From the Fan Fiction Unbound Archive,
posted by conTessaofthecastle:
Market Day in Arden was crowded. The shouts of the vendors blended with shoppers as Daphne made her way to the central square. Suddenly she felt a hand on her arm. Struggling to release herself and jostled by the crowd, Daphne found herself momentarily unable to breathe. She had come this far. If she was forced to return to the Coven now, before she had mastered the space-shifting spell, before she found Astoria, both of them would be lost forever.
Soph.
So that was unexpected. Shocking, in fact. Without thinking, I walk back to the lodge. I make it to the room—our room—without having to talk to anyone except Janaye, who sees me in the hallway and wants to chat. I wave her off. I am overheated after the cold outside, and the layers on me feel heavy and constricting.
I pull clothing off, my hat and gloves, then my jacket and the scarf I have wrapped around my neck. I sit on the bed and fumble with my shoelaces. God, these boots are so clumsy and heavy. I’m breathing heavily. My fingers are stiff and useless, and I realize my eyes are filling with tears.
Tess opens the door. I keep my head down, but I can see her boots out of the corner of my eye. I have the ridiculous thought that her boots are knock-offs, not “the Original L.L.Bean Maine Hunting Shoes.” This is stupid. I abandon my laces and stand.
“Why did you do that?” My voice sounds thin and shaky. Goddamnit. She stands in the doorway like some perfect china doll with her long hair flowing out of that little pink hat, cheeks pink from the cold, mouth open a little. Her face is serious, and I realize that she has tears in her eyes too.
None of this makes any sense. I sit on the bed again, and stare back at her. Now I’m getting mad again.
“My first girl kiss, and you ruined it. I’m not a guinea pig for you to experiment on, you know. Why did you do that if you didn’t mean it?”
She steps into the room, pulls the door closed, and locks it. Meeting my gaze, her voice barely above a whisper, she says, “I did mean it.”
Now I am completely confused. The silence hangs in the air between us until I wipe my eyes, which are wet with the damn tears. I bend down to work on my laces again. I want nothing more than to get these boots off my feet.
She speaks again. “Can I tell you about Joey?”
I don’t want to know why she is cheating on her boyfriend or her not-boyfriend. I shake my head and keep working on the laces on my left boot. The double knot is tight and my fingers aren’t much warmer.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Her voice is quiet, almost a whisper. She stammers, “He, he’s gay.”
I pause and then I turn back to that double knot, attacking it as if it is the SAT math section.
Tess speaks again, her voice still a whisper. “So am I.”
I straighten and stare at her again, hard. She looks terrified, which I don’t understand. That infuriates me.
I stand again, still in the damn boots, and glare at her. “What, you hate yourself for being gay? You pretend to be straight to convince yourself and everyone else in your redneck town that you’re something you aren’t? Does that make you feel good? Or normal?” Time for a new roommate. I can go bunk with Orly.
I grab my room key from the nightstand and head straight toward Tess, expecting her to move out of the way and let me through the door. She doesn’t move. I am inches from her, about to push her out of the way, when she says, “Joey. When he tried to come out, he got his jaw broken.”
I am so close to her I can hear her breathing. She is really crying now and puts her face in her hands. My stomach drops.
“Oh.” Gently, stumbling in these stupid boots, I guide her over to her bed and sit us both down. She stares at the floor. I rub my hands together, unsure what to do.
“Didn’t he tell someone?” I ask after a pause. “Get the police involved? Sue? I mean, even in New Hampshire you can’t break someone’s jaw for being gay. It must be a hate crime.”
“He couldn’t tell anyone.” Her voice is tiny now, and I can see tears coursing silently down her cheeks. I reach out to wipe them off with my thumb. The gesture startles her, and she flinches. I withdraw my hand.
When I speak again, I try to keep my voice level, even though I want to shake her.
“Tess, he needs to tell someone. It’s against the law to hit someone. And to hurt someone for being gay. His parents can—”
She grabs the hand I used to wipe her tears and squeezes it hard.
“It was his father who broke his jaw, Soph.”
Tess.
Later, when I go home and try to remember what happened after I said that, I will have a hard time with the details and I’ll finally give up trying to recall all of it. I won’t remember the few words Soph says, or her face when she gathers me into her arms and holds us together for long moments. I smell her citrusy soap and feel her hair, vaguely ticklish against my face. She gets up and double-checks the lock on the door. I’ve never seen her go this long without talking. And I can’t focus on watching her because of the tears in my eyes, but after she checks the lock she moves one of the nightstands in front of the door, and then turns off the overhead light and comes back to me in the dark.
The window lets in moonlight until she lowers the blind, still not speaking. Then she unzips my jacket, like I’m a small child. She bends down to undo her boots first, then mine, peeling layers of cold, wet clothing off of me while I sit there, almost motionless.
I find my voice before she finds hers, as she is pulling the socks off my feet. She’s already got me out of my jeans, somehow, and I’m in my sweater and underwear shivering. “I’m sorry,” I say so softly that even I can barely hear it. “I just really wanted to kiss you.” I can feel a fresh wave of tears about to start, when she looks up from the floor at me.
She starts to smile, but then catches herself, and asks, “Just because I’m a girl?”
“No,” I tell her, “not just because you’re a girl. Because you’re amazing. But I didn’t mean to ruin your first kiss.”
She doesn’t say anything, just turns back to my socks. But then she says the last thing I expect her to. “You didn’t ruin it, Tess. I mean, it’s not ruined anymore.” After that, she tips her head up and kisses me. I will remember that.
We end up under the covers in her bed, pressed together with the cold seeping from our limbs. I try to tell her I’m not confused about liking girls and I’m definitely not confused about liking her, but I need to keep it to myself for now. I end up saying something jumbled and confused. Apparently, it’s okay, because she kisses me again. She says something, but it isn’t clear and it doesn’t matter.
The details are fuzzy, but I will never forget how, close to Soph that night, finally warm, entangled with her under the heavy covers, my face pushed into the crook of her neck, I fall off to sleep, feeling something I would never in my whole life have expected to feel at that moment—completely and entirely safe.
* * *
From Soph Alcazar’s Writing Journal,
February 15, 2018
I thought that the closet was the worst crime.
But there’s more to it, my very first time.