II
That night, María doesn’t sleep.
She lies in bed beside her husband, body aching as it cools, fingers drifting not to the pain between her legs, but the ruby at her throat.
She lies there, trapped beneath the weight of Andrés’s hand, and stares up at the ceiling beams, trying to find faces in the whorls of wood.
She lies there, and for the first time in years, she thinks of the widow who came to town.
There are teas and tonics for many things, she said. To shed a fever, or ease a cough. To help a woman get with child, or get rid of it.
María lies there, and listens to the fire die, one crackling ember at a time, until the room is as dark as the night beyond, and Andrés finally, mercifully, rolls over. Then she rises, footsteps silent on the floor as she crosses the room, past the untouched meal. Steps back into her dress, eases the door open, and slips out.
Not yet dawn, but she finds her way to the kitchens using a lamp stolen from the stairs, begins studying the herbs stopped and bottled on the shelf. They clatter softly as she turns them, studying their labels. She cannot read, and even if she could, she doesn’t know what she is looking for, but she can still feel her husband’s hand on her stomach, the ghostly weight of it turning rancid in her guts, and—
A gasp. She turns in time to see a short woman in the doorway, one arm clutching a bowl of dough, the other crossing herself. The light lands on María’s face, her hair, and she exhales.
“Mi señora,” gasps the startled cook. “I thought you were a ghost.” She starts forward, setting the bowl down on the counter. “Is something wrong? Are you unwell?”
María weighs the words in her mouth. “Not yet,” she says after a moment, “and I do not wish to be.”
A knowing look enters the cook’s eye, displeasure on its heels.
“This is a kitchen,” she scolds, “not an apothecary.”
But María has never been easily cowed, not by a tone, or a look. Not as a child, not as a woman, and certainly not as a viscountess. Hers is a problem as old as time, and she expects there is more than one cure.
“Kitchens have some of the same herbs,” she says, holding the cook’s gaze, “and more discretion.”
As she says it, she draws a coin from her pocket and sets it on the counter. Even in the low light, the metal shines. The cook flashes it a hungry look, then swipes the coin into her apron, and shoos María from the shelf.
The cook moves quickly, fetching the right bottles with a surety that makes María think this isn’t the first time. She watches as the cook adds small spoonfuls of each herb into a cup, then stokes the embers in the fire, swings the kettle over the flame to heat just until tendrils of steam begin to rise, then pulls it off and pours the water over the herbs to steep.
To this, she adds a drop of honey.
“For the taste,” says the cook, handing over the concoction. She looks like she wants to say something else, but a look from María is enough to change her mind. The cook purses her lips while she lifts the cup and drinks.
It is bitter, and earthy, and the first sip sends a cramp through her empty stomach, but she doesn’t stop. She swallows every drop and then exhales, her muscles loosening in relief.
She hands the cup back, but when the cook reaches to take it, María catches the other woman’s hand and pulls her close. The cook is short, much shorter than the new viscountess, and María looms over her, thin fingers digging into old wrists.
“If you tell a soul,” she whispers, her voice low, almost gentle, “I will come back and cut out your tongue.”
The cook looks up at her in horror. María smiles down, and then lets go, returning to her room, where she climbs back into bed beside her new husband and sleeps soundly until dawn.
1529
It is a late-October day, and María is sitting on the stable roof, her bare feet swinging off the edge. She knows that Rafa is searching for her, has been for the better part of an hour now. His fault, she thinks, for always looking down instead of up.
She hums, and twists a fiery strand around her finger.
Somehow, she is nearly eighteen.
María knows it did not happen overnight, that she did not go to bed a girl and wake a woman, though some days it feels that way. The seasons have worked their change in halting strides, stretching her slowly into a stranger, her body too narrow, no hips or breasts to speak of, and her features too sharp—a long jaw, a narrow face, a high forehead interrupted by fair brows. Felipe likes to say that she looks like bread dough that’s been stretched too much and failed to rise.
But her hair.
In the end, all her mother’s efforts were in vain. It has not been cowed, darkened by mud or time to a more ordinary shade. Instead, it has grown brighter, defiantly so, year over year until it now seems imbued with molten light, a liquid copper spilling in loose waves down her back. In sun, it shines. At night, it burns, like a lantern in the dark.
