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Vi finds Caitlyn absolutely ridiculous.
She’s haughty to a fault, nose always upturned in some kind of disgust; she’s got a smile that’s too plastic and eyes that look like they’ve been cut to the bone. Rehearsed. Everything about Caitlyn is rehearsed.
Except she catches her on the balcony of a party, pressing a blunt to her lips in a way that makes Vi a little achy, and suddenly she can’t remember why she’d ever thought Caitlyn was bad news. They’re not supposed to be friends, not by a long shot, and Vi thinks that’s all the more reason to meet Caitlyn out there, bracing her forearms against the cool metal of the railing, smirking as she takes the free position by Caitlyn’s side.
“Mel’s friend,” Caitlyn says, drolly, eyes spaced out but somehow interested. Like seeing a light flicker somewhere deep in a fog. “Violet, right?”
“Yup.”
Caitlyn smiles, cocks her head back, breathes out. “It’s always a fun party when you’re here.”
And that’s the end of it, really.
They start meeting at parties, just eyes at first— meeting gazes from across rooms, smiling and nodding, simply acknowledging— and then they start meeting at parties. They walk over, grab each other’s hands, shake it with a slow deliberation that makes Vi wonder if Mel will be mad if they fuck on the bathroom counter. They branch off, they go to the balcony, they talk about their days, their weeks. Caitlyn learns that Vi is studying sports medicine, and has a part time job as a bartender; Vi learns that Caitlyn is majoring in business, with a minor in photography, simply because she likes to capture pretty things in their prettiest moments.
“Have you ever taken a photo of yourself like that?” Vi asks, head a little fuzzy, eyes a little misty. Oh, parties. They’ll do that to you. “I mean- not like a selfie- I mean a serious photograph. Pretty thing in a pretty moment.”
Caitlyn’s cheeks dust red, she takes a deep drag of the joint in her fingers. Vi watches it. Watches her.
“No,” Caitlyn says, with a small shrug. “Never.”
“Well that makes sense,” Vi replies, too serious, too high. Those are never a good combination. “You’d run out of space.”
“What?”
“Your camera,” Vi says again, slower, trying to make her point. “Doesn’t have enough space. You’re always a pretty thing in a pretty moment.”
And Caitlyn crushes the blunt between her fingers.
— —
C.K. Blog
The Sustainability of Love
Hello, readers.
I’m sure you probably pulled a face at the title of this blog post when you saw it in your inbox. I’m aware, this is not my usual tutorial on how to properly photograph your subjects, but I’ve been feeling overwhelmed recently. And this blog is, technically, a spot for me to relieve myself; though it masquerades as a Photography for Beginners, that is also a self-expression. A way of destressing at the end of the day or week or month.
So, ignore this if you will. Or, indulge me in my long rambling about love, because there’s something in the air and I’m afflicted by it.
So, I met a girl.
There, I said it.
I met a girl at a party. Tale as old as time, right? She’s beautiful, and at times, she feels a bit unattainable. Untouchable. Like she’s above the stratosphere altogether. But we talked, and we became friends, and we’re closing in on six months since the first time we talked. I, of course, am probably the only one of us who is celebrating this landmark, considering most people don’t remember dates as clearly as I do— nor do they care to. Which, under most circumstances, is fine with me.
But just last week, I found myself peering at my calendar, looking at the date— March 3rd— and thinking ‘oh, it’ll be six months in seven days’. And then, if you can believe it, I thought ‘I wonder if she remembers’.
So I pose this question, going forward, what is the sustainability of love?
To be perfectly content with the lack of something from other people— i.e. the remembering of dates— only to then feel absolutely ripped apart at the limbs when the one person that you claim to love also reflects that lack, is that selfish? Perhaps it is. Love is supposed to be selfless , isn’t it? The natural human tendency to put themselves first should be swept away in an emotion as strong as love, and it’s supposed to polish all that dust off of your being; leaving you a shiny diamond version of yourself. That’s what all the songs and movies say. Love makes you better, it makes you selfless.
I believe that’s a lie. Love doesn’t make you selfless, it makes you selfish. It’s like putting your hand in a cookie jar full of very tiny cookies— thumb-sized cookies— and eating one, two, five, until you pull away and realize that you’ve consumed the whole jar. Love, if proper, is a wellspring of emotion; a reserve waiting to be mined. People, on the other hand, will always be people. They will always pilfer resources where they find them.
People have needs.
Unfortunately, I find that I have come to struggle with this idea– that a person can need more than they can give for themselves. I’ve felt it, firsthand, the way love grows from your palms and reaches for the person before you can even move your arms, and there is nothing more scary, to me, than needing something in a capacity that I cannot control.
So then, at the risk of sounding tacky, I end this post with a question, rather than a conclusion.
If your need for another can outweigh what you can give for yourself, what is the sustainability of love?
— —
Caitlyn gets a text from Vi at eight a.m. on March 10th.
Vi [7:59]
g’mornin beautiful
guess what
Caitlyn rubs the sleep from her eyes and props herself up on one elbow, peering between the date and the text, thinking about the post she’d made last week, and feeling fear creep up in her throat the way spiders do a web.
Caitlyn [8:01]
dare i say, chicken butt?
Vi [8:01]
oh you fucking loser
no
that joke is old
Caitlyn [8:01]
so are we, unfortunately
Vi [8:02]
speak for yourself hag
anyway
so listen
uhhhhh
fuck this is a lot harder than i thought it would be
Caitlyn’s pillows find their way onto the floor as she sits up straighter, bending over her phone, peering down at the screen. Her heart thunders away in her chest, lightning, storms, and all. Vi’s texts don’t exactly inspire confidence, and though they’re not dating— they haven’t even kissed— insecurities insist on making a circus out of Caitlyn’s brain.
Caitlyn [8:02]
just tell me
i won’t judge
Vi [8:02]
it’s not bc i’m afraid of getting judged
it’s bc ik ur gonna eat this shit up
Caitlyn [8:02]
???
Vi [8:03]
my dad wants you to come over.
for family dinner with us.
:/
She blinks down at the text, worries forgotten. Suddenly, the birds chirping outside are a little bit louder, her ears pop like she’s finally emerged from some underwater tank, and all she can see and feel are the little rays of sun peeking through her blinds.
It doesn’t mean the insecurities are gone, but for today, for this morning, they’re subdued.
Caitlyn [8:05]
oh my god
Vi [8:05]
don’t.
do not.
Caitlyn [8:05]
Violet.
YOU TOLD YOUR DAD ABOUT ME
AWWWWWW
Vi [8:05]
SHUT UP SHUT UP
IT JUST SLIPPED OUT OK
I DONT
IMJFJDFJSJD
I DONT LIKE YOU.
YOU SUCK.
Caitlyn [8:06]
yeah and you swallow
anyway
i love this
tell him i’ll be there
Vi [8:07]
…fine
see you tonight :/
loser :/
i’ll pick you up at 7, be ready :/
— —
(Caitlyn makes avocado toast quietly in her house, listening to classical music, thinking about Vi, thinking about love, thinking about the way her heart feels like a dream every time Vi so much as looks at her. Light, fleeting, something that slips between your fingers when you dare to look in the eyes.
She’s meeting Vi’s father tonight.
It’s not a big deal, they’re not even dating.
She ignores the little needs pounding away on the back of her head, letting them clatter to the floor when they run out of energy.)
— —
People don’t meet Vi’s family often.
It’s not by design, but it just happens. Her family is, in her mind, a part of her life hidden behind large gilded doors and encased in crystals that refract light away from their presence. They’re sacred, they’re important, and Vi doesn’t regularly make friends good enough to let them behind those fortified walls of gold and steel.
Except then there’s Caitlyn. Caitlyn, who turns her nose up at any fabric that has any polyester in it. Caitlyn, who up until six months ago had been something of a distorted fantasy bordering on a nightmare for Vi. Caitlyn, who wears diamonds and Prada to parties and makes the commute to college in a Mercedes-Benz.
Caitlyn, who had gotten Vi to accidentally gush about her when Vander handed her one drink too many during the first night back for spring break. She’s amazing, Vi had whispered, voice reverent and hushed. Sometimes, I’m afraid she’s too good for me, though. And Vander had looked, and looked, and looked. Like peering through a magnifier, out over the ocean, studying waves and their motions and how they grab anything in its path and consume it. The way Caitlyn seems to consume Vi.
Then bring her over, kid, he’d said, nursing his smile behind a drink, hesitant to scare off Vi by showing just how happy he was. Let’s see this amazing girl of yours, and I’ll decide if she’s too good for you.
You’re biased.
Ah, well, occupational hazard of being a father, I fear.
