right hand and Rio realizes, with a flash of horror, that she still has Agatha’s ripped, ruined underwear clenched in her fist. She sticks it behind her back.

“Nothing,” Rio says, already turning to go to the elevator bank, “It’s a rag to clean computers with. Uh, good luck on your presentation?”

*

So, mission accomplished. Nobody thought she could do it, but she had, and now maybe Rio can move on with her life from Agatha Harkness.

Anyway, if she comes that night between the sheets of her bed, trembling and wet with Agatha’s spoiled underwear pressed into her face, well—that’s nobody’s business but her own.

*

“Billy,” She says on the subway the next morning, “I have something to tell you, but you’re not going to like hearing it.”

“Okay.” He sniffs, wiping his nose. They’re

crammed together on a two-seater making the journey from Bedford to 1st. “Hit me.”

“You’re really not going to like it.”

Billy regards her from the corner of his eye, backpack clutched in his lap, “I’m intrigued.”

“I had sex with…” Her eyes dart around the crowded subway car, “…you-know-who.”

Billy wrinkles his nose, “I don’t know who.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Rio,” He rolls his eyes, “Let me buy a vowel please.”

“Our boss.” She says in a low voice, and Billy’s brow furrows.

“Paul? Why would you fuck Paul?”

“No, not—” Rio rubs her hands over her face. They pull away from 1st Street, rattle on toward 3rd. “—Our boss boss.”

Billy shakes his head, “Jeff Bezos?”

“Agatha.” Rio hisses. Billy’s mouth drops open. He clutches his bag.

“You fucked Agatha Trunchbull?” He gasps, “I thought you were kidding.”

“Don’t call her that. Jesus.” The train pulls into 14th street and they slide out in the mass of bodies. “It wasn’t fucking. Moreso…outercourse.”

“Oh, God.” Billy screws his face up in agony, “I guess that’s what you wanted, right?”

“Right.” Rio agrees.

“So you got it out of your system,” Billy clutches his backpack straps as they cut across toward the R, “And you won’t be so fixated on Agatha anymore.”

This is making such perfect sense to Rio that it brightens her momentarily. She’d barely slept the previous night. “Right.”

“Which is good, because Agatha sucks.”

“She doesn’t suck.” Says Rio without thinking. They alight onto the platform. The lights of the R train twinkle from the back of the tunnel. Rio cranes her head to see. “She just has a lot going on, I think.”

When she looks back at Billy, he’s staring at her with an alarmed expression. The train rushes into the station, bringing with it a gust of wind that rustles his hair. “Oh, Rio,” He says with pity in his voice, “Oh, mama, no.”

Rio furrows her brow, “‘Oh Rio’? What do you mean ‘oh Rio?’” But Billy is shaking his head and boarding the train. She chases after him, gripping her messenger bag, “Why ‘oh Rio’ Billy?”

*

Rio spends the first half of the day trying to psychically destroy Agatha’s computer. How long can it take a woman who doesn’t know how to turn a Word file into a PDF to have an issue that requires Rio’s attention? 

It doesn’t help that Billy keeps giving her compassionate looks from the corner of his eye and had brought her a conciliatory peppermint latte from Starbucks, as if her dog had just been hit by a car. Rio figures that if she was doing a good job at actually pretending that she doesn’t care about what she and Agatha had done last night, she’d have no latte to speak of.

Her phone lights up at just before 4 PM. Rio reads the message, exhales a little sigh of relief, and says, “I’ve got to go to the 30th floor.” To the 0 people in the room who care.

It’s still bustling in the bullpen when she arrives. Rio slips through the maze of desks to the shuttered office in the back where Agatha waits. She knocks once. She opens the door.

Agatha is on the couch when she steps in, a folder of papers open on her lap. She’s wearing a sleeveless dress with a top blazer that’s been disposed of over her office chair, exposing her arms and shoulders. Rio’s mouth goes a little dry.

“You can shut the door.” Agatha says, not looking up. Rio does, and then moves to the desk, but Agatha stops her, “And lock it, please.”

Rio pauses, looking at her. Agatha flips a page in her folder. She goes back toward the door, turns the lock on the handle, and jiggles it once for good measure. 

Agatha finally looks up, sets her folder to the side. Says, “You can come sit with me.” Like it’s some prize that she’s bestowing upon Rio, who is vibrating out of her skin.

Rio prides herself on being unflappable. Nothing makes her feel like this. It’s irritating, like wearing an itchy sweater. She goes to the couch anyway, and sits her body carefully at what she feels is a safe distance from Agatha, hands on her knees, shoulders straight.

She feels more than sees Agatha shift to angle her body toward Rio’s. “You can look at me.” Agatha says, and when Rio turns she’s much closer, their thighs nearly touching. Rio’s heart starts going like a drum, and her palms are definitely a little sweaty. 

Rio expects something more from her, even though she suspects that this house call has nothing to do with Agatha’s computer. But Agatha only stares. 

Her hair, as it almost always is, is worn down. Her lips are slightly parted, expression relaxed, curious. Rio finds herself wishing for the cold, dismissive demeanor she’d become accustomed to. Agatha, refusing to look at her. Agatha, calling her Randy. Not Agatha, scrutinizing her with a look that, from a certain angle, could almost be mistaken for warmth.

Rio can only take it for a few harrowing seconds. She breaks first, looking away and clearing her throat, shifting on the couch. 

To her surprise, Agatha reaches out to her and puts a hand to her cheek. She gently brings Rio’s face back to look at her. Then, she kisses her.

The kiss is as filthy and as desperate as their first had been, almost immediately. Rio sinks into it like a warm bath, gripping Agatha by the forearms, pressing closer against her body. Then, she remembers herself and pulls back, panting.

“I thought you said that last night was a mistake.”

“It was.” Agatha says, still gripping Rio’s face. Still studying her, “You made me come so hard I thought my teeth were going to fall out.”

“Oh.” Says Rio, stupidly, and they kiss again, slower this time. 

“A mistake is a decision—” Agatha pauses to run her tongue against Rio’s lower lip, place an open-mouthed kiss on her, “—made on poor judgment, which last night was—” She sucks Rio’s tongue, bites gently at her mouth, moans when Rio surges against her. She then seems to lose her train of thought completely.

“So if we were to repeat the mistake right now…” Rio prompts, moving on to kiss her way down Agatha’s neck to her bare shoulder. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Agatha sighs, “Do you think you could do it again?”

“The mistake?”

“Could you make me come like that again?” Agatha asks, “I want to know if it was a fluke.”

“There’s like 15 people sitting outside of your office right now.” Rio says, her voice muffled by Agatha’s skin, her hair.

Agatha shrugs, “I can be quiet,” She says, “Can you?”

Which is how Rio ends up on her knees on some of the plushest carpeting she’s ever had the pleasure of coming into contact with, head between Agatha Harkness’s legs chasing a personal best she hadn’t even known she’d achieved. Agatha, by the way, is a world class liar, because when she comes she has to muffle it with a throw pillow to her face. 

Later, Agatha gets her there with a hand stuffed into Rio’s jeans, telling Rio about how she’d had to listen to that presentation with no underwear on. It’s as absurd as it is sexy, mostly because Agatha makes a point to note midway through the dirty talk that the presentation had sucked, and it brings Rio off in about 30 seconds flat, which seems to delight and disappoint Agatha in equal measure. 

”So?” Rio says, when she’s on the sofa re-buttoning her pants and Agatha has moved to stand at her desk, looking at her missed emails, “What’s the consensus? Fluke?” She’s loose and languid, brain going crazy from all the orgasm endorphins. More importantly, she’s confident. 

“God help me.” Agatha sighs under her breath. Her eyes flick up to Rio. The corner of her mouth twitches, “You can go, by the way. I have a 5:30 and now I’m going to need to wipe down that couch.”

Rio frowns, her high taking an abrupt nosedive. She stands, straightens her clothes. Picks up her messenger bag. “That’s not an answer.” 

“And what kind of answer are you looking for, exactly?”

“If we’re going to see each other again.”

Agatha pauses. She straightens from where she’s been bent over her keyboard and regards Rio with arms crossed over her chest, “Did you get your way a lot as a child?”

Rio snorts, “What?”

“Your grandparents, did they spoil you?” Agatha leans in. Squints. “You have the reckless confidence of somebody who hasn’t heard the word ‘no’ too many times.” She pauses, “Did they buy you a horse? I bet you had a horse.”

Rio shifts from foot to foot but refuses, this time, to be the first to look away, “It’s a simple question.”

“When do you work nights?”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Rio tilts her chin up, “And every fourth Friday.”

“Hm.” Agatha nods and slumps back down into her desk chair. For a moment, Rio thinks that this will be the end of it. That she’s going to have to swallow her pride and turn around leaving the thread hanging. “It wasn’t a fluke,” She says finally, “Good enough?”

Feeling as though she needs to make at least a show of giving this some thought, Rio lets it linger in the air for 5 or 10 seconds before saying: “Good enough.” Agatha nods once and turns back to her computer screen, and Rio opens the door to retreat. But before she leaves completely, she says:

“My grandparents bought me two horses, actually.”

