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Chapter Text

Rio Vidal didn’t choose the city of Westview based on a particular rationale. She’d spent her life in a small college town twenty minutes south of Chicago and left in the middle of the night a week ago. Something rattled inside her and snapped, and she simply couldn’t stomach being near her ex-lover any longer. She remembered everything about the night she left Evette.

Rio had returned home late one night, overcome with guilt, her hands trembling from the touch of another woman.

“I knew it,” Evette had said. “I knew it.” She asked why Rio had done it.

It was only a kiss, she’d said, knowing it was a lie. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

“How could you do this to me?” Evette cried.

She couldn’t muster anything beyond standing there, frozen, unable to speak. Her mind had flashed back to the burgeoning resentment that had spread like poison every time Evette chose her friends, her career, and herself over Rio. But she didn’t have a leg to stand on after a betrayal like this. Nothing would make it okay.

Rio wanted to say it was out of character to lie and cheat on Evette, but at this point—she didn’t know herself anymore. They’d been together since she’d turned thirty and spent nearly ten years together, and she threw it away one night for a woman she met at the pub. It was the first time in five years that she felt seen, though not loved. She’d set their relationship ablaze with a callousness that shook her to flesh and bone.

Evette didn’t deserve this, even if their relationship was dead in the water for so long, like flotsam.

So, Rio moved out and spent a few days on an acquaintance’s couch, only to realize there was nothing left for her there. No friends, no lovers, no family. It was too easy to leave. She was a handywoman by trade and never had trouble finding a job.

Westview called for her, drawing her into its foggy, thick air and grassy hills. It was a town of merely two thousand people, and she was replacing one of only a few mechanics like herself. Rio drove straight there and signed a cheap lease over email for a quaint, verdant one-story house in a neighborhood on the fringes of town.

She saw pictures, and there was no evidence of water damage, mold, pests, or sordid crime, so she didn’t ask questions. The neighborhood didn’t have a name and encompassed just eleven storybook houses. Five on each side of Witches’ Road, across from one another, slightly off-kilter, and one lone house at the end of the road.

It was Monday morning, and the whistle of a frigid breeze crept up on Rio, waking her in a cold sweat. She cursed to herself and sat up, and then dragged herself to the kitchen and made a pot of stale coffee.

Half-unpacked boxes and plastic bins lined the bedroom, living room, and dining room, along with the mix of softer midcentury pieces she’d acquired over the years. Her house resided in disarray, just as she did.

She brushed her teeth and clipped herself into a pair of navy coveralls, hovering at her bedroom window, poking her finger through the blinds. Rio watched the eerie calm of the neighborhood, listening for any semblance of life. The blinds in each house’s windows remained shuttered, and as still as a calm lake day. A dog howled every few minutes, and mourning doves cooed like gentle alarm clocks.

The lone house at the end of the road loomed over the rest of the houses, with a drooping thatch roof, diamond windows of odd, mismatched sizes, and an arched front door. It was an electric violet and the first thing Rio noticed about the house. Ivy crawled up the brick foundation of the house, punctuated with amethyst bellflowers.

The blueprint Rio had peered at online made the house seem much larger than it was. There was a field of tall grasses and wildflowers behind the house, like flames.

She sat down in the dining room, babysitting a cup of coffee and a piece of toast while she tabbed through her laptop to see what was on the docket of repairs today.

Two HVAC cleanings, one screen door replacement, and three gutter cleanings. It was that time of year.

Rio made a list of tools and components she needed and finished her breakfast. On her way out of the house, she shimmied into a flannel jean jacket and hid under a baby blue corduroy baseball cap. Her father had given it to her before he passed, and he’d worn a matching cap. He was also a handyman and hobbyist woodworker, and she’d grown up in his workshop, tinkering with chisels and saws and routers.

Her mother disapproved of how “masculine” her interests were, but eventually, she relented when she saw how much Rio loved fixing things. Rio called her mother every three to six months, chasing the distance growing between them. Her father was the glue of the family, and it’d become painfully apparent.

Rio stopped by Westview Hardware & Lumber, colloquially known in town as “Your Future Tools” because of the owner’s uncanny ability to foresee everything needed for the job with just a few questions. A bell rang above her head as she swung the door open and stepped into the store, lit with warm light. It was a welcome change from the harsh fluorescent light Rio had grown accustomed to at places like Home Depot and Lowes.

“Welcome in,” a velvety voice called. “My name is Lilia Calderu. If there’s anything I can help you with, you just let me know.”

Craning her neck around the fasteners aisle, Rio caught a glimpse of a woman with curly gray hair atop her head, clad in olive-toned dungarees and a yellow knit cardigan.

“Hang on,” Lilia said, “You’re the new handyperson in town. Rio Vidal, right?”

Screws in hand, Rio emerged from the aisle and followed Lilia’s voice. She stood behind the counter. “Uhm, yes?” Her furrowed brow betrayed her next question.

“Everyone knows everyone’s business around here,” Lilia said. “So, I heard you moved onto the Witches’ Road, into Herb’s old house.”

“Yeah, I did,” Rio said. “So, do you know why it’s so cheap to rent in that neighborhood? Everything else here was at least twice as expensive.”

Lilia put on her glasses and took out the newspaper crossword, with a pen in hand. “God, I love newcomers.” She wrote the word “MAGICK” in perfect script letters. “Nobody wants to live on the Witches’ Road because bad fortune seems to follow those folks. But I think the real reason is because Agatha Harkness lives there, at the big house at the end of the road.”

The name was so particular and so unique that it struck Rio in the chest. She wouldn’t forget such a name. “Agatha Harkness?” she repeated. “Who is she?”

“A witch, with a capital ‘B,’” Lilia scoffed. “She’s just downright nasty. She’s the meanest woman in town. She’s obstructive to town officials and they can never get her to tend that jungle she calls a lawn. She’s very tetchy about her land. She’ll shoot you if you get too close to that field in her backyard.” Rio leaned on the counter and took inventory of the door hinges.

“And that’s just the beginning.” Lilia clicked her pen in. “Some years ago, there was a bigshot land developer—Mephisto, I think—and he was going to buy Agatha’s house and land for double the value. He said there were mineral deposits or maybe oil there that they wanted to tap. She refused the offer.”

“Well,” Rio said, “that is her right, right?”

“Sure. Listen, I’m not a big proponent of suckling Mother Earth’s teat dry but then this guy offered a ten million dollar grant to the town if she’d give up her house. They even offered her a larger house in a nicer area near the town square. And she told them to go fuck themselves. Nobody has ever offered to invest in Westview like that. And nobody has come back since.”

“Jesus.” Ten million dollars in a town like this would’ve transformed it. The schools, the hospitals, the roads, the power plant, the town square. All of it. However, the amenities weren’t in terrible shape–the roads had recently been repaved, their power grid was transitioning to wind and nuclear energy, and the high school just built a new gym.

“And she doesn’t let anyone near her land. She pulled a gun on the Kaplan boys just last month.”

Rio shivered at the thought. Agatha sounded like a nightmare to deal with. She hoped she’d never have to cross paths with her. As long as Rio minded her own business, she could build a life here in Westview. She browsed the rest of the store for her items and went back up to the counter.

“Who are the door hinges for?” Lilia asked as she scanned each item, placing them into a brown paper bag.

At first, Rio hesitated. Usually, this type of information was private, but this town would find out anyway. “Sarah Proctor. Needs a screen door replacement.”

“Yeah, you might want to pick up some stucco patch. The front of the Proctors’ house is practically crumbling. That’s why that damn screen door takes such a beating.”

Rio took her word for it and bought a bucket of stucco patch, before slipping into her truck. She took a deep breath and gripped the steering wheel, ready to face the day.

Chapter Text

The week went by quickly and when Rio’s head hit her pillow, she dove into an immovable slumber every night. Every day after finishing up jobs, she’d unpack little by little, setting the coffee table, arranging books into the built-in shelves in the living room, and attaching shelves in the primary bathroom.

She’d met a few neighbors while she was out and about. Dennis, the mailman, lived in the house across from hers, which was convenient. Mr. and Mrs. Davis lived in the first house on the road, and they’d stopped by with a welcome fruit basket.

She woke from a nightmare again. She’d dreamt of laying on Evette’s chest, buried in her red hair, clutching onto her before her body disintegrated into black slush in her hands. She couldn’t help but feel she deserved such a fate in that nightmare.

She jumped into a pair of lavender coveralls and wore her dark hair in a top knot. Her overgrown bangs fell into her eyes, and she tucked them behind her ears. Her routine was set: stare out the window, make shitty coffee, toast bread, and then check the docket.

Today, it was toilet repair, deck maintenance, and window replacement.

She enjoyed her job; every day was a different set of problems to fix, and each problem varied in severity and urgency. The part Rio liked most was talking to her fellow townspeople and getting to see the interior of their lives. Being inside someone’s home was strangely intimate. She had a front-row seat to peoples’ insecurities, their familial conflicts, their innermost secrets they didn’t think she could see (she’d found Mr. Davis's secret bank account on his desk while she replaced the drawer slides).

She stopped by the hardware store and dropped a donut off at Lilia’s counter while she checked out. They were fast friends.

She finished installing new boards on the Tandons’ deck by nightfall and grabbed a takeout order at Jen’s.

“You should stop by for a beer sometime, Rio!” she called out to her. “Always in and out of here in such a rush.”

The truth was Rio was exhausted. She threw herself into this work so she could outrun the ghosts of her past. But it always caught up to her when she returned to her empty house and the guilt seeped into her stomach, making her queasy.

Still sweaty from the job, she peeled the top half of her coveralls off and tied the sleeves around her waist. She unloaded her dad’s old, reliable miter saw from the truck bed into a shelf in the mudroom. The room was neatly organized by hand tools, fasteners, power saws, drills, specialty power tools, and lumber. Rio feasted on the fries and burger and peeked into her fridge mindlessly.

She popped open a cold beer and chugged for a second before the doorbell rang. She looked down at her watch. It was 9 PM. The doorbell rang two more times, and then three times in frantic succession. What the hell was so urgent?

Rio groaned. “I’m coming! Jeez.” She wiped her fingers with a napkin. The doorbell rang again and again. She ripped the door open. “What?!”

“Hey!” A woman with distant, cerulean blue eyes stood in her doorway. Her rich, hickory-colored hair fell upon her shoulders in unkempt waves. She was clearly panicked, wearing only a floral back robe, and barefoot. “You’re a handywoman, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Rio’s mouth lugged behind her brain, which short-circuited at the sight of this bewilderingly gorgeous woman. Her cheekbones keen, her nose wise, her lips relentless.

“I have a leak somewhere in the wall and I need you to come fix it now,” she commanded.

“What?” Earth met Rio’s feet at once. She shook herself into focus.

“Let’s go.” She turned and motioned for her to follow.

Rio threw on a pair of sneakers, grabbed her tool bag, and trailed after her. “Did you turn off the main water supply?”

“Do you think I’m a moron? Of course, I did,” the woman said. “Would I resort to this if I hadn’t already tried that?”

A pang of anger rose in Rio’s chest. She hated working with folks like this—angry, unreasonable, and entitled. “You’d be surprised by the average homeowner.” They passed three houses and reached the end of the road. A new sense of dread washed over Rio when she watched the woman skitter up the mossy path to that arched purple door. “So, you’re Agatha Harkness.”

And goddamn it, she was hot.

Agatha turned around, whipping her robe around. There was something darkly theatrical about her. “Oh, don’t tell me Lilia got to you so soon.”

Rio didn’t answer. “Where’s the leak?” She tightened the sleeves around her waist. She followed Agatha past the living room and into the dining room. A coppery water stain grew on the wall behind the buffet cabinet. “Oh.” She reached for the door on the adjoining wall.

Agatha seized her wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Rio tore her hand away. “Is this a bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“I gotta get in there,” she said, nearly body-checking Agatha. She went into the bathroom and opened the sink cabinet. Reaching forward, she turned two valves clockwise until they were tight. Then, she went back to the water-damaged area of the wall, prodding it with her fingers when the drywall gave, forming a hole. If she let it sit any longer, this would become a much bigger problem. She grabbed a handsaw from her tool bag and plunged it into the wall.

“What the hell are you doing?” Agatha said, tone dripping with vitriol.

“I gotta find the leak. Go get some towels.” Rio removed a piece of drywall about the size of a bread box.

Agatha disappeared into the hallway. Her house smelled of pine and bergamot, and it was unexpectedly cozy. It was lived in. Almost endearing. A throw blanket sprawled across the couch, a pan full of pasta on the stove, a pair of boots in the kitchen, and books scattered on the dining room table. She reappeared and lobbed rough, worn towels at Rio’s feet.

Making quick work with controlled movements and elbow grease, Rio managed to find the leak and seal it with a plumber's putty. Water trickled down her arm and onto her white tank. “Do you have a big fan?”

“What? That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?” Agatha's eyes widened, incredulously. “There’s a fucking hole in the wall, lady!”

“First, my name is Rio, thanks for asking,” she said, keeping her cool demeanor. “And second, we gotta let the inside of the wall dry or it’ll get moldy in there. That’ll take at least the rest of the night.” Agatha groaned and rolled her eyes. “When it’s dry, then you can replace that part of the pipe.”

“Me?” She crossed her arms.

“Or you could hire someone.” It was all too easy to become ensnared in this coy game of wills. Rio’s nose itched with guilt, scrunching momentarily. Was she really flirting with Agatha Harkness of all people over a leaky pipe? It came over her like a monsoon.

“So, you do it, then. I’ll pay you,” she said like it was a business transaction. “But I won’t pay more than a thousand for this.”

“Fine,” Rio said, packing up her bag. On her way out, she said, “Put in a ticket for me.” She strolled out the front door and shut it behind her. The start of something dangerous prickled up Rio’s spine and neck as she departed the uneven path in front of Agatha’s house. That feeling of single-minded, unforgiving, and hell-bent obsession and fascination. Rio knew herself. And she knew she wouldn’t stop thinking about Agatha Harkness any time soon.

Chapter Text

Rio rose early the next morning, glued against her headboard with a laptop in bed. She dug through the internet, which was sluggish here, for anything and everything about Agatha Harkness. She needed to know more. She was reluctant to write anyone off based on town gossip.

There was more to her than that spiny façade; Rio could feel it rippling underneath, instinctually. She had to know more before she made any sort of judgment.

Who was she, really? Where did she come from? What was she hiding?

Rio dug through The Westview Times and didn’t learn anything new:

“Mephisto Leaves Westview for Good”

“It’s Time to Ask Westview: Is Agatha Harkness Good Enough to Stay?”

“Agatha Harkness Rejects Ten Million Dollars on Behalf of Westview”

“Witches’ Road Dispute Turns Violent: Local Woman Arrested for Vandalism”

Agatha had a bit of a violent and unpredictable streak, too. She’d threatened trespassing townsfolk with a gun, she’d smashed someone’s car windows with a bat, and she’d gotten arrested for drunken intoxication. Rio chuckled at the last one–she’d been arrested on more than one occasion for being a drunken fool.

The woman was unhinged, but when Rio had seen her last night, she seemed maddeningly human. Nothing close to the town’s mythology.

She scrolled through archives and came across an Evanora Harkness. Arrested for child abuse and spent a few stints in jail regularly. And then it stopped about twenty years ago. A pit in Rio’s stomach formed and bile crawled up her chest, burning. That must’ve been her mother.

And she could only assume that Agatha was the unnamed child in those articles.

Her laptop dinged with today’s docket. It was a light day. The Solis’ needed a few outlets tested and rewired and John Lee needed to re-mulch his lawn. And nothing from Agatha, of course. Rio poked her tongue in her cheek, unfazed. “Have fun with that leak,” she mumbled. Perhaps she was searching for mystery in a woman who wasn’t that mysterious. Perhaps she really was as she appeared: bitter and cantankerous.

It was an uncharacteristically warm day, so Rio broke out a pair of green overalls and a dark green cropped tee. She jumped in her truck and made her rounds.

At the hardware store, she chose a pack of GFCI outlets and generic white plates for them. The Solis’ weren’t picky.

“Get over here,” Lilia whispered to her from the corner of her cherry lips. She smiled bashfully at another customer in the power tool aisle.

Rio shot her a side-eye. “What?”

“I heard you went to Agatha Harkness’ house last night.” Lilia raised an eyebrow to the ceiling.

“Yeah, she had a water leak in the wall,” Rio said, shrugging. “By the way, you didn’t tell me she was—attractive.”

