Sugar Summer

by Hannah Moskowitz

  She narrows her eyes. “Why wouldn't I like you anymore?”

  “Because I'm not...I'm not like that,” I say. “I'm not that kind of lesbian.”

  “What does that mean, kind of lesbian?” Her face changes. “Oh, shit, is this about like the dancing gender roles shit? Me telling you to yell at me like a boy?”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh, Sugar. That's not...come on. You don't think I really believe that shit, do you? I'm a dyke who's really into gender roles? What?”

  “I don't know...”

  “That's just salsa,” she says. “That's not real. And that's just...shit, that's not being queer. Being queer is being everything. All of it. Look at me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sugar, look at me.”

  So I do.

  She's smiling. A new song starts.

  “Dance with me,” I say.

  We start slow.

  It's more like how we danced that first night, in the old clubhouse, than like our routine. Nothing is planned, but there's still this feeling like it's inevitable. One step leads into the next. My hands on her shoulders melt into hers on my hips.

  The music is scratchy, and the wind outside is getting cold.

  I'm not scared.

  She puts her arms up for me to lift off her shirt, and the second it's over her head we're kissing. I don't even know who kissed who. It's just like we finally couldn't stand not doing it anymore.

  She's against me, all curves and muscle and gold skin and warmth and and she wraps her arms around my neck and eases my hair out of its bun. I've never been kissed like this before. I've never kissed anyone who let me up for air, who didn't act like if our lips ever broke apart then that would be it, the moment would evaporate and they wouldn't want me anymore.

  No one's ever been patient with me like this.

  This must have been what my first breath felt like.

  She stretches her hands down to my knees and slowly works them up my thighs and underneath my nightgown. Her fingers wrap around my waist, and I lean back, arch my back, roll backwards and let my hipbones settle against hers.

  She pulls off my dress. Kisses me.

  “I don't know how to do this,” I whisper.

  She pauses, her forehead flush against mine. “Do you want me to show you?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  I sneak back into my cabin a few hours later. Once again, Bekah wakes up.

  “Y'kay?” she asks me.

  “I'm fine.”

  “You look different,” she says.

  “Yeah, I'm not wearing a suit.”

  “Mmm, yeah." She goes back to sleep.

  The sun's just starting to come up. I stand at our dresser and look at myself in the mirror. I close my eyes and run my hands over my body.

  I try not to dance.

  Chapter 9

  At breakfast, my mother will barely look at me. I sit there and sip my orange juice and stare her down.

  You have no idea what I did last night.

  You think you know how disappointed you are in me?

  You don't have a damn clue.

  It's so hard not to smile.

  Josh is checking in on our table constantly, flirting with my sister, flirting with me while my sister flirts with him. I'm sweet to him, so sweet. You have no idea what I did last night. You have no idea how much I don't want you. You don't know a thing about me.

  They thought they knew me. They thought they knew exactly what kind of person I was and what I would do and who I was going to be with.

  So did I.

  Now I feel like I could stretch out and fill this whole dining room if I wanted to. I feel like the biggest thing I've ever thought about. I could move mountains. I am a mountain.

  Not a damn person knew me. Everyone thought they had me pegged, and I'm sitting in this dining room like somebody who didn't have sex with a girl five hours ago and they still think they know exactly who I am. All these people have had me in their boxes for so long and...and this whole time I could have been moving mountains. I was.

  This is better than getting into Brown. Better than leads in plays or any test grade I've ever gotten. I had sex with a girl and nobody knows. This is winning the damn lottery.

  I eat my croissant and listen to the cheering in my head.

  I am a lesbian.

  I'm just a spy here with these straight people and they have no idea. Look at my mom, pissy because she thinks her straight princess dressed like a lesbian for a night. Look at my sister, drinking hot chocolate and telling my mother that she thinks she and Josh are getting really serious. I'm nothing like them. I'm a dyke. I'm a valkyrie.

  “Well, don't get too attached to him,” Mom's telling her. “Tomorrow you'll be back to your real boyfriend.”

  I put down my knife. “Tomorrow? Tomorrow's Friday. We're leaving Sunday.”

  “I thought maybe we'd get out of here early. Miss the weekend traffic,” she says.

  “We got here on a Friday and there was a ton of traffic,” I say.

  Mom says, “Okay, so how about we leave tonight, would that be better?”

  I close my mouth. Bekah looks at mom, then at me.

  “I want to stay,” Bekah says. “There's that end of the season talent show thing on Saturday night. My friend's performing in it.”

  “You have a friend here?” I say, and she gives me this look like shut up and oh. She's doing this for me. She doesn't know what's going on with me but she knows I want to stay.

  “Please, Mommy?” Bekah says.

  Mom squeezes Bekah's hand. “Of course, honey.”

  Bekah beams.

  Whatever. Works for me.

  As soon as breakfast is over I sneak to the staff quarters. I get seen by about a dozen entertainment people once I've crossed over the bride, but they all just wave. I guess after last night I get to be here now.

  I knock on Tristan's door and peek open the door when he says “Come in.” He's over by the shelf, rearranging some books. He grins at me. “Hey.”

