He didn’t fight back.
When they finally pulled apart, Smokey thought Heart might make an excuse to leave, but instead Heart only said, “You got a room in town, stranger?”
Smokey bit his lip as his heart leapt. A huge, knee-jerk part of him wanted to run away from that implication, wanted to spit or crack another pool cue. But he bit back the fear. Instead, he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” And he fished a motel room key out of his pocket.
Heart smiled and kissed him again, warmly this time, soft. “You gonna try to beat me up again if we go there?”
Smokey felt the heat hit his cheeks as the shame at what he’d done overcame him. He looked away, and Heart said, “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” and brought his hand up to Smokey’s cheek to guide his face back to his. Heart kissed him quickly, then pressed his hips forward to remind Smokey of the thrumming issue that requested his attention below.
Smokey got the hint. He wrapped his fingers in Heart’s, and they picked their way through the mess they left behind. When they pushed out the front door, hand in hand, the barman looked on in shock, but before he could comment, Heart dug a couple of twenties out of his pocket and pressed them into his hand. “Sorry ’bout the mess,” he said, and he and Smokey burst into laughter as they crossed the parking lot.
The first time Smokey fell in love, he was twenty-four. High from a fight, a little drunk from whiskey, and not entirely sure any of this was going to end okay. In the parking lot of that roadside place outside Denton, Smokey squeezed Heart’s hand, looked him in the eye, and decided, with a thumping shot of terror, that it was better to try than not try.
I CLOSE THE laptop.
Okay.
All right.
So that’s fanfiction.
WE MAKE IT back to our room, and I’m so busy worrying about what Tess is thinking that I don’t even remember that my freaking mother might be in our room when we get there. I open the door and say, “Mom?” but there’s no answer. She must still be out. Where does she even go all day?
The hotel Ms. Greenhill got for us is absurdly nice, and seeing it now, through Tess’s eyes, I’m a little embarrassed of it. A “suite” is, I guess, what it’s called.
“Nice room,” Tess says, impressed, putting her backpack down by one of the beds.
“Yeah, we don’t pay for it or anything,” I feel obligated to say so she doesn’t think I’m rich. “Our food is free, too. We can order room service if you want….”
“Do you know how lucky you are?” she asks, running her hand along the shiny countertops.
“I do,” I say.
“Not just the room. This whole trip. Meeting Forest and Rico. Getting to know them, being ridiculously lucky enough to be the one chosen for this out of everyone….”
I feel a pang of guilt because I’m here and a lot of other people wish they would’ve won instead of me. All I can do is try to represent the fans the best I can and use my brief position adjacent to Jamie to try to get him to see the show from our point of view.
“Because you’re super lucky,” Tess repeats. She must be warm because she takes her shawl off, and now she’s all bare wide arms.
“Let me give you the tour of the place,” I mumble and move away from her—all the way across the room—and open the curtains. “This is our amazing view… of that strip mall over there.”
She laughs and comes over to look out the windows, her shoulder nudging up against mine. Why is she undressing? Why is she touching me? Is she just warm? Or is it a secret signal? I’m not good with secret signals. I’m better with clear and direct communication. Surely she’s picked that up by now. I close the curtains and move back across the room to the kitchenette.
“This is the kitchenette. It’s mostly useless, but I use the coffeepot to make tea. Do you like tea? I have peppermint, chamomile, green, Earl Grey—it might be too late for Earl Grey, I guess, but I have it.” I’m rambling. I know I’m rambling, but I can’t stop myself. “Do you want some? I’ll make some. Is mint okay?”
I pick up the coffeepot and hold it up to show her. She’s still over by the windows, watching me with a funny look on her face. OH GOD, WHY AM I LIKE THIS? I DIDN’T ASK TO BE LIKE THIS.
“Claire…” she says slowly, “I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, but we don’t have to do…anything.”
I’m going to puke. What does she mean? Does that mean what I think it means? I’m going to faint. I’m gonna pukefaint.
