Eris tells me she has something after school, so she'll pick me up after the sun goes down. We decide that we'll spend a few hours making sketches for our next painting, which justifies our meeting up. Even though all I can think about is her forgery.

Twenty minutes late, her car pulls up in my driveway. I've been waiting at the door, my stomach doing nervous flips. Eris has interior lights in her car, casting a neon blue glow. I get in, and it feels nothing like all the other times I've reluctantly stepped in her car. At first, I think it's because it's night and we're lit in blue.

But the way she's looking at me is different. She's not glaring at me now, for one. But even that isn't enough to explain it. While I've grown used to her laid back, aloof demeanor in the rides to her house, today she has her full attention on me.

We haven't talked in person since the announcement about making it to the finals last week. A.k.a. since she hugged me. Since I offered for her to move in with me in Canada, planting the possibility of an Eris and Persephone that don't fade out of each other's life after graduation.

I'm self-conscious all of a sudden. Hyper-aware of the silence, her slight movements, her breaths, the way I'm sitting, my hands folded in my lap.

"Your hair looks different," she says.

Cue even more self-consciousness. Last night, I took out each and every one of my pink-tipped braids, gave my hair a long wash and an elaborate conditioning treatment. I don't have the type of curls that sit nicely by themselves. My hair is dark brown, tightly coiled, and the only way I like to wear it natural is in two French braids.

"I need to get it re-done," I mutter.

"It looks nice."

"Don't lie to me."

She scoffs. "I have no reason to flatter you. I'm serious."

My inhale is sharp and stilted for no reason. "Okay."

She drives. At her house, her mom offers me a steaming plate of food. The Lugo clan is having dinner, though Iker and Axel are absent today. I sit at the table and finish as fast as I can without it seeming impolite—I can't sit still until I see Eris' forgery.

Finally, we get to her art studio. She's organized the place, with canvases now arranged neatly against the wall, streaks of paint cleaned off the floor. She's smiling, but she's trying not to show it, her lips pursed even as the single dimple on her right cheek reveals her excitement.

"You ready?" she asks me. "It took a long ass time. Interesting exercise, though. Getting into your head."

Her glances at me are long and lingering. My skin warms, again for no reason. In the same way I have her full attention, my mind no longer trails off into my elaborate systems of categorization and sums, instead completely anchored to her.

She leads me to an easel, where my painting, Spring in Ottawa, second place at the California Youth Painters Fair, is propped up.

"So?" I ask. "Where's the fake?"

"This is the fake, Ef." She takes a few steps and pulls up an identical painting. "This is the original."

My world stops. The Earth's responsibility to spin on its axis has now been relegated to me. How fast is it meant to go anyway? A thousand, two thousand kilometres an hour, but my mind is faster like a spinning top toy out of control until it runs out of momentum and collapses on its side.

I literally fall to my knees.

I am going to throw up. I am going to explode.

Because it's a perfect forgery. Down to the angles, the thickness of the lines, and the time-lapse effect as Ottawa shifts through different times of day, a clash of dawn and noon and sunset.

Getting into my head is an understatement—Eris must've transferred my mind into hers while I slept, sifted through every secret and memory until she figured out how to replicate my style down to the most minute details. She excised every shard of my talent and took it for herself. Judges can give me second place or nothing at all, and I thought losing was the worst feeling in the universe until now.

"What do you think?" she asks, and she looks so proud of herself, her eyes gleaming while I feel like combusting into flames, never looking her or anyone else in the face again.

"It looks good," I manage to stutter out.

"C'mon, it's perfect! Told ya—I can do your style with my eyes closed."

"I want to go home."

The brightness in her demeanor dies instantly. "What?"

"I want to leave," I repeat. Through the windows, the vast San Diego city lights shine in the darkness.

"Why?"

"My art means nothing," I say, my throat increasingly tight. "I spent a month perfecting that painting, and you copied it in a week. I'm just one of your forgeries. Forgettable."

She kneels beside me, frowning up at the canvas. "Ef, the best artists still get copied."

"By better artists," I snap. "I thought I was better than anyone dead or alive—I truly believed that—but clearly that's not the case. So thank you for humbling me. If you wanted to make me feel small, you got it."