“Well, there’s nothing attractive about her attitude,” she said. “So, what was it like?”

“What was what like?”

Lilia rolled her eyes. “The inside of her house, Rio. Nobody has been in there for years and she just invites you in.”

“I don’t know. It was more normal than I thought it would be. She likes mid-century modern furniture and earth tones.”

“Don’t let that fool you. She went absolutely ballistic on the last handyman in her house.” “What did he do?” Rio asked. She assumed the worst.

Lilia checked to see if the coast was clear and leaned closer. “Well, he was fixing something in her kitchen and he went out back to smoke. And then she went nuts and kicked him off the premises. Hasn’t let a handyperson near her house since.”

Rio sucked air between her teeth. “Maybe he did something.”

“Be careful around her, Rio. I’m serious.” She rang up her items and pushed a paper bag across the counter.

Rio put her hands up. “Okay, I hear you.” She bounded out the door and into her truck.

She switched through the radio stations on the way to the Solis' house. She couldn’t stew in silence for more than a few seconds, couldn’t be alone with her thoughts. Was that what this newfound obsession was? Was she latching onto anything she could find to avoid contending with that horrible sinking feeling in the core of her being?

There had been a chasm forming in her ribcage for years, even before she met Evette, and it broke open when she left her. Now it was simply a void.

She snapped back to reality as she neared the long, grassy driveway up to the Solis’ house.

* * *

After Rio finished rewiring the Solis’ outlets, she ventured to All Things Green, the local plant nursery. She gathered a handful of fall flowers and vegetables: purple aster, hot pink dahlias, garlic, parsnips, and brussel sprouts. She ordered twenty bags of mulch, heaved them into the truck bed, and arrived at John Lee’s house. He lived in a neighborhood only ten minutes away from her house. His lawn consisted mostly of unkempt grasses, shrubbery, and a spotty layer of mulch.

John was an older Chinese man with kind eyes, lounging on the porch with a cup of steaming tea. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

Rio wasn’t used to her clients being so familiar. In the city, most of her clients pointed to the problem, grumbled, and then left her alone. “Sure. Do you have green tea?”

“Of course.” He winked at her. Within a few moments, she was ankle-deep in mulch, tearing each bag open with brute strength. He emerged from the front door with a squat periwinkle mug and set it on the flat part of his porch baluster.

She finished spreading and flattening the mulch efficiently and sipped on her tea every few minutes as she raked stray mulch from the tall grasses.

John thanked her, taking her hand warmly and shaking it. Then, he slipped cash into her palm and patted her shoulder.

Instantly, she saw her dad, with tufts of gray hair peeking out of his sky-blue baseball cap, sporting a toothy grin. When Rio was a teenager, she’d join him in the workshop and work back to back, with one on the bandsaw and one on the belt sander. Within the blink of an eye, he lay motionless in his casket, his lips whitewashed, and she was almost forty years old.

“Are you alright?” John asked.

She stuttered. “Yeah. Have a good evening, Mr. Lee. I appreciate the tip.”

* * *

Rio arrived home around 5 PM with five extra bags of mulch. She surveyed her front lawn, which Herb had kept weeded and clean.

There were a few areas of uneven mulch around the blue elderberry and ruby salmonberry growing in a zig-zag in front of the house. Digging around in the front pocket of her overalls, she clutched onto a Swiss army knife. It was a Christmas gift from her mother. She slashed each bag open and dumped the mulch in a heap.

As she spread the mulch with a rake, a rolled newspaper pelted her in the back. “Ow! What the fuck?” Rio whipped around, lasering in on the source. The rake slipped from her hands.

Agatha stood ten feet away, with her arms crossed against a crisp white shirt tucked into a pair of barrel-legged indigo trousers. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Ouch.” Rio picked up the newspaper and shook it at Agatha. “What the hell is your problem?” She had just started to forget about Agatha, putting the blossoming obsession to bed.

“Where have you been all day? I came by this morning and again around noon.”

Rio’s eyes darted left and right. “I’ve been working.” Then the lightbulb flickered on. Had Agatha expected her to come over to fix that damned pipe today? “I didn’t see a ticket come in this morning. Figured you called someone else.” She thrust her tongue into the inside of her bottom lip.

Agatha approached, clomping like a horse up the path in emerald Chelsea boots. Rio’s grip tightened around the newspaper. “Can you just fix it?”

With each word, Rio gestured with the newspaper at Agatha’s nose. “Put. A. Ticket. In.”

She caught the newspaper suddenly and wrenched it from Rio’s hand. “Do you have copper couplings? I assume you do since you do…” She motioned to the mess of mulch on Rio’s knees and chin. “...this.”

Rio crouched back down for the rake and continued.

Agatha strutted past Rio before she could answer, towards the front door. She reached for the handle before Rio leaped from the mulch, scurrying in front of her. She grabbed Agatha by the waist, close to her hips, with her mulch-kissed fingers.

A gasp escaped Agatha’s mouth. “My shirt!”

They both looked down at her white shirt, now sullied with mulch. Rio unhanded her waist.

She wasn’t afraid to get in peoples’ faces when she had to–this was something she learned in this field when men tried to intimidate her. But this felt different. This feeling swung between the precipice of a storm and something strangely invigorating. Agatha stumbled back with both hands in the air, as if they were made of glass.

“Relax, J Crew,” Rio snapped. “Let’s call it even, since you assaulted me with the thickest newspaper I’ve ever seen and you tried to enter my house like you own it. Other people might let you walk all over them, but I’m not one of them.”

Agatha ignored her and pulled out her phone.

“What are you–”

She held up one finger in Rio’s face.

“I’m talking to you–”

“I just sent a ticket into your little system,” Agatha said, pursing her lips. “I booked you for ten minutes from now, so if you could just confirm that—”

Rio’s nostrils flared and she waved her off. “Fine. I’ll see you in ten minutes.” Just when she thought she wanted to know everything about Agatha, she transformed into an albatross clinging to her neck, and she couldn’t wait to peel her off and fling her away. Rio just had to get the job over with.

Chapter Text

Rio threw pipe cutters, copper couplings, and crimpers into a tool bag and arrived at Agatha’s front door. She knocked once.

Agatha opened the door with bored, jaded eyes and a fresh shirt on. She opted for a dark wash chambray. “Hey.” She was hard to read; it was unclear whether she was simmering with fury or simply tired.

Rio shuffled past her into the dining room and got to work. Agatha watched her from the kitchen, hovering over a sizzling pan. Her watchful eye seared into Rio’s back as she cut through the section of pipe with putty on it. The silence grew, like an awkward, lanky teen.

“Agatha,” Rio said, “what do you do for a living?”

Agatha looked up from the pan, cocking her head to the right. “Excuse me?” The aromatic smell of garlic and chives permeated the air.

“What do you do for a living?” Rio repeated.

They lived only a few houses away from each other—Rio could either make nice or ruin her own life on the Witches’ Road by making an enemy out of Agatha Harkness. She chose to overlook the incident from earlier.

“I’m in ops at a small company,” she said, without pretense. She sighed and reached up into her cabinet for salt and pepper.

“Do you like your job?” Rio bit her lip and removed a section of copper pipe. She rummaged around in her tool bag for a pair of copper couplings.

“It’s fine. I don’t hate it and they’ll never lay me off.” She tucked a strand of wavy hair behind her ear pensively.

Rio’s gaze lingered for a moment.

She cut about an inch off each side of the remaining pipe in the wall. “So, what do you do outside of work?”

Agatha dropped the pan down on the glass stovetop and scoffed. “What are you doing? Why are you asking all these questions? Did someone put you up to this?”

“I’m just trying to be neighborly,” Rio said.

“Oh, really? No ulterior motive? You didn’t hear from that blabbermouth Lilia? Or Jen? She absorbs all the town gossip and keeps it on tap at the bar.”

Rio fit the copper couplings onto the cutout pipe and crimped them on each side, effectively sealing them together. “I’ve heard things about you, but I thought I’d get to know you before I start believing any of it,” she said.

She fastened two pieces of plywood to the inside of the square hole in the wall. Then, she fastened a sheet of drywall to the wood, making it perfectly flush with the wall. “Sue me,” Rio said, raising her eyebrows at the wall.

Agatha’s blue eyes ticked onto her, zeroing in like a sniper. “And what have you heard?”

Rio deflected. There was no way she could tactfully answer.

“Nothing worth mentioning.” She measured the twinge of annoyance across Agatha’s curled lips.

Rio’s stomach flipped and fluttered. “Though, if they’d mentioned your eclectic taste in decor, I might’ve been more inclined to ulterior motives.” She fought the urge to grin at Agatha. She drilled through Agatha’s steely eyes, catching a glimmer of surprise.

Agatha hadn’t expected a compliment.

Drywall knife in hand, Rio pointed to the buffet cabinet she’d moved aside to get to the wall. “Where did you get this? Is that acacia?” She wanted to run her fingers against the vertical grooves lining the front of the cabinet.

“Yeah, it is acacia. Good eye,” Agatha said. She cleared her throat. “It’s my mother’s.” She rolled her sleeves up and grabbed a pair of tongs from the railing on the wall, her whole body stiffening.

It was as if someone had sucked all the warmth out of the air.

“Is it a family heirloom?” Rio applied joint compound over the seams of the patch and wiped her knife with a paper towel.

“No.”

Rio sensed that it was time to go. Of course—her mother. Her ghastly, abusive mother. That was probably the last thing Agatha wanted to talk about. Rio bit the inside of her cheek, blaming herself. “I’m all done here. Just let this set and paint over the patch.”

Agatha nodded and walked her to the front door.

“I’ll send you an invoice,” Rio said over her shoulder on the way out.

“Rio,” she said.

Rio turned around.

“Thanks.” Agatha gave her a knowing nod.

Even though she froze her out, that dangerous feeling reignited in Rio’s chest and it wouldn’t burn out any time soon.

* * *

That night, Rio slept easy. Agatha’s voice echoed around in her skull, saying her name over and over. The way her voice had become shallow when Rio mentioned her mother illuminated a different side of her. That side of her felt more honest, more real.

Rio spent her day off exploring Westview. She went to the town square and bought fresh produce from the market. She enjoyed a cup of tea at a storefront bench, watching a man with a cowboy hat strum a steel-string guitar and croon through his nose at the fountain in the middle of the brick-paved square.

By evening, she ended up at Jen’s. The bar was covered in rich, storied walnut: dark and brooding floors, counters, booths, chairs, tables, and wall paneling. The wood swallowed up the daylight. The ceiling was covered in ornate, forest-green Baroque tiles.

Rio settled at the bar, leaning on the left side of her body, her right leg planted on the floor, half-standing.

She ordered cider and street tacos.

Jen swung through the doors. She wore a dusty pink jumpsuit with a delicate gold chain necklace, which popped against her warm, dark skin. “How are the tacos treating you? We’re trying out some new items on the menu.”

Through a mouthful of steak, onion, tomato, and cilantro, Rio flashed a thumbs up. “Keep it on the menu.”

“You clean up nice. This whole ensemble is working for you,” Jen said, her hand tracking up and down Rio’s outfit.

When she wasn’t in her work clothes, she gravitated toward a dark, earthy palette. She wore an emerald green corduroy shirt over a sleeveless black turtleneck with a pair of olive straight-leg pants.

Rio thanked her.

Jen wiped the counter down and narrowed her eyes at Rio. “So, you’re single, right?”

Rio gulped down a bite and nodded. “But I’m–I’m not really looking for anything serious right now. I’m not even sure if I’m looking for anything at all. I don’t know. It’s–it’s complicated. Why?”

“Really just looking for a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” She continued. “We do pretty regular events at the bar and the singles are ready to mingle. You’re shiny and new, and pleasant-looking, so turnout would be good for you and for my pockets.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not really ready to date anyone, even casually,” Rio said. All of her history with Evette rushed back to the surface.

“So, hook up with the singles. Keep them sane,” Jen quipped. “You don’t have to date to mate.”

Rio’s nose wrinkled at the phrase, but she understood the sentiment. She shivered at the thought of touching another woman after what she’d done to Evette. And she got away scot-free. She picked up and moved away without looking back, like a coward.

“Rio?” Jen said. “Are you down?”

She landed back in reality. “Eh, I don’t know.”

“Just think about it, okay?” Jen said, pouring a drink at the tap. “If you’re ever lonely on a Saturday night, this is where you wanna be. The weekend before Halloween we’re doing a cowboy night.”

“And you think I have a cowboy hat lying around?” Though Rio didn’t have a cowboy hat, she did own a pair of camel-toned cowboy boots. She’d gotten them at a flea market in New Mexico.

“You’d look good in one.”

Rio down the rest of her cider and slid cash over the counter, ready to turn in.

She lulled home in the truck, pulled into her driveway, and then shivered in her front yard for a few minutes, holding onto her arms.

The house felt too lonely tonight, and she wasn’t ready to brew in it yet. She had to face herself every day and take on the burden of punishment, and she couldn’t bear to do it tonight. She groaned to herself and avoided her house, embarking on a stroll around Witches’ Road.

Rio took inventory of each house she passed. Every house had a unique charm: one donning wooden chimes, one flaunting a gaudy red flag, one housing a giant rocking chair on the porch. By contrast, her porch felt a little barren, save for a couple of pots in the corner.

She admired Mr. and Mrs. Davis’ front yard, decorated with a sea of wild ironwood bushes, blooming with sprays of white flowers, delineated only by a winding stone path up to the front door. A petite wooden bench poked through the greenery, inviting her.

Just then, something rustled in the shrubs. Rio ignored it, but then it happened again.

A shadow dashed across the path. Hhhhhhhhchh!

The unmistakable sound of a cat’s hiss.

Rio tracked the black mass, sneaking up the path and to the right, closing in on a thicket of ironwood. “Well, hello there.” A black cat stared back at her, perched on the arm of the wooden bench, shrouded with sprigs.

Footsteps thudded against the path and a winded Agatha appeared, with her hands clutching her knees. She straightened up when she saw Rio, smoothing down her black leather coat.

“Oh,” she said, breathlessly. “You again.”

Rio couldn’t hide the relief on her face. “Is he yours?” Agatha always seemed to materialize in moments like this, and it wasn’t helping Rio’s burgeoning fascination with her.

Every time she laid eyes on Agatha, she fought the fickle nature of attraction. She was beautiful and enchanting, and there was no denying it, but Rio couldn’t let herself pursue her–she hadn’t forgiven herself. Every time she saw Agatha, a deep-set guilt gnawed at her core.

“Yes,” Agatha said. “This is Señor Scratchy. He lives in my basement but he’s a slippery bitch.”

“Señor Scratchy?” Rio asked. She offered her hand to the cat, and he apprehensively rubbed his head against it. “So, I see you’re a cat of color.”

That drew a chuckle from Agatha as she scooped him up and he nuzzled against her chest.

Rio’s heartbeat throbbed in her ears. “Are you going out?” She waffled on whether to mention Jen’s cowboy event at the bar.

Agatha met Rio’s gaze. “Maybe.”

“You look nice. That leather jacket looks great on you,” she confessed, and then immediately regretted being so complimentary.

Agatha’s eyebrows shot up, curiously. “Oh, I know.”

“Listen, the Saturday after next, there’s a cowboy-themed event at Jen’s. I think a cowboy hat would suit you.” The words tumbled out of Rio’s mouth, against her will.

A rasp escaped Agatha’s mouth, like the low creak of a floorboard. “You won’t catch me dead in a bolo tie,” she jeered.

Ooof. There was no ambiguity in that answer. Rio pivoted. “If you ever need someone to look after Señor Scratchy, I’d be happy to take him in. Or if he ever gets lost, I’d be happy to help you look for him.”

A crushing ache permeated through her chest and down to her stomach.

“Why are you being so nice?” A vicious edge protruded from Agatha’s voice.

Rio pet the top of Señor Scratchy’s head, fingers grazing Agatha’s jacket lapel. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m just trying to get close to your cat.” She buried her feelings.

The two of them burst into a fit of laughter at the implication. Agatha’s smile was so naked and endearing—and unexpected.

Rio’s cheeks flushed with hotness, conflicting with the cold bleakness pervading from within.

Agatha composed herself and said good night.

“See you around,” Rio said, her heart sinking at the realization that Agatha was definitely going out and seeing someone. Her sarcasm cut through Rio’s confident exterior.

Was that why she rarely gave Rio anything but trouble?

