Chapter Seventeen #2
April just sniffed. “Where did you learn how to fight dirty?”
“I had a bossy older sister in a small town where we called the lake a watering hole. I’m country.” She smiled softly, a bit more distance between them now as she trailed her fingers through the water.
“Do you miss them?” April asked. “Your sister and your parents?”
Daphne flinched as though April had sent another wave of water into her face.
“Sorry,” April said. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Daphne said, looking up at the sky.
April swam a little closer. She made sure to keep her chest covered, despite the fact that Daphne had already seen everything. Somehow, this didn’t feel like a tits out kind of conversation. If Daphne was willing to have it at all. She was still quiet, still gazing at the stars.
“Which one is the crab again?” she asked.
April looked up too, searching for the constellation between the clouds, but she couldn’t find it.
“Hidden,” she said.
Daphne huffed through her nose. “Figures.”
And it took her a second, but then she started to talk. As she did, her eyes weren’t on the sky, nor were they on April, but following her own hands through the water.
“I do miss them. A lot,” she said. “My mom is beautiful and kind and gentle. She’s funny too.
So smart and creative. She used to give us watercolor lessons, and she painted the most gorgeous sunsets.
They were incredible. I use a lot of her techniques in our class, actually, like how to do the perfect graded wash.
I’ve still never seen anything that equals her work, even in Boston.
But her life…it’s just not one I ever wanted. Not like my sister.”
“What’s your sister’s name?”
“Amelia. She’s three years older than me. And I was supposed to follow her example, right? This paragon of what a good Christian girl looked like, going to Sunday school and fantasizing about marrying the town golden boy and making sure I only dreamed good Christian girl dreams.”
“When did you realize you didn’t want a golden boy?” April asked.
Daphne grinned. “That I wanted a Golden Girl instead?”
“Well, Blanche is very hot,” April said, laughing.
Daphne laughed too. “Her name wasn’t Blanche, but I was nine when Danielle McCrae grabbed my hand during a tornado drill and held it for, like, five minutes.”
“Were you about to throw up?”
“Oh my god, it’s amazing I didn’t,” Daphne said, splashing April again, but lightly this time. “Your turn. How old were you when you realized you were queer?”
“Oh, god, Leigh Reynolds,” April said, dropping her face into her hands.
“An embarrassing story?” Daphne asked. “I’m intrigued.”
“Not embarrassing so much as long-standing.”
Daphne’s posture went a little straighter, but April ignored it, kept talking.
“Leigh is nonbinary and helped me realize I was pansexual when I was sixteen. I like all genders, and it really depends on the person for me,” April said. “But Leigh was—is—a total fuckboi.”
“Oh, like Sasha?” Daphne asked.
April laughed. “Exactly like Sasha.”
Daphne nodded and looked down, inspecting her wrinkling fingertips. “So…do you still see Leigh?”
“Oh, god, no,” April said.
And maybe April only imagined it, but she could swear that Daphne’s shoulders dropped a little.
“At least, not since last summer,” she went on. “I just got tired of the whole scene. And Leigh made it pretty clear they weren’t into the vibe anymore when I got a little too snuggly one night.”
Daphne widened her eyes. “April Evans? Snuggling?”
“I know, I know, I’m still processing the whole ordeal.”
Daphne laughed but then grew serious. “Actually, I don’t think it’s so hard to imagine.”
Somehow, they’d gotten even closer as they talked, the nearly nonexistent current pulling them together. April could see a water droplet on Daphne’s bottom lip.
“No?” April asked, her voice a whisper.
“No,” Daphne said. She stared at April, eyes soft, her irises flashing from green to black as wispy clouds passed over the silver moon. Unspoken words floated between them, but April understood somehow.
She understood that if she swam a little closer, Daphne wouldn’t move away.
And she understood that if she set her hands on Daphne’s waist under the water, pulling her closer still, Daphne would let her.
April also understood that when all this happened, and they bumped noses, laughing into the night air, Daphne’s lashes fanning beautifully across her cheekbones, she wanted to kiss Daphne.
And Daphne wanted to kiss her.
And maybe it was wild and reckless. Maybe she wanted to experience something new and exciting—kissing a pretty girl while half-naked in a lake—but April didn’t care.
Because why shouldn’t she kiss Daphne Love if that was what she wanted?
And why shouldn’t Daphne have what she wanted too?
Why couldn’t they reach out and take it, whatever it was at any given moment in their lives, whatever was possible?
Seemed to April, they’d both spent a hell of a lot of time not taking anything.
She yanked Daphne even closer, fingers spreading over her torso, thumbs pressing into her bare hips. Daphne gasped a little, smiled a little too, right before their mouths met. The mineral scent of the lake surrounded them, the water rippling as they moved, but April barely noticed any of it.
There was only Daphne.
Daphne and the moon and the stars.
The tang of lake water on Daphne’s mouth, the sounds she made as April tugged at her lower lip, then licked into her mouth. Daphne’s hands rested on April’s shoulders, but soon dipped into her hair, pulling at the roots just a little.
Just enough to make April crazy.
But this was all crazy anyway, and April wanted nothing more than to lean in.
All the way in.
She slid her hands down Daphne’s hips, then around her waist to pull her flush against her own body, not a breath of space between them. April slid her mouth down to Daphne’s neck, swirling her tongue just under her ear.
Another gasp, and the sound went straight to April’s clit.
She felt ravenous, almost unhinged. Granted, she hadn’t had sex in a while, and she knew how to take care of herself just fine.
