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Pleasant light from the moon seeps dutifully into Akarsha’s otherwise-dark room, cascading onto the sheets and down onto the carpet. There is no sound besides the breathing of the woman beside her and her perpetually-running fan – usually, it serves as white noise, but in the summer it acquires a different purpose in Akarsha’s poorly air-conditioned room. It is nearing eleven, and Akarsha knows that the time she has with Noelle is limited, or else she risks the wrath of her girlfriend’s mother in the morning. She resolves to enjoy the moment as much as she can, spooning Noelle as she somehow manages to read a book in the dim light. Her shirt rides up, and the bare skin of her midriff scratches against the itchy fabric of Noelle’s button-up as she pulls her closer. She smiles against Noelle’s neck as she buries her face in the warm crook on her shoulders. Noelle hums and flips a page, trying to appear collected.
“You have work in the morning, you know,” Noelle reminds her gently as she pushes her own body closer to Akarsha’s middle. Akarsha takes the opportunity to tangle her legs in Noelle’s. She would instead do anything than return to her shitty, minimum-wage summer job in the morning, including cuddling her girlfriend all day.
“I don’t wanna go,” Akarsha mumbles into Noelle’s skin. She snakes her right hand across Noelle’s stomach quietly. The physical intimacy grounds her, it keeps her head on Earth. Otherwise, she’ll get lost in the routine of customer service and stocking shelves at the local grocery store where she works.
“Go to sleep, doofus,” Noelle says, still not turning over to face Akarsha.
Akarsha sticks her tongue out, forgetting momentarily that her mouth is pressed up to Noelle’s neck. Noelle recoils at the feeling of saliva on her skin, and she quickly squirms away from Akarsha’s arms.
“Sorry! Sorry,” Akarsha laughs as Noelle stands up indignantly. Her girlfriend folds her arms at her, and Akarsha smirks. “At least your neck tasted good?”
Noelle slaps her in the arm as hard as she can, despite Akarsha’s pleas and apologies (frequently interwoven with the words “homie” and “dude”). She settles down quickly enough, though, and begrudgingly she retreats under the covers again, this time facing Akarsha. As an extra apology, Akarsha wraps her arms around her and rests her chin on the top of her head. Noelle prefers being held to holding, mostly because she’s still finding her way around physical love, and Akarsha is happy to provide. It warms her when Noelle reciprocates a little awkwardly, her fingertips finding purpose, dancing up and down Akarsha’s back rhythmically.
After a dozen minutes of silence, it is broken. “Akarsha?” Noelle begins quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Go to sleep. I’ll be here in the morning.”
Akarsha smiles, even though she knows what that actually means: Noelle will wait for her to fall asleep first, and she will carefully untangle herself from Akarsha’s arms before heading home, falling asleep in her own cold bed. Then, she will wake up at some ungodly hour her mother subjects her to, she will drag along her morning study hour, and then she will sneak out after her mother leaves to run errands, and Akarsha’s parents will let her in like they always do. She’ll pretend she never left, and Akarsha will allow herself to believe it because there is no way she’ll ever have access to the real thing.
“Akarsha?” Noelle says again, even quieter than before.
“Yeah?”
“Do… do you know how love works?”
“Aren’t you the scientist?”
“I know how it works chemically.”
“Then there’s your answer.”
“But there’s still so much that we don’t understand about love, from a scientific perspective. We don’t know how the brain decides who to love. We don’t know how we differentiate between romantic, familial, and platonic love.”
“Is there a reason for this conversation?”
Noelle doesn’t respond immediately. She seems to have stopped breathing where Akarsha holds her, too.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever loved before.”
“What about Diya? She’s your best friend.”
“Not in the way that I mean. I don’t love her in a romantic context.”
“Don’t lie. I see you ogling at her muscles. You’re just like Min.”
Noelle blushes furiously at that.
“I do not ogle . You’re so immature.”
“So you’re not denying that you look at them?”
“They are simply a fascinating display of female muscular capability.”
“Whatever you want to believe, sweetheart.”
There’s a prolonged silence then, and Akarsha embraces the opportunity to slide her hands down Noelle’s back and to her hips, pulling her closer.
“Akarsha?”
“Yeah?”
“You are the most frustrating human I have ever met.”
Akarsha snorts. “Why’s that?”
