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GUTS AND GLASSES
Garnet grew up having to explain to everyone about her shades. Over the years she’d grown up from being lame for wearing something so eighties, to cool, because of Cyclops, to being called Lady Gaga. She’s used to it, and all the trouble that being different brings – kids trying to shove it off her eyes during basketball, or pretending to hit it by accident.
They wanted to see her eyes. They didn’t get it when the teachers said that Garnet’s eyes were sensitive to light. She’d been asked if she was a vampire (in broad daylight) because of the light sensitivity.
“It’s just my eyes,” she’d said. It didn’t mean, to them, that the rest of her was normal.
As she grew up, her mother had them made extra hard to knock off, and she had a special pair for basketball and swimming and whatever else she got into. The rest of Garnet’s face might be bruised at a brawl in school, but not her cool wraparound shades. She ended up acquiring a reputation: she was the kind of girl that was too cool for you, too strong for you, and too perfect for you. It was a reputation she didn’t ask for. And like plenty of things she didn’t ask for, this one was an unwelcome barrier between her and the rest of the world.
It made falling in love difficult. It made thinking of Pearl difficult. Wanting to kiss someone shouldn’t be this hard, but it was. Sure, she and Pearl kissed on the cheek sometimes, as friends, but Garnet wanted a proper kiss, her way of reminding Pearl that the attraction was mutual and that maybe they could move from being friends to being a little more.
Unfortunately the grand plan of sweeping Pearl off her feet was marred by the fact that they both wore glasses. The running idea in Garnet’s head was that it would be after a nice dinner picnic, the moment would be perfect, and preferably not ruined by the fact that her glasses were practically stapled to her head by a thick strap. Contacts were not an option, because they irritated her eyes till she cried, and that would be an unromantic as well.
It also annoyed her that crying (of all things) and glasses-bumping had become her chief concerns. She wasn’t a romantic, not after being subjected to it all her life thanks to her two mothers. They never missed a chance to kiss in front of Garnet (or her friends) – they were the sort of parents that knew how embarrassing they were and were in a position not to care. Garnet eventually ended up numb and sick to the gills with it.
Romance had never been Garnet’s thing until Pearl.
Pearl was the kind of girl who twirled her fingers in the air without realizing it. She was the kind of girl who talked with every part of her: her eyes would rove all over the place, fingers would be off rattling points, she might rock on the balls of her feet or stand on her tippy toes, a holdover from her ballet days – she just had to. At every moment, she was moving, or breathing, or excited about something, or upset about something. One thing was for sure: she always had a reaction, which made her the perfect target for teasing, or exasperation, or amusement. Garnet had gone through all three and settled, at last, for affection. She was surprised she didn’t put up more of a fight against her feelings, knowing that Pearl’s last relationship had been intense and that her own feelings might not be returned. It was simply how she felt. And as for why… it was a guts thing, she once told Amethyst.
“A guts thing?”
“Is it easier to make fun of something, or to say when you’re for something?”
She knew Amethyst got the idea. Still, Amethyst chose to ignore it, saying instead, “So does this mean I can’t prank her on April Fools?”
Pearl was openly gay. Garnet was out herself, but not as flamboyant about it. Pearl was unapologetically girly, always wearing sundresses and makeup. When Dewey the -Dunce- Chairperson for Student Affairs asked her out, at a party, she looked at him in horror, turned up her nose, and said no in front of everyone, and later pointed out it was his fault for asking so publicly knowing what she was. When she’d been putting up posters with Amethyst in the Engineering building for the local gay club and told there were no gays in Engineering by some dumb kids she took the high road and ignored them until they shoved Amethyst, who punched back, and so of course Pearl had to defend her friend.
“You should see the other guy,” she said to Garnet the moment Garnet walked into the clinic. Amethyst, aware of Garnet’s feelings for Pearl, waggled her eyebrows and threw a huge thumbs up.
(Garnet was pretty sure Amethyst had taught Pearl that line. But still.)
Guts. Pearl had them. All her life, Garnet thought she had them. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Suddenly she had a stake in a thing she’d never wanted all her life, and she wanted it to be perfect. Garnet never demanded perfection of the world; she knew better. She knew how to roll with the punches. But her heart had dealt her a punch from which she couldn’t recover, damn it.
Her phone blooped.
Want to go for a drive tomorrow?
She laughed. It didn’t make sense, to be nervous over a drive.
//
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SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Pearl was never good at reading signals from people. It was just her luck that lately, Garnet seemed to be – well, interested. In her.
