Page 15

The trouble with being wildly attracted to serious girls, with the extra convolutions and internal monologues and the labyrinths of their smarty-pants brains, was that they were just a little bit of an enigma.

Tressa Fay considered this while she did her pre-workday chores the morning after spending her whole afternoon in a creek with a hot and serious girl.

Meryl was more than just a little bit of an enigma, and maybe, maybe , that made Tressa Fay nervous. But also, Tressa Fay knew, when a woman like Meryl finally kissed you, it really sent a person, just because she knew that Meryl was always thinking . The idea of how many ways Meryl might be thinking about her had kept Tressa Fay’s skin buzzing and her palms aching with tension all through yesterday evening and this morning so far.

And, and! Meryl was a good listener. When Tressa Fay talked to her, she felt so interesting. Meryl asked her questions, and Meryl’s questions made her think of questions to ask back. Then Meryl would put her tongue on the back of her teeth and think about the questions while Tressa Fay went breathless waiting for her to answer.

Tressa Fay had tried as she’d fallen asleep last night to be as objective as she could about it. Surely she’d felt this way before. Surely this was the only way a person was even meant to feel when they met someone they wanted to get to know better, to be around, to daydream about. A person they wanted to touch and to be touched by.

But maybe she had never felt this way before. That was what Tressa Fay had been forced to conclude in her bed, thinking about Meryl Whit.

Maybe she had never felt this way ever .

Yesterday, the creek was so cold that eventually it numbed their legs to the tops of their thighs, turning their skin bright red, and then the water felt good. It was a wide creek with fast water and tiny falls, one right after another, like steps, and the soft bottom among the smooth rocks was mica and sand, which made their skin glittery and disguised schools of minnows that kept whooshing by their ankles and making them laugh.

Meryl told her about water tables, underground springs, streams, and creeks, and Tressa Fay looked at the trees and grass and plants and the bend in the creek and thought about wild, undone haircuts with not a single piece that matched another, and how a style like that—one made to look like the creek—would blow around in the wind.

She was focused on dreamily reliving the date, sitting on a stool in her kitchen, her knees up under her chin, paging through a trade magazine, petting Epinephrine and drinking coffee, when someone knocked on her door.

“Honey? It’s Linds. And Meryl! And—hold on to your butt—Meryl’s sister, Gayle.”

Tressa Fay put down her magazine, confused.

Meryl had come over? But with her sister. The sister she’d said she struggled to connect with. Had Meryl told Gayle about their date, and then Gayle had insisted on meeting Tressa Fay?

And they’d come at the same time as Linds, who Tressa Fay had kind of expected, since Linds liked to bring fancy coffees and pastries so they could gossip before they both went to work. She was certain what Linds had come to gossip about was her date, but that was okay. Linds would disappear herself once she’d said hello politely and maybe sacrificed the pastries and coffee to a Meryl-and-Gayle-and-Tressa-Fay coffee summit.

Tressa Fay slid back the bolt on her door. There was Meryl, framed by the door, wearing killer high-waisted slacks and a teeny little button-up blouse with miniature sleeves. Work clothes again. Linds was behind her with coffees and a pastry sack, next to a woman who looked a lot like Meryl. Taller, older, but the same hair in a pretty fifties style that matched what had to be genuine vintage pedal pushers. Gayle had tattoos, a tasteful collage of old-fashioned flash over her collarbones and upper arms.

Linds held a coffee carrier with four coffees in it.

Tressa Fay tried to tamp down the unsettled feeling in her stomach. “Hey! Were you guys so surprised when you found yourselves at the same apartment? Obviously, you must have officially introduced yourselves already. Linds, Meryl. Meryl, Linds.” She stepped back and opened the door wider to let them by. “And, Meryl? Is this your sister?”

“Gayle,” Meryl said. Her eyes were full of apologies. Okay. Tressa Fay was not unfamiliar with family frustration. She would just answer whatever questions Gayle had, make sure Meryl wasn’t embarrassed. Hold Linds outside the door with one outstretched palm, then close the door in her face. If that were something she could do kindly.

