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January comes and goes quietly. By late February, Lola and Maya have settled into a new routine: each Thursday afternoon Maya will wait in front of Lola's school until the throng of escaping students subsides and Lola herself emerges from the building - always slightly late for one reason or another. Occasionally, a student will approach her, curious about the peculiarly dressed girl who everyone is starting to recognise as “Lola's girlfriend”. Maya has always enjoyed talking to strangers, often wandering off as a child to strike up conversations with people who had piqued her interest, a habit she only dropped after her mother found her sitting next to a middle-aged man in the park. “The world is a dangerous place, Mayumi-chan,” she had said, gripping her hand so tightly her knuckles turned white, and Maya had been too young and too naive to fully understand the meaning behind it, but the fear in her mother's eyes was enough to act as a detriment thereafter.
Now that she's older, she's well aware of the intrinsic value of being naturally likeable and gregarious, and she wields it to her advantage. It meant she was able to score a customer service job two weeks after becoming what would technically be considered homeless (but really entailed squatting on Max's sofa, which in many ways felt more like home than the one she had just left), and it's what allowed her to keep said job after what her supervisor had described as “an event that positively scandalised our middle-aged core customers”. And it's also why she doesn't mind the inquisitive glances and occasional small talk with Lola's classmates, who seem strangely impressed by the fact that one of their peers is dating someone of legal drinking age.
Once, on an unusually sunny and warm day in mid-March, a girl approaches her asking for a cigarette. Maya has no trouble spotting the tell-tale signs; the nervous shuffling of feet, the slight flushing of cheeks. She’s certain it's commonly understood that she doesn't smoke, but she can't help but feel a kinship of sorts, an unspoken understanding that exists between people who recognise something familiar in the other. Still, the short conversation that ensues is so awkward that Maya is visibly relieved when she sees Lola walking up to them, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“You're far too popular,” she grumbles, watching the girl scurry away with an embarrassed wave.
“I suppose it's only natural that they're all trying to figure out why you're dating a cool nineteen year old such as myself,” Maya teases, snaking her arms around her girlfriend's waist and pulling her closer until she can see the scowl disappear and the shorter girl relaxes into the embrace.
“Well, I guess it is a mystery what I see in you,” Lola counters, rising up on her tiptoes, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
~~~
There's a small cinema close to Maya's apartment that hosts classic movie nights each Tuesday. The floor is a little sticky and the popcorn reliably stale, but it's cheap and more often than not it's empty enough so Maya and Lola can be on their own at the very back. Maya has seen most of them before (the child-appropriate ones back from when her mother would leave her in front of the TV whilst searching for her father at the bars he liked to frequent, confident in the knowledge that Maya would be too enthralled by stories that were unlike her own to notice her absence; the others during the numerous movie nights with La Mif) but the repeat viewings are worth it for Lola's reactions alone, her almost childlike excitement, the way she squeezes Maya's hand during the shower scene in Psycho. Bar a short-lived nap, she even suffers through the entirety of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film she has disliked since she first watched it a few years ago, solely because she hates it less than she loves the way Lola's eyes light up watching it.
Much later that night, when Maya is close to drifting off to the feeling of lazy shapes being drawn on the palm of her hand, she's brought back from the brink of unconsciousness when the bed shifts slightly from the movement of Lola turning around to face her.
“Thank you,” Lola says so softly that she almost misses it, “I know tonight was torture for you.”
“What gave me away?” Maya mumbles in response, voice thick from the heaviness of sleep.
“I dunno. Could have been the nap. Could have been the fact you tried to make out with me at various points.” In the darkness of the room, she can more sense than see Lola's smile. “You'd think you would have more appreciation for visual beauty considering you're dating me.”
“I'm afraid my good taste doesn't extend to overly indulgent movies, as beautiful as they may be.”
At that, Lola chortles inelegantly, and when she rolls over and on top of Maya all thoughts of sleep are quickly cast aside. As their lips find one another's in the dark, a million galaxies explode behind her eyelids.
