capsize me and douse me in your bay

chapter twenty four

She couldn't sleep. Cheryl was asleep, but Toni couldn't sleep. And if there was one thing that she hated in life it was to be restless and alone with her thoughts. There had to be something she could do to help Cheryl get out of this slump. Even if the redhead wasn't her girlfriend, she saved her life once. That had to count for something.

Sighing quietly to herself, she looked over at the sleeping girl beside her, reaching out to smooth some hair from her face. Cheryl barely stirred aside from a gentle hum and a slight shift in her fingers. Toni hated that the younger girl seemed to have a perpetual worry wrinkle on her forehead when she slept lately. It's like it had been drawn on since the night she washed up on shore after getting banished from her home.

She knew Cheryl missed her home and her friends. She had a feeling that a part of her even missed her parents, despite what they had done to her. And what made it worse was knowing that Cheryl never got to say goodbye to anyone. The life she had known was ripped away from her without her permission or even any notice. Her heart ached for her girlfriend. She knew first hand about how life could change at the drop of a hat. She, herself, had gone from a happy kid to a sad orphan so swiftly and unexpectedly that sometimes it still didn't feel real. She remembered barely getting any time to adjust. She was back to school in a matter of days, all her stuff was moved to the Jones's house practically overnight. And before she knew it, the house she called home belonged to someone else.

And Cheryl...Cheryl was pretty much having to start from scratch with the learning curve of a kindergartener despite being fully grown. Toni couldn't even imagine what it was like in her shoes right now. But if she tried, she imagined that she would be feeling so lost and alone. Sure, she was there for her, and she had other friends through Toni. But there was no one else around like her. The redhead was a stranger in their little beach town, and let's face it, probably the only one from the ocean.

Turning over to glance at her phone, she frowned at the time. It was nearing five AM and sleeping was the last thing her body wanted to do. All she wanted to do was to get some answers. How to help Cheryl, what she should do. But who the hell was she supposed to ask? She couldn't exactly ask Betty or call up her old therapist about this. Toni was sure that if she brought any of this up to a professional they would have her put away in a psych ward somewhere.

She slipped out of bed and tip-toed to the closet, slipping on a pair of pants and some sneakers. Maybe she just needed to take a drive. One of the things she missed most about living in Riverdale was the freedom to take long drives in the middle of the night. She barely drove at all when she lived in the city. But there was something so therapeutic about driving around alone at night. When she was a kid, she remembered sometimes on the weekends or over the summer, her dad would wake her up when it was still dark out and ask if she wanted to go count street lights. Looking back on it now, he probably just couldn't leave her alone in the house at night while he went out for a drive on his own. But she never knew. It was an adventure. She would just count each streetlight they passed on her fingers while her father likely was deep in thought in the drivers seat in front of her, plagued by grief and the general stress that comes with being an adult.

Here and now, a big part of her wanted to ask Cheryl if she wanted to come along on her drive, but the rational part of her knew that she really needed to be alone for a little while. Still, she didn't want the redhead to wake up alone, wondering where she was. Toni would leave her a note if she wasn't sure that Cheryl wouldn't understand it.

With a sigh, she pulled a hoodie on over her t-shirt and tip-toed to the edge of the bed, crouching beside where Cheryl slept and smiling as she brushed her hair back behind her ear. "Cher," Toni shook her gently, smiling solemnly when her eyes started to blink open right away. Cheryl used to be such a heavy sleeper. "I can't sleep, I'm gonna out for a drive for a little bit," she explained quietly as brown eyes started to focus on her in the dark.