She scoffed to herself for even believing she had a chance–for even allowing herself to want someone new, let alone Agatha fucking Harkness.

Rio lay in the dark of her bedroom that night, grasping her bosom as if she were the only person in the world she had left. It was histrionic, and she didn’t care.

Chapter Text

It was fully autumn now, fiery piles of leaves accumulated on the sidewalk, and the morning air crisped and cooled.

Rio spent the last few days concentrating on work, exploring Westview, and meeting new people wherever she went. She wasn’t much of an extrovert, so it became arduous after the fourth new person she’d met.

But this was the only way to plow forward with her life and avoid thinking about the unavailable woman she’d grown fond of. It was karmic.

Rio Vidal was always the chased, not the chaser. It’d been that way her whole life, especially at the end of her relationship with Evette. They’d spent years drifting from one another: Evette’s career in finance had consumed her and Rio had grown disillusioned with life and what it meant to love someone for a prolonged time.

It felt unnatural to her, and the relationship never dominated her mind, body, or soul—but that was what the world had taught her about the lore of love–it was supposed to feel like a sort of sickness. And she’d never been afflicted, not truly.

Rio cared deeply for Evette and even felt a magnetic attraction to her, but there was always a pretense between them, always a league of distance between them. It was as if they’d glommed onto each other because it was what they were supposed to do when one found someone they could tolerate for more than sex–and even more so, someone their friends and family would condone.

After an uneventful Wednesday, Rio showered and shimmied into a black jumpsuit with an intricate vine print. She let Lilia and Jen talk her into a date with a cop. Of course, Lilia and Jen were in cahoots. The whole town was connected in one way or another.

Rio hated cops but they insisted this one was her type—which was—hot. There was no reason not to try dating again. Maybe this date would finally let her entomb the guilt that refused to wither away.

Rio rushed into Hudson Diner, which sat in the “blue collar” section of town, which was just a few blocks from the town square.

She was a tad late, but it didn’t persuade her to pick up the pace. She surveyed the diner, peering over people in booths and servers weaving through tables.

Her eyes fell upon an Chinese woman sitting in a booth, with sharp brown eyes, robust cheekbones, and a neck tattoo. She was tanned, and her black hair jutted out in a grungy wolf cut. That was without a doubt, her date: Alice Wu-Gulliver.

“Damn,” Rio muttered. “She is hot.”

Alice turned around to face her, flashing her a cool smirk. She was out of uniform, instead opting for a graphic white sweatshirt and slouchy maroon cargo pants. “Hey, I’m Alice. You must be Rio.”

Shaking her hand, Rio scooted into the booth, across from her. Rio ordered a decadent chocolate milkshake she would regret later and a chicken pot pie. Alice ordered a burger with onion rings.

As she dipped a crispy onion ring into a ramekin of ranch, Alice asked, “So, you’re not looking for a long-term thing? Me neither. Listen, I got divorced six months ago—for real, this time, and I’m ready to hit the hay again.”

Rio appreciated the candor. Being bashful was for nervous, shaky-handed twenty-somethings. “Like, tonight?” Blood rushed to her thighs, reactively.

“Yeah. Yeah, like, I need this.” Alice took a hearty bite of her burger.

The chocolate milkshake was smooth, creamy, and worth the gut punch Rio would confront later. She gulped loudly. “Man, you’re telling me.”

Rio bulldozed through the chicken pot pie and ate each bite with Tabasco. “How long were you and your ex-wife together?”

“Three years.”

Rio cocked her head.

“I know, I know,” Alice said. “Don’t judge me. I fly close to the sun with all my lovers. I fall hard, flame out, and then I wallow.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Rio said. “All of my issues are with myself and they probably wouldn’t be problems if I just went to therapy.”

They didn’t dwell on that for too long.

“Is that why you moved here? Nobody moves here for the bumping nightlife,” she snorted.

Rio slurped the dregs of her milkshake. “I don’t know. I needed a fresh start. I was with my girlfriend for a decade, but those last five years, it was like I was numb. I was just sleepwalking through my life. And I couldn’t feel anything until—” she hesitated to talk about what she did to Evette. “—I finally left.”

They finished up their meals, dabbed their mouths, and split the bill. Rio walked Alice to her squad car, and they quickly came to a mutual understanding.

Alice took a deep breath and said, “So, I don’t know if I really want to–”

“I didn’t shave my–oh, thank God.”

“Do you want to drive around the block?” Alice thumbed her car.

“Why not?” Rio climbed into the passenger’s seat.

“Oh, you can’t sit in the front,” Alice said. “Get in the back.”

Rio halted like a record, already sitting in the passenger’s seat.

“I’m just kidding.”

Alice drove lazily with one hand, wrist hanging over the steering wheel. Silence pooled between them for a beat, as they zoomed past a park and a dimly lit strip mall. “So, uh, you live on Witches’ Road, yeah?”

Rio didn’t know where she was going with this.

“Lilia says you get along with Agatha Harkness,” she said.

“Oh, did she?” Irritation flared in Rio’s nostrils.

“Is she causing any trouble in your neighborhood?”

Rio said no. She gripped on the armrest.

“Damn,” Alice said. “Listen, Agatha’s been a thorn in Westview’s side for quite some time now, and she’s got something on that land.”

“Yeah, I heard. She’s got minerals on her land, or something.”

“Or something, yeah.” Alice rolled the window down and a gush of frigid air rushed into the car. “Listen, I don’t like to do this, but do you think you could just keep an eye on her?”

Rio didn’t know how to answer.

As if she sensed the uncertainty, Alice said, “Look, we don’t know what she’s hiding on that land, but my hunch is that it’s not good for Westview.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Alice rounded back towards Hudson’s Diner. “She arrived in Westview and it’s like a black shroud blanketed this town, and it hasn’t lifted.”

“Okay, so she’s depressed and bitter, is that a crime in this jurisdiction?”

“Rio, she’s unhinged. People say they’ve seen her digging holes in that grassy field behind her house, burying something. We’ve gotten numerous reports of her burning things back there, too. She’s hiding something back there.”

The car rattled and buzzed, and the sense of unease percolated between them. Alice clicked her tongue and maintained her unwavering theory. “Who the hell threatens kids with a fucking shotgun for getting too close to their backyard? That’s a crazy thing to do.”

The hairs on Rio’s neck spiked, but still, her interest bloomed. She’d seen no such things, but she couldn’t help but trust Alice.

“Look, you don’t have to say anything. Just think about it, okay?”

Alice came to a stop in the parking lot, and Rio practically tumbled out of the door, slamming it behind her.

* * *

When she arrived home, Rio showered and got ready for bed. It was 10:30 PM. She tucked herself in and lay on her back, examining the ceiling.

The urge to peek into Agatha’s backyard overtook her; it was all she could think about. She fastened a plush beige robe around her waist and slipped on a pair of sneakers.

She found herself knocking and clunking through the garage for a ladder in dingy light, and then leaning it against the back of her house, next to the AC unit. This was the shit Joe Goldberg got up to, but Rio blew through her qualms, climbing up the ladder methodically.

She peered left and right to make sure nobody else was watching her. The neighborhood was motionless and only barking dogs kept her company. Rio hiked up the steep ceiling and held onto the chimney for stability.

From there, she could barely see Agatha’s backyard. The tall fixtures of her house obscured much of the view. From what Rio could see, nothing looked particularly sinister. A breeze howled through the tall grasses behind Agatha’s house, and they swayed to the left, dancing.

But then she saw an outline of something distinctly human in the field.

Shoulders. Flashing in between every gust of wind, veiled by the wildflowers.

Rio squinted, focusing on the shoulders, her eyes tracing the musculature of the upper arms hidden under a billowing black sleeve. Their arms stuck out, as if welcoming the night breeze.

The figure wore a pointy black hat, and they were unnaturally tall, towering over the grass.

Rio sucked in her breath, holding it in, and her heartbeat struck in her ears. Then, she saw the spindly, wooden hands.

It was a motherfucking scarecrow with a witch hat. Of course, it was a scarecrow. That’s what the townspeople were seeing in the field. It had to be.

“What the hell am I doing?” Rio asked herself. She promptly scaled down the roof and down the ladder, and went to bed.

Chapter Text

Rio spent every night on her roof, whether she wanted to or not. The compulsion to scrutinize the dense field beyond Agatha’s house only grew stronger.

On Thursday night, she stayed up until 11:30 PM to watch from the roof. The lights flickered on in the basement and then off.

On Friday night, she found a pair of dusty binoculars in a shoebox in her workbench. This was entirely wrong, creepy, and dirty, but Rio couldn’t tear herself away from that roof.

She spied through the binoculars, studying the magnified foliage through the lenses. She went to bed disappointed yet again.

On Saturday night, she went to bed early.

On Sunday night, Rio took a preliminary peek while she strolled around the neighborhood and only saw Agatha rolling her recycling bin to the curb. They maintained eye contact for a moment, and then Agatha curtly turned on her heel without acknowledging Rio.

Defeated, Rio shuttered all her blinds and locked herself in her bedroom by 10 PM. She felt stupid and pathetic enough—this was it. That was the last time she’d spy on Agatha.

She tossed and turned for hours, sweating through the sheets and fisting them in frustration. Rio lay on her side, with her shoulders scrunched up to her ears, reminding herself again to release the tension in her back.

She closed her eyes for a minute and then wrenched them open. Sleep would not find her, so she flung the sheets off and shimmied into a heavy flannel jacket.

It was the dead of night. The barking dogs had gone to rest and the crickets had burrowed away. Not even the wind whistled at this hour.

Like routine, Rio climbed up the ladder, binoculars slung around her chest, and squatted against the slope of the roof. Through the lenses, she immediately noticed movement in the grasses. A familiar figure in purple stood like stone in place. It was Agatha.

She was in her pajamas, which was, unsurprisingly, a matching purple set. She was facing the grass, her hands limp at her sides. Agatha stood and stood, unmoving, like the dead.

Rio didn’t know what to make of it, but the reality of spying on Agatha stabbed her chest, remorse quivering with every beat. So, the woman was in her backyard at 2 AM–so, what?

It was strange, sure, but she had no right to judge Agatha, and neither did all the other townspeople of Westview. Rio let her be and climbed down the ladder. This time, she put the ladder back in the garage, stashing it with a package of oak floorboards.

* * *

For most of the week, Rio returned to her mundane yet busy days: fixing and toggling peoples’ houses, hitting the bar, stopping by the hardware store, and avoiding Alice. She spent the evenings unpacking boxes and breaking them down. By Friday, she’d set up most of her furniture, decor, and house plants. She particularly enjoyed spider plants at the moment and interspersed pots of them throughout the house.

That evening, she replaced window siding and trim for Phil and Dottie Jones. They lived in the house to the left of Agatha’s.

“What’s it like living next to Agatha Harkness?” Rio asked, coyly.

Phil hugged two bags of groceries to his chest. “Honestly, we just stay out of her way. We can live with that crazy front lawn.”

“Is she really as scary as people say she is?”

He pursed his lips, his mustache becoming more pronounced. “Don’t know. Hope we never have to find out.”

With that, Rio lined up a new piece of black wood trim against the beige stucco of the house, butting up against the bottom of the window.

She fastened each piece of trim around the window and then used a dark caulk to seal the trim against the stucco.

The Jones had prepaid for this job because they had a seven o’clock dinner reservation and the babysitter was only there for a couple of hours. Rio cleaned up as they peeled out of the neighborhood in their charmingly old wagon.

As she loaded up her toolbag, the smell of fire woke her senses. But it didn’t smell sweet and natural like wood, it was acrid and sharp—like plastic or metal. She dropped the caulk gun into her toolbag and stalked the familiar odor, all the way to Agatha’s backyard. Rio scoffed to herself. Of course the universe would keep finding ways to bring her back to Agatha, the supposed stomping ground of all Westview conflict and fuckery.

Rio saw the source of the fire.

It was the colossal ancient air conditioning unit, sputtering and sparking. Without hesitation, Rio raced back to the Jones’ house, pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall in their kitchen, and returned to Agatha’s yard.

The fire had jumped from the unit to the wires and then licked the brick of Agatha’s house, charring it black. Rio yanked the pin from the extinguisher and sprayed the foam across the top of the unit, sweeping the hose from side to side.

She also applied a healthy layer to the brick, handily smothering the fire within moments. Then she felt her body slam against the brick, and cold metal jammed under her chin and into her throat.

Air hissed from her lungs as her back collided against the brick again. The nerves in her elbows vibrated, sending a wave of pain down to her fingers, and the fire extinguisher fell from her grip.

Agatha appeared, her wild eyes burning with blue-hot rage.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she barked. She pressed down on Rio’s neck with a baseball bat. The entirety of her body crushed against Rio’s, boiling with fury.

Rio could feel Agatha’s knees against her own. It was all happening so fast. So many lines crossed, scratched, and obliterated.

The pressure in Rio’s neck shot up to her bulging eyeballs. Rio shoved Agatha backwards. “Saving your goddamn house!”

“I don’t care,” Agatha snarled. “Don’t ever trespass here again. You’re lucky I didn’t smash your fucking kneecaps this time.” She pointed the bat at her as a warning.

Jaw clenched, Rio jerked the bat out of Agatha’s iron grip and lobbed it over to the side. “Not so strong without your bat, are you?” Rio jabbed her finger in Agatha’s face. “You should be thanking me for saving your ass and saving this field of weeds you’re literally willing to shoot someone over.”

Agatha took Rio by the throat, with her witchlike hand, and pinned her up against the brick once again. “Still don’t believe the townspeople, do you?” Her knees rammed against Rio’s, holding her in place.

“No.”

Agatha’s hot breath scorched Rio’s collarbone as she bared her teeth. “Well, you should.” Her hand tightened around Rio’s neck, squeezing with her thumb and index finger.

Rio clutched onto Agatha’s wrist, and something in the air shifted between them. This was a sparring match between wills, rage, and desire, but neither of them relented. “Agatha,” Rio said, “I think you are hiding something.”

There was a glint of despair in Agatha’s eyes, but she masked it instantly with a glare. “And what am I hiding?”

Rio faced her, locking her gaze upon her, only inches apart. “Yourself.” She glanced at

Agatha’s lips—and Rio paused for what seemed like the longest second of her life—righteousness, incredulity, and thirst coalescing into a maelstrom.

Unwrapping Agatha’s hand from her neck, Rio freed herself and growled, “You’re welcome.”

* * *

Alice hip-checked Rio as she fixed her red paisley bandanna over her black denim shirt and jeans in the mirror. “Yee-haw,” she said, admiring herself in the mirror.

“You ready to round up the cattle?” Rio asked. She grimaced at the connotation.

“Oh, no, hon. Not if you’re my wingman,” Alice said.

Rio had run into her at the local cafe a couple of days ago and somehow, they decided to attend Jen’s cowboy event together. They’d scooted around their last conversation: Alice didn’t ask again about spying on Agatha and Rio didn’t mention her last encounter with her.

Whenever she thought of Agatha’s indignant anger, her fists clenched and she grit her teeth, and then an involuntary rush of heat would snake through her bosom and down her core, and cascade between her legs.

She’d halt the feeling in its tracks when it came on, resisting as strongly as she could, resisting the urge to untangle that feeling. She couldn’t be feeling that way for Agatha.

Rio hadn’t seen her since and made certain she wouldn’t have to—taking early morning jobs and jobs across town.

“You should take the lasso,” Alice said, handing it to her.

Clad in a resonant, seaweed green shirt embroidered with a yellow and pink floral design, Rio knotted the lasso to the belt loop of her dark jeans. “Think I’ll catch someone hot tonight?” She fastened a silver skull bolo tie around her collar and pulled it tight.

Alice waffled, tugging on her earlobe and pursing her lips. She fit a mocha brown cowboy hat on Rio. “There, if you don’t catch someone hot tonight, I’ll take you home myself.”

“Careful,” Rio said, “I might take you up on that threat.” She stepped into her camel-toned boots, and she was ready.

Alice and Rio arrived at Jen’s bar in a giddy frenzy in a squad car with blaring sirens and flashing lights.

Jen threw her hands up when she saw the two enter. “Hey! I’m so glad you guys made it! Like a Barbie, she wore a hot pink shirt, pants, and cowboy hat. “See you in hell, you stupid fruits,” she sang.

“What?” Rio asked, turning to Alice. The bar was crawling with men watching a football game, straight bachelorettes sipping margaritas, and a smattering of twinks in cowboy hats.

“The event is downstairs, Rio,” Alice said, plainly.