~~~
Community service is full of transients, a forever rotating cast of actors in a play none of them truly want to be a part of. Maya does it for the planet, sure, but she could have joined other initiatives for that. In truth, she enjoys the thought of having a positive impact on someone's life, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant. “Transformational trash my arse,” is what one of her particularly stroppy charges once calls it whilst kicking an empty can down the train tracks, and Maya has to stifle her laughter with her hand.
Sometimes, she sees hints of Lola in some of the newcomers, all moodiness and attitude, and she makes a particular effort to get to know them.
(Once, there's a girl that reminds her of herself, many years ago. They both keep their distance, like two planets orbiting an invisible sun.)
~~~
It didn't take long into knowing her to learn that - hidden underneath the veneer of aloofness - Lola is more caring and emotional than she'd like to admit. Whereas Maya once overheard her first set of foster parents describe her behaviour as “surprisingly even-tempered”, Lola runs the whole gamut of human emotion. But they're untamed and wild, roaming freely after years of neglect, ungoverned by the constraints that a more orderly upbringing tends to impose on them.
It makes her wonder who Lola had been with the innocence of childhood still keeping burgeoning resentment at bay; the optimism of youth obscuring an increasingly stormy mind. Back when each bruise and scrape had been lovingly tended to, and happy moments were captured with the click of a shutter. Before their demons managed to catch up to them.
Madame Auclair, who runs the environmental community service programme Maya volunteers for, once told her that the most sensitive children often adopt the most severe coping mechanisms, an assessment Maya has no reason to doubt. She notices it in the way Lola's entire body stiffens whenever their friends mention one of her “exes” (most of them entirely casual endeavours, meaningless to both parties), the way her sadness will give way to anger out of sheer refusal to feel the former.
She tries not to dwell on it: how they really only know these versions of each other, shaped and moulded over time by forces outside their control. So instead she tries to focus on the future: the versions yet to be, full of potential, created only by them.
~~~
There's a repetitive quality to working the till, the incessant sound of the scanner disrupted only by polite formalities and, at times, crushing boredom. In the hour before closing, by when the constant flow of customers has reduced to a mere trickle, Maya likes to let her wind wander. She imagines walking past the rows of discarded shopping carts and the sprawling houses at the edge of the city. She imagines walking until she reaches the sea, its undiscovered depths dangerous and beckoning.
~~~
Lola cries often after her therapy sessions, more exhausted than sad. “I fucking hate it,” she spits out angrily, “therapy is supposed to bloody help, not make me more depressed than ever.” Maya doesn't know how to explain that the combined weight of grief and trauma can - in its own way - provide comfort too, and dismantling it may initially seem more like being untethered rather than unburdened. She wants to say: “Emptiness is simply space for something new,” but it sounds silly and overly simplistic even in her own head.
“I'm sorry, I'm the saddest girlfriend ever,” Lola mutters after a long while, and from the way her tone has shifted to something decidedly sulky, they both know the worst is over.
“If you can be the saddest, you can be the happiest also,” Maya eventually responds, pressing a light kiss to Lola's forehead.
~~~
A year after her parents' passing, when the initial numbness had subsided, Maya made herself the promise to always try to be her most authentic self. What was the point in pretence, she surmised, if one's life was governed not by a benevolent force or even just a basic concept of fairness, but chaotic randomness.
She fails more than she succeeds, of course. Youthful convictions are no match against the way nature has designed her to be more kind than honest . No match against the way fear (not cowardice, as she'd initially suspected) is the true enemy of bravery. It's fear that gets her through three dates with Char, and it's what keeps her quiet during those hazy spring mornings when all that should matter is the feeling of her girlfriend's skin against her own, yet all she can hear are the whispers of unspoken words pressing painfully against her chest.
