Chapter Text
I wept and I wept. I had come to believe that if I really wanted something bad enough, the very act of my wanting it was an assurance that I would not get it.
— Audre Lorde.
It took a year and some change, but three doctors, two somnologists and a strip mall acupuncturist ushered Taissa back into her body. Her College admission – a cocktail of pity and just about good enough SAT resits – landed her the coveted Pre-Law double major at Howard, a year and a semester behind her original graduating class.
She was in a deficit of time. So she had to be quicker, sharper, smarter to catch up. Taissa achieved. She maintained. She worked to the grizzled bone to surpass. She did better than her best; she controlled it. Taissa could confidently say that she made it out of her freshman year relatively unscathed. She was not sleepwalking. She was not seeing signs, visions and wonders, she was not screaming around open flames and wasting away in the snow. She was fine. Just fine!
But fine was just that. A slow drift into a fixed middle. No peaks, no lows. The days passed like a comforting hum; one bore no distinction from the next. All things considered, Taissa could learn to be happy with that.
At the close of freshman year, the pinch of that fixed middle, snagged. Her parents booked a flight and a rental car to help her pack up her dorm. The guys and girls who stumbled in drunk mere hours ago, sobered up to move out, meet their friends' parents and make grand plans for the future. The hallways filled with invites to cookouts, tender goodbyes, and the earnest promise to do it all again next year. “Danah's told me so much about you young man.” / “Hopefully all good things, Sir.” / “Nice to meet you Mrs. Cecilia” / “Oh please, call me Auntie CeCe.”
But the laughter didn't hit Taissa's corner of the dormitory floor. There were no stories to share with her parents, or an address exchange for a summer hang to slip into her hand. Outside the occasional greeting, no-one seemed fussed by Taissa’s departure. It was a particular that wouldn't have fazed her if she’d been alone. But there was something in her parents bearing witness to it that conjured a quiet, hot shame within her.
In the evening, Bill and Dianne took their daughter to a tiny diner near campus to commemorate the end of her first year. They surprised her with a card and a modest cake that read: we’re all so proud of you! After skirting around the academic small talk and how she was liking the city, her Dad finally came out with it. Bill wasn't a man that looked any type of challenge in the face. He mumbled over the rim of a plastic champagne flute before downing it in one. “Any interesting stories with your…friends?”
Now, no-one could ever claim that Taissa Turner was a loner. She had a string of familiar faces and amicable exchanges that made the day pass quicker. But the three of them had seen this before, done some iteration of this conversation every single school year. Her report cards followed the same pattern:
Excellent grades! Star Student! ★★★★★
additional note: In peer group settings Taissa can be…intense, quote unquote. She would be alright if she just lightened up, quote unquote. And maybe Taissa could develop stronger social bonds if she didn't take everything so seriously – quote fucking unquote. Which was – well, fuck them she thought.
After everything, what was she supposed to do with new friends? Who would know her, hold the whole of her, deeper than what had come before? This was the cost of a second chance. A handful of acquaintances, situational connections and fleeting drunken rendezvous. A thin, hard layer of film had to stand between her and anyone that tried to get close. She cut the pre-ambles and lost the knack for small talk. The directness, the quick turn urgency she needed to survive death, and death again, clipped her demeanor and her speech, so yes. Maybe making friends wasn't her strong suit.
Like clockwork, Taissa bent the truth like she’d always done. Her parents smiled softly, trying their best to not to let their disappointment show. With a tight-lipped smile, Taissa answered, “It’s going well.”
All she'd managed to claw back from time was a fragile thing that could slip out of her hands at any given moment. The terror of being uncovered, of being found out (about what in particular she didn't know) drove Taissa to the periphery of every room she was in. Playing it fast or loose wasn't an option. So she resigned to be moved by very little, leaving no traces and making no impressions. To whom nothing is given, nothing is required.
***
The brief, hot summer after freshman year came to a close. Taissa's parents insisted on the five hour drive, only settling to leave when the last box was packed away in her new place. In between the tears, forehead kisses and Taissa’s reassurance that she’d be completely and utterly fine, Dianne Turner held her daughter's face between her hands.
"Hey." As nonchalant as she tried to play it, Taissa softened as she heard the sweetness in her mother's voice. "Give people the opportunity to know how wonderful you are. Okay?"
And this time, she gave it consideration. “Okay, Ma.”