And if she is too long and lean, too wild to be considered comely, the strangeness of her hair has made her something even better. Striking. There may be nothing of Castilian beauty in María, but there is something undeniable about her looks. A primal grace that makes men turn their heads and their horses in the direction of the hunt.
She made note of this new power as the seasons turned and the men in her own village—some little more than boys, others old enough to be her father—began to stare.
She made note, and knew something must be done.
Someone whistles now, a short, sharp sound, and she looks down over the edge to see Felipe craning his head, cheeks still dusted from his work in the shadow of the blacksmith.
“Rafa’s been looking for you,” he calls, one hand up against the glare.
María lies back against the sun-warmed tiles, studies a passing cloud. “I know.”
Below, Felipe lets out an exasperated sound.
“María, please,” he says plaintively, and she sighs, and sits back up.
“Fine, fine,” she says, flinging herself over the edge. The drop is high enough to make her brother suck in a nervous breath, but she lands like a cat, bare feet sinking in the hay.
Felipe conducts her like a jailer, one hand against her back as he ushers her to the house. Inside, their mother sits by the fire, sewing in her lap. Rafa paces a groove into the floor.
But María’s gaze goes to the stranger sitting at their table.
The man is handsome enough, broad-shouldered and dark-haired, his beard trimmed short and his eyes a light brown at odds with the rest of his complexion. And though he is of average size, he seems too big for the narrow house, too tall for the low beamed roof, too fine for the threadbare rug beneath his boots.
“María,” says Rafa, in the scolding tone that always accompanies her name. “This is Andrés de Guzmán, Viscount of Olivares, and esteemed knight of the Order of Santiago.”
She wonders absently how long it took Rafa to memorize that string of words. But her attention hangs on the viscount. The cloak draped over his shoulders, lined with black fur. His vest, made from a fine brocade and fastened with jeweled clasps. The medallion of the Order on a gold chain around his neck. All of him flashing like a gem among the river stones.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she says, adding a breathless edge to her voice, as if she’s run all the way across town, instead of strolling up the lane.
Andrés de Guzmán rises from the chair, gives a flourish and a bow. “Encantado, mi señora.”
“A pleasure to meet you, vizconde,” she says, dropping into a low bow. A moment later, she feels the grip of his glove on her elbow as the viscount returns her to her feet.
“Now, now,” he says, “a woman need not bow so low to her betrothed.”
The air in the room tenses around the word.
But not María.
She is many things—stubborn, cunning, selfish—but she has never been a fool. She knows that she was born into this body. She knows it comes with certain rules. The question has never been whether she would wed, but whom.
So last year, when the heads began to turn, and Rafa started to worry the topic of marriage as if it were a wound, she looked around at the options in Santo Domingo, and found them lacking. She looked at her life and found it small. Saw the road that lay ahead, and there were no curves, no bends; it ran straight and narrow all the way to its end. She saw it in her mother’s hands, gone stiff with age, as they now struggled with fine stitches that had once come easily, only a matter of time before María herself was expected to take up the tedious work. She saw it in Rafa’s wife, Elana, round with a child that had already begun to waste her beauty and drain her youth. In Felipe’s bride, Lessandra, promised to him so long that she had never thought to stray. Both women walked into their marriage beds without so much as looking round to see if there were other paths.
But María has known, all her life, that she is not meant for common paths, for humble houses and modest men. If she must walk a woman’s road, then it will take her somewhere new.
She stares at the viscount now, seated at her table, as if they have not met before.
As if she did not see him riding at the helm of the caravan a month ago.
As if he did not see her standing at the edge of the crowd, and follow her across the square and into the shadow of the church.
As if she did not lure him there, feigning innocence as he cornered her, spilled praise at her feet and pressed to see what she might give. What he could take.
As if he did not reach out and coil a lock of copper hair around his glove.
As if she did not see the hunger in his eyes and know that she could use it.
By then she had spent nearly a year honing her gaze on the pilgrims passing through, balancing on that knife’s edge between too brazen and too shy. She had learned when to hold a look, and when to drop it. When to let a smile flicker like light on her lips, and when to bow her head.
When to be the predator, and when to play the part of prey.