“Oh.” She followed Alice around the corner, past the cider tap and bar, to a giant, steel walk-in freezer door.

Alice hauled the door open to reveal a matte black stairwell, winding down in a spiral. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, a childlike grin spread across Rio’s face.

Boots tapped and stomped the wooden floor as cowboys danced to Orville Peck, while their fringe, chaps, and cowboy hats frolicked and swung with them.

Tan, brown, and cream triangle streamers and Edison bulbs dangled from the ceiling. A blue and pink neon light of an ox’s skull hung squarely in the center of the longest wall, directly facing Rio. The horns blinked up and down.

There was a saloon-themed bar to the left, near a pool table. People lounged in velvety, half-circle booths, flirting, drinking, making out, and petting each other.

“If you find me like that later,” Alice said, pointing, “leave me there.”

Rio noted it.

“Hey, you,” a new voice crooned.

Rio turned around to a lanky yet elegant young man with a head of curly dark hair and a gaudy black cowboy hat. He wore a tight black leather vest with jeans and flared leather chaps–the outfit unequivocally did not wear him.

“I’m Billy the Teen. I’m the host of our little shindig here,” he said, reaching for her hand. “And you must be the fresh, new, delicious handywoman in town.”

Rio introduced herself. Alice winked at a woman across the bar and promptly slipped into the crowd of bodies.

Billy held onto her hand warmly. “We’ve got a whole range of queers for you, Rio. You’re quite the hot commodity right now.”

“We’ll see when the novelty wears off,” Rio replied.

“Oh, don’t count on it,” he said. “We’ve never had a hot handyperson in Westview and I have a feeling you’re about to get a lot more calls.” His eyeballs looked her up and down.

Her nerves vibrated in her body at the thought of taking home one of these attractive cowboys. It’d be fun, certainly, but could she handle it? Would that ever-present guilt break through and drag her back?

“Billy, lemme ask you something.” She stood beside him as he wiggled his fingers at a man shuffling on the floor.

Curiosity got the best of her and the next question she asked brought everything she was suppressing back to the surface. “What do you think of Agatha Harkness?”

“I think Westview judges her too harshly. You know, she babysat me and my brother, Tommy, for a couple of months.” He swiped a champagne glass from a server’s tray. “You wouldn’t think it, but she was a really fun babysitter.”

Rio chuckled at the thought of Agatha making Kraft mac and cheese and watching Spongebob Squarepants alongside two little boys. “That’s hard to believe.”

“I like her,” he said. “She’s such a bitch, but God, does she serve.”

“Serve?” Rio asked. She felt old.

“You’ve seen her, right? Michelangelo would’ve wept for the Sistine Chapel, Rio.”

She dodged answering the statement. “Is she seeing someone?”

“Not that I know of.” Billy smirked. “I do hear that she likes a hookup, though. But she only likes to take home out-of-towners and girlies that none of us know.”

“Interesting,” Rio remarked.

“So, I know you’re not asking about Agatha Harkness for your health,” he said, raising an impeccably threaded eyebrow. “I think you should go for it.”

Rio questioned him. “But you just said she’s a bitch.”

“Right. That just means she’s a complicated woman. Listen, Westview people might’ve made their mind about her, but they really shouldn’t judge her without knowing who she really is or what she’s been through. She’s got layers, babe,” he said. “Layers someone’s gotta peel back.”

A burly bouncer tapped him on the shoulder and whispered into his ear. “Ugh, excuse me. I have to go find my brother,” Billy said, disappearing into a hallway at the back corner of the dance floor.

Rio stood in the middle of the floor, mired in thought. Billy had surprised her with his nuanced, poignant perspective. She hadn’t expected to soften up again, already open to the thought of Agatha returning to the tapestry of her new life in Westview.

She weaved through writhing bodies and boots and ordered a stout at the bar. Then, she hid within the crowd again, sipping her drink and swaying with the cowboys.

The bassline of a Johnny Cash song twanged and Rio released her heels and body to the music, kicking with rhythm.

A blonde woman tipped her hat at Rio and asked to dance. Rio humored her, taking her hand for a two-step as they swung back and forth.

She was used to being pursued, but not this vigorously. Another woman cut in, linking arms with Rio as they danced to “Ring of Fire.” She smirked at the confidence of these women. They were practically throwing themselves at her.

Maybe she could meet someone tonight. Alice certainly did. There she was, groping and being groped against the wall behind the pool table. Rio snickered to herself.

The music died down for a second, and then Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s “Summer Wine” hummed through the speakers.

Whispers and murmurs traveled through the crowd, and heads turned, like a wave, toward the foot of the stairs. Rio twisted her head back.

“No fucking way,” she croaked.

Her eyes fell upon a pair of exquisite cow print boots, up to a pair of dusty black wide-leg jeans and a coal-black shirt with white details lining the placket and collar, complete with a tan fringe jacket. A dark brown cowboy hat encased with a silver rune hatband tilted up.

Agatha Harkness stood in the doorway, her steely gaze centered thoroughly on Rio, consuming her.

Chapter Text

The crowd parted for Agatha as she cut through, extending her hand to Rio. This was a challenge. Rio accepted her hand and Agatha drew her in close. The rest of the cowboys faded into the background.

“Hiya, cowboy,” Agatha said, her voice swinging with edge.

“That’s vaquero to you,” Rio shot back, letting go of Agatha’s hands.

They dragged their feet across each other, circling like vultures, the heels of their boots thumping against the floor. Unsurprisingly, a pair of polished silver spurs adorned Agatha’s cowboy boots, catching a glint of light.

“I love Nancy Sinatra,” Agatha said, inching close to Rio, her lips grazing her ear.

Fire breathed down Rio’s neck, tickling the downy hair, sending shocks down her spine.

“So that’s how we’re gonna do this?” Rio asked, lurching back into reality. “We’re just gonna pretend like your house didn’t almost catch fire and you didn’t threaten to break my kneecaps?”

Agatha simpered. “Humor me, Rio.” She reached out to Rio once again, offering her hand. Rio accepted it and Agatha squeezed her hand, while the other hand settled on her waist. “Dance with me,” she said in a low, breathless voice.

Rio clung to Agatha’s shoulder and led the dance with a step forward. “When I invited you to this, I was under the impression you didn’t want to come.”

“I said I wouldn’t wear a bolo tie.” Agatha leaned her head back, thrusting her dimpled chin out. It was one of those characteristics that Rio remembered on people, like a fingerprint.

Rio absorbed the sight as if Agatha could vanish at any second. She savored the intimate details of her freckled neck, like stars scattered in the sky. It was hard to focus on the issue at hand.

Her curiosity preceded her. “Where were you going that night?” Rio leaned in, watching every pulse of Agatha’s forehead vein, every crinkle of her nose, and every twinkle in her eye.

“Rusty Hill. They’ve got live music,” Agatha said, nakedly. It was an honest, straight answer.

“Were you going with friends?”

Agatha blinked and looked smugly at Rio. “Why do you care?”

Rio lied and said she didn’t care, suddenly on uneven footing, grasping at her dignity. The murky waters of her intentions and emotions had distilled into crystal clear waters, choppy with turmoil.

Agatha had jolted her from her seemingly permanent dormant state.

At this moment, while she danced with Agatha, their hands intertwined, and Rio knew that she wanted her. Carnally. In ways Rio had only fantasized about in hazy vignettes.

She wanted Agatha’s body pressed up against hers–again—but this time transforming anger into passion. Rio wanted to relish the friction of their bare skin grazing one another, heated and heavy.

But logic and rationale wouldn’t let her forget how Agatha had slammed her up against the brick wall, her eyes ablaze, as if she was possessed. Rio asked, “Why were you so angry at me?”

“You shouldn’t have been trespassing, that’s all,” Agatha said. She stepped forward, leaving Rio no choice but to step back in rhythm. “I would’ve seen the fire, eventually. Probably.”

It was clear she wouldn’t extract any truthful answer to that question, so Rio freed herself from expectation and predictability. “I’m surprised you didn’t just get the gun, Agatha,” Rio asserted. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you went a little easy on me. Why go for the bat?”

A flash of mischief blinged in Agatha’s eyes. “What can I say? I take pity on the bad boys. Bad on the outside, but just a softie on the inside. The bat seemed more your speed.”

“You know,” Rio said, “Even if all those rumors about you are true, like you say, I don’t care. I want to hear your side of the story.”

Agatha’s suave visage dropped. “What did you mean when you said I was hiding?”

Rio took the opportunity to lead the dance again, stepping forward and closing the space between them. “You hide within this town’s tapestry of you. I think you do it because it’s easier than facing whatever it is you’re harboring inside. You live up to the rumors and expectations about you to keep people out.”

“Well, it’s working, isn’t it?” Agatha asked. Rio could see the cracks in the foundation forming.

Rio shook her head definitively, with the weight of an anchor. “It’s not working on me.”

Agatha tossed her hair over her shoulder.

They’d come to a truce, smiling at one another for a fleeting moment. The burning desire had returned in full-force, blooming in Rio’s core.

She wanted to savor every moment she could have with Agatha. She was the type of woman who could slip through Rio’s fingers, like a phantom.

“So, should I break something else in my house? Is that how I beg for your forgiveness?” Agatha asked, splintering through their shared moment.

“Well, you definitely should replace that fire pit you call an AC,” Rio said. Was Agatha flirting with her? Was this mutual? Was Rio ready for the consequences of this heavy-handed banter?

Still, a question cooked in her brain–where was Agatha going that night? Rio couldn’t let herself fall into a chasm for a woman who wasn’t available. She could not repeat her past with Evette.

She asked, “Are you seeing someone?” Rio’s tongue traced the edge of her teeth, and she pressed further. “Exclusively?”

“Depends on how you define it.” Agatha fought for control, swinging Rio in a spin.

Rio complied and spun back into Agatha’s hold, but maintained her composure. “Why so coy?”

Agatha only smirked and pulled Rio close as she led the dance once again. “Are you used to getting your way? You ask questions and you press and you expect answers, right?”

Her eyes flitted on Rio’s expressions, honing in on her soul, like a game of cat-and-mouse.

“Answer the question,” Rio said. “Agatha,” she said, inching close to her ear and inhaling the scent of her shiny, dark hair. It was the scent of lavender, so subtle, that only someone this close could’ve perceived it. The scent roused her confidence. “Are you seeing anyone? Dating? Sleeping with anyone?”

The candor of her words fetched a hyperbolic expression of genuine shock from Agatha. But she ignored Rio’s question. “I like this look on you. It accentuates your–”

God, she was infuriating. “Stop deflecting,” Rio snapped. It was a simple “yes” or “no” question. It shouldn’t have been this complicated, but Agatha never seemed to say what she meant.

Rio didn’t know her well enough to decode anything. But she knew one thing for tonight: she couldn’t let herself go after another taken woman.

Agatha was quiet. She held eye contact with Rio, waiting for her to break first. Neither of them did. They lingered on each other, their hands flexed, their hips swaying to the cadence of Nancy Sinatra.

“Listen,” Agatha said, cradling Rio’s chin with her thumb and index finger. “I…” Her eyes flicked down to her lips. “...have to go.” She released Rio and slinked away into the crowd, into the back hallway.

Rio’s boots stayed planted on the floor, no matter how hard she tried to yank them up. She wanted to stalk Agatha back there, but she couldn’t compel herself. All logic and reason screamed at her not to. This was a terrible idea. Was this how repentance looked? A bewitching smoke show in fringe?

Her heart raced, each beat reverberating in her ears and through her sternum, like a hammer to nail. Her cheeks flushed hotly and sweat broke out upon her back. Her composure caved in, and her desires were laid bare.

Rio could no longer withstand the heat–she had to find relief.

She marched into the hallway, coming upon two doors. One to the storage room and one to the dressing room. She turned the handle to the dressing room.

The dressing room housed a dimly lit closet with racks of costumes to the left and a grand black vanity. Agatha stood in front of the large mirror covering the wall, her hat and fringe jacket tossed to the far corner of the vanity counter, meeting Rio’s eyes through her reflection.

Rio swallowed and locked the door with a heavy click. She removed her hat deliberately and slowly, hanging it on the door handle. For what seemed like the longest few seconds, she faced the door, zeroing in on the orange paint peeking through the chipped black paint, her heartbeat in her throat.

She turned back to face Agatha’s reflection.

Only the sound of their shallow breaths enveloped the room. Rio edged closer and closer, like a huntress, until she stopped inches behind Agatha. She breathed her in, and her scent absorbed into her body, trickling from her chest into the tips of her fingers.

Rio ran her fingers through Agatha’s wavy hair, stroking the ends and bringing them to her nose. She closed her eyes, basking in this sliver of time in the universe—that belonged only to them—aimless and untethered in space.

Still, neither of them uttered a word.

Rio locked eyes with Agatha in the mirror and swept her hair to one side, her fingers barely grazing the nape of Agatha’s neck.

Rio stayed deathly still, assimilating every freckle, wrinkle, texture, and scar. Together, they formed a map of Agatha’s mysterious past.

Brushed her lips against the pale skin of Agatha’s neck, Rio promised intimacy silently, and didn’t satisfy her with a kiss. No, she wanted to enjoy this moment.

She could feel the electricity between them and the dominance surging through her veins, lording it over Agatha. She couldn’t resist power like this.

Rio wrapped her left hand around Agatha’s throat, lifting her chin so she could see herself in the mirror. Her other arm wrapped around Agatha’s waist and her hand drifted from her torso down to the belt loop of her jeans, her thumb hanging onto it. Knuckles white, Agatha clutched the elegant lip of the counter to steady herself, as if she might disintegrate into dust.

With the sleight of one hand, Rio unbuttoned Agatha’s jeans, sustaining an unbroken gaze in her reflection. Agatha dared Rio with her eyes, her gaze scorching, her lips curling.

Without pretense, Rio slipped her hand into her jeans, and under the waistband of her underwear, her fingers touching the softest part of Agatha Harkness.

She trembled under Rio’s fingers, wet and breathless. Rio observed her through their reflection, their bodies leaning into one another, in a silent pact of bestowing and receiving desire. This was intoxicating.

An otherworldly power overwhelmed Rio as she caressed and picked up the pace. Agatha’s chest heaved.

Then Rio entered her, feeling her warmth around her fingers. Agatha gasped, biting the bottom of her supple lip. Rio wanted her, all of her. She tightened her grip on Agatha’s throat and clenched her jaw, her own lungs void of air.

Was this what Rio had wanted all along? She glared at herself in the mirror and the

reality of being locked in a dressing room with Agatha came crashing down, like a hurricane making landfall. What the hell was happening?

Was Agatha taken? Was she playing her? Had Rio made the same mistake of herself? Had she written herself in stone as a cheater?

Agatha rolled her head back onto Rio’s shoulder and she closed her desperate eyes, readying herself.

Before Agatha could take the remainder of her power, Rio pulled her hand away, removing herself. She couldn’t bear the weight of her guilt, razing her newfound forgiveness for herself to smithereens.

She took her hat from the door handle, unlocked it, and wrenched it open before rushing out.

Chapter Text

Rio blacked out on the way home and slammed the front door behind her, buckling against it and sliding down to her knees.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.” She whispered in panicked tongues to herself. “What did I do? What am I doing?”

Rio beelined to her dining room and rummaged through the stately liquor cabinet, searching for the mezcal she’d gotten shipped from Zacatecas. It’d been sitting, unopened, the amber bottle gathering dust for about a year.

She hadn’t opened it when she left Evette, so she decided she would open it when she truly needed it. Her hour of need had arrived.

She poured herself a heavy-handed glass and threw it back. The liquor sizzled in her throat and she winced. Then she had another splash. A series of errors unfolded that night, and around 1 AM, Rio stumbled to her bedroom, face planting into bed.

* * *

The doorbell clanged like it was going out of style, over and over, vibrating through Rio’s teeth. Her brain bounced around her skull as the bell rang through her skin. She’d been snoring on her belly, with her head twisted at a horror movie angle.

She belched herself into consciousness and flipped onto her back, forcing herself onto her elbows. Her neck was as stiff as plywood, twinging with pain as she stood up. Her joints ached with every step and the crackling sound they made ruefully reminded her that she was simply not sturdy enough to guzzle mezcal like she had last night.

Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Dingdongdingdongdingdongdingdong.

Rio tore the door open, powered only by fury now.

“What do you want?!”