And Vi had grumbled, but given in.
All of which led to this moment, with Caitlyn clutching her purse in white knuckles and staring at the smokestacks above Vander’s little home, deep in the forest, off the beaten path, with Vi at her side; both of them vibrating for reasons so similar yet so different.
“This is very…” Caitlyn begins, and then trails off, thumbing the white sheer material of the frilly sleeves on her blouse.
“Lumberjack chic?” Vi finishes.
Caitlyn snorts. “Yes. That’s it.”
Vi fidgets. Having Caitlyn in her space– because this is truly her space, not the little eight by four box she lives in on campus– begs an assumption that bangs on the back of her brain. She looks at Caitlyn, and feels midnight shades burning holes on the back of her brain, and assumptions are all a person has, sometimes. You must be in love with her, her brain assumes, that’s why you’re letting her into your space.
And there is nothing scarier than that assumption, because on it’s tails, comes a man cloaked in darkness that drips and red that bruises, whispering you will never be good enough.
But those thoughts are gone as soon as they come, not on merit of their own autonomy, but because Caitlyn grabs her hand, laces their fingers together, and smiles at her like there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. “Should we go in?” she asks, rubbing her thumb back and forth on Vi’s hand, smiling with a lightness.
It’s said so gently, so close-cropped to a four letter word, that Vi’s heart stutters, tearing itself apart in her chest. “Yeah,” she smiles back, nodding, squeezing Caitlyn’s hand. “Fair warning though, my sister’s home and she… has a sort of— initiation ritual, I suppose?”
Caitlyn blinks.
“A what?”
— —
Vander has both of them under two burly arms the second they shoulder through the door, ignoring the way Caitlyn’s eyes go wide at his larger-than-normal frame, and ignoring Vi’s protests of stop, you’re gonna mess up my hair, stop!
“Caitlyn Kiramman!” he booms, voice low and rumbling but so warm that Vi doesn’t miss the way Caitlyn’s eyes soften under the fear of practically being accosted with affection. “My daughter speaks very highly of you.”
Vi rolls her eyes. “He’s acting all proper, can’t fucking believe this guy- come on old man, give it up.”
Caitlyn giggles nervously, eyes dating between Vi and Vander. “Well, I think very highly of your daughter, so I’d hope she does.”
Vi flushes under the admission, and Caitlyn doesn’t meet her gaze once she says it.
“Good,” Vander grins, hands on his hips, red flannel stretching around his shoulders. “Now, come on inside. I’m making my famous Vander’s Veggie Pie for dinner, since Vi here told me that you don’t eat meat!”
Caitlyn’s lips part slightly, eyebrows raised. Vi watches her, curiously, because this, of all things, should not have rendered her speechless. But there are words in Caitlyn’s eyes, feelings in the set of her shoulders, emotions pouring out of her trembling fingertips. And though Vander doesn’t see them as he turns around, hobbling back to the kitchen with a happy grumble, saying something about let me set the table, Vi stays rooted to her spot, watching Caitlyn.
“You told him I don’t eat meat?” Caitlyn asks, voice nothing but a whisper, a decibel above disbelief.
Vi rubs the back of her neck, bashful and nervous. “Well, yeah. You- you don’t, right?”
Most of the times, when Vi looks at Caitlyn, she finds a girl laden with rich luxuries and the sort of arrogance that comes with being the sole heir to a multibillion dollar trust fund; she finds a girl who tries her best to empathize, but still falls just a little short of the mark– simply because she’s never known a life other than hers– and grows red at the ears with the effort to understand where Vi comes from. But sometimes, just sometimes, Vi finds this Caitlyn, looking back at her now, who seems unburdened of one of life’s simplest joys– which is to be understood and to be seen.
“No, I don’t,” Caitlyn says, slow, like she’s running parallels of every time in her life that she’s been afforded this level of care, and comes up empty. Dipping your hands in the sand, and watching the grains fall through your fingers. “But I never- I never told you.”
“It doesn’t take a psychic to tell that,” Vi scoffs, and finds that Caitlyn flinches a little at it. She scrambles to fill the gaps. “I just- I mean, you always go for the vegetarian options when it comes to snacks, you know, at parties and stuff– when the bacon pretzels and shit are right there- so, I- put two and two together?”
“You put two and two together,” Caitlyn intones back, but the ghostly haunting of her voice is gone, replaced by something steadier, something more solid. Like kicking out rotting wood and replacing it with fresh, new cement. “That’s… very considerate of you,” she finishes, and it doesn’t sound like she’s saying those words at all. It sounds, if Vi will let herself be optimistic, like she’s saying I might love you a little.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yup.”
Caitlyn rolls her eyes, threading their arms together, and pulling them in for some kind of ride. “You’re so stupid.”
“Will it make me stupider if I say only for you?” Vi asks, and doesn’t care that Caitlyn can probably see her emotions clear as day on her face- doesn’t care that she’s laid herself bare the way a map lies in front of a tourist. To be explored, to be plundered.
Caitlyn hums, and tugs Vi towards the kitchen. “No,” she exhales, revealing the secrets of the universe. “Not if it’s only for me.”
— —
C.K. Blog
206 Bones of Love
You render me speechless with your love. Not because I cannot find any words to describe it, but because there are infinitely many words to describe it. And you render me catatonic, with your love, in the same vein that you find me speechless, because I’m petrified of this power you hold over me. Humans were not meant to love like a necromancer— to love as though you are controlling the very bones in my body, rebirthing me from a soil that I had not known I was buried in.
— —
Powder abducts Caitlyn, is the only way to put it.
Caitlyn comes back from a quick bathroom break, a detour on the way to the kitchen, and Vi watches her pocket her phone with a shaky hand, opening her mouth to say something to Vi, only to be body slammed into the next dimension as Powder comes barreling downstairs.
“So you’re the girl who’s got my sister kicking her feet and gigglin’ and shit!”
Her arm goes haphazardly around a bewildered Caitlyn’s shoulders, and Vander hides his smile behind a spatula as Vi purses her lips together to press away her own amusement.
“Ah, I am?” Caitlyn asks, raising an eyebrow, one arm coming subconsciously up to wrap around Powder’s waist and steady the both of them.
“I don’t kick my feet and giggle-” Vi rushes to defend at the same time Powder goes, “Yes! Absolutely!”
Vi slumps back into her seat as Powder beams and Caitlyn’s mouth twitches into a smile. Fighting against her sister was a losing battle from the beginning, and it’s not like she’s wrong, it’s just that maybe Vi would like to keep her dignity around the girl she’s in love with.
Somewhere, dimly, she thanks Powder for her straight shooting attitude. It’s ten times easier to hear it come out of Powder’s mouth on her behalf, a confession in it’s own right, although placed adjacent to Vi herself, and it’s so much easier to see Caitlyn take it in stride; building Vi’s confidence, block by block, for when she looks at the clock, and thinks three hours till eleven o’clock, she’s not scared of what shifting tides the time brings with it.
Powder sweeps Caitlyn backwards, towards the living room, mumbling something in her ear that causes Caitlyn to let out a nervous giggle, and Vi sends an apologetic shrug when Caitlyn spares one second of a panicked glance over her shoulder. It’s the initiation ritual, she’ll either sink or swim. And though it holds no real meaning on who Vi keeps as friends- she likes to think Powder is pretty good at reading people, too.
“That girl is wrapped around your pinky finger,” Vander says, once Caitlyn and Powder are out of earshot. Vi slowly turns towards him, rotating in a barstool by the kitchen island.
“What— what do you mean?”
“I mean,” he laughs, billowing and boisterous, always a man of comfort. Vi thinks everyone should have someone like him in their lives— someone who feels so much like painting the sky itself with any color you’d like. “She would do anything for you- did you see the way she let Powder drag her away? Didn’t even question it! Ten years of raising you girls and I’ve never seen someone take to Powder that quickly.”
“She-” Vi starts, and stops, and starts again. “She’s just good with people.”
“I’m sure she is,” he says. “But Powder is not just people to her, she’s your sister.”
And Vi picks up the implication he’s trying to put down. Caitlyn is stepping out of her comfort zone for Vi, and even though she’s good with people, Powder is different from most people. Louder, harsher, snappier. Closed off on edges where people tend to open, and open on cliffs where people tend to close. Powder is, as most humans aren’t, less of a contradiction and more of an unapologetic existence. It can be jarring, to suddenly be in her presence without so much as a warning, but Caitlyn takes to it the way caterpillars do to metamorphosis— and people don’t consciously do that, they make an effort. They make an effort to be more, do more, understand more.