"So now you're mad at me just because I make good copies?" she asks, tone raising to match mine in the type of animosity that's become so familiar to us, but instead of comforting me I flinch away, my eyes stinging. "It's what I was raised to do, and I fucking hate it."

She was probably surrounded in clouds of marijuana and nicotine while she painted. Maybe I could live with it if she'd done it only for me, but this is just another normal day in her life. All my sacred geometries, my calculations, my color schemes, my blending of the real with the abstract—everything I thought defined me as a legendary artist—isn't special at all. 

"You were raised to plagiarise the classics," I mutter. "Not paintings like mine."

"It's the same techniques," she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. "A little easier, kinda, since I don't need to age the paint or make cracks in the varnish to make it look vintage."

I want to tell her, I don't care, but instead what comes out is: "Did you hate copying mine?"

She pauses to hit her vape—God, I can't stand that stupid thing—as she thinks. She's no longer staring at me, and it's the only thing I'm grateful for, because my eyes are starting to water.

The art fair feels like an eternity ago. I'd rather line my room with dozens of second place trophies than live through another second of whatever this is, drowning in more held-back tears than I ever thought myself capable of, wishing for the time when things were easy and simple and binary, when any display of her talent would only motivate me to do better.

It's pathetic how much I've let my defenses fall. How entrenched I've let her become in my artistic self-worth. I'm saturated to the brim with reeking Eris Lugo energy.

"No," she finally says. "I didn't hate copying yours."

The most pathetic thing of all is the small comfort I find in those words, like I can still be special.

"I didn't think you could do it," I say, channeling all my bitterness to deflect her from my watery eyes. "But I underestimated you. Congratulations. You are officially better than me."

I don't know how to leave this off. How to tell her goodbye without insulting her first. Now that I'm aware of the amount of pressure she's under, it courses through my blood despite it not being my problem whatsoever.

"Ef?" Eris asks.

I force myself to look up at her, tears escaping while my thoughts run a million kilometres a minute.

She's doing it again. Staring at me. Not as an enemy. Not as a friend or one of the clingy girls she fools around with. I have no idea what this is.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks softly. "What are you always thinking about when you look like that?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

Why does she care anyway? To use it against me like she did with the forgery? Watching the way I paint all these weeks, studying my methods like I've been studying hers—we've spilled into each other, a contamination gone rampant, and not even our art will come out unscathed.

And then I start crying. For some reason I just start crying.

Eris grabs my wrist. "Bro, what's going on? You're worrying me."

"Don't," I whisper, pulling away. "Don't worry about me."

She should want to see me cry. She should want to see me beaten down and weak. Maybe the Eris from two months ago would.

"You're so confusing, you know that?" she says. "If I knew you would get so upset I wouldn't have done it. You were the one who asked."

I get up, grab my painting from the easel, and decide I need to leave. I can't stand to be crying in front of her, can't stand the idea of her holding my wrist and reassuring me as if I'm some over-sensitive girlfriend.

So I walk down the stairs just as she did that one day, and she rushes after me.

"Ef," she calls out. "C'mon... don't do this to me."

I pause. Tears are running down my face, beyond any effort of composure and control, so I continue. I walk out the door and the gate with no idea where to go.

It takes all but ten steps for me to start bawling my eyes on the street. I cry for myself. I cry for her. Cry because she took so much time on the forgery, trying to impress me, and I can't muster an ounce of appreciation. I shouldn't care about how that makes her feel, but there's something that's been pushing me toward some twisted sort of compassion for her, but I can't let myself surrender. I don't know what that would look like. And I don't want to find out.

"Persephone, I just wanna talk," she calls out, shutting the gate behind her, and runs to catch up to me.

"Leave me alone."

"Let me at least take you back."

"I don't want to be anywhere near you or your car."

With the hazy blue lights glinting off her piercings, pulling me into some alternate dimension more akin to Fitz's music video.

She flinches back, her brows furrowing. With no time to put her shoes back on, she's wearing these ridiculous fluffy panda slippers. We're at a standstill in her grand, deathly quiet neighborhood, surrounded by mansion lights and luxury cars, and the breeze is so cold.

"Fine," she says. "Let the body guards take you, then."

"I don't want to be in their car, either."

"So how are you getting home?"

"I can walk."

"Persephone, what the fuck. It's far."

"I'm not busy."

