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There had never been a question as to whether Darcy Olsson liked girls. It was one of the things that made Tara want to be friends with her, not that she knew that then, or had even thought liking girls could be a thing a girl could really do. She had heard the word lesbian, she knew the concept, but being a lesbian wasn’t about liking girls, not really, she had learnt that. Liking girls didn’t come weighted with a moral judgment; being a lesbian did. So Darcy didn’t really seem like a lesbian, she just seemed like a person. A person that Tara, at eleven years old, sitting right at the back of band rehearsal, shaking with nerves and feeling completely out of her depth in a new school, found herself drawn to, pulled as if by a force that knew better than she did where she was going.
--
She doesn’t bring it up with Darcy until they’re thirteen. Darcy isn’t like her other friends, everyone else is so focused on making sure everyone else thinks they’re cool, that they’ll be included, that no one has any reason to bitch about them behind their back. It’s not that Tara doesn’t get it, in fact she really, really gets it. It feels paralysing sometimes, the need to be liked, to be seen as anything but weird. She envies Darcy, who never seems to care about any of that, who brushes insults off like they’re nothing but specks of dust on her blazer. But that’s never worked for Tara. So she ends up hanging out at school discos with people like Harry Greene anyway.
He won’t leave her alone. She’s learnt to stay quiet when boys talk to her like this, learnt that if you don’t give them anything to latch onto, they’ll get bored eventually. But Harry isn’t letting up.
“Come on.” His voice is halfway between friendly and taunting. “There’s gotta be at least one boy here you fancy.”
“I dunno.” She holds her can of Sprite close to her chest, holds her knees tight together on the chairs that have been set up off to side of the dance floor which Harry’s sidled up next to her on.
“You know like half the guys here would go for you though.”
“Okay.” One word answers should work. She doesn’t know what it is. She doesn’t hate the idea of boys being interested; if Harry’s telling the truth, it’s actually sort of flattering. But she hates the way he’s asking about it, like he’s trying to get something out of her. Something he can use.
“I heard Nick Nelson has a crush on you actually.” Oh. Nick Nelson. Floppy hair, soft smile Nick Nelson. She definitely doesn’t hate the idea of him being interested. On the contrary, she feels her cheeks go warm. Something akin to a flutter in her chest.
“Oh, um, really?” She doesn’t want to give Harry too much, but she wants this. Something hasn’t been making sense and she can’t it figure out. Somehow, Nick liking her and Tara liking him back feels like it would make whatever it is right. It would solve something within her.
“Oh yeah. He’s always going on about how fit he thinks you are. Can’t blame him.” He nudges her and she shrinks as far back into her chair as she possibly can. “Wait, wait, I’ll get him over here.” He laughs to himself, as if there’s anything funny about the whole thing and it makes Tara’s knuckles go white from clenching her hands together so hard around the Sprite can. She hates feeling like boys’ entertainment. Hates feeling powerless.
When she sees Nick though she can breathe a little better, that’s one of the things she likes about him, he can calm down just about any room, diffuse any tension. At the very least he’ll take the pressure off having to keep up this faux-friendly conversation with Harry.
“I’ll leave you two alone then.” Harry tells them, raising his eyebrows, a smirk on his face that makes Tara’s skin feel itchy and too visible. She knows that even if he does leave them, he’ll still be watching, everyone is always watching. The music is too loud.
Nick sits down next to her, leaving a few centimetres between them. “Um.” He pushes his hair back from his eyes. A habit. “Sorry I-, I know Harry can be a bit much.”
“Oh. Yeah. It’s fine.” She’s finished her drink now and doesn’t know what to do with her hands, holds them under her legs. Has no idea how this is supposed to work.
“We don’t have to… do anything if you don’t want to.”
She turns her head to look at him too quickly. “Do you not want to?” Bites her lip in frustration with herself. That was another thing she had learnt not to do. Show too much interest and they’ll call you desperate.
Nick looks back at her, really meets her eyes and they’re the kind of eyes you melt into and so that must be the reason she’s getting warm. “No, no I do. God, this is weird. I mean, I like you.”
Really, this makes her feel all the right things. The squirming in her stomach, shaky hands, flushed cheeks. These are the things she’s supposed to be feeling. So why can’t she just let herself feel them? Why is she always over-analysing herself? Why can’t she just like a boy and have that be the end of it? She laughs a little, out of a cross between exasperation for herself and something more like genuine happiness, maybe relief. “Really? I wasn’t sure if Harry was just making it up for attention or…”
“No!” Nick’s voice gets too loud, and his cheeks too red. “I mean, no, yeah. Sorry, if you don’t like me back that’s fine.”
“No, no, I-.” She does like Nick, she can say this, she doesn’t understand why her throat is closing up. Of course she likes Nick, and he likes her back and that’s a really good thing. Being desired is it right? The thing she should want more than anything. And being desired by a boy like Nick Nelson… pretty much any girl in this room would want that, she thinks. Except for girls like Darcy. She swallows hard. Nick is still looking at her with those bright puppy-dog eyes and she’s falling, she must be falling, so why can’t she feel the rush? “I like you too Nick.” She says, as solidly as she can, but her voice shakes in spite of itself.