  “Oh, God, you're up and doing things and not dead and...” I wave my hands a little. “I have a lot of feelings.”

  “I can see that!”

  “How are you?”

  “Exhausted,” he says. “Sore. But a hell of a lot better than last night. I...thank you. For that.”

  “Of course. Don't worry about it.”

  “Your mom came by this morning,” he says. He gestures to the bed and we both sit down. “She's pretty awesome.”

  “Sure, when she's not bitching out at Mara.”

  “Eh. It's not really going to have much of an effect on Mara's life if your mom doesn't like her. Three days from now she never sees her again, right?”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  He frowns. “What's wrong?”

  “Nothing. So how soon until you're back to dancing?”

  “My friend Tony is here to fill in for me until Sunday. After that the season's over, so...”

  “Right. Then what are you gonna do?”

  “I have a gig teaching at a senior living community in Nashville,” he says.

  “That's awesome!”

  “Yeah, and I'll still get to come back here for the summers. Maybe you'll be back too.”

  “Yeah. Or I can get old and go live in Nashville.”

  “Ha, or that.” He leans back in the bed.

  “Do you feel different?” I say.

  “What, like more of a boy?”

  “I guess.”

  “Nah,” he says. “Not really. Not yet. I have to be all bandaged up for a few weeks, and there are these drains and everything...it's pretty gruesome. Maybe once I see it it'll feel more real.”

  I nod and look around his room. I can appreciate it a lot more now that it's light and I'm not worried about anyone dying. He has a whole cluster of Frida Kahlo prints on the wall opposite his bed, and a lamp shaped like a mermaid.

  “How about you?” he says. “Learn anything from your time as a b
oy?”

  “I learned I was never a boy,” I say.

  He laughs and winces. “Still sore.”

  “Do you need anything? I guess no more painkillers.”

  “Tylenol! So exciting.” He raps on my knee. “No, come on. I want to know how last night went.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yeah...the performance?”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Did...something else happen last night? I mean, besides me almost dying everywhere.”

  “No...”

  He studies me, then drops his mouth open. “You slept with Mara.”

  “What? No.”

  “No, stop it, it's my superpower, I always know when people slept with each other. And you slept with her.”

  “You can't tell anyone.”

  He falls back on the bed, laughing and very carefully holding his ribcage. “Oh my God. She owes me twenty bucks, I told her you weren't straight.”

  “Well, I don't think she still thinks it either.” I poke him.

  “So what are you, gay, bi, pan...?”

  I laugh. “Uh, gay, I think? I've definitely never felt this way about a guy. Though to be fair I've never really felt like this about a girl either.”

  “How was the sex?” he says.

  “Um...intense? There's a lot to do.”

  “That there is.”

  “Have you slept with girls?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay, so like...there's a lot of...parts? And I didn't really know when I was supposed to be doing stuff with my hands, or with my mouth, or is...okay, is scissoring a thing?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, people make it sound like scissoring is a thing but I sort of felt like...okay, this isn't gonna do anything.”

  “It's fine for foreplay, but mostly it's something straight people use to be able to conceptualize lesbians.”

  “But...basically it comes down to oral, right?”

  “Pretty much. It's been a long time since I've had lesbian sex, what do I know.”

  I laugh.

  “But did you have fun?” he says.

  “Onstage? No, I was a nervous wreck.”

  “No, in bed.”

  “Oh God yeah. I mean, still a nervous wreck but...” I breathe out. “God, I couldn't believe it was happening. Mara is...”

  “Yeah, she's pretty good, I hear,” he says. “She's got the experience.”

  “No, I don't mean that. I mean yeah, but just being with her. I couldn't believe that I got to just...my whole life I've had all these female friends that like, I wanted to get close to? And I don't know if that was a sexual thing and I was in denial or if maybe it was just a romantic thing and I was in denial or if it wasn't any of those and it was just, like, intimacy, but then...I'm having sex with Mara and I'm like...this is the closest it's possible for me to get with her, and I get to do it with her. I mean she's...it's Mara.”

  “Ohhhh you are in deep.”

  “I mean Rory Richards comes from Hollywood to spend an evening with her,” I say. “It's Mara. Everybody knows that.”

  “Rory uses her as a little sex toy to make herself feel important,” Tristan says. “It's bullshit. Sleeping with Mara reminds Rory how far above her she is.”

  “What? Ew.”

  “Yeah, and Mara just lets her...anyway. My point is, not everybody knows that. Not everybody sees her as an actual person instead of a symbol to throw themselves on. God knows I get the same treatment.”

  “You're special,” I say.

  He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

  “No, not because you're trans. Because you listen to people. Nobody listens to people. But you do.”

  “Heh. Thanks.”

  “Also you're an extremely good dancer. Not just anyone can do your routines, you know.”

  “So it didn't go well?”

  “It went fine,” says a voice behind me, and lungs feel fluttery. Mara walks in and perches on the bed next to me, but she's looking at Tristan. “Our jobs are safe, our bonuses are safe. You don't need to worry about any of that. How are you feeling?” She takes a thing of Twizzlers out of her pocket and offers one to Tristan, then me.

