Darling Days

by iO Tillett Wright

  She pulls back and looks at me for a second and whispers, “iO . . . I think I know why we cannot leave each other to go to class.”

  “Why, Nikita?”

  “Because we are in love.”

  All the air in me goes. It doesn’t even whoosh, it’s just gone. My eyebrows sail up. Can she be serious? I only just switched back to being a girl again, and now this?

  “Wow.”

  “What do you feel about that?”

  “Well, yeah, I mean . . . um . . . well, Nikita, I’m not gay.”

  “I know. Neither am I. But you feel that thing, right?”

  It takes me a minute, eventually nodding my head. I touch her torso, by her solar plexus.

  “In here, right?”

  She bursts into a wide, glittery-eyed smile.

  “Yes. Right there.”

  I’m quiet for a long time. All I can do is breathe, and it’s even a challenge to keep that going. If I stop concentrating it will certainly stop.

  So many thoughts are happening, but also none at all. It feels like my universe is realigning itself around this person. This person who has ceased to be a human and instead has dissolved her edges out and bled into a ball of energy, magnetic, electric, on fire, blurry, and yet totally in focus.

  Time has changed. I have a vague awareness of the sunlight crawling across the carpet, but I feel no fatigue. I feel like I could play a basketball game . . . as long as she’s watching. And the thought comes over me that I would do anything as long as she is watching. I would go anywhere with her. In fact, I don’t want to go anywhere without her.

  I realize that I’m not in control of any of this. She’s simply pointing out something that already is, not something that could be. No matter what I say right now, it won’t change the fact that it already is.

  No fear comes from her, just this calm. She doesn’t pull her eyes away like I do, she looks straight inside of me, with her unreadable smile, the way she always does, waiting for me to answer.

  I’m afraid. I’m afraid of being gay with her. Of everyone knowing I’m a girl and then knowing that I’ve got this thing with her.

  But why would they have to know?

  Because we are in this tiny school, in the middle of sheep fields, in the middle of nowhere in England, and everybody knows everybody else’s everything. Plus, this is big. What is happening here, this cartoonish explosion in our chests—this thing that grows arms that tickle the inside of my body each time we hug, like some alien was split in half and we each swallowed one side and every time it senses the other it becomes electrified—that thing is big, and I don’t know if I can keep it hidden.

  But I’m an actor . . .

  They’ll judge us, surely. They’ll think we’re weird. No, we can’t tell anyone. They’ll shun us. It was already such a huge hurdle getting people to understand why I’m in the girls’ dorms, looking and dressing like a boy; now they’ll think I’m a pariah. It’s different for Nikita because she’s got her own room in the garden where she’s isolated, but I’m up in the thick of it with all these girls. They can’t know, they’ll think I’m a pervert.

  Then she touches me and my brain shuts up.

  She laces her fingers into mine and it’s all I can do to stay on earth. She pulls our hands up and puts them between our chests, right between the alien halves, and I realize the creature is writhing to get at itself.

  She scoots closer to me and hooks her finger under my chin, pulling my face and my eyes up to meet hers. I say, “I don’t know what to do . . .”

  “You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to . . .”

  “But I do.”

  There is no world in this galaxy in which I’d have the balls to kiss her again, but I’ve decided that I really want her to do it.

  “You do?”

  In the tiniest voice in which I’ve probably ever said anything, I tell her I want her to kiss me again.

  When she leans in, she pauses, barely a centimeter from my face. I can smell her nice moisturizer and the breath coming out of her nose. My own is suddenly a deep exhale. I’ve never wanted anything so badly. It’s like I’m hungry for her mouth, but I can’t move. I let her hover there, hesitating, in her own mental circus of second thoughts, probably; I’m unable to because I haven’t got the first clue how to do this without being a total creep. But the longer she stays there, the crazier it makes me, the more I want to bite her face off in the sweetest way possible.

  I look up and see that she’s staring at my mouth and her breathing is labored. This makes my head tingle and I start to feel crazy.

  Finally, finally, finally, finally she puts her lips on mine, and the whole world stops.

