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Gansey and Blue shared everything during their cross country road trip.
It started the same way it did back in Henrietta: the same spoon scooping yogurt into Blue’s mouth that brought berries to Gansey’s. It started, too, with material things: Blue behind the wheel of the Camaro; Blue wearing Gansey’s favorite plush yellow sweater; Gansey wearing Blue’s favorite shirt of ruffled layers.
Henry was part of the sharing as well, of course. But Henry didn’t care for germs. But Henry didn’t drive. But Henry was, if not vainer, then at least stricter about his appearance than Blue and Gansey were about theirs. Henry ate his own food. Henry lounged luxuriously in the backseat of the Camaro. Gansey dug through his suitcase to pilfer that sinfully soft Madonna number, and Henry let him, but he did not wear anything of Gansey’s in return—sharing, yes, but of the one sided kind. With Henry, there was an added degree of separation.
Gansey and Blue shared everything but separation.
It started in Henrietta, and it started with material things, but it was more than Henrietta and more than material. They shared touch. They shared not-life-ending kisses and they shared breath, traded between lips and lungs. They shared a bed, a hand hold over a dreamt gear stick, and secrets. They shared laughter, experiences, awe, and love. They shared skin. They shared names.
(“Jane,” Gansey whispered. Each day of the road trip was different, but each night was the same. Thin sheets and thinner stars, stale light through the window casting shadows, casting beauty over Blue Sargent. She was so close, and yet Gansey missed her. “Jane.”
“Doe,” Blue whispered back. It was the same word, somehow. She touched Gansey’s face until he smiled, and then she pressed into the dimple at his cheek. “Doe.”)
For an entire year, Gansey and Blue let their lines blur. They melted into each other, or maybe Gansey just melted into Blue, and that was fine. On the road, for that year, nothing mattered. Nothing but Tennessee’s hike to Raven’s Point, Arizona’s terrifyingly grand Grand Canyon, Oregon’s sacred trees and a lake like the moon’s craters. Nothing but the slick orange-red heat of the sun shining through the windshield of the slick orange-red Camaro. Nothing mattered but the three of them.
The outside world could not erode them. Parents and friends and colleagues could not witness and speak on shared clothes, shared selves. Gansey hardly witnessed it himself, unaware in the wake of tan skin, tan lines, adventures—last year was the year of Glendower, but this was the year of life. He was too present to dwell.
That had to end eventually, though.
Driving slower than the speed limit, not stalling the engineless car but stalling for time, they crawled over the Virginia border. They headed towards Henrietta. Home was the first thing that Gansey felt.
And then— fear.
Because it would matter here. Here, in the place that mattered most with the people that mattered most, there would be eyes to observe and mouths to ask what it all meant. The questions were inevitable, but Gansey did not have the answers.
Gansey drove the dreamt Camaro up to the very edge of the Barns’ property. Stone columns were swallowed whole by ivy and a nightmare security system glistened, unseen, between them.
“Ready?” Gansey asked.
He looked at Blue in the passenger seat. She touched the scar along her eyebrow, and she nodded. He looked at Henry in the backseat. He clenched his hands into fists, and he nodded, too. Gansey took a deep breath, and he eased up on the brake, and he drove through the web of horrors: his first death, his second death, Glendower’s rotted skeleton, every time he ever proved himself a prim and polished Gansey.
It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, that haze of awful memories, but for Gansey, boy and timeless forest both, every second was an infinity. When he finally broke through those few infinities, he exhaled hard. His lungs contracted; his eyes burned. The driveway crunched under the Pig’s tires.
“Okay?” Blue asked. Her voice wobbled a little.
Gansey nodded. Henry nodded, too.
A year had passed since Gansey had been here, and several years had passed since he’d been a frequent visitor, but still, he hadn’t forgotten this place. Plush grass rolled out like a carpet. Livestock chuckled and chirped in the distance. The smell— The smell. Gansey used to live with this smell. Hickory smoke and boxwood, grass seed and lemon cleaner. He wasn’t sure he’d missed it, but he was sure he loved it.
The front door opened, a squeal of hinges polluting the hushed afternoon. Ronan stepped out onto the porch, and Adam followed. They both looked different. Ronan’s hair was a little longer and a new tattoo slithered up his bicep. Adam’s hair was cut cleaner than it ever was before and a new height squared his shoulders back, lifted his head high. They looked older, marred by all they had experienced while the others were away.
While Gansey saw the beauties of America, Ronan saw carnage and war and fire. While Ronan saw carnage and war and fire, Adam saw Ronan almost die.
Christ, these two. Gansey knew he had missed them.
Gansey watched Ronan and Adam look at him, and it was only then that he paid witness to himself. He realized, then, the year of melting into Blue and the toll it had taken. His edges were sanded off. His hair was longer, too. His glasses sat delicate and near-permanent on the bridge of his nose. Blue’s skirt hung off his hips. Gansey watched Ronan and Adam look at him, and then he watched their eyes flicker down to an explosion of pale purple lace. He realized, then, that it was an unusual thing for him to wear.
Christ, Gansey thought again. How foolish of him, to be so oblivious to his own choices. How silly of him, to not consider the consequences of his strangeness. There must have been better ways to feel closer to Blue without dressing like her, though he couldn’t think of any now.
He braced himself for scorn.
“‘Sup, maggot,” Ronan said. He offered Blue his fist, but Blue stole a hug instead. Ronan let her, and he let his chin dig into her skull, and even now, he was still looking at Gansey. “Nice get up,” he said, pushing Blue away, more gentle than he needed to be.
Gansey didn’t say anything. He touched two fingers to gauzy fabric.
Adam didn’t say anything either, but he was the first to give Gansey a hug of his own, and when he said how are you, his voice contained no trace of Henrietta’s melodic vowels. Gansey hated it, but he didn’t mention it. He just said, “Alright. You?”
Adam laughed at him. “Yeah, Gans. Me too.”
The scorn did not come.
Instead, Chainsaw shrieked in circles overhead. Gansey laughed at her, and he earned himself an armful of bird as punishment. Gansey stroked over her beak, and she nipped at the collar of his shirt.
“Krek,” said Chainsaw, and then she bit Gansey’s finger.
He winced, cursed a word Helen taught him, and then said, “Ronan.”
Ronan huffed, and he took Chainsaw from Gansey, and he scolded her for mistrusting dream creatures when she herself was one. He took Gansey’s hand, too, and inspected the shallow wound. “You’re fine,” he said, pushing Gansey’s hand back, again gently.
