Threads of Summer

Chapter 7: Anna

Daylight crept slowly into the bedroom, peering through the sheer blue curtains draped over the open window. The crisp morning air chilled the room, and rays of light settled over Anna's sleeping face. She stirred; goosebumps prickling down her arms, and her eyes fluttering as they adjusted to the morning sun. Still refusing to wake, she sank her face into the pillow, thanking her lucky stars for a quiet Sunday morning.

Sundays weren't usually so peaceful. Hours before sunup the irksome crow of a rooster would periodically pull her from sleep, then the sound of clinking cups and dishes as the downstairs swelled with the busy chatter of a new day. Kristoff and Kai were usually the loudest when they made their way from the workers' quarters, their work boots scuffling on the wood floors, and their voices resounding loudly up the stairs as they discussed their plans for the day at the breakfast table. Anna couldn't remember the last time she got the chance to sleep in past seven. Not with all the ruckus.

Twisting and shifting to her side, the last of the blanket slid off. Her head felt lead-heavy and her uncovered arms and legs left her trembling, but the bed was soft and the down pillow molded perfectly to her neck. The most comfortable her bed had ever been.

That's when she remembered trembling in the cold lake, her wet arms clasped over her cousin's warm shoulders, and the shallow breaths between kisses. Then later that night, lurching forward into an unfamiliar brightly lit bathroom, diving head first into the toilet as ounces of beer erupted painfully from her mouth. Her head and stomach swelling with endless waves of nausea, and it seemed that beer had poured out of her like a bottomless gorge. Through all that, a gentle hand had been her comfort, rubbing soft circles on her back as she retched again and again. And later that night when she lay sobbing in bed, her head just over the side, dry heaving into a trash bin, it was that same hand that soothed her.

For a split moment she considered that it could had been a dream, or perhaps her overactive drunken imagination, but the details were much too vivid to be mistaken for either. Super realistic vomit dreams. The thought made her chuckle; a soft and raspy groan-of-a-laugh that slowly peeled the sleep from her eyes, then caught in her throat as realization set in.

Eyes wide open, and face to face with her sleeping cousin, Anna wondered how she could have ever confused the bed for her own. It even smelled like Elsa, sweet and fragrant, like a sun-soaked field of blooming wildflowers.

Shifting herself back as far as the width of the bed would permit, Anna was unnerved by the nearness of Elsa's sleeping face; the soft contours of her nose and chin, and the way the glow of firstlight cast shadows of the embroidered stitching on the curtains across Elsa's cheek. There was that peculiar ache again, something like an emptiness that squeezed at her chest and twisted in the pit of her stomach. It was this same feeling that compelled her to reach a tentative hand and trace the tips of her fingers along the curve of her cousin's face and the swell of her mouth. Anna's fingers lingered on Elsa's half parted lips, once more recalling the inebriated kiss she'd stolen the night before.

She pulled away in spite of herself, tensing as her fight-or-flight instincts kicked in. The events of last night were gradually coming back to her, sparking a flicker of fear that grew and felled every last thread of unspoken yearning, quelling it like a bucket of ice water.

Sliding one foot off the bed, Anna was desperate to slip away unnoticed before her cousin woke. She was suddenly overcome with embarrassment at her own behavior the night before, nearly drowning herself in the lake and drunkenly pawing at her cousin. What if someone saw? But her worst fears resided in what Elsa might say. What if she tells my parents? Kristoff?

Jane had been at the party too, embarrassing Anna to no end by dragging her onto the dance floor, putting her bad dance moves on display for all their old classmates to see. And she was also there later that night, helping Elsa drag a drunken Anna into the shower after she'd vomited beer all over herself.

What if Jane already knows?

Her stomach seized and turned with a nauseating tightness, imagining what Jane's twitter feed possibly looked like this morning. The only other person that had a bigger mouth than Jane Porter was Esmeralda Romani. If Elsa had spilled Anna's misdeeds to her loudmouthed bestie then the farmer fangirl, as Jane loved to call her, was as good as screwed. Before Anna's foot could reach the floor, Elsa stirred from sleep, her sleepy gaze leaving Anna frozen in place.