It was, empirically, factually, a weird thing. A statistical outlier. Garnet Jones was complete in herself, did things as she pleased, weaving in and out of college activity as she liked. She was one of those people who enjoyed life – a foreign concept to someone like Pearl, who fretted over everything. It was natural for Pearl to fall in a (carefully controlled) like when it came to Garnet, because Garnet was so different from her, but she wasn’t exactly sure what Garnet could possibly get in their relationship. Pearl knew what she gave in a relationship: devotion, a nice car, the promise of stability. Garnet didn’t want any of those. So Pearl wasn’t sure if Garnet was just being friendly when they’d started sort-of-dating, and for some reason, it had fallen into this pattern of them going on actual study dates and occasionally having dinner but not really discussing what they were.
Pearl, not having anyone to talk to, had no idea whether this sort of thing was common, the reason why so many people had their status listed as ‘complicated’ on social media. She wasn’t sure whether to mark it as an outlier or within normal range. She had to rely on her feelings, and her feelings were currently telling her, against the rationale of her mind, to take Garnet out for a drive (if Garnet wanted to, of course) a few miles away to a quiet beach town where they could hang out. She would then tick off a list of signals (whether Garnet held her hand, or if Garnet wanted to go somewhere more private, for example) before asking Garnet if this constituted going steady.
It was not a very rational plan, because it was made out of her daydreams. Pearl knew that. She hoped that her injection of observation and inference-making would help. Yes, her hypothesis was biased, but surely her methodology was not.
//
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FAVORITE ACCIDENT
Garnet was quiet on the drive out to Beach City, thinking about her evening conversation with Amethyst.
She shouldn’t have told Amethyst about the glasses.
“Oh wow, man, I can’t believe Pearl’s got more balls than you,” Amethyst had said at the end of Garnet’s short soul-baring explanation. At Garnet’s sulky glare (that wasn’t visible through her glasses, but Amethyst was great at reading body language), Amethyst further drove the point in: “this isn’t about glasses, you’re just looking for an excuse not to make the first move. Real lame, buddy.”
Real lame, buddy. She hated it when Amethyst understood her.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Garnet replied, looking out the window.
“You know, we don’t have to drive out,” Pearl said, “I was just thinking the weather was great for it. We can still go back.”
Oh no. No she didn’t want to go back. “Uh, no, this is fine,” Garnet said. “I mean, you want to go out right? We’re here.”
She’d made it sound like she was doing it because she had to. Like a friend-duty thing. Why did she have to talk, to begin with. She didn’t have Rose Quartz’s famous way with people. She was just Garnet, chilling at the back.
“I mean,” Garnet said, trying a third time, “I mean, I want to go too. I’ve never really seen Beach City up close.”
Pearl hummed. Garnet slunk. Then she stood up straighter, because she could hear her mother scolding her: Joneses don’t slink.
//
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Beach City was full by the time they arrived. “I should have expected this,” Pearl muttered as they weaved in and out of the flea market that popped out on the city street. It was almost summer, though the air was still a little chilly. This didn’t stop the tourists from flocking to the beach.
“It’s fine,” Garnet said, as they separated to let a man pass between them. They occasionally brushed shoulders against other tourists as they walked down to the beach, until Garnet, somewhat worried she wouldn’t be able to find Pearl, took her hand.
“Sorry,” she said, dropping the hand just as soon as she held it. “I-I mean, we might get lost.”
“It’s fine,” Pearl said, taking Garnet’s hand. “That’s a good idea.”
They were stopped for a moment by a guy at the end of the flea market, who waved a hair dye formula for Garnet. “I guarantee you, this fixes any bad dye jobs ya got there,” he said.
Garnet waved him off. After some distance, Pearl asked, “what did happen, anyway?” she asked, referring to Garnet’s cotton-candy hair.
“My favorite accident,” Garnet replied. “I was around sixteen and thinking, well, if I’m going to look different all the time, I might as well dye my hair. I didn’t read the instructions, so I ended up with red and blue in some patches. I kinda liked it so I kept it that way. Been doing it for a while now.”
“I wish I had your guts,” Pearl said. “My hair’s just strawberry blonde. Kind of boring, I know. I’ve never really done anything with it. Or with my clothes, now that I think about it. It was always dresses and flats with my mother when I was growing up.”
“Do you want to try something else?”
“I wish I had more shorts, honestly,” Pearl said. “And some nice jeans. But dresses are nice, too.”
“I always thought dresses were your thing, to be honest. You’re always so… girly.”
“Well I enjoy it,” Pearl said. “But I think twenty years wearing mostly skirts is a long enough time.”
“Then we should get you something,” Garnet said. “While we’re here.”
//
//
They ended up on the beach. They ended up with a picnic. They ended up swimming with their clothes on; they had new ones anyway. Garnet, floating on her back, eyes perfectly shielded from the sun, should have been thinking about making things clear between them, but Pearl had splashed a powerful spray of water into her face, and Garnet was determined to punish her right for it. They gave up splashing each other when the waves got rough and instead just floated around a fair distance away from the shore, never too far apart from each other.