Gansey said, “I’m bleeding.”
He was tempted to bring his finger to his mouth, but he didn’t want to ingest whatever nastiness Chainsaw might have transferred in her attack.
Ronan said, “Don’t be a wuss.”
He punched Gansey’s arm, and Gansey winced again. If he was not himself, he might have returned the favor or given Ronan a stern kick to the shin. He was himself, though, so he did not have the gear of casual violence. He kept his limbs to himself.
“Where’s my mint plant?” Gansey asked.
“Inside,” Ronan said.
Gansey went inside without being explicitly invited. He ignored, as best he could, the swish of billowing fabric as he walked. If he thought about it, his insides would cringe and his face would burn as red as the blood dripping from his fingertip. Gansey found his mint plant thriving under its own sun and, just as he had every anxious day in high school, he put a leaf to his tongue.
Blue came up behind him, hand on his lower back. “Got enough to share?” she asked.
Gansey put a mint leaf on her tongue. She leaned into him, impossibly closer, and beyond them, Henry and Ronan and Adam fell into raucous bickering.
After the Barns, they dropped Henry at Litchfield and took to Fox Way. There was only one car in the driveway, a teal-blue car older than Blue herself, but that said nothing of the number of women inside. The house was, as per usual, a riot of crowded corners and cautious sageing and conflicting foods baking in the oven.
It took three minutes for someone to notice their arrival.
Unfortunately, that person was Orla. Gansey did not like to dislike people, but he could not forget the tension that Orla had once inflicted between him and Blue. He could not forget, either, the look on Blue’s face after an argument with her cousin—Orla knew where to strike to hurt the most. Gansey did not like to dislike people, but at the very least, he did not favor Orla.
She had foam dividers between toes painted a brilliant red, and she walked funny to accommodate them. She stopped walking when she saw Blue.
“Cousin,” she said.
Blue rolled her eyes. “Hi, Orla. Where’s Mom?”
Orla crossed her arms under the rack of her chest, and she tipped her head back, all righteous and offended. “I haven’t seen you in a year, and that’s all you have to say. I s’pose you think you’re better than us now you’ve seen the world?”
“I’ve always known I was better than you,” Blue lied.
They were one step away from breaking into one of those notorious arguments. Gansey would rather they didn’t fight. He said, “I like your polish, Orla.”
Orla scoffed at him, hands thrown up like his compliment somehow proved every point she had ever tried to make. She did not tell them where Maura was, but she stomped away before anyone could start yelling.
Blue twisted her gaze to Gansey. “Why did you do that?”
Gansey shrugged. “I liked her polish.”
He took Blue’s elbow, and he let her lead him deeper into the house. Fox Way was something of an anomaly. Where you thought there should be a bathroom, there was a kitchen. Where you thought there should be a dining room, there was a reading room.
That, of course, was where they found Maura Sargent. She looked up from a spread of tarot cards. Gansey could not see them all in the curtain-dimmed, candle lit room, but he saw the Page of Cups—Blue’s card.
“There you are,” Maura said.
She stood to embrace her daughter. Gansey was taller than his own mother, but Blue was half a foot smaller than Maura. Gansey thought it should always be that way: parents big enough to protect their children, parents big enough to be idols trusted without question.
While they hugged, Calla said, “Hello, Richie Rich.”
He greeted her politely, asked how work was going, and she scowled at him, muttered something about raven boys being raven boys. Gansey considered apologizing on behalf of Aglionby students everywhere, but thought better of it.
When the hug broke, Blue sat cross legged on the floor of the reading room. She tried to pull Gansey down with her, but he was frozen under the inquisitive gaze of Maura Sargent. She was even less subtle in her looking than Adam and Ronan had been. Perhaps Gansey should have changed in the backseat of the Pig before coming inside. It wouldn’t be the first time, it was a long and winding road trip after all. The truth, though: Gansey didn’t want to change, he liked the softness of the skirt and the feeling of being the same as Blue—equals like they always had been, reflections of each other.
“Hm,” was all Maura offered as a verdict.
She looked away from him, and she must have traded a communicative gaze with Calla because Calla said, in response, “Makes sense.”
Gansey did not know what made sense. He wanted to ask, but before he could, Blue started talking about their trip, and Blue started asking if Mr Gray was back yet, and Blue pulled hard enough that Gansey acquiesced in joining her on the floor. He smoothed the length of the skirt over his lap and his knees. He kept petting it for longer than he needed to.
Blue did not officially move into Monmouth Manufacturing, but she did sleep there their first night back in Henrietta and every night that followed. Her suitcase was upended on the floor beside Gansey’s, spare socks littering the streets of little Henrietta. Her favorite brand of yogurt was well stocked in the fridge. Her hair tickled Gansey’s nose while they slept. She didn’t officially move in, but she did in every unofficial way.
“You know,” Blue said, her head on Gansey’s stomach and soft folk music playing from the radio they’d found and stolen from Ronan’s abandoned bedroom, “I used to hate that I didn’t live here.”
“What?” Gansey asked. The words came as such a shock that he almost tried to sit up. The only reason he didn’t was the comfort of Blue’s weight. ”What do you mean?”
Blue shifted a little. She pressed her cheek, her nose to the cotton of Gansey’s t-shirt. It wrinkled under her movement and threatened to expose skin. Her voice was a little muffled when she said, “I couldn’t live here because I was a girl, and as long as I couldn’t live here, I wasn’t really one of you. I was always a little apart from the group. It used to bother me.”
“Adam never lived here,” Gansey said.
“No,” Blue said, “but he could’ve. Don’t worry, it doesn’t bother me anymore, Gansey.”
“It bothers me that you were bothered, though,” Gansey said. He put his palm over her forehead, just touching her, holding her to him. “I never thought of you as different from the rest of us because you were a girl.”
Blue hummed. “No. You wouldn’t think that.”
Gansey rubbed his thumb over her brow, the one untainted by a demon’s scar. Soft hair flickered over the pad of his finger. For a moment, the silence held. The radio sang the question, “Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?” The lamp in the corner mumbled electricity’s barren harmony. Blue put a kiss to Gansey’s t-shirt.
“You know,” Gansey said, “I used to hate that I didn’t belong at Fox Way.”
Hate was too strong a word, if anything it was a discomfort, but hate was Blue’s word, so he borrowed it for now.
“What?” Blue asked. She took his word, too.