  “I'm fine,” he says. “No more codeine for me.”

  She rips off a hunk of her Twizzler. “What's it like being boobless?”

  “So far a lot like being boob-full but with drains strapped to my chest.”

  “It'll be worth it,” she says. “We're gonna have such better costume options now.”

  “Yep. That's totally why I did it. Costumes.”

  She kisses his head. “I knew it.”

  “It really went okay?” he says. “We're not going to get fired?”

  “I didn't do the lift,” I say. “But I don't think anyone noticed.”

  “And afterwards...?” Tristan looks at Mara.

  “Afterwards is none of your damn business,” Mara says. “You want to keep up with the gossip, don't go and have medical emergencies when exciting shit is going down.” She squeezes his wrist. “Listen, I gotta go, okay? I have a lesson with the Mennysons.”

  “All right. Let me know if you have any problems with Tony.”

  “Will do. I'll see ya.” She smiles at Tristan and then barely, barely looks at me and then down before she leaves.

  “Okay, what was that?” I say to Tristan. “She acted like I was invisible, I...”

  “Ohhh she's so into you,” Tristan says.

  “No, that's what your mom tells you when a boy ignores you and it's bullshit.”

  He says, “Yes, for most people it's bullshit. But I know her. She doesn't get shy around girls. This is...this is new.”

  “Yeah, because maybe she likes those other girls and not me,” I say.

  Tristan looks at me and shakes his head slowly.

  “Just because you want it to work doesn't mean it will,” I say.

  “Yeah, and just 'cause it's too good to be true doesn't mean it won't.”

  “I'm leaving in three days,” I say. “There's no universe in which this is too good to be true.”

  “So then what are you doing in here talking to me?” he says. “You have three days.”

  “She has a lesson, you heard her.”

  “Sooooo go spend time with your mom so it'll be easier for you to make an excuse and go see Mara later. This isn't rocket science.”

  “Y'know, if you were a girl I'd totally be into you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “The fact that I'm not into you really should have been all the proof we needed that I was a lesbian.”

  He rolls his eyes and shoves me. “Get out of here, Sugar.”

  “But you're so dreeeeeeamy.”

  “Sugar.”

  “I'm going!

  It starts raining a couple hours after that, coming down in buckets. Bekah and I hang out with my mom in her room, playing Monopoly that we brought from home, listening to the wind pound on the door. All the deeds are sticky and Bekahkeeps complaining about what the humidity's doing to her hair.

  “We should get a refund on rainy days,” Bekah says. “They had to cancel like everything.”

  “What did you want to do?” Mom asks her.

  “I don't know. I was thinking of going to the lake and working on my backstroke. Y'know the Rosses, in the next cabin? They have a girl who's going to the Junior Olympics, and she was helping me out. I cut my time by a second and a half.”

  “Really?” My mom says. “That's incredible, Bekah.”

  Bekah just glows.

  “It's your turn, Mom,” I say.

  She picks up the dice without looking at me.

  I stare at the window at the rain pouring down. It's eleven AM. Usually Mara would be teaching a merengue class right now. Outside. Maybe they moved it inside...or maybe they cancelled it.

  I get up and put on my jacket.

  “Where are you going?” Mom says.

  “Oh, I thought I'd see if they were doing anything at the clubhouse
,” I say. “I'm going crazy cooped up in here.”

  “I think I heard they were doing charades up there,” Bekah says. She catches my eye.

  I nod. “Right, yeah. I'm gonna see if they're doing charades.”

  Mom says, “Bekah, do you want to go with her?”

  “No, I'm fine.” She stretches out across my mom's bed. “I wanted to talk to you about my classes next year anyway. How do you pick which APs to do?”

  “Well...” Mom starts, and I mouth thank you at Bekah and get out of there.

  I pull my raincoat all the way up over my face and keep my arms wrapped around myself, but I'm somehow still soaked by the time I get to Mara's cabin. I knock, and cross my fingers, and wait.

  She opens the door. She's still in her work clothes.

  “Hi,” I say.

  She smiles at me.

  “Can I play with your makeup?” I say.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She has a whole trunk full of amazing costume makeup. I put on a ton of gold glitter eyeshadow and she helps me with the false eyelashes.

  “Make sure you wash this all off before you leave,” she says. “Hard to explain to your mom how you got this at charades.”

  “Can you imagine if I'd had the beard still on the other night?” I say. “Maybe that would have been better. She would have thought I was rehearsing for a play instead of cosplaying as a lesbian.”

  “Tada.” She shows me myself in the mirror. “Lesbian couture.” She stands behind me and leans over, wrapping her arms around my neck.

  “You're so pretty,” I say. “You're like scary pretty.”

  She kisses my temple. “Not so bad yourself.”

  “This is like...” I look up at her. “This is the most intense thing I've ever felt. And I feel like I should be keeping cool and not telling you about it and I hear myself talk and want to like, tape my mouth shut, but it's like...I'm having this big personal thing and you're here for it.”

  She laughs. “I'm so glad I'm here for you to bounce your personal experience off.”

  “No, that's not what I...I'm sorry. That's not what I meant.”