"Hi," Elsa whispered softly under her breath, her voice resonating like a warm and vibrant hum, leaving Anna breathless and without a thought to cling to. "You sleep okay?"

Elsa was barely awake as she spoke, yet a soft coy smile graced her cousin's lips, as if hinting at a secret that was hers alone.

Anna smiled back. But it was a stiff, strained smile, and she was suddenly quite aware of how painfully awkward she was. Elsa woke looking like a storybook princess kissed by the morning sun, and Anna half expected fat baby angels to swoop over her cousin and pay homage to her beauty by serenading her with tiny golden harps.

Side by side with her cousin, the comparison was like night and day. The beauty, and the bore. Not that anyone other than herself and Hans had ever said so. Considering how uninteresting Anna was, with her plain face, twin-braided hair, and her homely clothes, she would have been surprised if anyone had taken enough notice of her to make the comparison.

A crinkled brow settled on Elsa's sleepy face and, without explanation, she reached a hand toward Anna. Slowly pressing her fingers on the curve of Anna's cheek, Elsa paused when Anna winced from the pain onset by Han's retaliatory close-fisted souvenir, but she did not pull her hand away.

"It smarts, doesn't it?" There was still that hint of a smile that pulled at the corners of her cousin's mouth, even as she looked on with concern.

Anna nodded a reply, then whispered a meek "yes" when she realized how little she could move her head against the pillow. Finally beginning to wake to the aftereffects of the alcohol, Anna's head seemed to weigh more than the rest of her body, and a dull pain settled beneath the spot of flesh cupped by Elsa's cool fingers. It shamed her to admit how good it felt. Like being kissed by a crisp breeze. She was also distinctly aware of the swelling on her cheek and across the knuckles of her right hand. And as Anna shifted her head against the pillow, she was aware of another throbbing ache just above her eyebrow. It hadn't been there during the party. She was certain of as much.

"That was from the shower head," Elsa explained, practically reading her thoughts.

And just like that, Anna remembered the spray of cold water on her face as Jane played with the nozzle settings and accidently struck her with the sharp edge of the shower head.

"I must look like the bad end of a bar fight," Anna mumbled sarcastically, feeling sheepish and raw. "It's a wonder that I still have all my teeth."

"No," Elsa replied, her face inching closer and her eyes imprisoning Anna where she lay. "You look like the sun."

At first Anna assumed she was joking, but there was a warm and earnest look in Elsa's eyes that gave her pause. It also made it impossible for her to look away, and heat rose from the collar of her shirt, pooling in the rounds of her cheeks. I can see the moon in your eyes.

The moon? There was something so familiar about those words. The memory of it just at the tip of her tongue.

As sleep dissipated from Elsa's eyes, her hands slowly came alive. Anna didn't pull away when Elsa's fingers traced a path along the line of her jaw, or when she pressed her thumb on Anna's lower lip, but she was suddenly too embarrassed to respond.

"What are you…?"

They stared. It was only for a few drawn out seconds, but there was a tension to it that compelled Anna to tear her eyes away. Elsa withdrew her hand and cleared her throat.

"Dirt," she replied, flicking Anna on the nose. "You have dirt on your face."

~X~

Jane called them down to breakfast, tapping twice on the door as she urged Elsa and Anna to get dressed. Anna had nearly leapt out of her own skin when Jane swung the door open demanding pancakes, and quite incredulous at the fact that the girls were not yet up.

"How can you still be sleeping?"

Elsa glared back.

"It's barely half past seven. That hardly qualifies as sleeping in."

But Jane was beyond listening.

"I swear I'm gonna die of hunger if you two don't hurry it up," Jane grumbled, grabbing Elsa's discarded fluffy slippers and flinging them at her where she lay. "I'll start the coffee and see you two downstairs."

