Falling Forward (Fall #2)

Chapter 1

THEN: DIANA

“So this is it?” As Diana said the words, she felt something final click inside of her.

She rolled over in her bed. Her naked body was warm and flush, a stark contrast to the cold that was starting to spread from her heart to the rest of her.

Next to her Juanita, or “Jay” as she liked to be called, as it allowed her to reclaim some elements of her name, turned to face her.

Jay was on her back, naked and equally flushed, still carrying the crimson afterglow Diana loved so much.

The heat of August and what they had just done hung in the air, and while it had been like a hug before, it now felt like it was beginning to suffocate Diana.

“Diana, listen to me,” Jay’s soulful voice was pleading. Her big brown eyes were glassy and her shiny black hair still clung to her forehead; Diana had to fight the urge to push it back. “I graduated, I have a full scholarship waiting for me, Berkeley is across the country.”

Diana knew it was true. She wasn’t delusional or stupid.

She was sixteen, starting her junior year, so at least two more years left in Maplewood.

That didn’t mean that she hadn’t hoped. Hoped that her first love, the first person she’d allowed herself to fully fall into, would fight for them, for her.

A nagging feeling inside of her made her wonder then if she was in fact delusional and stupid.

Jay had her whole life ahead of her now; she’d graduated, had a full ride to study computers or whatever it was she often tinkered with.

She had a chance to leave Maplewood behind.

Maplewood was Diana’s destiny; she had no choice in the matter. But Jay did; she could leave Maplewood. And Diana knew she should. Maplewood had just been Jay’s start, not her end.

“I know, I just—god Jay, I am going to miss you. I love you,” Diana said.

She’d said ‘I love you’ many times. The first time had been dramatic and cinematic, done in a rainstorm the two had run through the orchard to escape.

They had found shelter in a small storage shed at the edge of the property.

And while up until that point they’d only made out, it was the first time Jay had let Diana drop to her knees and worship her.

She loved everything about Jay. And yes, it was cliche, they were worlds apart: she the heiress of a family business and Jay, the daughter of the Flores, two Mexican migrant workers who worked on her parents’ property full time.

A lot of that had to do with Jay, her parents wanting a better life for her.

It also had to do with Diana’s urging of her own mother to listen to Jay’s, who was more adept at conversational English than her father.

“I will miss you too, Diana, and I do love you, I just—” Jay hesitated, pulling a brown-pink lip between her teeth.

It was a gesture Diana knew meant Jay was about to share an uncomfortable truth.

“I just can’t stay here. I need to go to California.

I need to go be me,” Jay said carefully, but the implicit words were clear: she couldn’t be herself in small-town Maplewood.

Diana feared she was also saying that she couldn’t be herself with Diana.

Diana felt the tears rise and she dropped her head onto Jay’s chest, nuzzling her face between her small breasts that always brought her so much comfort.

Jay wrapped her brown arms around her and squeezed.

Diana felt her rub her chin on the top of her head as Jay inhaled her scent. The loving gesture made her brave.

“Are you saying that you can’t be yourself with me? Because I —”

But Jay cut her off, “Don’t, no. Diana, you mean so much to me. We mean so much to me. I honestly,” and at the hitched breath and pause Diana could hear the emotion welling inside Jay. It comforted her to know that she found this moment hard too.

“This has been more than I could have ever imagined possible for me. In a way, this has freed me, Diana. I don’t think I can express it entirely, but I know I have had something with you that often are dreams to others like me. I have been lucky.”

“Then why give it up? Why give us up? I am not that much younger than you, two years, that’s all I need, two years,” she sobbed into Jay’s chest, but even as she said it, two years sounded like a lifetime.

“Because—” Diana could hear the quake in Jay’s voice that let Diana know she was crying too. “It is because this has been like a dream that I have to go, and I need to leave this here in Maplewood.”

Diana lifted her head to meet Jay’s eyes, now shiny with tears. Diana saw that her face was folded in what looked like anguish.

“I don’t understand,” Diana said thickly.

“I never knew this was possible for me, to be loved by someone like you, to be loved in general. And,” Jay’s face crumpled more as she gave a small sob and then took a deep breath so she could continue, “I wouldn’t know if I were holding on to this because I felt like it was the only option I had.

” And with those words, it was Diana’s turn to hold Jay.

“Jay, that’s crazy, you’re beautiful, funny, smart, did I mention beautiful?

You saw my face when I first saw you.” Diana had been smitten from the first moment she spotted Jay.