Agatha smiles, nods. Sticks her tongue into her cheek, “Uh-huh,” She says, “As I suspected.”

*

The next morning, Agatha comes on the elevator after her. Rio tries to resist staring at the back of her head, fails, then figures it doesn’t matter anyway because Agatha is unlikely to notice her.

But then, funnily enough, she does. Agatha turns over her shoulder and catches Rio’s eye. It happens over the flash of a second, but it’s enough to make Rio blush and for two men on the elevator with them to exchange a glance over Agatha’s head.

When she departs at the 25th floor, Rio turns to find Agatha looking at her. To Rio’s great surprise, Agatha lifts the pointer finger of her right hand as if in a small imitation of a wave. The corner of her mouth twitches. Rio hasn’t the time to react before the doors close again and she’s left in the corridor with her heart racing.

Chapter Text

Rio’s life for the last decade has felt like a dream. As though she’d fallen asleep in her dorm room in Durant, with its cheap fixtures and snoring roommate, and stepped through a portal into another life. Sometimes she thinks she still might wake up, and that the acceptance letter from Harvard will not have come, and she will be the same as she was when she was 19 and the world had some cheeky sense of possibility left in it.

Everybody loses their wide-eyed eagerness for life at some point. She understands this, of course, as a universal truth and not a bad thing that had happened to only Rio Vidal. Still, in her weaker moments, she wonders for how long she’ll have to suffer the absolute banality of it all.

The Kafkaesque grind of living in New York City, of working in a windowless IT room, of the subway, of the many tall, gray buildings. When she sleeps, she dreams of bolting barefooted though flat, green fields, of the smell of cut grass on her grandfather’s jacket, of the radio playing in the driveway. Of being 16, both the smartest and the prettiest in her class, all the boys looking at her, her looking at the girls, and all those girls letting her as long as it remained a tightfisted secret.

Except, when Agatha calls for her on Thursday night, she feels a stirring of wakefulness. And when she bends Agatha over the desk, shoves up her skirt and pushes her underwear down her legs, she certainly isn’t sleepwalking. She feels like Rio again, hungry to the point of instability. Rio, who has the whole world to take.

She pushes her face between Agatha’s thighs, uses her mouth while Agatha presses her face into a stack of quarterly reports. When she comes wet on Rio’s cheeks and chin, Rio’s cunt clenches. She stands and sinks her fingers into her without pause, feeling taller and larger when Agatha groans and scrabbles at the surface of the desk, hisses out a desperate yes. One, then two, then more.

Rio feels her already tenuous grip on reality loosen when she fucks her. She finds herself pushing harder than she normally does, digging her teeth into Agatha’s shoulder a little deeper, jogging her hips a little more obviously. If she hits the right angle, she can grind herself somewhere between the back of her hand and Agatha’s left asscheek, crude but nonetheless effective.

She has a hysterical moment of thinking they might never stop fucking, and also that she doesn’t want to stop. Rio wants to be this person forever, this ravenous, gluttonous person, this person who has Agatha Harkness making sounds like she is actually sobbing from pleasure at what Rio is doing to her.

Agatha tumbles over the edge, and Rio feels it against her fingers. And then, incredibly, impossibly, she does too. Rio never comes like this, mostly because she’s never cared enough to try. It hits her like a freight train and is almost embarrassing in its obviousness and ferocity.

After, when they’re sprawled out on Agatha’s couch, Agatha says: “Holy shit,” Sounding almost stressed out by the quality of the sex they’ve just had, and then, “Was that your whole hand?” And Rio shifts, wondering if she’d done too much. She shakes her head and holds up the four fingers of her right hand with the thumb tucked down, still sticky and dried opaquely in places.

Agatha takes it and presses a kiss to those fingers, then lets them drop over her thudding heart. “You must be hungry.” She says. Rio aches all over, inside and outside, her body snapping like a wolf’s mouth.

“Starving.” Rio agrees. Agatha smiles.

“If you check to see that the coast is clear I can order us some take out.”

Rio wants to say to eat here? Together? but is weary of questioning her good fortune. She stands instead and goes to the door, cracking it open and peeking her head out. She’s not wearing pants, and so keeps most of her body carefully angled away.

From the desk where she’s picking up her phone, Agatha laughs, “Nice and subtle.”

“Coast is clear,” Rio glares at her, “Where are we ordering from?”

“I thought the place across the street. There should be a menu on the coffee table.”

Rio goes and slides to the floor beside the table, leaning her back against the leather couch. She shuffles through the papers sprawled over it until she finds a menu and inspects it, “Doesn't this place have a Michelin star? Do they even do takeout?”

“They do when I call,” Says Agatha, “What do you want?”

“Uh,” Rio blows a raspberry and flicks through the menu, “Steak frites?”

Agatha purses her lips, “We’re going to work on refining your palate.”

They eat on the floor, side by side, Rio in her t-shirt with no pants and Agatha in a camisole and skirt. Rio’s steak is hot and perfectly cooked, and she pretends she does not notice when Agatha loots her fries.

“So I know you’ve been frustratingly vague about your career aspirations,” Agatha begins after a few minutes of easy conversation, “But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I know some of the people in charge of hiring at Apple. And Microsoft.” She regards Rio from the corner of her eye, nibbling on a fry, “Just say the word, and I’ll send them your resume.”

Rio grapples with this information for a moment, staring down at her half eaten steak. “Is this what nepotism feels like?”

“Nepotism would be if I made you the head of IT,” Agatha reaches for another fry, “Which, by the way, if you want it, just ask. I never liked Paul anyway.”

“Nah,” Says Rio, “But thank you.”

“That’s all you’ve got? ‘Nah’?”

“I said thank you.” Rio sighs and cracks her neck. That strange fog settles over her again. She wishes that she and Agatha were still fucking, that she still felt as electric as she had when she was inside of her. “I hate working in IT.”

“Then why do it?”

“My grandpa got sick, I wanted to send them money for treatment,” Rio sighs, “And they thought working the ranch was beneath me anyway. I figured I owed it to them to make them proud.”

“At least you made it out of Oklahoma.”

“I miss Oklahoma.” Rio corrects quickly, “Or I think I do. I miss how I felt when I was out there.”

Agatha grunts in acknowledgement of this, “It sounds very Grapes of Wrath.”

“It wasn’t.” Rio says, her voice taking on a defensive edge, “It was nice. I was outside all day, fixing cars with my grandpa—” She realizes that she’s monologuing about something that Agatha, in all likelihood, doesn’t give a shit about, “I was happy.” She finishes lamely.

“Did you?” Asks Agatha, “Make them proud?” When Rio looks over at her, she’s studying her curiously.

“Yeah.” She nods once, eats a fry to give her a second to consider what to say next, “But now that they’re not around anymore, nobody cares what I do but me.”

“Must be kind of nice.”

“I don’t know how I feel about it yet.”

“Well,” Agatha tilts her body back against the couch. Her presence next to Rio is warm and syrupy, “I don’t know any Oklahoman ranchers to connect you with, but I can ask around.”

Rio snorts, “It doesn’t have to be that. I just don’t know if I want to be here anymore.” She looks to Agatha and holds her gaze, “You should be careful. Keep offering to help me and I might start to think that you like me or something.”

For one quivering second, they stare at each other. Agatha’s expression doesn’t change, but her chest swells with a deep breath. She looks away, back to her fish.

“And what a tragedy that would be,” She replies, flipping her hair over one shoulder, “I want to see a clean plate, by the way. That steak probably cost more than your entire outfit. Including shoes.”

Rio takes a big bite, “Yes, mommy,” She says, and laughs when Agatha slugs her right in the shoulder.

*

Rio finds herself stalking the feeling of fucking Agatha like a hungry tiger with a wounded animal. Having gotten a taste for it, the need becomes unshakeable.

The quarterly all hands meeting happens. The whole magazine is there, editorial and support staff alike, all stuffed into the 30th floor bullpen. Rio sits between Alice and Billy and tries to ration out the time she looks to the front of the room, where the CEO is standing, and behind him to where Agatha sits.

Agatha is slackened in a desk chair, phone out, not even pretending to listen to what the CEO is saying about quarterly reports. Her eyes flick up occasionally, but always go back down to her phone.

30 minutes into the meeting, Rio’s phone buzzes. She looks down at the text, and then over to where Agatha sits, face still impassive.

What were your horses names

Rio rolls her lips together. If Agatha isn’t going to let anything slip, neither is she. Petunia, she types back, and Wilbur.

Across the room, Agatha hides a smile behind her hand. Rio can still see it in the wrinkles around her eyes. Are you joking?

I was 7

Your grandparents should have intervened on your behalf

“And now our editor-in-chief, Agatha Harkness, will talk a little about readership trends this quarter. Agatha?”

“Yes,” Agatha clears her throat, tucks her phone into her slacks, and stands. She looks as if she’s about to say something and then, incredibly, as though she loses her train of thought. She opens her mouth, closes it, shakes her head. Laughs a little. “Sorry about that. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. Anyway, a lot to say this quarter—”

*

“Uh-huh. And have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?” Rio tucks the phone between her cheek and shoulder and takes out her cell phone, tapping out a message to Agatha.

