Chapter 1 #2
Her voice pulled me out of it. I turned toward the sound and found her by the window, the streetlight pouring in like liquid gold. It wrapped around her, caught in her hair, softened her edges until she almost looked unreal—like something you’d only get to keep in a photograph.
“Come take a selfie with me.”
I made a face, because that’s what I do, but I went anyway. I always go when she calls.
She laughed when I reached her, warm and easy, and hooked her arm around my shoulders. She held her phone up, angling it this way and that, frowning when the light carved a shadow across one of us.
When she huffed in frustration, I took the phone from her. “Let me.”
“Well,” she said, grinning at me like she knew exactly what she was doing, “you are the photographer.”
“I also have longer arms,” I shot back, nudging her lightly.
I adjusted the angle, stepping us just enough into the light so it framed instead of swallowing us. We tilted our heads together. She tightened her hold on me, like she fit there naturally. Like she belonged there.
Her smile was wide and alive, no guard, no hesitation.
The gold in her hair burned against the dark of mine.
Her bright green eyes caught the light and seemed almost luminous, while mine—hazel, always shifting—looked deeper, harder to read.
Her cheeks were soft and warm where mine were all sharper lines and shadow.
Even my nose felt a little too prominent next to her small, sweet one.
We looked like opposites. Light and dark. Soft and angular. Sun and shade.
And somehow, together, it worked.
I looked at the screen and felt something settle low in my chest. That quiet apartment I’d imagined earlier flickered in my mind again—but now it felt colder. Thinner.
Because standing there, her arm around me, the gold light wrapping us both in the same frame, I didn’t want to figure out who I was alone.
I wanted this.
When we went back upstairs, it was late.
Paris quieted in that way that felt intimate, but like New York, it wasn’t too quiet.
We had taped some paint swatches to the wall to try and decide what looked best. Frankie sat on the floor with her back against the couch, wine glass balanced on her knee.
I sat beside her. Our shoulders touched.
For a second—just a second—I wondered what would happen if I leaned in. If I said something I’d buried years ago. If I told her I’d loved her in a way that had nothing to do with friendship and everything to do with timing and fear and the kind of wanting that doesn’t ask for permission.
But I didn’t. I’d learned that lesson already. It wasn’t fair to her and it wouldn’t be fair to me. Frankie knew my history.
I used to think I was only a lesbian, full stop, proud and sure. Turns out identity isn’t a door you walk through once. It’s a hallway. With mirrors, and really fucking bad lighting. That’s why sometimes, you don’t recognize yourself right away.
Frankie rested her head briefly against mine. A casual thing. A familiar thing. My chest tightened anyway.
“You’re going to be okay,” she said.
I nodded. “I know.”
That wasn’t a lie. I was going to be okay.
I would survive. No offense to Gloria Gaynor, but I’d long since mastered survival.
I didn’t need an encore. Still, I would be fine.
That wasn’t a question I had. How would I do it?
Well, that was a different story. But for right now, in this apartment, with garlic on my hands and wine on my breath and the weight of goodbye pressing softly against my ribs, I knew I would be okay.
I had no other choice. The beginning of the story never feels clean, or at least, it shouldn’t. If it was tidy, settled, and without any messes to fix, then—well, what story would there be to tell.
So, beginnings felt like this moment—disorganized.
“I think I like the passion plum one,” Frankie murmured, gesturing with her wine glass. There was a lazy warmth to her. We both tilted our heads.
Beginnings were often littered with choices.
“I thought you liked the Aubergine,” I teased her, really emphasizing the mouthy word.
Beginnings featured crossroads at every corner.
She snorted and bumped my shoulder with hers. “Too dark. It’s dramatic though, and if you only did a feature wall and went super bright on your furniture choices…”
Beginnings were heavy.
I laughed. “I don’t know if I want to go with any of the purples, to be honest. Maybe I’ll do something sassy and dark red. Dramatic. Powerful.”
Beginnings could be bright in places.
“Sounds like you,” she murmured and I heard the compliment beneath the words. “I can’t wait to see what you choose.”
Beginnings could also be dark, uncharted, and a little lonely—even when you sat next to your best friend.
“I’m going to miss you, Frankie,” I said, drifting close to the edge of that goodbye I didn’t want to say. The one I’d known was coming since the day I confessed that I wanted to move. That I needed to. That I had to.
“That’s because you love me,” she said, then turned her head to look at me. That gleam of tears was right there in her eyes. She blinked them back, thank fuck, cause if she started crying—well I would be a wreck.
No, better to save our tears for later.
“Maybe,” I said, almost thoughtfully, as I pushed up from the floor to carry our empty wine glasses into the kitchen.
I made it three whole steps before my response seemed to register with her.
“Wait—what do you mean maybe?” The playful outrage hit the right note and we both laughed. If I swiped away an escapee tear, well, no photo no crime.
“Do you want to do some espresso before we crash?” I hadn’t set up the new machine that Frankie insisted on buying with a pert, It’s for me, not for you. I’m just letting you use it.
Bullshit. But loving bullshit. So I accepted.
“Tempting,” she called back. “But I’m kind of mellow and I like it.”
Me too.
We decided on a movie. We had to watch it on my laptop because I hadn’t decided on a television or much else. But we were delaying crashing. Sleeping meant we would open our eyes to our last day together.
Staying awake only delayed the inevitable, but never let it be said that I wasn’t stubborn. I wanted every damn minute we could squeeze out of this. “Tell you what,” I said when the movie was over. “Patisseries in the morning before dawn? We can enjoy the sunrise with coffee and pastries?”
She checked her watch. It was late, if we got up before dawn, we wouldn’t be getting much sleep. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
When we finally went to sleep, we had to share my bed. It was the only one I had, and I refused to let her take the couch until I’d suffered through it first. That was my excuse. She let me have it.
Frankie fired off a few messages to her boys, thumbs flying, then curled onto her side and went out like a light. Just like that. Always able to rest when she decided it was time.
I wasn’t built that way.
I lay awake listening to the soft, steady rhythm of her breathing.
I stared at the ceiling and thought about faces I hadn’t met yet.
About the strangers who would one day sit in front of my lens and trust me with something honest. About the future I hadn’t yet earned, but was standing at the door anyway, knocking.
I thought about who I’d been in New York. In Texas. In other people’s stories. I thought about who I might become here, in this city that didn’t know me at all.
Tomorrow, Frankie would leave. The goodbye would happen whether I was ready or not. The plane would take her west, and I would stay right here, in this apartment she’d helped build around me like scaffolding, trusting I’d learn how to manage once she was gone.
Tomorrow, I would begin again.
But tonight—tonight was still ours. Still warm. Still unfinished. So I let myself miss her before she left.
And in the dark, with Paris breathing softly beyond the windows, I let the beginning be exactly what it was—uncertain, heavy, and quietly, terrifyingly alive.