Chapter Sixteen In Which an Illegal Concert Is Attended #5
“The grand gestures are the whole point,” Zada interjected. “You just haven’t watched all of Aurelie. In context, it’s—”
“See? This is what I mean. You think you’re this meek little mouse, but what you don’t see is how terrified everyone else is of embracing what makes them happy. But you revel in it.”
“Hardly,” Zada said, but Daphne was still going.
“Sure, you may revel quietly, but I see you. I always have. Hell, you shrink from offending anyone and you’re afraid to raise your voice, but then you turn around and refuse to marry Buford because you’re just that determined to find your true love, not the hollow charade this whole city is playing at. ”
“I broke off my friendship with you because I was afraid,” said Zada.
“You didn’t want to lose your scholarship.”
Their faces were very close now. Zada kept expecting Daphne to notice and back away, and Daphne kept staying. Daphne, with her mussed hair and her sad brown eyes. Zada wanted to lighten that sorrow more than she wanted her next breath, and in the end, that was the problem, wasn’t it?
“That wasn’t why,” said Zada slowly. “Not really.”
“It’s okay,” said Daphne. “When you stopped talking to me, it hurt so much that I never really tried to see it from your point of view. It wasn’t fair of me to expect you to risk everything for all my misadventures.
You didn’t have the privileges I did, and I was thoughtless enough to not consider that. ”
“No,” said Zada. “I mean, yes, that was part of it, but—” She took a deep breath.
She had come this far and Daphne apparently thought she was brave.
She could travel this road a little farther.
“I think what really scared me was how I felt. I would’ve done anything to make you laugh.
” She said it with something approaching violence. “And I mean anything, anything at all—”
“You can’t say that,” Daphne broke in. Her voice was rough and unsteady. She swallowed. “Zada, you can’t say things like that. I can get along fine so long as you don’t—”
“I’m sorry,” Zada said. “I know you love Flora—”
“What are you talking about?”
Zada was the first to break eye contact.
Her gaze flew to the fish behind Daphne, the chipped tile floor beneath them, anything to keep herself from what had to be pity in her best friend’s face as she breathed in again and said, in almost a whisper, “Come on, Daphne. All the signs are there. You’re not sleeping, you smile at nothing—”
She broke off. She couldn’t say more. Her voice had failed her. On the ground, one of the tiles was cracked almost exactly in half and in that moment, she felt for it a profound sympathy.
“Zada,” Daphne said slowly and clearly. “I promise you, I’m not in love with Flora.”
Daphne’s fingers were warm on the underside of Zada’s chin as they gently tilted her face back up again, and all of the air left Zada’s lungs. Daphne’s eyes no longer looked quite as sorrowful, and despite the tears threatening to prickle at her own eyes, she had to smile at that.
“I am such a coward,” said Daphne, reverent.
Zada was no longer following the thread of their conversation. She couldn’t follow anything beyond the beat of her own foolish heart, but she had to object to that. She shook her head, hard.
“You’re not,” she said, and she was leaning closer and closer, an echo of that moment in the attic all around them.
“Yes, I am,” said Daphne, “or I would’ve done this years ago.” And with that, she brought their lips together.
Zada didn’t immediately register that Daphne was kissing her.
The continents of her mind shifted, seismic.
The facts of her universe reshaped themselves, as if she would have to relearn gravity.
Or whatever was the opposite of gravity, whatever allowed for flight, because Daphne Fallow was kissing her in the ruins of an old aquarium, and Zada was half sure her feet had left the ground.
Daphne pulled away. “Um,” she said, eyes huge, blinking rapidly.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—” She took a step back.
Her shoulders were slumped, and that was when Zada realized that she hadn’t kissed her back, that as her entire world trembled and shook and rearranged itself, Zada had stood there stunned like a statue.
She reached up to place a hand at the nape of Daphne’s neck.
In most of the love stories she’d read, this was where instinct took over. The heroine didn’t have to decide to kiss her beloved, she was helpless not to. Love was surrendering to a force greater than yourself, as impossible to fight as the tide.
Zada, however, was keenly aware that she had a choice. There were a thousand reasons this was a bad idea, and despite Daphne’s belief in her courage, a part of Zada shook with fear. This wasn’t a story and there was no guarantee that they would be all right.
She knew that if she asked, Daphne would have readily agreed to never mention this again. They could go on as they had been, working together to prevent a marriage that didn’t quicken Zada’s pulse—with no acknowledgment of the mercurial, funny, fantastic person who did.
On the other hand, here was Daphne, dark-eyed and earnest, the very beginnings of cautious hope starting to flicker at one corner of her lips.
“Don’t apologize,” said Zada, with a ferocity that surprised even her, and then she tugged Daphne down and kissed her.
It was technically Zada’s third kiss, but it was the first one in which she was an active participant.
With her universe reshaped around the fact that Daphne had wanted to do this for years, Zada kissed her and kissed her, savoring the feel of their lips together, stepping closer and savoring the feel of Daphne’s arm around her waist, crushing their bodies together and savoring the feel of that, too.
When they had to break apart to breathe, Daphne rested their foreheads together, as if she couldn’t bear to move even an inch away.
“We can’t do this,” she whispered. “We can’t. You’re engaged.”
“Yes.” The enormity of their plans for tomorrow hit Zada all at once, nearly striking the air from her lungs again. She might have fallen over if not for Daphne’s hands at the small of her back. “But perhaps not for long?”
Daphne grinned. Her eyeliner had smudged badly into a raccoon-like mask, and her hair stood up in all directions. She had never looked better.
“Perhaps not,” she said.