“Are you okay?” she asks. Why, do I not look okay? She looks okay. She looks more than okay. She looks perfect.
“Claire?” she says again. I feel hot. I’m sweating. She’s not sweating. She’s glowing. She’s a glowworm. I’m just a regular worm. A regular gray worm that’s sweating so much it turns all the dirt around it into mud. A gross, sweaty, muddy worm.
“Okay,” she says. “It’s cool. This is obviously too much. I’ll just get my stuff….” She goes and grabs her backpack and starts for the door. “No problem, I’ll let myself out. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She says it like it’s no big deal.
Like she’s doing me a favor.
She’s not doing me a favor.
I want her to stop.
Tess. Stop.
STOP.
“Stop!”
I say that.
She stops.
She looks back at me and waits.
Absurdly, I think about all the fics I’ve read. I know exactly what to do next. The secret signal I need to give.
I drop my gaze to her lips.
Her lips smile.
I’m still holding the coffeepot. What would happen next in a fic? Claire puts the coffeepot down. I put the coffeepot down. Claire approaches Tess. I put one foot in front of the other.
She drops her backpack and holds her hands out to me, and when I reach her, she slides her hands around my waist and brings me in tight. Claire kisses Tess. And I lean forward and that’s how easy it is, because now we’re kissing.
And my stomach zhooms.
My heartbeat spikes, and I’m tingly from the base of my neck down to my fingertips, and her lips are soft and welcoming, and I just want to burrow in and stay right here in her arms like it’s my hobbit home. I never want to leave.
I start to smile, and she must feel it because she pulls away.
“What?” she asks, smiling, too.
I just shake my head. I don’t know, I don’t know. Kissing Kyle Cunningham was a joke compared to this. Reading fic about kissing is a dim shadow of the real thing.
“It’s never felt like this before,” I whisper. Our faces are still so close together I can hear her breathing. I can see her pulse in that soft part of her neck, and I want to kiss it, too. I want to kiss her nose. I want to kiss her eyes. I want to kiss her again and again. I realize what I’m thinking. I don’t know what this makes me, I can’t think about it right now. My mind is a swirl. And I’m lost looking at her, because she’s still smiling at me, and her smile makes me want to cry it’s so pretty.
“Claire, you are amazing, do you know that?” No, I didn’t. “And you’re very, very cute.”
Glowworm thinks I’m cute. GLOWWORM THINKS I’M CUTE.
The warmth in my belly is overwhelming. Before I know it, the pressure is building behind my eyes, and tears are welling up and I WILL NOT CRY IN FRONT OF TESS but it’s too late, she’s seen them, and her eyes get big with concern and she lets go of me DON’T LET GO OF ME, TESS and she’s giving me space I DON’T WANT SPACE.
“Oh no, what is it? I’m sorry. Too much? It’s too much.” And I’m shaking my head and I can’t speak because I’m afraid it will come out as a sob and now the dumb tears are running down my cheeks and WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? I’M RUINING IT. She’s waving her hands around like she doesn’t know what to do, then she sees a box of Kleenex and grabs it for me and starts handing me tissue after tissue—way too many tissues—saying, “It’sokayit’sokayit’sokay!”
I wipe the tears away w
ith the tissues and then—oh god—I have to blow my nose so I turn my back to do that, but now I’m this gross mucus-y mess and my glasses are fogging up and it’s definitely over. One kiss, that’s it, now it’s over, and she won’t want to kiss again because now I’ll forever remind her of snot because I’m the girl who cried after she kissed her.
When I turn back around, she’s sitting on the bed with her hands clasped in her lap and not showing her disgust outwardly at all because she is a kind person. I’m waiting for her to make an excuse to leave, when she says, “Sorry.”
SHE’S SORRY?
