Swipe Right

by Tagan Shepard

  Most people would have been upset to wake up alone after a night like mine, but I wasn’t. Sure, it would have been infinitely better to see her sleep-tousled head on my pillow, but Pen was a light sleeper. Staying in bed too long made her joints ache. More to the point, she’d told me long ago that she never stayed overnight in a hookup’s house. It implied she wanted to see them again, even if it was just in the morning. She always left after they fell asleep. Pen hadn’t left when I fell asleep. Around three o’clock I’d raked fingernail marks into her back, so I was certain she’d stayed the night.

  The coffee was a clear sign, too. When she brought women back to her place, she made a point of sending them home early. Her one hard-and-fast rule, one she never broke no matter how much the other party begged, was that she never made coffee when there was a stranger in her house.

  “Coffee is a conversation beverage,” she’d explained once. “I don’t have conversations the morning after. I don’t even have goodbyes.”

  Since Pen was brewing coffee, I assumed she had a conversation in mind. I was nervous about that, sure, but the smell of Pen’s skin on my sheets made me brave. Brave enough to smile when I heard her footsteps crossing the living room floor. Not brave enough to keep smiling when I saw the somber look on her face. I pulled the sheet up to cover my suddenly cold skin.

  “Hey,” she mumbled.

  “Hey yourself.” I slapped on a flirty smile, but even I could hear the tremor in my voice.

  She was wearing a pair of my running shorts and an old food-festival T-shirt. Both hung off her, highlighting the difference in our body sizes. She held a pair of coffee cups that sent steam curling into the air between us. After an indecently long time drinking in the sight of her wearing my clothes, I finally noticed the rest of her. Every inch of visible skin from neck to shins was covered in bruises, some fresh red-purple but most of them fading to a sickening green-tinged yellow. Pen followed the path of my gaze and said nothing. When I looked back up into her eyes, they were cold stone again.

  More as an excuse to avoid that distant gaze than a desire for clothing, I leaned over the mattress and snatched up the first thing I could reach. It was Pen’s shirt, crumpled now but the collar still smelling of starch. I pulled it around my shoulders as Pen crossed the room and sat on the other side of my bed. The shirt didn’t fit well, especially around my chest, so I couldn’t button it. When I moved toward her she held out a coffee cup, stopping my progress. I took the hint along with the coffee and settled my back against the padded headboard.

  “We…um,” Pen cleared her throat and her hesitation was adorable in the way only a blushing butch can be. “Didn’t get to finish talking last night.”

  I sipped my coffee and let her collect her thoughts. She was a skittish cat—if I spooked her now I’d ruin everything.

  “You’re right, Kieran.” She took a long breath and locked her gaze on me. I fell into the green fields of her eyes. “I am in love with you.”

  Hearing her finally say the words made my heart roar and my lungs burn. “I’m in love with you, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

  Not exactly the answer I wanted.

  “For what?”

  Pen looked down into her coffee as though there was some answer in the black contents. “I’m sorry you love me back. This was a lot easier when I was the only one with feelings.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. I reached out and cupped her cheek. I wanted her to look up at me, but she refused to acknowledge my gentle pressure. I pressed my forehead against the crown of her head and whispered, “I’m not. This—you and me—this is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Her hand rested on top of mine, but she kept her head lowered. “You don’t know what it would mean to be in a relationship with me.”

  I took a deep breath and plunged into the conversation we were circling. If I didn’t make my expectations clear now, I was in for a lot of heartbreak. “I know it would require monogamy and I know that’s not your thing.” Pen stiffened under my touch, but I plowed on. I thought of Ashley and the kindness in her eyes when she called Pen family. “I think we could negotiate a middle ground.”

  Pen sighed. I was expecting some sort of relief, but that wasn’t what I heard in her voice. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that. Although we do need to talk about that, too.”

  “What are you talking about then?”