She says the words, and thinks she means them, but it isn’t until later that they kiss. It’s clear everyone thinks they should, they’re all waiting for it. She’s waiting for it too, and Nick’s waiting for it. The waiting is heavy, stifling, anticipation hovering between pleasant and terrifying. But probably that’s how everyone feels before their first kiss.
They dance together and she holds Nick’s hand, and it feels safe, tight but not too tight, warm but not too warm and so almost right. Nick spins her around and they laugh together and she can imagine this working. She can imagine dating him, holding hands walking to school before splitting off in separate directions and kissing his cheek with a goodbye. She can imagine sending him texts with love hearts at the end and the way he would hold her when they kissed. She can imagine it, in theory, but realistically, the thought of actually being with him, past the hand holding and kissing and everything you were supposed to do in a relationship, emotionally committing to him, falling in love… it makes something sink in her stomach. She’s probably just over-thinking things again, they’re at a Year Eight disco for god’s sake, why on earth is she even thinking about love in the first place?
So when the music changes, she takes his hand and pulls him off to the side of the dance floor, lets herself breathe. Nick’s cheeks are flushed, and she doesn’t know if it’s from the dancing and all the people around them or something else.
“You okay?” He asks her, softly, like maybe he’s seen something in the way she’s looking at him. It makes her swallow hard, makes her throat feel dry.
“Can I kiss you?” She asks, maybe to prove something to herself, maybe because it feels like the kind of thing people do in moments like these, maybe because the light is catching in just the right way.
“Oh.” Nick sounds genuinely surprised and she takes a step back, regret quickly building up in her stomach, her chest, and she feels so stupid because why would she even ask him that when she doesn’t even know if she-. “Um, yes.” Nick rubs the back of his neck again, awkwardly, cheeks even redder. “Yes!”
That makes her laugh, and she supposes this will be a moment she’ll want to remember, the lights, the music which seems to have faded a little into the background of her closeup, all the cameras trained on her and Nick. The shot is set up just right, the framing perfect, now all she has to do is be her own director.
Tara has to stand up on her tiptoes and Nick has to lean down a little and they don’t get it right, their noses bump. She thinks she might breathe out a ‘sorry’, but his mouth is on hers before she has the chance to say or think anything much at all. His mouth is on hers and that’s it. She’s kissing someone, she’s having her first kiss with a cute boy who’s sweet and kind and loveable and there’s no reason that she shouldn’t be absolutely swooning right? This is her movie moment, so why isn’t the music swelling? Where are her freaking sparks? What’s so wrong with her that she doesn’t even get her own butterflies, doesn’t she deserve that?
It's over quickly and neither of them has any idea what to say. She’s torn between wanting desperately to look away and feeling too guilty for wanting that. “Was…that okay?” Nick asks her, nervous, like he’s scared he did something wrong as well.
It’s not like she can do anything but lie. And it’s not his fault, there’s something not working inside of her, like her mechanics have failed, her wheels have gotten stuck. “Yes! Sorry, I’d never done that before so I didn’t really know- “.
Nick laughs a little. “Me neither, don’t worry.” She’s grateful that it was him, even if it wasn’t right. “Now I feel like there was all this build up, sorry if that was bit anticlimactic for a first kiss.”
That makes Tara let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. So it’s not just her. Nick feels like this too, probably everyone feels like this after their first kiss. There’s so much pressure for it to be this big romantic thing, maybe it’s not supposed to feel like anything that special, maybe she shouldn’t have been expecting a big movie moment. “No! Oh my god, this is so stupid, we shouldn’t be apologising to each other. It was nice!” But her voice sounds a little strained, which makes her feel guilty and a just little bit scared.
Nick puts his arms around her, hugs her and she wants it to mean something different to what it does. It feels safe, protective, but also somehow all encompassing, like she’s being swallowed by something bigger than herself. It’s not at all unpleasant, just… platonic. Eyes stinging, throat closing, stomach droppingly platonic.
“Do you want to get something to drink?” Nick asks, pulling away from her and she nods with a forced smile and wishes, suddenly and with a pang in chest, that Darcy were here.
--
“Darcy?” They’re lying on the grass out the back of Tara’s house, a week after the disco, a week of just about the entire school asking her about Nick, telling her how cute they think they are together, telling her how jealous they are. It makes something twist in her stomach every time. If they’re jealous, she feels almost bad; so many people want what she’s just had, and she can’t even get herself to be excited about it.
“Mm?” Darcy turns her head to face her, squints her eyes against the sun.
“Do you ever-.” Tara doesn’t know how to ask the thing she wants to ask. Is it rude to ask someone if they like girls? What if Darcy is disgusted that she would even suggest it? Calling someone a lesbian still feels like an insult, she can’t bring herself to say that to someone she likes so much. “Never mind.”
“What?” Darcy turns herself around so she’s lying on her stomach, props herself up on her elbows and Tara can’t help but think she looks a little angelic looking down at her, the sun spinning a glowing halo around her hair.
