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You’re at a party with the girl you love.
She doesn’t know you love her.
She dances, carefree, head thrown back and exposing the long, delicate line of her throat, burnt-ebony-black braids thrown over her shoulder as she laughs, loud and unapologetic and piercing your eardrums even through the bass that thrums directly into your bones. It’s the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard.
You stand in the kitchen, toeing the doorway, holding a can of cheap beer you half-drained and filled with apple juice the rest of the way. Despite it being watered down it makes your head swim in a dizzying way, but that might just be the fact that Fig is smiling in your direction, flashing danger sharp canines. You want to know what a knife made for killing but used for healing feels like against your skin.
She bounces up to you before you can follow that train of thought any further, to where it inevitably careens off the tracks and explodes in a resounding whirlwind of flame and noise so loud it makes you ears ring. She’s all wide, cheeky smiles, filtering through the crowd like she’s been there her entire life, like parties are in her blood. You wonder if they are. She meets you at the doorway of the kitchen, standing on the precipice of safety and the steep, cavernous drop into unknown territory, away from the sterile calm kitchen with its bright fluorescent lights and white tile flooring.
Your ears ring anyway, as she takes the can from your hand and takes a generous swill, red-grey skin shining with a faint sheen of sweat and maybe body glitter, you can’t tell. You’re too invested in the way her nose crinkles as she pulls the can away from her lips, glaring at the label critically.
Her eyes are really, really red.
Cherry red, like the blood rushing to your face as she gives you a look, light smattering of freckles lost on the wrinkles of her scrunched nose like dinghies out to sea, caught in a sweltering storm.
“What is this?” she asks, though there’s hardly anything critical in her voice, laced underneath with cheer and excitement and everything that makes her uniquely Fig. Your face burns as you lift a single shoulder in a shrug.
“Oh- uh- y’know,” you stammer, hoping it comes off cryptic and not like you have barely any idea what you’ve concocted in that can with your burning desires to be the good, Helioc girl everyone wants and to rebel fighting each other like rampaging bulls with eyes that only see red.
Cherry red irises.
You’re at a party with the girl you love, and she doesn’t know it yet.
You have to get out of here.
You mutter out a half-excuse about needing to go to the bathroom, running off down the hall like the hounds of Hell are at your heels. They just might be.
The bathroom is blissfully, thankfully, empty, and you take note of your sanctuary, locking the door behind you with a shuddering sigh that makes your shoulders shake. You slide to the floor, back pressed to the door of the linen closet, hands braced on the cool tile. White tile, with clean, symmetrical lines of dark grout filling the space between them. Your head spins.
You think about love.
You don’t know what real love is like. You’ve never been in love before.
There was that time with Tracker, where you thought you might be in love with her, but she couldn’t take you freezing up every time her hand slipped beneath your shirt, how you got that distant look in your eyes whenever she talked about Pride, the wary glances you gave her lesbian flag pin where it was pinned to the shoulder of her worn jean jacket and the way you shuddered whenever she said queer.
You wonder what love tastes like, real love. You wonder if real love doesn’t taste like lies, like acid burning on the back of your tongue, like the acrid bite of the bar soap your mom used to scrub your mouth out whenever you swore. You wonder if love tastes like cherry cola, and apple juice, and cheap beer.
You think of your parents, and the way they loved you. Was that real love?
You think of the times your parents looked at you with disdain, with Shame in their eyes so big and heavy it deserved a capital ‘S’. You think of sitting in church every Sunday morning and Wednesday night and all the days between then, of squirming in your seat whenever Pastor Amelia mentioned The Gays with such a barely constrained bite of hatred in her voice it made your skin crawl.
You think of when your parents told you they loved you.
You think of your mom looking at you, hand on your knee, other clutching a Heloic Bible, how she said, we don’t hate the gays, Kristen. love the sinner, hate the sin.
You think of your father brushing back your hair behind your ears, looking you in your teary eyes so bright they were acid green, telling you, it’s just not right, sweetheart. it goes against everything we teach.
You think of them telling you, together, over dinner, while your little brothers stared with lack of understanding, telling you, we want you to stop hanging out with those school friends of yours. when you mentioned not being comfortable in your own body. Demanding to know who told you that, and sending you to your room when you refused, your dinner half-finished at the table.
You think of Tracker’s murmured, i love you’s you were never able to return, whispered against the back of your neck in the dead of night. How her casual touches made your eyes jolt open, goosebumps rising along your skin. How you wished it was easy for you to love her back, like she loved you. How you wished your parents loved you, Capital ‘L’ Loved, the way Jawbone loved Tracker, listening to her no matter what and treating her like an equal and never sending her to bed with dinner unfinished. Brushing her hair behind her pointed ears, smiling at her achievements, proclaiming how proud he was of her.