In the quiet of her sparsely furnished room, Taissa cracked open a fresh notepad, scrawling Intentions in big block letters.
“Okay, Tai.” She mumbled. “We've got to pivot.”
-
This year will be better than the last.
-
I will do better than my best.
One clean line drawn through.
“Wait – no.” She doubled back; penned it down again. Baby steps.
-
But I will have fun.
Underlined for emphasis.
-
I will work hard.
-
But I will make FRIENDS.
Double underlined for emphasis.
“Perfect.” She smiled. Outside, offcuts of conversations floated through the bay windows with the dregs of the summer heat. The velvet thump of a Memphis 808 poured like syrup two doors down, slow and low, as the dust caught in the light grooved to a descent in its echo. In the stillness, the mill of the outside quieted as a feeling – that had silently rested with Taissa since she boarded the plane in Alberta – crept up her spine, round her chest, and stuck heavy in her throat. She hadn't found a name for it yet, but it was amorphous, the strongest thing she'd felt that broke up the middling numb of getting by. Not solely grief, not solely sadness – but something she had managed to move faster than until now. The final intention seemed to float from it, stopping Taissa in her tracks. Finally, on a shaky exhale, she slowly penned:
-
I will make up for lost time.
Taissa’s opportunity to try out her new and improved lease of life came at the debate club committee meeting. As the club's newly elected President, Taissa did something she’d never (willingly) done before. She asked for feedback.
“I think it would be good to hear what everyone thinks. Where could I…" She gripped her notepad and pen under the table, "...improve. And what could I do better?”
The room fell silent, exchanging hesitant looks. Chelsea, the social secretary, broke the silence. She was a quiet girl, timid in a way that threatened to become irritable if it wasn't on account of her deep kindness and effervescent laugh. Chelsea wasn't much of a talker, but her laugh, that seized her upper body into a shake and her voice into a hiccupy snort, lightened every and any group setting she managed to stumble into.
“Well, um." Chelsea swallowed nervously. "My boyfriend’s on the committee for the chess club. We could do… joint socials with them?”
Taissa relaxed her shoulders as the word FUN blurted out like a foghorn in her mind. She pushed through to offer a strained simile. "Sure."
The table fell into an ease, hitting the room with a flurry of excited suggestions.
“Can we get matching jackets?”
“We should get flyers printed!”
"Yo, we should go Daytona for the spring social."
"And how'd that go for you last year, huh?"
“Can we debate, like, fun stuff?”
“Oh! A billboard in the quad!”
“If I’m being honest. It’s been kind of a snoozefest, Taissa.” The last comment weighed down all overs, drawing the metaphoric feedback form to a close. Chloe, the Vice President, feigned nonchalance as she inspected her french tips. To both of their annoyance, Chloe and Taissa were indistinguishable in manner, outlook and ambition. The same girl if their lots in life drifted three degrees further than their current moment. Valedictorians. Golden child only daughters. The smartest person they knew. Two hard-headed undergrads walk into a bar with a single seat. Instead of finding solace in their overlaps, they locked into a series of petty rivalries that they both, deep down, found themselves irritated and deeply thrilled by. Taissa winning out over Chloe at last year’s election only proved to aggravate their one-upmanship.
“What do you suggest, Chloe?” Taissa volleyed back.
“I don’t know.” Chloe shrugged, the fry in her voice stretching out the vowel into a mock empathy. “I’m not President.”
Fine.
Every self-help book on leadership she'd read since she was twelve, boiled down to one truth: Initiative and trust were the cornerstone of a good leader. So Taissa took the meager $75 in the club's annual budget to buy a dozen pizzas, and the world’s saddest set of streamers for her first semester mixer. Baby steps.
It was an uninspiring turn out. A few hungry freshman who rolled through for the free dinner, and Chelsea’s boyfriend who made sure his radio got returned by the end of the night. The bootleg mixtape stuck on the second track until Taissa whacked the back of the stereo, pulling Lil’ Mo's vocals out the tinny speakers. Surely, truly. This couldn’t be the fun her grand plan promised?
Out of the corner of her eye, Taissa spotted Chloe beaming at the first guest who wandered up to the sign up table that hour. The girl stuck out from the rest. Her coat was feather-trimmed, ostentatiously hitting the floor with a glossy heeled boot to match. Her braids were fresh, ends bumped and sheened to high heaven as gold so solid that it had to be heir-loomed, cascaded down her ears. Taissa figured that she must have been lost – someone dressed to the nines on a Friday night had better things to do. But the girl unfolded a flyer and handed it to Chloe. “Is this the debate club mixer?”