And that day, in the shadow of the church, she’d played it perfectly, bold enough to catch his eyes, chaste enough to stay his hand. Andrés de Guzmán had retreated, understanding that if he wanted to touch more than María’s hair, it would be as her husband.
And so he went.
And here he is again, and the silence must be stretching on too long, because Rafa clears his throat.
“The viscount has come to ask for your hand,” he explains, as if she is too thick to understand the meaning of the word betrothed.
They are expecting a performance, and so she gives them one.
“In marriage?” she asks, twisting her face into an imitation of surprise, eyebrows arching at this wholly unexpected ambush. She even looks to her mother, as if for aid, finds only relief and resignation on the woman’s face. As if this is a burden lifted, when the truth is, it was never hers to carry. With their father gone, Rafa is the master of the house, and so the task of marrying María off falls to him. As he reminds her. Often.
“It is a happy day,” says her mother.
“Indeed,” says Rafa, looking as smug as Andrés, each convinced that they are the mind behind this meeting. As if she did not set the game and arrange the pins so all they had to do was knock them down.
“What if I refuse?” she asks, just to savor the surprise on Andrés’s face, the shock on Felipe’s, the horror on Rafa’s. She lets the question hang only a moment before laughing. Her brother sags, relief and embarrassment flooding his cheeks.
“Apologies, mi señor,” he says to the viscount, clearing his throat. “María has an odd sense of humor.”
The viscount doesn’t laugh, but he does not seem insulted either. He answers Rafa, but his attention is pinned to her. “María has only ever been a sister and a daughter. But she will soon learn to be a wife.”
The slightest emphasis on the word learn, like a switch grazing a horse’s flank.
But it will take more than that to make her flinch.
“Well, María?” says Rafa, urging her with a pointed look to accept the offer.
And for once, she does as she’s told.
She nods, holding out her hand, and Andrés de Guzmán’s mouth splits into a haughty grin, like he’s the one who played the game, and won. And as he bends his head to kiss the bare skin of her knuckle, where the wedding ring will go, María imagines the road curving away beneath her feet, and smiles, too.
The viscount returns a fortnight later, a new kind of caravan in tow.
Cart after cart fills the road behind his horse, each one steered by a well-dressed servant and each brimming with gifts—fine tapestries and casks of wine, candied fruit and cured meats. One cart rattles with chargers and cups, enough for every mouth in town, another arrives with hens packed so tight their feathers jut between the slats and fly away like dandelion fluff. An homage to the miracle that made Santo Domingo famous, though hopefully none of these will rise up off their dinner plates.
In hours, the town’s plaza is transformed.
Tables dragged from the houses and hauled into the square, every oven commandeered to prepare the wedding feast.
The night before, María’s mother brushed her hair a hundred times, until it shone as bright as the fire in the hearth. And as she did, she told her daughter what it meant to be a wife.
Gentle. Loving. Obedient.
Words that made María tense. And, as if her mother could feel her stiffening, she leaned close and said, “You will learn, it is better to bend than to break.”
María stared into the hearth. “Why should I be the one who bends?”
Air hissed through her mother’s teeth. “I know you, daughter. I know you have always wanted more. And you have chosen a grand life. But it will not be an easy one. Men like the viscount, they take what they want.”
So do I, thought María as the comb hissed through her hair like water on hot coals.
They marry on the steps of the cathedral, Andrés in his finery and María in a brand-new dress, the edges trimmed with gold. It is the finest thing she’s ever worn, and during the Mass that follows, while the priest drones on, she runs her fingertips along the stitching, counting the pattern as if it were coins as she tells herself this is what she deserves.
This is what she is worth.
At last, the congregation spills out into the square, and the wine flows, and music tangles with the laughter and the toasts. To the viscount’s health, and to hers, and to their happiness.
Her new husband covers her hand with his, and every time he speaks to her, or of her, he does not use her name. Instead he calls her mi esposa—my wife—the words chafing like rough wool. But María only smiles, and reminds herself they are a key, unlocking the doors to a better life.
His parents are not in attendance, though he assures her that they have sent their happy wishes, and that she will meet them soon enough. Meanwhile, Rafa is smug, and Felipe is drunk, and their mother is wistful, and María wonders if she will miss them when she’s gone. She tries to conjure the image of it, expects to feel something, a happy sadness, a parting grief, but she can’t.