Your ass looked great in those pants btw

The response is instant, is this what’s passing for romance these days?

I didn’t know you were looking for romance Rio responds and then, as quick as she can after so as to not let the moment linger, when can I come up there?

Three bubbles appear, disappear, and appear again. Rio watches her phone screen like her life depends on it. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just let me know when you’re at the login screen.”

I’m in meetings all day, responds Agatha. A few seconds later, We probably shouldn’t keep doing this in my office.

Rio considers playing it cool. But then again, why start just then? IT room then? She replies.

A minute passes. Then five, ten. Her call ends. There’s no response.

Rio does her best to stave off going full Byron, but by 7 PM she’s near despondent. Was Agatha trying to break things off? Like that? Rio skips dinner with Billy to lay on her bed and watch the ceiling fan spin, too keyed up to do anything else.

When her phone buzzes, she first assumes that it’s Billy trying to pull her out of her funk. Sorry, the message from Agatha says, that was the longest meeting of my life. I was thinking my place.

Rio sits straight up in bed, that’s ok she replies to the first part of the message, but then has no idea what to say to the second. How does she reply in a way that doesn’t make her seem desperate? She is desperate.

What are you doing right now?

Lying in bed, Rio thinks, and thinking of you, hanging out

Send me your address, I’ll send a car

Billy eyes her suspiciously when she steps into the living room, dressed for the outside world, and says, “I’m going out, don’t wait up for me.”

A beat passes. He sets his Xbox controller down and sits forward on the couch, “Rio,” He says, “I wouldn’t.”

“You don’t even know where I’m going.”

“Yes I do, because I’m not stupid.” He arches an eyebrow, “Is she paying for your Uber?”

Rio flattens her mouth. Shifts her weight from foot to foot, “She’s sending her private driver.”

“Oh my God,” He says, “You are dangerously, dangerously close to calling Variety to talk to them about Agatha Harkness ruining your life.”

“No I’m not.” Rio says, “Because I don’t care about her and she doesn’t care about me. We’re equal. It’s just sex.”

“You don’t think those other girls felt that way too?” Billy points out and, yeah. He’s not wrong. Rio isn’t even sure she’s convincing herself of her own indifference, not with the way she’s been sniffing Agatha out like a hungry dog for the last two weeks, “She’s wooing you. You’re getting wooed right now. But eventually the wooing will stop, and it’s going to drive you insane. It’s like she’s putting some funny little hex on you.”

Rio doesn’t want to hear it. She leaves the apartment anyway. The car that pulls to the curb is sleek and black with dark windows, and the man driving it is in a suit. Rio feels momentarily embarrassed that she’s wearing sweatpants and a puffer jacket that makes her look like somebody’s bodega guy.

Agatha’s townhouse is the kind of Park Slope brownstone that tricks people into moving to New York City. Hell, Rio sees it and wonders if living in the City is really that bad. She even has a parking space, Jesus.

“Ms. Harkness said that you can go straight in.” Says the driver, not looking back at Rio.

“Uh,” Says Rio, “Okay. Thanks a lot.”

She knocks once still, her manners winning out over following directions. Then, Rio turns the knob and steps from the cool New York City sidewalk to the warmth of Agatha’s house, which Rio had expected to skew Patrick Batemen but is, instead, as loud and cluttered as Agatha herself.

The foyer is covered in William Morris wallpaper and there’s a bench upon which Agatha has thrown much nicer outer clothes. A pair of salt-stained boots lays askew under it.

“Rio?” A voice drifts in from down the hall, past the stairs, “Is that you?”

“It’s a burglar, actually,” Rio calls back, turning to look at her windswept hair and chapped cheeks in the foyer mirror, “I’m here to steal all of your brass fixtures.”

“I barely know what you’re talking about half the time,” Agatha’s head pokes around the end of the hallway. She’s in a kimono and her hair is pulled up in a bun, “Come on, the kitchen’s this way.”

The kitchen, which spills into the living room, has the whimsy of a heroine in a Nora Ephron movie. There’s even a hanging pot chandelier over the island, which Rio hadn’t known existed outside of silver screen depictions of upper middle class families.

Agatha has laid out a bowl of olives and a bottle of wine, although Rio understands intuitively that it’s not on her account, “Tell me that wasn’t your dinner.” She says archly. They’re standing across the island from one another, Rio dressed down from her jacket, Agatha leaning on her elbows next to the olive bowl.

“I had bread earlier.” She hedges, selecting an olive, popping it into her mouth, spitting the pit into another bowl, “How did you like Tommy?”

“Does that move impress a lot of women?”

A smile pulls at Agatha’s mouth, “But baby,” She croons, her voice breathy, feminine, teasing, “You’re the first.”

Rio rolls her eyes, does her best to seem disaffected, but it hurts her stomach to think about. She’s putting some weird hex on you. Rio shakes off the Billy in her head and his annoying logic.

Before the moment can linger, Agatha’s phone buzzes on the countertop. Even from her disadvantageous angle, Rio can see that the name on it says Mother with a knife emoji, skull emoji, blood drop emoji, and crying emoji.

Agatha stabs the decline button and stuffs two more olives in her mouth. “Does she call a lot?” Rio asks lightly.

“Only when she’s not trying to psychically tell me how disappointed in me she is. Thank God plane tickets from Palm Springs are so expensive right now.”

“How could she be disappointed in you?” Rio blurts without thinking. Agatha stutters, recovers, and spits the pits into their bowl, “I mean look at…this.” She gestures broadly to the apartment, “You’re clearly doing well for yourself.”

“I could cure cancer tomorrow and she’d never forgive me for the lesbian thing,” She says before taking a long sip of wine. It stains her mouth when she’s finished drinking, “I have this recurring dream where I pay for research that proves that being gay is genetic on your mother’s side and then I tell her it’s her fault to her face.” Rio clears her throat and becomes suddenly very interested in the wood grain on the butcher block countertop, “Go on,” Says Agatha somewhat testily, “Say what you’re going to say.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Those big brown eyes aren’t doing you any favors. You look like a sad, curious chipmunk.”

“I guess I always wondered why you never just confirmed it,” Rio says, “All those stories, rumors, whatever.”

“It does nothing for me to engage with gossip.” Agatha replies flippantly.

“But…it’s not gossip. It’s true.“

“So what? Lots of things are true that aren’t worth the wasted breath on talking about them. I’m a dyke, big deal. It’s New York City in 2024.“

“Sure, but…” Rio begins, almost loses her nerve, but then continues when Agatha gives her a look like she’s not about to let it go that easily, “So you never wanted to have, like, a partner?” Rio probes, “A family, or anything? You can’t really do that if you’re…”

“If I’m what?” Agatha deadpans. In the closet, Rio thinks, and then figures that this will get her into spanking territory, and not in a good way.

“Why aren’t you more discreet?” She asks instead.

This is, of course, a worse thing to say than her original thought, if only by a hair. Rio sees this in the way that Agatha’s shoulders tense, then she flips her hair, pressing the flyaways back with the palm of a manicured hand. She reaches for an olive, stops herself, and then lays her hand flat on the countertop. “I went to a meditation retreat to answer the same question. And to try to cure myself of the incessant desire to sleep with women who ruin my life,” She says, “And almost immediately upon returning I was seduced by my IT girl not once, not twice, but several times. In fact, she’s in my kitchen right now, asking me nosy questions about my personal life.” Agatha eyes her, “So I guess I still don’t know.”

“Okay.” Murmurs Rio. She’s trying to crawl away from the land mine even though it’s already blown her legs off.

Agatha pushes the olive bowl toward her, “Want one?”

Rio blinks, “Sure.”

“Great, bring them with you to the bedroom,” Agatha says, then, with a flip of her hair, she rounds the kitchen island and takes off down the hallway.

*

Agatha’s sheets have a thread count in the thousands, and Rio still gets olive juice on them, even though Agatha warns her against it. Maybe if she’d been a little more convincing. But, in truth, Agatha hasn’t been convincingly cruel to Rio in weeks. It’s like she’s barely even trying anymore.

In the end, once the two of them are naked in bed, Agatha forgets about the olives and slips on top of her. Her skin is softer than the sheets; it glows in the streetlight that breaks through from her curtains. When Rio slides inside of her, first with one finger, then another, she sighs and lets her head loll back. Rio thinks it makes her look about ten feet tall.

That ravenousness comes over her again, the kind that she now associates only with Agatha. Feeling it is the relief of meeting an old friend. Rio grips her hip with one hand and pushes up into her, hard, the way they’ve always done before. A fast, insatiable coupling of bodies.

But Agatha stops her, a hand on Rio’s chest, over the stupid Tony Soprano chain. “I’m still a little sore from last time,” She murmurs, and begins to grind her hips down. The movement is languid, almost lazy. “Let’s go slow tonight, okay?”

She leans over Rio, her hair bracketing them, and places a wet kiss against her mouth. Rio moves her fingers again, matching Agatha’s movement. They go slow.

