Chapter 5
five
. . .
Akilah crosses her arms over her chest, then lets them fall again three times before she realises she’s doing it.
Someone in the corner is staring at her, and it’s not a kind stare.
It’s a what-are-you stare, and Akilah hasn’t eaten in hours, so she’s thirty seconds away from running straight out of the cafe.
Dressing this way is supposed to make people wonder, just not in a I’m going to tell the café owner you came out of the women’s bathroom, way.
Growing up, how she dressed was a contentious issue at home.
Her parents were fine with her transitioning, but they never understood why she would, only to dress like a teenage boy, or an old man let free in an outdoor clothing shop.
It’s a conversation she’s had with herself so many times.
Akilah didn’t feel comfortable in her body until she hit her thirties.
Then, everything slowly fell into place.
Life didn’t end. She can be a woman and wear all black. She can be a woman and have underarm hair. She can be a woman; however, it works for her.
Still, dealing with other people is not something she does well.
Akilah doesn’t react. She barely moves. Returns to the safe place in her mind and replays the ride home for the twenty-seventh time.
In version eleven, she told Tanner she wanted to see her again.
Version fifteen involved her apologising for their initial meeting.
Version eighteen required legal counsel.
In version twenty, Tanner kissed her goodnight.
In the real version, she said something vague about not liking sex, and now Tanner probably wanted to throw a book at her.
“Akilah?” the person behind the counter calls. Oh. It’s her from the bar. Daisy. Akilah smiles as best she can as she reaches for her food. By the look on Daisy’s face, it’s a grimace at best. Akilah hovers for a moment too long. Would it be weird to ask her for Tanner’s number? Probably.
“I—” Never mind. Her heart races, and she feels a groan at the base of her throat. Daisy, (though then Akilah’s gaze falls on her name badge. Darcy, she knew that.) smiles at her and then looks behind her so obviously that Akilah follows her gaze.
Tanner. Light above her, like the heavens shining down on an angel, when it’s a gaudy overhead light, managing to make her look like artwork.
She’s working on something, a bowl of fries next to her.
There’s a chair opposite her. Darcy raises her eyebrows a few times.
God, why is walking over making her pulse thump in her ears?
Tanner looked like a daydream in her car.
Smiling and making conversation easily, even as Akilah forced it to be weird with one-word answers.
Her laugh filled the silences that Akilah would have made awkward without even trying, and Akilah didn’t even look at her as she left.
But she has thought about her every hour; that must count for something.
“Hi.”
Tanner looks up at her, glasses perched on the end of her nose. She smiles far too brightly. Oh, she’s beautiful.
“Hi.”
Akilah fidgets on the spot like she’s thirteen again and about to leave the house in a skirt for the first time. She takes a breath, thinks about how soft Tanner’s jumper looks. Thinks about rolling the cuffs of her sleeves back so she can see her hands.
“Can-”
The woman from earlier comes over. She looks her up and down again—Akilah’s blood spikes.
“Excuse me.”
Akilah chews on her lip. “Yeah?”
“Do you know where the bathroom is?”
“It’s over in the back corner,” she replies. The woman looks her up and down more slowly. Then she looks to Tanner. “Oh, are you on a date?”
Tanner replies too fast. “No.” Offensive.
“Cool,” the woman replies. Then turns back to Akilah. “Can I get your number?”
Akilah frowns. “I don’t date.”
“Oh,” she responds, then she bites her lip, looks vaguely like she might choke on it. Flutters her lashes so hard that Akilah almost asks if she has something in her eye. “Are you sure?”
Tanner scoffs. “She said no.”
Akilah sits down, using the awkwardness to take the seat that she wouldn’t have had the courage to take if not.
Tanner doesn’t talk, doesn’t even look at her.
Akilah pulls her sandwich out of the brown wrapper, sighs and drags out her tablet.
She’s not sure why she thinks she’ll be able to figure out what’s wrong with the brief if she hasn’t so far.
“What’s wrong?” Tanner asks, not looking up from her task at hand. She is using chopsticks to eat her fries. Akilah pulls some pens out of her bag, lines them up and lines them up again.
“Nothing.” Only the fear that she’s going to lose her livelihood because she doesn’t have a single artistic bone in her body, but annoyingly specific ideas, and the jealousy of the woman who walked straight up and asked for her number, while Akilah can’t figure out how to get Tanner’s, and her boots are brushing against her shoes.