Gansey remembered his first time at Fox Way, that first disastrous reading. The air in the house was charged with possibility, the women in the house were tethered by the unbreakable bonds of unconditional, familial love. Blue was those things too. Blue was possibility and the strongest form of loyalty, and seeing her there, at home at Fox Way, drew Gansey to her even more than seeing her at Nino’s had.
He remembered, too, every subsequent visit to 300 Fox Way. Somewhere inside him, all times were the present time, and so it was impossible not to remember: bustling awkwardness, unintentional offense, a boy among witches, a discomfort. He loved Fox Way, but it was not his, and it never could be. He didn’t like that.
“Fox Way is… magic, psychics, women, you,” Gansey said. “I wanted to be as close to you as I could be. I wanted to be a part of that world, but I couldn’t. That used to bother me.”
Blue turned her face up at him, lips a tempting pout. “Are you lying to make me feel better?”
“No,” Gansey said. She must have known that, but she asked anyway. Perhaps she asked to make him smile, which Gansey did. “Never.”
Blue hummed again. “But it doesn’t bother you anymore?”
They’d been so far removed from Henrietta, from Monmouth and Fox Way, for so long that Gansey could not still be saddened. He might one day be again, but for now, he answered, honest, “No. I got what I wanted. I am as close to you as I can be.”
“I always liked that you didn’t belong at Fox Way,” Blue admitted. “I liked seeing you out of your depth and trying so hard. It was—” she struggled for an adequate word “—sweet.”
That warmed Gansey. He always warmed when Blue put to words how she felt about him. Probably that was conceited or selfish of him, but he decided months ago he was allowed these little pleasures. “Right,” he said, teasing now, “because you like me pathetic.”
“Yes,” Blue said. “I do. Is that okay?”
“More than okay,” Gansey said.
Then, he cupped her face, and he applied just enough pressure that Blue understood what he wanted without him having to ask for it aloud. Blue moved from laying against him and, instead, moved to kiss him. Her lips were soft against his. Her mouth tasted like the toast they ate in bed earlier. There were still some crumbs caught between them. Gansey didn’t mind it. Gansey kissed her hungrily.
There was no question that she belonged here, at Monmouth, in his bed, now.
“Why do you have this?” Blue asked.
She was sitting on the floor of Monmouth with an adventurer’s treasure box in her lap. Gansey had many treasure boxes. He couldn’t see, from where he was seated, his own scrawled writing on the side, so he did not know where in the world this collection was from. In her hand, Blue held up a deck of tarot cards. Ah, Gansey thought, the England box. The sight of the cards flooded him with embarrassment.
“Uh,” he said.
“Uh?” Blue said back. She shuffled the deck expertly. Though she was not a psychic, she was a psychic’s daughter, and her skill with the cards was obvious. It thrilled Gansey—the wave of color, the ripple of sound. “Where did you get them?”
Gansey swallowed, throat a little dry. In the early years, when Gansey was still trying to prove that he hadn’t hallucinated, he tried everything he could to prove or find his connection to the supernatural. That had come with many failed attempts at psychic ability. That was where these cards had come from.
“A shop in London,” Gansey said.
Blue wrinkled her nose. She looked at the card on the top of the deck, her card, and her expression soured further at the neat art and the neat edges. “You bought them new didn’t you? That is not how you’re supposed to acquire a tarot deck.”
Gansey nodded. He understood that better now. He had seen Adam’s deck given to him by his mentor. He had seen Maura’s deck of simple and pragmatic art. He had seen Calla’s deck of shadows and jewel tones. He had seen Jimmi’s deck of cats. He had seen Orla’s deck of lovers. The tarot deck was a reflection of the psychic who wielded them. The deck Blue held? That was a reflection of the non-psychic who bought them for more than they were worth.
Though he had no doubt now that he had no connection to the divine, Gansey asked, “Is that why they didn’t work for me?”
Blue laughed, which was okay, because it was a joke made just for her. Blue knew as well as Gansey what it was like to want this and not be allowed to have it.
“Shall we do a reading?” Blue asked.
“Sure,” Gansey said. He no longer wanted Blue to put the cards away. She was taking a moment of childish failure and turning it into something softer, kinder. He liked putting his memories in her hands; she always treated them well.
Blue shuffled a last time, more simply this time, and then she splayed the cards. She held them out to Gansey to pick. Long ago, he had been so afraid of the future, of his own bad decisions squandering what little was left of his life, that he had not been able to make a decision at all. He had looked at a deck more well loved than this one, and told Blue to pick for him.
“Any card,” Blue said.
Now, Gansey had time. Now, Gansey was not so afraid. He selected a card from the middle of the splayed fan, and he set it on the floor between them. The Lovers.
The day after Gansey’s second death, every psychic at Fox Way had given Blue and Gansey a reading. They had drawn The Lovers over and over, and they had never drawn Death. It was only when the final deck, Adam’s deck, offered the same lovers that Gansey and Blue kissed a second time. Gansey had not died again then, and he had not died again since. Whatever lifeblood Cabeswater had given Gansey was strong enough to stand face to face against a mirror as strong as Blue.
Blue smiled at the card, holding none of her previous contempt. Gansey took up the mantle instead, frowning at the harsh dichotomy of man and woman, the undeniable differences between them. He thought of Ronan and Adam, of tamquam alter idem, as if the other were the same.
Blue said, “I don’t need to be psychic to understand that one.”
Gansey kissed her in agreement.
“Put them away now?” Gansey asked, and Blue did.
Returning to Henrietta was the start. Returning to Henrietta was a trickle of both self awareness and shame—for Gansey, they were always the same thing. The return to DC, though, was a bucket of ice water dumped overhead.
Gansey put it off for as long as he could, which in the end, wasn’t very long at all. Two weeks after the road trip ended, Gansey’s mother called and asked to see him, said she was having a dinner party this weekend. She did not make demands, for that was not the way of a Gansey, but instead, asked him to attend with imperative question marks. Gansey agreed to drive up at the weekend, and now, he stood in Monmouth, wearing a suit that still smelled a little like dust despite the dry cleaning it received.
“I’ll go with you,” Blue said.
She hadn’t offered before now, at the last minute, which told Gansey she did not want to go, but she would for him. She must have seen the anxiety in his expression. “No,” Gansey said. “There’s no need.”
Blue nodded. She tied Gansey’s tie for him—a messy knot he would have to redo before the end of the two hour trek northeast. Blue kissed his chin. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Gansey kissed between her eyebrows. “Okay.”