And then it is time.
They do not linger at the feast. Andrés is eager to depart for his estate. María’s mother cries, stiff hands clasped and tears running silent down her face, and her brothers embrace her, first Felipe, smelling of wood chips and soot, and then Rafa, who places a kiss on each cheek, and bids her Be a good wife.
Gentle. Loving. Obedient.
Felipe’s wife, Lessandra, smiles and dabs at her cheeks, but Elana catches María’s hand, hunger glinting in her eyes. “Do not forget us, sister.”
María can feel the woman’s greedy fingers inching toward the gold trim of the bridal sleeve. Knows she is trying to exact a promise.
“Of course, sister,” she says, a smile in her voice. “I will carry you in my heart.”
And then she pulls free, and takes her husband’s outstretched arm, and lets him lead her away, not knowing, of course—
She will never see her family again.
II
Alice lurches back into her body, the entire pep talk erased by the sudden appearance of another person, the intimacy of it, not the crush of faceless strangers partying beyond, but a single girl sitting alone in the dark.
She’s lounging on the edge of the bed in a silver baby-doll dress, leaning back on her hands, fingers sinking into someone else’s pillowed comforter. Her legs are crossed and her head’s tipped back, exposing the warm column of her throat. Her hair is a mane of curls that are probably brown, but look violet from the scarf thrown over the bedside lamp, and Alice’s first thought is that she wishes she could take a picture. Maybe it’s the way the light carves the other girl up, tracing hollows and points, grazing her thigh where it meets the short silver hem.
And then Alice realizes that the girl’s no longer looking at the ceiling, but at her.
(“You’re staring,” snapped the first girl Alice ever had a crush on, the words sharp enough to sear her cheeks, to make her duck her head even though she hadn’t been, not then, was just daydreaming in the wrong direction.)
Alice is staring now, but she can’t seem to tear her eyes away.
She knows if someone looked at her the way she’s looking at this girl, she’d flinch, but the girl doesn’t, only smiles, revealing a dimple in one cheek. She rises to her feet, and as she does, the fingers of light seem to bend and follow, like they want to keep touching her. And Alice doesn’t blame them.
The girl walks right toward her, doesn’t stop until she’s close enough for Alice to see that it’s not a trick of the light—her curls are truly violet—close enough to see the freckles dusting the girl’s tan cheeks, close enough to trace the curve of her pomegranate lips, and Alice has the sudden urge to kiss her, and what a consecration that would be, of her new self. But then the girl’s eyes drift past her and Alice realizes she’s blocking the door to the bathroom.
“Sorry,” she stammers, already forgetting the rules, but the girl only cocks her head as if amused, eyes trailing like fingers up Alice’s front as her voice brushes her cheek.
“For what?”
And Alice is even more flustered now, doesn’t know what to say to that, afraid she’ll somehow make it ten times worse, apologize for the way she was staring, the longing behind it, the almost kiss as well as blocking the door, and then she might as well give up the whole silly game and go back to floor three and hide under the covers reliving every failed second of this night until the end of time.
Instead she steps aside, out of the doorway, and says, “All yours,” and the smile that twitches at the corner of the girl’s mouth makes Alice think it is—that this is in fact her house, her bed, her room Alice is standing in, but the girl just drifts past her into the bathroom, and closes the door without ever turning on the light.
Alice ejects herself from the room.
Decides as she does that what just happened was a minor hiccup, a false start to the game, but by the time she’s halfway down the hall, New Alice is back on track. The music is loud enough to drown out most of her doubts, and her skin is buzzing from that brief meeting with the violet girl, cheeks warm from the memory of that raking glance, and she probably hadn’t been flirting but even still, the weight of that look was like a shot of vodka, bold and burning in her chest, and that is the problem, she decides—New Alice is too sober.
She sees a boy from her building—floor two or four, she doesn’t know—holding a half-smoked joint, and plucks it from his fingers, takes a drag, and for a moment she is three thousand miles away, sitting on a low stone wall, heels knocking pebbles and mortar loose from the rock while a song loops on her phone and then she exhales, sighing the smoke out into the space between them with her thanks.