Vi’s heart keels over, bubbles and bursts and snaps in her chest. She offers Vander a tight-lipped smile before returning to the living room, finding Powder cross legged on the couch, and Cailtyn sitting stiff but not hesitant next to her. One of her palms is turned up, cradled in Powder’s hands, the other fisted in her lap, as if she’s nervous.
“Your lifeline…” Powder grumbles, tracing a finger across it. “I don’t like it. I feel like ending it.”
Caitlyn jerks. “You- what?”
Vi rolls her eyes, leaning against the arch of the doorway. “Powder, don’t freak her out.”
“I’m not!” Powder exclaims, eyebrows shooting up, but not taking her gaze off of Caitlyn’s palm. “She’s got a very irritating lifeline. Hard to read, for some reason.”
Caitlyn glances back and forth between the sisters nervously. “Is that- I feel like that should be cause for concern. What is hard to read about it?”
Powder taps a finger on her palm, dragging it across the line with the length of her polished nail, and Caitlyn flinches, fingers curling. Vi grins. She’s ticklish.
“It’s just- sort of at conflict with itself? For the first half. And for a lot of the middle,” her finger traces a circle over the center. “But then it pans out at the end. You know what?” she lifts her head, looking curiously between the two of them. “Your lifelines look kinda similar, actually. From the middle onwards.”
And that’s how Vi knows that Powder— in all of her little eccentric evaluations and off-kilter comments— is giving Caitlyn the green light into their lives. It expands like a kite in her chest, slowly unfurling from her ribs before soaring high through her throat and going right to her head, making Vi feel like she might lift off altogether and go somewhere deep into the clouds. When they were younger, Powder would turn her nose away a lot at the people Vi mixed with— often other kids from the foster care system— sometimes they were kind, but most of the time they were cruel, carved into too early by the brunt of life, turned into spiteful beings solely because they didn’t have what is a given in most situations. A pair of parents. Or maybe even just one. Anything would be better than nothing. But Powder had known, every single time, which ones would bring trouble and which ones wouldn’t. Like she had a third eye for it.
Vi learned to trust that instinct pretty quickly, turning her back to the world, turning her eyes inwards, keeping her focus on Powder, weathering through the bad foster homes and the neglectful people. It stayed that way until Vander found them, dragging them away from the watchful dark gaze of the man who ran their foster home, always cracking his knuckles in a way that made Vi feel on edge— always hiding bottles of weird purple substances in the cooler of the basement. All these years later, and she’s pretty sure if they’d been stuck there for any longer they might not have made it out in one piece.
But those are all ponderings for other days and other times, because the timeline that Vi lives in has Powder on Vander’s couch, beaming, dishing out her usual prowess for reading people— giving Caitlyn that thumbs up that Vi knows means some much more than an actual thumbs up— and of course, then there’s Caitlyn. Out of all the mundane little occurrences of Vi’s life, meeting a girl at a party had to be at the top of the list. It’s college, there’s a party, there’s a pretty girl, she’s smoking a blunt; none of that should lend itself to the whimsical explosion of roses and glass and flowers everywhere in Vi’s vision.
There are always girls, there are always parties. None of them before Caitlyn were ever catalysts of chaos for Vi’s heart, and none of them after Caitlyn have lived up to that exhaustive expectation of an experience.
So when Vi clears her throat, it expels all cobwebs and fears and confusion from her mind. Tonight, the six month anniversary of their friendship, it must be special. There are times to fumble, and times to be decisive. Times to flee and times to dig your heels in. And well, with Powder telling Vi that their lifelines look so similar at the end— code for I can see her in your life, if you want her to stay— who is Vi to fumble or flee?
— —
Dinner is a quick ordeal. They dig in heartily, Caitlyn pressing polite fingers to her mouth to cover giggles as she watches Vander, Vi, and Powder playfully lob insults back and forth at each other; Vi keeping her eyes on Caitlyn so intently that she misses a pea with her fork and sends it flying straight into Vander’s eye.
Caitlyn’s hand bumps against Vi’s as she leans over to grab the salt, and Vi links their pinkies together, right there on the table.
Love flashes red, and so do Caitlyn’s cheeks.
She doesn’t move her hand away.
— —
“Step outside with me,” Vi says, rather than asks, after Caitlyn’s done helping Vander with the dishes and Vi’s fixed Powder’s cable connection in her room that was rendering her PlayStation useless.
She’s standing by the door as Caitlyn wipes her hands on her pants, drying them haphazardly and staring at Vi with wide eyes.
“What?” Caitlyn asks, blinking, eyes shifting between Vi and the door behind her. “It’s so cold.”
Vi holds up a scarf and a thick fleece-lined coat of Vander’s that she steals on occasion. “Get over here.”
— —
Vi loops the scarf around Caitlyn’s neck herself once Caitlyn has shuffled into the jacket, and there’s the droning of a football game in the background, complete with the soft muttering of Vander’s voice as he comments to himself on plays and goals and touchdowns. Vi makes two loops, tugs it closer to Caitlyn’s neck, reaches up to free Caitlyn’s hair from the material, flicking out back over her shoulders, and Caitlyn catches her wrists before she pulls away.
“What are you doing?” Vi breathes, but lets Caitlyn hold her. Some things are more important than personal autonomy.
“Thinking,” Caitlyn replies, so soft Vi would miss it if she wasn’t literally standing in Caitlyn’s space.
“About?”
Caitlyn takes a moment to answer, and her grip falters. Vi retracts her arms back into herself, but doesn’t move anything else.
“About how cold it must be outside,” she says, after a long moment, and Vi knows she’s lying, and Caitlyn must be aware that she knows; but Vi doesn’t push and Caitlyn doesn’t wait for her to.
Sometimes, it’s nice to exist with someone who knows you’re lying, and lets you get away with it. Sometimes, that’s what love is about.
— —
(Don’t be so kind to me, is what Caitlyn thinks. Don’t wrap your love around me the way you wrapped that scarf. I don’t want to need you to survive the way I need this scarf.)
— —
There’s not much to see in terms of scenery outside Vander’s house. It’s surrounded by a thick, dense cropping of forest, and in the distance the cityscape makes itself visible. It glows all kinds of colors, yellow, purple, blue, and Vi leads Caitlyn around to the back of the house, where she waves a hand at the wooden stairs leading onto the deck, giving them a perfect vantage point to the skyline.
Caitlyn settles onto the topmost one gingerly, completely in contrast to the way Vi plops down, and they both fight the urge to giggle at the way the stairs creak in duress under her ass.
“It’s so calm out here,” Caitlyn whispers, taking a deep breath, wrapping her arms around her knees. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Vi breathes, staring at Caitlyn’s side profile, eyes tracing the long line of her jaw. “It is.”
Their shoulders bump together, and Caitlyn smiles at her, resting her chin on the swell of her shoulder. “Your reputation precedes you, Violet, but I’m afraid they’re all wrong.”
Vi blinks. “What do you mean?”
“You’re so sweet, but there are-” Caitlyn waves her fingers vaguely. “-rumors, I suppose, of you being untouchable. Of being explosive. That people are scared to come near you because they don’t wanna get caught in whatever crossfires you bring with you.”
“Ah,” Vi nods, rubbing at the back of her neck, tapping her foot against the wood. “It’s sort of— uh, self-made? Well, that sounds— what I’m trying to say is- I did that to myself. I went around letting people spread rumors after I beat up a guy on campus once ‘cause he kept swearing I’d lose in a one-on-one against him.”
She lets out a chuckle that borders on sounding like nails on a chalkboard, and Caitlyn winces. “Why?” she asks. “You- I can’t imagine that did anything but isolate you.”
“You’d imagine right,” Vi says, letting her voice lilt into a soft mock of Caitlyn’s accent. Caitlyn rolls her eyes. “That was the intention, actually.”
Caitlyn gapes at her, just a little, because here’s Vi— charismatic, funny, charming, and strong Vi— and she’s telling Caitlyn that she purposely kept herself isolated. It’s an idea that finds itself on a cliff in Caitlyn’s mind, an idea that needs to self-destruct with a swan dive off the edge because she can’t so much as imagine wanting to be by herself. Alone is not a concept that Caitlyn does well with, which brings her back around to her own insecurities— as selfish as that may sound, since they’re talking about Vi — but she can’t not think about it. Because Caitlyn has needs, and Vi is filling them with every passing minute, she’s pouring uncanny amounts of love into Caitlyn and keeping her happy, keeping her brimming with affection— and how sustainable is a love that feels like that?