He left her at Monmouth, and it pleased him—the idea of her waiting there for him, the idea of her belonging in his space so much that she could inhabit it on her own, the idea of coming home to her. The dreamt Camaro roared to life under Gansey’s hands. He would have preferred the real Pig, but he’d gotten used to the dreamt Camaro’s reliability, and he was not particularly interested in getting stranded halfway to hell. Blue waved from one of Monmouth’s gaping windows, and Gansey blew her a kiss, and then he drove two hours northeast.
It was instantaneous.
The house, or rather, the mansion that raised Gansey loomed with candles in every window, silhouetted figures conversing in every room, and wealth dripping off every surface. Before Gansey even stepped inside, as soon as he climbed out of the Camaro, the mask fell over his eyes. Shoulders rounded out, jaw tightened to a square, hands brushed nonexistent lint from a perfectly tailored suit. Instantaneous.
Gansey went inside.
His father was the first to greet him—a clap of hands coming together in a firmly clasped handshake. Richard Senior spoke as if it had not been thirteen months since he’d last seen his son. He told Gansey about his newest acquired car; Elvis rode in it once, he said. He asked Gansey how his Camaro was holding up after a year of so many miles; Gansey didn’t have a lie ready for him, he was out of practice. His father shrugged off his silence, and he pointed Gansey in the direction of a fellow Congressperson’s son. Micheal, his name was, put another hand out for Gansey to shake, and Gansey shook it. He knew just how tight to squeeze, just how long to linger.
“Hey, man,” Michael said. “Good to see another young face around here, right?”
Gansey was not sure he could be classified as a young face. He did not feel especially young at the moment. He felt, instead, the ancient stretch of Cabeswater within himself. He wanted, badly, to retreat into it. Gansey said to Michael, “Indeed. The future will be bright if we are leading it. My father mentioned you’re at an Ivy League. Harvard, is it?”
Micheal was charmed. Gansey was miserable.
He had donned this particular mask so often. The mask of masculinity. So much of Gansey’s life was lived under the guise of a boy adventurer, a son, a traditionally male scholar, a pest-like brother. He learned this language young: handshakes, fist bumps, claps on the back, man, dude, last names. After all these years, he was practically fluent, but it still was not native to him. Like Latin, Gansey understood it, but in order to speak it, he had to first translate his instincts into something foreign and unnatural. It was exhausting.
For so long, Gansey was used to this dance, the extra step between him and others, between him and the foot he put forward. For so long, all he knew were games of pretend, hard work made to appear effortless. Now, though, his tolerance for it was dulled by a year away from this dance, this game. He was miserable. He was exhausted.
He got through a conversation with Michael, and then he was forced into a reunion with his mother. She tutted at the length of his hair, asked him when he was getting it cut, with the expectation that the answer would be as soon as possible. She shoved him into an introduction with someone important’s important daughter.
“You’re the same age,” his mother said, a hint of suggestion in her tone.
“Mother,” Gansey said. “I am still seeing Blue.”
“Of course,” his mother said. She introduced him to Natalie anyway, and it was worse with her than it had been with Michael. She played an admirer, a feminine against his supposed masculine, and Gansey hated it. Gansey did not want to be admired, Gansey did not like this juxtaposition between them. He slipped away from Natalie as quickly as he could without being rude. He was intercepted, next, by someone who wanted to ask about Glendower’s tomb. Gansey slipped away from them even faster, and was, then, trapped by someone else who wanted to talk to him about firing up the male youth vote. Gansey didn’t think the male youth vote should be fired up at all, not with how right-leaning they were, but he could not say that here. He could not say anything true here.
He loosened the red noose around his throat. He snagged a glass of champagne from a waiter who let him, regardless of his age. He slipped away, he slipped out. He ducked between two french doors and into the humid air of mid-July.
The mask fell and shattered on the patio.
The return to Henrietta was the start of a trickle of self awareness, but the return to DC was a bucket of ice water dropped over head. Chilled understanding ran through Gansey. Gansey could never be fluent in the language of men because she had never been a man at all.
Gansey had always felt other. Though she was good at performing, at making herself fit in, Gansey had never felt at home among private school boys and the sons of aristocrats. She’d assumed it was simply because she was stifled and strange. She’d assumed it was because she had died and risen again at the hand of Glendower, burdened by her resurrection and her quest.
That was before Glendower was dead. That was before Gansey was alive. That was before she wore a skirt for the first time. That was before she fell in love with a girl, in a way so apart from man and woman, husband and wife, father and mother. That was before she kissed a girl who called her a doe, a girl, in return. That was before she left all expectation and societal binaries behind for an entire year. That was before she started exploring something without realizing she was exploring anything at all.
She realized it now, and she missed it. Here in DC, there was so much she could not have. Here in DC, she missed her freedom, her sense of self, her sense of sameness or belonging.
Maybe her stifled strangeness and ley line favor were part of her isolation from those who were supposed to be peers, but that wasn’t all of it, that wasn’t everything. She understood now: masculinity felt like a mask because it was a mask.
She wasn’t entirely sure what was underneath.
Whatever it was, it was abstract, almost undefinable. It was color changing fish and fish that swam through the sky. It was the difference between glasses and contacts. It was the shift from he to she. It was the same thing, probably, that made Blue wear fingerless fraying gloves despite temperatures below freezing. It was the same thing, probably, that made Helen wear heels everywhere she went, so she remained always unattainable, untouchable.
Helen’s heels, six inches for this dinner party occasion, clicked against the pavement. Gansey siblings were a rare occurrence, but a blessing when they arose. They understood about each other what no one else could. They knew how to look out for each other, and they knew how to find each other. Helen found Gansey now.
Gansey was pacing the back gardens—the most forbidden place on the property for her. It was late enough, she hoped, that the darkness would keep the wasps at bay.
“Do you even have an EpiPen on you?”
Gansey glanced over her shoulder, and she shrugged a denial she wasn’t willing to give outright. She’d received enough lectures in her time about survival and safety. She did not need another.
“What are you doing out here?” Helen asked. She stepped under the lamplight, and a gleam reflected off her red satin dress. Helen had always been beautiful. Gansey wouldn’t say she was jealous, exactly, but she was— yearning. “The party is inside, Dick.”
Gansey bristled at the name. It had never been hers. “Exactly.”
Helen sighed. She sat down on a stone bench, and she gestured for Gansey to join her, and Gansey did.
“What’s wrong with you?” Helen asked. It was the kind of question that could be an insult, but when Helen said it, it was only genuine worry. “I thought you were doing better, gallivanting across the country with your lover and,” she struggled to classify Henry Cheng, “the other one.”