  I have been hurled into something, the entirety of my being reduced to the trembling of a leaf. I am no longer my own master. An unknown rider has taken the reins. I am suddenly aware of a madness that took hold of me weeks ago.

  I love her. Profoundly.

  When our tongues touch, we begin to speak a new language, one spoken by no one else on the planet but us two. The air is suddenly thick, like we are breathing honey. It’s so hard to breathe like this, dangerous and sweet, but I’d rather drown than take my mouth away.

  Her hand wraps around the back of my neck and she pulls me toward her, our tongues twirling around each other, and my whole body is enflamed.

  I have absolutely no fucking clue what I’m doing, and my worst nightmare would be to get this far and turn out to be a bad kisser.

  Tock, tock, tock.

  Three soft knocks and the door creaks open. In pokes Malia’s majestic head of curls, cringing at the sound of the old hinges, scared of waking our floor person who lives on the other side of the wall.

  I’m frozen, face burning, a puddle in my underwear. I’m so embarrassed and so excited. I try to act natural, but all I can do is grin. Malia looks at me and cracks up laughing, but Nikita rolls over to face her and says, with nonchalant but commanding authority, “What, Malia? We were just talking.”

  I chime in, “Literally all night long, dude. It’s nuts. We haven’t slept.”

  Malia shrugs and says, “Nikita, you better go. It’s almost seven. You’ve got to get out of the wing before everybody wakes up.”

  Nikita turns and looks at me over her shoulder. She smiles a calm smile, and under Malia’s beautiful Syrian quilt she squeezes my hand. I smile back, trying desperately to play it cool like she is, and she gets up and goes, patting Malia’s hair and kissing her on the forehead on the way out.

  Chapter 35

  The First Time

  Southern England, October and November 2000

  THE SCHOOL BECOMES A MAZE OF HIDING SPOTS. TRAILS that were just for jogs become a snarl of secret paths to secret bushes, logs turned to benches, leaves turned to blankets. But for every hiding spot, there’s a curious human out for a stroll, eager to bust you.

  This tango teems with excitement. We greet it with the nimble feet of teenagers in love, lightning in our heels and blaze in our hearts, for each moment we can sneak is a universe of new feelings.

  I start to lose track of how much I’ve learned. Like an astronaut catapulting through galaxies, unable to soak in the details of each passing planet, I can gather only that this thing is infinitely bigger than me. I open my arms to it and fall chest forward, smile on my face, thrilled that I have been chosen by whatever gods of love have bestowed this blessing on me.

  I have no need for sleep, I have been awake for a week straight, and I show no signs of slowing. Every minute of the day is spent thinking of her: if I’m stuck in a classroom, I’m daydreaming of her lips, doodling poems for her; if I’m free, I’m running to her. If she’s busy, I make her something.

  There’s a long weekend and all the British kids go home. On the last night, six of the remainder gather in Nikita’s room and we play spin the bottle, truth or dare, and strip poker. Anya, a girl from New York, ends up in nothing but her underwear, holding her cards in her mouth for modesty’s
sake. Thomas, a French boy, apparently wants to kiss me. I’m willing to do it, in the interest of a cover, but when he probes my mouth with his tongue, I can’t help but recoil. It makes me want to kiss Nikita so much I can’t speak.

  Nikita and I are dared to kiss three times, and the boys jeer at us to “snog,” so we try to do it without letting on that our brains are fusing. I wonder if they can feel my body temperature shoot through the roof when I pull back from her, but no one seems to suspect anything.

  Finally, after three hours, everyone leaves. I tell them I’ll be right there, and stay behind. Nikita and I sit on the bed and stare at each other for what feels like an hour, smiling, never breaking eye contact, feeling the surges of something foreign in our bellies.

  My tongue becomes hypersensitive. Every time I run it over my lips, my breathing gets heavier. It’s like I want to eat her. I want her to be inside of my skin; nothing less than that could bring us closer.