She had come out to her foster parents eight months before graduating, more by accident than premeditation. Not the wisest decision, in retrospect, to sacrifice her education for her integrity, but Maya understands the importance of protecting the little she has. She thinks about going back at times, pictures the doors it would unlock, the winding paths currently barred by virtue of her circumstances. But in order to gain this potential freedom she would have to lose almost everything she holds dear - the sound of the key turning in her lock; the stability of a home belonging only to her - and she's not sure she could bear to pay the price.
Lola suggest it once, casually, whilst Maya is working through her budget for the next month.
„Daphne's room is free, you know.”
She tries to picture it: her, Thierry, Lola; yet another false family. And it is at this precise moment she realises that there's no turning back. What better way to suffocate young love than to enter an arrangement of dependence, she thinks. (Your father is a proud man , a voice that sounds a lot like her mother's hisses in the back of her head.)
So she simply cocks an eyebrow at Lola. „Are you demoting me to a housemate?“
Lola scoffs and playfully throws a marker in her girlfriend's direction, Maya dodging with ease, before they both start giggling.
They don't mention it again.
~~~
Her mother had been a pragmatist. A gifted violinist, she had ended up training as an accountant in order to provide a steady income, which was just as well, considering Maya's father was already in the midst of a slow and steady descent by the time she was born.
The had met at university; her mother - a recent transplant from Japan, escaping an overbearing family only to find another - the student, her father the teacher. Maya had considered it all terribly romantic, the way children who love their parents do. “He was the most brilliant man I'd ever met,” her mother would say, and Maya can't remember if there had ever been a hint of sadness in her voice.
~~~
There are upsides to working in a supermarket. Not only is there a general employee discount which Maya exploits to its full potential, they also get first dibs on just-expired but still consumable products (expiration dates being a predominantly capitalist invention intended to further stoke consumerism, according to one of Maya's fellow environmentalists). On top of that, customer service comes with an abundance of stories, ranging from funny to outrageous to outright perplexing.
(“Remind me, wasn't there that one girl who once made out with someone on top of the till?” Max likes to joke sometimes when they're on the topic of Maya's job, and she has never regretted telling him anything more.)
It's not a bad job, and it pays the bills.
But always there, at the back of her head, a niggling of doubt, a sense of but is it enough .
~~~
Lola accidentally kills two of Maya's plants before she is banned from all watering duties. Jo writes an entire eulogy, delivering it in an expectedly dramatic fashion, with a grand finale that culminates in her presenting Maya with what she describes as a “consolation plant”, courtesy of La Mif.
It subsequently takes centre stage, perched on top of one of Maya's precarious book towers, and she never fails to be amused by Lola's huffs of annoyance whenever she catches sight of it.
~~~
They talk about going to the seaside in early autumn, as soon as school holidays are over and prices start to drop, so Maya decides to take extra shifts at work. Once, Lola proposes getting a part-time job to help out financially, and Maya rebuffs her with such vehemence the younger girl is taken aback for a moment. She apologises shortly after, and when Lola affectionately kisses her cheek in response, fingers entangling with Maya's, she hopes she understands. She can't offer her much in the way of material riches, but she can gift her the twilight years of adolescence, unencumbered still by the realities of adulthood.
~~~
Usually, sleep comes to her effortlessly, but as of late she keeps waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, heart racing. Whenever it happens, she reaches across the expanse of her bed, relieved the times she finds it empty, glad the times she doesn't.
When exhaustion finally manages to usher her back into a fitful sleep, she dreams of falling.
~~~
Maya had idolised her father, a quiet and withdrawn man, resistant to laughter or, indeed, happiness. As a young child she would often climb on to his lap and they would listen to records of Bach or Louis Armstrong for hours.
He taught music on and off until the end, hampered by his lack of passion for teaching and his increasing unreliability.
Whatever his dreams had once been, they had never come true. Where her mother had been flexible and resourceful, he had been unwavering and brittle. “No amount of innate potential can save you from the grasp of insignificance, Maya. Only hard work and perseverance can,” her father would say, before succumbing to the weight of his own expectations and his inability to meet them.