“I know, I always do this,” she says. “I fall for straight girls, and then they get confused, but it’s cool, it’s cool. You’re not queer. We don’t have to do anything. I can go, or I can stay and we can just watch TV or something. Whatever you want. I promise not to stalk you or tell anyone or anything.”
I don’t really hear most of that because I’m stuck on…
She…fell for me?
“Tess,” I say, and my heart is still going sixty-five down the freeway, but I swallow my fear. “That’s not what this is.”
She looks up at me. “No?”
“I’m not crying because I’m straight….” Then, because saying that caught me off guard, I add quickly, “I don’t know what I am. I’m crying because… It’s dumb, but I’m crying because I’m happy.”
She stares at me.
I stare at her.
“This isn’t gay panic?” she asks hopefully.
I shake my head. She bursts out laughing, and runs her hand over the shaved side of her head and behind her neck. “Oh Jesus, Claire, I thought…”
“Tess…” I know what I want to say, but I’m terrified to say it. But this whole night is uncharted territory, so screw it, right? “Can I kiss you again?”
“Yes,” she says enthusiastically. “YES.”
So I step forward, and I gently put one knee on the bed on either side of her and kneel so our faces are the same level.
Again, I drop my gaze to her mouth, savoring the moment this time.
Her tongue slips out just a bit to lick her lips.
Slowly, I tip my head forward, and her mouth rises, and just before we meet, I pause again and marvel at the warmth of her, at her openness.
She likes me. And she wants me to kiss her.
So I kiss her.
And I don’t cry.
And this time she opens her mouth, and my tongue slides in, and she tastes like maple syrup and waffles and girl.
She brings her hands up my back, and it gives me goose bumps. I press into her, and she tips back onto the bed and our foreheads bonk as we land, but we don’t stop, we just keep kissing like that, and there’s this feeling building inside, and I definitely know what it means because I’ve gotten it during a good fic many times.
Tess’s hands find the gap between my shirt and my pants, and she dips her fingers into the space, warm against my back, and the feeling in my stomach travels south and I need her to touch me more, so I do the only thing I can think to do, which is roll my hips down, and I feel her breath hitch, and I’m thinking, Don’tstopdon’tstop, and she doesn’t. She grabs me by the waist and pulls me somehow closer to her, pressing up into my jeans, breathing into my mouth.
I remember she’s wearing a dress…. How easy would it be to just slip my hand underneath? She has her hand balled up in my hoodie, and our bodies are pulsing slightly together. I reach down—her thighs are so soft where I graze my fingers against them. I dip my hand beneath the hem of her skirt….
What do I do now? I don’t know!
I need to read more femslash, I think wildly.
And then my breathing gets tight as I realize what I’m doing. Thirty minutes ago I was walking along the river and now suddenly I’m lying on top of a girl with my hand up her skirt?
I take my hand back and pull away from her just a bit.
“Claire?” she says.
This is all happening too fast. What am I even doing?
“Is everything okay?” she says, her arms still wrapped around me, holding me tight against her.
“Yeah, yeah, I just, um…” My voice trails off as I look at her. She looks so beautiful, her hair splayed out behind her on the bed, her lips pink, her cheeks flushed. I did that. I did that.
I want to kiss her again, so badly. What does that mean? What does that make me? Is this it? Is this the confirmation I was looking for? I’m definitely gay, no turning back, forever and ever, amen? I feel the sudden urge to leave.
She pulls one hand out of the back of my shirt and brings it to the side of my face, rubbing my cheek with her thumb.
“You are so frigging hot right now,” she says.
What do I say to that?
So are you, so are you, so are you runs like a refrain in my head. I’m just getting my lips to form the words when…
BEEP.
The door opens.
Oh shit.
I leap off Tess and straighten my shirt, wipe my lips on my sleeve. She pulls her dress down and sits up, and we both look toward the door just in time to see…
Mom walk in.
“Claire, I just went to the most divine cupcake shop, I brought you a—”
She stops short when she sees Tess.