  I can smell everything, and I am acutely aware of my palms. It’s as if I have heat vision. She is the only thing my senses can detect, just her outline. I feel a pull, from my center outward.

  Slowly she crawls across the bed and kisses me. A bullet fired in a pool, a slow surge, spiraling in.

  Her hand wraps around the back of my head and I start to feel myself invert, my insides fold out, my edges defined by her touch.

  Breathing so deeply makes me feel like I am a body electric, my skin a blanket of nerve endings firing all at once.

  When our tongues meet, I groan involuntarily. The feeling overwhelms my body, my stomach drops out, and my hands reach for her, pulling her toward me by the small of her back.

  Frustrated by the boundaries of our shapes, she grinds down into me so hard our hipbones bruise each other. A bruise never felt so good.

  I have to bite my own lip to contain my heat.

  Our faces press into each other, taking in smells, desperate to inhale each other. When her fingers interlace with mine, I feel like my head might burst. I can only stare at her.

  She looks back into my eyes as her mouth moves down my stomach. Slowly she pulls my sweats down. I am so scared I stop moving altogether. I don’t want to do anything wrong. Gently, she puts her hand on me, and I realize there’s been a flood. Her fingers inch their way down me and I stop being able to breathe. Then she puts her tongue inside me. My eyes roll back in my head and my brain explodes.

  Time melts away as my fingertips become supernaturally sensitive and my mind bends into and out of itself, as I learn what it is to become one with another person, riding her wave with the entirety of myself.

  If she never stops, my happiness would never stop. If I die right now, I have lived enough.

  Chapter 36

  Feral

  Southern England, November 2000

  I FEEL CONFUSED. WANDERING. I FEEL PROTECTED. THIS part is disorienting.

  Nikita’s beautiful hand rests over mine, gliding a razor up my calf. We’re in the bathtub in the east wing. She plugged her speakers and CD player into the blow dryer outlet and they’re sitting on the closed toilet, Erykah Badu singing softly to us. A candle burning on the sink is the only light in the room. The mirror is fogged with steam.

  I have never shaved my legs before and the hairs are fine and dark brown, about a quarter inch long. Piled in the sink are a bag of cotton swabs, some hair bands, bottles of Weleda face wash and moisturizer, a pair of tweezers, a set of nail clippers, and a stick of deodorant. Self-care school.

  I watch Nikita’s strong forearm in the flickering light, resting on top of mine as she guides my hand. My toes, bearing freshly clipped nails, are pressed against the tiled wall. That happened right after Nikita taught me how to put my hair in a ponytail for the first time.

  This all started with a shirt. Nikita asked to borrow something to wear after we fucked straight through sports class, but when I gave her a T-shirt she smelled the pits and made a foul face.

  “Okay, iO. What’s going on with you and deodorant?”

  Embarrassed, I shriveled up into the blanket.

  “What kind are you using??”

  “ . . . I don’t.”

  “What?!”

  “I thought you were supposed to use a pumice stone, but it doesn’t work. So . . . I just don’t use anything.”

  “A pumice stone?”

  I was so confused and embarrassed I wanted to cry. I felt ashamed of myself, and there is nothing worse than feeling ashamed about your hygiene.

  She looked at me with thoughts behind her eyes before asking me slowly, “Have you shaved your legs before?”

  I wanted to die. I couldn’t even look at her. Staring at the blanket, I shook my head. She took my chin in her hand.

  “Hey . . . baby . . . it’s okay. Do you want me to show you how?”

  Shame spilled through my body. She put her arms around me and kissed my face.

  The appropriate words were unavailable to me to explain my sense of inadequacy, my alienation, my desperation to feel like a real girl, like I belong. The language didn’t come to describe the fear and loneliness that came from realizing my ma isn’t good for any practical lessons, from the realization, as I moved further out into the real world, that she is kind of crazy. That I’m on my own. I can’t go to her for advice, for structure, for rules, for tips on how to be alive and functional.

  I’m unaccustomed to feeling things like that. I bury such feelings under projects and arguments and weed. The feelings overcame me and I wept into Nikita’s shoulder. She wrapped her arms around me only tighter, gently telling me it was okay, I was going to be okay, she would help me be okay.