Tanner looks at her. “Can you tell me the truth on the first try?”
Akilah frowns. “I-”
Tanner’s face softens. “Give it a moment. No rush. I’ll be here.”
Akilah stares at her tablet until everything feels less fuzzy.
She’s just going to sign it and be done with it.
It’ll be safe, and she can redecorate over the coming years if needed.
Downtown is a culture. People love it there, and they’ll still love it there even if they feel like they might see the Teams notification every three seconds.
Tanner drags her pencil over her sketchbook. Akilah wants to ask her about it. Akilah wants to talk to her. She wants to know what she’s thinking about and if she’s thought about her. She’s never been one to hold a conversation. Floating through life on raised eyebrows and grunts alone.
“I’m sorry,” Akilah says.
Tanner frowns, darkening a line, pen tight between her fingers. “Why?”
She reorganises her pens again. It’s not until the tops are aligned that she speaks. “I was rude to you the day we met.”
Tanner gasps, sitting upright. “Oh, are you finally apologising?”
“That’s what sorry means.” Akilah frowns. “I didn’t murder your cat.”
Tanner laughs, resting her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand. “Good start,” she replies, wiggling her eyebrows. She doesn’t seem annoyed. Wildly distracting as she smiles at her.
“I wasn’t prepared to see you,” Akilah says.
Focusing on the loose thread on Tanner’s jumper collar.
“And I was annoyed that I’d left something important so late.
I didn’t mean what I said. Well, I did mean it.
I didn’t mean how it sounded. I wanted to look at your portfolio, I meant I didn’t want the pink cover, because that’s what I saw.
I struggle sometimes with how things sound.
I’m always going for direct, but perhaps it didn’t come out like that. ”
Tanner looks at her for real, like she can see through all her bullshit. The persona that she doesn’t care if this fails. Akilah looks down at her paper again, then she looks back because Tanner still hasn’t spoken.
Tanner smiles again, but it’s not as wide. It hits her in the gut all the same. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Akilah clenches her fingers. “Okay, what?”
Tanner shrugs. “Okay. I’ll let you off because my shoes weren’t ruined, and your club flooding is a good enough reason to be difficult.”
Akilah shoves her hands between her thighs. “I didn’t mean to be.”
“If I forgive you, will you stop looking so tortured?”
“That’s my face,” she replies. Tanner laughs again.
Then, finally gives her respite and picks up her pencil.
Akilah could move too. Start working on her brief again, but she’s acutely aware of how she already lined her pens up twice, how she’s already tapping her heels slightly, how she’s already obviously different.
“You’re thinking too loud for that to be your face,” Tanner says as she sketches. Oh. “You’re distracting me.”
Akilah swallows. Her parents used to stop her from fidgeting. She tried her best to keep her stimming at bay – she already brought difficulties to the home, let alone annoying people at the dinner table.
When she bought her house, she got used to making a little noise.
The way her hands move didn’t wind her up, so she can stop, but it’s work.
It’s quiet for a moment. Akilah usually likes the quiet.
It’s safe and soft and doesn’t demand anything from her.
She exists in the silence between conversations and the stillness between events.
She’s never willingly entered something that wants more from her.
“I’m trying to figure out what these drawings mean,” she says before she can stop herself.
“Can you do it without looking like you’re mad that a tablet exists?”
“No.” Her hands are light against the tablet; she isn’t tapping, and she hasn’t groaned in at least four minutes. She racks her brain for what’s making her wound up. “I haven’t done anything.”
Tanner leans her neck back a little, her smile taking over her face as she looks up at her. “I’m only — doesn’t matter.”
“If you tell me what’s annoying, I can try and stop.”
Tanner tilts her head, the flicky ends of her hair falling to show her collarbone. Akilah wants her to sit up straight again, so she doesn’t try to trace it.
“You’re not annoying.” Tanner frowns, shaking her head. Akilah knows that she is. It’s why she gives her parents such grace. Autism and gender issues in one child were a lot for them. “I didn’t mean to make you think that. I was just … Why are you here? To say hi?”
“There are no other tables.”
She pouts. “So, not to say hi?”
“That’s the first thing I said.”
Tanner laughs, and Akilah tries to figure out if humour is that subjective, because she wasn’t particularly funny.
“What are you working on?” Tanner asks, not looking up from her sketch. She rubs out a line and redraws it. It looks the same to Akilah either way.