Ten Paces Ahead

My heels clatter down the wooden stairs like raindrops pelting the rhododendrons in the front garden. I pause on the landing, palming my pockets for the key I just used to lock the door to my apartment, then pull out my phone to check the time. The glass reflects the sun grinning white in the clear blue sky, and I feel its heat wrap around my shoulders.

The only storm here is the summer rain thundering against my ribs, and I’m on my way to see the girl who put it there.

I tuck my phone into the deep pocket of my skirt, then continue down to street level. My rainfall feet give an encore performance. I hop over my neighbor’s cat sleeping at the bottom of the stairs—a white mound of fuzz covered in black flecks of bark mulch—and swing out onto the sidewalk with the creak of the garden gate’s hinges.

My steps are lighter than usual. I feel pulled forward, some unseen force acting upon my chest, leading me into the world heart-first.

But that can’t be right. Love is never so close. Love runs ten paces ahead of me, calling over her shoulder for me to catch up.

In middle school, I picked a random boy in the cafeteria to have a crush on because my friends wouldn’t stop hounding me until I had one. When he asked if we wanted to get married with wooden rings at the Shakespeare festival, I ran and hid in the bathroom until the bell rang.

High-school-me crushed on a series of girls, one who was nice to me in math class, one who painted women in profile in art club, one who laughed with her whole chest and crocheted through lunch period. When asked what I liked about them, I didn’t know how to answer. It wasn’t their hair or their eyes; I could hardly remember what shirt they wore or if their make-up was done. I just saw something shine in them, and I wanted to follow that light.

Come college, I dated a woman I thought would be the one. She was a star on the rowing team, and she liked to put her big arms around my waist and hoist me into the air, just to prove she could. When I told her the truth about how I felt, she was holding someone else’s waist the next day.

I haven’t seen my ex in years, but as I walk down the sunny sidewalk, pavement blister-white beneath my leather sandals, I feel her shadow stepping on my heels.

But this is not the story I want to tell myself today. I focus on the invisible force pulling me forward. The excitement, the hope, the giddy rush of joy in every step.

I focus on Daphne.

Something like six months ago, Daphne kissed me under the awning outside that cheap Thai place, the rain an opaque curtain where it spilled from the pointed corners of the red overhang. Six months, and I still get sun showers in my chest when I think about her.

I suppose that’s how it’s supposed to be, when you have a girlfriend, but so much of this is new to me. I thought perhaps the rain would settle into puddles, the puddles dry up in the sun. Instead, dew glistens in me even when Daphne passes over the horizon of my mind. She never really leaves.

Still, part of me thinks I’m only delaying the inevitable by not telling Daphne.

Part of me wants to believe she doesn’t need to know, that I don’t need to say it when she already accepts the way things are between us. Part of me dreams nothing will change when I utter those words, but it’s a fool’s dream.

I reach the bottom of the hill, the sidewalk leveling out beneath my heels, and my phone buzzes. The case is warm like Daphne’s palm in mine when I pull it from my pocket.

I’m here! At the benches by the crosswalk, her text reads. The phone pings again. There’s an ice cream truck!!!

I giggle and type a quick Be there soon!! before continuing down the street.

Daphne’s all I see, now. I see her in the purple halos the sun casts in a pigeon’s feathers, elusive and beautiful and entirely mundane. I see her in the smooth teal face of the new streetlights at the corner, ushering cars across while I wait for the walk signal. I see her in the foam of white petals gathered in the corners of the Town Common, fallen flowers crashed against sidewalk curbs like waves against a rocky shore.

But when I see Daphne, I do not see her. I don’t see her freckled cheeks and her round shoulders. I don’t see the brown halo of frizz escaping her ponytail or the mascara clumped on her lashes. I don’t see the strap of her purse pushing her breasts apart or her jeans digging into her waistline.

I mean, I do see these things, but I don’t see them as her.

When I see Daphne, I see pigeons and green lights and fields of flower petals. I see love smiling and waving at me, waiting for me to catch up.

“Becca!” Daphne runs towards me, the charms on her purse clinking together at the sudden movement. “This market is so cute! I can’t believe I haven’t been yet!”