Flustered in a way Taissa had never seen, Chloe answered excitedly, “Yeah, that’s – that’s us!”
“Great. Do I just sign here?”
“Oh don’t worry about all that, I can do that for you.”
“Oh, thank you.” The girl extended a hand bejeweled in rings and earth tone bangles as she took Chloe’s into a handshake. “My name's Simone by the way.”
“I know who you are.” A blush rose to Chloe's face. “In the sense that!...I’ve been to all of your events and stuff. That poetry night you hosted was incredible.” Simone placed a hand to her chest with a soft smile. “You might not remember me, but I know Danielle who knows Ivy and – you know Ivy, right? She –”
Simone clicked her fingers, recalling, finishing off Chloe’s sentence in unison.
“ – does braids. Ivy hooked me up last week, I didn’t know you were cool with her.”
As Chloe’s eager grin blossomed to a bashful giggle, Taissa could tell that she'd be stuck on the word cool for the rest of the night. And that someone like Simone associating it with her, was about to make not only Chloe's whole day, but her whole week. Something beyond their petty rivalry flared up to irritation within Taissa.
Chloe nodded enthusiastically. “Me and Ivy? We go, like, way back.” She lied. “That’s my girl.”
“Nice. Well, I won’t keep you. I’ll see you out there..?”
“Chloe.”
“Chloe. Thank you for having me.”
Taissa realized far too late that her mouth had drifted open and she was staring squarely at this girl. Simone walked past her, briefly confused, and gave a polite smile. Her eyes followed Simone as she took her seat. Gradually, the whole room seemed to pull towards her. Half of the committee drifted in her orbit to talk to her or simply be in the vicinity of whatever conversation she was having. Before she could connect the dots of who exactly Simone was, Chloe veered in front of her gaze with a sense of urgency. “Hey. We need to kill the presentation and go straight to games.”
"Are you asking me, or are you telling me?"
They both paused, waiting for the other to budge.
Taissa scoffed, “Uh, I didn't stay up to finish this slideshow for nothing.”
“I know but like, there’s cool people here now. So…?” There was no way Taissa could forego these slides. She'd spent all night in the computer lab color coding the presentation and figuring out how to tastefully use star wipe. No way.
“I just think we could have a bit of fun. First impressions and all.” Taissa sighed begrudgingly. “But hey. I’m not president.” Chloe shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
The self-imposed mantra rang like a gong in Taissa's head as she took to the speaker podium with Chloe. Fun and light-hearted. Fun and light-hearted. FUN and LIGHT-hearted.
"Hi everyone, it's good to see…so many people here." She began to a half empty room. "My name’s Tai, and I’m the president of this year’s debate club. This year –"
"–And I’m Chloe. The vice president of this year’s debate club." Taissa gently tugged the mic back.
"Thank you. Chloe." As she glanced down at her cue cards, the letters jumbled and danced until all Taissa could make out was snoozefest in bold letters.
Okay, Tai – pivot. Out in the crowd, a handful of semi disinterested faces stared back at her. In the fullness of the room's harsh light, Simone met her gaze, soft and expectant, and the sudden urge to know what she thought of her, suddenly overwhelmed Taissa. Just power through.
"Here at HUDC, we strive to challenge ourselves through the meeting of ideas, theory, and ideology. We don’t want to stop at just ‘having an opinion’ but to really get to the heart of why we think what we think. How can we orate succinctly and precisely in ways that are compelling and nuanced?"
The mic rang out with a static feedback as Chloe pulled it again.
"And also – having fun."
"Yes, fun. We, uh, are planning some totally cool socials this year and we have a –" Taissa swallowed, nervous now as her eyes darted from Simone back down to the cards. "– a, uh…a range of opportunities for social enrichment.” She finished quickly.
The silence was tight. A pin could've dropped and the whole room would've heard it. Out in the crowd, Simone's gaze drifted to the stitching of her skirt and the thought of a fifteen minute slideshow felt absolutely god awful to Taissa. So instead, she pivoted.
"Games, anyone?"