But this wasn’t the anonymous lust she felt when she watched porn or read a superspicy novel and then reached for a favorite toy in her nightstand drawer.
This was Daphne.
This was…
Fuck, this was trouble.
Daphne made a sound then—so sweet and provocative at the same time, her fingers sliding to April’s face to take her chin in her hands—and April pulled back.
Daphne inhaled sharply at the shock of it, but she didn’t protest. She didn’t move at all, really, except to look at April, their eyes locked.
Then Daphne pressed one more kiss to April’s mouth—soft, sweet—before putting a bit more space between them.
She kept her arms draped over April’s shoulders, however, and April felt her eyes start to sting with how much she liked them there.
And she couldn’t.
There was nothing but disaster down that road.
“I think I finally have an idea for the Devon,” she said.
Daphne’s brows lifted, and, just as April suspected she would, she removed her arms from April’s shoulders. April felt the loss immediately. She had a wild urge to grab Daphne’s wrists, circle them back around her neck.
“Oh?” Daphne said. She smiled softly, knowingly, as though she could see right through April’s chest to every conflicting part of her heart—the want and the denial, the exhilaration and the fear and the uncertainty.
April nodded, but she didn’t know what else to say, and Daphne didn’t ask.
They hadn’t made a habit of talking about the Devon, sharing ideas, or asking about each other’s progress.
April, of course, had seen the first incredible installment of Daphne’s series—what April assumed was a series—and knew Daphne was hard at work in the studio on more.
But she never asked.
And Daphne didn’t either.
It was easier to pretend the Devon was happening to both of them separately, had nothing to do with the other person at all, than face the reality that they were competing.
Which was probably why April had said what she’d said. Deep down, she knew the Devon would put a stop to everything happening in this lake right now, the ultimate cold shower.
And she was right.
She and Daphne watched each other for a second, everything floating between them like stardust.
“We should probably head back,” April said.
For a second, Daphne looked stricken, but she covered it up so quickly, April wondered if she’d imagined it.
“Yeah,” Daphne said softly, then started swimming for the shore. “We probably should.”
April sat on the porch late into the night, her sketchbook open on her lap.
As it turned out, Ramona’s engagement news paired with rage painting and topped off with kissing her ex’s ex—again—was excellent creative fodder. All that angst and turmoil, the lust and the panic and the loneliness. An artist’s dream, really.
She shook out her hand, achy from the sketching of the last couple of hours, the side of her palm coated in graphite. She was left-handed, so any work with a pencil—a marker, paints, anything, really—always left her hand and fingers a mess.
Her sketchbook was a mess too. A beautiful, feverish mess, full of smudged pencil and bits of eraser peppering the pages, but she already had five full sketches.
They were rough—just outlines of what she’d do in the final medium, which would be pencil and pastels on thick textured paper, but they were there.
They existed.
She flipped back to the first drawing—the Fool.
In the sketch, she’d drawn a young version of herself, no tattoos at all—not yet, at least—a beatific smile on her face, her eyes lifted to the sky, while one foot stepped off the edge of a cliff.
Behind her, a hand reached out to grab her shirt and hold her back but couldn’t quite get to her.
Beyond her, a city gleamed. Above her, a sky full of stars sharing space with a blazing sun.
In her mind, the colors she planned and the way it all came together in the final product were dreamy and ethereal.
Uncanny and wild and strange and even a little silly.
Just like her.
She flipped the page to the Magician, then the High Priestess, followed by the Empress and the Emperor. Each illustration was her, each one depicting classic tarot imagery blended with her own story, her own journey.
She smiled down at her work, her fingers already itching to get started on her final products, which would certainly take some time.
Right now, though, she didn’t have the materials she needed, and she wanted the full picture first, all twenty-two biographical—evolutionary—Major Arcana sketched out and ready.
She sat back in the chair, resting her head against the back. She felt good. She felt empty and full all at once, that blissful, exhausted sensation she got when she created something she truly loved, something that made her feel alive.
Made her feel like she had a purpose.
“Finally,” she whispered to herself, her eyes on the sky above.
It was fully cloudy now, the stars hidden from view, but she knew they were still there, fixed and steady while the world turned.
She knew she should take a break and go to bed—Daphne had been asleep for hours—but she felt anything but tired right now.
She felt motivated and driven and inspired, and she never wanted it to end.
She flipped a page, ready to start on the Hierophant, but her pencil hovered over the blank page. She had a plan for this stage, this card about knowledge and external systems, about breaking free from the expected and the orthodox.
But suddenly, she saw a flash in her mind, a vision for the next card in the set. It wasn’t her original idea for this card, but she couldn’t stop seeing it—a recent memory—and maybe she simply needed to release it, expunge it, before she could move on.
She flipped the page and her pencil started moving before she even made a decision to draw.
Soon, she was looking down at Mirror Cove and two people in the lake.
One was her, of course, tattoos and bare shoulders, her hair slicked back and her lashes spiked with water.
The other person had damp lavender curls and lovely collarbones, her fingers soft on April’s face.
Their heads were close, a kiss either just about to happen or already experienced. Or both.
April stared at the image.
The Lovers.
She blew out a long breath and ripped the page free from the wire rings, bits of torn paper dangling in the air. She was about to ball it up, toss it in the recycling when she went inside, but instead, she folded it once and slid it inside the folder attached to her sketchbook’s back cover.
Then she flipped back to the Hierophant and started to draw.