Chapter Five #3
Plus, she had the Devon to think about now, and it was just too fucking exhausting feeling poised to attack all the time.
“Fine,” she said, holding on to the post next to the boat, and stepping into the canoe. “But you’re paddling.”
Daphne made a noise behind her, but April was too busy scrambling to sit down on the bench on one end, wobbling as she did so, to pay her much mind.
Daphne, for her part, glided into the canoe as though she’d lived on one half her life.
She untied the vessel, then picked up the yellow paddle and closed her fingers around the T-grip, using the blade to push them away from the dock.
“Done much canoein’ in yer day down South?” April said, putting on an admittedly horrible Southern accent.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Daphne said calmly, except she sounded more like Emily Gilmore at the moment. April did hear the hint of a Southern twang in her voice at times, though, cutting off final consonants and using a few elongated vowels here and there.
“Have you?” Daphne asked. “Didn’t you grow up here?”
April lifted a brow. “And who told you that?”
Daphne sighed. “Why is every inquiry into your life taken as a knife in your back?”
April had no answer for her, really. At least, not one she wanted to get into at this moment. So she simply sighed dramatically, lifting her shoulders with the inhalation and jutting out her chin on the exhale.
Daphne dug the paddle into the water, moving them quickly away from the dock. Cloverwild grew smaller and smaller, and Clover Lake spread out before them, trees nothing but dark shapes against the blue-black sky.
“Yes, I grew up here,” April said finally. “Since I was nine. And I love the water. I just have horrible balance.”
Daphne smirked. “Was that so hard?”
“Excruciating.”
“Well, I’m about to ask you another question, so brace yourself.”
April grimaced. “I’d rather discuss the mating habits of brook trout.”
“Brook trout?”
“The official freshwater fish of New Hampshire.”
“Of course,” Daphne said. “I’m fascinated by their mating patterns.”
“As are we all.”
Daphne cracked a smile, and April very nearly mirrored her expression, but stopped herself just in time.
She didn’t want to smile at Daphne Love.
And she definitely didn’t want to answer any of her questions.
They fell silent, and Daphne sliced through the water one more time before setting the paddle across her lap. They drifted lazily in the darkness.
April tilted her head toward the dark sky packed with stars, hoping they could just stay like this—quiet, getting used to each other’s presence without having to deal with anything real. That was all she really needed. Simple adjustment. A settling in.
Of course, Daphne had other plans.
“So what exactly is your problem with me?” she asked.
April kept her gaze on the sky, eyes searching for constellations.
She could always spot Orion, the Big and Little Dippers, Cassiopeia.
Others were a little trickier, but she loved the hunt.
She wondered how long she could simply ignore the question, looking for Virgo and Hydra, but then something Daphne said on the dock floated back to her.
“Why have you had the worst spring of your life?” April asked, head still tilted to the heavens.
Daphne was quiet for a second. April spotted what she thought was the crab in the sky—Cancer.
“That’s how you’re going to play this?” Daphne finally asked. “Answering a question with a question?”
April looked at her now. “Tit for tat. And you answer first. Those are my terms.”
Daphne pursed her mouth. “Can’t we start with something easier, then?”
“Like what? Your favorite color?”
“Perfect,” Daphne said. “It’s gray. What’s yours?”
April gave her a look. “Gray. Your favorite color is…gray.”
“Even my favorite color annoys you?” Daphne asked.
“It doesn’t annoy me. I’m surprised, that’s all. I figured someone like you would pick lavender or baby blue or, like, fuchsia.”
“Someone like me?”
April sighed.
“Would you please stop doing that?” Daphne asked, teeth obviously gritted.
“Doing what?”
Daphne just pressed her eyes closed, shook her head, and took a deep breath. “I like gray because it’s soft and calm, like a cloudy day. A blanket pulled over the world. And I like the possibilities of it—it’s not black, it’s not white, just a million shades in between.”
April felt something in the center of her chest loosen. Daphne’s green eyes were big and liquid, and she looked at April as though waiting for her to offer back some sort of poetry about colors.
April cleared her throat, straightened her shoulders, then motioned toward her pants. “I like black.” And that was true, she did…but black wasn’t her favorite color. Not by a long shot.
Daphne pressed her lips together, nodded. “Got it.”
“Why did you have the worst spring of your life?” April asked again, barely letting a beat pass. She understood the absurdity here—she didn’t want to share her favorite color, for goddess’s sake, but she wanted to know all about Daphne’s pain.
Maybe she was a terrible human being.
Daphne dipped the paddle back into the water. For a few seconds, April didn’t think she was going to answer and they’d be back to square one talking about long walks on the beach or favorite ice cream flavors.
But then Daphne inhaled. The tiniest sound, the simplest motion, but the air dragged slowly into her lungs, as though fighting its way in against Daphne’s will, and April felt it.
A shift.
A knowing.
A familiarity.
“I thought I was going to get engaged,” Daphne finally said. “And instead…”
Her voice was quiet, but steady. April, however, felt her insides disintegrating. Daphne hesitated, then kept hesitating, her throat working in a swallow. April wanted to scream at her to go on, but somehow a softer side of her prevailed.
“Instead what?” she whispered. Even though she knew. Maybe Ramona was right about Daphne and Elena, and maybe April had known she was right the whole time, ever since Daphne showed up on the cabin’s porch teary and stressed.
Daphne smiled, but it was sad, resigned. “Instead, I got my heart broken.”
April let the truth settle between them. She waited to feel some kind of relief. Maybe even a little glee. She wasn’t proud, but there it was, her grudge-holding heart reaching for a tiny bit of smug satisfaction.