~~~
Lola sometimes looks at her in a way that takes her breath away, like the oxygen in the room can't coexist with the sheer amount of love she feels for this girl. It scares her, this intensity, and she always averts her eyes quickly.
Every time you make a move you destroy my mind Freddie Mercury sings, surrendering himself to the insanity of it all, and the words haunt her late at night, more a warning than an endorsement.
How could it ever be good, to lose control so willingly.
~~~
She doesn't much remember of that day in early June when she ends up fainting in the break room. Her supervisor insists on taking her to the hospital, and despite her assurances that such a step was entirely unnecessary, there is a comforting familiarity in the starchy crispness of white sheets, the smell of bleach and anti-septic hanging heavy in the air. They're worried enough that they hook her up to a blood transfusion, but Maya is well-versed in assessing the severity of a medical situation, and each nurse that checks up on her meets her gaze with a smile.
It's only when everyone arrives at the hospital that embarrassment hits her. Jo unceremoniously drops an assortment of gelatine-free sweets on her bed, whilst Sekou leans down to giver her an awkward hug. Max keeps his distance. He is still on file as her emergency contact at work, and Maya knows it's unfair to be mad at him when he would have likely received the call at school, surrounded by the others, but she can't help it. Lola enters the room last. There’s a blank expression on her face, and guilt washes over Maya like a wave.
“Your blood pressure was very low. You're also anaemic. Considering your age the most likely causes are a lack of iron and perhaps stress, though we will have to wait for the results of the blood test to confirm that,” the doctor says half an hour later, looking at the file in his hand, much thicker than your average. Something about his general demeanour and the way he'd cast a disapproving glance at the group of teenagers congregated in the room reminds Maya of Paul, her last and most under-whelming foster father. She dislikes him immediately.
“In the mean-time I'd suggest supplements, and maybe adding more red meat to your diet.”
“I'm vegetarian,” she retorts, “but I suppose I could eat more spinach.”
Jo almost chokes on a sweet, and they discharge Maya by the end of the day.
~~~
Lola takes care of her in the days after, making her watery tea and lukewarm lunches, iron and B-12 supplements rolling about wildly on the plate.
They both know that something will have to give.
~~~
It's the right thing to do, the only thing to do. Because community service doesn't pay the bills, and Maya is too old to pretend that anything else matters.
She cries for hours after getting off the phone with Madame Auclair, her head on Lola's lap. She can feel deft fingers combing soothingly through strands of growing hair - black like her mother's - whilst heavy sobs wreck her body, and it's such a reversal from their usual dynamic she can't help but cry even more.
How can she explain how directionless she feels to a person who expects so little from life, who is happy to simply exist in the warm glow filtering through Maya's blinds.
How could she possibly say It's not enough, when she's never had more.
~~~
„I love you,” she murmurs into Lola's hair when she's fairly certain that the younger girl is asleep. She says it more often now, but it feels foreign still, her tongue caressing the word awkwardly. She wishes there was less fear in her heart. Lola rouses from her sleep, twisting around lazily in Maya's arms before softly pressing her lips against the pulse point on her neck. Her mind briefly flashes to images of gazelles in the wild, long tender necks caught between strong jaws, at the lion's mercy.
~~~
She plays Lola the first and only jazz record her father had ever been a part of, published independently back in his twenties with some of his friends, when he was still full of promise and dreams.
„Was he well-known,“ Lola asks, all innocence, and Maya snorts at the idea.
„He wishes.“
It hurts less than it used to.
~~~
Maya doesn't know what to expect when she steps into Madame Auclair's tiny, windowless office. They haven't spoken since that sombre phone call several weeks earlier, and the meeting invite had arrived via email rather than a casual text.
She's a kindly woman, and Maya returns her smile easily.
~~~
As a child, Maya would often play through scenarios in her head. Would her father look at her proudly if she managed to play the entirety of Chopin's Prelude in B Minor without a single fault, or would he reach for the glass of whiskey on the table next to him? Would her mother laugh if she told her about how she had corrected her art teacher for mistakenly calling origami a Chinese practice, or would she chide her for being disrespectful?