Concentrated sunlight beamed into the house and into her eyes, to which she shielded her eyes as if she were a vampire. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

Through the cracks between her fingers, Rio could make out three shadowy figures. The one in the middle had a familiar, textured haircut. The one on the left had a short haircut, close to the curve of their skull. The one on the right had curly hair.

“Here, put these on.”

Someone handed Rio a pair of black sunglasses. “Alice?” Rio took in Alice’s serious, mascara-smeared eyes. Then she saw Jen and Lilia. “Wow, you brought the whole squad.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Jen replied. She looked flawless, as per usual. Her eyeliner was satisfyingly sharp and her skin was dewy and springy, like she’d just left the spa.

Lilia flashed a look of offense. “Alice told us you left the club in a rush and she couldn’t find you or reach your phone.”

“We were worried,” Alice said. “And you looked kinda upset.”

Rio fell back onto her couch and the three of them filed into her house and plopped down around her. “Well, I’m fine.”

Alice and Jen sat in loveseats facing the couch and Lilia sat next to Rio.

“You’re clearly hungover.” Alice crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Did you drive home drunk? I don’t wanna be a cop about this but I’m literally a cop so if you–”

“Jeez, I didn’t drive home drunk, okay?” Rio said. “This…happened after I got home.” The amber mezcal bottle on the coffee table sold her out. An empty glass sat next to it.

“Okay, so what happened?” Jen asked. “You and Alice seemed like you were having a great time. I know Alice was having the tongue of her life.”

Alice smacked Jen on the bicep with a limp hand.

Rio didn’t want to say. She remembered everything. Every sensation, scent, texture, sound, and sight of her. God, was it delicious. But nauseating guilt and dread eclipsed the fleeting pleasure of the memory. She burped again, and her throat burned with acid.

“Wait a second, we aren’t talking about the weirdest thing that happened last night,” Jen contended.

Lilia and Alice blinked. Rio’s stomach churned loudly.

“Agatha came to the club, guys,” Jen said. “Say what you want about her but she commits to themes. If she weren’t such a witch, I might’ve asked where she got that fringe jacket.”

“She was there?” Alice asked.

“It’s not totally out of the ordinary,” Lilia said. “She’s been known to party a little.”

“Okay, wait,” Jen said, fingers tapping her forehead. “Rio, what happened? Why were you so upset?”

“I did something.” Rio cringed and sunk into the cushions of the couch. She hugged a fuzzy, apple green throw pillow to her chest, wishing she could shrink into an ant and burrow herself away.

Lilia deciphered the look in her eyes instantly and sighed with her whole body. “Oh, my God. You didn’t. Did you?”

“I did,” Rio said, nodding into her hand.

Alice and Jen turned their heads to Rio.

They turned their heads back to Lilia.

“You did not.” Lilia sprung to her feet, her hands firm on her hips. “Oh, Rio. What did I tell you?” Rio didn’t protest.

“Does one of you want to chime in and tell me what exactly Rio did?” Alice quipped.

Lilia ignored her and continued her rant. “She’s not your friend, Rio. I mean, you’ve talked to her and been in her house—and you even said so yourself—she’s rude, entitled, unhinged, kinda violent.”

“I know,” Rio whined. “We got into it the other day. She threatened me with a bat.”

“Wait, is this about Agatha?” Jen asked, her eyes widening.

Alice pursed her lips and her expression hardened. “Is that why you left last night? Did you guys get into a fight?”

“I thought Lilia said you guys got along,” Jen muttered.

“Oh, I think they’re getting along, alright,” Lilia said, her mouth curling to one side of her face.

Jen and Alice both froze and shot a look at each other.

Rio confessed. “There was some yearning. And heavy-petting. On the outside, mostly.”

Lilia shook her head, methodically, and her frown carved itself deeper into her jaw. The disappointment and disbelief hung in the air like a noxious fume.

“You’re sleeping with Agatha Harkness?!” Alice asked.

“Not really,” Rio said. “I don’t think last night can happen again.”

“So, she threatened you with a bat and…” Jen trailed off, gesturing with her hand, squinting her eyes with confusion. “You decided to pet her kitty?”

“Oh, Jen, please,” Lilia said, waving her hand with disgust.

“This could be a good thing,” Alice said, her fingers linking. “You’re probably the closest person to Agatha right now. Did you think about my proposal for you?”

“Wait, so she’s not seeing anyone?” Rio asked, eagerly sitting up.

“If she were, the whole town would know,” Alice said. “You could be our confidant, Rio.”

A pang of sharp pain stabbed Rio in the stomach. “I’m not going to spy on her, Alice.” The relief of finding out she hadn’t gone after a taken woman was short-lived and shallow.

Lilia sat next to Rio once again and clamped a hand around her shoulder. “This could be good for Westview, Rio. And you really don’t know her.”

“And you guys do?” She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t play both sides of the fence. But there was a speck of doubt, humming beneath the surface, always.

“Okay, look, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Alice said, relenting. “But, please, Rio–if you find out what she’s hiding, think about us. Think about Westview.”

Before Rio could say a word or protest, Jen stood up. “I’m starving. Let’s make some pancakes.”

Rio hated that her friends were right. She didn’t know Agatha Harkness, not truly.

The woman was an enigma, and Rio wanted nothing more than to decrypt her masked expressions and her vague remarks. But what Lilia said crawled under her skin, prickling at that doubt.

There was no good reason for Agatha to become so enraged that evening, unless she was hiding something on that land. Agatha was the epitome of smoke and mirrors, and Rio couldn’t let that distract her, no matter how good it felt.

Chapter Text

When Monday rolled around, Rio’s hangover finally subsided. She hibernated for the weekend, rescheduling a few jobs for the week, and imbibing a steady stream of Gatorade and water. 

She wasn’t ready to see Agatha again, not after everything that had happened the last time. Rio couldn’t trust herself around Agatha when she looked at her, though she held all the power last time, and it revived her soul. 

Agatha didn’t seem like the type to relinquish herself to another person; she seemed like the woman who held the reins, controlling them to her desires. Had she let Rio hold that power over her? 

It was a scary feeling, not knowing if what she was doing was right or not–and knowing that her newfound friends were vehemently opposed to anything to do with Agatha didn’t help. 

It wasn’t a question of whether she desired her, that was a certainty. It was what came after that. Rio hadn’t thought that far ahead. She lived in the present, and she hadn’t expected to cross paths with someone like Agatha. 

She’d arrived during a fall breeze, and a cyclone carried her away. 

Rio got ready, wearing a cream sweatshirt with a pair of denim overalls, and headed out for her first job of the day. She went through the garage, and straight into her truck. Her first stop was the hardware store. 

When she arrived, she found Lilia at the front desk, where she alternated between the crosswords in the newspaper and greeting customers.

Lilia slurped her coffee and groaned at it. “Blech, I never learn. Diner coffee is never good.” She scribbled on her newspaper, scratching the page to get the ink in her pen to flow. She didn’t look up when Rio came in, the bell sounding from the ceiling speaker. “How’s your head?”

“I’m hangover-free, Lilia,” Rio said, on the tips of her feet from the drywall aisle. She grabbed two panels of sheetrock and a bag of joint compound mix. “Got any tips for the Leungs? I’m putting in an archway for them today.” 

Lilia chewed on her lower lip and took her glasses off. She pointed with her pen. “The Leungs love their security system. It’s wired through every single doorway in their house.”

“Oh, God,” Rio said. 

“I’d buy some cable ties and a staple gun if you don’t have one. The guy who set up their security system was an animal. I’ll check out what you have and hold it up here,” she said, waving Rio over. “Cable ties are in aisle six and the staple guns are in aisle nine.” 

Rio placed her merch on the counter and wandered back to the aisles. She scanned the variety of cable ties, twist ties, twine, and gear ties. 

Eventually, she settled on a pack of dainty, white cable ties. White would blend best with most walls. 

The door rang again, and Lilia greeted the customer enthusiastically. It was uncharacteristic of Lilia to be so loud and breathy, but Rio paid no mind. 

She moved onto the staple guns, which were situated with the nail guns. The store only carried two nondescript brands of staple guns: one pneumatic and one manual. Rio chose the stainless steel manual staple gun and swiped a box of staples. 

When she emerged from the aisle, she instantly recognized the lean figure chatting with Lilia at the register. 

Rio pivoted on her heel and ducked at the speed of light, back into the safety of the aisle. What the hell was Agatha doing here? She certainly didn’t seem like the type of homeowner who willingly went to the hardware store. Rio’s ears perked up as she strained to eavesdrop. 

“...Doing your own projects, huh? Good for you,” Lilia gushed. “...spackle in aisle four behind you.” 

“You guys sell paint here?” Agatha asked. 

“We sell a small selection of basic colors…” Lilia said, babbling.

Agatha drummed her long, witchy fingers against the sheetrock on the counter. “So, I guess you and Rio know each other, right?” 

Rio straightened up, pushing her shoulder blades back, as if it could help her listen harder. 

“Sure, she comes in here for her jobs. As handypeople do.” 

Sighing with relief, Rio relaxed her shoulders. This was a testament of her friendship with Lilia in real-time. 

“If you see her, will you just tell her I’m looking for her?” Agatha pressed.

“About what?”

“None of your business, Calderu,” Agatha said, melodically. “I’m gonna go look at the paint.” She abruptly left the front desk and marched toward the back of the store, miraculously missing Rio on her way. 

Rio poked her head out of the aisle and caught Lilia’s attention, her eyes following her every move. They had a telepathic understanding. She scurried to the front desk and grabbed the sheetrock panels, clamping them under her armpit. 

She whispered to Lilia, “Just charge these to my account?” 

Lilia nodded and winked. 

With her leftover appendages, Rio gathered the rest of her stuff and skittered out of the store. 

Agatha had been looking for her. Did she want to talk about what had happened? Was this about something different?

Rio’s heart shot through her ribs, ricocheting around with a mess of fear, anxiety, nerves, and excitement. Her mind raced, like film slides clicking through a projector, the images nonsensical and luminous. She couldn’t make sense of the images, but they all revolved around Agatha. 

Sucking in a breath, Rio shoved the feeling down deep into the recesses of her body and focused on getting to the Leungs’ house. She was always good at getting back to dry land, back in her body.

* * *

Rio patched and finished the drywall at the Leung residence, and accepted a generous tip on her way out of the neighborhood gates. 

She stuffed the cash into the front pocket of her overalls and twisted her spine, trying to stretch the ache out of her back. Work like this had torn her body apart, year by year, tendon by tendon, but she staved it off as much as she could, unlike her dad. 

The elder Vidal numbed his joints with beer and didn’t believe in stretching, so the cords in his neck accrued knots. Eventually, he relied on heavy bouts of ibuprofen, destroying the lining of his stomach in the process.

On her lunch break, Rio stopped by the town square to pick up some groceries at the market. She’d planned on cooking French onion soup this week, but she forgot the Gruyère and she wanted a few Vidalia onions. 

Begone pop stars hummed on the speakers and seniors hunched over the produce. Rio snuck between an older man and shrunken woman, near the potatoes, onions, and garlic. The three of them rummaged through the produce in silence, looking past bruises and squeezing for unwanted mushiness. 

As soon as Rio found a suitable onion, she placed it into her mesh produce bag. She peered around for the dairy section–and the air in her lungs suddenly evaporated. 

There she was again.

“What the fuck?” Rio said, under her breath. 

Agatha stood in the cheese section, with a bag slung over her shoulder, studying the Edam and Camembert like a culinary student. She whipped around suddenly, her tricky eyes fixed on Rio, catching her in a trap. 

“Hey, you ,” Agatha called.

Rio stammered, which was completely out of character. “Hey.” She held her basket up. “I’m here on my lunch, so I’m just in and out.” 

“Relax, I just wanted to ask about your upcoming schedule. And about your experience with remodeling bathrooms.” 

Rio clenched her stomach, her guard zipped up to her neck. “You could’ve sent a ticket in for that.”

“It’s a big job,” Agatha said. “I didn’t know if that was part of your services.” She ambled closer, floating over to the tomatoes. 

“Well, what’d you have in mind?” 

Agatha thought for a moment, pushing her lips out. “I want to rip out the tile, replace the sink, replace the toilet, and maybe do some painting.”

Rio kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. “I mean, I typically don’t do contractor stuff like that but–.” 

“Can you do it in two weeks?”” 

Before Rio could answer, Agatha completed her sentence. “I know–’put in a ticket.’ Yeah, yeah. I might, I might not. Good thing you live on my street.” She turned, signalling the abrupt end of the conversation, going back to the cheeses. She placed a jar of apricot jam in her basket and considered the truffle cheese. 

Disbelief pervaded through Rio’s chest, constricting her airway. Was that really the whole conversation? That’s what Agatha wanted to talk about? Was all of this in her head? 

Rio hesitated between the onions and mustered a broken set of words from her mouth. “Are we–you’re not–can we–?” 

She’d never been tongue-tied. She was the type to speak deliberately, selecting her words carefully, and executing smoothly. 

But as soon as Agatha looked at her, Rio’s brain seized. Nobody had ever tripped her up like this. She prided herself on being the cool, calm, and collected person in any situation. This clearly wasn’t the case now.

“Are you always this squirrelly?” Agatha teased. She enjoyed having the upper-hand, too much. 

Rio strutted over to her, attempting to regain her cool demeanor. “So, we’re just going to pretend like Saturday night didn’t happen?”

Agatha shrugged. “We don’t have to make it a whole thing.”

Rio expected her heart to sink, but instead it blackened with heat. “No, we don’t have to.”

“But I did enjoy myself.”

Hubris bolted through Rio’s rib cage, and she said, “I know.” 

She couldn’t let Agatha have the last word. She could see the cogs turning in Agatha’s pretty head, and it only padded her ego. 

As much as the woman sent mixed signals, these were flashing, blaring, and red. 

Rio continued, “Do you want to enjoy yourself again?”

Agatha sputtered, her mouth cracked open but nothing came out, foraging for something witty to sling back. “What are you suggesting?” 

She hadn’t expected Rio to play ball.

“You tell me,” Rio said, winking at Agatha. She pivoted on her heel, pulling the pin to a grenade and leaving Agatha with the fallout. 

She had to have the last word, even if it meant steeping in uncertainty. 

At least now, she’d know if the chase was mutual. 

* * *

Rio finished her jobs that day and returned home around 7 PM, her joints aching, and her overalls smudged with dusty white spackle and such. 

The high of having the last word had dwindled, but only marginally. She hung her keys up on the hooks in the hallway closet and threw her coat on her couch. Then, she threw herself on the couch, too, exhausted. Starving, but too tired to do anything about it. 

She shifted on her back, unable to get comfortable. The muscles in her lower back tightened like cables, rigid and unyielding. Rio groaned and poked her fingers into her muscles, hoping to relieve the ache. 

It worked for a moment, but what she really needed was to unweave her muscles and unroll her body, like a long piece of dough. 

She flopped onto the floor, moved the coffee table aside and pulled her right knee to her chest. Staring at the ceiling, Rio was starkly reminded that it was popcorn ceiling, its ugly texture casting odd pimply shadows that made her skin crawl. She scowled.

She thought of each painstaking step she’d have to take to get rid of that godforsaken, asbestos-filled trend: she’d have to wet the ceiling and scrape all the texture off, which would probably take days by herself. 

Her neck spasmed just thinking about it. Alas, it could wait another day. She yawned and suddenly sleep snuck over her, like a weighted blanket. 

The doorbell rang once and a raucous snore escaped Rio’s open mouth, which aroused her from slumber. 

The door rang again. She rolled her eyes, still laying on the rug under the coffee table. “ Ugh . Go away,” she said to herself. 

Then, a series of flat, matter-of-fact knocks. Rio checked her watch. It was 10 PM. There was only one person who could and would disrespect her time like this. She sat up, and to her surprise, the door creaked open. 

Agatha stood in the doorway. “Hello?” she called. She moseyed inside and gave Rio a look of confusion, cocking her head to the side. “What are you doing?”

Rio stayed on the floor, her limbs stiff. “Okay, better question. Do you always invite yourself into your neighbors’ houses?” 

“You really should lock your doors, Rio,” she said. “Again, what are you doing?”

“I had a long day and my back hurts,” Rio said, finally standing up. “It’s late. Why are you here?” It then occurred to her—Agatha could be here to enjoy herself . 

Was this how it would happen? Her heartbeat sped, lurching into her throat. She hadn’t imagined that this was how their escapades continued, dressed in overalls. 