"You're certifiable!" Elsa called after Jane, sliding out of bed and hurling her slippers back at her friend, only to miss and slap them against the door as Jane pulled it shut behind her.

"But pancakes do sounds good right now," Elsa said mostly to herself, retrieving her slippers from the foot of the door. Then crossing over to her dresser, she dug out two outfits and handed one set to Anna.

"You don't have to," Anna began to say, but Elsa insisted.

"Take it. You can always return them to me next week." Then, wrinkling her nose, she added, "Besides, your clothes smell like beer and vomit."

Anna wondered just how much of an ass she'd made of herself last night when she realized that Elsa was starting to getting undressed.

Turning away at full tilt as Elsa unabashedly peeled off her pajamas and slipped into a pair of denim shorts and a short-sleeved crop top, Anna took the opportunity to quickly pull on the stone-washed blue jeans and red tank top her cousin lent her. The top was snugger than Anna was accustomed to, and she subconsciously tugged at the hem, unable to decide what was more embarrassing: the tight fitting top that accentuated every curve of her chest, or the fact that Elsa was changing just a few feet behind her.

Within moments, she heard the faucet running in the adjourning bathroom, and Anna realized that Elsa was washing up. Not bothering to look back, Anna mumbled something about needing to find her shoes downstairs, and left without waiting for a reply.

The house was bigger than she remembered. She took a wrong turn in the extended hallway and turned back at the dead end before she found her way back to the interior balcony that overlooked the living room and the foyer. Anna had never been very familiar with her cousin's house. She had only come over on a handful of occasions, and the last time she'd visited was when she was eleven, not long before Elsa became a mass of unbearably moody teenage angst.

"How's the hangover?" Jane asked as Anna descended the staircase into the foyer.

"Awful," Anna replied, stiffly holding her arms at her sides, still fixating on the snug tee.

"Not surprising. You were beyond wasted." Jane glanced expectantly to the top of the stairs. "Did Elsa go back to sleep?"

"Oh, no. Um, she shouldn't be long. She's just washing up, I think."

Jane gave Anna a quick glance over and raised her brow, then with nothing more than a pensive acknowledgement, she led her into the kitchen.

"Nice outfit."

Anna managed to reply to the compliment with a quick thanks, but couldn't bring herself to say just how unlike herself the outfit was. The jeans were stylized with shredded holes over the knees, and the tee was unlikely to stretch, no matter how much she pulled.

"Kristoff called this morning," Jane told her as she propped open the refrigerator door.

"He did?"

"About a half hour ago." Jane paused and pressed her chin against her hand. "It's so weird that you don't have your own phone. Kind of adorable though, in a rural kind of way."

"What did he say?" Anna chose to ignore Jane's remarks, not masking the annoyance in her voice, however Jane was Jane and Anna doubted she'd taken notice.

"He wanted to know if you needed a ride home, but I told him we'd drop you off later. I think he was mostly just disappointed that his date with Elsa ended so early."

"Oh."

She had forgotten about that.

"That boy has it bad for our girl. It's too bad that he's totally wasted on her."

"I guess."

Jane eyed Anna curiously, for the first time taking notice of the flustered flush creeping along her face.

"Kristoff is terribly sweet, but dumb. Poor boy can't see what's right in front of him."

Anna held up her hands in protest.

"It's really not like that-"

"I gotta say, I'm surprised that the two of you hooked up at one point. Like...how was it? You know, the sex? Did it make things weird between you two?"

"I don't..."

But her words were too slow to catch up with the ever-shifting machinations born from Jane's neurotic brain.

"I'm impressed though," Jane interrupted without pause. "Here I thought you were this completely virginal tomboy, but even you have your share of notches on your bedpost." She tilted her head and Anna could see Jane's mental gears shift in a new direction. "Was Kristoff your first?"

"I'd rather not talk about any of this," Anna replied hesitantly. "It's kinda private."

"Oh. Was I being too pushy? I was being too pushy, wasn't I? I don't always know when to stop. Elsa says I can be over-the-top at times, but I guess I was just so curious because I never really thought that you were into things like that."