After some light trivia and quick fire debates, the ice broke and the mixer eventually found its flow. They ended the night with a debate roulette; an old club faithful that was easy enough to pick up. Taissa had the most wins on the scoreboard (not that she was counting) and a sense of pride swelled as she reckoned she hadn't done half bad for her first mixer.
“Should we make this interesting?” Chloe asked. “One last debate, winner takes all?” Taissa sat back, unfazed, as the room goaded for a volunteer. She picked up the last envelope filled with topical facts at random, flipping it over to read the subject. "Oh, this one's fun – argue for, or against Pittsburgh’s current title as the ‘city of bridges'." Glances were passed to no avail.
“There’s a $50 gift card to Pepe’s pizzeria if you win?” Chloe offered feebly. After a beat, a new voice emerged. “I’ll do it.” The room vocalized with glee as Simone raised her hand. She had spent most of the rounds observing, quietly nodding when someone had found their footing in their argument or orated in a way that got the room up.
Chloe handed Simone the same envelope, reminding them both of the five minutes they had to prepare. Simone hadn’t spoken until now, and a low humming paranoia pricked at Taissa. It was irrational, absurd even, but it seized her directly and swiftly. She knows something you don’t. Taissa glanced down at the paper, pretending to read along. “I'm fine.” She whispered. The feeling could be buried – it was an instinctive remnant of another time and place that no longer served her in this world. But her heart still strummed as her thoughts raced and tangled. She’s going to beat me. She’s going to win.
The time to prepare continued to pass. Across the table Simone slipped on her glasses, intensely parsing through the topic’s material. She was a pretty girl. Fashionable in a way that stirred admiration and stopped someone in their tracks. The way Simone blinked, how she bit her lip when she was deep in thought, the way she oscillated her pen between her fingers – Taissa zoned in on it, picked it apart on a granular level. I have to win circled and trailed in her mind until a conclusion that came from somewhere unknown followed it: She needs to see me win.
"Time!" Chloe called.
“Oh fuck.” She had studied the curve of Simone’s eyelashes, the two tone gloss on her lips and the dimple in her cheek when she concentrated. She made note of the slight twitch of her left eyebrow every half a minute give or take, the steady, persistent throb of her pulse in the crook of her neck. But Taissa knew nothing about Pittsburgh. And nothing about bridges.
She scanned the first page, trying to recall the information she’d gathered to collate the fact sheets in the first place. The whole thing would be a breeze. It was just a game. It had no bearing on her life or anything past the four walls of the room. But that hollow hunger that gnawed at the edges of her now and again; the one that needed to feed, to grasp with open hands and to win, firmly pulled at the strings of her.
Like anyone would, Simone came to the game with a newcomer's naivety. With a shy smile she faced her opponent, letting it falter when she realised that Taissa was in fact, taking this little game as serious as a heart attack. Taissa opened with clear, concise facts. She orated each statement with logic and to no-one’s surprise, quickly swayed the room to her side. She had an unwavering confidence in every single word that left her mouth; quick-witted enough to sell water to a fish. The room applauded as she closed.
Simone followed. She paused, considered her notes and then adjusted the mic delicately between her nails. "Can I tell you guys a story?" Hesitant, the room nodded slowly. She paused in acknowledgement, lowered her paper and began. "Imagine a city…"
The whole room listened with rapt attention as Simone painted a picture of a city that one could love, and an honorific title that could honour the structures that made it. For a moment, Taissa forgot about winning. She, too, felt the air loosen as Simone spoke. She couldn’t help but listen eagerly, as Simone pulled the knot out of her argument with a single verbal string, and let the whole thing unfurl. Simone’s voice fell softly in the room, sat somewhere in the middle and was held up by the crowd’s singular fixed focus on her. It was like nothing Taissa could do, and nothing she had seen before. She now understood why the room couldn’t help but tilt towards her.
“Tai. Your rebuttal?” Chloe asked.
“Oh. Yeah. I think that –” For the first time in a long time, Taissa couldn't find the last word. “Huh.” She clicked her tongue as the timer buzzed.
The game ended. They bestowed Simone with a tiny plastic trophy and the promised giftcard. The stereo went back on, and the room mingled with a new jovial ease. Taissa on the other hand, stewed in the corner, dumb-founded at her defeat. She lent over the corner of the stage frantically penning everything Simone did well, and everything she did not.
Focus on cadence. Stronger openers. Emotional, human connections. Work on breathing and when to pause, Play with formalit—
“Hey.”