Agatha turned towards her, facing her straight on. She started with an open pair of hands. Just as quickly as Rio allowed herself to indulge in fantasy, Agatha quashed it.

“I thought about your proposition, and I just don’t hook up twice. I can’t.” 

Rio stood as still as a rock, attempting to cover her unabashed disappointment. 

“Can I ask why?”

“Come here,” Agatha said.

“What?” Rio eyes darted left and right.  

“Come here,” Agatha repeated, lifting one arm, beckoning for Rio. 

Rio floated over under her command, her bloodstream rushing with tumult and bewilderment. Her stomach gurgled. 

“Turn around.”

Rio turned around.

“Fold your arms against your chest.”

 Rio obeyed, bringing her elbows in and then folding her forearms across her chest, as if she could be laid into a casket at any moment. 

Agatha wrapped her arms around Rio, her chest pressed up against her back, breathing on her neck. “I’m not looking for anything and I don’t want this to be weird, especially if you’re going to be my handywoman–”

“How could this possibly be weird?” Rio deadpanned, turning back to face Agatha, inches from her lips. She couldn’t help but glance at them. 

“Hush,” Agatha hissed, “you’ll feel better.” Her arms constricted around Rio, and she tugged upward, sharply. Rio’s spine cracked and the ache in her back suddenly dulled. Agatha released her.

Rio turned around to face her again. She was so taken by the maneuver and the lack of pain in her back that she forgot to feel the sting of rejection. “Oookay,” she started, “you’re a witch .”

Agatha flashed a close-lipped smile. “They do say that about me.” 

“So, is that what you came over to talk about? To tell me you don’t hook up twice?” Rio asked, finding her balance. She was more disappointed than she should’ve been, but she wasn’t looking for anything beyond sex—and she could achieve that elsewhere. 

“Maybe.” Agatha paused. “No.” 

Rio ventured past Agatha and into the kitchen, peeking into the portal that was her refrigerator. “It’s never an easy answer with you,” she said. She dug out a carton of eggs, bacon, and lettuce and put a pan on the stove. 

“I actually came to officially book you for my house,” Agatha said. “I was serious when I said I wanted the bathroom done in two weeks.” 

“At this hour?” 

“A witch never sleeps, Rio,” she said, like an adage. She eyed the bacon sizzling in the pan. 

“Agatha, I don’t usually do jobs like this–”

“Before you say anything, I have a whole Pinterest board with some ideas and I want you to take a look–and then decide.” 

Rio hadn’t pegged Agatha as the type of woman who liked Pinterest, but alas–she was a fancy white lady and this was part of their culture.

Had anyone else asked to renovate their bathroom, Rio would’ve pointed them towards WestPages. 

But this was Agatha, and she couldn’t pass up the chance to learn more about her, so she accepted the job with a heavy-chested sigh before she even saw what it entailed. She had to know what the rest of Westview was seeing when they saw Agatha.

Rio would be in her house, again. She’d learn about Agatha’s taste in bathroom tile and paint colors, and that was intriguing. What if she had bad taste? Would that air of mystery suddenly vanish?

Rio cracked an egg into the pan. “Fine, send it to me,” she said, knowing her body would feel like shredded wheat when she started the project. “You want a BLT?”

“Absolutely not. I’m gonna go sit on that cushion graveyard you call a couch,” Agatha

said, pulling out her phone, her voice trailing away. “Oh, God, I’m siiiiiiinking.” 

Rio caught her reflection in the single panel of steel on her fridge, and she tucked her hair behind her ears, brushing her flyways into order. She reminded herself: it’s just Pinterest. It was late, and she was bone-tired, but this could be how she cracked Agatha.

* * *

Rio chomped through her sandwich in two bites, while Agatha chattered on about her hatred of white subway tiles. She insisted on the return of maximalism, and said beige belonged in certain wardrobes in certain circumstances, not on walls and on furniture. 

Then, she walked back on maximalism and decided on an Art Deco renaissance. 

After dinner, Rio put her dish in the sink and returned to the living room. Rio sat next to Agatha, one couch cushion apart. 

Agatha scrolled through her Pinterest board, pointing to black slate tiles, floral wallpapers, gold fixtures, green pendant lights, and French country cabinets. She had great , if not, eclectic taste. It was unexpected. 

Rio had expected to see more mid-century touches—cleaner, simpler lines. But this was gorgeous, striking, and bewitching. 

This was what it was like to catch a glimpse past Agatha’s hard shell exterior. It happened so rarely, and Rio felt lucky that she’d been chosen.

Agatha’s current bathroom was perhaps incongruent with who she was as a person: it was washed in a warm yellow paint, granite countertop, white enamel sink, and oak floors. It was respectable, but no personality emanated from it.

An hour had whizzed by. Rio had an early job tomorrow, and she knew she’d wrest herself from bed in the morning with brittle, stiff shoulders. She didn’t care. 

“I guess I’m all yours for two weeks,” Rio said. She felt around in her breast pocket for a pen and marked two weeks on the calendar hanging in the kitchen. 

So, why are you in such a rush to get this done?” Rio asked. 

Agatha sucked in her bottom lip. “No reason. I just can’t stand that yellow paint anymore.”

“I don’t believe you,” Rio said, bluntly. “You got friends coming in town you wanna impress or something?”

“No,” Agatha said. “I don’t really have friends anymore.”

“So, you’re doing it for you, then?” 

“Sure,” Agatha said, slouching against the back of the couch. She clawed and clutched at the cushion, one hand on each side of her thighs. “Where’d you get this couch? So I can make sure never to shop there.”

Rio lobbed a throw pillow at her, reactively. “I bought this off Wayfair, okay? My ex took the supportive couch.” That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth, either. Evette deserved the good, firm, designer couch. 

“Where’d you move from?” Agatha asked, one eyebrow rising. 

Rio told her about the town just outside Chicago where she’d lived for most of her life, while conveniently skirting around any mention of Evette. 

“Is that why you moved?” Agatha turned her body towards Rio, resting her elbow on the edge of the drooping couch. “To get away from your ex?”

“That’s part of it.” Her walls reared, hoisting high around her past. Rio’s brown eyes darkened, obscuring the truth. 

“Why here? Why Westview?” A sparkle flickered in Agatha’s eyes, all the way down to her quizzical smile. 

Rio pushed back. “How about I answer that question after you answer a couple of mine?”

Agatha held up her index finger. “One question.” 

“How did you become Señor Scratchy’s keeper?” It was a simple, unexpected question that would reveal some of Agatha’s character. 

Agatha squinted, as if in disbelief. “I found him when he was a kitten. Must’ve been about eleven years ago. It was the anniversary of N—”

“That part’s not relevant.” She hesitated and continued. “He was living in my gutters. I heard meowing one night, and at first I thought he was in the attic. But then, I climbed up to the roof–and it was the middle of the night. And there he was, buried under a year’s worth of muck and leaves.”

Rio imagined rainwater gushing down the sides of Agatha’s house. A year’s worth of debris in the gutters in a climate like this must’ve been insane. 

“So, I scooped him up, and he scratched me right across the nose, and I fell off the ladder.”

A gasp left Rio’s body. 

Agatha rolled up her sleeve, revealing a long, gnarly scar running from her elbow up to her forearm. “I probably should’ve gone to the hospital for this, but I wasn’t in a good place, so I taped the cut together.”

Rio studied the scar, noting that it’d healed flat in some places and bumpy in others. It was reddish, with bursts of miniscule veins here and there, apparent against Agatha’s pale skin. 

“I take it that’s why he’s named Señor Scratchy?” Rio asked. 

“Precisely,” Agatha said, winking. “Your turn. Why Westview?” 

“The answer really isn’t that interesting,” Rio said, biting her tongue. “I wanted to be alone, I guess. I wanted to be unknown, even to myself.” 

“Why would you want to be unknown?” 

The quiet between them surged. 

“You’re fascinating,” Agatha said.

Rio smiled at her, with the tenderness of a summer breeze. She couldn’t help it.

Chapter Text

By Wednesday, autumn had become tinged with a chilly wind, a harbinger of a dry winter to come. Alice had caught her at the bar, and Rio reluctantly recounted her night with Agatha over hot cocoa. “It’s not like you’re a rat,” Alice said, unconvincingly.

Rio found herself in the passengers’ seat of Alice’s police car, yet again, warming her hands over the raucous AC vents. She told Alice that she’d be working in Agatha’s house for a couple of weeks.

“This is good, Rio,” Alice said. “You’ll be in her house a lot. Could be the only time you just take a gander around her house, see if you can find anything else out.”

“Okay, seriously, there hasn’t been anything suspicious about her, really,” Rio insisted. “She’s just theatrical.”

Alice ignored her and continued questioning. “You haven’t been able to get a closer look at that field behind her house?”

Rio said no.

“Seriously? You put out a fire back there, and you didn’t get a look?”

“No! Sue me for focusing on one thing at a time while there’s a fire and a very, very angry woman threatening me.” Rio spilled a splash of scorching cocoa on her hand.

“Wait,” Rio said. “I have seen her in her backyard, in her pajamas, late at night.”

Alice tipped her head closer, her eyes waiting for more.

“I’ve seen her in that field a few times. She just stands there.”

“Hmmmm,” Alice hummed. “That is strange.”

Rio sank into the seat, and it creaked, her stomach uneasy and swirling. What she’d said out loud was real, now—to Alice and Westview. Perception was reality in this town.

* * *

Rio spent the evening with Jen, dropping in at various boutiques and quaint strip malls. Billy was hosting trivia night at the bar, and Jen rarely had an evening off.

Rio liked to start Christmas shopping early; that was the tradition with Evette, even though it drove her nuts. Thanksgiving was only a little over a week away.

Evette had relished the chaos of a Black Friday sale, and Rio actively avoided it. It was pointless and grotesque to Rio, but here she was, shopping far too early.

At a local home goods store, she browsed through the candles and kitchenware. She’d be buying for a few people in Westview, at most. It was a strange change, but truthfully, she had grown exhausted with the ever-expanding line of people she had to buy presents for. Maybe that was why she moved.

There’d be no obligations this year, even from afar. Westview was an isolated town. The internet here was spotty, and Rio liked it that way; it made it harder to live her life through the whirlpool of screens.

“What do you think of these?” Jen asked, wagging an assortment of dish towels with bright red designs on them.

“They look a little murder-y,” Rio volunteered.

Jen nodded in agreement and set the towels down. “I should stick to the citrus and fish ones.”

“Do you like these?” Rio asked, brandishing a four-pack of beautiful, end grain coasters. “You think these would make a good gift?” She pictured them in Agatha’s living room, on her Danish coffee table. Was it too much wood? Was it midcentury-leaning? Did she hate coasters and that was why Rio didn’t see any?

“Yeah, they’re cute,” Jen said, absentmindedly. Then, she swirled her head around, pursing her lips. “A gift for Agatha? Come on, Rio.”

Rio didn’t deny it. “Look, we’re not doing anything. She’s just my neighbor. I’m doing some work for her house soon—and Christmas is coming up in a month. I thought it’d be nice.”

Jen didn’t have to say anything else to draw more out of Rio.

“Okay,” Rio said. “We’re really not doing anything. That last time, that was a one-time thing, apparently. I may have propositioned her, and she shot me down, and that’s that.”

“Well,” Jen said, “I’m sorry.” She patted Rio’s shoulder the way an absentee father would, a little too hard and familiar. “Honestly, it’s probably the universe’s way of telling you to stop fucking around.”

Rio placed the coasters back in their rightful slot on the item display. The pendulum between pursuing her lust and residing in safe rationale constantly swung, and Rio wasn’t sure how much longer she could bear it.

* * *

On Thursday morning, Rio bundled herself in a pair of heavy-duty black coveralls and a coffee-colored shearling coat. She tied her hair up in a bun, but two tresses of hair still fell in her eyes. It drove her nuts, but she lived.

She arrived at Agatha’s front door at 8 AM sharp. Her breath appeared in front of her in the crisp air.

Today was the first day of this breakneck-pace project, and she’d be taking measurements of the bathroom, removing the vanity cabinet, mirror, and sink.

Agatha opened the door, looking past Rio, gesturing for her to come in. She had her AirPods in, discussing something about budgetary concerns at her company. Her hair looked styled, in neat waves, with one side pinned behind her ear.

She looked pretty in a cordial, candid sort of way. Rio couldn’t peel her eyes from Agatha, and couldn’t believe how attractive she looked, doing such mundane, everyday things.

Rio cleared her throat in an attempt to concentrate on the job and not the way Agatha looked, even though she’d already imagined how she’d look just after her work day had ended: tousled hair, half-unbuttoned shirt, an irresistible lip bite.

She followed Agatha past the dining room and into the hallway.

Agatha pointed to the bathroom and then left Rio to her work.

Lobbing her coat on the couch, Rio got to removing the vanity cabinet. She dropped her tool bag on the floor and started with the shut-off valves under the sink. The pipes and valve were corroded with a green and white crust, but not so badly that they’d need to be replaced right away.

But Rio decided she’d replace them anyway–it’d be a cleaner job. She dug around in her bag for her trusty pocket knife, which had a beautiful curved blade and dark wood handle, carved by hand.

It had been her father’s, passed down from his father, and so on. Nobody in the Vidal family seemed to know its true origins, and nobody knew why the blade never seemed to dull. She’d come into possession of the knife after he passed, in a wooden box with his belongings.

Had he been alive, he would’ve flipped if he saw how she used the knife. She took it with her for most jobs, cutting through packaging, caulk, grout, wood, and other materials. It was like a piece of him she kept at her side, at all times.

Rio used it to slice through the caulk sealing the vanity to the wall. She closed the knife and clipped it to her leg pocket.

She unscrewed the mirror from the wall and set it in the hallway. Within two hours, she’d dismantled the vanity and removed the sink, and the hallway bathroom was ready for its makeover.

Agatha wandered down the stairs, with a particularly content bounce in her step. She stopped in front of the newly placed mirror in the hallway, admiring herself. She wore a pair of flared blue windowpane pants and a royal blue shirt tucked into it. “Hey,” she said, poking her head into the bathroom, hanging onto the door frame. “You work fast.”

Rio looked up at her. “Yeah, I’ve done a few of these.”

“So, you wanna hit the store? Go buy a vanity and pick out the floor tiles?”

“Right now? I thought you were working,” Rio said, sheepishly. She stood up, meeting Agatha’s eyes.

Agatha snickered. “Please, they’re lucky I show up day-to-day.” She grabbed Rio’s arm. “Come on. Let’s take your truck.”

* * *

Seventies ballads played softly through the speakers as Rio drove. She and Agatha made conversation, exchanging pleasantries about the weather and the plans for the bathroom. After a lull, Agatha asked, “So, how’d you learn how to do all this stuff?”

Rio clutched the wheel and made a right turn. “My dad.” She smiled when she thought of him. “He was a handyman, too, and I used to tag along on his jobs and I’d unscrew panels, drill holes, spackle, clean up, you know. We spent a lot of time in his workshop, too. I went to community college for some foundational skills and the business side, but my dad had a whole lifetime of experience that I wouldn’t have learned anywhere else.”

“Do you still talk to him?”

“He passed away a few years ago,” Rio said. “He and I were always closer than my mother and I.”

“I can relate,” Agatha said. “My mother and I were always at odds.”

“I’m sure for good reason,” Rio said, reassuring her. She didn’t let on that she’d read those terrible news articles about her mother.

“I didn’t know she’d passed away until I saw the obituaries nearly three months after the fact,” Agatha uttered.

A profound sense of sorrow propagating in Rio’s core, like thorny vines, lashing around her muscles. She felt sorry for Agatha, but not pity. Rio could feel her pain, bleeding into the space between them, suffocating them.

It was cut short when they arrived at the specialty hardware store.

Once inside, Agatha’s mood shifted once again, cloaking herself in that smug visage that kept others at bay. Rio went with it.

They explored each aisle, interchanging thoughts about the wood patterns of the vanity cabinets and the material of the sinks. Eventually, Agatha chose an elaborately carved mushroom-colored vanity with a dark ceramic sink. It looked nearly identical to the French country vanity Agatha had pinned on her Pinterest board. Rio ordered it and coordinated the loading of it into her truck while Agatha browsed the bathroom tiles.

When Rio returned to her, Agatha pointed to black hexagonal tiles. “These?”

“Too busy.”

Agatha held up square tiles.

“Nah.”

“What about these?” She stroked a glossy herringbone-pattern tile. “Never mind, I hate these.”