“I was,” Gansey said. She kicked her foot out, brogues tickling the petals of summer drooping, melting, sweating flowers. “I am. It’s just—” Gansey couldn’t tell the truth of what was wrong. Stupid as it made her, she’d only just figured it out, and she couldn’t say it out loud yet. She didn’t have the right words, and besides, Helen probably wasn’t the right person to tell first. “These things,” she gestured at the house and the party within, “you know.”
“It’s not that hard,” Helen said. “We’ve been doing this our whole lives. It’s just one night, Dick.”
It was the closest she would come to saying: just suck it up.
Gansey shook her head. She wanted to tell Helen that she couldn’t just suck it up. She wanted to tell her that it was that hard. She’d loathed these events for as long as he could remember. They were fake, they interrupted her magic quest, they demanded she wear a suit and a red tie, they demanded she don a mask. Gansey couldn’t say any of that, though. “I don’t think I’m going to stay the night after all.”
“Mother will be upset if you leave,” Helen said. “You’ve been away for so long.”
She meant more than the road trip. She meant more than their mother.
“I can’t,” Gansey said. Her voice tripped a little, clumsy with emotion. Gansey swallowed, Gansey tried again. “I can’t stay here. I want to go home.”
Helen sighed—again. It was the closest she would get to admitting her disappointment. She put her hand on Gansey’s knee and squeezed. “I’ll make an excuse for you,” she said, “if you promise that, one day, you will tell me what was actually wrong tonight.”
She meant that this was more than Gansey’s usual kingly anxiety, and she knew it.
Gansey considered the proposition. Probably she could never tell her parents what happened this night, but probably she could tell Helen one day. “Okay,” she said. “You,” and the division there was obvious, you and not them, “can come visit me in Henrietta, if you actually miss me.”
“Of course I miss you,” Helen said. “Brat.”
Gansey laughed. She retrieved her car keys from her pocket, and she swirled them around two fingers. “I’m going.”
“Go then,” Helen said. Her voice was rich with disdain, but she hugged Gansey tightly before she let her go.
Gansey spent the days following her mother’s party trying to find the words. For what she was, for what she wanted to be. In the end, language failed her. In the end, she asked Blue, “Can I ask you a question?”
They were sitting together under the stretching branches, the scratching leaves of Blue’s favorite beech tree. Blue leaned right back against the trunk, as if she trusted the bark to hold her gently without abrasion or accidental hurts. Gansey sat a little away from the tree, tracing the exposed roots with the tip of a finger.
“Sure,” Blue said, elongated by Henrietta vowels that curled, unbearably fond, around Gansey’s heart, “but only if I can ask you one too.”
Gansey nodded. She almost told Blue to go first, but she knew she would lose her nerve if she did.
“Does this bother you?” Gansey asked. She had done her research. She understood the language she was supposed to use to define this: transgender, transfeminine, she/her/hers pronouns. But it was too much. But Gansey failed to speak, so she made her point, defined this, by plucking at the hem of her half-crochet, half-nonsense shirt. It was Blue’s shirt.
Blue frowned, eyebrows furrowed. It was a testament to their skilled communication that she understood, right away, what Gansey meant. Not just the shirt, but what the shirt represented. “No, of course not.”
Gansey was not convinced. “Why are you making that face then?”
Blue straightened her face out, but the damage was already done. Blue pushed away from her tree, and she caught Gansey’s hand where she was still idly tracing roots. Blue, similarly, traced the lines of Gansey’s palm. The affection tickled, but Gansey did not pull away. She did not, either, meet Blue’s eyes.
“Doe,” Blue said.
Gansey’s eyes burned. Awful, traitorous. “Jane.”
Blue tapped beneath Gansey’s chin, and Gansey looked up at her, and Blue made a quietly sad sound. Tears had not fallen, but Blue swiped her thumbs under Gansey’s eyes like they had. “Doe,” she said again. “It does not bother me. It worries me, though, that you are— being me, instead of you.”
“Oh,” Gansey said. Her cheeks burned. Awful, traitorous. “I…”
Wind shifted the branches above and ruffled Gansey’s hair. She wanted to tuck the loose strands behind her ears, but she did not move, for she did not want Blue to move either. She didn’t want Blue to stop touching her. Blue was still cupping her face in her hands.
“Is that bad?” Gansey asked, when the breeze abated. “I like you.”
“No,” Blue said. She shook her head. She dipped in close to press their noses together, and then she dipped away again. “It’s not bad.” She was smiling now. “But I like you, Gansey. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Oh,” Gansey said again, dispirited. “I don’t want to be me.”
“Yes, you do,” Blue argued. “You just don’t want to be the version of you who wore boat shoes and polos, and who answered to Mr Gansey, and that’s okay. I’ll be less embarrassed to be seen with you in public if you retire the president prep boy uniform.”
Gansey laughed. Nothing she said was particularly funny. Really, the honest truth of her words, her ability to whittle Gansey down to the core of herself, was something devastating. Blue spoke of other possibilities, of greater potentials, and Gansey shattered with hope. It came out as a damp laugh, rife with feeling.
“Okay. But I—” Gansey shook her head. “I don’t know who I am without those things. I don’t think I want to be rid of them entirely. And I—” Gansey frowned. “I don’t know how to be any other me.”
“Yes, you do,” Blue repeated. “I’ve seen it. Do you think I would ever pair that shirt with those pants? No. Never. You have instincts, Gansey, you have identity beyond what you can borrow or mimic from others. You just have to explore. Give yourself permission to play, and give yourself permission to do it badly.”
“I love you,” Gansey said. Because she couldn’t say anything else.
It was Blue’s turn to laugh. “I love you too.”
She settled back under the beech tree, and she pulled Gansey to join her, and Gansey went without a fight. She trusted Blue to keep her safe from the jagged edges of the tree’s bark. For a long while, they were quiet. Blue tugged at Gansey’s hair, and Gansey threaded her fingers through the holes of a crocheted shirt, and Blue kissed the shell of Gansey’s ear, and Gansey closed her eyes as the breeze picked up again. She could sleep like this, relaxed as she was and unburdened by the release of confession. For a long while, neither spoke.
Finally, Gansey remembered. “What were you going to ask me?”
Blue asked, “Can we please move the fridge out of the bathroom?”
You are being me, Blue said, not you.
Blue hadn’t meant to sow doubt, of course she didn’t, but her words reminded Gansey that she was not human, but instead a forest entity’s attempt at humanity, mirroring the ways of the magicians who’d asked for its sacrifice. Gansey wondered if what she was experiencing was her or if it was Cabeswater, specifically the piece of Blue that Cabeswater had borrowed to teach itself kindness, love, and a desire for adventure.