“It’s only the second farmer’s market of the summer,” I remind her. Both of her hands have already slipped into my fingers. She talks with her face pressed close to mine, and I don’t back away.

“But I should have gone last year!” she says.

“You didn’t know me last year,” I say.

She kisses me, a quick end to the argument, and we walk arm in arm towards the cluster of booths around the flagpole.

The tent peaks bury the horizon like a technicolor mountain range, ultramarine blue and coral pink, cadmium red and daffodil yellow. We window shop at the soap and jewelry stall, taste homemade jams and local honey on multigrain crackers, debate buying Daphne a new cutting board and lament not bringing kitchen knives to be sharpened.

I get in line at the huge vegetable tent—really three tents strung together—a quart of blueberries in one hand and a pint of tiny wild strawberries in the other. The red is blood-bright, the flesh supple between the countless dimples of seeds.

Daphne cuts across the path to a purple tent, the poles drenched in rainbow flags. I watch the woman behind the table gesticulate as they talk, the bright blue, pink, and white text on her shirt visible even from this distance: I love my trans child.

“That’ll be seven-fifty.” The cashier rings me out. He puts little red nets over top of the cartons before bagging them up in brown paper. I think I say thank you before I drift back towards Daphne, but my head is getting loud in this crowd.

“Becca, they have free pride bracelets,” Daphne says. She knows I’m there without even looking over her shoulder. “Look, they have an ace pride one, too.”

She plucks the gummy wristband from the pile and shows it to me. Purple, white, grey, and black swirl across the limp plastic dangling from her fingers. She holds it out towards me for an agonizing breath.

“Oh, that’s nice,” I say.

“I call them acelets,” the woman behind the table says, grinning at her own joke so hard her nose crinkles between her eyes.

“Clever!” Daphne says, and she drops the bracelet back into the pile.

My chest feels tight and my vision narrows on that strip of purple plastic as Daphne goes back to fishing around in the bowl. It’s soon covered again, and Daphne pulls out a lesbian pride bracelet for herself.

The pinks and oranges are a summery swirl that remind me of a scoop of sherbert. The colors suit her. She has a flag hanging up beside her bed, framed by string lights and silver-striped pothos leaves. When we sit in her bed, whether to kiss senseless hours away or watch sitcoms on her laptop, I’m always situated at a slight angle, my shoulder tucked behind hers, and the flag rises like a pink sun over her head.

The colors feel so warm, so familiar. A hearth I dry my feet at after a long walk through the snow. But it is not my hearth, not my home. I am only welcome inside if Daphne opens the door, and I don’t know how much longer I can pretend for her I’ve only lost the key I never had.

“Here, you want this one?” Daphne picks up a simple rainbow pride bracelet. The color belies nothing her hand in mind doesn’t already.

“They’re free!” the woman reminds me.

“Sure.” I hold my hand out to accept the bracelet. I feel silly for hesitating, but the colors look dull in my palm, nothing but a placeholder for the truth I know I owe Daphne.

“Thank you!” Daphne slips her hand up to my elbow and waves goodbye to the woman before she can ask us to sign up for any email lists.

Daphne says something about ice cream, and I agree, so we get in line at the truck, but I’m not here anymore.

I’m in her studio apartment. The kitchen is cluttered with cold mugs of tea, and whimsical paintings of insects and flowers lean up along the back wall. The smell of acrylic paint is thick in the air, her latest palette peeling on the upturned milk carton next to her easel. Sheer curtains block the busy intersection below her fifth-floor window, but the sun casts a kind light through the room, soft around the curves of her shadows.

Her mattress is warm under my back. Her chest hangs heavy into her bra, a few acne scars like pink kisses peppered between the freckles, and her hair trickles down to brush my ears. My hands hold her hips, but none of her weight rests in them. She’s staying up on her own.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her for the tenth time. She is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, shining and iridescent like the sun through soft rain showers, and still, I want nothing.

We’re next in line at the ice cream truck.

My head is too loud to hear myself order, but the teen in the truck takes my money, and a few minutes later he hands Daphne a cone with two scoops of strawberry, and me one of vanilla with rainbow sprinkles. They match the colors on my wrist, as does hers, and my stomach swirls. I think the universe is mocking me.