Because Vi clearly has a very specific reserve of affection for the people that she chooses to let into her life, and suddenly Caitlyn is worried that she’s too much- she’s taking too much from Vi, and she’s supposed to be self sufficient, she’s a Kiramman for fucksake. She has a rifle to her name that she can set on her shoulder and aim with both eyes through the viewfinder, she can shoot down her burgeoning affection and her needs and be only what Vi needs from her. She can be someone who gives more than they take.
“So what am I doing here with you?” Caitlyn asks, and though the words are harsh, she doesn’t sound harsh. Vi doesn’t flinch.
“You’re… ruining my reputation,” Vi says, slowly and decisively. “Yeah. That’s what you’re doing.”
And suddenly Caitlyn is ripping herself apart, right down to the bone, reaching to expel every negative thought she’s ever had about her relationship with Vi. There’s an immortality to being with Vi, a feeling of being limitless in a liminal space, like popping open an umbrella inside a store— but opening umbrellas in stores brings bad luck, as the old saying goes.
“It’s our six month friend-anniversary today,” Caitlyn says, simple as an apple falling on Newton’s head, leading to the whole world of discovery. “But I think you knew that.”
“Yeah, I did. I do.”
“And you wanted to make it special.”
“Yeah.”
Caitlyn lets out a long-suffering groan. “You’re making this really hard for me.”
Vi blinks. “I don’t mean to.”
“No, I-” Caitlyn starts, and then laughs, reaching out with her right hand to splay her fingers across Vi’s knees, squeezing supportively. “I know. You’re making it hard for me in a good way. I feel- I feel a lot about you.”
Vi’s whole face shifts, and Caitlyn thinks about photography, about immortality, about how the whole concept of capturing something you love in a moment that looks important to you will never cease to be novel; for if Caitlyn could bottle this emotion on Vi’s face– she’d do it, she’d immortalize it.
“How much?” she asks, like she doesn’t know.
“Too much,” Caitlyn replies, as if it’s the truth.
They smile, and it curls the edges of a book, dog ears the page, marks it in their memories forever as night to remember, a moment to photograph, a sea gathering waves out of still waters. They’ve known each other for six short months— it’s nothing compared to the lifetime Caitlyn has spent knowing her best friend, Jayce, and the several lifetimes Vi could swear she’s born and reborn as Powder’s sister— but the connection is there nonetheless. Maybe they’ve known each other in other lifetimes, too.
“What are you thinking about?” Vi asks again, pushes a penny for her thoughts while being penniless. Caitlyn opens and closes her mouth, exhaling a huff. “The truth this time,” Vi prompts. “Please.”
Later, Caitlyn will think about how this moment of weakness was the beginning, the end, the middle— all of it. This was the catalyst. But for now, all she can think about is the sliced edge of Vi’s jaw, the perfect bow of her mouth, the ring around her nose that catches light, and the way her eyes are so desperately grey that Caitlyn could swear they were hiding an Olympus of their own. All she can think about is how Vi is fulfilling every single one of her needs, and she’s not in control, and how nothing makes her more scared than that; than the idea that her own power is slipping out of her grasp because Vi has more of it- all of it- and she’d give it away in a heartbeat if Vi asked.
But the night is young, and the moon mimics the lights of the city, and everything feels so within her grasp. That’s the thing about letting your thoughts run wild- about letting the stars seem bigger and brighter than the sun- about not paying attention to the signs the way most people misread the speed limits on roads. Oh, I was going forty in a thirty? they’ll say, miffed but unapologetic. Caitlyn rushes past all of her own fears in that manner, letting her eyes brush past all of her own warning signs, letting the grey of Vi’s eyes seem more primary than the red of Caitlyn’s flags.
But here’s the thing— and they won’t tell you this just on any old Wiki article about a Kiramman— Caitlyn’s need for control over her emotions comes with its own antidote. She could spend hours leaning over railings, talking to Vi at parties, watching her diverge from a large group of people all standing around debating the likelihood of a beer pong game, to come and meet Caitlyn on the back porch— and she could spend days, weeks, months, feeling the way Vi presses close to her when the windchill picks up a little. The antidote, then, is far more simple than the problem. Because Caitlyn can allow herself to lose a little control, if that means learning Vi and all of her little pieces.
Learning the way she likes to fist bump Powder when they cross each other every time, and learning the way Vi wipes her mouth with her whole arm rather than just her hand; learning the way Vi’s shoulder twitches when she gets stressed, and how she rolls her head back constantly to work out some kind of invisible crick. The antidote, much like the devil, is in the details.
“I’m thinking about how you’re a pretty thing in a pretty moment right now,” Caitlyn finally responds, bunching the fabric of her slacks over her thighs in her hands.
“Oh,” Vi exhales, like she’s letting her whole heart out in a single breath. “You- damn. You’re- fuck.”
Caitlyn laughs, free and unburdened, locking away her fears for another day. It’s stupid, she knows that, but sometimes the risk is worth taking. “It’s okay, take your time.”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh, that’s not very nice.”
“Yeah, well,” Vi shrugs, fumbling with her fingers. “It’s also not very nice to make me feel like I’m going to throw feelings up on my shoes.”
“Aim away from mine, please, I bought these yesterday,” Caitlyn says, levity galore in her voice.
“Is it going to make you love me less?”
Caitlyn’s heart stills. They get that wrong about love, it’s not the extra beats or the skipped ones, it’s not even the increase of rate or the way it might bear out of your chest— it’s the coming to a complete stop that makes love love. If my heart stops here; may we live in this moment forever? Photography has nothing on my heart, immortality has nothing on your soul- I could live ten lifetimes and not have enough of you.
“Who said I love you at all?” Caitlyn whispers, careful not to disturb the air around them.
Vi doesn’t miss a beat. Oh, maybe they’re all just giant walking hearts. “No one had to.”
“You’re cocky.”
“You love me.”
“I’ve never loved anyone before,” Caitlyn admits, lets it spill out of her the way colors spill out of the sky on beautiful evenings. “Romantically, I mean. You- you’re the first.”
Vi responds the way she never expects anyone to respond. Vi doesn’t say- well, I’m honored- and she doesn’t say- is that so?- because this is who Caitlyn has fallen in love with, a woman who wields kindness not like a weapon but like a bar of soap— used to clean and uplift and leave a person feeling newer than they’d been before she came along.
Vi asks, “How does that make you feel?” and Caitlyn kisses her.
— —
“You never asked if I love you back.”
Their lips are inches away, breathing fire, stoking fire, nursing fire. There’s no fear of burning each other when they’re both up in flames.
“Don’t you?” Caitlyn asks, as if she’s known the answer her whole life.
“I’d probably trade you for a bag of Doritos.”
Caitlyn laughs, the universe hears her. “Can’t blame you, I do love a good crisp.”
Vi wrinkles her nose. It’s unbelievably cute. “I forgot you’re British.”
— —
(I love you, Vi whispers against the gentle slope of Caitlyn’s spine, mapping the words across her skin. Oh, my beautiful cartographer of love, Caitlyn thinks, and threads their fingers together over her stomach.)
— —
C.K. Blog
reblog from MelMedardaWrites
I find that today, more than other days, the sun shines brighter. Perhaps it’s because I woke up this morning with your pinky wrapped around mine like a promise, or perhaps it’s more than that.
Anyone can make a promise, but your promises sound like coronation speeches, like the oath of a decade, a century, an eon. You take my hand and populate my palm with all the wishes that you carry close to your heart, and I feel so lucky to share them with you.
So, the sun doesn’t shine brighter, but my eyes open wider, I take it all in. I take you in.
— —
Theology has always interested Caitlyn. Religion, it’s vices and it’s virtues; the grasp, the hold, it’s unflappable hand that can wrap a human whole and enlighten or delude them. She doesn’t study it, doesn’t take a class on it, but she observes it from afar. What is the nature of devotion? Who is to say what is faith and what is fallacy? She supposes each person has their own version of it, and she finds herself wondering now, more than ever, where her faith lies.
She knows that she believes in God, one God, maybe multiple Gods, but she doesn’t know what it stands for in her mind.
And then there’s Vi, with her strong arms and charming smiles and if Caitlyn could build a whole religion for her, and her alone, she would. She’d raise monuments for Vi, and write long scriptures in her name. Religion, at the end of the day, could be for any one thing— so long as it garnered devotion. And that’s what she feels for Vi, a strong kind of devotion that nearly relegates itself to being religious, to being so head over heels that when Vi throws a look over her shoulder, ankle deep in the ocean by the beach, Caitlyn nearly builds a temple out of the sand.