Taissa crushed the paper to her chest as Simone approached.
“Hi.”
"That was pretty fun. Is it like this every week?"
"No."
"Oh. Right."
Simone shuffled from one foot to the other. She offered a smile, waiting for Taissa to pick up the rest of the conversation.
"I don't think we got introduced properly, I'm Simone. I'm a Lit major. What about you…it's Tai, right? That's a pretty name."
"Yes. And uh - thank you." But the words cranked out hard and blocky, the distance between her brain and her mouth feeling miles apart. She blurted out, “Are you from Pittsburgh?"
"No. Are you?"
"No."
Simone chuckled, nervous. "I just read the paper."
"It's totally fine. Not that it wouldn't be fine – it's just a game, it's not like it means anything. But that's not to say that you didn't do a good job, and you shouldn't be proud - because you did. and you should be.”
“Okay…?”
“I have to…go now."
"Nice to meet you too?"
Well. Taissa settled that Simone’s first impression of her was a masterclass in making a damn fool of yourself – but it was fine. She had her mantra. She could be amicable. She could get her brain to walk in tandem with her mouth. The second impression could always outstick the first. She banked on running into Simone at the library, at a canteen, at a switch over between classes. It didn’t cross Taissa’s mind why it was important, but she did need to show a random girl that she'd known for an hour that she could hold a conversation like a normal, well adjusted person.
The following week hand delivered Taissa’s opportunity to do so. Simone came back. And kept coming back each week after. The rest of the newcomers drifted, but she returned, 5:55 every Thursday, haloed by the same crowd who wanted nothing more than to talk to her. Where Taissa wanted to join in and broach a conversation, she could only mumble a sparse “Hey” and bury her head back down in her notes, waiting for the previous booking to finish in the room.
She was not a shy girl. She knew the steps to socialize. But there was something in Simone’s presence that shook all that shit up. Her thoughts come out backwards, her words cut short at the root, and all the things she wanted to do, became things she couldn’t. What salted the wound was the fact that Simone was good. Really, fucking good. Good in a way that came with ease. She showed up, showed out and swept the floor with Taissa every single debate. If Taissa went left, she went right. She was measured with her rebuttals, got better, and took on the notes the club gave her to perfect it the following week. She beamed at the end of each debate, asking the audience unsure, “was that okay?” every time she blew Taissa’s argument out of the water. It confused Taissa more than anything, because her anger at being beaten again, pinged quieter than the feeling that always held the room when Simone was in it – to tell her how good she was. So Taissa bit her tongue. Put up that familiar wall. She contended with the incessant urge to get Simone to know her and the one-sided rivalry that she was trying to nurse. The one time she did manage to get one over Simone, it left her unmoved. Simone congratulated her, impressed. "That was a really strong closer. Good job." Taissa could only mumble a sparse thank you and move on swiftly to another conversation across the room.
Summer closed and autumn began.
The push and pull of this new unaccounted feeling Taissa couldn't name, wore her out. It's persistence was making a slow incision; getting under her skin and taking her out of her spirit. It was messing with her mantra, throwing her off and by sheer coincidence – only seemed to perk up when Simone was around.
This year will be different, my ass.
In the weeks since meeting her, Taissa listened out for Simone’s name in conversations, piecing together a portrait of a person everyone seemed to know fondly. They spoke her name with a smile in their throat and a glint in their eye. All anecdotes of her took the same form: she put on a function or was situated at one where people had the time of their lives. She heard that she was a writer who could hold a room so deftly, that the audience remembered little else but the words she spoke. She sounded like the person that brought one group of people close to the other. The connective tissue, the friend of a friend, the eternal good sis and homegirl people scrambled to know. Taissa heard how people moved heaven and high water to make sure Simone was looked after. When the snow forbade her from visiting family for the holidays, a handful of homes were open for her across the city. She was a fixture, the central jewel of Howard’s crown that Taissa was oblivious to until now. On a cold snap Friday in November, Taissa determined to get to the bottom of it. She turned to her roommate Ronnie.
They were stationed in her bedroom. Taissa with a full spread of textbooks, scanned cases and flashcards peppered across her desk, and Ronnie, who had migrated to Taissa’s room in the hopes of coaxing her out for the night.
Taissa had made sure to sound as disinterested as possible, when she asked her if she knew someone called Simone.