Slower means more time for Rio to run her free hand over Agatha’s body, to feel its curves and dips. More time for their kisses to linger, hot and open, more time to be inside Agatha, to curl her fingers and feel the shaky moan that results in the shell of her ear. They fill the quiet of the bedroom wall to wall with the noises they make; the creaking of the bed, the press and pull of their mouths. The way Agatha says oh, over and over again, as if each movement is a pleasant surprise.

Agatha’s orgasm comes slower too. Rio can feel it as it gathers. Agatha’s rhythm stutters, her moans become choked off. She takes Rio’s chain between her fingers and clutches it, then finally leans down again, down so that their faces are close.

“Oh, God,” She sighs, “Oh, fuck, baby, that feels so good.” And then, “Don’t stop, Rio, don’t stop, please don’t stop—”

Rio can feel those words somewhere aching and deep in her body. They feed that hungry mouth until she can’t help herself, and she pushes them into a sloppy, frantic rhythm. She needs Agatha, can feel that need in her cunt, and in a deep, dark place in her chest. She doesn’t want Agatha’s orgasm to be slow, she wants it to tear Agatha apart. Rio sits up, arm wrapped around Agatha’s waist, and fucks her until she yells, clenches around Rio’s fingers, digs her hand into her chest.

They collapse back onto the bed together. Agatha’s head on Rio’s chest, hair wild on her face and the pillows beneath them. Rio’s fingers slip out of her. They breathe together. Before Rio really realizes what’s happening, she’s holding Agatha to her chest, her nose pressed to the crown of her head.

There is a long, peaceful silence in the room. It’s punctuated only by the ambient noises of the street below. The cars and their lights. The people and their talking. For a moment, it feels like the whole world is spinning with them as its center. Agatha warm in Rio’s arms. Her body limp from its orgasm.

But Agatha seems to startle after a moment and rises up on her elbows to look at Rio. Her pupils are big as saucers, her face pink. Her lips are parted, leaving her with an expression almost of wonderment.

Agatha is beautiful—has she ever noticed that about her before, really? Stupid from endorphins and sex and the sudden, pleasant mundanity of this revelation, Rio smiles. Agatha frowns. She rolls off of her, and the spell is broken.

“Thanks for that,” Agatha says, clutching the sheets to her chest and wiping under her eye. Her voice has taken on a strange, perfunctory edge. “And for coming over on such short notice.”

“Sure.” Rio is unmoored. She clutches her sheets to her chest too, only because she feels like she’s supposed to. In the back of her mind, she’s wondering why Agatha isn’t still in her arms, the place they’d just been the happiest.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Agatha gropes for and retrieves her kimono, tying it tightly around her middle, “Tommy is out there whenever you’re ready to go, but, uh, I have an early morning tomorrow, so…”

“Yeah,” Rio responds dumbly. Where is that moment they’d just been in — she wants to go back to it so badly, “I’ll be gone before you’re finished with your shower.”

“Great.” Agatha smiles tightly, looks as though she

might say something else, and then seemingly decides against it. She disappears into the en suite and Rio is left alone in her bedroom.

She hears the shower turn on. Rio knows she should move, should dress, but she feels frozen in time. Some kind of funny hex. Agatha’s face, open and flushed from the things Rio had just done to her. She rubs the heels of her hands into her eyes—what the fuck is happening to her?

Rio reaches over to the nightstand where the olives and wine still sit. She takes one from its bowl, sucks the meat from it, the juice. Works her tongue around the pit. She almost puts the pit back into the bowl, then she glances behind her at the door to the en-suite where Agatha is still showering Rio’s touch from her body.

She spits the pit onto the floor and hopes Agatha steps on it later. She hopes it hurts her foot. Then, she stands to get redressed.

*

Realistically, Rio should have taken the hint. It would have been easier, maybe, if Agatha had taken her own hint. This is a rare circumstance, Rio thinks, in which it would be less painful to be ghosted. Less painful for Agatha to stop calling. To stop looking,

But Agatha does call, and she definitely still looms looks. Rio goes to her townhouse enough that she starts giving Tommy video game recommendations for his sons’ Christmas presents. Once, a very long time ago, she’d had control over this situation. She’d sat in Agatha’s chair at Agatha’s desk and looked her in the eye and demanded an apology and Agatha had given it to her.

Now, she’s not sure what Agatha would have to do to sever this connection. She calls, and Rio comes—it’s as simple and as agonizing as that. Servile as a dog, and heart strangely tender.

Once, she arrives to find a jacket in the foyer that’s just this side of too androgynous for Agatha’s tastes. It hangs beside the mirror like a taunt, reminding Rio of the life Agatha lives outside of their relationship. That Rio is not the first, and perhaps she is already not the last—but one in a crooked line up of women.

That night, she sucks a hickey into Agatha’s breast so large and dark that it’ll linger for weeks. Rio figures that this other person, this not-Rio person, should have to suffer through a reminder that Rio, too exists.

After, when Agatha is tying her kimono, she says, “Take that jacket that’s hanging up on your way out and leave your old one.”

Rio, still a little dazed, sits up on her elbows, “What?”

“The brown one,” Agatha says, “By the mirror. Doesn’t it fit?”

“I haven’t tried it on.”

“It’ll fit,” Agatha says with a dismissive wave, “I have an eye for sizes.”

“What about my jacket?”

“I’m taking that jacket to a farm upstate.” Rio flops back down on the bed with a groan, covering her face, “Rio, you were supergluing the holes shut in it—I mean, my God.”

The jacket, which fits Rio like a glove, makes her irritable. When Billy sees her in it, he raises his eyebrows and folds his lips in. When Agatha sees her in it the next time they’re on the elevator together, her eyes linger appreciatively.

It’s just enough outside of Rio’s taste level and budget that it feels as though Agatha has lifted her leg and taken a piss on her. Or outfitted her in her letterman’s jacket. It becomes even worse when, a few weeks later, the whole IT room gets outfitted with replacements to their old, shitty computers.

Brand new machines, hardware, the works. The man who installs them says, “Agatha Harkness insisted on it after the system outage.”

And Rio knows that Alice and Jen are not stupid enough to hear that, see the fucking jacket, and not start putting some pieces together. They stop joking about it altogether, which is more damning by far than the alternative.

The worst part is that Rio knows this, and still she wears it—wears it every single day.

Stupid jacket. Stupid Agatha.

How can she be Agatha’s when Agatha doesn’t really feel like her’s? Does Agatha see other women, she wonders, and does she laugh when she’s with them the way she laughs with Rio? Do they too have gifted jackets that cost hundreds of dollars?

Does she call them baby when they’re inside of her? Does she pretend, afterward, that she hadn’t said anything at all?

When she next goes into Agatha’s office to help with her computer, she’s coiled up so tight that she can barely look at her. Rio sits stiffly in front of the keyboard while Agatha lounges on the couch, looking up every now and then with a furrow in her brow.

“Are you alright today?” Agatha asks after a few minutes, “You seem…rigid.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re coming over tonight? I can get us food from that place you like.”

Agatha has returned her attention to a pile of front page layouts. Rio looks at her over the top of the computer. Something inside her spills over.

“Are you seeing other people?”

Agatha looks up, straight ahead at the wall at first, and then over to Rio, “What?”

“Are you dating—fucking—other women?”

The question sits in the room with them as though a person. Agatha laughs, “Why do you want to know?”

Rio’s shoulders stiffen, “So you are.”

“Rio, unless you think I’ve somehow invented a machine that puts me in multiple places at once, there’s no way that I, a nearly 40 year old woman, am running a magazine, keeping you busy, and also entertaining some anonymous third lover,” Another slightly harried laugh, “Are you seeing somebody else?”

“Maybe.” Rio replies, tilting her chin up. Agatha’s smile takes on a funny sort of dimension.

“Okay, Romeo,” She says, tilting her head, “I wasn’t aware you cared.”

“I don’t.” Rio replies pitifully, shoulders slumping.

“Oh,” Agatha says, nodding her head, still smiling, “Sure, that makes perfect sense. So—tonight?“

“What if I wanted you to come to my apartment?”

“Your apartment?” Agatha squints at her, “Where do you live again?”

“Bushwick.”

“Bushwick. Rio—”

“I just think it’s weird that I’ve been to yours so often but that you’ve never been to mine.”

“Is that what this is all about? This…” Agatha gestures between them. Rio shrugs, although it is, of course, not even scratching the surface of what this is all about, “…strangeness? Don’t you have a roommate? Doesn’t your roommate also work here?”

“He’s gone this weekend,” Rio replies, “At his boyfriend’s.”

Agatha has always had a startling acuteness to her, like she’s thinking 5 steps ahead of whatever situation she’s in. Generally speaking, Rio is able to keep up to her, at least to steps 3 or maybe 4. She feels totally adrift that afternoon when Agatha studies her. “I don’t generally go to other people’s apartments,” She says, “Particularly when they have roommates that are also my employees.

Curiously, she doesn’t say no.

“Fine,” Rio sniffs, petulant, “So don’t come.”

“But would it make you happy?” She asks, “Would it prevent further arguments as to…who I am and am not fucking?”

Rio shrugs one shoulder, refusing to commit totally. Agatha rolls her eyes. They agree on 7:30.

