16. Tess #2
“I mean, I should not have kissed you at all,” she amends. “I already know you don’t want to get involved with anyone until Shel is older, and Dieu sait that I don’t have time to get involved with anyone either. Also you live here, so there’s that, and it’s just…”
She toys with the end of the lead rope, plucking at a loose thread before looking into my eyes again.
“It’s way too complicated, isn’t it? I was up all night thinking about how…how stupid it was.”
It shouldn’t hurt to hear her say that. It shouldn’t hurt to hear the truth.
Still, I press a hand to my stomach as it flexes like I’ve been punched.
“Yeah. It was stupid.”
Sam lets out a loud snort and bobs his head, like he agrees with us. Jacinthe chuckles, and somehow, I find myself laughing too.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I tell Jacinthe. “It was, uh, a team effort, wouldn’t you say?”
She nods. “Something like that.”
“I’m sorry too, for what it’s worth. I don’t know what I was thinking, inviting you over in the middle of the night…”
I picture the moment in my truck when the invitation slipped out of my mouth, and the truth is that I do know what I was thinking.
I was thinking I didn’t want the night with her to end. I never planned to kiss her. I just knew I had to be near her. I knew whatever lit up inside me last night would grow cold and dark the second she stepped away.
“I thought you were just being friendly?” she says, smirking.
I have to turn away while I fight to stop imagining how fast I could wipe the smirk off her face if I walked over and kissed her again right now.
“Yeah, well, look how that ended up,” I mutter while flicking some dirt off the top of Pierrot’s stall door.
I have to get this conversation back on track. I can’t flirt with her when I’m supposed to be putting a stop to this for good.
“The truth is, I’m attracted to you.” I force myself to meet her gaze. “I should have handled it better. I should have known better than to put us in that position.”
Her eyes scan my face, and I wonder what she sees. I wonder if she can tell how thin my resolve is, like the slimmest gold veneer painted over a much weaker metal underneath.
“I’m attracted to you too.”
Her voice is low enough it almost doesn’t reach me, and I see it in her again, just for a flash of a second: that softness. That part of her she keeps tucked away from the world.
“Y-you are?” I stammer.
“Duh,” she says with an exaggerated eye-roll. “What do you think last night was?”
She rakes a hand through her hair, leaving it rumpled.
“You’re, uh, not my usual type,” she tells me. “I did not even think I was into other butches, but you’re just…”
She flicks her hand out to gesture up and down my body while her eyes trace the same path. I can feel heat spreading all the way from my toes to my forehead, like she’s touched me everywhere she’s looked.
My tongue is too thick in my mouth to speak. All I can do is stand there at her mercy until she clears her throat and shrugs.
“So, what do we do now?” she asks.
I latch onto the reminder that we’re supposed to be taking action. I came out here to solve a problem, not create another one.
“We have to forget about it.”
I sound rushed, desperate, like I’m clinging to the edge of a cliff.
I force myself to slow down.
“I mean, it can’t ever happen again.”
Jacinthe nods, just once, before she goes back to picking at the loose thread in the lead rope.
“Right. You’re right.”
Her voice has become too monotone to read, especially when she’s not looking at me anymore.
The longer I stare at her, the more I feel like there’s a fist squeezing around my heart, tightening its grip with every second of uncertainty.
“Not that I don’t want?—”
I cut myself off before I can finish that sentence.
Even saying the things I want feels dangerous, like a forbidden incantation in a spell book waiting to unleash an unknown chaos.
“I mean, it’s just, with Shel,” I say instead, “and us living here, it’s…complicated.”
“I know,” Jacinthe says. “I get it. Trust me. I understand.”
I remind myself she has commitments too. She knows what it’s like to have so much riding on your shoulders that a single misstep can send your whole life toppling out of control.
“I know you do.”
We hold each other’s gaze this time, and it’s almost like we’re making a vow, a declaration, a bond to a single truth:
There is something in us that’s the same.
Then we snap apart, retreating into ourselves.
“So, we’re in agreement, then?” I say, stuffing my hands back in my pockets and giving her a curt nod, like this is all business. “It was stupid. It won’t happen again, and as for being attracted to each other, we’ll just…let that go.”
I do my best not to grimace. I sound na?ve even to myself, but I can’t see another option.
We have to let it go.
“I mean, lots of people are attracted to each other and never do anything about it,” I say, jerking my shoulders up in what I hope is a passable shrug. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal. We’re both adults. We can handle it.”
Jacinthe plants her hand on her hip.
“Yeah,” she says, in that same monotone voice from earlier. “Of course. So now we just…go back to normal?”
I cross my arms in addition to my legs, tying myself in knots to mirror the ones in my stomach.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. We go back to normal.”
I try to picture what normal even means, and I can’t.
I don’t know if there ever was a normal when it comes to Jacinthe. I watched this woman scream bloody murder at a deranged donkey the day I met her, and I think maybe I’ve been utterly fascinated by her ever since.
Still, normal can’t include kissing her, and normal is what I’m here for, after all. I’m here to build a normal, stable, functional life. A life I can count on. A life Shel can count on.
I cling to the thought of Shel, to the sight of her running up the driveway after school, a huge smile on her face as she returns to the place she’s starting to think of as home.
I can do normal for her.
“So,” Jacinthe says, reaching for the latch on Sam’s door. “Are you gonna help me with these horses or just stand there all morning?”
I chuckle and flip her the bird, and then we get to work.