Gansey ended up at the Barns. Ronan knew more about Cabeswater than anyone.
Of course, in order to ask Ronan about Cabeswater, Gansey had to explain herself. She had to use words this time, too, because Ronan hated being cornered into making assumptions. Probably because that was his trick. Gansey sat on the hay strewn floor of Ronan’s dream emporium barn, trying to talk herself into talking.
Eventually, Ronan lost patience with her silence. That, too, was his game. “Spit it out,” he snapped.
“I’m having a moment of self discovery,” Gansey said, quick and without thinking. “I am realizing that my gender identity does not align with the sex I was assigned at birth, but I am— I am wondering if this is real or if it’s a byproduct of Cabeswater’s sacrifice.”
Ronan didn’t react, exactly, but he did stop fiddling with a dreamt string of gold. Ronan said that, when plucked, the string played whatever song was stuck in your head, but Gansey thought that was a lie because the only song she’d ever heard it play was Murder Squash. Ronan set the string down, and he looked at Gansey.
It was not the look he had given her from the porch on that first day. He was not assessing the physical changes and adornments, but instead, looking deeper. Ronan was seeing something within Gansey, and Gansey didn’t want to know what it was.
“You’ve felt this way for longer than you’ve been Cabeswater,” Ronan surmised.
He was right, but. “I’ve always been Cabeswater, in a way.”
Ronan huffed, faux annoyed. “It’s not Cabeswater,” he said, like a declaration. “Cabeswater is a sentient ley line creature. It doesn’t know enough about being human to give a fuck about bullshit like gender. Clearly, you give a fuck. This is all you. Take responsibility for your own shit.”
“But,” Gansey said, “it could still be a side effect. It could be Cabeswater emulating Blue, right?”
Ronan shrugged. “I doubt it. Does it matter?
“Does it—?” Gansey spluttered, caught off guard. “Of course it matters!”
“You can’t always know why, man— no, dude—” Ronan swore. Ronan swore again, worse the second time, “Fuck.”
He didn’t say sorry for the misstep of language, but it was obvious he was sorry because he turned his back on Gansey. He was such a coward sometimes. Gansey stood, and she scuffed her palm over Ronan’s skull, a teasing gesture between brothers. Or, more accurately, between a brother and something else. And there, see: Gansey got it wrong plenty, too.
Ronan shoved Gansey away. Gansey was glad she had come to the Barns.
Henrietta did not have much to offer in terms of clothing stores. Blue suggested the local thrift store, Encore Boutique, but unfortunately and uncomfortably, that did not seem very Gansey, and wasn’t that the point? To explore Gansey’s version of femininity, instead of Blue’s? Instead, Gansey went to the town’s only department store, which again, unfortunately and uncomfortably, only appeared slightly more Gansey. Probably Gansey would have to drive to the nearest city, soon, to really fulfill her promise of self exploration.
For now, though, she made do with the department store. She felt watched as she entered the women’s clothing section, like she was doing something wrong, but she knew she wasn’t. She could browse, she could buy. Probably she couldn’t try anything on here, and probably that ran the risk of the clothing not fitting right, but it probably wouldn’t fit her right anyway. She tried not to think about that, though. She felt— bad when she acknowledged that these clothes were not made for her body.
She trailed through the aisles, hands pushing at hangers to see what hung from them, fingers trailing over fabric to judge its softness.
She didn’t know what it meant to be feminine and Gansey. She could picture Helen, dressed in satin dresses the color of red rubies. She could picture her mother, dressed in pencil skirts and blazers. Neither was Gansey, though. The Gansey family was a foundational part of Gansey, yes, but it wasn’t everything. What was it Helen said?
You’ve been away for so long.
From the age of thirteen, Gansey had been searching the globe for Glendower. Even after finding him, she continued scouring the country for new marvels. Gansey was an amalgamation of the wealth that birthed her and the travels that changed her. She was not any one thing, so she did not know what to be at all.
Gansey sighed. Overheard, the speakers squealed an irritating pop song. Gansey shuffled through shirts and skirts and dresses, but nothing spoke to her. Just when she was about to give up her hand landed on a green dress—the same color as tree dwelling lichen, the palest of greens. The silhouette was simple. The material was thin and shiny to the touch.
Blue would never wear this, Gansey thought.
Blue liked to build layers and then she liked to build structure out of those layers. Blue liked clashing colors and patterns, complexities born out of contradictory materials. This dress was none of those things. This dress was singular in its construction, this dress was the color of new growth.
Gansey bought it.
Gansey was too nervous to go home to Monmouth. There, she would have no reason not to try on the dress. There, Blue would be waiting for her. Gansey had to go somewhere, though, so she texted Adam.
Gansey: Are you at the Barns?
Adam: No, boyd’s. I’m due for a lunch break if you want to stop by tho
Boyd’s wasn’t far from the department store, but the drive felt long with the plastic shopping bag burning a hole in Gansey’s passenger seat. She couldn’t even look at it, too afraid she would catch a glimpse of green spilling over. She pulled into the parking lot crowded with cars dropped off by their drivers, and she slammed the Camaro door on the heart pounding purchase.
She had to go inside to find Adam, and Adam waved with a greasy towel, and said, “Two minutes.”
Gansey waited two minutes, and then Adam announced his lunch break, and they went back outside. They sat on the curb in front of the shop, and Adam ate half his sandwich in two bites. He ate the other half more slowly and talked around it, saying, “Ronan said you came by the Barns. Wouldn’t tell me why, though. Said I had to hear it from you. I thought we were done with secrets?”
Ronan, Gansey thought, like a foul word.
“I’m not keeping it secret on purpose,” she said. “Will you do a reading?”
Adam squinted at her, suspicious, but he agreed. He put his sandwich back in his brown paper bag (Gansey spotted a handwritten note inside, smiled at the love of her friends) and he went to get his tarot cards from his car. He shuffled them in an efficient, practical way. He held them out to Gansey, and Gansey tapped the top of the deck when instructed. Adam shuffled again, and then he dealt three cards out on the pavement.
The Moon, reversed. Eight of Cups. The World.
Gansey had only the most basic understanding of tarot and its meanings, but even she could see the story reflected here. The Moon: a feminine energy in reverse, shrouded in confusion and misconception. Eight of Wands: a cloaked figure entering the unknown, leaving behind all that was once assumed or understood. The World: a beautiful woman rich with fulfillment and harmony, representative of a hard journey completed. These cards were past, present, and future. They were Gansey’s past, present, and future.