Agatha arrives on Rio’s stoop at 7:17 with a 6-pack of Miller High Life.

“Is this a joke?” Rio asks, taking the beer. She tries to focus on that and not how good it feels, after a long day, to see Agatha step into her foyer and shake a light dusting of snow off her scarf. Even to see her take in the grim state of the building with a judgmental eye.

“No joke,” She says, “The man at the bodega assured me that this is a local delicacy.”

“Har har.” Says Rio.

She and Billy’s apartment isn’t a room at the Ritz, but it’s not a total shithole either. Agatha makes one shoebox joke upon seeing the kitchen but otherwise does not seem like she’s about to call the ASPCA regarding Rio’s living conditions.

She does insist, after getting a cold High Life in her hand, on the full tour. So Rio takes her around. She saves her bedroom for last. She’s never been scared to take a girl in there before, but Agatha’s got her palms sweating and everything.

“And this is yours, I presume?” She asks, gesturing to the door that leads to Rio’s room. Rio shrugs.

“One way to find out.”

Inside, Agatha makes no comment for a few long seconds. She walks the perimeter, absorbing everything with a keen eye. Rio feels for a moment like she’s seeing these things through Agatha’s gaze—her slightly rumpled bedsheets, her painted shut window. The dumb gaming computer.

Agatha pauses at her dresser and picks up a photograph. She looks over her shoulder with a lopsided smile, “Petunia, I presume?”

In the photograph, a 7-year old Rio holds a speckled horse by the lead. She’s grinning a big, gap-toothed smile. 30-year-old Rio feels a flush of embarrassment.

“Yes.”

“Is that a cowboy hat?” Rio, hatefully, blushes as Agatha clicks her tongue affectionately and sets the photograph down. Next, she picks up the small toy truck that had been sitting next to it.

“My grandpa gave me that,” Rio hastens to say, afraid that Agatha is going to think that she just collects Hot Wheels in her spare time or something, “It looks like the truck we were fixing up together before he…” She pauses and clears her throat. Agatha sets the toy down and rolls it over the surface of the dresser a few times before moving on.

Finally, she drops to Rio’s bed with a little bounce. Rio regards her leaning against the adjacent wall with her arms crossed.

“I have a thing about subway clothes in the bed.”

“Rio, you and I both know that I did not ride the subway here this evening.” Agatha deadpans. But when Rio shrugs, sticking her tongue in her cheek, she seems to get the hint and stands.

Her jacket slumps to the floor. Her socks. Then, Agatha shimmies from her pants and tosses those aside too. Her underwear are lace again, green this time, and Rio wonders with a flash of heat if they’re part of a matching set.

“Shirt, too.” She says, “Just to be safe.”

They are part of a matching set. Agatha sits back on the bed and reclines onto her elbows, giving Rio a beseeching look that is definitely doing every ounce of the damage that Agatha is intending for it. Rio feels like she’s about to get on her knees and crawl to her.

“Come here,” She says, “I’m getting cold.”

Instead, Rio goes to the nightstand and opens the top drawer. She retrieves from it a dildo attached to a black harness, holding it up to Agatha’s scrutinizing gaze.

“What do you think?” She asks, unsure what to make of Agatha’s lifted eyebrow and the twitch at the corner of her mouth. Agatha slides back on the bed and then rolls onto her stomach, up on her elbows. She kicks her feet up behind her.

“Take those subway clothes off,” She says, “Put that thing on, and come here.”

Perhaps this was a tremendously stupid idea, because when Agatha kisses Rio just above her bellybutton, then leans forward to suck and then bob her head once, then twice over the dildo, Rio realizes that whatever power she’d managed to claw back through the home court advantage and the element of surprise is gone.

She rolls onto her back again and drags Rio onto the bed and over her, laughing a little when the toy pokes her in the thigh, not laughing anymore when Rio lowers herself between her legs and sucks her clit into her mouth. Rio brings Agatha to a quick and messy orgasm and then clambors over her, wiping her face with the back of her forearm.

When Agatha tries to turn back on her stomach again, Rio stops her. “I want to do it like this,” She says, nudging Agatha’s thighs apart with her knee. “I want to look at you.”

A flash of something in Agatha’s eyes, but she pivots onto her back. Stretches her arms languidly over her head, presenting her body. Rio takes it. She paws at the back of Agatha’s bra until it slumps off and then showers her chest with kisses, sucks a pebbled nipple into her mouth.

“Fuck,” Rio says without thinking, “You’re gorgeous.”

Agatha pauses, then tugs Rio’s head back up to hers to deliver a sloppy kiss. With her other hand, she reaches between them to take the toy, stroke it, then guide it between her legs, “Just fuck me already,” She says, peevish and breathless, “All this talking, I—ah.”

Rio pushes in and delights in the way that cuts Agatha off mid-lecture. She’s so wet, so ready for her, that it takes nothing at all. Agatha’s legs immediately go to wrap around her lower back, locking her into place.

Rio presses their foreheads together, rocks her hips. Agatha has her eyes clenched shut.

“Look at me,” Rio says. She feels invincible like this, somehow. Like there’s no way that Agatha could deny her. To bolster her point, Agatha does open her eyes, fixing a glassy look to Rio, “You feel so good, you feel—fuck,” Rio pauses to kiss her, “I want to be inside of you forever.”

Agatha moans, high and broken, and wraps her arms around Rio’s shoulders so that she’s effectively clinging to her. Something snaps in Rio and she goes harder, faster, a sloppy frenzy of hips and hands and kisses and words falling out of her mouth that she barely recognizes she’s saying, things like so perfect and so wet and, more nonsensically, look at you, look at you—

Agatha’s orgasm as it builds is so frenetic, so enthusiastic, that Rio feels as though they share ownership of it. When Agatha’s body short circuits, so does Rio’s, when it tenses, so does Rio—when she moans, long and loud, almost a sob, Rio says, yes, yes, yes, as if egging them both on.

Except, when Agatha slumps back, spent and exhausted, Rio keeps going, still in pursuit of some invisible conclusion, until Agatha stops her with a hand on her chest. “Hang on, hang on,” She says, pausing Rio’s movement, guiding the toy out of her with a wince. She pushes on Rio’s shoulder until she’s up on her knees, and then her back. She pulls at the straps and tosses the toy to the side of the room. “I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Agatha says with an almost absent-minded fondness, “Just give me a second, I’ve got you.” Then with her head between Rio’s thighs, then with her tongue on Rio’s skin.

After, she lays with her cheek on Rio’s stomach for a long time. Rio strokes her fingers through the hair at Agatha’s temple, half expecting a repeat of that first night at her house. That Agatha will rise and realize where she is and what she’s doing and leave.

But the moment never comes. And enough time passes that it seems like it’s never going to.

Eventually, Agatha tilts her head so that she’s looking up at Rio through her eyelashes, “I’m starving.”

“But you just ate.” Rio deadpans, earning herself a pinch on the skin of her hip. She laughs and squirms, “Okay,” She says, “Yeah, I’ve got a place in mind.”

The place she takes Agatha is, in her estimation, one of the last great dive bar burgers in the City. It's dimly lit but for some neon signs and the staff is mean, and everything comes in a red, paper lined basket. She keeps waiting for the moment that Agatha will balk and ask to be taken to a classier joint, but she doesn’t.

“What kind of wine do you have?” Agatha asks the waitress when she comes to dismissively take their order.

“Red,” The woman says, “And white.”

Agatha smiles tightly, “Red it is.”

There’s something odd about watching Agatha, now dressed in one of Rio’s t-shirts and Rio’s sweatpants, loose and easy from sex, eat a $10 cheeseburger with boxed red wine in a drinking glass next to her.

“You know how I said I’m not seeing anybody else?” Agatha says, wiping some ketchup from the corner of her mouth with the heel of her hand, “I lied. Things are getting pretty serious with this burger.”

“Oh?” Rio replies, smiling, and swats Agatha away when she reaches for one of her fries. Agatha takes one anyway, “You have your own!”

“They taste better when they’re somebody else’s,” Agatha pops the fry into her mouth, “Anyway, I’m thinking of asking her to go steady.”

“The burger?” Rio raises an eyebrow, “You’re going to ask the burger to be your girlfriend? Not anybody else in this bar.”

“Is there somebody else I should be asking?” Agatha asks, all faux confusion. She juts her thumb back at where their waitress is wiping down the bar, “I don’t think I’m her type.”

Rio leans over the table. Squints at Agatha. “You can be a real asshole, you know that?”

“No,” Agatha replies nonchalantly, “Actually, nobody’s ever told me that before.”

The walk back is cold, but they take it close to each other, hands brushing. Rio does not think that Agatha is the hand holding type. She doesn’t even consider herself the hand holding type, or she hadn’t before she thought about doing it with Agatha.

In front of her apartment, Agatha pulls out her phone, “Thanks for this,” She says, “I had a really nice time.” The way she says it, like the evening is already in the past tense, makes Rio’s hair stand on end.

“Do you have to go?” Rio asks, hating how childish her voice sounds, “Billy isn’t coming back until Monday. You could spend the night.”