The boy leans in, flirtation in his glassy eyes, but New Alice isn’t interested, doesn’t linger, doesn’t hand the joint back, either. She has laid claim to it, pink lip stains on the tip of the paper, and she turns and takes another draw, smoke trailing behind her as she moves down the crowded hall, and the bodies don’t exactly part but she winds between them, no longer against the flow but with it as she passes through the kitchen, where bottles are lined up like stained-glass panels under the lights.
She reaches for the nicest-looking one and pours herself a shot of amber-colored scotch, throws it back, refills the glass, and when Old Alice whines that she has never had a head for liquor, that she has a paper to finish, that it isn’t smart to drink from open bottles, New Alice downs the second shot, and drops the last of the joint in the dregs of the glass, dousing both the butt and the protest.
One night, she thinks, and the thud in her chest is the steady beating of a clock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. And as the liquor hits, so does the weed, and warmth finally blooms inside her chest, and her head feels light, and this is the secret, isn’t it, she thinks, this is the easiest way to become someone else.
She is out of the kitchen now, the music running its fingers through her hair, the bass like a rope around each bone, and she moves toward it, hand skimming the wall for balance, until she is back to the vivid green paint with its fairy blooms. She leans in, and lets her forehead rest against the wall.
Her wall.
She closes her eyes, cocooned in the noise, until she feels herself sinking into the green paint, the surface going spongy beneath her palms, turning to mallow, swallowing her hands up to the wrist.
Alice jerks back, expecting the wall to hold on to her, but the paint is just paint and she stumbles, shoulders colliding with another body. A hand steadies her, and she knows, somehow she knows before she ever turns, that it’s her.
The violet girl.
And it is.
The sorry is halfway out when the girl smiles, one brow arched as if she’s in on the game, and Alice bites down on the word, turning it into a so, her lips pouting around the shape. The girl’s hand is still on her shoulder. It seems quite comfortable there, and the music is too loud to hear anything that’s not a shout, but Alice can read the words on her pomegranate lips.
Dance with me.
If Alice looked around, she’d see it’s not a strange request—everyone is dancing now, this section of the house a bobbing tide of limbs—but Alice doesn’t look at them, because that would mean looking away from the violet girl, with her tinted curls, and high cheekbones, and wide brown eyes. Brown, the most common color in the world, but there is nothing common about them. They’re gold at the edges, like some internal light is trying to peek out, but dark at the center, so dark she’d think the pupils were blown wide if she couldn’t see them too, pinpricks despite the party’s muted light.
And Old Alice might have stumbled, might have fumbled this flirtation, but the sheer volume of the music eliminates the need for coy replies or witty comebacks. All she has to do is nod, and then the girl’s hand is sliding from her shoulder to her shirtfront, fingers tangling in the cotton of her shirt as she pulls Alice closer.
The music is a current, the bass a rolling tide, and they are rising and falling together, and up close the girl doesn’t smell like vanilla, or coconut shampoo, or any of the heavy floral scents that hung in the air earlier that night when the girls in the suite were getting ready.
No, she smells like wet earth and wrought iron and raw sugar.
They don’t so much tangle up as fold together, arm on arm, ribs on ribs, a girl and her shadow, or a shadow and its light, and she’s heard a hundred songs and sayings about how the right person can make the whole world disappear, but the world is still there, raging around them, only it’s background noise, it’s set dressing, and for once in her life she is standing center stage, performing for an audience of one, this violet girl.
“I’m Alice,” she shouts over the music, realizes as the words come out how useless it is; she can’t hear her own voice. But the other girl seems to. She answers, her own name lost in the swell, and Alice frowns, and shakes her head, and the girl presses in, leans her cheek against Alice’s, and says it again, and the name should be nothing but an exhale tickling her ear, but the music chooses right then to dip, and so she hears it.
Lottie.
And then the girl is ducking her head, curls tickling Alice’s neck, and she feels the kiss as it lands on the bare skin at the open collar of her shirt. Alice is shivering, hungry for the touch, is about to pull the girl’s face up and kiss her when her ears hum, filling with a noise too loud, too bright, and at first she thinks it’s some kind of frozen note, a song’s protracted beat, but the atonal chord rises above the music and then the music cuts off, and the note remains and she realizes what it is: a smoke alarm.
And everything unravels.
