28 TOILING AND WAKING HOUR
28
T OILING AND W AKING H OUR
We walked the promenade side by side. Spring air simmered, buds unfurling on the sycamore branches, and everything smelled like new growth and rain. Night made it all a silhouette with Grainer’s facade behind it, like a stage where our play had been set.
Our hands brushed. I jerked, involuntarily—but Finch’s fingers found mine again and hooked. We’d been friends for so long. She’d kissed me into a slackened mess. Yet somehow that tentative touch was enough to turn me shy, like this was a first date and I was still learning the steps.
“You working at the library on Sunday?” she asked lightly, as if holding my hand were something she did every day.
I answered just as casually. “I think so, gotta check the schedule again.”
She squeezed my hand. Our shoulders were near enough that I could feel the heat of her through her hoodie’s thin sleeve. She led us out of the night and into Tuck House, up the stairs and down her hall, only dropping my hand when she had to fish out her keys.
Inside, we kicked our shoes off at the door, and she dropped her bag beside them. I followed her to the couch. The scent of incense lingered—I imagined her in this room alone, burning something with her eyes shut, the kind of meditative state she indulged in when the rest of us weren’t around. She reached for me. I let her pull me down until she was on her back with my head tucked against her shoulder. Our legs tangled together. Ankle to ankle. Her bare calf peeking out of the cuff of her pants. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d been alone like this, but my heart recalled. It was pounding like we’d been running. We lay in that silence for a while, her fingers stroking over my back, one of mine snaking beneath her hoodie and resting against her ribs. She smelled like a good dream. Like finally falling asleep.
“I wanted to do this in Michigan,” she murmured against my hair. “It was just weird, with everyone else there.”
“Me too,” I whispered. “But, I mean, Michigan was weird in general. Everything’s been weird for a long time.”
“Is this weird?”
Finch’s hand gestured loosely between us. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips dampened by her tongue. I wondered if she could feel my heartbeat in all the places we touched. Instead of answering, I leaned up and caught her smile—kissed her openly, hesitation falling away and simple comfort taking its place. It was so right, to be there with her, held against her chest, her hand sliding up to cup my cheek and fix me in place. Like something I’d waited all my life to earn.
“Not weird,” I whispered when we finally parted. The smile on her mouth made me want to kiss her again, so I did. Her fingers twined in my hair and held fast. I watched her map my face, gaze darting from eye to eye to nose to mouth and back up.
“Would you have been—” She stopped, hesitated. “If the others found out, would it embarrass you?”
“Of course not,” I answered honestly, even as my pulse picked up. “But it’s kind of nice like this, isn’t it? Not having to worry what the rest of them might think or say?”
She must have seen something anxious in my face, because she frowned.
“I just know they would give us shit for it,” I tried again. “And it’s not like either of us really know what we’re doing. So why try to justify it? Why not just ... enjoy the time we have?”
I turned my head so I could bury it against her throat and felt her chest rise and fall with a sigh. Her blunt nails scratched softly against my scalp. “You say that like there’s an expiration date. Do you want an expiration date, Jo?”
There was something buried beneath the question—the quiet uncertainty that characterized her insecurities, the fear that we were out of alignment. What did I want? To kiss her again. To leave it all unsaid. To paint her over and over and over. To go home to a house that I loved and find the people I loved in it. For the people I loved to love one another. To mend our rifts, to fill the cracks with gold, to watch it all glow.
“No,” I said. “I want everything good to last forever.”
She laughed. “You’re such a romantic.”
“And you’re not? You’re a painter, you love idealization.”
“Exactly, idealization. I’m not afraid to hope, but I also know where my expectations should lie.”
I tried to focus on the way her fingers locked in the short strands of hair at the nape of my neck, the warmth of her skin against my nose.
“I don’t know, I think it’s nice to dream,” I admitted. “Things don’t always have to change. We could all get a house somewhere out in South Bend or in the country. They’re always auctioning off old places for cheap. We could fix it up, build a studio.”
Finch exhaled. “Be realistic.”
“What’s so unrealistic about that? Why do your plans always leave us out?”
She sat up a little, forcing me up with her. “I’m not leaving you out, I’m trying to prevent you from getting hurt when these dreams don’t pan out. People have to move on with their lives, Jo. Caroline’s parents will get her some bougie apartment in Chicago or wherever else she wants to go. Amrita will probably end up with an internship in New York and Saz’s trust fund will give her her choice of the world. They can go anywhere, Jo. I don’t have any real money, and if I don’t Solo, my options are limited. I’ll try to get a job in the city. Hopefully I’ll find a cheap place to rent. And if I don’t, I’ll go home for a little while. It’s reality, Jo. Places like the Manor don’t exist outside of Rotham. It’s not worth pretending otherwise.”