Meryl walked a few steps inside. “Good morning,” she said. Her hair was wavy, curly, and damp underneath, against her nape, where it hadn’t dried all the way from her shower. Gripped in Tressa Fay’s hands, it would feel like scraps of sweaty silk.

“Good morning.” Tressa Fay took her all the way in, her overwhelming realness. “I love your outfit.” She reached over and put one finger on Meryl’s itty-bitty shirt collar.

Linds stepped forward, breaking the spell. “Good morning, also.” Her smile was bemused. Gayle’s mouth was firm.

Tressa Fay made more room in her small entryway by closing the door. “Please come in.” She gave Linds a warning look.

“I brought coffee!” Linds handed them around, then sat down on Tressa Fay’s rocking chair and put the pastry bag on the floor, obviously in no rush to leave. Tressa Fay moved throw pillows off her sofa to make room for Gayle to sit. Epinephrine surprised Gayle by settling in her lap immediately with a big, comfortable purr.

Tressa Fay couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why do you have four coffees?” She might have said, What brings everyone here? How nice to meet you, Gayle! Oh, I’m so glad everyone caught me for breakfast! But this was a lot after a second date. Even an extremely crackerjack second date.

Meryl touched her arm. “I invited Linds over this morning. And my sister.”

That didn’t make sense. It made sense that Meryl had talked to her sister, but not Linds. “How do you even know her?”

“I’ll tell you the whole story, okay?” Meryl asked this with her big brown eyes on Tressa Fay’s.

“Why is there a story?” Tressa Fay sat down on her sofa, glad when Meryl sat next to her, their thighs tight together. “Do you guys know each other from the university or something?” Epinephrine turned on his purr at a high volume as Gayle massaged his ears.

“Meryl came to talk to me in my office yesterday,” Linds began. She held up her hand when Tressa Fay leaned forward. “I think it’s better if you hold your questions until the end.”

“For sure,” Gayle said. “You will have at least as many questions as I did.”

The coffee was burning Tressa Fay’s hands through the paper cup. She kept her attention on Meryl. “I thought everything was really, really good after you dropped me off yesterday?”

“Better than really, really good,” Meryl told her. “Because it was so good, there are some things I need you to know—”

“Apparently,” Linds interrupted, “I have explained everything previously, so I hope I can do a good job this time.”

Tressa Fay felt patronized and left out. She didn’t want to be left out of something that involved Meryl and Linds. And Meryl’s sister . “Before you explain anything to me, explain to me why you know Meryl,” she said.

“Let me explain.” Meryl turned her body toward Tressa Fay, her wide-legged slacks draping and slinking against the upholstery. “I tracked down Linds myself to talk to her.”

“Why?” The bottom of her stomach dropped out. “Did you have…concerns about me?”

“None.” Meryl nudged her with her leg. “None at all. I needed to talk to her because of what you told me about her .”

“What part of what I told you about her?”

“That Linds was receptive and open to even very unlikely ideas and feelings and experiences.”

“Did I tell you that?” It didn’t sound like something Tressa Fay would say, exactly. She’d be more likely to talk about Linds’s delightful witchiness. And she couldn’t remember having said it to Meryl. Or anything like it.

“Not in so many words. But you told me about the conversations Linds had with you, and with your friends, and with my sister and James, and what Linds talked to you about helped me understand that she was the person I needed to help me talk to you .”

Tressa Fay felt a headache starting at her temples. She remembered, suddenly, Meryl telling her in the car that her engagement was her second -biggest heartache. She hadn’t told Tressa Fay anything about the worst time her heart was broken.

Tressa Fay was afraid.

“I know none of that makes any sense,” Meryl said. “I’m wondering, if you knew that I really wanted you to listen to what Linds has to say, if you could?”

It was a question that generated dread. Tressa Fay could feel it—cold, down deep—and she didn’t know where it came from or why, because the only other time she had felt it was when she was trying to find a place to sit after her colleague had spilled that texturizing fluid on the floor in the last salon she worked in. She was dizzy, and her vision was gray and spotty, and then, right before there was nothing, there was a feeling that stopped her breath.