“Oh,” Adam said. He rubbed at his temple, he stared at the cards, and then he stared at Gansey, and Gansey knew that he understood. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“If I knew how to talk about it, I wouldn’t have made you get the cards out,” Gansey said.
Adam pointed at the third card, The World. “If you want to get here,” he said, “then you have to really accept it, and I think, to do that, you have to be able to say it. Doesn’t have to be to me, and doesn’t have to be today, but eventually.”
“I kind of told Ronan,” Gansey said. “And Blue and I have talked about it, just without the words.”
Adam smiled, amused but not unkind. “Aren’t the words the most important part?”
“I don’t know,” Gansey said. “Do I have to be able to say I’m— I’m— a— a girl to be one? Did you have to declare you were bi before you were allowed to kiss Ronan?” Gansey pushed a hand through her hair, gently snagging on stray knots but not pulling. “I don’t know if saying I’m a girl is even the whole truth. It feels more gray than that.”
“But it’s part of the truth?” Adam asked. He picked up his sandwich again, and he took another bite, and it helped to make this less tense, more casual.
“Yeah,” Gansey said. “Yeah, it is. Probably it’s most of the truth. There’s a dress in my car right now that I’m too scared to try on.”
Adam raised an eyebrow. He was grinning again. “Really?”
“Yes,” Gansey said. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Sorry,” Adam said. “I’m just imagining it. Is that allowed?”
Gansey didn’t think Adam was genuinely asking, and she couldn’t answer if he was. Gansey didn’t think Adam was making a joke, either, but she laughed anyway. She shoved Adam’s shoulder, and told him to eat his lunch, and while he did, Gansey picked up the three tarot cards fate had chosen. She put her thumb over the woman of The World’s face, concealing it from view. After a moment, she revealed it again, happy and bright. Gansey wanted to become her.
“Put them back with the others,” Adam said.
Gansey did. She said, “Thank you.”
“Sure, Gansey,” Adam said. He paused. “Is— Is that allowed?”
“Yes,” Gansey said. She did not want to be called anything else, unless the person doing the calling was Blue.
In a minute, Adam’s lunch break would disappear, and he would be summoned back to work. In a minute, Gansey would drive home to Monmouth with a dress in her passenger seat. For now, though, Adam and Gansey sat side by side, not talking.
Gansey assumed that trying the dress on would make her feel bad. She expected it not to fit right, and she expected it to accentuate all the ways this was impossible—all the reasons she should pick up the broken mask of masculinity, glue it back together, and put it back on.
Gansey tried the dress on anyway.
In the privacy of the barely used second office, second bedroom of Monmouth, Gansey slipped out of the societally acceptable polo, chinos, and boat shoes. She held the dress up in front of her: a-line cut, length that fell mid-calf, thin straps, thin fabric too, neckline like a heart. She held the dress the same as she held her breath.
If this went wrong, could she recover from it?
Gansey wasn’t sure. Gansey thumbed one of the straps, and she tried to give herself a pep talk: she’d never bought clothing like this for herself before, she didn’t know what size to get, and she didn’t know what shapes would suit her. She barely knew anything, and therefore, it was okay if this went wrong. She could always try again. Time tugged at her ankles and a recent memory surfaced: Blue said, “Give yourself permission to play, and give yourself permission to do it badly.”
“Thank you, Cabeswater,” Gansey said, even though it didn’t really work like that, it wasn’t really Cabeswater’s doing.
Glasses set aside on the barely used twin bed, Gansey closed her eyes, and she went in completely blind. She pulled the dress over her head, and for a moment, she was swallowed by it, lost in it. Her head was held underwater and she couldn’t breathe. Then, the surface tension broke. Then, the dress fell, neatly, to hang from her shoulders. Gansey’s eyes were still closed.
At least it fit enough that she could get it on, she thought.
“Okay,” she told herself. “Okay.”
Gansey opened her eyes, and she looked in the mirror. The old mirror was dusty and her vision was blurry without her glasses on, but even like this, Gansey could see herself. She understood, then, why Blue had pushed her here. This was not Gansey wearing her girlfriend’s clothes. This was Gansey wearing her own dress. This was Gansey. She smoothed her palms over the sleek fabric, and she reached a trailing hand toward the mirror, and then she put her glasses back on, and she looked at herself properly, and—
It was good.
She didn’t expect it. She expected it to be bad and to make her feel bad. But standing there, in a green, green dress that fit her without clinging to her, that suited her without erasing her, she felt good. She felt really, very good.
Gansey had to smile because otherwise she would cry.
She let herself have this for a few minutes, just standing in front of the mirror and appreciating the sight of herself. Was this the first time she had ever met her true reflection? She felt the inane urge to introduce herself anew, and only when she started to open her mouth to speak did she step away from the mirror. She left the quiet privacy of the second office-bedroom. The floor was a familiar chill beneath her feet as she padded into the main space. Large windows let in pink light from the fading sunset.
“Jane?” she said.
Blue looked up. Her eyes widened a little, and she said, “Oh. There you are.”
Gansey felt herself flush. Blue stood to greet her, and she took Gansey’s hand, and she spun her under her arm. It was awkward because Gansey had to duck her head to make the difference in height work, but it was lovely because the dress rippled, soft, against her skin. Blue caught her waist so Gansey wouldn’t spin out of control. Blue pulled her in so they were hip to hip. The fabric of the dress was thin enough that Gansey could feel the warmth of Blue’s hand through it, and she— she liked that. She liked all of it.
“Pretty,” Blue said.
“Thank you,” Gansey said.
That evening, they didn’t talk about it anymore, not after that. That evening, Gansey wore the dress around Monmouth, though, and it continued feeling good.
The next morning, Gansey stood at the mirror, and she pinned her hair back with two gold pins that Blue would never, ever wear. Blue was watching her with attentive eyes, warm eyes.
“Where did you get those?” she asked.
“Same place I got the dress,” Gansey said. She’d picked them up, along with a tube of sheer lip gloss, on her way to the register—impulsive. “Had to tell the cashier I was getting someone a gift.”
Blue hummed. “You did, in a way.”
“What do you mean?” Gansey asked. She supposed it could be considered a gift to herself. She didn’t think that was what Blue meant, though.
“It’s a gift for me to see you like this,” Blue said.
“Pretty?” Gansey asked, stealing her word from the previous evening.