Rio scanned the tiles, her hand outreached. “What about…”

Her hand and Agatha’s met on the same tile. An electric spark jolted through Rio’s spine. Agatha didn’t pull her hand away. They’d chosen a gorgeous black mosaic tile with a white seven-pointed star.

Rio wanted nothing more than to take Agatha’s hand and tug her close against her body, meeting her body’s every desire and need.

“These are cement tiles, so they’re definitely pricier,” Rio said, stirring from the moment.

Agatha waved her hand, grazing her hair. “Price is but a number. Let’s get them.”

Rio wasn’t surprised, but she was yet again intrigued. Agatha must’ve been high up at her company, because those handmade cement tiles were prohibitively expensive for most of the folks in Westview.

* * *

The next two days, Rio sweated over the floor, prying up the tiles in the bathroom, her arms and legs weak by the time she’d finished. Every time she clutched something, the tendons and ligaments and muscles in her palms and forearms cramped. She kneeled on the floor, staying there as long as she could.

Agatha bumped around the kitchen, whipping dinner together. Rio packed up her gear and got to the front door.

“I bought too much bacon,” Agatha said. “Stay for dinner.”

It was less of a question and more of a directive. Rio paused and turned. “Sure.”

They sat in the dining room, adjacent to one another. Agatha had made BLTs, except

that they were exceptional. Rio raved at the first bite.

Agatha had made a chipotle mayo from scratch and cooked the bacon to crispy perfection. The bread was perfectly buttered and grilled, too. On the side, she served sweet potato fries.

It wasn’t surprising that Agatha could make a mean sandwich. She seemed like the type of person who only ate the most delicious versions of every food.

“Jeez, I forgot what it was like to eat dinner with someone else at this table,” Agatha conceded.

“God, me too,” Rio said. “This is nice, not to go home to an empty house to eat dinner by myself.” When she said that out loud, she realized how much single-hood had seeped into the fabric of her daily life, and her being.

She prided herself on independence, and she was happy–but she didn’t want to live a life of solitude forever.

“I’m not dying to jump into anything serious right now,” Rio continued. “Not after the last decade with my ex.”

“Right.” Agatha asked, fiddling with a sweet potato fry. “What was that like for you?”

Rio shook her head. It was an innocent question, but her lower lip twitched at the reasoning behind Agatha asking.

“My relationship? It was fine until it wasn’t,” Rio said, side-stepping the hairy underbelly

of that colossal question. She switched the spotlight onto Agatha, instead. “What about you? What was your last relationship like?”

Agatha hemmed and grunted. “Mine? My last relationship?”

Rio captured a tremble in Agatha’s hand and a flare of—unease, behind those calm eyes.

“Pfffft, that was so long ago, I don’t even remember it,” Agatha blathered. “I mean,

please, I’ve had hot flashes that have lasted longer than any of my relationships.”

“Come on,” Rio said, egging her on. “You can’t tell me you don’t remember any of your exes.”

“Look, the truth is,” Agatha began, “I don’t do relationships.”

Rio taunted her with a weighty smirk. “Oh, really? Like you don’t do hookups twice?”

“Yeah, like that.” She wiped her hands with a napkin and crossed her arms tautly. “I don’t see why it’s a bad thing.”

Rio cleaned her hands in her napkin. “I guess it’s not necessarily bad.” She wrung her fingers, and her palm spasmed violently, forcing her hand into a fist. “Ah, fuck. My hand is cramping–”

Agatha snapped her fingers and summoned Rio’s hand, taking it and pressing her thumbs firmly into her palms, immediately releasing the tension. Rio’s shoulders relaxed into Agatha’s strong, nimble hands.

“Does that feel good?” Agatha asked, with an expected answer.

Rio stuttered, butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “Yeah, it does.” Why did she turn into jello anytime Agatha touched her?

Her spine dissolved, and her resolve dissipated like mist when this particular woman touched her skin. Rio flexed her core, stifling the arousal like a bug under her foot.

Agatha massaged her hand, and eventually moved up Rio’s forearm. A tingle climbed up Rio’s legs as she stayed in the moment with Agatha, simply looking at her.

She paid no mind to Rio, absentmindedly handling her as she recounted her short-lived relationships. “I’ve had flings, romps, encounters, strong, unbroken eye contact in dimly lit bars, all of it. I’ve lived, ‘kay? But none of them go anywhere after that initial…time. Whether it’s chemistry, looks, vibes, fatal character flaws, terrible taste in shoes, they’re annoying–it always ends. And it’s always messy.”

Rio implored her to continue with an inquisitive look, her eyebrows creeping up. Agatha took her other hand and kneaded the stiff muscles in her hand.

“They all come to the same conclusion, which I think is true and I don’t care: it’s me that they don’t like. And have I been known to use people for my own pleasure? Yeah,” Agatha huffed. “But they knew that, coming into my house–and coming—never mind. The point is, relationships just don’t work with me. And I’m happy with myself.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you squeezing my hand so hard?” Rio asked, her hand limp in Agatha’s boa constrictor grip. Rio flashed a grin at her, shattering Agatha’s illusion of coolness and being unbothered. Then she saw it in Agatha’s eyes. Bolts of white-hot lightning. She was holding herself back.

Could Rio be mistaken? Was there indeed a layer of mutual attraction boiling under the surface?

“Oh.” Agatha loosened her grip.

Rio rested her hand in Agatha’s open palm for a second. “For the record, I don’t think it’s you that’s the problem.”

Chapter Text

For the next few days, Agatha had Rio over for dinner several times. Each time, they made light conversation, chatting about Señor Scratchy’s new diet and Rio’s odd propensity for finding lost items. That, however, didn’t stop Rio from dreaming of Agatha, shamelessly.

At night, she found herself lying in bed with her arms above her head, gazing up at the ceiling. Her hands clenched at the memory of Agatha caressing them. She brushed her lips with her fingers, reliving what Agatha’s neck had felt like against them.

Then she imagined what her mouth would taste like: perhaps like a rainy day in the spring, or an autumn breeze. She savored the romanticism of her daydreams before drifting to heavier, edgier thoughts.

The recurring dream that Rio clung to was the one where she sat upon a vast knoll on a picnic blanket, grass tickling in between her fingers.

She’d watch the sun emerge from a pillowy sheet of lilac clouds, showering her tan skin with hazy, placid light. And then Agatha would appear, twirling a purple azalea between her long fingers.

She’d smile at Rio and come closer, practically climbing over her, and her eyes would lock on hers. The hairs on Rio’s arm stood up, as Agatha straddled her, one leg on each side of her hips.

They’d remain frozen, posed in time like a Polaroid, their eyes locked on each other, like keys to their souls. And then Agatha would take Rio’s face in her hand, caressing her cheek. She’d whisper in a low, gravelly voice, the warmth tickling Rio’s ear.

The grating sound of her blaring phone alarm always woke her up when she got to that part. Rio stumbled from her bed in a daze, donning a toothy grin.

Breaking with the rest of the week, she spent the day sealing and polishing the cement tiles, until they were lustrous like liquid.

She locked herself in her garage, working on the tiles in a makeshift workshop bench composed of two tables of different heights. She hated unsealed tiles; their porous faces made her fingertips feel dry, the microscopic particles of cement dust stuck in the grooves. But still, she pushed through.

This kind of rote work was a type of therapy for her, completely encompassing her senses and thoughts, so she wouldn’t have to think about her more.

Rio wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she felt off-balance. She’d grown accustomed to her routine with Agatha over the week, and it felt odd being at home again.

She thought about what Agatha was doing, imagining her at her computer with a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of her nose. She’d chew her bottom lip when she got an email for a new ticket at work, and then she’d roll her eyes, abandon the laptop, and then drop in on the progress of the bathroom.

* * *

Around 7 PM, Rio finally finished working on the cement tiles, signifying the end of the day when she shook out her hair and took her corduroy baseball cap off. She put it back on, backwards, and tucked her hair behind her ears. Trudging to the kitchen, Rio yawned and cracked her neck from side to side.

She opened the fridge and groaned, knowing she’d never been much of a cook, and dinner would be an odd mishmash of food. Rio was a utilitarian, and food was no different.

The muscles in her forearms fluttered and loosened, like overstretched rubber bands, weakened. Her father had taught her some stretches, in which she flexed her hands outward for a few seconds and then curved both hands back in towards her wrists.

In the fridge, there was half a bag of carrots, a handful of cilantro, some leftover pork shoulder, and a container of diced white onion in the fridge. Rio frowned, but then blew her hair out of her face and resigned herself to some low effort tacos.

As she took everything out of the fridge, the doorbell rang.

“Come in!” Rio called over her shoulder.

In walked Agatha, and it didn’t surprise Rio this time.

“I’m trying a new pot roast recipe. Come over.”

Rio brushed off her coveralls, which were sullied with cement dust, old paint, and pen. “Right now?”

“Yeah, right now,” Agatha said, impatiently. She still had an apron over her work clothes, a crisp white shirt and a pair of plaid slacks. Snapping her fingers, she sucked in her cheeks and puckered her lips. “Let’s go, while it’s hot.”

Surrendering with her hands up, Rio let the fridge door swing shut and followed Agatha out of the house and up the road to her house, as if she were under a spell.

On the walk up, Rio muttered, “Wow, dinner at your house again? You must be fond of me.”

“I find you the least annoying in this town,” Agatha said, tipping her haughty nose up. “And also you’re giving me a hell of a deal on this work, so this really is just an obligation on my part to appear–”

“You really could’ve left it at ‘yeah, sure.’”

Agatha turned around and pointed to her head. “I like the hat.” She winked at her and then entered her house.

Rio immediately began analyzing that wink, dissecting it under her mind’s microscope like a pathologist. She wasn’t sure if it was meant as a message, or if Agatha was just messing with her—as usual. And the compliment about her cap—was she joking?

She felt like a clumsy, bumbling teenager, trying to decrypt every look and word from Agatha. But within seconds, she stopped herself, shooting herself down with a mental tranquilizer dart.

Rio reasoned with herself: this was just the horns emerging. She hadn’t felt this attracted

to someone in years, so of course it was exhilarating. Of course, it made her pulse race between her legs, tightening like a rope. But it would pass, eventually.

Agatha served two plates with aromatic pot roast, and they sat down at the dining room table.

Rio washed her hands and then began unbuttoning her coveralls, twisting her body out of them.

Agatha’s eyes widened and her lips parted.

“W-what are you doing?” she asked.

Rio felt her eyes lasering in on her, and she suddenly felt exposed. She tied the arms of her coveralls around her waist, now just wearing a white tank top. “I didn’t want to get your stuff dirty,” she said, innocently.

“Oh,” Agatha said, “thank you.” She fumbled with her soup spoon as she sat down across from Rio. She regathered herself in an instant, but Rio had already gleaned the true meaning of that look.

At dinner, they chatted about their days. Both were mundane: Rio sealed tiles. Agatha regaled a story about corporate tomfoolery. She hadn’t revealed much about her job thus far, so Rio sank into her pot roast, listening with her shoulders up to her ears.

“First, they tell me they need me to get a new contract signed with the integration platform by the end of tomorrow,” Agatha said, “so I pull all the coordinators and analysts off the migration project to test the platform, right?”

Rio nodded. “This is delicious, by the way.”

Agatha thanked her curtly. “And then I get a message from the head of IT and the VP. ‘We’re not going through with this contract. We’ve decided not to integrate vendor invoicing into the ERP.’”

Rio vaguely followed the plot of her day, but the acronyms and details flew over her head. It was hot when Agatha blew off steam about her job; there was something inexplicably attractive about the way she clenched her jaw.

Rio tasted each bite of her dinner, the savory, cozy flavors of meat, carrots, and potatoes enveloping her mouth and tongue.

Agatha went on without taking a breath.

“These fuckers send us on a wild goose chase every time they hear ‘AI’ and ‘low-code’ and I have to manage the budget and timeline, which gets pushed every time they get this whim, and the project just grows and mutates and–”

She realized that her hands had contorted into freaky angles, and she sucked in a breath… “I like my job,” Agatha said, “but I hate the bullshit.”

Rio tittered. “You know, for someone with such a big reputation in Westview, you’re awfully normal.”

Agatha’s eyes patiently traced their way up to Rio’s. “You say that, but you don’t really know me or my secrets, or my past.”

Biting her bottom lip, Rio replied, “So, tell me about you. I want to know you, Agatha.”

“Why?” Her face sharpened and the air thickened.

“Do I need to have a reason?”

“Look, if I know anything about people, it’s that you can’t trust them. They’re never who you think they’re going to be,” Agatha stressed.

“You can’t trust me?” Rio asked. She wasn’t hurt, but she also hadn’t expected Agatha’s sudden coldness.

She was truly unpredictable; it was like boarding a ship riding on brooding, uneven waves in the middle of a gray storm, without a compass. “Come on, you don’t trust me, but somehow, we’re friends?”

Agatha shook her head at Rio. “We’re not.”

An unwieldy silence descended upon the table. Rio held Agatha’s gaze, challenging her to look away, to fracture the ice pane that had frozen between them.

She gathered the dishes, and placed them in the sink, soaking them with dish soap. The dish soap smelled familiar, an enticing lemon and mint, reminding Rio of her laundry detergent, fragrant and not too overpowering. Agatha followed her into the kitchen, her arms crossed.

Rio turned around from the sink. “You’re right. I don't really know you, under all this hot, pale, menacing thing you have going on,” she said, finally breaking the tension.

An unwilling smirk pulled at Agatha’s lips. “So, who put you up to this? Lilia? Alice?”

“Nobody.” Rio gripped onto her hand, her fingers imprinting on Agatha’s protruding tendons. Her hands were blistering, as if they’d been roasting in a fire.

Agatha looked down at Rio’s hand and caught her gaze once again.

Rio let go of Agatha’s hand, but she so desperately wanted to hold on. Her perseverance didn’t waver, though, and she didn’t let Agatha put up her wall of sarcasm and humor.

“You say we’re not friends,” Rio said, “so, what are we, Agatha?”

Agatha took a breath, her lips curling, as if she were about to say something. Instead, her hand reached out, her fingers stroking Rio’s jaw and cheek. The look in her eyes was sharp and harsh, like a fortress had frozen around her heart.

“Agatha,” Rio whispered, not quite a protest. She wasn’t strong enough to resist her, not at this moment, not if she went further.

She wanted to crumple under Agatha’s touch, and to give into the connective rhizomes sprouting between them. It’d be so easy to get what she wanted now, to burn up the desire that had been building in her core.

But something in the recesses of Rio’s reptilian brain flagged her skepticism, her doubt.

It was as if Agatha was trying to distract her, to run away from answering the question. She could see Agatha’s exoskeleton hardening, as she performed a sleight-of-hand, conveniently sweeping away the truth at hand.

Still, Agatha didn’t say anything. She pulled Rio close, their foreheads touching. Her thumb brushed against Rio’s lips. She was right there, ready to receive Rio.

Wrapping her hand around Agatha’s wrist, Rio swallowed hard, inhaling the lavender scent of her hair. Her knees wanted to buckle at the thought of finally consummating with this woman. Rio wanted nothing more than this—but her misgiving would not relent—this wasn’t the right time, or reason.

“Agatha,” Rio said, regaining her footing, and meeting Agatha’s blue eyes. “Did you really think that was going to work?” She grabbed Agatha by the hips, a little too confidently, and pushed her against the counter next to the stove top.

“It was worth a shot,” Agatha said, barely audible, her tongue poking in her cheek, a smarmy admission of defeat. She wriggled from Rio’s grasp, sidestepping. “But for the record, why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t matter to you?” Rio asked.

Agatha shook her head and shrugged. “No.” She was as serious as death.

Rio didn’t reply; she was void of any meaningful words. She wanted to poke and prod and ask why. Why didn’t it matter to her?

No.

The word reverberated in her head, sending catastrophic seismic waves from her chest to her psyche. The way she said it was so nonchalant and blasé—as if to say this was who Agatha Harkness really was: cold, unpredictable, distant, and cruel.

Rio’s heartbeat crawled to the pace of a snail, her heart plummeting to the depths of her leaden stomach.

Had she been imagining the chemistry between them? Had Agatha been toying with her, this entire time? She had to have felt what Rio felt.

Rio refused to believe she’d imagined it in her head; that would be too far from her perception of reality.

Her disappointment was palpable, physiologically, but she’d always been adept at hiding her true feelings underneath her cool exterior.

