I Have Come Home by Carla Bruce #3
“Me too,” Audrey pipes up. As the others follow suit, Blue listens, her smile widening, eyes aglow. She looks over at Diamond, at Cyrus, then at everyone else.
“Alright,” she declares. “First things first, y’all.” Reaching into her bag, she extracts a folder and opens it, revealing a stack of pages. “We need to get officially recognized as a student organization.”
“So, you’re heading home this weekend, right?
” Neese asks. They’ve just left a local coffee shop not far from campus, for a welcome change of homework scenery.
Around them, fresh snow drifts from a muted gray sky, a slow release after a long-held breath.
Her winter coat is long and cherry red, a vibrant thing against the backdrop of faded brick, ashy concrete.
“Yup,” Audrey says, leaning a shoulder against the wall beside her. “Taking the train.” She smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Fifteen hours alone with my thoughts.”
“That’s a lot of hours.”
“And a lot of thoughts.” A pause. Audrey seems to be studying Neese’s boots, which are a bit scuffed at the toes. “Probably most of them about you.”
The everyday hustle around them diminishes to insignificance, the jingle of shop doors opening and closing, the groups of students laughing to each other as they pass them on the sidewalk, the occasional honk of a horn as cars navigate the powdery streets in lower visibility.
It’s a precious, shining moment that Neese wants to preserve in a glass jar, press and extend like taffy, examine from every angle, reliving the surprise of such a confession again and again and again.
“What?” she says, happiness rising like a bubble in her throat, threatening to float her away. She edges closer to Audrey, the stronger gravitational pull, delights in those deep brown eyes finally moving upward to meet hers, challenging and fond.
Her voice is soft. “You heard me.”
Neese has nothing to say to that: She did hear her, which is exactly why she wants to hear it again. Her eyes trip down to Audrey’s lips, clear and brazen, her mind spinning with giddiness and long-suppressed want. “I…”
“Neese.”
Their eyes meet again. A question, a response. An understanding.
“My roommate is away for the night,” Neese offers. “And I…” She casts around for a few seconds, distracted by the small plume of Audrey’s breath in the frigid air. “I’ve been trying to hang this poster above my bed, but it’s more of a two-person job.”
“Ah.” Audrey nods sagely. “Need some help?”
Her yes rides the wave of a low chuckle, prompting a sideways grin from Audrey, lips twitching against an answering laugh. Neese savors this moment too, her own mirth a sweetly held note.
They don’t hold hands on the walk to the bus, but their fingers bump and brush many, many times, which rides some chaotically illogical line of being both not enough and nearly too much. And it’s nice like this too, a gentle, steadying kind of nice.
Audrey’s finally decided—anthropology is what’s calling to her, and she has the paperwork in her bag to deliver to the undergraduate dean on their way to Meridian, Neese’s dorm.
The student population on campus has somewhat thinned, the wired pre-weekend energy permeating those still left behind. As they ascend the stone steps to Locke Hall, the doors swing open to reveal Blue and Cyrus, who are locked in a tense, hushed conversation until they spot the two girls.
“You two look cozy,” Cyrus announces in shrewd assessment. “Congratulations, or pre-congratulations? I can’t tell.”
They glance at each other, furtive, definitely giving themselves away. “What’s happening?” Audrey asks, too curious to dignify the provocation. “Did you get the letter?”
“Well, we submitted what we needed to,” Blue confirms with a heavy sigh. “I don’t love the way Dean Archer’s secretary looked at us when she saw the petition, but I’m not particularly surprised, either.”
“And now we wait,” Cyrus says, a bit grim. “We’re supposed to get word in early January. But I have a feeling this application may get suspiciously misfiled. If it takes me making a visit to Dean Archer every morning until we get an answer, then that’s just what it is.”
Blue suppresses an eye roll, barely. “Should we anticipate discrimination before it happens?” she asks, seemingly directing the question to Neese and Audrey. “What’s the best we can expect of our school leadership?”
“I still think any ‘first’ will run into roadblocks,” Audrey says. “But who knows?”
“That is why it’s the first,” Neese reasons. “Either because any earlier attempt was denied, or no one thought it was worth it to even try.”
“This is what I am saying,” Cyrus says, pointing a finger at Neese, then at Blue. “We anticipate skinfolk not being kinfolk, we can better anticipate their moves to silence us. You’re too trusting.”