The rest of March goes by in milkshakes and McFlurries from the McDonalds on the opposite side of campus, April passes them with fresh leaves and dewy grass, Vi takes her to a museum, points out all the beautiful little things that her eyes catch on; they visit a beach, they go to an amusement park, and then some nights they simply lounge on Caitlyn’s couch, Vi’s head in her lap, snoozing away, and Caitlyn skimming through her recent pictures on her phone, editing them and sharpening them.
“Do your parents know that we’re dating?” Vi asks in early May when they’re both under a tree on the campus grounds, head propped against the bark. It’s a tiring day, Caitlyn has a final in two hours and Vi has a shift at the bar in five, but this is their version of unwinding.
Caitlyn’s eyes flutter open.
“Um, what?”
Vi takes a beat, drumming her fingers against her thigh, humming quietly as if she’s reevaluating whether she should even ask the question again, but she’s got Caitlyn’s attention now— and nothing makes Caitlyn more restless than not knowing what’s going through Vi’s head.
“I mean- Vander- he knows about you,” Vi begins again, less anxious and more just hesitant, as if she’s still not sure if she should be saying this at all. “And I know you talk to your parents every weekend, so I guess- I guess I was wondering if you were keeping us a secret? Which is fine! Do they know you’re a lesbian? Shit- wait, don’t answer that- I don’t have the right to ask-”
“Violet,” Caitlyn says, accent lilting heavier with amusement as she reaches over to lace their fingers together on Vi’s lap. Vi relaxes into the gesture. “Yes, my parents know I’m a lesbian, and no, I’m not keeping us a secret, but-” she takes a deep breath, “I haven’t told them about us either.”
“Why not?” Vi asks, the epitome of patience, so unlike the rumors about her that have grown legs and walked a mile around the college.
Caitlyn rolls the answer around in her mouth, wonders what she could possibly say. If she knew the answer, it would be a lot easier, but even she doesn’t know why she doesn’t bring it up with them. The most obvious answer is the fact that her mother would grab her private jet— the Airbus A380— and be in Caitlyn’s comfortable little apartment in under twenty-four hours if she caught wind of a new woman in Caitlyn’s life. It’s a believable excuse, and it’s not even an excuse, because it’s true, Caitlyn really does not want her mother in her space until she absolutely has to be. But it’s also not the whole truth.
Because if Caitlyn were to dig deeper, if she were to not be so scared of that box in which she’s locked half of herself and shoved into the recess of her mind, she’d find that she’s keeping it from her parents because she’s also keeping it from herself. Most days, she looks at Vi, and sees a girl so bright that the sun grows grey and dull. Most days, she holds Vi in her arms, listens to tall tales about Powder from when they were children and thinks about how brave Vi has been her whole life. But most days are not all days, and on those days that she isn’t feeling any of those things— on those days where she’s left alone for a little too long, sitting with her thoughts and a pen in her hand, textbook open to some page that she’s supposed to be reading for class— she feels just tired.
Tired and scared. Because she feels the need for having Vi around growing everyday, like bacteria left in a petri dish, and her need for control scrambles like claws on a smooth surface. Nothing to cling to, nothing to keep her from falling.
So when Vi asks why not? with her head tilted in that adorable puppy-like manner that makes Caitlyn melt, and her eyes squinted against the sun as the rays fall through leaves and branches squarely into her face, it nearly destroys Caitlyn to shrug and say:
“I don’t know. Perhaps because I don’t want her interfering.”
It’s a lie, but Vi smiles at her like she’s received the truth and Caitlyn buries her face in Vi’s neck; pretends that if, for just a moment, she could stop looking at her girlfriend, she’d be rid of all of her guilt and anxiety.
— —
(When she lifts her head, Vi kisses her, and the guilt sings.)
— —
“There’s a fireworks show happening tonight,” Vi says, shouldering open the door to the back porch of Caitlyn’s apartment, stepping through to where Caitlyn sits, shades over her eyes, arms behind her head, entire torso exposed under a skimpy bikini, achieving the perfect summer tan. Vi raises an eyebrow, slides her own glasses down her nose to take in her girlfriend. “Although the view right now is immaculate as well.”
“Stop that,” Caitlyn grins. “Fireworks, you said? Where?”
“On the beach,” Vi supplies, reaching down to pass a glass of pink lemonade into Caitlyn’s hand as she settles into the lawn chair propped open on the deck by her side. “We don’t have to go, but I just thought it would be cool. Could be like a- date, or something, I guess.”
Caitlyn snorts. “It’s so cute that you get awkward asking me on dates, we’ve been together for two months already, Violet.”
Vi rolls her eyes, lets a groan loose as she stretches languidly. “Because it doesn’t feel real sometimes, like- damn. We’re really dating. Holy fuck. Who would’ve thought, ya know?”
“You’re cute.”
“Don’t ever repeat that in public.”
“Are you going to come pick me up? For the fireworks?”
“I was actually thinking we could walk?” Vi asks, reaching over to play with Caitlyn’s fingers lying languidly over her stomach. Caitlyn flips her hand over, lets their palms slide together. “It’s just- summer’s gonna be busy for me, I’m taking a bunch of shifts at The Last Drop, and I guess- well, I wanted to walk with you and spend as much time as we can together,” and then she winces. “When I say it like that it makes it sound like I have a terminal illness or something.”
Caitlyn laughs, and then lets it peter out. “You want to spend as much time with me as possible?”
Vi’s voice is sober and steady when it reaches her ears. “I always do.”
“And here I thought you were using me for sex.”
“I am.”
“Oh okay, glad we could clear that up.”
Vi giggles and rolls over, Caitlyn tilts her head to the side, sliding her glasses onto her head to meet Vi’s gaze.
“This is gonna sound cheesy as hell, but,” Vi takes a deep breath, holds Caitlyn’s gaze, and exhales. “You’re like- the best thing that’s happened to me. Ever.”
“That’s-” Caitlyn begins, and then swallows the noise in her throat. “I appreciate the sentiment but I must, as a scholar, remind you that you never know what the best thing to happen to you, ever, is. Because you’re speaking based off of what you have known so far, when there could be better in your future-”
“Caitlyn,” Vi deadpans, shutting her up.
Caitlyn hums into silence.
“I adore you, but sometimes you just need to shut the fuck up and take the compliment. Stop thinking there’s something hidden or something more behind simple statements. You don’t need to dissect and dive into the cracks and crevices of every sentence gifted to you.”
Caitlyn huffs, stores air in her cheeks before letting it out slowly. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It is, but that’s okay, it’s cute.”
“It’s really not,” Caitlyn insists, even though she thinks Vi might have hit the nail on the head.
“I love you,” Vi begins again, unprompted, and Caitlyn feels time still the way animals go into hibernation— in preparation for something. Time holds its breath as Vi speaks. “Like I- I really love you. And I want you to know that. That’s the long and short of it.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
Caitlyn huffs, throws her hands up, feels the lawn chair rock under her, clicking against the Trex Deck of her back porch. “Be so- so easy to love! It’s- it’s horrible. You’re horrible. Who wears their heart on their sleeve like that? I’m disgustingly in love with you and it’s going to destroy me.”
It’s said in jest, harsh words riding out on a sweet wave, washing over Vi as she takes it all in with a smile.
“Making you be disgustingly in love with me was the goal.”
Kissing Vi isn’t a novel feeling anymore, instead, it feels more like the way you wiggle your toes in the worn soles of a shoe after wearing uncomfortable high heels all day. And when Caitlyn leans over, she anticipates Vi meeting her halfway, anticipates the way her steady hand cups her jaw, the way it slides to the back of her neck, under the curtain of Caitlyn’s hair, rubbing the baby hairs at the very bottom of it all. Caitlyn can anticipate everything about Vi, perhaps down to the metronomic beat of her heart if she really had to, and she thinks about the raised floorboards of Vi’s dorm that she keeps accidentally ripping the bottom of her feet open on; she thinks about the sweater that Vi has left hanging in her closet since the last week of December— before they were even together.
She thinks about how she needs to feel Vi the way she can. An omnipresence in her life, a constant, something she can depend on. The fear is never quite gone from her mind, the absolute terror of wondering just how sustainable a love that feels like so much can be. The aching of her bones under her skin, like they’re not supposed to be there, like maybe they’re supposed to be with Vi; the collapsing of her heart and exploding into a thousand tiny particles of sand, to get swept away to some ocean with Vi’s name on it.
People are not supposed to feel like that, they’re not supposed to feel like Sunday morning breakfasts with pancakes, where there’s a girl with dyed pink hair laughing as she drowns her plate in syrup; where there’s a girl in a too-big T-shirt and an AC/DC band logo over the chest that indicates this definitely isn’t her shirt. People, for the most part, feel like cold dinners from the fridge on a Wednesday— taking it back up to their room, eating it in silence, hitting play on a YouTube video they’ve settled to watch since they can’t find anything better.