The lights come on, and suddenly the Co-op is just a house, too crowded and too bright, and Alice looks around, but the violet girl is gone, and the bodies she’s been fighting through all night are moving in the same direction now, a tide carrying Alice away, down the hall and out the door and down the steps onto the street.
The night is a hand on the back of her neck, heavy, unwelcome, and she feels dizzy, unmoored, the world gone soft under her feet, her senses knocked off-kilter—like taking a nap in the afternoon and waking to find it’s dark outside, or stepping off one of those moving sidewalks, or lying for too long under the stars on a clear night as they slide around so slow you don’t notice until you stand up again.
Alice forces air into her lungs as a handful of students break off down the road, but the rest are too drunk and too high to make any quick decisions, so they pool on the curb in the humid night, dozens blinking away a trance, and Alice scans their heads in search of Lottie and her purple curls, but of course she doesn’t see her.
Alice sighs, and lets her head fall back, and feels the first drop of rain like a kiss on her cheek.
She sucks in a breath, because she knows what’s coming, and sure enough, by the time she exhales the humidity gives way, the night splitting open like a seam as it starts to rain. Not the steady drizzle Northeasterners seem so used to, but a sudden, crushing downpour, the water thick enough to blur the light posts.
The night around her fills with shrieks, students turned to birds by the sudden storm. They screech, and flock for the cover of the porch, desperate to stay dry, but Alice’s body moves before her mind, away from the house and into the street.
In seconds she is wet, the rain so loud in her ears that the other sounds All disappear—
The lines of the block washed away—
And just like that—
Alice is back home in Hoxburn, standing in the yard, arms outstretched and heels sinking into the sodden grass as the rain comes down so hard and so cold that the shock of it catches behind her ribs, and the air gets stuck in her lungs, the way it does when you jump straight into a freezing loch or wade into the North Sea. Catty taught her that the fastest way to shake the breath loose was to scream, but Alice can never bring herself to do it, so instead she holds her breath and stands there, shivering beneath the storm, knows her teeth will chatter for hours after, her fingertips too cold, and she’ll have to sit and thaw before the open fire. And the truth is, Alice loves that part, the drying off, the warming up, the coziness of coming back to life.
But that’s not why she stands out in the rain.
It’s because there’s a moment, pressed beneath the weighted blanket of the storm, when her body stops fighting, when all the voices inside her finally go quiet, and her shoulders loosen and her lungs unclench and her skin goes numb and the line between girl and world gets smudged, and she is washed away.
Made new.
Someone shrieks and—
Alice opens her eyes and—
—her front yard is gone, and she’s standing in the middle of the Harvard street, soaked to the bone, and the night is full of lights racing toward her, and it takes her a moment too long to realize they are headlamps on helmets, a tide of bicycles on some kind of night ride, a herd of rushing metal and voices shouting at her to get out of the way and then a hand catches her wrist and yanks her back onto the curb.
And it’s Lottie, of course it’s Lottie, her silver dress melting as the rain soaks the fabric, plasters it against her skin, the hair dye running from her storm-soaked curls, the violet rinsing out and rolling down her face like tears. Alice lifts her hand to the girl’s cheek, as if to brush away the stain, but her fingers get lost along the way when Lottie leans into the touch and speaks.
But the rain is a sheet of white noise, so Alice doesn’t hear what she says.
And then the girl is pulling her down the street, and then they are all moving now, the kids from the party, some sprinting toward the Yard, ducking under trees and awnings trying to stay dry, and others resigned to the rain, and Alice soaking it up like a sponge, Lottie’s hand still around her wrist, both of them caught in the storm.
Somewhere around here the edges of the night begin to blur, moments dropping like stitches, the waterlogged minutes collapsing in so that the next thing she knows, they are tumbling through the nearest open gate, and then up the steps of Matthews, ducking under the cover of the awning, rain falling in a sheet to one side, the building rising to the other, both of them sopping wet and breathing hard from the run through the storm.