But Meryl’s knee was pressing against her leg, warm through her slacks, and even though Tressa Fay couldn’t get a deep breath into her lungs, she nodded anyway, just to see Meryl’s reassuring smile.

“I promise that Linds and I will tell you something for the first time in the history of explanations of ghosting that makes you feel better about the ghosting instead of worse.”

Gayle cleared her throat. “To be fair, I didn’t sleep a lot last night after Meryl left. But I think there is more good that outweighs the bad. So far.”

“Please tell me what’s going on.” Tressa Fay glanced at Linds, who had on her soft, accepting-of-the-boundless-diversity-of-humanity expression.

Linds started talking, and talking some more, and explaining , as the dread spread through Tressa Fay’s body in a slow, cold wave.

When Linds had finished, she did not feel better.

Tressa Fay didn’t want this choose-your-own-adventure version of a love life. She wanted to kiss Meryl, be with her, cuddle on a sofa with her, go to Canyon Tacos with her. She wanted to have seen her for the first time in her red mathlete T-shirt, sitting at the bar with a pitcher of limeades.

“I get it,” Tressa Fay said, having finally managed to understand what they were trying to make her believe. She noticed that her knee was bouncing. “But no. No, thank you.”

Now Meryl pulled out her phone. “I have to show you something.” She tapped open her Messages app, and then a thread that said Tressa Fay at the top of it, with a little picture in the circle that was a picture of her, but not one Tressa Fay had ever seen. Or that Meryl had ever taken. Meryl tapped the picture to open the associated contact info, and Tressa Fay saw her own phone number saved.

So these were messages she’d sent to Meryl and Meryl had sent back to her.

But, of course, she hadn’t. She’d talked to Meryl only in person, at the salon, on the trail, driving to the creek, in the water, and now. In her own apartment.

After Meryl finished showing her the messages she’d exchanged with Tressa Fay, the pictures Tressa Fay had sent her from the future , Tressa Fay hated two things.

She hated that no version of her was a version with a choice.

And she hated that she was incapable of imagining a solution to this situation that didn’t end with her heart getting broken.

“Why did you want me to know about this?” She pointed at the phone. “That’s not me. I’m right here, and I’ve never seen those messages, which means that’s someone else. I don’t like the idea that I’m supposed to, what? Take directions from the future? We just met. I just met you.”

Her cold fingers and forearms were washing over with heat now, and she couldn’t make herself believe what she’d just said out loud. Not after yesterday, creeking with Meryl.

Not after lying awake last night, testing her own feelings, thinking so hard about what she felt so she could put her finger right on it, like Meryl’s finger on the strap of the red swimsuit.

Tressa Fay had never before felt the way she did about Meryl.

“I shouldn’t have to know all of this yet.” She leaned over Meryl’s body to scoop Epinephrine off Gayle’s lap, and even though he protested, she needed to bury her face in his fur. “It’s too much.”

What she meant was that she was in a relationship with Meryl that was much further along, much more serious, than she had understood. The decision had been made for her by Meryl and her unimaginable self, smiling in her mother’s coat with a perfectly intact, not damaged and ripped, corduroy collar—a garment that was, right now, at a restorer in Milwaukee, who had made it clear he wouldn’t get to it until the end of August.

“Look at this,” Meryl said, tipping her phone toward Tressa Fay.

She tapped her finger beside one of the improbable exchanges. This one was from yesterday, late at night, after Meryl had dropped her off at home. And from October. Her stomach wouldn’t stop dipping, like the feeling before a roller-coaster drop. Her skin wouldn’t warm.

What was your favorite part of creeking with me?

when I slipped on the bank in the mud and you came running in my direction and slipped and fell in the creek, and when I looked where I should step to help you, I saw a fossil

Why?

because I thought to myself at that moment that we both had to fall on our asses to find something amazing

I’m going to come and see you in the morning after our creeking excursion. I’ll come to your apartment before you go to work. You won’t have even a moment to believe I’ve left you.