“By the way,” Vi breathes into Caitlyn’s mouth, breaking away for a moment. “Can you help me dye my roots after we come back tonight?”
Caitlyn blinks, pulls back, runs her fingers through the soft tuft of hair that always falls forward on her forehead, and then to the shaved side that’s faded back to brunette.
“Yeah, of course,” she says, and kisses Vi again, tastes moonlight and sunfire and pancakes and syrup and lipgloss.
— —
The air is a little too sticky, the pavement slaps wetly under Caitlyn’s feet from a fire hydrant that had accidentally exploded, and Vi’s hand is snug in hers as they tug each other down the cobbled path towards the boardwalk, from where they’ll get to the beach, and to the ocean, to the sky, and beyond. Caitlyn had put a cute white sundress on, and had recommended that Vi go with a red tank top and cargo shorts— and it takes the world of self-control to not let her gaze constantly wander to the large map of tattoos rippling across Vi’s now-exposed skin.
“It’s gonna start in fifteen minutes,” Vi says, as they round the corner and find themselves face to face with a bonfire father down the beach. “Do you wanna get some soft-serve while we wait?”
“Lead the way,” Caitlyn hums, letting Vi drag her down the boardwalk, to a small white van with the windows popped open, some girl in a low-cut tank top hanging out of it, handing out ice creams and snow cones and popsicles.
Vi slaps the side of the van gently, calling the girl’s attention, and her eyes light up, red curls bouncing as she leans over to wrap Vi up in a hug through the door before leaning away and Caitlyn raises an eyebrow. She hadn’t been aware that they were friends.
“Vi! What can I get for ya?” she says, smile a little too wide, eyes a little too eager, and Caitlyn’s mind dings.
“Two vanilla soft serves, Sarah, thanks,” Vi replies, either extremely dense, or playing it off for the sake of Caitlyn.
The girl’s eyes dart over to Caitlyn in a single swift motion that feels a little too practiced to be a one-time thing, and Caitlyn’s chest stutters with an aborted laughter. Oh, she thinks, reaching to wrap a possessive arm around Vi’s waist, pulling them back to chest as Vi leans into it. That’s how it is.
“Do you know her?”
Vi grins up at Caitlyn, as if she’s never had another thought except for Caitlyn in her whole life. “Yeah, she was in my anatomy class last year, and then we just kinda became friends, I guess.”
“And she isn’t… your type?” Caitlyn asks before she can even consider the weight of her words.
Vi blinks, smile sliding away, ice cubes across glass, colors across the sky. Caitlyn’s jaw ticks.
“Uh, no? I mean- she’s hot- but I-”
Caitlyn presses her lips to the shell of Vi’s ear, fingers webbing across Vi’s lower stomach. A smile paints the corners of her mouth, amused. “Relax, baby.”
She can feel Vi twitch under her hand, and some part of her must have ascended to hell because it shivers with pleasure that can only be described as hungry.
“I- I am relaxed,” Vi stutters, trembling on her words, a leaf in the wind.
“Mm,” Caitlyn hums, and lets her eyes flick back to the open window of the ice cream truck.
She’s there— Sarah— holding two soft serves, eyes wide, and then narrow, and then back to normal. Caitlyn plasters on a smile that’s sickly sweet and lets her teeth drag over Vi’s ear, feeling her girlfriend shiver in her hold, eyes shut, oblivious to the display happening around her. “Sarah’s got our ice creams, babe,” she says, finally letting go, purring softly, feeling Vi’s laughter rumble through her as she catches Sarah’s gaze and stumbles out of Caitlyn’s grasp apologetically.
“I- thank you, Sarah,” Vi garbles out, sliding a twenty dollar bill through the window and not stopping to get the change as she turns back to Caitlyn, cheeks a fierce red. Caitlyn thinks she looks adorable.
Thinks she looks like hers.
And then the thought makes her chest close up, because this need to have Vi feels debilitating— feels like the forecast of a storm before it comes, feels like seeing dark clouds in the distance and shutting all the windows. No one should need another person like this; in the way the tides need the moon, or the way a bulb needs electricity. (Or maybe they should, but Caitlyn’s whole life has revolved around self-sufficiency, about being good enough to stand on your own two feet, about never needing a helping hand from anyone. And it won’t be until much, much later, that she can find it in herself to look the truth in the face, that horrible, horrible truth— that people need others— and accept it.)
Vi slides the soft serve into her hand and then drags them away from the van, still giggling over Caitlyn’s silly display of jealousy, still making light-hearted comments like, didn’t know you had it in you, Kiramman, it’s kinda sexy, while Caitlyn smiles down at her; head somewhere a million miles away.
They find a spot on the beach by the bonfire, Caitlyn sinking into the sand with a soft thud, and Vi settling into the space between her legs, leaning back into the cavity of Caitlyn’s chest with the intention of creating a memory— of leaving her imprint on Caitlyn the way time does on wounds. She thinks, distantly, about how leaving Vi would probably feel like ripping a limb out of a socket. (If she fits this well within Caitlyn, she must be meant to be there, but this too, is a truth that Caitlyn won’t learn until much later. Building blocks, building up, leaning forward, tipping until it can tip no further.)
There are a hundred other couples around them, all in various positions— some kissing, some giggling, some simply looking up at the sky the way Caitlyn and Vi are— but there’s one thing common in all of them: peace. Tranquility. A sense of limitlessness in a night that only lasts a few hours, in a moment that only lasts a few minutes. Cailtyn holds Vi tighter, feels Vi’s long fingers curl around her wrist questioningly.
“Babe?” Vi says, tilting back, eyes imploring. “You okay?”
And Caitlyn charts her own heartbeat, the way it beats in morse code, the way it says: no, how could I be— how could I be okay when you’ve taught me to love with no limits but all I have are my limits. I want you, and I can’t have you. I need you, but I don’t know how to need you.
Instead, she says, “Yeah, perfect.”
Vi squints, grabbing Caitlyn’s chin between her fingers, dragging her closer. “Are you sure?” she asks, and then pressed a fleeting kiss to Caitlyn’s lips. “‘Cause you’re being way less annoying than usual.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Caitlyn grumbles, and holds Vi closer.
Vi giggles. “I was planning on it. Once we got home.”
Caitlyn’s stomach flips. “Mhm?”
“Mhm.”
“Vi,” Caitlyn admonishes, holding a groan deep in her stomach, leaning forward to rest her forehead on Vi’s shoulder as she feels laughter rumble through her girlfriend. “Don’t do that. I’m more inclined to make you see fireworks in our bed than see them here on the beach.”
“Patience, Cupcake,” Vi skims her lips across the flat plane of Caitlyn’s cheek. “You’ll get your turn.”
“I’m pretty sure this counts as public indecency.”
“We’re not even naked.”
Caitlyn tucks her face against Vi’s neck. “You’re making me feel naked. I feel like everyone and their mother can tell the kind of thoughts I’m having right now.”
Vi’s quiet for a moment, reaching up to trace her fingers down the path of Caitlyn’s throat, tapping thoughtfully against her sternum. Caitlyn lets her. Maybe she hopes Vi’s finders are some magic salve— maybe she hopes it’ll make the tightness in her throat go away, open it back up, release her lungs from the asphyxiation of her own thoughts and fears. She thinks of hands, thinks of Vi’s, thinks of her own, thinks of them sprouting out of her lungs and holding her throat closed every time she’s around Vi, making it so damn hard to breathe.
And then, Vi says, “I still feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
Caitlyn’s chest shutters.
So she hadn’t been healing with her fingers on her throat, she’d been reaching. She’d been mapping out the tightness, pulling words from the soft flesh of her tendons, feeling the trembling ache of her bones the way Richter scales read earthquakes.
“FIVE MINUTES TILL THE FIREWORKS!” someone yells around them.
“I don’t want to-” Caitlyn starts, chokes, starts again. “Why do you say that?”
Vi feels hot in her arms, but she always runs hot, her body temperature always higher than normal. But this isn’t that— this is the heat of being pulled taut, of being pushed near a fire and being told to wait. Wait for it to grow. Wait for it to burn you. Wait to disintegrate to ashes.
“Because I love you,” Vi says slowly. “And I know you. You’ve felt- distant. Since we met Sarah. Is that it? Are you still— because she’s nothing, Cait, I’m serious-”
Caitlyn shakes her head, feels the fabric of Vi’s tank top against her face. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“FOUR MINUTES TILL THE FIREWORKS!”