Protecting her.
You wonder if love is supposed to make your gut burn, the way Pastor Amelia said you should love Helios so much you fear him. That your love for Helios is what takes you down onto your knees at night, every night, praying and praying that he would take this sickness, this sin out of you till your eyes burned with unshed tears and your knees were raw with carpet burns.
You wonder if you could be loved, or if the way everyone loved you wrong fucked you up forever.
You think you can love, can love correctly, can love right, but you aren’t sure.
You love the rest of the Bad Kids, love your little brothers even though you never see them anymore, love your parents despite the fact that the very thought of them makes your chest tighten so much you can barely breathe.
Your fingers, nails dull from anxious biting, scrabble at the tile while you claw at your throat with your other hand, desperate for air.
In, out. In… out.
You breathe haltingly, shudderingly, the way Adaine taught you and the way Jawbone taught her.
It still feels heavy, capital ‘U’ Unloved stamped into your chest like a brand, but you think you can live with it, maybe. Probably.
You stand and look at yourself in the mirror, raking fingers through auburn hair, hair that tangles up in unmanageable curls around your flushed, freckled face.
Fig said your hair reminded her of fire, once. Like blazing flames from the deepest pits of Hell, said with a kind of reverence you’re undeserving of. The way her eyes shone made you squirm, cherry red so blindingly bright you felt every bit like you were under the light of an interrogation room, hot shame creeping into your veins for daring to be revered by a girl as amazing as her.
There’s a knock at the door just as you turn the water off, having splashed cold directly onto your face in hopes to quell the red beginning to rim around your eyes in angry, unloved lines.
“Kristen?” Fig’s voice is soft, questioning, as it filters through the door.
“Just a minute!” Your voice cracks in a lying splinter. You cringe. “Just, uh, just washing my hands!”
“Alright….” She doesn’t sound like she believes you. You wouldn’t believe you, either.
Fig must see something on your face as you exit the bathroom, because she takes your hand in one of hers-- her hands are small, so small, with callouses on the pads of her fingers from plucking at her bass-- and gives you a look so gentle and kind and Loving it turns your insides to jelly. Or maybe cotton-candy-fluff, with the way it chokes you up, tickles at the base of your throat.
“Hey,” she smiles, cocky, one corner of her mouth hiking up higher than the other so you can see the dimple carved into the bottom of her cheek. “Let’s get outta here. This party is lame, anyway.”
You follow obediently, like you’ve always been taught to be, nodding along with a kind of dumbstruck awe. Fig Loves parties, capital ‘L’ Loves. She must think this one is really lame if she’s ditching, but with the way she was dancing earlier, you doubt it.
There’s no way she’s leaving just for you, is there?
The Unloved stamp on your chest pupates into all caps, big and dark and searing through your shirt so violently surely Fig must see it by now. But she keeps walking, hand in hand with you, and doesn’t even comment on the way your palms are clammy and fingers bony and ugly in hers.
You stand on the porch just outside the house, Fig still holding your hand, staring up at the moon. The light pollution is low enough in this part of the city that you can see every single star, carefully stitched into the all-encompassing blanket of the night sky. The moon is staring at you like she’s asking a question, but her light is soft and gentle where the daylight of pious prayer is harsh and cruel.
You just left a party with the girl you love, and she’s holding your hand.
“You okay?” Fig asks. You’d almost forgotten she was there, floating away into the sky as you were, if not for the tiny, hot coal of her hand clutched in yours. You squeeze her fingers and give what you hope is a reassuring smile.
“Yeah. Just got kinda anxious back there, y’know?” She nods sagely. She still hasn’t let go of your hand.
“Wanna go get pizza, or somethin’? I don’t think Basrar’s is still open this late. He’s probably asleep.” Her face tugs down into a frown, and there goes the crease in the bridge of her nose again. “Do genies even sleep?”
“I think he’s a djinn.” you add, unhelpfully. “Sure, yeah- pizza sounds good.”
You don’t want to go home yet, to a crowded apartment with people who may or may not love you. Your bed feels empty without Tracker in it, since she went back to school.
You wonder if Tracker still thinks about you. If she still Loves you.
But Fig is tugging you down the driveway to Gilear’s shitty old hatchback she borrowed for the night, and you’re sliding into the passenger’s side and Fig is cranking up the radio so loud you can’t hear yourself think and she’s singing along and she looks so beautiful you can’t really find it in you to care about Tracker anymore.
You just left a party with the girl you Love, and she doesn’t know it yet, but maybe that’s okay. You won’t tell her now, can’t tell her, but maybe someday, when the stamp of UNLOVED on your chest has faded to an old scar and your hands don’t shake when you think about your parents.
You’re in the car with the girl you Love, and everything is okay.