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There are many truths to this story, but here is one of them: Libbie Brookhants did love Alexandra Trills, loved her truly and deeply and honestly.
Here is another truth: When Alex died, neck snapped on a fall down the stairs of the darkest, stormiest night in either of their memories, Libbie might have just as well given up right then. Alex died, and yes, they had been frustrated with each other and yes, there were far too many secrets between them, and yes, if Libbie could have picked a life it would not have been this one by any stretch of the imagination.
But she loved Alex, loved her more than she managed to love anything or anyone else, and their misery only stemmed from the ways they had been trapped into this life, each holding a pile of secrets and unable to share with each other. Another way of saying this is that it was the situation that made Libbie miserable.
Here is a secret: in Libbie’s own, private imaginings of her future, a world where she was not pregnant and widowed before reaching her twenty-third birthday, she adventured for a decade. She put off marriage, saw every corner of the world she could get her hands and eyes and mouth on, chased and desired and wanted plenty of different people, lived as wildly as she could. But even in her wildest imaginings, she always came home. She would inevitably realize what Alex knew at only twenty, that they were made for each other, made in some impossible, queer way.
That she could love lots of people, sure, that she could laugh at their jokes and delight in their closeness but really, there was only ever room in her heart for Alex. Libbie knew this, even in her trapped, real-life, headmistress self. She just wished for the self-discovery before settling down.
The timing was all wrong, it had been since Alex left school and Libbie found herself able to, however shallowly, move on. They’d loved each other so much, sometimes in the painful, burning, tearing sort of way. And in the time that Libbie had to think after Alex’s death (when truly, all she had was time) she thought often about how she and Alex, in another world, would have been able to figure things out in quite a different way. She would have travelled, tasted all the things her young heart desired and then, instead of being stunted and trapped, her heart would have turned her right back across the continent and taken her home.
Home, in Libbie’s thoughts at this time, always meant wherever Alex ended up.
She would have been a teacher somewhere else, at a school happier than Brookhants, gotten over Libbie the way any first heartbreak eventually heals, would have made herself a peaceful, happy life with her students and her books. And then Libbie, just after her thirtieth birthday, would have been able to tumble, head-over-heels, back into her Alex’s life and turn it upside down, let them be drawn together like magnets, and Alex, after some cajoling, would take her back.
And then they would have lived happily ever after. Of this, Libbie was sure.
But all of this happened exactly the way that it did. No adventuring for Libbie, no healing for Alex. Just their lives braided together in a way that was all too real, and that resulted in a dead Alex, which in turn resulted in an utterly shattered Libbie. They had been fighting. That had nothing to do with the deep, endless, soul-deep way that Libbie missed Alex, the way that no small resentments like the ones they had traded back and forth could hold a candle against grief.
But that is neither here nor there.
The point, this particular point, is that long before Alex was dead and Libbie was shattered, they loved each other with a remarkable ease.
Here is what you have. An empty Wellesley dorm room. A twin bed, wire frame creaking and mattress used by too many girls before the present moment, plenty capable of bearing the weight of two bodies. A softly dripping leak in the corner, water-staining the wall. And this is all you could ever need.
The air is still, waiting softly, until Alex gasps. It’s a familiar sound, but one that never fails to shiver up Libbie’s spine. It’s January, cold even inside the buildings, and Libbie skates a finger along the goosebumped skin of Alex’s shoulder, running down across her arm and jumping to her stomach, to her lovely ribcage and twitching stomach. She’s looking at Libbie with watchful eyes, not yet reduced to pleading but not necessarily opposed to it, and Libbie’s whole body warms at the sight.
She’s never going to get used to this, she’s decided, the world is full of a thousand mysteries, a thousand more thrills, but nothing will ever feel quite like Alex’s eyes pinned on her face, waiting underneath Libbie’s hand with a naked, wonderous sort of trust. Contentment floods her body and she presses herself down against Alex, the fabric of their clothes rubbing together with a promising sort of friction, and while she kisses Alex again and again and again (Libbie loves kissing Alex, loves the smell of the skin above her clavicle, loves the warmth of her cheeks and the jumping urgency between her legs) Alex’s hands find their way underneath her shirt, deliciously cold against Libbie’s stomach.
Those same hands, determined as their owner, have Libbie’s shirt unbuttoned and thrown to the floor next to her skirt in a matter of minutes and Libbie groans into Alex’s mouth, presses herself even further against Alex to slot their legs in just the right way, for Libbie to find purchase against Alex’s thigh, just underneath the jut of her hipbone. Alex, still fully dressed, laughs in the bashful, glancing way she does so often at times like this (Libbie is mapping the times that Alex is full of sleek, sure control – exams, sporting events, Christmas gift shopping – and when she turns shy and watchful – times like this – with delight, delight at knowing and understanding and the promise of soon knowing even more) and Libbie huffs, pulling herself up long enough for Alex to slip out of her sweater like a snake shedding skin.
Alex wraps a hand around Libbie’s wrist, pulling their mouths together with a clashing, messy urgency, and Libbie nearly forgets to breathe as her bare skin meets Alex’s, as Alex slips a hand between Libbie’s legs and keeps another one at her waist, allowing Libbie to move against her with a frantic, heedless vigor and kissing her all the while.
This is love, do you see? No matter how much bad manages to slip through the cracks, no matter how many chances are lost between them, neither Alex nor Libbie ever feel the snickering bite of regret. They were so young, and trapped into horrible choices, loving each other too much and in the wrong ways, and still, still their short lives held so much more good than bad.
For every fight about Alex’s jealousy, for every admission that Libbie had to make that Alex’s concerns were not unfounded, there were a hundred lazy mornings, a hundred times Alex woke up with Libbie wrapped around her like a koala. They shared hurried breakfasts on the way to school, and warm, homey dinners, they problem solved and rolled their eyes at each other from across the room and built a school and took care of as many girls as they could, and fought only because they cared so much, and took care of each other, really did, as often as they could.
To err is human.
To love is human too.
Alex and Libbie, no matter how their story ended or the worst things that they ever did, loved each other so much that it changed the course of a curse.
The good outweighed the bad. A million times over.
There is love. Beyond all this, there is love.