  Chapter 37

  Out

  Southern England, December 2000

  PHONES DON’T RING THE SAME WAY IN GERMANY. IT’S LIKE a drawn-out beep. It’s more clinical, more official, more daunting. I’m nervous as the third beep drags.

  I don’t usually call my pop, so he picks up a bit confused.

  “Hello?”

  “Poppa, it’s me.”

  “Hey, squirt! How are you?”

  “Good! How are you?”

  “Great! Getting ready for the premiere of the new piece. Working insane days, into nights, into more days.”

  “Yeah? Is it looking good?”

  I’m stalling.

  “Yeah! I think so . . . We’ll see. You never know.”

  “Oh, Pop, I’m sure it’s gonna be beautiful, as usual.”

  “Ha. I hope so, kiddo. What’s going on with you?”

  “Well . . . I wanted to tell you something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well . . .”

  I think of that moment on the street, on our bikes, and how he reacted when I told him I wanted to be a girl again. How could this really be more shocking than that, right? My belly is a little tight, but Nikita puts her hand on my thigh and it softens.

  “You know that girl you wanted me to meet when you were here? The German girl?”

  “Nikita. Yeah?”

  “Well . . . she’s my girlfriend now.”

  “Ha . . . no shit!? Wow. She’s gorgeous, I. Lucky you!”

  “Dad!”

  He laughs from his gut, as if he’s relieved that that’s what my news was. I’m smiling in the phone booth. I give Nikita a thumbs-up.

  “No, really, I, that’s wonderful news. Are you happy?”

  “Yeah . . . I’m in love, Dad.”

  “Yeah? Wow. That’s powerful stuff. Does she feel the same way?”

  I glance at the beauty watching me from the corner and smile.

  “Yeah. I don’t really know how that happened, but she does.”

  “Psh. You’re a catch. That’s how.”

  My tension has released. I feel so relieved to have just gotten this over with and been forthcoming. Now I have an ally in the most insane experience of my life.

  When we hang up, I dial my ma’s number. I am sure she will be just as easy.

  “Hello?”

  �
�Ma.”

  “My bud!”

  “Heyyyy, Ma. How are you?”

  “Ah. You know . . . How are you?”

  “I’m good. I, uhm, I want to tell you something.”

  “Oh god, you’re pregnant.”

  “No, Ma! Jesus.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to get knocked up since you were thirteen!”

  “What the fuck, Ma?!”

  “You’re built for it.”

  “Wow. Well . . . no, it’s kinda the opposite news, actually.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, I, uhm . . . I fell in love with a girl, Ma.”

  There’s a thick silence between our continents.

  “Ma?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well . . . ? Can you say something?”

  “I . . . uh . . . well . . . Are you a dyke now?”

  “No! I’m just in love with a person, Ma.”

  “Uh-huh . . .”

  “Ma, for chrissake . . .”

  I am blindsided by her coldness. Coming off the high of my pop’s warmth, I thought that for sure she would match his enthusiasm.

  “Ma, what’s your problem?”

  “I just . . . I really wanted grandkids . . .”

  “You’re still gonna have grandkids, Ma! Of course I’m gonna have kids! You can still have kids with two women, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh . . . well, then, it’s fine.”

  I start laughing just to let the tension out. This is so ridiculous.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah! As long as I get grandbabies.”

  “Jesus, Ma, you sound like a yuppie.”

  “I know. Hey, I’m happy for you. I gotta go. I love you, my bud. Sooner.”

  “Sooner, Ma.”

  Chapter 38

  Too Soon

  New York City and southern Germany, Summer 2001

  LOVE FRIED MY BRAIN. ITS HAZY OPTIMISM MADE ME THINK it would be a romantic move to take Nikita to stay at my ma’s house for the summer. She’d never been to New York, and I figured maybe I could brave the madhouse if she was my buffer. It would be a nice graduation present for her. Fuck was I wrong.