"Bro, you're being so stubborn right now. You're telling me you're gonna walk, like, ten miles holding that painting? It's cold."

"I'm Canadian."

"It's not safe."

"It's perfectly safe," I snap. "Not everyone has a price on their head like you."

I expect her to glare at me, but all she does is take a deep breath. Because she's trying. She's trying so hard not to lose her temper, trying in a way no one would ever have the patience for.

"Just let me drive you," she says. "Please."

She has never used such careful words. Never reached out further instead of shutting me down. So I'm the one to do it for her. I walk up to her and let my tears become venom. "When will you realize I want nothing to do with you? You're a nuisance, you're a literal criminal. You're the lowest of the low in society and give every decent Mexican a bad name."

It hits a nerve, but not the one I want. Because instead of pushing me, cursing me out, dragging me to filth... her expression parallels mine in an unbearable sadness.

She glances at the sideways canvas in my hand and quietly says, "You've been judging me all along, huh?"

"When haven't I judged you?"

"There were a couple times I thought you understood. But I guess not. You've just been listening in to get more ammo to hate me, right? To write me off as some pinche cartel princess or whatever the fuck you think of me. Think whatever you want. But remember this—you owe me. For what you did last time."

The anatomical study. Our deal. When she asked me what I would do for her, and the words out of my mouth: Anything you'd like.

"I'll pay it back somehow," I say. "Some other time."

She shakes her head. "Nope. You don't get to pick. It's my decision when you pay me back, and I'm telling you you're not walking back by yourself. You either let me take you, get you an Uber, or you can stay."

Something flashes in her hand. She must've been hiding it in the pocket of her hoodie, now glinting gold in the streetlights with the diamond Guadalupe taunting me—the third virgin to complete our trio.

"Really?" I ask. "Now you're going to shoot me if I don't leave?"

Eris doesn't point the gun at me directly, but the threat doesn't need any more saying.

"I tried to be nice," she says, "but you're not listening, and now we do things my way."

"You have serious issues. Not everything can be solved like some mafia movie."

I turn around and continue walking, which is an idiotic decision with a firearm in the picture, but instead of the soft click, readying a golden bullet for fire, she runs up to me and grabs my wrist again, pulling me toward her.

"Ef," she says, relentless. "Just stay."

She's begging me. I've never been begged to like this, like her fate is in my hands, like it will wound her mortally if I don't.

"Stay and do what?"

"You told me you wanted to sketch ideas for the painting."

"The deadline is weeks away. We have time."

Procrastination is not in my nature, but in these circumstances, I'd rather ignore her for another week before even thinking about painting at her side.

"Okay," she says. "I don't know, I guess... let's a watch a movie, then."

I want to laugh. "After everything you've done to me, to my family, you think we can just sit down and watch a movie?"

She abruptly lets go of my wrist, and pain jolts up to my elbow. "You are such a raging, stone-cold bitch."

I turn my back to her again. "I'm not here to be your distraction from all the disturbing things going on in your life. You can use someone else for that."

Before I can start walking away, I feel her arms wrap around me from behind.

She crosses them against my waist, one hand still holding the gun—that thing better be on safety—and my breath catches, but all she does is lean her head against my upper back.

And I realize I'm no longer crying.

"You're not a distraction, pendeja," she drawls, and the way she says pendeja has the exact same cadence as someone saying something like baby. "You're what I need a distraction from."

How far has she dug into my brain that she already knows how I'll physically react to this strange, sickly saccharine turn in conversation? Her desperate pleads make me seem like I'm the centre of her world, even though that will never be the case—she's mafia royalty, and I'm just a naive, sheltered nobody.

"If you need a distraction from me," I breathe, "why don't you go find that instead?"

Her arms tighten around me. "Because I missed you, you stupid bitch."

Why, why is that the thing that makes my nervous system go haywire?

"Doesn't seem like it," I say, forcing a calm tone, praying she won't feel my racing pulse throughout my entire body the tighter she grips. "You always make quite the effort to ignore me."

"What kind of rival would I be if I started inviting you over to smoke and swim and paint every day?"

There's no way I would get anything productive done with her constantly in my orbit.

"You'd want that?" I ask. "Even though we argue and put each other down 90% of the time?"