“I can’t tell you,” Caitlyn whispers, feeling her chest squeeze. The corners of her eyes are wet, her arms are trembling. Vi brackets them with her own, humming something short, like a pitiful tune.
“You don’t have to tell me right this second,” Vi murmurs. “But you owe it to the both of us to say it eventually. I want- I want to be there for you, Cait. Whatever it is. Please let me.”
“I cant- I cant-” Caitlyn repeats, and pulls her head off of Vi’s shoulder. Suddenly it’s suffocating to be there; she doesn’t deserve the comfort of Vi’s essence.
“Why not?” Vi presses, and the fading red of her roots are darker in the night, the greys of her eyes darker with no light, the frown of her mouth darker with so much plight.
“THREE MINUTES TILL THE FIREWORKS!”
“Because if I say it,” she says, and feels the regret building already, the way sediment builds on banks. “If I say it, then it becomes real. And I don’t— I want us to work, Violet. Fucking hell, please don’t make say it.”
Vi takes a deep, shuddering breath. Her sobs are there, too, she’s holding them in, just the same as Caitlyn. Oh, one of them will have to break first. “I love you so much, Caitlyn.”
“I love you, too,” she scrambles to say, scrambles to hold on. This is what she was afraid of— of needing Vi so much, that when the time comes to separate- it’ll break her in half.
“So we need to do what’s right by each other,” Vi keeps going, voice too steady, too practiced.
“TWO MINUTES!”
“I’m sorry,” Caitlyn garbles, a wet mess on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry- I don’t- I want this to work, please let me try to make this work.”
Vi twists in her grasp, and there’s no one left on the beach, no one but them and the clicking sounds of fireworks being locked into place. No one but them and the stars. Vi surges forward, holding Caitlyn’s face with her free hand, framing their mouths together. Caitlyn sinks into it, or drops, rather, because nothing about this is graceful. There’s hunger, desperation, and they kiss like they’ve never done before— they kiss like they know there’s a limited number of kisses left. Like they’re running on borrowed time.
Caitlyn remembers the first time she’d wanted to kiss Vi; standing under god awful red LED lights of some frat boy’s bedroom, watching Vi scavenge under his bed with a grimace as she pulled a small bag of fresh weed out from under it. She’d come up, smiling, teeth on display, eyes glinting with danger and kindness, a contradiction of its own, and Caitlyn had thought oh no. Because infatuation, you can get rid of, liking you can get rid of, but love? It happens automatically and without a grace period, most of the time. One morning you wake up, you spread your fingers across the bed sheet, and find love in the spaces between. You find it webbing your fingers together, you find it rolling in little dust bunnies across the floor.
Caitlyn finds it in the shake of Vi’s shoulders as she cries now into her mouth, just as she’d found it in the shake of her shoulders as she’d laughed back then, saying frat boys, they never know where to properly hide their shit.
(I must be a frat boy too, then; for I know not where to hide my love for you.)
The fireworks explode.
Caitlyn’s cheeks are wet with her own tears as well as Vi’s.
— —
“Come home with me,” Caitlyn whispers, fireworks booming away, the reflection of it trapped in the water below. “Just- one night, please? And then we can have our talk. Please, Violet.”
So many please’s, what is she begging for? Does she even deserve to have it?
Vi nods, eyes darting between Caitlyn’s mouth and eyes. “Of course.”
They don’t wait to see the end of the fireworks.
— —
They stumble through Caitlyn’s apartment door, kissing again like they’re standing on the edge of a cliff, Vi grasping at the edges of Caitlyn’s shirt, peeling it off, leaving a trail that she’ll use to guide herself out in a few hours, heart lying broken in her hands; crying but surviving. She’ll be okay, they both will be.
But they’re twenty-one, they’re not even out of college yet, and nothing ever seems like it’ll be okay at this age.
— —
“You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me,” Caitlyn whispers, knuckle deep inside Vi, kissing the inside of her thigh, watching her, feeling her contract.
Vi shudders and crests at the words alone, then why aren’t I enough? going unsaid, stuck to the back of her throat.
Caitlyn doesn’t let up, fucks her through two, four, six orgasms. Maybe she’s holding off the inevitable, maybe she’s imprinting this moment into their memory deep enough that it can make up for any time spent apart. Two, four, six months. Maybe years.
Vi leaves long scratches down her back on the fourth one, legs locked around Caitlyn’s hips, pulling her deeper, holding her, head flung back.
Harder, she whispers, and Caitlyn obliges.
It’s all they can do to ignore the pendulum swinging over their heads.
— —
She flips Caitlyn over, eats her out, holds her thighs down until Caitlyn’s tugging at her hair, begging for more, begging for less, mumbling incoherently.
“I love you,” she whispers, sliding all the way into Caitlyn, feeling her tug at the harness on her hips, silently begging.
“I love you,” Caitlyn reaffirms, and Vi tucks her head where Caitlyn’s shoulder meets her neck, working her hips.
She listens to Caitlyn’s short pants, her choked moans, and wonders, distantly, if there are degrees to love. Caitlyn loves her, but not enough. Or, Caitlyn loves her, but too much. She wonders which one it is, and groans quietly when Caitlyn’s breaths come out short and staccato, pitched high in her throat.
That time, they come together.
And it leaves both of them feeling hollow.
— —
They don’t say anything for a good hour after they’re done. It’s three in the morning, but the semester ended a week ago, so they have no obligations until later; they can give themselves time to process. Vi holds Caitlyn against her side, the taller woman curled with one leg thrown over Vi’s hips, arm strewn over her torso. She feels absent circles being traced on the side of her right rib, and leans into it.
“That was the best sex we’ve ever had,” Vi says, a crack in the ice.
Caitlyn snorts, soft. “Yeah. Ironic.”
Vi gives them a beat, before sighing. “We have to talk about it, Cait.”
“I know.”
“I’ll wait as long as you need- but it has to happen tonight.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
Reluctantly, a memory fills Vi’s mind; a memory from two months ago, when they were sitting on Vander’s deck, watching the city lights, and she remembers. She’d known back then, perhaps distantly, perhaps distractedly, and she’d rejected it— that there was hesitancy in Caitlyn. She’d kissed Vi, but had kissed her like a secret. Like it was something she wasn’t allowed to have.
It rushes back now, in thick rivulets, icy rivers down icy paths. Vi wonders how she’d managed to make herself so blind to it.
Perhaps this is where age old adages— love makes you blind— have their moment in the spotlight. The inevitable after of a love that burned too bright, of a moment that repeats the history of many. Cliché sayings are cliché for a reason.
“Whatever it is,” Vi starts again, slow, pressing her open palm against the long length of Caitlyn’s spine. “Just know, I love-”
“Don’t say you love me, please,” she breathes, interrupting, and Vi’s mouth snaps shut. “Because I’m about to do what is probably the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do in my life, and if you tell me-,” Caitlyn chokes, breaking on the word. “If you tell me you love me, I won’t be able to do it. I’m brave enough for this— but only just this once.”
Vi looks at her, soul unthreading in her throat, and nods. Caitlyn squeezes her eyes shut, tucking against Vi for one final moment. She speaks her next words into the space above her lover’s heart.
“Your love- it’s- it feels like home. And like everything I’ve ever wanted. But it also makes me a coward, because I need you so much I can’t even see straight- I can’t think straight- and it’s turning me inside out, Violet. Not you, never you— but how I process your love. I wish I knew how to love the way you do, but I- I don’t. When you stand there, and you’re so fearless and unapologetic about the things you need in your life, it makes me feel insane because everything in me is telling me that I’m not supposed to need another person the way I need you,” Caitlyn pauses, takes a breath, Vi listens, rubbing up and down the length of her back. “And I want to be for you- what you are for me, you know? Strong, kind, steady-”
“You are,” Vi interrupts, turning on her side slightly, meeting Caitlyn’s eyes, meeting the moisture gathered on the waterline. “You- you’re all that and more for me.”
“That’s what you think,” she whispers, and sounds so broken that Vi’s distress increases tenfold. “But to me— when I look at you, and then I look at me— I think of all the ways that you complete me, and I get so fucking scared. Because I don’t know how to need you, Vi. It’s- I don’t-”
“Okay,” Vi whispers, pulling Caitlyn into herself, pressing a smattering of kisses across her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
Caitlyn goes quiet, and she appreciates Vi’s resilience, her patience, her immovable presence of kindness, and the sobs in her chest rattle so hard she thinks they might fall right out. This is all that she’d fallen in love with, all of Vi, all of the years of kindness stored in a body that has only been around for twenty-one of them. Like she’d spent lifetimes being a rock, a pillar, an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. Something something Newton’s fucking law.