“Abara?” The familiar script rolled off the tongue. “Oh yeah, that’s my girl.” Ronnie paused, wave brush in hand. “Who’s asking?”
“It’s nothing. She just joined the club recently.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“What?”
“She might have mentioned it.” Ronnie turned, avoiding Taissa’s look.
“What did she say?” She cleared her throat. “Not about me. About the club, of course.”
Ronnie smiled, a secret knowing, until the silver jewel in her eyebrow rose to catch the light. “She said she had… fun.”
“That’s – that’s good.” Taissa returned to her textbook until the heat in her face dissipated.
Through persistence and proximity, Ronnie had slowly floated into Taissa’s very tiny circle of trust. They met on Taissa’s second day in the apartment. Ronnie had brought her Dad’s van, the soft and hard furnishings, three older sisters and a troupe of aunties that needed to fill the once empty spot with laughter, food and the earthy smell of olive oil to anoint the doorways. It was the way they embraced her – how Ronnie had embraced her. They hugged first, greeted second. They asked her where her people’s were from, took a jovial jab at New Jersey and moved on. There were no leading questions, no picking at her timeline and no I’ve been dying to know. Ronnie only wanted to know what Taissa felt safe to give.
“How we feeling about tonight?” Ronnie asked.
“Hmm. Watching a bunch of dudes throw a football around…?”
“…Or those old ass text books?”
"I would, but –"
"You gotta finish. I know." Ronnie tempered her disappointment.
"Next time. I promise."
"Which is what you said last time.” Ronnie called playfully as she left the room.
"Pinky promise!" Tai craned back in her chair. Only when she heard the soft click of her bedroom door, did she slip out her losing debate from under her text book. It was obsessive, sure. But she needed to know why – technically, above all else – the reason she couldn't win against Simone. She had highlighted lines of improvable syntax, the sections of rhetoric that needed a do-over. In the margins she annotated each time her argument was sinkable. She'd memorised Simone's closers, her turn of phrases, and the gently pointed questions that took every inch of wind out of her sails.
"What is she doing that I'm not? Come on, Tai." The lines blurred until they were watery etches dancing on the page. She flipped the book shut and sighed.
"Hey Ronnie?" Taissa crossed the room to the door, calling down the hall. "Is that invite still open?"
All things considered, taking a night off hadn't turned out half bad. Their seats were semi-decent, they'd snuck in a quarter flask of liquor to keep them warm, and the home team were managing to keep their head above water. Taissa even found herself cheering along.
But as half-time rolled around, the steady noise of the stadium, the bite of the cold, took her elsewhere. That feeling found Taissa again. That tender nub of memory, that couldn’t be soothed by the rum, the excitement of a game, nor the laughter she shared with Ronnie.
Down below, a single drummer christened the band stand. A sandy tempo grew to a continuous note, calling the audience to quiet with a final strike. The french horn and the tuba players followed next. In one motion they took a synced breath. The air pushed through on an exhale, hummed in the middle of all that gold and finally released into one note on the field. It was a precise and melancholic sound. It folded with the trombone, the clarinet and the flute that softly floated into the harmony. Not a single soul in the stadium spoke. They all held the reverence of the moment they were being invited into. Taissa had never seen, nor heard anything like it. They barely had a band of substance at Wiskayok High, and if they did, they never played anything like this – that could call something out of someone. Music close to the earth and the sky at the same time. And that tiny seed of feeling that nestled within her, peaked through again. The loss and all of that grief. The chords of the horn called it out of where she tried to bury it deep. Her breath wavered as she gripped the plastic of her seat, as a question that always felt childish and futile pushed through. You moved on, you moved past, you could not dwell on what was. But still. Why did this happen to me?
She hadn't thought about it. She hadn't thought about it in so long. She'd gotten so good at pushing that heavy mass of loss down deep that she could almost forget. The hollow was revealing itself now, figures, faces, names – leading Taissa to where the hurt was. What’d she missed. A hunger that could never be satiated, a sharpness that could never be felt again. A reaching to the bounds of her person that couldn’t be replicated. People that knew her down to the rhythm of her breath, gone in a matter of minutes. The life before and the life that was, snatched away quickly and without warning. And who here, could she explain that too?
