Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Her manager, Perry, had texted her that same day to inform her that her article regarding the subject had been her most popular article to date.
Lee Holmes was two glasses of wine down in celebration, cogitating ideas as to how to fill that newfound space inside of her, when a knock at the door dripped the remains of the third glass onto the floorboards below as her body jerked in response to the sound.
She set the glass down on the kitchen island upon where she was sitting and stood up.
Answering the door to an unknown guest in her dinosaur pajamas two weeks ago would have been enough to paint her a deep shade of embarrassed, and yet, given all that she had been through in recent events, it made greeting someone in her most comfortable clothes trivial in comparison.
The hallway, with little to occupy its space now without the hyacinths besides a desk and an office chair, felt desolate and morbid in ways that only Lee herself could presently understand.
Somehow, the absence of the flowers felt equally as macabre as their presence had felt prior to her disposal of them, as if each and every petal, every root, had a ghost floating across each and every stem.
Instinctively, she flattened down her pajama pants, as if offering herself a mental reset, or perhaps a vague attempt at seeming more presentable, as she exhaled, and opened the door.
The face that greeted her was the same face that she had fallen in love with five years ago.
Just as she had not grown horns the day she had disposed of Edward Beckett, Morgan Finch hadn’t either.
As she stood in the doorway, her eyes were already glassy, from crying previously, or being on the verge of it, she wasn’t sure.
What she was sure of, however, was that she looked delicate.
Morgan Finch had not used her key to enter the apartment, but she did retrieve her set of keys from her navy bomber jacket pocket, twirling the apartment key around the hook on her keychain until it came off entirely.
When the singular key had been separated, she placed it into the bowl beside the door next to Lee’s.
To Lee, it felt like the modern equivalent of waving a white flag. It also felt like abandonment.
“I could leave, if you need me to. I could also wait outside the door if you want to talk but need some time first. Or I could wait only for you to realize that you aren’t ready at all.
I guess what I’m trying to say, and it’s really out of fucking line for me to do so, is that all I can think about is lying in bed with you the other day, and how that might have been the last time, and how I wouldn’t be able to function, or do anything for that matter, if I didn’t come here and see what you thought about that. ”
The obvious reasoning as to Morgan showing up unannounced would be to discuss Arthur Strickland, and yet, it appeared that Arthur was not on Morgan’s radar at all.
There was a sense of irony in the notion that despite the fact Morgan had shaken her entire world, she was always the one who kept her grounded simultaneously.
Looking at her felt like looking through the windows of a building on the verge of collapse, only to be pushed towards safety before it all came crashing down.
Somehow, Morgan Finch looked smaller now, as she stood within the doorway, her left hand across her right arm, hesitant, and uncomfortable.
“Perhaps now would be a good time to try out my new teapot,” Lee proposed, smiling through the few tears that had begun to form, turning her amber eyes into a watery haze.
Morgan Finch exhaled a sigh of relief, settling in ever so slightly as she removed her hand from her arm, the awkwardness dissipating. “I think I’d like that.”
As the teapot boiled, so too did the tension in the room, stewing silently, building to a simmer.
Only, when the water was fully heated, the temperature in the room did not spill over.
Lee Holmes retrieved two mugs from the cabinet, acknowledging Morgan’s own favorite mug after grabbing her own.
She was struck by the normality of it all upon placing them down onto the counter, which, given everything that had happened between the both of them, was a rarity that she had greatly missed.
Morgan Finch was no stranger to her, even if their goodbye upon breaking up had made her feel like one.
She knew without asking how many sugars to put in her cup of tea as she poured the liquid from the teapot to the mug, which was to say, far too many.
She knew the appropriate amount of milk, and which kind, namely, oat.
When she offered her the mug, Morgan offered a simple thanks in exchange, blew on the contents, and took a sip.
Lee Holmes placed her own mug down upon the kitchen island, allowing it to cool down, as she retrieved the teapot with the remaining tea inside of it, simultaneously placing it to the left of where she had placed her mug, before taking a seat.
If awkwardness was something she could lose, she would discard it instantaneously, and yet, as she sat there, now, it almost felt like the awkwardness consisted of all of her—her entire being.
She couldn’t lose her entire body just as she couldn’t lose the uncomfortable aura that was seated in the bar stool beside them, like a permanent host.
“I—” Lee said, simply, composing the syllable with her tongue before she had even devised the rest of the sentence. As if on cue, Morgan did the same thing, muttering the same word at the exact same time.
“You go,” Morgan added to her own “I—”. “Sorry,” she continued, staring down at the counter as if embarrassed by the intrusion of her words.
Lee huffed, taking a sip of her steaming hot tea if only to buy some time in order to think of something appropriate to say. “It’s been awfully cold, lately,” she said, closing her eyes and scrunching her nose, sucking in air now as if she could suck her words back inside herself.
“It has,” Morgan offered back, a slight smile forming at the corner of her mouth. “You’re good at this, you know.”
“Hm?” Lee responded, wrapping her hands around her mug for the warm comfort it provided; her only comfort at present time.
Morgan Finch began to laugh slightly now, shaking her head in the process.
“No, I just mean…” she paused, exhaling.
“I was kidding. Being sarcastic. Probably because I’m just nervous.
It feels like I’m on a first date with you all over again, paired with sitting in the hot seat at a job interview.
And then you make a statement about the weather and it just…
” she paused once again. “It was just funny, that’s all. ”
It wasn’t at all how she had expected this experience to go, but she found herself smiling simultaneously.