Even now she often visualises that moment of choice, each decision branching off into its own path, forever separated yet tantalisingly close. Sometimes, Maya can see that alternate universe play out through the thin membrane that separates this existence from the one that could have been.
She wonders what life she will leave behind this time.
~~~
„It's at a youth centre. A full-time position. Minimum wage, at first, but there'd training opportunities, and progression plans.“
Lola is quiet for a very long time, eyes trained at the ceiling, as if waiting for guidance from above. „It's in Lyon.“
(Madame Auclair, seeing the conflicting emotions play out on Maya's face, had reached across the table, covering Maya's hands with her own. “Maya, I know it doesn't always feel like it, but you are so very very young. Don’t let someone else's journey change the course of your own. Just promise me you'll think about it.”)
„I know,“ Maya says quietly, and it sounds more apologetic then she'd like.
„Why not find something in Paris? Why go all the way to Lyon? Surely there are enough grumpy teenagers here to keep you entertained.“ There's an iciness to Lola's tone that makes Maya shiver.
„It's not that easy, and you know it. I don't have a degree, or even the BAC. I have two months' worth of savings to my name. The world doesn't shower people like me with opportunities, Lola. The supermarket, it was a solution at the time, but I need —“ she pauses, the truth on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be released „—I want more than that. Something might open up here, sure. But it might not. And I can't take that chance.“
„So what about us?”
Lola looks at her then, sad and beautiful and so so young. She knows there's no point in begging Maya to stay.
“I love you,” Maya blurts out, and it's as true as anything she's ever said.
But it's no answer to Lola's question, and the implication hangs heavy in the room.
~~~
She doesn't hear from Lola for five full days. There's no option other than to give her the space she needs, even though she's worried sick.
Normally they would all hang out together on Sunday afternoons, but Maya knows that Lola won't show if she attends, so she comes up with an excuse not to.
“I got you in the divorce then, huh,” she says dryly when Max knocks on her door later that evening, and when he steps forward to envelop her in a hug she clutches at his shirt like a lifeline.
Once she starts, the words won't stop coming. She tells him about how the centre is trying to hire people from disadvantaged or otherwise difficult backgrounds, giving them a chance where others wouldn't. How it already feels more meaningful than anything else she's done in her life. It'd be chance to help these kids find an outlet, she explains, maybe even a purpose. And maybe in return, she'll find one too, she adds silently. Max is listening intently, not interrupting her once.
“I think you're doing the right thing, you know.” She knows he means it, though his expression is sober. But his love for her isn't the kind that would allow emotion to cloud his judgement, and it's a relief. “I'm sure she'll come around too.”
“What better way to test a relationship than to trigger your girlfriend's abandonment complex.” It comes out more bitterly than intended, and Max looks at her for a long time.
“Remember when you broke my heart three years ago?” he eventually says, and it's such a perplexing change of topic Maya starts to laugh.
“Are you trying to add to my misery?”
Ignoring her snarky remark, he continues: “Obviously it would never have worked for a million reasons, but at the time all I knew was that I was crushing hard and you were indulging me for some inexplicable reason. And then we went on that fateful third date, and we kissed, and when I pulled back you looked me square in the eye and told me that it didn't feel quite right. And I knew it too, I guess, but I was still heartbroken for a while. And then we became friends.”
“I don't quite get your point,” she admits after mulling it over for a while.
“My point—” he elaborates “—is that you were honest with me and it hurt like hell for a while, but in the end it allowed us to forge a bond that ended up lasting way longer than any romance between us ever would have. So maybe you and Lola will break up, or maybe you won't. All you can do is live your truth and let things slot into place, even if it's the more difficult thing to do. And whatever happens next … it'll make sense at some point.”
