Chapter 25 #2
“In this scenario, wouldn’t I have a perpetually thirty-year-old lover and immortal ghost children? I’d be emphatically never alone,” Frannie says.
Elsa tilts her head, and Frannie can’t help but step forward, eager to take her moment of détente to pull Elsa into her chest. But Elsa steps back.
“Functions, and holidays, dinners with friends—you’d have to do all of that alone. I cannot ask you to pretend, to put yourself back in the closet for me for the rest of your life.”
“What are you talking about?” Frannie asks.
“I know what it’s like to spend your life hiding who you are, hiding who you’re with,” Elsa says, raising one shoulder.
“Every time I had to say Joan was my roommate, it killed me a little bit. That we could only be ourselves, could only be proud and open and … out with each other, and with trusted friends—it wasn’t hopeless, but it isn’t what I want for you.
I want you to be able to show the world how wonderful you are.
All of you. I don’t want you closeted for me. ”
A small, besotted laugh escapes Frannie’s lips. Is that all?
Elsa blinks at her, brow furrowing, affronted.
“Just because the world doesn’t know who my lover is, doesn’t mean the world won’t know I’m queer.
I love you,” she says fiercely, waiting until Elsa’s conflicted eyes meet hers.
“But my relationship status has no bearing on my queerness, or whether or not I can be out with the people in my life. I was bi and proud before I met you, and I’ll be bi and proud whatever happens between us.
Despite daily appearances to the contrary, I am decidedly not in the closet at all. ”
Elsa laughs, startled. She stares at Frannie before looking around the room again. “It wasn’t like that when I was alive.”
“No,” Frannie agrees, wondering if the owner of this apartment knew Elsa back then. “But it is now. So, if that’s your only reservation, we can take it right out of the con column, yeah?”
Elsa looks back at Frannie, almost pitying. “You know it’s not my only reservation.”
Frannie curls her hands around Michael’s tablet, her good humor deflating. She forces the words out of her mouth around a pang of her own quiet worry: “If it’s the risk that something goes wrong, and you can’t make it all the way across the power line …”
“The risk of an end to our immortality isn’t the problem,” Elsa says simply. “It’s the end of a big, beautiful life for you that worries me.”
Frustration replaces Frannie’s horror. “It wouldn’t be the end of anything!
I know that choosing to spend my life with you and the kids comes with sacrifices.
I know you couldn’t go places with me, and that I couldn’t tell almost anyone about you, and that my parents can’t meet you.
And I know Michael and Bridge won’t get older, and that you won’t either,” Frannie presses on while Elsa shakes her head.
“I’m not oblivious to the strangeness of it. ”
“It would change the whole course of your life,” Elsa insists.
Frannie huffs. “My life has already changed. The only difference between Seventy-Third Street and here is that if you stay here, I lose all those life things, and I lose you guys too.”
“Frannie—”
“I’d still be walking through the world with this enormous secret in my chest—with all the love I have for the three of you—and I won’t get to come home to you.”
“I know you love us,” Elsa says quickly. “We love you, too, so very much. But it’s your life you’re sacrificing, and I can’t let you—”
“It’s my sacrifice to make!” Frannie exclaims. “I’m the only one who gets to decide what I give up, what I compromise to get to love you for the rest of my life. You have to stop making choices for me.”
“Then you have to actually think about the choices you’re making for more than half a second,” Elsa snaps back.
Frannie stares at her, the fragile hope that brought her here this morning cracking into pieces.
Days without Michael’s shy smile, Bridgette’s mischievous laughter—without their funny observations and questions and jokes—without seeing this incredible woman, talking with her, laughing with her—it’s no choice at all.
But that doesn’t seem to matter to Elsa.
“I’m sure about this. I want to live the rest of my life with the three of you,” Frannie says.
“Did I think I wanted kids before I met yours? No, I didn’t.
But it’s not about wanting hypothetical kids, or wanting a traditional relationship, or wanting all the things you think I need to live a full life.
I want you, and Michael, and Bridgette. We could be so happy, the four of us.
That’s what I want. That’s my choice, and it’s mine to make. Deciding to try is yours.”
They stare at each other and Frannie tries to breathe evenly. She doesn’t know what else she can—
“And if I still say no?”
Frannie swipes angrily at her treacherous eyes.
She will not cry. She’s too angry. “I guess I just make sure I don’t get electrocuted, but die violently enough so I can come back with unfinished business and haunt your ass,” she says tightly.
Elsa gapes at her. “Well, it’s not like you could stop me.
You let me leave, you have no control over what I do with my immortality. ”
There’s a bitter sting to her words and she looks down at the tablet still clenched in her hand. If Elsa says no, Frannie’s not sure how she’s supposed to move forward.
“Is that your plan?” Elsa asks. “Get us over to Seventy-Third Street for the rest of your life, and then stick around after you die? You’re planning to come back as a ghost? To tether yourself to that building for eternity?”
Frannie hides a wince. She hadn’t actually thought that far ahead—understandably, she thinks, concerned with the more immediate ghostly problems.
But this one is easy. She looks up to meet Elsa’s gaze. “I’m planning to tether myself to you for eternity.”
It doesn’t elicit the smile she expected. “You don’t understand how long that is,” Elsa says, her voice rough.
Frannie steps forward again, and this time, Elsa doesn’t step back.
Frannie takes one of her hands. “What does it matter, if it’s with the three of you?
” Elsa’s hand twitches in hers. “And if we can figure out how to get you across the street, who knows where else we can get you. Maybe the whole island will be our electrical playground someday.”
Elsa’s fingers grip Frannie’s back, and she stares down at their hands for a long moment. Frannie feels hope rise in her chest. Maybe that was right. Maybe promising forever forever will convince her that—
“If I still say it’s the wrong choice, do you want me to go away until you leave?” Elsa asks, her expression guarded.
Frannie loses the fight with her tears then, panic coursing through her. “Are you … breaking up with me?”
“No!” Elsa says, tugging on Frannie’s hand to bring her closer. “No, I don’t want to break up. And I don’t want to disappear for however long I have you. But if it’s going to hurt too much, then I will.”
“But you’re still saying no,” Frannie says, sniffling. It’s like her heart is breaking and mending all at once.
Elsa steps forward and Frannie goes awkwardly, falling into her shoulder while the ghost wraps her arms around Frannie’s back. She twists her free hand into Elsa’s turtleneck, Michael’s tablet bumping their stomachs.
“I’m saying once you get your book deal, we probably have at least six months to be together before I have to answer that question for the last time.
I’d like to spend them with you, if you’ll have me.
And we can”—she pauses, taking a deep breath, and Frannie’s heart skips a beat—“keep talking about this.”
Her voice is husky and thick against Frannie’s ear.
If you’ll have me.
Frannie tightens her grip, turning her face into Elsa’s neck.
“Of course I’ll fucking have you, you ridiculous woman,” Frannie mutters into her skin. “I’m still mad that you gave Henry my book, but I’m not mad enough to miss the time we have left.”
“Good,” Elsa says, pulling back to take Frannie’s cheeks in her hands.
Frannie meets her eyes, resolve steeling through her. She leans in to press her lips roughly against Elsa’s, a rebuttal, a promise, a vow. Six months. She has at least six months to convince Elsa to give her a lifetime, and maybe more.