Their hands have come undone, and Alice wishes she’d held on, because now it would be weird, wouldn’t it, to reach for the other girl again, when there’s no reason to—or so she thinks, until Lottie reaches out and takes her hand, like she doesn’t need a reason more than wanting to, and now there is a rope between their bodies, their fingers like a knot, and Lottie comes forward and Alice moves back, only it doesn’t feel like she’s retreating, more like being led, step-by-step, that rope drawn taut and slack and taut again, until her back meets the building door and she shivers as cold metal hits wet shirt, the sensation forgotten a second later when the girl’s body presses against hers. And Lottie is a fraction shorter, with the curls now tamped against her skin, but there is something about her that makes Alice feel like she is looking up, and—
(why is she taking measurements when there are hip bones buzzing against hers, when her heart is slamming against her ribs so hard the other girl must be able to feel it knocking, their wet bodies plastered together against the door)
—and it is not enough, there is still too much space, and maybe Lottie feels it too because she lets her head fall forward until their lashes tickle and their noses brush and their lips almost almost almost touch, and right there the other girl hesitates and meets her hungry gaze and whispers—
“May I?”
—as if this is the moment for discretion, and Alice nearly bleats out the word yes, and the other girl must see the letters taking shape before the sound is fully out because her mouth is already there, catching the s with her kiss.
That kiss—the one Alice has been waiting for since their bodies tangled in the house’s throbbing beat, since she recoiled from the wall and felt that cool hand on her shoulder, since she saw the girl sitting on the bed in the dark, since the cab first spit her out in Harvard Square three weeks ago with her whole life stretched ahead.
That kiss.
Rose-petal soft and deep as a well, and then teeth skim her lower lip and her knees threaten to go, and she’s thankful for the door at her back and the girl who now tastes like rain, and honey, and hunger.
Then the kiss is gone, her mouth, gone, as Lottie draws back, and Alice tries to move with her, but the girl’s hand is splayed across her ribs, holding her gently, but firmly, against the door.
“Shall we stay out here,” she asks, “or are you planning to invite me in?”
And for the first time Alice hears the faint edges of an English accent, like dead leaves cracking underfoot, expects to feel herself put off, but something about those sounds coming from that mouth—the mouth that has opened a door inside Alice, a want, a hunger, a heat pooling in the bowl of her hips—suits her perfectly.
“Well?” asks Lottie, lips twitching in a teasing way, as if the question is mere courtesy, as if she already knows how this will go. And Alice, Alice, under a spell, manages to free one hand long enough to swipe the key card, pulling the girl into the entryway and up the stairs, wringing raindrops with every touch, the water leaving a trail like a crime scene in their wake as they make their way up to floor three.
Two feral, hungry girls.
The suite is still empty, and dark, and Alice doesn’t even stop to feel self-conscious about the narrow room she shares with Lizbeth, or her unmade bed, the pile of clothes in the corner, the books littering the desk. The night has taken on a soft focus, narrowed itself to only them, and Alice is trembling, but Lottie is steady. Sure-footed. Sure-fingered as she tugs Alice toward the bed.
They don’t turn on the light.
She casts her phone aside without looking at the time.
(If she had, she would have seen that it’s well past midnight now, the game long over by her rules, New Alice returned to Old. If she had looked, she might have lurched back into her body, her cluttered head and anxious heart, might have realized that the magic potion of the shots had in fact evaporated, the buzz of the joint worn off, leaving only Alice, eighteen and alive and high on the heady pleasure of being touched, wanted, spelled by the power of the other girl. If she had looked, she might have stopped. If she had looked. But she doesn’t.)
Lottie pulls her close again, and something changes. Up until now she’s felt like the other girl is humoring her, like this whole thing was just another kind of game, but this time, as their bodies meet, Alice hears the other girl’s breath catching, a hitch of desire that makes her blush, makes her flush, makes her ache.
(She is used to wanting plenty, but it is another thing to be wanted.)
Teeth graze her collar, light as a feather drawn over bare skin, and then a hand slips between Alice’s legs, fingers curling, palm pressing hard to the front of her wet jeans. Alice arches into the touch, the touch that cannot get close enough because there are—
“Too many clothes,” she gasps.
Lottie chuckles softly, a soundless, heavy thing like distant thunder as she pulls back, watching as Alice tries to peel out of the sodden layers, and quickly discovers how hard it is to make the gesture sexy. It is awkward, but Lottie seems to delight in that awkwardness, eyes laughing as Alice fights with the fabric. The shirt’s okay, but the jeans are stuck fast, and she’s left wriggling and prying them away, something between a sausage casing and a durable layer of plastic wrap until she’s finally winded but free.