“But it’s not okay,” Caitlyn begins, with a deep shuddering, a reconciliation in her own chest, a stone turning over. Vi holds her tighter, like she knows what’s coming. “When we were standing there— and you know, the whole Sarah thing happened— I’m a jealous person, okay? I just am. But not- not like that. I need you so much, and I feel like it’s digging into who I am, does that make sense? I- I want to be better than that. For you, and for me. I know you thought it was— y'know, funny, whatever— But I couldn’t stop thinking about how I can’t need you like that. I can’t need you like I need fucking water or oxygen or one of the basic tiers of Maslow’s fucking hierarchy!” Her breathing picks up, trembling on her veins, plucking blood cells from her body, playing her like a tune. “Because sure, maybe you find it funny this time— maybe you’ll find it funny the next hundred times— but then what? Then what? And that’s not even touching the voice that’s constantly telling me that the way we love— the amount that we love— isn’t even fucking sustainable.”
She takes a deep breath, naked and rattling, and senses her tears before they actually come.
And then she’s crying, full body sobs, against Vi, who somehow has found the root of the problem through the messy word vomit that Caitlyn regurgitates into one run-on sentence; who knows Caitlyn better than Caitlyn even knows herself; who knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is their last night of being together.
Because this— this isn’t sustainable. The problem isn’t their love, it’s Caitlyn’s inner conflict. It’s a tangle of things that she’s yet to pull apart in her chest, years of a kind of love that she’s learned— of a kind of self-sufficiency that she’s come to lean on, a self-sufficiency that Vi’s presence threatens.
When they’d started this conversation, ten minutes ago, Vi had wondered what the degree of Caitlyn’s love is— if she loved too much or too little— and she knows this now: that Caitlyn loves her more than anyone else has ever loved her. Perhaps a selfless kind of love that requires holding a mirror up to your own face, and looking your imperfections, fears, and pitfalls in the face. A kind of selfless love that begets reflection. A kind of selfless love that pulls electricity from materials that aren’t even conductive, that creates life where there had never been before.
Maybe that’s what makes it so hard, Vi realizes, as she feels Caitlyn shake against her, breaking through the cement of her heart with every sob; maybe suddenly feeling so much is difficult for people who had gotten used to feeling so little.
“Loving you is easy for me,” Vi says, quietly, and even though Caitlyn is crying, she knows she’s listening. She always is. The way walls do, the way the air does. “Because I’ve spent my whole life dealing with emotions larger than myself. Most of the time they were negative— or painful. But you- you were light when I met you. Just a fucking bright spot in the room, even though I thought you were a bit of a rich prude.”
Caitlyn huffs a laugh through her sniffling and Vi smiles against the crown of her head, even though it breaks her, even though it breaks both of them.
“But I understand what you’re saying— and I also understand that there has to be room in your heart for yourself before you can make room for me—”
“No,” Caitlyn gulps, shaking her head, pulling herself out wetly with a sniffle from Vi’s shoulder. “Whatever you do— whatever you think— I need you to know that I loved you to the best of my ability. I love you to the best of my ability.”
Vi gulps shakily, and nods.
There’s vicious growling in the back of her head, a terrible haunting thing, and she fights it. She holds on. Caitlyn is telling her she loves her, and she believes her.
Or, she’s trying to.
“You love me, but you’re breaking up with me,” Vi whispers, and can’t help the bitterness that leaks out, just a little bit of it. A small gas leak.
Caitlyn sobs, Vi’s heart collapses.
“I’m sorry,” she repents as fast as she’d said it. “That wasn’t fair.”
“No,” Caitlyn shakes her head, kissing Vi softly. Vi melts into it, kinetic sand against fingers, rippling, breaking, gathering. “That’s okay, you’re allowed to be mad— or sad, or whatever. You- you can yell at me, if you want to. I know I deserve it.”
“Stop that. You don’t. No one deserves to be rebuked for putting themselves first.”
“I feel like I’m being selfish.”
Vi sighs, reaches over, tucks a lock of Caitlyn’s hair behind her ear before cupping her girlfriend’s— ex girlfriend’s?— cheek tenderly. “Selfish doesn’t always mean bad,” Vi says, speaking the words that she’d said to herself so many nights when she was younger. When self-preservation meant being selfish sometimes.
“I’m hurting you, Vi,” Caitlyn whispers, at odds with herself.
“You’re not,” Vi says, and finds clarity in her own mind the way she finds blue in clear-skied mornings, or the way she finds her heartbeat under her ribs. “Am I hurt? Yes. I love you. This was always going to hurt. But are you hurting me? No, of course not,” she leans in, aligns their lips together, Caitlyn catches her on the downbeat, as she’s pulling back. “I want you to be okay. I want- I want you to be okay with who you are by yourself before you learn to be okay with who you are when you’re with me. Because they’re one and the same, Cait. And I can’t— I can tell you, a hundred times over, that our love will survive regardless because I love you even on the days that love feels like a heavy cloud or the static of a broken T.V.— or I could tell you that you don’t have to be scared of needing me because I need you just as much. But none of that matters unless you come to those conclusions yourself.”
Caitlyn, dimly, thinks of telling Vi that she should consider a minor in psychology, or maybe literature; that there are layers to people and Vi can peel them back like she’s picking petals through a bouquet of flowers. But she lets those thoughts go unsaid, because the reality is that she doesn’t want someone else to share Vi’s thoughts in the capacity that Caitlyn does. She wants this Vi— this soft, insightful, kind Vi— all to herself.
Selfish, that’s the word for it.
Selfish doesn’t always mean bad.
“I’m so sorry,” is all Caitlyn can manage to say, digging herself into Vi’s chest, into her heat, knowing this is going to be the last time, for a long time, that she’ll feel this loved.
“Don’t be,” Vi whispers, and finds her throat tight, her cheeks wet, her chest collapsing. She finds laughter escaping through a window, finds pain and suffering taking its place. She lets it all go. “I’ll always be here for you.”
“You’re my best friend,” Caitlyn garbles, and reaches for the space between her fingers where she’s stored her love. One day it should warp into a circle on her ring finger, but for now, that’s where she keeps it. “Before- before anything else, you’re my best friend. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” Vi says, and doesn’t even realize she’s lying. Doesn’t realize the little part of herself that’s grown wings, turned into a bird, flown far from the cage of her heart, ripped a new hole in space, and disappeared forever. She doesn’t know how being friends was so contingent on being more.
She cries, and so does Caitlyn.
They may not know about the lie, but they both feel death in their bones.
— —
Vi [3:34]
mel
please come pick me up
i’m at cait’s
please
i’m so sorry
i know it’s late
but we broke up
god i’m sorry
Mel [3:37]
Don’t apologize
I’ll be there in ten
Vi [3:37]
oh shit
i wasn’t actually expecting you to be awake
damn
wtf
go to sleep fucker
Mel [3:38]
:/
I was studying
yk
Like a college student
Not off living my own little romcom
Vi [3:38]
we literally broke up
not a lot of rom or com happening
Mel [3:39]
I know
I’m sorry
Again
I’m getting in my car, I’ll be there in a bit
I love you
Vi [3:39]
love you too
drive safe
— —
C.K. Blog
3 A.M.
As it turns out, three in the morning is when love shows it’s ribboned paths on lines drawn by human hearts. As it turns out, love is sustainable, just not mine. As it turns out, love doesn’t turn out as you’d hoped for it to; but rather as you knew it always would.
Our bedroom door is open, our bathroom door is shut. You’re behind one of them, guess which one.
I used to always be able to hear you hum when you were behind closed doors. You’d always let me know where you were, even without actually saying it. Perhaps I’ve grown too used to finding traffic lights while they’re still green; I’ve rolled through a bright red. I don’t know how to stop wanting you, needing you, loving you.
But you’ve built your fortress and I’ve dug my grave.
— —
Vi presses a kiss between Caitlyn’s eyebrows before she leaves, trembling on the skin, feeling Caitlyn’s palm encircle her wrist.
“Don’t go,” Caitlyn whispers, futile.
“Mel’s here,” Vi says, and Caitlyn relents. “I’ll text you when I get back to my dorm, okay?”
“Okay.”
— —
“What happened?” Mel asks, eyes trained on the road, hands gripping the steering wheel loosely.
Vi pulls the sun visor down, slides open the mirror, and watches the pale little yellow light above flicker to life on her roots. She runs her fingers through them, and thinks about how Caitlyn had tugged desperately mere hours ago. They were supposed to dye them tonight.
“We were supposed to dye my roots,” Vi whispers, and Mel bites her lip.
— —
(Vi doesn’t text Caitlyn when she gets back to campus, and Caitlyn lets it go.)