  Pen looked up and, for the first time in her life, I saw shame. Maybe even embarrassment. The emotions didn’t sit well on those soft features. “You don’t know what it’s like to be with me. To date a person with a chronic illness.”

  “I can’t imagine how your EDS…”

  “Can’t you?” She growled, cutting me off. “Look at me.”

  She swept a hand over her body.

  “You bruise easily…”

  Pen pulled aside her collar to show me a particularly livid bruise at the spot her shoulder met her neck. It was fading to yellow at the edges, though the center was still a dark red-purple. I could see the outline of teeth in the center of the bruise. I hadn’t bitten her last night and she assured me in whispers and kisses in the small hours of the morning that there had been no one else since our night in the alley.

  I’d bitten her in the alley, I was sure of it, but not that hard. And it had been over a week ago. This bruise was still the color of raw meat after ten days. I gasped at the thought of what I’d done. How I’d marked her flesh. The more I studied the bruises, the more I could attribute to myself. I reached out with trembling fingers and touched the bite mark. Her skin was cold.

  “Pen, I’m so sorry. I hurt you.”

  “It doesn’t hurt, Kieran. Not at the time. It hurts for days after. That bruise will last a month.”

  “A month?”

  “This is what I’m talking about.” She raked a hand through her messy hair. “This is what it’s like to live with Ehlers-Danlos.”

  “I can handle a few bruises.”

  “Can you handle the dislocations?” She pulled the arm of her shirt up to show her shoulder. There was a fine stippling of red dots circling the joint. “Friday I took my annoying couple to Culpeper for more showings. We went to six houses. I dislocated my shoulder from opening so many doors in one day.”

  “You can dislocate your shoulder opening a door?”

  “Not one, or even two. Not as long as I do it right. I twist too much or press too hard on the door when I’m opening it, my shoulder comes out. If I turn my wrist the wrong way on a doorknob, I can dislocate that, too. If I’m not careful going up stairs, or coming down them, I can dislocate my ankle. I have to think about every single movement I make with every single one of my joints.”

  “That sounds exhausting.”

  “I don’t take days off because I’m lazy,” she said, refusing to surrender my gaze. “I take Tuesday and Sunday at home because I usually don’t have the strength to get out of bed. I tire easily. I need rest. More than most people need.”

  “But you swim so much.”

  “If I don’t strengthen the muscles around my weak joints, they give out. Swimming is the only way I can exercise without risking injury.”

  “Okay, I get that, but we can work with that. I can respect your routine. I can respect your need for time to take care of yourself.”

  “It’s not only those days off.” Pen slid farther onto the bed and started picking at the stitching of my duvet. I forced myself to sip my coffee and not read too much into how her body moved closer to mine. “Sometimes I’m too tired to go out. Sometimes I go out and I’m too tired to stay.”

  “I don’t need to go out all the time. I like a quiet life.”

  “And what happens when it’s your birthday and I need to go home before the entrée is served?”

  “You really think that’ll be more important to me than your health?”

  “In time it will.” She tucked her foot underneath her leg, but the more she settled in, the mor
e distant her expression. I could see the walls around her. She was showing them to me and daring me to try climbing them. “It won’t take long for you to get annoyed by my limitations.”

  “I can’t promise I’ll be perfect, Pen.” If she thought I’d be intimidated by these barriers she built around her heart, she had another thing coming. “Couples fight. We might fight about that, I don’t know. But let me be a bitch first before you get mad at me for being one.”

  “It wouldn’t make you a bitch.” She was running her hands though her hair again and it was getting more and more messy with each pass. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s a burden. Dating me will be a burden.”

  Now she was just pissing me off. “Pen, what’s this really about?” She raised her hand to her head again, but I grabbed it before she could pull her hair out. “Why would you think this way, baby?”

  It was a calculated move, calling her baby. She hadn’t been in a relationship before, had anyone ever called her a pet name? If there was anything I could do to highlight the intimacy between us, I’d do it. I had no problem fighting dirty for her heart.