She wouldn’t let Agatha parse through her shell, not after she’d so callously played her. This had become a twisted game of wills, and Rio would play, even if her desire betrayed her.

Chapter Text

The next day, Rio returned to Agatha’s house, buttoned up in a pair of black coveralls, her hair neatly tied back in a bun. She fastened a lavender bandana around her neck.

The wind howled through the creaky windows, like an omen.

Agatha said good morning, as if nothing had happened, and then disappeared upstairs, clacking away at her keyboard.

After she’d had the night to process their conversation, Rio’s disappointment morphed into something hotter, something molten. She scoffed to herself as she unloaded the polished cement tiles from carefully packed boxes, cursing in Spanglish under her breath.

Against all odds, she’d absorbed her mother’s way of expressing her anger, down to the way she peppered “puñeta” through every jagged sentence that left her mouth.

When Rio was a child, her mother would curse over the stove as she painstakingly slow-cooked chicken and then scrubbed the dishes with a violent gusto. The common thread was the woman never stopped to process her feelings, whether they were good or bad. She was the engine that propelled the household forward, as her father returned home late and often left early in the morning.

That thread followed Rio, as she avoided any and all thoughts bordering on feeling. She was good at compartmentalizing, until now.

Her thoughts kept circling back to the gall of Agatha. How brazen she was when she said what happened between them didn’t matter. Who the hell was she to deny that spark that kept Rio up at night? Was it denial on Agatha’s part, or was Rio the one in denial?

* * *

Rio worked quietly for hours, doing a dry run of the cement tiles, arranging them on the ground and then finally began installing them. Her simmering anger killed her appetite, and she skipped lunch.

Around 2 PM, a silhouette loomed over the tiles and Rio looked up.

Agatha leaned in the doorway. “It looks great,” she said, her shadow floating over Rio. She sipped a fizzy orange mocktail through a glass straw. Her cheeks sunk in, and her cheekbones demanding attention. “Do you want one?”

“Sure, why not?” Rio focused on her work, placing spacers down between the tiles as she pressed them into place, her ire turning into a flat calm.

Agatha disappeared for a minute and then reappeared with an identical tall glass filled with the same fizzy drink. “Cheers,” she said.

Rio grit her teeth, appalled at the ovaries on this woman, but she maintained her expressionless face. Her very expressive mouth always gave a little too much away, at times.

This was the game then. It didn’t have to be hard; she could be civil.

Clinking her glass against Agatha’s, she took a sip. “That’s pretty good,” she remarked. Rio asked what the drink was called.

“I don’t know, I just threw it together. Call it ‘Witches’ Brew.’” Agatha replied, “You know, I

was a bartender for a hot second when I moved away for college. Didn’t last long.”

Rio set her glass down and continued arranging the tiles, kneeling. She looked up at Agatha. A lightbulb went off in her head. “You were born here, then?”

Agatha hugged her arms to her chest, nursing her drink. “Yep. I’ve been the witch of

Westview for a lot longer than people know.”

Rio pressed further, now moving on to another section of the floor. “Do you have family here?”

To her surprise, Agatha didn’t clam up right away; she took the bait. These were the questions she usually shunned and screened. “No, no. The people who were my family are gone.” She had two maternal aunts, but she’d only met them once when she was a child. Agatha said her mother kept her isolated.

Rio paid her condolences, not knowing what she could say. Curiously, she asked, “Were you ever close with your mother?”

“Never,” Agatha said, curtly. She switched course, deflecting. “My mother couldn’t wait for me to turn eighteen, so she could wash her hands of me. So, I went off to college, tried to pave my own way. But I couldn’t afford it—which was why I was bartending. But I’m not good at doing what I’m told.”

“That’s unsurprising,” Rio quipped. “When did you move back to Westview?”

Agatha sighed with pause, thinking of her answer. “I didn’t come back to Westview for a long time. Not until my mother died.”

“Was that why you came back?” Rio asked. “Because she died?”

“No.” Agatha’s watery eyes went soft, and then she cleared her throat. “I loved her, against all odds. But she couldn’t stand me.” It was an unusually naked display of emotion and humanity for her.

Rio could see the vestigial limbs of Agatha’s grief, her desolation, treading water for stable ground. Still, she asked why her mother hated her.

Agatha clenched her teeth, her pulse in her jawline.

Coming to her feet, Rio leaned into her space, listening intently. “How could your mother hate you?” she asked.

Finally, Agatha took a shaky breath and said, “She said I was the spitting image of my father.” She finished her drink, and continued, “He left just before I was born. I was ‘born evil,’ she’d said.”

Rio didn’t know what to say, except to offer perfunctory, empty words of comfort. She backed off and didn’t probe any further. “I’m sorry,” she managed.

“I shouldn’t have–” Agatha didn’t finish her sentence, waving her hand.

Instinctually, Rio wanted to meet Agatha’s phantoms and learn the epochs of her history, absorbing her pain and her past. She wanted to reach out for Agatha’s hand, intertwining her hardworking fingers with her nimble, lithe fingers. But Rio’s rationale told her to retreat, reminding her that this was just part of the Agatha show. Part of the act.

The woman was an enigma, obscured by showmanship, and no matter how delectable she was, Rio resisted the urge to reach out for her.

And the universe seemingly agreed.

“I have a call,” Agatha muttered, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder.

* * *

That night, Rio returned to her old, immoral habits. She ate a light dinner consisting of a Mediterranean salad and pasta leftovers, showered, and read the latest issue of n+1 in bed, and fell asleep on the couch for a few hours.

At midnight, she rose from the couch, put a coat on, and went straight for the garage. And there it was, stashed under the half-torn box of oak floorboards, like an old friend: her trusty ladder that she’d used to spy on Agatha weeks ago. The binoculars sat on top of her worktop bench, glinting in the sickly white fluorescent light.

Rio picked through her closet for her favorite heavyweight black denim coat, which was lined with wool. It was a coat that had survived community college, ex-girlfriends, that one night in jail, her first handywoman job, Evette, and a rather grumpy squirrel.

She took off her pajama pants and slipped into a pair of sweatpants, and then climbed up to the roof. Once there, she watched Agatha’s land through the binoculars.

A breeze tickled the underbrush in the field, and Rio saw a familiar figure: the scarecrow. She smiled; he was an old friend at this point. Not long after, Agatha emerged from her house, in a black satin nightgown, marching toward the field.

Rio could only see the back of her head, recognizable by that wild mane of dark brown hair.

With each step, the weeds and brush obscured Agatha’s form until Rio could only see the top of her head and her shoulders, just a few feet away from the witch scarecrow. There she stood, like history beheld, with her arms at her sides. It was as if she were—

“You’re sleepwalking,” Rio whispered to herself. It was so obvious, but she never realized what it was that Agatha was doing until now. Until she really saw her.

A gust of wind ripped through the field again, and only Agatha remained still. She must’ve been cold, but Rio didn’t move from her post. She continued her watch.

At this moment, she confessed something to herself: that her lust for Agatha had never waned. Even after she’d been rejected, Rio couldn’t help herself. She was merely a red-blooded human being, swept in by a brooding, perplexing, blue-eyed tide.

* * *

The following morning, Rio started her day at the hardware store, her safe place. It was baked into her routine so many days of the week that she felt disoriented on days she didn’t stop by. The tumultuous tornado that tore through her internal monologue hadn’t relented.

Last night, like ritual, she ruminated on Agatha for hours on end, indulging in all the memories of their interactions. It was the only way she fell asleep.

One moment, she fixated on her primal desire for Agatha, imagining what she would’ve done on that fateful night at Jen’s bar. The visions flashed through her mind in remnants, vivid and vague at the same time.

Rio would’ve buried her nose in Agatha’s brown hair, inhaling and memorizing her scent. She would’ve stripped that black shirt off, kissing her neck and working her way down to her chest, while her hand worked, wandering down her jeans. She would’ve savored the wetness and warmth between her legs, and finally tasted the exhalation of Agatha’s pleasure—

But the next moment, her fantasy was interrupted with nebulous, directionless feelings of something entirely different. She didn’t want to stop at consummating her curiosity for Agatha’s sensuality and ecstasy—but she had to stop. Some things were not meant to be.

She hoped that seeing Lilia would set her straight.

Rio had sent in an order for two gallons of paint, rollers, edging brushes, and trays. Agatha had chosen a creamy mushroom color that would contrast well against the black French country sink cabinet that was delivered a couple of days ago.

Lilia whistled to the tune of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” and then broke out into a whimsical sing-along. She hit the higher chorus notes with ease. According to Jen, Lilia was known to make appearances at occasional open-mics and karaoke at the bar, and she slayed.

The “New Tools” banner hanging above the aisle closest to the counter called out to Rio, and she meandered into it. Between the woodworking router tracks and the gimmicky multi-tools, she found herself rationalizing and reasoning with whether she’d ever need to use any of these tools.

She studied an electric screwdriver, which came with a bendy attachment to get into tight spaces. It would’ve been handy when she took the cabinet down in Agatha’s bathroom. Tossing it into her basket, Rio moved onto the next gimmick.

There was a drill bit kit for stripped screws, and she remembered the stripped screws in the handle fixtures in the sink. Then, a set of specialty pliers, which could come in clutch for any other water-related or pipe-related issues in Agatha’s house. Or someone else’s. Rio justified it–she needed those for her job.

Another gimmick, another thought drifted towards Agatha. All roads led to her, no matter how tenaciously Rio fought the compulsion to think of her. The woman had kicked her down the road like a rock one kicks over and over along a walk. Yet, here Rio was, thinking of her.

She left the aisle and tried to push it all out of her mind.

“What’s got you frazzled?” Lilia asked, from across the counter. She tilted her head back, her sagacious nose sniffing out Rio’s internal turmoil.

Rio set the basket on the counter. “How do you do that?”

Lilia threw back her curly tendrils and widened her naturally eccentric eyes, signaling her excitement. “I see everything, Rio.” The phone rang, and she picked it up after the first ring without breaking eye contact.

She greeted the customer on the line, sandwiching the phone between her ear and shoulder while she scanned Rio’s paint and various tools.

“Mmhmmm…yep…right,” Lilia mumbled on the phone. “Mmmmhmmm. We do. That, too. You’re also going to need a cement mixer. Just trust me.” She thanked them and hung up the phone.

“So, back to you,” Lilia said, “how’s the job for Agatha going? She’s got you off the market for a week, and I’ve got a whole new rotation of handymen and frantic customers asking for recommendations.”

Rio shrugged with hubris; her father had taught her to work well and to work fast. “Hey, send them my way. I’ll put them on the schedule.” She was making a name for herself already in Westview faster than she’d thought possible.

Lilia repeated, “How’s the job?”

“It’s fine. All of it is going fine,” Rio lied.

“Is that why you’ve got bags under your eyes and why you’re on your second cup of coffee?” Lilia clicked her tongue and nodded her head at the veins pulsing in Rio’s dancing fingers.

Rio stopped drumming the counter abruptly. “I might’ve had an extra cup this morning because I haven’t been sleeping well lately.” Her poker face immediately went slack, and she tried to remember if she put foundation on this morning.

“Good God, what is that woman doing to you?” Lilia asked. “Is she threatening you? Is she blackmailing you?”

“Jeez, Lilia, no!” Rio peered left and right, and over her shoulder, to make sure the other customers wouldn’t hear their conversation.

Lilia pressed her lips together, and cocked her head to the side. “So is she simply so pleasant that you’re losing sleep?”

“She’s been…a little volatile,” Rio revealed.

Groaning, Lilia exclaimed, “I warned you, didn’t I?” She rubbed her temples with her fingers, took a deeply labored breath, and asked Rio for more details.

“One minute, I think we’re really getting somewhere, really building a friendship, and then the next, she shuts me out,” she said. “The other night, she said we weren’t friends, and that she couldn’t trust me. And then yesterday, she told me about her mom and I thought she was going to cry.”

“What did she say?”

Rio didn’t say. “It’s a little too personal, I don’t–”

“She’s cold, and then she’s ‘too personal’? Which one is it?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

Those words ate at her, once again.

Lilia pointed her pen at Rio, and readjusted her glasses, as if she would be able to see through her. “Don’t be young, doll. What is it that you want with her?”

Rio thought the answer would come to her, but then it occurred to her that she’d never answered that question in her mind. “I don’t know,” she finally mustered.

A customer wandered behind Rio, and asked Lilia where he could find aluminum flashing.

Lilia gestured over Rio’s head. “End of aisle seventeen.” She clicked through something on the computer, holding her index finger up at Rio. Then, she turned her attention back to her and took her glasses off. “How much longer do you have for the job?”

“A few days.”

“Listen, you’re a grown woman. Figure out what you want,” Lilia said. “But for now—you have a few days left in her dominion—you’re the best chance at figuring out what she’s hiding. Don’t let this be a waste.”

“I saw her last night in the field, sleepwalking,” Rio noted, absentmindedly. Lilia had a presence that drew absolute honesty from her.

“Probably guarding whatever it is she’s got back there,” Lilia said, lowering her voice as the door clanged. “Look, get it out of your system, but be rational. Why the hell did she turn down ten million dollars for those weeds?”

She slammed her hand down on the counter and slid the cans of paint over to Rio. There can’t be a good answer,” she warned.

* * *

Rio spent the rest of the morning painting Agatha’s bathroom, applying a thick coat first and then going over it again. She put on a pair of headphones and listened to The xx on repeat. She gravitated towards Coexist the most, channeling her directionless yearning alongside the sparse, echoe-y guitar lines and the poetic lyrics.

Agatha said hello once and then went to her office, seemingly more distant than before. She bounded up and down the stairs a few times, in all her gorgeous glory, clad in a white jumpsuit with black pinstripes. Rio snuck a few peeks, not lying to herself any longer.

She’d put down three coats of paint by lunchtime, and Agatha knocked on the door frame. “You work fast, Vidal.”

Rio said thanks robotically. Setting her paint roller down in the tray, she poured some paint into a plastic red bucket and grabbed an edging brush.

This was her least favorite part of painting. She tended to go too fast and paint always accumulated on her fingers at some point.

Agatha lingered. “Are you going back home for Thanksgiving?”

Glancing up, Rio raised her eyebrows. There she was again, with her Agatha™ shenanigans. “No. Besides, this is home for me now. Why?”

She shrugged, sheepishly, observing Rio as she painted, dabbed, and painted. “I thought you’d go back and see your mom or family, or. . .”

Rio shook her head. She stayed strong, letting Agatha carry the conversation this time. “What is it, Agatha? I’ve got painting to do on your dime.”

“Well, I’m spending Thanksgiving alone, obviously. You’re spending it alone—”

“I mean, I said I’d be here, but not that I’d be alone,” Rio said.

Stunned, Agatha prattled on, “Oh, of course. Of course, you’re not gonna spend it alone. Why would someone like you…spend it alone? Anyway, listen, if you find yourself wanting to ditch that, I’ll be here.”

Letting Agatha tie herself in knots, Rio dipped the brush into the paint and made a few broad strokes. “Is that an invitation?” she asked, at last.

“Yes,” Agatha said from the corner of her mouth, barely audible.

“What?”

“Yes, it’s an invitation,” Agatha replied, louder.

Rio was about to accept, but she couldn’t help the mudslinging. She was never above being petty for dramatic flair, and with Agatha, this might’ve been the only chance she could have the upper-hand. It was too good to resist.

“I’ll consider it,” Rio answered.

* * *

That afternoon, Rio installed the new sink cabinet, making a mess of screws, drill bits, white caulk, and shims. She left the new piping under the sink, ready for tomorrow. She swept the splinters from the shims into her hand and threw them away in the kitchen trash.

Agatha suddenly barged into the bathroom.

Rio turned around and jumped back. “Christ, you scared me!”

Inches from her face, Agatha asked, “Have you considered long enough?” She didn’t give Rio a chance to answer. “Why haven’t you said ‘yes’?”

“Why don’t you trust me?” Rio rebutted. It was her gut; it’d taken over momentarily and distilled into this moment. She took in the delicious scent of Agatha’s hair product: a distinct cedar.

Squinting at her, Agatha said, “Answer my question first.”

Rio looked her in the eyes, reading the curve of her nose and lips and studying the wily angles of her jaw. But she couldn’t see past her battle-hardened visage through to what she was really thinking and feeling. God, she was distractingly gorgeous. All the same, Rio had to engage in this song and dance.

So, she said, “I’m going home.” Rio slipped past Agatha, and their bodies brushed against each other.

Agatha did not go after her.