I could seriously kill her right now, Anna thought, narrowing her eyes.

"Like sex?" She muttered flatly, wondering if Elsa would come downstairs in time to stop Anna from strangling Jane.

"Like...boys."

And just like that, all thoughts of strangling Jane vacated Anna's mind. In fact, it seemed that thoughts had left her altogether.

"I..I mean, nothing wrong with that," Jane rambled on. "I just...so like...you really didn't find me attractive last night?"

"What?"

Am I still drunk? It briefly occurred to Anna that she might have been in the middle of a drunken delusion, or was possibly still sleeping.

"I don't think I'm hideous or anything. I mean, I've had my share of boyfriends and admirers, but...you weren't the slightest bit interested?" Jane gave Anna an innocent wide-eyed look, tilting her head ever so slightly.

"Why would you think I'm..."

Then it dawned on Anna...the awkward babbling, the coy tone, and tilted glances. Is Jane actually flirting with me? That can't be. And why would she think I'm-

"Well, you do have the whole lesbian farm girl look totally working for you. In a really good way, I might add."

~X~

Anna was halfway through her sophomore year of high school when she was awakened at 2 a.m. on a Saturday by the nonstop obnoxious ringing of the landline phone. The entire household woke up. She heard her mother and father's voices traveling down the hallway, then the sound of her mother's slippers scuffing on the floor as she made her way downstairs. It was the only landline they had, used strictly for farm business, and it almost never rang outside of business hours. The only other time the phone had rung persistently so early in the morning was when her grandfather had passed away two years before.

She strained to listen in the darkness for a clue of what the phone call might have been about. But it was relatively quiet, too quiet to qualify for an emergency, and so she drifted back to sleep. And she would have stayed asleep had it not been for the jingle of keys she heard in the hallway.

"Mom?"

Anna popped her head out her bedroom door, her sleepy eyes adjusting to the lit corridor.

"Go back to sleep, sweetheart."

Her mother was dressed in jeans and a warm jacket as she rifled through her purse.

"You going out?"

"Just for a little bit. I'll be back soon."

"Did something happen?" Anna walked over to her mother and peered in her parents' bedroom where her father lay snoring. "Dad's not going?"

"It's nothing serious. But your cousin, Elsa, might be in a bit of trouble after tonight." Pausing to think for a moment, her mother added, "It might be best if you come along too."

It took Anna less than two minutes to get dressed, and moments after that they were on their way to town to pick up Elsa and her friend, her mother had explained.

They didn't say much else on the drive over, but Anna understood the implications of her mother's words. She flicked on the car radio, halfway through a Randy Travis song, and quietly hummed, but she didn't fully wake until her favorite Garth Brooks song came on. Anna hummed along at first, but when her mother began to chime along with the lyrics, she quickly joined in, and soon the truck cabin had come alive with their loud, tone-deaf rendition of Friends in Low Places.

They were still singing and laughing at themselves when they pulled up to their destination. It got quiet again as soon as the engine cut off.

"Wait right here," her mother told her before she dismounted the truck and shut the door. Anna watched her go, noticing the low hanging moon in the sky, and how much larger and brighter it seemed to be. Her mother walked up the pebbled path to a brightly lit yellow two-story house and knocked on the door. The door opened, and her mother stood talking to an unseen person in the doorway for a while before Elsa and Jane emerged from the door frame.

Her mother waved her over, and Anna jumped out of the truck, jogging over in time to help steady the girls. They were clearly drunk, and Jane was barely conscious.

"Please don't tell my mom, Aunt Jenn," the more coherent Elsa pleaded, moonlight painting her back, and casting a long shadow over her face.

"I'll promise no such thing," Anna's mother replied as she took hold of Jane, then instructed Anna to help her cousin.

Anna took her by the arm and steadied her like a crutch. If Elsa realized who she was, she certainly didn't show it.

They buckled the girls into the backseat. Elsa fell asleep almost instantly.