  Pen was quiet for a long time, staring at me. Eventually she sighed and slid her fingers between mine. “I need to tell you about my mom.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. Pen had never talked to me about her mom. She’d made it clear early in our friendship that subject was off limits. I didn’t even know her name.

  “Okay,” I said as gently as I could. My stomach was in my throat. “Tell me.”

  It was a long story, but I hung on every word. I didn’t even try to hide my curiosity.

  “She was beautiful. Dad says I have her nose. I remember her eyes mostly,” Pen said. “And how frail she was. When I was a kid, I thought she was made of glass. I didn’t hang off her like other kids hung off their moms. I made it my mission to protect her. Walking in front of her and opening doors. She called me her knight in shining armor.”

  She leaned over and set her coffee cup on the bedside table. She hadn’t taken a single sip.

  “One day she picked me up from school and saw me on the playground, showing the other kids how I could bend my arm all the way back so I could touch my own elbow. They were all either screaming or cheering.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I’m not supposed to, but yeah.” She pulled her right hand back with her left until the fingers of her right hand were flat to her forearm. The sight made me a little queasy. I would’ve been one of the kids screaming. “I was ten at the time. All EDS kids play around with their hyperflexible joints. It freaks out other people but it doesn’t hurt us, and kids don’t know how bad it is for them.”

  She released her arm and wiggled her fingers. Her smile wasn’t for me. It was for ten-year-old Penelope and the kids she freaked out on the playground.

  “Mom sat me down and told me all about Ehlers-Danlos. She had EDS and she’d guessed I had it. Dad didn’t want to get me tested ‘cause he thought it would freak me out, but mom knew I wouldn’t stop pushing my joints if I didn’t know it was bad. That’s how I found out why she was so frail.”

  “But you’re not frail. Why was she?”

  “Because of me.”

  “How could you have had anything to do with her health?”

  That’s when Pen took a long, shuddering breath and started the real story. I tried not to interrupt her. It was like watching poison leeching from an old wound.

  “My mom had a different type of EDS. More severe than mine. Hers was vascular so there were more heart complications. She didn’t walk until she was four. In her early twenties she was diagnosed with a complication called aortic root dilation. It put her at high risk for aneurysms, so her OBGYN advised against pregnancy. There was a good chance that she wouldn’t survive childbirth.”

  I took her hand when her voice wavered, but she composed herself quickly.

  “Dad told me they had a lot of fights about it. He wanted them to adopt but she wouldn’t hear of it. My mom had always wanted to be pregnant and she won. She was very stubborn.”

  “I’m glad she did,” I whispered.

  Pen smiled at me for a heartbeat then continued, “They tried for a long time. I think there were some miscarriages, but they wouldn’t talk about it with me. When I finally stuck, it was…Dad said it was the worst and best eight months of his life. Mom was in constant pain and so weak she was in bed for weeks at a time. He said she’d lie there, pale as a ghost, rubbing her belly and talking to me. They took me early and I was fine, but Mom was in the hospital for a month after I was born.”

  Pen fell silent. She sipped her coffee, giving the impression she was searching her memories, but it was obvious she didn’t have to search far. These feelings, these memories—they were close to the surface. They were a bruise that would never heal.

  “Most of my childhood she was fine. I didn’t start thinking of her as frail until she got hurt more often. One of my first memories was sitting on her hospital bed when I was four or five, playing with her and trying not to jump too much. It was hard because she was always in good spirits. It started to get really bad when I was eleven, though. She would be in the hospital or in bed for weeks or months at a time, then she would be fine and act like nothing had been wrong. She was always smiling and laughing. She couldn’t work after that, so she made it her job to be the perfect mom. She was.”

  This time when Pen stopped, I thought it’d be safe to ask, “What was her name?”

  “Connie.” Pen sighed and shook her head. “She didn’t live long enough for me to get to that phase where you call your parents by their first names though.”