“Because I think I love you and I don’t know what that means.” Akarsha’s heart quickens considerably, and she hopes Noelle doesn’t notice. There’s a brief pause before Noelle continues, her voice shaking. “And there’s no research that I can rely on to teach me. And I’m so lost and confused, and I’ve never felt like that before. And you’re so annoying, and I don’t know why my brain decided to pick you. And…”
Noelle trails off. Akarsha is too busy processing the information to fill in the gaps for her. Noelle loves her.
She knows that, come morning, they’ll never speak of this again. Just as Akarsha doesn’t say that she knows Noelle never sticks around when she’s sleeping. She only has this brittle moment to understand what it means that Noelle loves her.
“And I hate you.” Noelle shakes slightly, never the type to express emotion so vividly with her words. Akarsha holds her a little tighter, noticing that her voice borders on watery.
“That’s an oxymoron,” Akarsha says.
“Shut up,” Noelle shoots back instantly, curling into Akarsha’s body. “I don’t know what to do.” The words seem unfamiliar to Noelle’s tongue, like she has, quite literally, never said them before. Akarsha knows that her girlfriend would never be so vulnerable with anyone else, not even Diya. It’s a testament to how they’ve grown into each other throughout their two or so years of knowing the other. For a moment, it’s as if they’re the only two in the world. They are floating on a raft in the middle of an angry gray ocean.
Akarsha collects her words, her brain entering “serious girlfriend” mode, as she likes to call it. “You don’t have to do anything,” she says, a bit quietly. “You don’t have to change anything.” She bites her lip, loosening her grip on Noelle’s body. “And… I love you too, you know.”
Unlike Noelle, it’s not the first time she’s ever said it. It had slipped out once in the spring of the same year, a few months after they started dating. It had been incomprehensible to Akarsha that Noelle liked her back, considering that she had been perhaps her least attainable crush ever, so, during a session of baseball practice, the words just came out of her mouth before she had the chance to stop them. They weren’t to Noelle, only to Min, who she was in the dugout with. She remembers it vividly.
Akarsha had watched as Noelle hit the ball with absolutely no improvement from her freshman year, and shook her head with a smile as Noelle wobbled to first base slowly.
Min had remarked, “She runs like a dog with three legs. I have no idea what you see in her.”
Noelle was forced out immediately. Akarsha shrugged and replied, smirking, “You know, Diya loves dogs with three legs. Apparently, so do I.” Her smirk fell when she realized what she said, and she flustered quietly about her declaration. Min looked at her strangely, and the dugout fell silent when Noelle returned to it.
She has been waiting to say the words to Noelle for a while. It was never that she doubted her love for Noelle, but it was so final to say it aloud. Now, though, it’s natural, almost like a statement of the obvious, and she curses herself for making Noelle say it first when it’s much harder for her.
“God, I love you.” The words are tumbling out of her teeth now. “I love so many things about you. I love how you’ll drop everything you’re doing to come help me out with some stupid chemistry homework and how you get so worked up over tiny things I say to annoy you. I love how you still freeze up a little when I kiss you even though we’ve been dating for months. I love… so much. About you and about how you are.” She has to cut herself off before she says too much. Noelle is tense where she’s still wrapped up in her arms. Akarsha almost expects her to say, “You’re such an idiot, Akarsha. I was just kidding.” But she doesn’t. And there’s a small bit of moisture collected where Noelle’s closed eyes meet her shirt.
The silence continues for many beats more. Her perpetually-running fan, the one that keeps her cool during the summer and far too cool during the winter, is the only thing that fills in the quiet. It is nearing midnight, and there have been far too many emotional moments within the last hour. Akarsha is exhausted. She feels as if she has all the time in the world to spend with Noelle. Even so, she resolves to enjoy every second she is allowed, holding the girl who loves her and whom she loves gently in her arms as they doze off.
“Akarsha?” Noelle is the one to break the silence first, as Akarsha’s eyelids grow heavier and sleep comes to prod at her mind.
“Yeah?” Akarsha replies sleepily.
“Go to sleep. I’ll be here in the morning.” Noelle’s fingertips resume their previous pattern of treading up and down Akarsha’s back. The motion only serves to make Akarsha drowsier. “And… I love you.”
Akarsha is asleep before she can reply.
When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she will find Noelle still curled up into her side, sleeping soundly in her arms. She will grin broadly and pull the sleeping girl impossibly close and kiss her forehead like she is a treasure. But for now, she leaves the conscious world content, knowing that she’ll never be alone again.