“You’re always pretty,” Blue said. “Today, you’re happy. I like seeing you happy.”
Gansey grinned, couldn’t fight it even if she tried, which she didn’t. She was happy, she realized. For a long time, she thought she was happy. After the resolution of the Glendower story, during that first year of present life and new sights, she thought she was happy. She thought she had everything she could ever want. She didn’t realize what was missing then, but she realized it now: if not acceptance, then the beginning of it; if not self actualization, then the beginning of that too.
“Damn,” Blue said, at the bloom of her smile.
Blue came up behind Gansey, and she put her arms around her center. Like this, Gansey could just barely see Blue in their shared reflection. Blue could hardly see her either; she pressed her face between Gansey’s shoulder blades, hiding away as if this was all too much. Something pleased and rotten squirmed under Gansey’s skin.
That morning, they talked about it.
Face still buried Gansey’s shoulder blades, Blue spoke something muffled.
Gansey had to ask her to repeat herself. “What did you say?”
Blue pulled away enough to speak. Gansey could still feel her breath, damp and hot, on the skin of her nape. “Would you prefer if I called you my girlfriend?”
Gansey didn’t mean to stiffen, but she did. Her muscles seized and her blood went cold. She was a board, a plank of wood, in Blue’s embrace. Blue noticed, of course she noticed, and she held her tighter, closer. She slipped her hand under Gansey’s shirt to prod at her stomach until she laughed a ticklish sound. Gansey batted her away.
“Don’t do that,” Blue said, scolded. “You know I don’t mind, whatever you want, whatever makes you smile like that.” She asked again, for a third time, “Would you prefer it?”
“No one else would call me— that,” Gansey said.
“That wasn’t the question,” Blue said, not angry, never angry, but with a little bite regardless. “Also, do not doubt me. I’m a menace with a switchblade, y’know, I can get people to do a lot of things. The whole world will call you my girlfriend, if that’s what you want.”
Gansey’s lips quirked, not quite a smirk, but close to it. She still didn’t give Blue an answer, instead asking, “You really don’t mind either way? It implies something about you, doesn’t it? That you would be dating a girl, I mean. We haven’t talked about that part of it.”
Blue gave Gansey the benefit of really, truly stopping to think about it. Then, she said, “No, I don’t mind. I’m not worried about gender. I like who I like, and I like you. Besides, to me, you’d always be my best friend first. Is that okay?”
God, Gansey loved her. She made it so easy. She did not bat an eye at queer, lesbian, sapphic—whatever they were to be labeled didn’t matter when the love between them wouldn’t ever change. God, Blue was perfect.
“Yes,” Gansey said. “Yes, that’s okay.”
It was more than okay.
“So,” Blue said. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?”
“Yes,” Gansey said. Then, she did the impossible, and she finally said, “I… would like to be referred to as a girl. I would like it if you, and the others, used she/her pronouns when complaining about me. I would like— I would love to be your girlfriend, please.”
“Please,” Blue mimicked, bright and joyful, fond and amused. She turned Gansey in her arms, and she tapped both gold pins, and she kissed her. “Hi, girlfriend.”
This was only the beginning. There was still so much: what the world would say, what Gansey’s family would say, what greater changes Gansey wanted to pursue, what else she liked besides the green dress. This was only the beginning, but it was a damn good one.
That afternoon, Gansey put her new dress back on. That afternoon, Gansey and Blue packed a picnic basket with easy foods, crackers and cheese and a container of green grapes, and they took to the fields behind Aglionby. It was still summer, and so the place was abandoned—safe and private for their date.
Gansey laid out a gingham picnic blanket, which Blue had already made vicious fun of her for having, and Blue laid out the food, and they laid down under the sun. Gansey and Blue no longer shared everything, but they shared the blanket, escaping from the tickle of grass and insects. They shared snacks, they shared laughter, they shared conversation, they shared touch, they shared company, they shared secrets.
Blue looked at Gansey. “I’m going to draw you.”
Gansey laughed. She assumed Blue was joking, but she covered her face anyway, like she could hide from the depths of her attention, her adoration. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes,” Blue said, “I am.”
Like she’d planned this, Blue procured, from the basket, a notebook and a pencil sharpened halfway down to the root. Blue mumbled something about capturing her, about posing, and Gansey flushed red in the heat of summer and the warmth of embarrassment. She didn’t watch, but she listened to the gentle scratch of pencil against paper. Minutes passed. Minutes burned.
“Jane?” Gansey asked, under the glare of the sun, under the whisper of clouds, the only witnesses of their vowed affection. “Can you kiss me?”
Blue put her pencil down. “Okay.”
She hovered over Gansey, both half prone, and she leaned in close so their lips brushed. She leaned closer, then, so they did more than brush. Gansey spent so much of her youth searching for proof that she was saved for a reason and proof that magic was real. Every time Blue kissed her, Gansey got her proof. They fit together so perfectly that it couldn’t be anything other than divine.
When Blue tilted her head, Gansey tilted hers. When Blue opened her mouth, Gansey opened hers. When Blue cradled Gansey’s face, Gansey cradled Blue’s flank.
This—kissing Blue Sargent—was what Gansey was saved for. This—kissing Blue Sargent as Blue Sargent’s girlfriend—was a magic she couldn’t quite believe. She remembered, again, the figure of The World. Lucious. Beautiful. Bright. Alive. And smiling, Gansey remembered her smile best of all. That same grin flickered across her own face, contentment after a long battle won, and Blue kissed that same grin.
“Doe,” Blue whispered. She pulled back from their kiss. She put her fingers to Gansey’s mouth, dragged her thumb over Gansey’s bottom lip, and said, “You taste like strawberry.”
“It’s the lip gloss,” Gansey said, voice a little throaty.
“I like it. I like you like this so much,” Blue said. She kissed Gansey again. She pressed her saliva damp thumb to the dimple in Gansey’s cheek, gouging it gently deeper. She licked her own lips. “What do I taste like?”
Gansey smeared her lips together, leaned in enough to nudge her nose against Blue’s mouth. “Grapes,” Gansey said, and she reached for the spread of fruit without looking, and she held out another green grape. Blue took the offering, crunching down on crisp freshness.
She chewed slowly, savoring. Gansey watched closely, also savoring.
Blue swallowed. Blue said, “Kiss me again, please?”
And Gansey did.
They no longer shared everything. They didn’t have to when Gansey was a person of her own now. They didn’t have to share when Gansey had her own dress, her own skin, her own identity.
They still shared kisses, though. They still shared love, too.