“You don’t even try!” I said as I pulled away from her. “You don’t even want to imagine a world where we all might want to stay together because you can’t bear the thought that people might care about you, that we might want to spend time with you because we like spending time with you. And I know you and Caroline have your fights, and I know you’re your own person, but we take care of each other. Why would you want to isolate yourself from that? Why can’t you let someone else love you without trying to figure out what they want from you?” I hesitated, avoiding her eyes. “We’ve talked about it before. Caroline has said a million times that she and Saz could pool their savings and get an old place for us to fix up. You said it sounded nice.”
“Of course it sounds nice, Jo,” she murmured, one hand circling my ankle and squeezing. “You know it would be great. But do you really think Caroline’s parents would let her use their money to live with a bunch of lesbians in the countryside? I’m sorry, but it’s not going to happen.”
“Saz is bisexual,” I snapped pointlessly.
“Fine, one bisexual and four lesbians. You need to accept that Caroline will Solo and some gallery will love her work, and they’ll offer to represent her as a professional painter. She’ll go on to make amazing things, and she’ll be hanging in a museum by the time the rest of us are still finding our footing at a coffee shop, barely making rent.”
I yanked my foot out of her grasp and slid off the couch. The sigh she let out was fed up and exhausted. “You can go ahead and admit it,” I said, shrugging my coat back on. “You’re jealous of her. She has what you want and you can’t bear it.”
“Jesus Christ, Jo. You just need to get it through your head that it’s not going to be like this forever,” Finch snapped. “We leave. People move on. It all fucking changes.”
“I’m jealous too,” I admitted, as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “It’s impossible not to be. But you always think the worst of them. You never give us a chance.”
Finch shook her head, her voice softening. “You’re not listening to me. It doesn’t matter how I feel about any of you if that feeling isn’t rooted in reality. And I know it’s scary to think about, but you’re not a failure if you have to go home for a little while. You can take time to figure out where you want to go, and what you want to do, and who you want to become.”
There was no life if I left this one behind. The person I’d been before Rotham no longer existed. There was no home to go back to where I could find myself reflected unless they were there, filling its halls.
“I can’t,” I whispered. My eyes welled with tears. I didn’t want her to see me cry—somehow it was the most pathetic thing in the world. “I can’t go back there. I’m different now.”
Finch got to her feet and reached tentatively for my hand. When I let her take it, she pulled me into her again, wrapped her arms around my neck, pressed her cheek to mine. I closed my eyes and let her hold me.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Forget I said anything. You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to go. You know I love you.” Love , said like that, like it was so easy, like it still meant the same thing it had when we’d just been infatuated friends. “I’m just trying to keep you from getting hurt. I don’t want you to pin your hopes on Caroline.”
I nodded.
“We can go to sleep,” she whispered. “You don’t have to leave.”
I shook my head.
“Are you sure? It’s late. You shouldn’t walk home right now.”
She was so solid beneath me. Her fingers pressed down into my shoulders as if rooting me in place, fusing me with her.
“I’ll text you when I’m home,” I said against her throat, my hands drifting at the base of her spine. She hesitated—I could feel her pushing back, wanting to tell me that she was sorry again. But we let the silence live on. I pulled out of her grasp and laced my shoes back on.
“Wait,” she said finally. I watched her disappear into her room, heard her rummage somewhere unseen. When she finally reemerged, she took my hand and unfurled my fingers to press something into my palm. It was a little white pill, pale against my angry scar.
“Take this and get some rest tonight,” she murmured. “You look like you haven’t slept since last month.”
I scoffed a laugh, but her face remained serious. Her only goodbye was a tug on my arm and a kiss pressed to my temple, the kind of tender action that made me almost regret going.
But I wanted to be home with them in the Manor. I wanted to prove Finch wrong and to show her that we could figure things out, that we would choose each other with intention. We wanted to be artists. But what good was art when made alone? What reason would I have left to paint if it wasn’t about them, if they wouldn’t see it in completion?
Campus was barren during my walk home. The promenade wove past the woods, trees shaking in the dark, the breeze cool enough to raise chills along my arms beneath my jacket. I tried not to look into the black pockets of night. I was so afraid of my mind’s potential for invention—all the ways it could and would hurt me, all its opportunities for destruction.
But I caught the flicker of movement anyway. It was impossible not to; the shift was so stark against all that shadow that my eyes went right to it. Sight dissolved until the shape was a girl stepping into the woods, shrouded in a white dress, underdressed for the spring night. My first thought was Mother Crone. All those Rotham stories proving themselves to be true.
I stood and watched and waited. When my brain caught up to my body, my feet kicked into gear before I could fully realize what I’d seen.
It was Caroline making her way into the woods.
I shivered, already afraid, and I followed her to the trees.