The trombone gave it right back, carrying the mess of her emotion and putting it into the ether for her. Taissa closed her eyes, letting the music wash over her. How the oboe seemed to reach out and offer a warm hand to let it all down. The hunger, the blood, the deaths, the pockets of knowing and being known – the sharp axe of severance she had to take to all that she was in the wild. No one but Natalie would know the laughter they shared during the second spring. When they had gone out hunting, just the two of them, and the flowers had bloomed to a powdery sweet yellow on the north side of the cabin remains. The pollen laid thick and they couldn't stop sneezing; high pitched squeaks that seized the body. The absurdity, the child-like mundanity of it doubled them over until they hiccuped with laughter, hand in hand, giggling under a bright blue sky. She missed the secrets her and Shauna held for one another. She missed the distance they couldn't broach through winter and the common ground they found in the heat of summer.
When mercy melted the snow and Taissa believed in the hollow hope that they could all make it out alive, it was Van who had made those bright days just a little bit brighter. Van had rooted her, known her innermost being and let her know the textures of her own too. They christened each morning before the others awoke wrapped in furs, dreaming about a future that Taissa quietly knew couldn't be. She hushed the fear that searched for the logic in every line, that held up that dream of love with the solid one she had fastened to for half her life. Law school. Grad school. Sum-cum-laude, the highest of highs and a steeled hedge of protection that could never be snatched away. The dream under that thatched roof in those sticky summer dawns was a wide naked road, fizzy nights in dive bars and the promise of an endless summer. It was as light as the wind and weightless like it too. In those mornings Taissa let herself float, just for a while, in the dream’s boldness. Batted away the ‘and after that?’ Ignored its lack of underside to anchor her firmly in the future. Instead, she kissed Van’s smiling face. Swallowed the future grief and let the love between their breaths carry them to another day. She missed Van something fierce. She turned it loose too fast. They all loved each other. They survived each other, died for each other and would bear the wounds of each other for the rest of their lives. They had nothing to show for all they went through but the life ahead of them.
A flute quartet floated up a gentler refrain, holding the hardness of her time with a note that had never seen Taissa’s particular loss, but knew the nature of goodbyes nonetheless. For a moment, the long shadow of endings that eclipsed her little life so soon, dissipated. Gently, she left a piece of it in the altar in the air the music conjured. The last note struck. Taissa rose with the stadium in grateful applause. The claps rolled to cheers as the band started up again – this time with a dance team, uniformed and gracefully assuming a first position. At the tip of the triangle, in the same eggshell white, gold trim and indigo blue, was none other than Simone Abara.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Taissa thought. Oh god, what if she can see me from here? Wincing, she downed the liquor in one go, slowly sliding out of view to take her seat again.
“Let’s go Moni!” Ronnie called with pride. And the crowd seemed to be locked on Simone too. The piece meal facts Taissa knew aligned. The cheers confirmed that not only was Simone someone well known, she was someone well-loved. Simone sat poised, coyly toying with that love as she playfully put a hand up to ear. The audience flooded the stadium with whoops and hollers, and the rest of the team giggled and smiled too. Then, Simone took the second position – a raised hip with a tight arm heavenward, fingers softly pointed beyond. Within seconds, eight thousand people fell to a hush at her gesture.
The band started up again, an ecstatic wall of sound that shook the air of the stadium. Simone’s body curved, fluid and controlled around it, hips and hands flowing effortlessly between the chords. The second, third then fourth line of dancers followed suit until the staggered waterfall of movement synced. They were beautiful. Precise and brilliant. But it was Simone that Taissa’s gaze hadn’t faltered from. She was fluid lines, perfect extensions and flawless arches. For a beat, it was no-one else but Simone wrapped in the groan of the horn, the rumble of the drums and the wind of the saxophone. She held her body like she was born to do it. Effortless and ordained; a conduit for communal sound. The coyness, the charm and delight in knowing how to hold and move her body knocked that emptiness that Taissa felt in her own. As Simone danced, unashamed and enraptured, Taissa’s body shook with the reminder of a feeling she’d forgotten. She finally remembered how hungry she could get.
The final roar of applause from the crowd brought her back to the stadium. The show was over. She wiped the tear in the corner of her eye before Ronnie could notice.
“Wow. Right!?”
“Yeah.” Taissa said. “I – I’m actually not feeling too hot. I might head home.”
Ronnie gently touched her elbow, concerned. “You want me to come with?”
“No, you’re good. I’ll just make my own way. It’s probably the cold.”
