twenty-one #2
When she brought this up with her mother later, after dinner, in which Mira was too distracted to flirt with Sulim beneath the table, Joiya said, “Yes, your father has been here a couple of times to see some sites for himself. He comes at night so nobody will recognize him.”
Mira must have looked more hurt than she thought, for her mother did a double take before crossing the room to take Mira’s hand.
“I’m sorry, did you want to see him, my heart?”
“Well, he is my father…”
“I just assumed that you’d rather not see him for now. You two don’t get along that well when under duress.”
She shrugged. “Now I know why you’ve stayed in town a couple of nights. Were you meeting up with Ba?”
“You make it sound so scandalous, my heart.”
“I didn’t mean like that.”
Joiya giggled. “I do love to hug your father.”
Mira didn’t know if that was a euphemism, and she didn’t want to know.
She had enough of her own romantic bullshit to deal with.
Such as when she met up with Sulim in the woods the next day, their passion taking them straight up to the loft before anyone could call one of them on their communicators.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Sulim propped herself up on her arm as she loomed over Mira, both of them naked beneath the blanket adorning the loft. “Like, a few months ago, it was preposterous that I would be…”
“Having an affair?” Mira supplied. “With me?”
Sulim slowly shook her head. She was so approachable, so lovely with her hair mussed from being in bed that Mira wished she could convey to the world how happy she was right now.
“Falling in love.” Sulim turned slightly, staring upward toward the low ceiling. “Fuck. I can’t believe I just said that out loud.”
Mira wrapped her arm around Sulim’s torso, encouraging her to come closer, as if they hadn’t just been physically inseparable for half the afternoon. “Are you telling me you’re not familiar with the sensation?”
“I thought I was,” Sulim admitted, as she melted into Mira’s arms.
Her nose was soon between Mira’s breasts, inhaling her scent as warm, tender fingers crawled up her bare back.
“But this is different. It’s not just… exciting? It’s like I can’t get enough of you. It’s hard to imagine this ever getting old.”
Has it gotten old with others before? Mira didn’t ask because she knew the answer.
It had been much the same for her over those past five centuries.
There were times I thought I was in love…
Especially when she was an adolescent who explored lovemaking with other women as if it would define the finest points of her life.
In a way, it had, but as the centuries went by, she realized that there was a large difference between sexual pleasure and romantic love.
The former was much easier to find than the latter.
In fact, love was never expected with sex.
Until now, she supposed.
“Believe it or not,” Mira said, stroking the back of Sulim’s head as they lay together in front of the sunny loft windows, “I think I’m falling in love with you, too.”
“Ha! No way.”
“Why do you say that?”
Sulim buried her whole face where her nose had been just a moment before.
“Because you’re… you. Who the hell am I?”
Her voice was so muffled that Mira almost didn’t understand her.
“I’m just some human, you know? We have our business. I’m already married. How presumptuous of me to assume that you could fall in love with me?”
Mira had to hold back the laugh threatening to shake her throat—and her whole body, thereby ruining how nice it felt to hold Sulim so close. “If you can say words like presumptuous, then I clearly didn’t make love to you hard enough.”
Although Sulim was wooed by that, enough to keep them both up there for another couple of precious hours, it brought something up that had been on Mira’s mind.
Especially when around her aloof mother, who was now dragged into Graella’s wedding planning when she wasn’t helping Ramaron with their research.
She knows who my soulmate is. Mira watched as her mother talked to her husband on a communicator late at night, eyes alight from their secret language that conveyed who they were to each other.
Although Joiya was lighthearted enough to talk about the wedding, she kept circling back to how “free and boisterous” the energy was on Arrah, which was due for a nitrous storm soon—the first since the julah arrived.
She won’t tell me who it is. Had the woman already come and gone?
Dead to the world? Returned to the Void? Does she not want to break my heart?
She thought of Sulim waiting for her up in the loft, the book Mira had given her close to her chest as she gazed out the window.
More than once, Mira had caught her like that in the mornings, the easiest time for them to have a tryst without suspicion.
Sulim was angelic in the way she indulged her imagination, the curve of her throat tilted while her hair curled around her ear.
She had such a feminine, dainty way about her despite the tomboyish looks.
She’s the opposite of me. Mira had a masculine quality despite being traditionally feminine, especially when her grandmother could get her in a dress for a family portrait.
Sulim has never seen me in anything but my Temple whites.
And naked. She had seen her naked a few times by now.
Mira continued to stare at her mother, who went into the other room as she lowered her voice and told her husband a dirty joke that their daughter wasn’t supposed to hear. The only woman to talk to the High Priest like that…
A lump formed in her throat. She thought of her parents’ love story, about how their love even included one other—about how messy the whole idea of a soulmate was.
The person who shares your aura. The one who would die for you.
She thought of her mother’s aura reading at Graella’s party in the backyard.
When Joiya hung up and walked back into the bedroom, a romantic smile on her mien, her daughter got up and commandeered her attention.
“Is Sulim my soulmate, Ma?”
Joiya was so stunned by the question that she didn’t immediately answer.
“I need to know. Because I love her, and it’s the kind of love that I haven’t experienced before. It’s not like…” Mira inhaled a deep breath before she lost her nerve. “It came hard and fast, yeah, but she’s human. And she’s married. And we would cause a lot of problems if we…”
She took a step closer to her mother. Joiya remained silent.
“If I love her.”
Joiya put her communicator on the bed and opened her arms to her daughter.
“No… seriously? Is that why we’re actually here? So I would be forced around Sulim?”
The thing about Mira’s mother was that she was a font of nonverbal communication.
A single tilt of her head, a raise of her brow, or a flex of her fingers said more than many words.
She could look right into her daughter’s eyes and see more than her soul—she saw the heart that beat there, the frantic worries in the mind, and the blood circulating until the end of natural life.
She looked at Mira right now with a mother’s pride, but it was tinged with sorrow. An acknowledgement that things would not be easy, but for now, they were wonderful.
Mira went for that embrace. Well, her mother’s hugs were always great, but this time? When she bared her heart to the woman who had borne her?
She could finally confess to being in love. For the first time in her life, she understood one of her mother’s most powerful emotions that drove her to the ends of the universe.
Love. Hard, passionate, life-changing love.
And it had finally come to Mira Dunsman in the unlikeliest place.