  It was a pretty name. A name that made me think of sunshine and spring flowers. I was starting to get a picture of this woman in my head and I liked everything about her. She reminded me of Pen.

  “For my fourteenth birthday we had a big picnic in the park. The sun was shining and the grass had just been cut. They’d trimmed the lower limbs on an oak tree. You could still smell the sawdust in the air. My friends and I played soccer and ran around the playground. Mom kept chasing us with drinks and treats, telling us all to be careful. Dad was hanging out with the other dads, grilling or something.

  “It was hot. I remember that, too. I was sticky with sweat the whole time, but it was so much fun. We gathered around the picnic table and mom brought out this huge sheet cake loaded with candles. Everyone was singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Then mom fell.”

  The image I’d had in my head had been a perfect scene out of some ‘90s movie. It ended abruptly with that. With the image of a slightly dowdier Penelope hitting the ground and cake splattering over everything.

  “It was weird because as soon as she went down, everything went silent. None of us kids knew what to do. Then she climbed back to her feet, apologizing about the cake. She fainted again, but Dad caught her. She said she felt like she had the flu.”

  I tried to imagine what it would’ve felt like to see my mom crumple at my birthday party. At fourteen I would’ve been more embarrassed than anything else.

  “Dad and I took her to the hospital in our station wagon while the other parents cleaned up. She spent the entire ride turned to face me, apologizing for ruining my party and promising to make it up to me. By then I knew all the nurses at the hospital from Mom’s frequent visits. They heard what happened and threw me another party in the waiting room. Dad was pacing around the whole time while they made me a party hat out of latex gloves and yellow sticky notes.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  She nodded but I felt like an idiot. Of course it wasn’t fun. I wish I didn’t know how this story must end.

  “When the doctor finally came out, he took Dad a little ways away, but I could still hear. Mom had an AAA. An ascending aortic aneurysm. I looked it up when we got home. The main artery from her heart got thin in one spot and swelled, then threatened to burst. They got her to surgery but her vessels were too fragile.”

  “Because of the E
DS. Because she didn’t have enough collagen.”

  Pen nodded. “I was watching Dad when the doctor was talking. When he said Mom was dead…” She had to stop and shook her head like she was trying to clear it. Her voice was huskier when she continued, “I saw his eyes.”

  She stopped again for a long time. I squeezed her hand but she wouldn’t look at me. “What about his eyes, Pen?”

  “He was relieved.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the doctor said Mom was dead, my dad’s reaction was a moment of pure relief. I knew then what it was like to live with someone with EDS. Sure, he was sad after. It crushed him a moment later. He fell to his knees and cried for what felt like hours, but his real reaction was relief. She had been a burden and he was glad it was over. He used to get so annoyed when we had to cancel plans because of her pain or her dislocations or her bad heart. He was free from that burden.”

  “Pen, I…”

  “I know he loved her.” She looked at me and her eyes were dry. Dry and determined. “He loved her but she was still a burden. Love isn’t enough. Not when the person you love is so limited. Maybe at first it is, but eventually it’s too much. I can’t put that burden on you. No one wants to live that way.”

  I watched her speak herself into silence, unleashing her greatest fear into the world with me its only witness. She bent her head, exposing the back of her neck as though she were placing it on the block for me to chop off. It took me a while to realize that was exactly what she thought would happen. That I would see this story how she saw it—as all the excuse anyone would ever need to lock one’s heart away for good.

  I wasn’t naïve nor dismissive enough to believe her preference for casual sex was all due to this one moment in her life. But I also wasn’t naïve nor dismissive enough to believe that trying to process both her own and her father’s grief hadn’t had a profound impact. She may have chosen a life without romantic entanglements, but she’d also chosen to suppress her feelings out of fear.

  My heart cracked in a thousand places for fourteen-year-old Pen. It cracked in a thousand more for the warmth she was denying herself. How different would her life have been if she hadn’t seen that flash of emotion on her father’s face? How different would it be had she interpreted it the way I did?