But she didn’t feel any of that.
She just felt an old ache, familiar and lonely.
“Elena,” Daphne said. “That’s her name.”
April just looked at Daphne, still digging for any clue that Daphne knew who she was. But there was nothing. Only a heartbroken woman sitting across from her.
“She’s older than me,” Daphne went on. “Eleven years. We met when I was a senior in college and I interned at the Museum of Fine Arts.”
April stayed silent.
“I know, right?” Daphne said, shaking her head and laughing a little. “Such a cliché. The young intern and her hot, single power-lesbian supervisor.”
That described Elena all right. Everything except…
“So she was single when you met her?” April asked.
Daphne frowned. “Of course she was.”
“You’re sure?” April asked.
Daphne blinked rapidly, clearly taken aback. “Yes. I’m sure. God, can you imagine? Why would you even ask me that?”
April opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
She could tell Daphne the truth. Just get it off her chest, clear the air, explain why she’d been such an asshole since they’d met.
But goddammit, she didn’t want to feel like this again—the ex, the woman scorned, the one who was left.
And if she told Daphne the everything right now, that was who she’d be.
All summer. Every art class. Every time she walked into the cabin to find Daphne reading or snuggling with Bob, that’s all she would be.
Elena’s ex.
And that’s not who she was anymore.
So she offered Daphne a scrap, the tiniest crumb of truth.
“I get it,” April finally said. “I had a fiancée.”
Daphne sniffed. “You did?”
“Once upon a time. She was…well, she was lovely. Until she wasn’t.”
Daphne’s lips pressed flat. “I’m so sorry.”
April shrugged. “It was a long time ago. I got over it, and so will you.”
Daphne’s eyes welled again. “What was her name?”
April sent her gaze skyward again. She could feel Daphne’s silence though.
She waited for it to pass—she could wait anyone out, never had to say a word.
April was content to hold her secrets close, always had been.
She waited and she waited, but the quiet between them just grew thicker.
April looked for more shapes in the stars, looked for herself, though she knew Scorpius was in the southern sky.
“You do that a lot,” Daphne said.
April didn’t look at her. “Do what?”
“Look at the stars.”
April’s gaze drifted over the heavens. “I guess I do.”
“Why?” Daphne had turned them around and started paddling again, the canoe slicing through water and air toward Cloverwild.
And for a split second, wildly, April wanted to tell her.
Tell her something real. Something true.
She wanted to tell her about the loneliness of her childhood, all about her parents’ desire for a child and the child they actually got.
She wanted to tell her about her grandmother teaching her about astrology, about going to the library and devouring everything she could find about star charts and signs.
How it all made April feel like she had a reason.
Like she was a reason, as opposed to a random amalgam of cells her parents would’ve altered if they could.
But then April heard laughter from Cloverwild’s dock, and April remembered who Daphne was, who she was, how she hadn’t told these stories to anyone since the night she’d fallen in love with Elena Watson.
And that was the way she’d rather keep it.
“No reason,” she said, eyes locked on the dock, on her freedom from this conversation. She still had no clue how she was going to get through this summer with Daphne, but she was an adult. She’d acted like an asshole, yes, but she could figure out how to move past all of this.
She’d done it before with no help from Daphne Love or Elena Watson.
She’d fucking do it again.
April took a deep breath, nodding to herself, but noticed Daphne had stopped paddling again, about twenty feet from the dock. Daphne watched her with an expression April couldn’t really parse. Eyes softly narrowed, but mouth taut—curiosity and suspicion all at once.
“What?” April asked.
“You suck at tit for tat,” Daphne said.
April laughed lightly. “Maybe I do.”
“Why did you ask me if Elena was single when I met her?”
April’s spine went rigid. “I was—”
“Because that’s not exactly a normal question to ask someone who just went through a breakup.”
April cleared her throat, looked down at her lap now. “I was curious. That’s all.”
But Daphne shook her head, sadness spilling into her expression now. “I don’t think so.”
“Goddamn water signs,” April said under her breath.
“She cheated on you, didn’t she?” Daphne asked softly. “Your ex.”
And it felt like taking a bullet. The shock of Daphne’s assessment. Yes, it had been three years. April felt no pain for Elena herself, but she still felt the heartache of the act—the heartache and betrayal, how disposable it had made her feel.
“Yes,” April said curtly. “She did, okay? She dumped me like a piece of trash three years ago. Now can you row us back to the dock?”
Daphne didn’t start paddling though. She simply stared at April with a devastated look on her face. And dammit, for all of Daphne’s emotional transparency, April couldn’t tell if it was pity, empathy, or some clairvoyant knowing.
“What was her name?” Daphne asked again.
“Fuck,” April said quietly, then looked down at her lap, picked at her chipping black nail polish. And she knew she couldn’t do it—couldn’t lie to Daphne, no matter how much easier this would be if she did. Blissful ignorance and all that.
And maybe part of her wanted the truth out there, the air fully cleared. Maybe a smaller part of her wanted Daphne to know—wanted her to understand exactly how and why and when and who.
Maybe, really, she just wanted to exist in this sordid history, because ever since yesterday when it became clear that Elena had never once mentioned April’s name to Daphne—April, who Elena had asked to marry her once upon a time—April felt like she was disappearing.
She thought about her parents, about Ramona, about her complete lack of other adult friends.
She’d been disappearing for a while now.
Maybe her whole life, one tiny millimeter at a time.
And goddammit, she was tired of it. She didn’t want to be Elena’s ex, no.
But she had to be something, didn’t she?
Someone.
So she sent a hand through her hair and met Daphne’s probing gaze. “Her name was Elena.”