“Who’s this?” she asks with a look of wide-eyed wonder. God, Mom, be cool. Don’t act like I’ve never had a friend over before.
Friend. I’m burning on the inside. I’m sure my cheeks are neon red right now.
“Tess,” she says, putting her hand out. That hand was just up my shirt not ten seconds ago. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs….”
“Good lord, child, please call me Trudi.” Mom shakes Tess’s hand, then looks at me in complete delight. “You made a friend!” she exclaims—I swear to god, exclaims. I’m dying. I’m dead. Tess and I glance at each other, and her face is tight from holding back a smile and her eyes are bulging and I can tell she’s laughing hysterically on the inside.
I look back at my mom. “Um, would it be okay if Tess slept here tonight?” I ask. “She doesn’t have a place to stay so I thought she could take one of our beds.”
Mom looks back at Tess, then at me, and I have no idea what she’s thinking, but I’m mortified.
She just says, “Good thing I got extra cupcakes, then, huh?”
Two hours and two and a half cupcakes later, I’m in bed next to my mom, who is snoring. I look across the gap to the other bed, where Tess is sleeping on her back, her hair up in a silk scarf.
I look at her profile, admiring the way her forehead curves into her nose, the way her lips part a bit as she sleeps.
I want to kiss her again. And I don’t know what that means.
Because here’s the thing, right? I have a couple options. I could wake up tomorrow and tell my mom I’m gay and I like Tess, and then she’d cry and be so happy for me and probably give me a sex talk, which I do not want to hear (but also I probably need to hear from someone because if today proved anything it’s that I seriously have no clue how sex works when it’s not between Smokey and Heart—more research is clearly needed), and then I could announce it on Facebook and come out to my school and everyone would either accept me or not accept me and then I would have to become friends with those other two lesbian girls, even though I don’t know nearly enough about basketball to hang out with them, and I would need to buy some rainbow suspenders for the Pride parade in Boise, which I don’t even want to go to because parades are just too many people and Tess and I could, what, be girlfriends? Would I meet her family? Her friends? Would I cut my hair into something edgy and short? Would this be my coming-out story forever when people asked me about it? Would Joanie Engstrom still want to be bus buddies with me? Would I have to decide if I also still like boys? Would I have to start calling myself lesbian? Bisexual? Pansexual, like Tess? The words blur and block out the rest of my brain.
My chest feels tight, so I turn onto my back and look at the ceiling and bre
athe in through my nose and out through my mouth, long, slow breaths.
I don’t know how Tess does it. She seems to know exactly what she is, and who she likes, and why. When did she acquire this certainty? And how can I get some of it to rub off on me?
My cheeks flush in the darkness at the phrase rub off, and I shake the visual from earlier that night away.
Because what if… what if I’m not actually queer? What if I come out to everyone I know, but then I realize later that this was just a weird night and after this I never kiss another girl? Then what? Then do I have to re–come out as straight? Take it all back? And who would believe me? Everyone I know already thinks I’m gay just because I ship slash and I like to talk about it. I mean, I could never come back from that.
How are you supposed to know? I mean, really know, like for sure know? Know enough to tell your mom, who will surely freak out and want to bake a cake or something? Know enough to call yourself gay—in public or even in private, even in your own head?
I don’t know. What if I never know? What if I feel like this forever?
Here’s one thing I do know: I know that Smokey and Heart are in love.
When I realize that, I can feel all the muscles in my body relax. My shoulders press into the mattress, my eyelids finally soften. This I know with certainty. Sorting through all my own emotions is a mess, but Smokey and Heart’s love is no mystery.
And tomorrow I’m headed to Seattle. My last stop, my last chance to make sure the world knows about them. Tonight with Tess was fun, but I can’t let something like this confuse what’s really important. I have my whole life to figure out my sexuality, but I only have another two days to try to make SmokeHeart canon.
I don’t look at Tess again, for fear I’ll lose my nerve.
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