It was around four in the afternoon when they finally got out of the water and trudged back to the more public side of the beach, where they could take a shower (Pearl insisted on it.) There was no question about it, they were swinging their hands held fast, suspended between now and – whatever came after. Garnet’s heart was back to hammering her every which way, only momentarily relieved when it was her turn to take a shower, but it came back in full force when she saw Pearl come out of the shower stall, her glasses dangling off the collar of her shirt.
Pearl waved, not that she had to. Against the setting sun, it looked like Pearl’s eyes glowed blue green, standing out between her still-pale skin and strawberry hair, and not for the first time Garnet wished she knew what it looked like without her glasses on.
“I can never tell what you’re thinking,” Pearl said, smiling up at her. Her eyes really were glowing, against the sky’s colors. For a second, Garnet blanked out with the tingling at the tips of her fingers and the hammering at her heart, but she willed her fingers into her pockets and shrugged.
“That’s a good thing,” Garnet said. “I’m not really thinking anything, half the time.”
Pearl raised an eyebrow. “Nobody can think nothing,” she said. “Nothing itself is a concept.”
Garnet laughed. “Right.”
“I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
“That’s what I like about you,” Garnet said, a little too open after spending an entire afternoon with Pearl with no direction but whatever they felt like doing. “I’m always picking something new up.”
Pearl blushed. She quickly ducked away and walked towards one of the concession stands, muttering something about coke. Garnet smirked a bit, both pleased and agitated, and let Pearl go ahead, giving her enough time to get that blush under control.
Dude, she could hear Amethyst say in her head. If you can’t make a move after all that you’re really not worthy.
//
//
Pearl fell asleep on the bench, just before the sunset. Not wanting to wake her, but with nothing to do, Garnet left a message on Pearl’s phone and strode off to find a place for dinner. She got as far as the pier, where market stalls were changing face, turning into modest diners. By the time Garnet returned to Pearl, the sky was a pale blue thing already dotted with stars.
“Hey,” she said, sitting next to a now-awake Pearl.
“I missed the sunset,” Pearl said, a little sullenly.
“We could just go again next week.”
Pearl was quiet for a beat.
“Yeah,” she said. “If we don’t have exams.”
Garnet watched the waves on the shore grow darker and darker as the evening deepened. Pearl watched the stars come out. Sometime during their peaceful sitting session they found their hands touching, then holding, then occasionally their thumbs would brush against the back of their palms and they’d smile at each other and then go back to looking at the beach or the skies.
//
//
SAY SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING
Pearl’s brain had well and truly short circuited around the time Garnet’s thumb brushed against hers. Fewer and fewer stars were coming out, until they stopped popping out of the black at all. By then there was only one working signal left in Pearl’s brain: that Garnet liked her and therefore it was high time to shove her tongue down Garnet’s throat, which was such an undignified thing to think that it short circuited too along with the rest, leaving Pearl blushing at the sky with a brain that wasn’t working.
“Pearl?” Garnet asked, and Pearl slowly remembered that she had muscles to turn her head towards Garnet, and even vocal chords with which to reply, but she’d forgotten to get her blush in order, so she said Yes? with a face so red-hot it looked as though she might pass out.
“Are you okay? You don’t have a sunburn on your face, do you?”
Pearl poked her cheek. “No,” Pearl replied, and by then her brain had picked itself up from the floor and was busy trying to flood her mind with anything except Garnet Jones in a bid to get the blush under control.
Pearl’s brain was not doing a very good job.
“Could you do me a favor?”
Pearl nodded.
“Could you take off your glasses?”
Pearl took them off.
Garnet kissed her.
It was a very brief kiss. By the time Pearl closed her eyes, Garnet’s lips were already leaving hers. Pearl’s arm twitched, caught between two signals: to pull Garnet in or to let Garnet go.
It stayed put, for the rest of Pearl was trying to hold onto the sensation of Garnet kissing her.
“Um,” she said, after.
Garnet wasn’t helping. She looked frozen in place herself. Pearl’s brain picked itself up for the second time and quickly got things under control:
“Can we do that again?”
This time they met halfway. This time they didn’t stop. They went on kissing, and exploring, and touching, until they both got too hungry to ignore – and then after that, they gave up on going home and spent the night first on the beach and later at the back of Pearl’s car.
Finally.
//
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fin
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The fun thing about writing for garnet is that, if you didn’t have a peek into her head, you’d think she’s super cool tucking her fingers into her pockets and throwing compliments around like it’s nothing. But then you see her in the answer and you’re like, Garnet is a dork.