Just be your most authentic self , her younger self would add, with a confidence Maya isn't certain she still feels. But then she looks at Max, and she realises that despite all the doubt that's been festering in her heart, they've come a long way since their first fateful encounter. They've both grown and changed, like caterpillars in the midst of metamorphosis, their final destination unclear. Maybe, Maya thinks, all you can do at this point in your life is breathe life into the space your body has made for you.
“Long-winded but astute,” she smiles, returning her focus to their conversation. “Sekou is starting to rub off on you.”
“Maybe,” he admits, his voice full of fondness.
~~~
They meet on neutral ground, a park near Lola's school.
She looks tired - they both do - but there's no hint of alcohol on her breath, and Maya lets go of a weight she hadn't known know she was holding.
“Do you want to break up?”, Lola asks suddenly, her words cutting through the tense silence.
Maya shifts nervously, her nails digging into the wooden slats of the park bench. “No. Do you?”
Lola shakes her head.
And then: “Lyon is two hours away by train, I looked it up. I'll visit, and ... you'll visit too.”
It doesn't quite feel happy, this resolution, but bittersweet and imperfect, the way adult decisions tend to do.
~~~
It only takes two cars to move all of Maya's possessions into her new flat, not including most of her books and plants, which Max promises to bring as soon as he gets his licence.
It's only marginally bigger than her old place, but it's bright with high ceilings and when she looks out the window she can see the city, and a hint of green beyond that. She takes her time decorating, letting the space speak to her instead of forcing her previous flat's identity on it. She starts by putting up photos around the flat. A lot of them are Lola's, mostly pictures of abandoned places they explored doing urbex, as well as a few she took of them as a group. There's only one of them as a couple, courtesy of Sekou playing around with Lola's camera, and though the focus is slightly off - obscuring certain details - she likes the way Lola looks completely unguarded, Maya's arm casually draped over her shoulders.
The first few weeks pass in a haze. A late-summer heatwave descends on the south of France like an unwanted visitor, and Maya sleeps on top of her duvet with all the windows wide open, even the weight of her tank top too much to bear in the stifling heat.
It's Lola's turn to visit her for the weekend, and Maya can feel the static in the air when she collects her from the station, the bus ride back to her place both excruciating and electrifying. Lola, evidently feeling like a bit of a tease, inches closer until their thighs are flush together, and the contact makes Maya dizzy. They go for languid walks along the river, and she can tell from the way Lola allows their clasped hands to swing between them freely that she likes Lyon as much as Maya does, and it's easy to understand why. There's a beauty in being in a place that holds no history for either of them. One time, they get ice cream in cones from a street vendor, and Maya can't help but stare as the sugary melt drips down the sides and coats Lola's fingers, indecent thoughts entering her head. Sunday mornings, by contrast, are blissfully lazy. They spend the better part of the morning in bed, talking or cuddling. Lola likes to rest her head on Maya's stomach and listen to her steady heartbeat, and sometimes she blows air onto a patch of exposed skin; kisses the goosebumps left in its wake.
Every few weeks, all of La Mif squeeze into Max's tiny car and drive down together, spreading out on Maya's living room floor with pizza and bottles of sweet lemonade and telling stories until the early hours of the morning.
It's as good as it could be.
~~~
As expected, Maya makes friends easily. First, with colleagues at the youth centre, a colourful group of vagabonds with backgrounds not dissimilar to Maya's, brought together by the desire to make a difference in the world. Later, with people at the environmental group she joins soon after moving. One of them, Simon, a student with a big attitude and a bigger heart, introduces her to the local gay scene.
The women in particular regard her with unconcealed curiosity. Fresh meat , Simon calls it with a twinkle in his eyes, and true enough their interest settles down over time.
One girl, Adele, laughs a bit too loudly whenever Maya makes a joke, flushes too easily whenever their eyes meet across the room. It's innocent and flattering and in another life it's something she might have entertained.
Lola goes quiet whenever she mentions her new friends, her answers becoming mono-syllabic, and the silence is so unbearable they both start finding excuses to terminate their daily phone calls prematurely. She knows she shouldn't have to feel like this, that there is no shame in exploring this new life, even if it excludes Lola. But there's no inherent logic to guilt.