"It's masochistic as hell, yeah," she murmurs against the base of my neck. One of her hands slips under my long-sleeved shirt, lingering on the lowest point in my back. When I don't move, don't push her away, don't even make a sound, she traces my spine just like I did to her, trailing upward slowly, vertebrae by vertebrae with the same pressure I used on her, and this conjures up far more than warm cheeks and stilted breaths—I get the visual of my skin turning molten, eviscerating me completely.

"For years, all I hear is your stupid voice in my head criticizing me," she continues. "But any nice thing you say, I play it over and over again like a fucking loser."

We're too close. Her other hand sits way too low on my stomach, the gun aimed at empty air. This is her last ditch effort, resorting to ridiculous measures.

"Let go of me," I say, gripping my canvas so hard I'm afraid to crack the wooden frame, but my words come out like a half-hearted suggestion rather than a threat.

"Persephone," she says, all whiny, and I think she's quickly learned that saying my full name is the fastest way to get me to break. "Come back inside."

"Why? Give me one good reason."

"I don't have a good reason."

She's dug inside my head, but so have I, and I know the real reason is this: she is unspeakably lonely.

My core clenches as she traces the circumference of my ribs. I'm not thin enough for them to stick out, but measuring my proportions is the last thing on her mind. She moves from the back to the front of my ribcage, then presses against each bone like piano keys in the world's slowest melody.

It should make me recoil. It should make me nauseous and disgusted and totally sick. But this is nowhere near as violating as her forgery, tampering with my artistry. And she can't finish, because my breasts hang over my uppermost ribs, and in the same way I was careful not to touch hers, she avoids them like forbidden territory.

Except for when she tugs at the edge of my bra and then lets go until the elastic snaps against my skin in a sharp sting.

This is too much. Maybe I'm more than a little into it, and I know I won't be sleeping tonight with the incoming tsunamis of shame and embarrassment and regret, but this is still entirely, absolutely too much. I'm struggling to keep my balance, my knees failing me like some old woman with arthritis.

"If I let you do an anatomical study on me, will that clear my debt?" I ask. "Will that make us even?"

She lets her hand drop to her side, even adjusts my rolled-up shirt back into place, but I feel so cold.

"Nah, pendeja," she says. "I don't think that would be nearly enough."

"Then what?"

"It's the most cliche shit ever, and you'll never forgive me, but I've been thinking about this since the day I knew you existed and haven't been able to stop thinking about it even when you're being such a raging bitch and it really, really pisses me off, and hell if someone kills me off before I get the cojones to do it then there's no way I won't become a ghost and haunt your ass for the rest of your life because—

"What are you talking about?" I ask, harsher now. I turn around to face her, and her expression is wide-eyed and flushed as if I've caught her in the midst of something she shouldn't have been doing, like the embarrassment of our closeness is too much for her to handle now that I'm staring her down.

"Fuck, I'm going to regret this so bad," she whispers.

"Regret what?"

Gun still in hand, she gets on the tips of her toes, circling her arms around my neck, her nose nearly against mine. And what kills me is the fact that she's literally armed yet looks at me so innocently like she's the one at my mercy, still pleading without words.

"Stop me if I'm being stupid," she says.

Again, the earth chooses me to spin in its place. I glance at the silver medusa piercing decorating the dimple above her cupid's bow, her small and pouty lips, and then her arms tighten around me, her chest locking in place against mine, and I think she's going to hug me again until—

She kisses me.

▴ ▴ ▴

a/n: well... this is a scene that was definitely not in the first draft 👀 but omlll, i swear you guys i've been smiling like a fool while editing it! is this finally it?!?! will persephone push her away?? will she surrender?? is this how you expected the chapter to end?? did you expect eris to be so vulnerable? and if you were in persephone's shoes, would you have reacted the same to the perfect forgery?

this was so much fun to write. their constant arguments truly flow so naturally. and also i can't get over the visual of eris in her panda slippers while holding a mf GUN 😭😭😭 gonna need to draw that sometime honestly

anyway, it's taken 22 long chapters (and 64k words a.k.a. 75% of the story) to get to this point, so don't hesitate to let me know what you think <3

song rec for the day is 8AM by nicki nicole and young miko. i've been listening to a bit of latino lesbian trap for some eris inspo, and this song HITS! find it on the header at the beginning of the chapter.