Her smile turned into a laugh shortly afterwards, offering her some much-needed release from the pressure that had gradually built up inside of her.
Once she had released it, she grounded herself once again, reminding herself that this conversation could be one of the most definitive conversations she would ever have; she needed to get it right.
“You were incredibly honest with me the other day,” she said, looking at the kitchen island where they were seated as opposed to Morgan. “It meant a lot to me that you were able to do that.”
Morgan nodded, tapping at the counter with her index finger.
“It meant a lot to me, too. I told you then and I’ll say it again now.
I know it’s probably far too late for me to be that honest, and vulnerable with you.
I should have done it a lot sooner; I know that now.
Believe me, I wanted to. But…” she paused.
“Have you ever been so scared of something you couldn’t speak? ”
Lee looked at Morgan now, acknowledging the question she had just asked her.
She was remembering their time on the rollercoaster more frequently these days, but now, it felt even more prominent at the forefront of her mind.
It felt prominent because Morgan had asked her how she was feeling when the ride had already begun, and Lee had opened her mouth to speak, only for no sound to come out, because she had simply floated out of her body in fear, and was no longer in control of piloting it.
Perhaps she and Morgan weren’t so different in that respect.
“I have,” Lee said, returning back to the conversation. “The difference is that once I work through that fear, I speak to you about it afterwards. You haven’t always extended me the same courtesy.”
Morgan stared directly into her eyes, shifting her hand from the counter slightly towards Lee’s own, until their fingers were touching ever so slightly.
“Would it make any difference if I told you that I would extend you that courtesy now for as long as you wanted it?” she asked, continuing before Lee could even answer.
“You are the only definitive thing in my life, Lee, the only constant.”
What had once felt like a somewhat manageable pebble lodged inside of Lee's throat had now become a stone; an object too large, too prominent, to swallow down. Her legs trembled slightly against the cool metal of the bar stool, and yet, despite everything inside of her screaming that she was too weak, too vulnerable, to speak her truth, she maintained her gaze on Morgan, and stood her ground. “My problem lies now with the fact that I don’t know what a future with you would look like, and that’s terrifying to me.
You don’t terrify me, at least, not anymore.
It’s the notion that I’m not going to know what tomorrow looks like, or the next day, or the day after that.
It’s exciting at the same time, I won’t deny that, but being with you sometimes is like feeling like a hunted deer, escaping its predator only to go into cardiac arrest five minutes later. ”
Seemingly becoming braver, Morgan grazed the edge of Lee’s finger, so gently that Lee wondered if Morgan had even touched her at all. “Do you feel like you’re being hunted?”
“Not by you,” Lee said, affirmatively. “But being with you comes with the potential that we will both be hunted.”
Morgan Finch sat with that for a moment, quietly nodding, so timid in her approach that Lee only barely noticed that she was doing it.
“I understand that,” she said, finally. “I would never want you to feel on edge for the entirety of our relationship, especially when I’ve finally been able to relieve myself of that now that you know who I truly am. ”
Lee asked the question that had been on her mind every time she had tried to figure out the inner workings of Morgan Finch. She asked it because it might just be the last time she had the opportunity to ask her. “Do you know who you are?”
Flattening down her hair, Morgan let the silence envelop the both of them once again.
With their fingers still touching, she extended her index finger ever so slightly, and stroked Lee’s own index finger cautiously.
This time, Lee knew she wasn't just imagining it. “I do, and I’m worried that scares you, even if you think it no longer does. You know, Lee, I would wait for you forever. I’d wait until the sun expands and engulfs our planet.
But the thing about waiting is that it’s something you can do willingly.
I can’t willingly change the person I’ve been before, just as I can’t change the person inside that I am now.
I could do things differently, say things differently, act differently,” she emphasized.
“But painting a white teapot blue doesn’t change the fact that we both know who I am underneath. ”
Lee Holmes gazed at the teapot now, as if it were the only object in this world that truly mattered, or at least, the only object in close proximity to her that wasn’t composed of the very flesh she had laid her hands upon only days before.
She stared into it, or perhaps through it, she wasn’t sure, and upon doing so, allowed its decorations to transfix themselves into her pupils.
The design, she deduced, was intricate, each brush-stroke intentional in nature, creating a larger image.
The teapot itself was whole, with, or without the decorations, but with them, it made it part of something bigger—ornamental and delicate.
People, in some ways, were decorated in ways that made them more than the flesh as it sat upon their bones, Lee thought.
Each and every action an invisible tattoo that made up a larger image that could be seen by those who wanted to see it.
Morgan Finch wasn’t one singular thing, just as Lee Holmes wasn’t one singular thing.
Morgan’s actions had decorated her in ways that others could potentially never understand, even Lee, herself, but she understood enough to shake her head in disagreement.
“I know who you are, Morgan Finch," Lee stated with conviction, only then noticing that her legs were no longer trembling. "I also know that you’re wrong. People aren’t one singular visage of color. There’s more to it than that. There’s more to us as a species than that.”
“What about me and you?” Morgan asked, her voice practically a whisper as she extended her entire hand now in order to cover Lee's own. Lee felt it tremble against her skin. “Is there more to us than that? Or will there never be an ‘us’ to come back to?”
A silence enveloped the room, blanketing their previous moments in a shroud of doubt. It lingered, and lingered, and lingered.
Lee Holmes conjured one simple word; the only word that remained in her vocabulary, and with it, the silence was shattered.