"Your uncle's not gonna be happy about this," Anna's mother muttered under her breath as they pulled back onto the road. "That man only cares about appearances and what other folks think."

"Can't we just take her home? Who says Uncle has to know?"

Her mother smiled and ran her fingers through Anna's moonlit hair. She didn't say anything, but she didn't have to. Anna already knew why it was pointless to try. In a small town like theirs, everyone knew everyone's business, and Elsa's parents were bound to hear six different versions of the story by morning.

They dropped Jane off first. She didn't live very far from the party, no more than half a mile. Anna assumed that the annoyed woman with the dour expression on her face was Jane's mother, Mrs. Porter. Anna didn't hear what Mrs. Porter said to her mother, but when Anna's mother returned to the truck, she looked nearly as dour as the other woman.

"I'd be drinking too, if I was related to that woman," her mother grumbled when she closed the door. Anna snorted a laugh.

They were much quieter when they drove to her uncle's house. Anna reached for the car radio but thought better of it when she glanced at her sleeping cousin in the rear view mirror. Moonlight shimmered in her hair. Even as drunk as she was, Elsa was undeniably pretty. The kind of pretty that left you with butterflies. It was a quarter past four when Elsa stirred awake, just as they neared the Aarons' Ranch, and she clearly sobered by the time they got off the main road and wound through the quarter mile driveway to her house.

The porch lights came on as soon as they came to a stop.

"Stay here," her mother commanded, setting the truck in park and leaving the engine running as she walked over to meet Elsa's father at the front door.

Elsa unbuckled her seatbelt, but stayed put, and Anna glanced up at the rearview mirror again. Their eyes met, and Anna realized that Elsa had only just become aware of her presence in the car.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Anna said after a pause, glancing back at her mother and imagining what she might be telling Elsa's father. Jenn Aarons was hardly a lenient mother, but she always bore a softness for her only niece. Had it been Anna in Elsa's place, Anna was certain that her mother would have grounded her until college. Whatever it was that her mother said, her uncle's expression had remained largely neutral and distant. In all truth, Anna had no clue what Elsa's father would say or do, but saying that it would be fine seemed like the thing to say in situations like this one.

"I mean, it's not like you killed anybody," Anna went on, unable to stop herself. "Except for, well, maybe a few brain cells."

"It doesn't matter," Elsa quietly replied, cold and detached. Anna wondered if Elsa acted intentionally so, living up to her popular nickname, or perhaps in response to the expectations of her father.

Unnerved and uneasy with the silence that followed, Anna clicked on the radio, hoping that Patsy Cline would be more adept at filling the awkward silence. The song was one of her mother's favorites, and Anna remembered how her mother would spin her around in the living room as they danced along with the music.

"I love this song," her cousin said softly.

Anna looked up at Elsa's reflection in the rearview mirror, surprised at her admission.

"It's a good song," Anna replied, surprised once more as Elsa began to sing along with the radio.

It was a whisper at first, lyrics rolling off of her tongue more like breath than song. Then gradually, the volume of her voice increasing only ever so slightly, and breath turned into music.

"And as the skies turn gloomy and night winds whisper to me, I'm lonesome as I can be…"

Emboldened, Anna found her voice, and joined hers with Elsa and Pasty, smiling at her cousin through the mirror, "I go out walkin' after midnight, out in the moonlight just hopin' you may be… "

It was a funny thing. Just moments ago Anna was at a loss for words, and now they were singing together to an old song on the radio. Strangers who were not quite strangers. Just outside the truck, an angry father was likely waiting for her cousin, but in that moment there was only the warmth of the air conditioner and the brief connection brought on by Patsy Cline's voice, beneath the glamour of the moonlight.

"... somewhere a-walkin', after midnight, searchin' for me..."

The moment was bound to end, and by morning their brief connection would be something lost in the stars. But the moonlight would stay with Anna long, long after.

...to be continued...

A/N: I know my updates have been super insanely spread out (more so than usual), but I've been preoccupied teaching so my down time for writing has practically evaporated. Until next time folks! (whenever that may be)