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Amelia Scanwell has never liked the way people tend to look at her. She hates the looks of disgust, the looks of pity, the looks of men with hungry eyes. Any glance with a tone beyond general indifference has the ability to upset her, as Amelia has never been the sort of person who likes being noticed.
The first time Violet looks at her, it’s with the same sort of irritated glance that the majority of harlots send her way. “You’re scaring away the culls,” they’d say. “We need to eat too.” But Violet doesn’t say anything, she just looks at her with annoyance before shaking her head and walking away.
This interaction should not stick in Amelia’s head the way it does. She keeps playing it over and over in her head, analyzing ever little detail until she’s absolutely sure she’ll never forget any aspect of it. She’s laying on a straw mattress on the floor of the one room her and her mother can barely afford, wondering why she can’t get this woman, this harlot, out of her head. Uncomfortable sleep comes before she can formulate any sort of answer.
She learns the harlot’s name a few weeks later. “Violet,” calls a blonde woman in an unkempt blue dress, “Nancy’s expecting us at Mrs. Wells’s for some reason or another.” Violet steps out from between two buildings, a disgruntled gentleman with mussed hair following close behind her. Amelia recognizes her immediately, wants to call out to her. She repeats the name in her mind like a mantra, wishing she had the courage to do so. Violet. Violet. Violet.
The gentleman reaches for Violet, but she bats his hands away and murmurs something about kicking his balls into his throat if he doesn’t fuck off. Amelia wants him gone too, but she feels that might have more to do with the way he’s looking at Violet like he wants to eat her alive. This time, Violet doesn’t spare her an irritated glance as she walks off with the blonde woman. A part of her wishes she had.
In the weeks following, Amelia does everything she can to find Violet again, to get her to look at her. She doesn’t know why she wants Violet to look at her so badly, only that her heart flutters ever so slightly whenever she does. It’s become a common occurrence, running into Violet on the streets. Common enough that Violet must have noticed it by now.
“Are you following me or something?” Violet says one day, looking Amelia up and down (she pretends it doesn’t cause the butterflies in her stomach to turn into elephants). “I keep seeing you everywhere, talking about the fires of hell or salvation or whatever.”
Amelia feels her face grow hot and hopes Violet can’t see the way her cheeks turn red. She isn’t good that at this, isn’t good at having conversations with people who aren’t her mother. “I…” she begins, but Violet cuts her off.
“I thought you were. It’s okay, I don’t particularly mind. I guess my soul is in need of saving, whether I acknowledge it or not.” She laughs, and Amelia smiles, and for the first time she feels like she might be genuinely happy.
After this, interactions with Violet become easier, more frequent. Amelia finds that she actually enjoys the way Violet looks at her, her eyes flickering up and down before settling on her face. It makes her feel comfortable, safe, as if she needn’t worry about how everyone else looks at her because it’s only Violet’s gaze that matters. She thinks about it as she falls asleep at night, about Violet’s eyes, her lips, what it would feel like to hold her hand. She pretends her thoughts don’t go farther than that, that it’s merely a girlish, innocent desire for friendship. Amelia has never been very good at pretending.
Perhaps going to the masquerade party was a mistake, because she can’t stop looking at Violet. There are things going on in this house that her mother would never approve of, that she shouldn’t find even the slightest bit intriguing. She saw the way Mrs. Wells looked at that French girl when she walked in, shameless. If only she could find it in herself to look at Violet without shame.
She isn’t drunk, but she can’t stop talking, and talking, and talking. And Violet is watching her, watching the way her lips form words and her eyes dart this way and that as she gets to an exciting part of whatever story. She finds that she likes talking, likes Violet watching her. There’s indecent sounds coming from every other room in the house, and she should be getting home, her mother is going to be waiting up for her, wondering where she’s gone. As much as she doesn’t want her mother to worry, she also doesn’t want Violet’s eyes to leave her face.
She’s vaguely aware of Violet’s face creeping closer to hers. She doesn’t think twice about it, and maybe that was her first mistake. Maybe her first mistake was agreeing to come to this party, or maybe it was letting a single irritated glance worm its way into her brain and make a home there. Maybe none of it was a mistake at all.
Violet’s lips are hot against hers, and her first thought is not to pull away. It’s to melt into it, to pull Violet closer, to stay like this forever. To her surprise, she kisses Violet back, and she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They’re just hovering there, waiting for permission or direction, waiting, anything. They’re still hovering there when she pulls away, and she pretends she doesn’t see the hurt in Violet’s eyes when she stammers something about having to get home to her mother.
Now she’s laying in her bed at Quigley’s, replaying the whole thing over and over in her head. The feeling of Violet’s lips on her own, the way Violet looked at her as she fled. It was the first time she hadn’t enjoyed Violet looking at her, and she hoped with every fibre of her being that it would be the last.