While Jay was shorter than her 5’7 stature, what she lacked in height she made up in vibrance.

A vibrance that Diana had had to touch the moment she saw her, standing outside with her parents talking to Diana’s.

Long, black, straight hair that reflected the sun, deep brown eyes, and sharp cheekbones under warm brown skin.

“Diana, we’ve been over this, look, I love you, but we have to accept that we are not the same.”

“I am a woman! I obviously like women too! We—”

“Are not the same, Diana. And that’s OK.

I don’t know why everyone is so up in arms about thinking of all of us as equally experiencing the world around us.

Do you know why my mother was so set on asking your parents for a full-time job here?

I could have died back in Mexico, Diana.

I would have likely been murdered. And then we come to this country, and my parents are treated like dogs.

My father was afraid for my mother to even speak to your parents about a permanent job here.

He thought for sure it meant they’d never hire them again. ”

Diana thought for a moment how she’d advocated with her mother for her to do so, exchanging a promise to attend future events she had previously gotten out of.

But her mother and father both had been agreeable; Diana just knew her mother wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to gain something.

“What? My parents are uptight but they would never, they aren’t—”

“I am not accusing them of being racist, love. I am saying that experience has taught us to not know, and therefore to be careful. Our ability to live this way is tenuous. Something that yes, you as a woman, will see, but never experience in the way that I will.”

“I don’t care if you’re—”

“I know you don’t love, I know. I am lucky, my mother believes in the muxe, and while it isn’t the same, it helps her understand.

She has always believed it made me strong.

I am my parents’ only child, and while my mom understood, my father had to grieve the loss of the only son he thought he had.

He too now agrees, this makes me strong.

But not everyone everywhere is okay. They are afraid of what they don’t understand, especially if it is strong.

Diana,” and Jay turned to brush a kiss on one of Diana’s arms that were around her shoulders, “I have never been held the way you hold me, the way you touch me, the way you love me, the way you have always looked at me and saw me as me. But you and I here are not the world. We are not even Maplewood. Yes, as a woman, a blonde woman at that, you risk oversexualization, rape, battery, but the the chances for me are exponentially higher, coupled with racism and—”

“So what, because you have it ‘worst’ we can’t be together?” Diana could feel anger rising. Everyone had their differences, everyone had their struggles and she wouldn't be made to feel like shit just because hers were different from Jay’s.

Diana began to pull away, but Jay held her closer, her warmth so inviting that Diana found herself once again resting her head on her chest.

“It is not the same, and it is ok, ok? I am angry too, ok? I hurt too. We can only be mad at the circumstances that led us here, not at each other, babe. You are not being punished Diana—”

“I am if I can’t have you,” Diana sobbed.

“You can and you have, babe. But I need to go somewhere where I can feel free, okay? I need to know that I am not staying because I feel ‘lucky,’ but because I know I should be with them. I love you, and I have loved what we have shared, but you have two more years here. You are inheriting a family business, you will have so much life— Diana, please don’t take that for granted. I need to go find my own.”

Diana swallowed. Deep down, Diana knew she was right, and she hated it.

She felt rage and pain and it was all rooted in what she could only identify as guilt.

And a part of Diana hated Jay for making her feel guilty, and then a part of her hated herself for hating a part of Jay.

Jay, who was a light, who would go on to California and find her life away from Maplewood, away from her, who had what Jay hadn’t been born with, in every sense.

She wanted to argue that she didn’t believe in luck and that she didn’t take it all for granted— but then, maybe she did if she hadn’t really thought about it all until Jay spelled it out for her.

This fact enraged her more, but also made her give into the grief that was the finality of this moment between them.

“Will you stay in touch?” Diana asked meekly, pathetically.

“Yes, especially with my parents working here.” Jay had started to stroke the small of Diana’s back, the way she liked. At her words though, Diana suddenly wasn’t sure what would be worse: to know she could never see Jay again, or to know she would see Jay but not be able to have Jay.

“I love you,” Diana said, because it was the only truth she had to hold onto that was comforting in the moment.

Jay rolled them over so Jay was on top, their bodies flush, Jay’s soft wetness –what she joked as her “organic dildo”-- on Diana’s thigh.

“I love you too, Diana, always will,” Jay said, and she bent down and kissed her. Diana drank it all up, never wanting the moment to end, wishing that she could trade places with Jay, or at least grant her everything Jay had claimed she took for granted.