Lola brings it up a few weeks later, sat on the opposite end of the couch in Lola's apartment, their legs intertwined.
“You never talk about them anymore.”
Maya looks up from her book. It'd be easy to act wilfully obtuse. “I didn't think you enjoyed hearing about them,” she says carefully, after some consideration.
“I don't. Not really,” Lola acknowledges, exhaling audibly. “But I'd rather you told me. If we stop talking to each other about parts of our lives there'll be nothing left soon. And I don't want that.”
“I don't want to hurt you.” Maya's voice cracks on the last few words.
The sofa, old and worn, dips as Lola wedges apart the older girl's knees, settling between them and cupping Maya's cheeks with both hands.
“I might not like to hear it sometimes, but I'm working on it. I'm trying to do better.”
In lieu of words, Maya closes the gap between them, kissing her so deeply that the world around them collapses into nothingness.
~~~
They allow her to start a gardening group at work. It's too late in the year to plant anything, so the sole focus is on readying their small plot of land for the next season. A few kids have signed up so far, and she shows them how to uproot weeds and turn over the soil.
They finish a couple of weeks later, the bare ground now covered with old tarpaulin, ready for springtime. They all jot down their suggestions for what to grow on small pieces of paper, which Maya keeps in a box in her locker until it‘s time for the draw. She‘s tempted to take a peak at times, curious to know what their little garden might transform into once names emerge from unfolded notes and life has been brought to barren earth.
~~~
Lola meets Simon first. The contrast of personalities couldn‘t be starker, but thankfully Simon‘s cheerful nature isn‘t dampened in the slightest by the lack of reciprocation on Lola‘s part. For most of the afternoon they listen to a dramatic, if likely exaggerated account of a family holiday gone awry, before transitioning into a lengthy analysis of his recent dating record.
“I guess he‘s alright looking,” Lola says, swiping through the fourth profile that‘s been presented to them.
“He‘s pretty dreamy, I think. But talking to him is like squeezing blood out of a stone. So the real question is, does he fall into a) douchebag, b) personality-free or c) protective of his privacy territory?”
Lola, at the best of times not one to readily dish out relationship advice, sends a look of distress in Maya‘s direction, who simply shrugs her shoulders.
“Don‘t look at me. Men are not my area of expertise.”
Simon throws his hands up in feigned annoyance, muttering something about lesbians not being the right audience for his dating woes.
“ However , as someone with objectively great taste—” and at that, Maya makes sure to wink at her visibly amused girlfriend, “—he does list Michael Bay as his favourite artist, so I‘d at least exclude C as an option.”
Later, on their stroll back home, Lola suddenly stops dead in her tracks.
“Never, ever tell this boy I‘m bisexual.”
Maya‘s initial bemusement gives way to laughter, and she presses a quick kiss to the corner of Lola‘s mouth before making the easiest promise of her life, and silently promising her so much more.
~~~
Meeting the wider group is a more difficult affair. Adele in particular is regarded with thinly veiled contempt, and memories of Char and ill-timed love confessions enter Maya‘s mind uninvited.
After twenty minutes of stilted conversation, she ends up pulling Lola to the dance floor, and despite the previous tension their bodies come together naturally.
“If you keep staring at her like that she may start to think you‘re into her”, she says, leaning closer in order not to have to raise her voice, her tone light but critical.
“I‘ll stop staring at her when she stops drooling over you.”
It‘s cute in a way, Lola‘s jealousy, but underneath all the indignation and petulance she can sense her girlfriend‘s insecurities itching to rise to the surface, like a beast awakened from a deep slumber.
“Lola, if I wanted to be with her, or any other woman, for that matter, I would be. But I‘m not.”