“Let’s go check out the booths over here,” Daphne says, starting to wander away. My feet begin to follow, but our arms stretch between us, my pace not matching hers.

The distance grows, as does the knot in my stomach.

“Wait.” I tug on her hand. Her arm bounces, elbow overextending in its socket, then she springs back towards me.

“Yes?” she says. She’s so close, I can see the thin wash of pink strawberry stuck on the waterline of her lips.

“I want to tell you something,” I say.

A pair of children carrying unwieldy bags of kettle corn strut past us; a huddle of teens raid the sample board of homemade jam smeared on crackers; a tiny dog sniffs Daphne’s toes, the leash connected to a woman with her back turned, busy asking the jewelry vendor what metals will tarnish.

“Maybe not right here,” I amend.

“Let’s go back to the benches over there.” Daphne gestures to the far end of the green with her ice cream cone. “Or we could go to my car?”

“The bench is fine.”

She gets to the bench first, and though I don’t mean to, I seat myself with a few inches of space between our legs. Daphne laps the perimeter of her cone to catch the drips, and I find a streak of white on my thumb when I do the same. My tongue leaves my skin sticky in the small, woven creases where it can’t reach. I want soap and water or a wet wipe, but Daphne leans forward, one elbow on her knee, so she can peer around into my face.

My heart takes off like pigeons scattering as a cyclist rounds the corner into a flock. Wingbeats rattle the streets in my airways. My stomach sloshes, a puddle run through.

“We don’t have to do this here,” Daphne says, her voice so gentle, I want to cry.

“I’m asexual,” I blurt out. “That’s what I—what I want to tell you. I’m ace. Asexual.”

Daphne nods slowly, but there is no surprise in her eyes.

“Alright.”

“Alright?” I exhale the word. This doesn’t feel real.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she says. “I kind of—well. I assumed it was something like that, at this point.”

“Oh.” My heart sinks. I almost want the pigeons back, if it means I can be rid of this heavy dread. If she suspected, this is already over.

“It’s not like we’ve… you’ve made it pretty clear how you feel about sex,” she says. “And it’s not like it ever bothered me. It doesn’t change much. Just means you have a name for it now.”

“It doesn’t bother you?” I ask.

“No. I would have brought it up sooner if it did,” she said.

“But—” My mind can’t follow where her words lead. “You mean you still want to be with me? You don’t just see me as a friend, now?”

Daphne frowns. She lifts her hand like she wants to touch my hair, but settles it in her lap instead.

“I love you,” she says. “You know that, right?”

“I know.” My voice squeaks.

“And whether or not we have sex—now, or ever—doesn’t change that.”

“Oh.” My vision fogs and my lungs feel stuffed nearly to bursting, like I’ve breathed in a tree’s worth of white petals.

“Hey. What’s happening in there?” Daphne puts her hand on my cheek, a tear smearing between our skin. She looks me in the eyes, but I feel her looking through them right into my head.

“The last time I said that out loud, I was left alone,” I said. “I didn’t want to think—I didn’t really think you would—but I guess some part of me still…”

The words leave me. She nods, stroking my cheek, and presses our foreheads together. For a moment, I don’t even hear the crowds wandering between the booths, the children shrieking as they chase each other across the green, the rhythmic popping of the kettle corn. There’s just Daphne and me, not close enough to kiss, but close enough to fall into each other head-first.

“I’m really glad you told me,” she says. I open my eyes, and the angle of her face is so absurd I can’t help but giggle. She laughs like yellow dandelions and monarch butterflies, her face falling into my shoulder.

“I am though!” she says.

“I know! I am too,” I say.

I hug her. She hugs me back. We laugh for a while, and then we’re simply breathing together.

“I wasn’t lying to you, by the way.” My voice is as soft as her arms around me, now. “I do think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world. I do want to kiss you and fall asleep next to you and get old and adopt a hundred cats with you. I am attracted to you. Just not—not sexually. I hope it doesn’t feel like something’s missing.”

“Nothing’s missing. Not if I have you.”

I squeeze her tighter, and when the tears prick my eyes again, there’s nothing but joy in them. Her heart is pressed to mine, glowing green, screaming go, and love waits patiently for me to cross the street.