She reassured Ronnie once more before making a b-line for the exit. She weaved through the crowd in the stadium and jumped on the express bus that dropped her a block away from home. Taissa barely remembered if she saw her neighbors or if she pulled the gate tight on her way in. She unlaced her boots, took two stairs at a time until she could peel off her clothes from her sweat-soaked body. If she latched the front door or put the thermostat up for the night, she didn't know. What Taissa did know, was that for the first time in a long time, her body came alive. Simone stood up there, bright and beautiful, and all the back and forth about opening arguments and keeping score took a back seat. Because when that last note rang out, the middling numb that rested for so long in Taissa, shot up to a peak. A heat she’d forgotten bloomed in her gut, tingled in her fingers and toes, ricocheted through her body and rushed straight to her clit.
Want moved faster than shame this time. It grabbed a hold of Taissa and didn't let up as she flung herself on the bed. For the first time in years, she was going to touch herself. Intentional, direct and determined. With her face buried in the pillow, hips hitched up to the ceiling, she let her fingers go to work.
“Oh my god.” She mouthed. The moans she managed to conjure from her body were incredibly filthy and deeply, deeply uncouth but god. The pleasure, the full scope of her own delight after so long – needed to break in her. To witness the fullness of something. It picked her up, rocked her and let go on three, to put her back in her body. In the sea of people, how Simone – eyes bright and giddy with excitement – controlled it, as if she was the cornerstone of the whole affair. The band, the dancers; holding the whole stadium in her hands. The ache radiated through Taissa’s thighs, rolling through her hips as she kept a steady rhythm against her fingers.
The particulars of what the hell is happening right now escaped her, but Taissa knew that she was really goddamn close and she just needed to get right there, to really get there. The logical part of her brain convinced her that it was simply the scope of the moment. The evocation of the music was the only thing that moved her. Maybe there was a chord that knocked on a memory, that trip switched a feeling that was getting her out of her spirit like this. It wasn’t the dimples in Simone’s cheeks when she smiled. It wasn’t the joy in her eyes as her body curved around each note with a pose. It wasn’t the sensation that brewed in Taissa after; an alchemy of many things (part awe, part jealousy, part admiration) that distilled to one overwhelming force: desire.
Her eyes fluttered open and shut again. Her hips ground down onto the two fingers soaked to the knuckle inside of her. The warmth of Simone’s voice, the husky honeyed tone of it. The way every rebuttal was a question. Simone’s constant need to know why, rang out in Taissa’s mind and ushered it through her body. I need to get there now now now now. Taissa thought about how in every room her gaze couldn’t help but land back on Simone. Whether it was curiosity or competition, Taissa couldn’t take her eyes off of this girl. And what it would be like, in some world, to have Simone’s gaze on her now, her voice to tickle and linger on the skin of her ear as she told her everything she saw. She would tell Taissa, that her being open and wanting like this was a good and sweet thing. She would ask her if all of this work was on account of her and surely she could hold on just a bit longer. The image of it – watching Simone witnessing the mess of her right now, uncontrolled and tender. That maybe, just maybe, she liked the twin dimples at the base of Taissa's back. The curve of her spine and how pretty she looked right now, arched and wide open, just for her. The thought of Simone watching her fuck herself sent Taissa to the line – she came with a stretch of her legs, a clamping of her thighs and a mouthful of bed sheets between her teeth.
Her muscles relaxed. She rolled over, eyes heavenward and sighed. She sighed again, louder, letting the cool air tickle her bare chest.
“There.” Taissa whispered. “I’m fine.”
The relief lasted for a startling thirty seconds before the realization dawned on Taissa. All of the mind blanks and curt answers. The high probability that she had blown her rep to pieces and weirded the hell out Simone. The drop in the pit of her stomach when she saw her, the dry-mouth and fidget in her hands whenever Simone spoke. It came down to this. I have a crush.
“Oh no. No. Oh no.” Taissa squeezed her eyes shut, pawed for the light and turned it off. I’m going to see her on Thursday. I’m going to see her on Thursday – every Thursday and she’s gonna know. She’s gonna know. She would have to look Simone in her eyes, smile in her face and pretend she wasn’t knuckles deep, imagining her talking her through it a few nights ago. Great job, Tai. She groaned, curling into a ball as she pulled the covers over her head. All things considered, Taissa was not fine.