Temporarily assuaged, they say nothing more for a few minutes, and Maya allows herself to get lost in the music and the feeling of Lola‘s hands on her hips. She‘s mesmerised by a patch of skin just underneath her girlfriend‘s right ear; a faint hickey illuminated by the blue hue of the club‘s strobe lights, and if it weren‘t for the fact that Simon has joined them on the dance floor she would have felt compelled to leave a more visible mark.
“Besides, I only have eyes for you banane,” she whispers into Lola‘s ear instead, and the way her entire body trembles when Maya nips lightly at her earlobe sets something alight in her belly. When she finally draws back Lola‘s pupils are dilated to the point of appearing black, and Maya wonders if this is what it would have been like, if they had met in a place like this years ago. The thought leaves her mind when Lola grabs hold of her hand and practically drags Maya to the bathroom.
It‘s not something she‘s ever considered doing before, hooking up in the toilets of a dingy club at 1am in the morning, but there‘s something about the look in Lola‘s eyes and the force with which she brings their lips together as soon as the door locks into place that makes it impossible to object. When one of Lola‘s hands slips underneath her waistband and the other clasps tightly around her mouth, all she can do is surrender to the ecstasy.
“You‘re impossible,” she says afterwards, breathless, leaning forward to press their foreheads together.
“Still, you love me,” Lola responds quietly, but with a certainty that belies her earlier jealousy.
They end up adding their initials to the collection of phone numbers and love declarations that adorn the bathroom stall, and, much to Maya‘s amusement, the younger girl insists on framing them with a heart.
Simon winks at them when they finally rejoin their table, and Maya has the decency to blush.
Adele is not an issue after that.
~~~
“I chose to be with you,” Lola blurts out suddenly on a rainy Sunday morning a week after Christmas, and Maya looks up from her book, brows furrowing in confusion.
Lola is already staring at her, and from the way her homework has slid off her lap, an afterthought to the moment, she had been doing so for a while. “I know that you still worry about having “left” me behind. And I just need you to understand that I‘m here because I want to be, not because I need you to be my rock or anything. I choose to be with because I love you.”
It's the kind of admission Maya still doesn‘t quite know how to acknowledge with words, and luckily Lola responds in kind to what she offers her instead.
~~~
They go on a hike in early February. Each laboured breath escapes in the form of an ephemeral cloud, the steam dissipating into nothingness. The tip of Lola's nose is red from the cold, and they are wrapped in so many layers of clothing that their usually loose jackets wrap snuggly around their bodies. The shedding of layers upon their eventual return home may in fact be Maya's favourite part about the entire thing. They always do it in a hurry, clothes strewn everywhere, until Lola's freezing fingers find Maya's hips and she lets herself be guided all the way into the shower, the hot stream of water washing away all their sins, rebirthing them anew.
They stop in a clearing on a hill overlooking Lyon. It‘s a crisp, cloudless day, the city stretching out ahead of them and, far in the distance, mountains soaring skywards, imposing and magnificent.
“It's gorgeous,” Lola says, and Maya hums in agreement, not looking at the view at all. Their eyes meet, and Maya‘s breath catches in her throat. Specks of light dance in Lola's eyes, and they're the brightest Maya has ever seen them.
She thinks about their very first meeting, about the many things they have learned and unlearnt and are yet to learn. She thinks about how her heart had already known everything that mattered.
The slight pressure of a hand on her shoulder brings her back to the present. When she opens her eyes she can see Lola looking at her quizzically, and Maya realises she'd been holding her breath, her body screaming out for oxygen. The subsequent intake of brisk winter air leaves a burning sensation in its wake, not unlike the unpleasant scratch in her throat from the removal of the intubation tube. It‘ll pass, they had said.
“You with me?” Lola asks, her face scrunched up in concern, and Maya wants to reach out and smooth out all those lines of worry.
“Yeah,” she says eventually, feeling simultaneously sad and elated and, above all, painfully alive. “I just realised we never ended up going to the coast.”
And when Lola laughs it's a sound so radiant and airy Maya feels like it could carry her over towns and mountains, all the way to the glistening sea.