“There’s a difference between trusting and optimistic, Cy, my love,” Blue argues, grabbing his finger and waggling it. “The way I move in this world is because I expect the best of people…or because I want to.”
“And when we don’t get it, we demand it,” he counters, eyebrow and head cocked.
Blue chuckles. “Well, I can’t argue with that.”
“No you cannot.”
“What are you two up to?” Blue asks as Cyrus slings an arm around her shoulders. “Going out tonight?”
“After they—” Cyrus begins, before Blue’s hand rises to clamp over his mouth. Effectively muzzled, he widens his eyes in betrayal.
“Finally declaring my major.” Audrey beams, patting her bag. “Last errand before I go see my parents tomorrow.”
“And? What did you decide? You, leave them be,” Blue chides, quieter, removing her hand from Cyrus’s mouth. He rolls his eyes, purses his lips shut.
“Anthropology.” Audrey bounces up onto her toes a few times. “Feels good to know.”
“Right on,” Blue tells her, offering a triumphant high five. “We’ll let you get back to it. Have a great weekend, y’all.”
“You too,” Neese and Audrey tell them in unison as they finally pass on the stairs, Cyrus and Blue descending as Audrey reaches the door. Then Neese pauses, turns.
“Are we really that obvious?”
Blue snorts as Cyrus dissolves into cackles at her side. “Girl,” she answers, head tilted backward, a wry smile on her lips. “Yes. Have been. And it’s beautiful!”
Neese would be lying if she said she’d never wondered what her dorm room would look like through Audrey’s eyes, but nothing compares to turning the key in the lock and entering it, Audrey’s warm presence at her back.
She keeps her side maintained enough; her mother brought a deep, fuzzy purple rug that her roommate, Naomi, appreciates.
Her wall adornments include posters of Prince and Lady Sings the Blues, a framed photo of her and her brother taken ten years ago at a family picnic, and a few postcards she’s collected through the years during the museum visits her father would cajole her into.
When she turns to assess Audrey’s reaction, she’s peering closely at a slim book on Neese’s desk— The First Cities, by Audre Lorde.
Neese feels heat rising from her stomach to her chest, then snaking up her neck.
Learning Audrey’s name all those months ago had Neese considering ridiculous questions of fate and happenstance.
That she’s now standing in Neese’s room, holding the book of Neese’s favorite poet, is nearly too much to bear.
“Her first collection,” Neese says, aiming for normalcy, as Audrey turns it over and flips idly through. Nearly every page is dog-eared, lines Neese loves to return to over and over.
“Mm-hmm,” Audrey hums. “I remember hearing Blue talk about it.” She finds a page and reads to herself for a moment, then silently crosses the room to sit squarely on Neese’s (thankfully, made) bed.
It’s a sight that Neese has to lean against her dresser to enjoy with any kind of subtlety or dignity.
Audrey’s long legs cross at the ankle, her head resting against the wall as she reopens the book to the page her finger was holding and begins to read to herself, lips moving silently.
“A land where all lovers are mute,” she murmurs, with a small smile.
Neese recognizes the line immediately, from “Pirouette.” There are a few poems that spring to mind when it rains; this is one of them.
She wishes Audrey would continue reading out loud, and is soon rewarded with the final line, exhaled more than spoken, like a sigh. I have come home.
Neese thinks, clear as a bell, I could easily fall in love with you.
Audrey chooses that very moment to look over at Neese questioningly, just about giving her a heart attack.
“What is it?” Neese asks, finally unsticking herself from her dresser to cross the small room, sit beside Audrey on the bed.
Audrey’s soft eyes track her progress, the room quiet, the air between them charged as they simply look at each other.
Neese wonders what Audrey is seeing, making any particular note of: her square-rimmed black glasses, her puffy ponytail, does she have anything in her teeth?
She’s getting ready to voice another query when Audrey is suddenly much closer, filling her vision, and then there are soft, warm lips resting against hers, a gentle press that lasts for one honeyed, eternal moment before it’s over.
Neese’s eyes don’t flutter open, because she never closed them.
But when she leans back in to recapture Audrey’s mouth and Audrey responds in kind, they slip shut quite naturally, so as to enshrine the experience of their second kiss, absent superfluous senses.
Every angle of their lips meeting is a revelation; Neese mourns each brief inevitable separation even as they come back together, feeling herself smiling into the kiss, Audrey’s name a rolling litany, another beating pulse. Wild and strong.