“Rio.” Agatha sighs and slips her phone back into her pocket. Rio takes a half step away from her, bristling from the condescending tone she’d just said her name with.

“I just don’t know why we can’t stay together,” She continues, doubling down, “We had a nice time. We always have a nice time together.”

Maybe it’s because it’s the first time either one of them has said as much out loud, but Agatha’s face changes. It softens almost imperceptibly, “You know what this is, I’m not—”

“Do I?” Rio sticks her hands in her pockets, shrugs her shoulders up to her ears, “I’m starting to feel a little jerked around.”

And oh, in an instant she hears it. The pathetic, childish way that she’s talking. She realizes that it is happening to her. She’s been wooed and she’s about to be unwooed. She’s been hexed.

“I’m not trying to jerk you around,” Agatha’s voice takes on that warm, placating tone that has always, always worked on Rio in the past. It’s working on her now, and she sort of hates herself for it, “But this is not going to be a normal relationship where we go on dates and…have sleepovers.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not.”

“Well maybe I don’t want it, then,” Rio replies hotly because, yes, suddenly this situation feels untenable. She is seeing herself not as Rio Vidal but as the 7th in a lineup of women identical in their piteousness. When had that even happened? “We should just stop.”

Agatha says, “What?”

“We should just stop. We should go back to what we were doing before, without having sex.” Rio sniffs petulantly, “I think that would be best.”

Agatha’s face tenses as if she’s not comprehending the words that Rio is saying. She looks almost faintly disgusted by it. Her head rears back just slightly, “No.” She says.

Rio blinks, “Excuse me?”

“I said, no.” Agatha repeats.

“You can’t just tell me no when I try to break up with you.”

Agatha shakes her head, “How about this—I’ll tell you what I want—I want for us to drop this conversation tonight,” She ticks each of these off with a finger, “And to not do something silly like end our relationship. And now you,” She gestures to Rio, “Should please tell me what I need to do for you to achieve that.”

“Why does this feel like a negotiation?”

“Because we’re negotiating.” Agatha replies, “Now, please. The floor is yours. I’m eager to hear your demands, which I trust will be extremely reasonable.”

Rio considers for a long moment that she isn’t going to engage with this. There might even be a second in time in which she has totally convinced herself that she won’t do it. But when she opens her mouth, she says, “Did you do this with all the other women you dated?”

“No, Rio,” Agatha says. This time, there’s no trace of irony in her voice, no teasing. She doesn’t even hesitate, “I never went to their rent controlled Bushwick apartments either. You’re the first.”

Rio sniffs and crosses her arms. She looks at the sidewalk, already feeling herself caving in, “I want you to spend the night. And I want to talk about this more tomorrow morning.”

There is a two or three second pause, but Agatha reaches out to open the front door. She holds it ajar and gestures for Rio to go first, “Go on,” She says, “Let’s go upstairs.”

Rio’s heart, badly as she wishes for it to be indifferent, catches. She goes forward. She steps through the threshold.

*

The next morning, Rio wakes with a face full of brunette hair and a warm, soft body in her arms. It’s been so long that she’s briefly confused, but, at that point, she would know Agatha’s smell with her eyes closed. It relaxes her.

“Do you typically sleep in until 9 AM?” Agatha asks, turning her body to face Rio, “Or did I just wear you out last night?”

“I usually sleep in later than 9 AM,” Rio grumbles, “Much later.”

“Now, now,” Agatha taps her nose, “That’s not the behavior of a champion, is it?”

They make love, once and slowly, before emerging into the kitchen. The breakfast options are limited, but Agatha complains only once about her only choices being Honey Nut Cheerios or buttered toast. And, to Rio’s surprise, she picks the Cheerios.

Breakfast is spent in relative, easy silence, other than the sound of crunching, sipping, coffee pouring. There’s light coming in from the kitchen window where a spider plant hangs, a piece of stained glass from one of Billy’s ill fated artistic endeavors leaning against the sill.

“So,” Agatha says, elbows on the small, round table, and taking a sip of coffee from a chipped le creuset mug, “Let’s talk.”

“Now?”

“Why not?” She shrugs, “I’m fucked, I’m fed.” She quirks an eyebrow at Rio, “You’re not scared, are you?”

Rio absolutely is. “I’m not.”

Before she can open her mouth to say something more, there is the sound of keys pushing into the lock, the door handle jangling, then pushing open. Agatha only has time to shoot her a singular, confused look, and then Billy is waltzing in, looking at his phone.

“Hi, hi, sorry, I know. I forgot my phone charger and Eddie doesn’t have shit at his place. I’ll be two secs.” He doesn’t look up, waving as he passes the kitchen and dining area, “How was your night? I thought you were seeing—” He finally turns, and the smile slides off his face, “Oh my God? I mean—hi…Agatha.”

Agatha winces, “Hi…you.”

“Agatha, this is Billy,” Rio says, unsure of how else to proceed. She’s glaring at Billy so hard that she thinks she might be about to laser holes in his head, “Billy is my friend who I told pretty explicitly to text me if he needed to come to the apartment.”

“Yes, well, perhaps Billy’s phone died,” He says pointedly to Rio, who looks away, “Okay, well, I’m just gonna—” Billy gets his phone charger from his room and goes back to the front door, cutting through the now icy silence by saying, “We’ll catch up later, Rio.” Before he exits and closes it behind himself.

Agatha holds her gaze for a second or two longer, the warmth that she had previously radiated now replaced with the cool steel that Rio associates with before-Agatha. Rio prickles. Agatha runs her hands over her face.

“This was—”

“Don’t say ‘mistake’.” Agatha takes her hands from her face and regards Rio.

“This was a decision made based on poor judgment.”

Rio laughs, once, humorless, “Thanks, that makes me feel awesome.”

“Well, what do you want? I just got caught by an employee, in his apartment, having a morning after bowl of Cheerios and Folgers, with another employee,” Agatha tilts her head back, “Oh Christ, the headlines are running through my head already.”

“Billy won’t tell anybody.”

“How am I supposed to know that? I don’t know Billy.”

“Okay, so what if he does tell? Would that really suck so badly?”

“Yes, Rio, it would suck. Really badly. Doing this with an employee is a whole lot different than doing it with some random NYU coed.”

“You’re not technically my boss.”

“Yeah, HR loves it when people start throwing around words like ‘technically’ before describing a relationship.”

“I just don’t buy that this is the issue.” Rio says, “You’re Agatha Harkness, you can do whatever the hell you want.”

“So what’s the issue then? Enlighten me.”

“You don’t want to have to acknowledge that you’re gay,” Rio replies, “And you especially don’t want to acknowledge that you’re being gay with me.” Agatha scoffs, and she flips her hair and crosses her arms, but she doesn’t deny this. It stings. Agatha must see something of this on her face, because her expression eases somewhat.

“It’s not about you,” She says, “There’s a lot more riding on this for me than you might think.”

“I’m sure.” Says Rio. She purses her lips. “But then maybe we’re just not compatible.”

“Look, Rio,” Agatha relaxes her posture. She lays her hands out, palm up on the table, as if asking for Rio to hold them. Rio folds her arms and jams her hands into her armpits, “What do you want? Seriously, tell me. I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“This isn’t funny. I’m not negotiating with you right now.” Rio says, “This sucks. I feel like I never know what you’re doing or who you’re with, and I feel like I can’t ask you, and I can’t tell anybody else either.”

Agatha works her jaw, runs a tongue over her lips, says, “So what would make that better? New apartment? Car? Fuck, a horse? A farm? Give me something to work with here.”

“I want you to tell me that you like me.”

“Goddamnit, Rio,” Agatha hangs her head for a moment before looking back up, “Don’t pretend to be stupid when I know that you aren’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you right now.”

“Then I want you to tell people about us. Not just at our job. I want people to know that you’re my—” The end of her sentence hangs there in the air, suspending them in time for a moment. Agatha pinches her lips together.

“It’s not that easy.”

“Okay, well,” Rio pushes back from the table. She feels a curious sense of calm roll over her. For all the ways in which she’d been trying to avoid this outcome over the last few weeks, it feels so inevitable now that there’s almost no use in fighting it. She gathers Agatha’s jacket from the hook, her scarf, her bag. She brings it over and lays it out on the table in front of Agatha, who has a dumbfounded expression on her face, “It’s been nice, I guess.”

“Wait a second,” Agatha says, looking at her things laid out in front of her, “We’re not done here.”

“We are.” Rio says. “I am.”

Agatha seems to consider this a moment, then stands, slipping on her jacket and toeing on her boots. Rio goes to the door. Opens it. She waits for Agatha to leave.

Just on the other side of the threshold, Agatha takes a deep breath and says: “We’ll take a few days to cool off. Then, we can talk more.”

Rio suppresses an eye roll, “Goodbye, Agatha,” She says, and shuts the door.

*

Rio walks into her kitchen, pizza in hand, and promptly trips over a glass vase, sending water and an ostentatious bunch of roses crashing to the floor. She frowns. She’s tired of being foiled by bouquets in her own home.

“Billy!” She calls. He emerges from his bedroom and his eyes immediately go to the pizza in her hands.