“It’s nothing, seriously.”
“I hate secrets, you have to tell me now!” She looks up at Darcy, the way she’s smiling, not completely hiding the concern in her eyes, and knows somehow, that she won’t be offended, she won’t find her weird. Darcy will get it. Just the thought of that makes some of the tightness in her chest come undone. “Um, do you ever feel… like do you ever think about kissing girls?”
Darcy’s smile softens, but lingers, like dappled sunlight. Tara feels a pang in her chest, holds her breath waiting for the answer. “Yeah, I do. Is that okay?”
It’s like the sunlight has seeped into Tara’s bones, it’s not that she didn’t expect that response, but it stills feels like a relief, even if she isn’t quite sure why. “Yeah, I think so, I mean, oh my god sorry. I know it’s okay, I just…”
Darcy drops her arms, rolls over so she’s lying on her side, facing Tara. Doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I know what you mean. Does the idea of kissing girls scare you?”
“A little bit.” Tara admits, quietly, pushes the heels of her hands into her eyes.
“Hey, hey, look at me.” Darcy touches her arm, gently, asking her to follow. Of course, she does, rolling onto her side to mirror Darcy, meeting her eyes like they’re magnets, drawing her in. “It’s okay if you’re scared by it. It scared me too, when I was younger.”
“How’d you stop being scared?” Tara asks, hears her own voice in her ears like a confession.
Darcy pulls up some of the grass in front of her, separates it into strips. “I don’t know really. I guess I just realised it can feel really amazing as well.”
“Really?” Tara takes a shaky breath. It’s weird, but this moment feels almost like the one she thought she was supposed to have with Nick. The swelling music, the butterflies. She thinks she might even be able to feel sparks in the space between their hands where they’re resting on the grass.
“Yeah.” Darcy says. “I was scared, and then I was just… lighter.”
“That sounds nice.” Tara says, shutting her eyes to stop the tears she can feel about to spill.
Neither of them says anything for a minute, Tara keeps her eyes closed, but just hearing Darcy breathing in tandem with her makes her own breathing easier, makes her feel soft. She wonders if this is what Darcy meant by lightness.
“I don’t think I want Nick to be my boyfriend.” She says quietly, as if someone from school might hear. As if whatever authority it is that decides who is and isn’t a lesbian might.
“That’s okay Tara, really. Don’t listen to everyone at school. They’re idiots.”
She can’t stop it now, she lets the tears rolls down across her temples, into her hair. “I don’t think I even liked kissing him.” She’s not completely sure she even said it out loud. Her chest tightens again, her cheeks burn. Not wanting to kiss one boy shouldn’t make her feel so devastatingly ashamed. “I really wanted to like it.” Her voice shatters into a million little pieces which fall into the grass when she says it, because she knows it’s not just one boy.
“Oh, Tara.” Darcy shifts, wraps her arms around Tara, enclosing her in the exact type of hug she needs, a little over the top and a little awkward, and so entirely Darcy. It’s so different from hugging Nick. They roll over so Tara’s lying on her back again, Darcy’s head tucked into her shoulder on top of her. They stay like that for a minute, just breathing. Chests rising and falling in tune with each other, against each other.
Darcy lifts her head, takes Tara’s cheeks in her hands, looks in her eyes and oh, so this is what it’s supposed to feel like; the cameras focusing for their close-up shot, the hammering in her chest, all the gears turning in just the right way. She holds her breath.
But Darcy doesn’t lean down. Just keeps holding Tara’s eyes with hers. “It doesn’t make you a bad person. Or gross. Or weird, or anything. I promise you.” She squeezes Tara’s cheeks a little tighter. “And I’ll be right here until it doesn’t feel scary anymore, okay?”
Tara blinks the leftover tears out of her eyes, swallows hard. She’s never felt like this before, like the constant pressure of her life never existed at all, like it’s possible not to feel completely out of place with a person. Or no, it’s more than that. She doesn’t think any place could feel more perfect. “Okay.” She says softly, wanting no one but Darcy to hear, not even the ants crawling in the grass. “Thank you. I-, thank you.”
They stay like that for another minute before Darcy jumps up suddenly, holding a hand out to pull Tara up with her. “Come on, you have to help me make some fake blood, I’m gonna be a vampire for Halloween!”
Tara puts her hand in Darcy’s, lets herself be pulled up.
--
It isn’t until she’s fifteen that Tara stops being scared. Her and Darcy get trapped in the practice room and she could never have prepared for a kiss like this. It’s nothing at all like Nick. It’s nothing at all like any of the romcom tropes she had once hoped for. In fact, she has no idea why she would ever hope for them when she could have this instead. It’s like a daydream. It’s like dancing. It’s like lying in the grass and sunlight. Still, when they pull apart, she becomes hyper-aware of the faint voices of other students down the hall, the discordant sounds of instruments getting tuned. She thinks about what this means, kissing a girl. The word lesbian rings in her ears without ever having been spoken.
So maybe she’s still a little scared. But she takes Darcy’s hand, squeezes, and when Darcy smiles at her, she’s never felt lighter.