And even though Lottie must have gotten just as wet, somehow there is no struggle, just fabric falling, revealing warm bare skin, and Alice takes her in, trading mental pictures for the real ones she never took—ones she’ll wish she had.
A silver dress pooling like a mirror at her feet, streetlight streaming through the window, painting lines across skin, the utter confidence of an eighteen-year-old girl standing stark naked and rain-damp in the center of her room, curls plastered to her face and neck, violet ribbons running like ivy between her breasts, over hourglass hips—
(Tomorrow morning Alice will find purple stains on the cheap rug, like drops of blood.)
—and she waits like a canvas, waits for Alice to make her first move, leave her first mark, but it takes a steady hand and a solid will and she’s never had either so of course she falters, skimming the girl’s waist, the skin so soft and smooth and tan, trailing her fingers through the purple-tinted stream as it follows the curves of the girl’s hip, but she feels less like a seductress and more like a child fingerpainting, and the thought has her wanting to curl inside herself, makes her draw her hand away.
It might have ended there, but Lottie catches her wrist, guides her to the bed, eases her down, down among the tangled sheets.
Alice looks up, and in the lightless room the other girl is nothing but a shadow, lithe and looming, edges lit and center dark, and Alice realizes Lottie is still waiting. Waiting to be invited in, just like Alice has been waiting all her life. Waiting to get out of her small town, waiting for her life to start, and here it is, right here at the edge of an unmade single in a college dorm, and the freedom is dizzying, and it scares the shit out of her as well—but fear and fun could be neighbors, right?
(Like the time Catty’s boyfriend, Derrick, gave Alice a ride on the back of his motorbike and when he tipped to make a turn, she could have reached down and skimmed her fingers on the asphalt—the world was suddenly so close—and then the bike righted and the world balanced and Alice’s heart kept pounding, but it wasn’t fear, at least not fear alone. It was the thrill. And afterward, every time she was in her dad’s car, with its walls and its roof, she rolled the window down and held her arm out and felt the wind whip against her skin, and relived that tip, that turn.)
And here she is, no car, no walls, just open air, and all Alice has to do is lean in, lean in, lean in.
So she does.
Leans in so hard that she feels like she’s falling, even though it’s the other girl being pulled down into the bed, on top of her, skin so velvet, petal soft, and warm where it fits against hers, and her whole body hums because still they are not close enough, Alice fumbling as if it’s her first time—
(It’s not, no, that honor went to Rebecca Pierce when they were both fifteen and that really was full of fumbling, nervous laughter punching holes in the seduction, a tangle of limbs, and unsteady touches—Like this? Like this? Like this?—a leg pressed hapless between knees, grinding in search of rhythm before they gave up, collapsed into a pile on the blankets, unfinished but spent.)
—and she doesn’t remember saying any of this out loud but the girl above her smiles as if she did, as if Lottie can see the whole thing written in Alice’s breathless want, her blushing face, and the violet-tinted girl is catching her mouth, kissing her down into the sheets, and then the lips are changing course, leaving a trail of kisses down Alice’s jaw, her throat, one leg pressed between her two, the pressure of it so delicious it makes her thighs clench, and the world could stop right there, but the girl is rising off her and Alice wants to say wait, wait, is bereft, reaches out, grasping, greedy, to pull her back but the other girl catches her fingers and kisses them and then presses them into the pillow, and gives her a look that says Stay, and Alice does, even as the girl kisses her way down the pale slope of skin between Alice’s breasts, down her stomach, wet curls painting the skin in her wake.
And Alice—Alice is a square of chocolate melting in the sun, edges soft enough to smudge, and this is what she dreamed of when she dreamed of college, of freedom, of life, and now that it’s happening to her she’s torn between the urge to hold the moment on her tongue, and the urge to spit it out before it can dissolve, and even now she is still thinking too much, still stuck somewhere inside her head, until Lottie nips the soft skin inside her thigh and it is enough to bring her back, to send her pulse skipping and her limbs stiff, to put her firmly in her body as the other girl’s mouth settles in the dark between her legs and she stifles a gasp, blood rushing to the surface, and then Lottie does something with her tongue and the night unravels, and Alice—
Alice finally stops thinking, and simply comes apart.