“Praise be,” He says, and goes for the box. She holds it out of his reach.

“I thought I told you to give some of these to Eddie.”

Rio stands in a kitchen packed floor to ceiling with floral arrangements. They cover every flat surface. The sink has been unusable for a full day—it’s full of cut daisies. a vine keeps ticking her cheek. She pushes it out of the way with a free hand.

Billy rolls his eyes, “I did,” He says, “More came while you were out. I think that you forget that this woman has infinite resources.”

They take the pizza to the table, where they have to clear six vases of flowers to the floor before they’re able to place it and sit. They eat straight from the box, like feral children, but that’s just the kind of week it’s been.

“She left a note in one,” Bill says around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni, “Did you see that?”

“I don’t look at them. Did you read it?”

Billy snorts, “Of course I did. It was very graphic. Good for you, by the way.”

Rio kicks his shin under the table. They eat in companionable silence for a few minutes before Rio asks, “How did she sound in the letter?” All focus on picking the pepperonis off of her pizza so she doesn’t have to face Billy’s judgmental look during her moment of weakness. She hates Agatha. She is also wondering, at any given moment, where Agatha is and what she is doing.

“She sounded sad that her hot young girlfriend brutally dumped her.”

“We weren’t girlfriends.”

“O-kay.” Billy raises his eyebrows high, “Whatever. Is it wrong that it was a little humanizing?”

“Yes.” Rio fixes him with a disbelieving look, “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“Rio, I am on your side.” He pauses, “Except about the jacket,” He amends, “You really should have kept the jacket.”

*

The thing is, now that Agatha is out of the picture, Rio’s bearings are gone again. Her job had been injected with fun, and promise, and excitement, and now it’s another thing to suffer through while she daydreams about better times and other places. The City had been at its most seductive when she was in love and self destructive. Now it just seems tarnished and gray.

It’s impressive to her that Agatha waits a week before trying to see her again, which is not to give credit where it very much is not due. She puts in a ticket this time, perhaps because Rio has blocked her phone number and she knows that strong arming her via a messenger wouldn’t end well.

Rio takes it rather than pushing it off to Jen or Alice. A week is already too long to have lived in this washed-out limbo. When she goes to Agatha’s office, the first thing she says when she shuts the door behind herself is: “You need to stop sending me flowers.”

Agatha, who is sitting on her couch with a coffee table book open next to her, raises her eyebrows. Unfortunately, she looks hot that day—probably a calculated move on her part, and a rookie mistake on Rio’s. “Fine,” Agatha says with a shrug, “But you have to tell me what to send instead.”

“Nothing,” Rio says firmly, “We’re broken up. I don’t want to receive anything from you.”

“I don’t accept that,” Agatha parries, “There’s no reason for us to stop seeing each other.”

“There are a few reasons. We talked about them.”

“If you want to be exclusive, we can be exclusive,” Agatha says, “We already were. You can ask me what I’m doing, who I’m with. I don’t care.”

“And what are you going to tell people about me, then?” Agatha purses her lips. She smooths a hand over the fabric of the skirt she’s wearing. She says nothing to this, “Okay, so—there’s your reason.”

“Everything else could be the way that you want it,” Agatha continues, bunching her skirt up in a fist, “All of the important stuff. Dinners, movies, spend the night, whatever. I won’t fuck anybody else, and neither will you. There shouldn’t be a hang up here about it having a signed document with HR or,” She unclenches her fist to waive the hand in the air, “A coming out spread in Vogue.”

“So then what?” Rio says, “I spend forever behind the scenes of your life? What if we wanted to get married? What if I wanted to have a family?” Agatha says nothing, “That’s what I mean. I am not going to be another one of those stupid girls that gets their heart broken by you.”

“You already aren’t!” Agatha looks exasperated now, “Do you think I did this for any of them? I’m trying very hard not to break your heart, you’re the one fighting me about it.”

“I’m 30,” Rio says, “I didn’t suffer through being gay in Oklahoma to come here and be in the closet in New York City. That makes no sense.”

“I just need you to be reasonable for a second. Do you think this is easy for me? This is my career. I would not have made it to where I am today if I was out,” She scoffs, “Waving a pride flag in the Village.”

“Who told you that,” Rio asks, “Your mother?”

Agatha erupts in a manic, humorless laugh. She opens her mouth and shuts it, then shakes her head. She is visibly unraveling at her ends, “You think,” She says, voice pitching, pointing at Rio, “That just because you are hot, funny, smart, and good in bed, you can come in here, into my office, and extort me.”

“You called me in here,” Rio says, “You asked me what I wanted, and I told you. If you can’t give that to me, that isn’t my problem.”

“Could you ask,” Agatha replies, “For anything else?”

“No.” Rio watches the anger, the frustration flash hot on Agatha’s face, “Do you actually have a problem with your computer?”

“I am going to throw that computer in the trash,” Agatha grits out, “And do everything on paper from now on.”

“Fine,” Rio says, opening the door to Agatha’s office. Agatha rises from the couch.

“Fine!” She shouts back, but Rio has already shut the door behind herself, and Agatha’s voice is muffled.

Rio spends the rest of the day stewing. If she had any artistic ability whatsoever, she would be making a voodoo doll of Agatha and stabbing pins into it. She starts to understand the urge to call a national publication and tell them what a jerk Agatha is. She almost can’t believe she’d laughed at those girls before. They’d so obviously been completely in the right.

By the time she’s waiting for the elevator that evening, she’s lit up like a Christmas tree. Almost trembling with righteous anger.

And then the doors slide open, and there is Agatha, standing right at the front of the crowd like she normally is.

Rio gets a good look at her face, and sees that her eyes are rimmed red like she’s been crying. In a fraction of a second, she deflates. Agatha clenches her jaw and reaches to hit the “door close” button.

“This one’s full.” She bites out, and then they’re gone.

*

Two Saturdays later, as she’s walking down the street from her apartment, Rio feels a familiar black car roll up beside her.

She rolls her eyes. Pulls out her earbuds. Stoops to the unrolled window. “Are you stalking me?”

“Only today,” Agatha says. She looks opulent in the backseat, comfortable. She’s got on a large winter jacket and has sunglasses tucked into the front of her blouse, “What would you say if I asked you to get into the car and come somewhere with me?”

“I’d say you’re blocking a fire hydrant and I’m about to call the parking authority.” Rio says, then pushes off to continue her walk. Let Agatha trail after her.

But then, Agatha says: “Rio.” And her voice is not like Rio has ever heard it before. Agatha has, at various times, sounded belittling, lustful, confident. Angry, funny. But the little warble of uncertainty is new. It makes Rio pause and look back. “You didn’t hate me not that long ago. Do you think that you can tap into that feeling for a second and get in the car?”

Rio goes to the front window and taps on it. Tommy rolls it down. “Tommy,” She asks, “Is she taking me somewhere to kill me?”

“No ma’am,” Says Tommy, which is good enough for Rio.

The ride is 10 minutes long and dead silent. Rio sits crushed at the opposite end of the back seat and Agatha doesn’t try to disturb her. She only vaguely tracks where they’re going—into Ridgewood, and then deeper still into Queens, until they’re turning through industrial streets dominated by trucking companies and warehouses.

Rio furrows her brow when they pull up in front of a garage door on a narrow, otherwise empty street. She looks at Tommy through the partition and wonders why he would lie to her.

“Come on,” Says Agatha, putting on her sunglasses. She opens her door and steps out, “This is it.”

Rio shivers on the street while Agatha takes a little, tagged ring of keys from her pocket and uses one of them to open the padlock on the garage door and heft it up. When her eyes catch on what is inside the garage, she pauses. Her brain refuses for a moment to process the data.

“What’s this?” She asks dumbly, despite seeing that it is a truck. Agatha looks over at it.

“I’ve been told that it’s a 1971 F100,” Agatha says, wrinkling her nose, “I don’t know what that means. But,” She glances back to Rio, “Not a bad likeness to that toy car you had, no? I couldn’t get the color right but,” She shrugs, trails off. Rio is still looking at the truck.

“Where did you find this?”

“I had Jilly scouring Craigslist. She’s much better at that than she is at staff writing.”

“Agatha…”

“Before you decide how you feel about it,” Agatha says, “Get in the truck. I have something else to say to you.”

Inside, the truck smells like old leather and cigarette smoke. There’s duct tape holding holes in the seat together, barely. Agatha gets into the passenger side of the bench seat and removes first her sunglasses, setting them on the dashboard, and then a piece of folded paper from her jacket pocket, which she passes to Rio.

“What’s this?” Rio asks, unfolding it. It’s a print out of an e-mail.

“HR wants to meet with you on Monday,” Agatha says, “All you need to do is sign a piece of paper saying that I never,” She flaps a hand around, “Pressured you into giving me sexual favors.”

“But Agatha,” Rio says, “You told me you’d give me a promotion if I—”

“Don’t, Rio, I’m serious,” Agatha snatches the paper from her hands, “If I find out you’ve made one singular metoo joke at the HR meeting I’m pushing this truck into the Hudson river.”

Rio runs her hands over the cracked leather of the steering wheel, “If you tell the company,” She says, “People are going to find out.”

“Yes,” Agatha sniffs, “Vogue, I suspect, will scent the blood on the wind in two weeks, maximum. And then God help us both. I needed to have taken you shopping starting 2 weeks ago, but there’s nothing to do about it now.”

“Shopping?”

Agatha rolls her eyes and shakes her head as if Rio is asking the stupidest questions on the planet, “They are going to ask me,” She says, “About you. At which point I will have to introduce you as my—God, girlfriend is so unbecoming—partner? And I can’t do that if you’re wearing your ex-girlfriend’s Sleater-Kinney t-shirt and Madewell jeans.”

“Agatha…”

“The truck is yours as long as you want it, no matter what. And I’ll pay for the garage. It doesn’t start, of course, but I thought you’d like that. And if you don’t want it, I’ll sell it.” Agatha sniffs and rolls her shoulders, looking like she’s bracing for a swing.

Rio’s heart stings from being too full. She almost wants to scratch it. “Is it too late to ask for a horse?” Agatha turns to her sharply. Her face is pinched, and Rio looks onto it with a kind of fondness she hadn’t previously known she was capable of.

“Yes, ha ha, very funny,” Agatha says, “I am sitting here, destitute, extorted, having been taken for everything I have by some—” She is cut off when Rio slides over the bench seat and takes Agatha’s head in her hands, kissing her. Rio feels Agatha’s body relax, and then her hands come up to grab her forearms. When they break apart, she sighs as if in relief, her eyes closed, “I missed you.”

“I missed you,” Rio kisses her again more fiercely. Their tongues slide together. Her hands go to try and find the zipper of Agatha’s jacket, “You have no idea how much I missed you.” The satisfaction of the moment has slipped into famishment. She hasn’t been with Agatha in over a week, which now feels completely insane. “Are you really going to do this?”

“I’d rather do this than lose you,” Agatha sighs, lets her head loll to the side. Then, she seems to remember herself, “Wait, wait, wait—” Now pressed against the passenger side door, she pushes Rio back. She receives Rio’s pleading look with an eye roll, “We have an appointment at Bergdorf Goodman in an hour and traffic on the bridge is going to be insane.”

Rio rolls her eyes, leans in, “Who cares, let’s go tomorrow.”

Agatha pushes her back again, face stern, “Two weeks, Rio. Be careful what you wish for.” Rio huffs, but she acquiesces and slides a few inches over. Who the fuck is Bergdorf Goodman anyway? “By the way, about the horse thing,” Agatha reaches up and flicks a plastic luggage tag that’s hanging from the rear view mirror, “There you go.”

Rio reaches up and stops it where it’s swinging back and forth. Agatha has written on it, in her curling, sophisticated script, Petunia.

“I sensed some favoritism,” Agatha says, when Rio looks at her, “Anyway, I prefer to think that all trucks are women. Oh, Christ, don’t look at me like that,” She reaches out and takes Rio’s cheek in her hand, “At least not in public. Everybody is going to figure out that you’ve turned me into a soft touch.”

“We’re not in public,” Rio says, “We’re in my truck.” She slides toward Agatha again, who now has a dark glint of mischief in her eye. Maybe her brain has trailed off from traffic on the bridge. Rio figures it’s worth a try. “I think I would be remiss if I didn’t ask to see the back seat.”

Agatha puffs out a little breath, “Shut the garage door,” She says, “You’ve got 15 minutes.”

*

The 7th and final news story about Agatha Harkness’ love life is not a scandalous hit piece, but a three-column profile in the February edition of Vogue. The tagline on the cover reads Agatha Harkness on Life, the Universe, and Finding Yourself at the End of Your 30’s.

There is surprisingly little in there directly about Agatha being gay, except that when she is asked if she has somebody special in her life, she says, “My girlfriend, Rio.” And then when asked why she’s choosing now to be open about her sexuality, she says: “It was just time. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror and say, ‘it’s time to live authentically’. It helps if you have somebody to give you a little nudge.”

“A little nudge?” Rio asks disbelievingly when she reads it, “Agatha, I basically chased you out of the closet with an ax.”

All things equal, Agatha’s decision to, quote unquote live authentically, makes Rio think about doing it as well. She lingers on with the IT department for another 6 months but eventually quits. She’s making enough money from fixing computers that the job is less of a necessity than it is a waste of her precious daylight hours.

And then, at the end of her lease with Billy, Agatha tells her to just come live at the townhouse. Even if temporary feeling, she’s not paying rent and is saving more money, and Agatha lets her take over the whole basement with gadgets and laptops.

Agatha tells her it feels good to come home at night and feel that somebody has been living there in the meantime. She doesn’t even fuss at Rio for the things Rio thought she might; a dish left in the sink, forgetting to hang the bathmat after getting out of the shower. If anything, Rio thinks she might like it in her own strange, Agatha way.

But still, Rio dreams on. She starts to look at houses and land and, a little over a year since she and Agatha had started seeing each other, she finds one. It’s not exactly Versailles but it’s on the Metro North line and has enough land for Rio to do something with, if she wants. And, more importantly, she can afford it, and afford to fix it up a little, too.

She shows Agatha on her laptop one evening, Agatha looking on her stomach and Rio with her cheek resting on the curve of her ass. There’s a long silence in the bedroom, and then Agatha says:

“I’m high maintenance, you know that.”

“I do.”

“And I can’t move full time to—” She squints at the screen, “What is this, New Paltz?”

“Just outside,” Rio says, “And I know.”

“But, if this would make you happy,” Agatha continues, “And you can find a way to keep me happy, then I think it’s fine.”

Rio smiles, thinking about how Agatha hadn’t even entertained the idea that they’d break up. In truth, she hadn’t either. They’re too obsessed with each other, too interlaced to be unraveled that easily, “I think I can make that happen.” She says.

“Two weeks a month in the Hudson Valley can only help my blood pressure, I guess,” She continues, “And I’ve been trying to one-up that bitch Ina for the better part of the last decade. I’m paying for the remodel, though. And I want full control over the wall paper.”

“Okay.” Rio agrees fondly.

“And I’m keeping the townhouse. Where else am I going to keep my secret second family?”

Rio frowns, even as she feels Agatha’s butt shake with her laughter underneath her. “That’s not funny.” She grumbles, which only makes Agatha laugh harder.

“Oh, sweetheart,” She croons, shutting the laptop, “Come here.” Agatha remains on her stomach as Rio crawls up her body, trailing kisses along her shoulders, her neck, “Long-term relationship, house in the country…” Agatha sighs as Rio sucks on her earlobe, “…all we need now is a late-in-life baby to spoil.”

Rio laughs, “Our lives are hard enough, you want to add carrying a stroller up the stairs at the Prospect Park stop to the list?”

“You’d have fun trying to get me pregnant.”

“I’m sure I would,” Rio is pushing up her nightgown now, delighted to find no underwear, “If I could.”

“Have you considered that you’re just not trying hard enough?” Agatha says, sighing and rolling her hips when Rio’s fingers find her cunt and stroke over it.

“No, I hadn’t. You are so smart.”

“I know,” Agatha moans as a finger sinks into her, “So this time consider just trying really, really hard.”

On the steps of the Met, eating $10 hot dogs, Billy tells Rio that she’s become something of a sainted figure in the IT room for their new three day in-person work week, remote August, and Agatha’s recent 50% in office work schedule. “Alice is talking seriously about framing a picture of you with some prayer candles.” He says.

Rio tells him everything, because she has never not told Billy everything, including the baby thing. He licks ketchup from his thumb and shakes his head. “Rio Vidal,” He says, “Made it from Oklahoma to Harvard to New York City, and now baby trapping Agatha Harkness so hard she thinks it’s her idea. You’re the kind of person they write folk songs about.”

“It is her idea,” Rio balks, swatting a pigeon away from her food.

Now she spends most of her time researching soil alkalinity and fruit varieties. Petunia is fixed and road safe and she drives it to a garden warehouse in New Jersey once a week to research and to stand amongst the greenery.

At night, Rio dreams stranger than she ever has before. She dreams that she is clawing her way out of the soil, unable to breathe, and then gasping for breath into the cool night. She dreams that she and Agatha are asleep in the New Paltz house, but that the apple trees that she’s planted have grown too many and too close, and that their branches and pendulous fruits knock against the windows of their bedroom.

She wakes into the New York City townhouse, gasping, heart racing. She sits up into the moonlit bedroom, clutching the blankets around her chest.

“You okay?” Agatha rolls on her back, eyes still closed, groggy. When Rio says nothing, she continues: “Was it the apple tree dream again?” Rio nods. Agatha groans and throws an arm over her eyes, “Rio, baby, just don’t plant so many of them.”

Soothed by Agatha’s voice, Rio lays back down into their olive juice-stained, 10 million thread count sheets. She takes Agatha’s body into her arms and Agatha goes there willingly, sighing in bone-deep pleasure. “You’re so smart.” She says again, and Agatha chuckles once before drifting back into slumber, her body becoming warm and pliant against Rio’s.

Rio follows her not long after. This time, she doesn’t dream at all.