Tressa Fay hadn’t had this conversation with Meryl. She’d never texted Meryl at all, but she had to remind herself of that, because the exchange felt familiar. That was exactly what she’d thought about the fossil.

Meryl, real and warm and soft, was right against her body, on her left side, even, closest to her heart.

“Meryl said she’s already told you how hard it’s been between us,” Gayle said. “I was shocked when she came over to my place yesterday. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to my house. Then she told me all this. She showed me what you said about me.” Gayle looked at Meryl. “Will you show her what she said?”

Meryl scrolled through her phone, then tipped it at Tressa Fay again, who realized only then that she was fighting tears.

your sister said the carrier and the tech guys aren’t able to get access to your phone account. even though she doesn’t have your physical phone, they are supposed to do the spy thing where they look at what you’re doing on it. there’s a lot of talk about “tower dumps” and “PCMD,” the upshot of which is that they can’t get a bead on your phone and don’t know why

The universe is at our service. We can sext away.

I wouldn’t care if they were watching

also Gayle and James have been tromping around in the cold to various lakes and streams you like. Gayle had to buy hiking pants and that is a big deal. she wants to be an expert on your life, because that’s the best way to find someone who’s missing, she said. to find out everything you can about who they are

God

but she also said that when you miss someone more than you can possibly imagine when they disappear, you do all the things you never bothered to do and should’ve done years ago. she said she loves you always but also she likes you. she doesn’t want to lose you just when she was starting to really get to know you

Tressa Fay looked at Gayle. “That’s why I’m here,” Gayle said. “Because, like Lindsay told you, the way this ends and the way I get my sister back—not just from disappearing, but really back—is that we join forces with this future and fuck everything up. My whole goal is for September fourth to be a normal day none of us even remember.” Gayle’s voice had gotten so fierce, the room went quiet. Epinephrine stopped purring. “But I get that you guys just met. And everything.”

Tressa Fay coughed out a laugh.

“I didn’t have to tell you,” Meryl said. “I could’ve left it the way it was, where you were the only person who got to have time be how it always had been, without thinking about the future or worrying about September. I thought about it a lot, because of something you texted me right before I walked into your salon for the first time. You said you felt sorry for you back in May, having your perfect day, not knowing what was coming for you.”

“Which was you.”

“Which was us,” Meryl said.

“But you have more us than us .” Tressa Fay gestured between the two of them. “That is what I am struggling with, despite the fact that I just noticed that your belt has little tiny bees on it and is so precious I could die.”

Meryl smiled, and her eyes filled. “This doesn’t have to change how we are. Right now.”

“It already has, though,” Tressa Fay said. “Even if I didn’t know that I had already met you, or I will meet you, whatever you want to call it, I know that you, the right-here you, won’t be here after the summer. You’ll disappear . And that puts a kind of pressure on this, on us, that wasn’t there when I was ‘accidentally’ touching you every chance I got in a creek yesterday, wondering if it would be too soon to ask you to dinner tonight.”

“It wouldn’t be.”

“Well, I know that now, but when I had my coffee this morning, I had only gone out with you twice!”

“So…um,” Linds butted in, “isn’t it kind of good, then? That you can have what you want on an accelerated schedule? Because you know Meryl already really likes you? And you already really like her, if you can accept that the woman wearing your mom’s coat in that picture is you?”

“But that woman lives in a different universe than me!”

“I mean, she lives in a lot of different universes? But that actually makes my point.”

Tressa Fay closed her eyes.

Meryl held her hand.

She’d held Tressa Fay’s hand on their first date, walking through downtown, their granita cups sweating in their other hands, and Tressa Fay had loved the way it felt. There wasn’t a single awkward knuckle or wrist bone or finger when they held hands. Their hands came together and melted as if their skin were infused with magnets, or like they shared a vessel that had been waiting to connect them together, finally.

It felt like that now, even though she was also angry and her thoughts were blown apart.

She kept her eyes closed and Meryl’s hand in hers.

She thought about what it would mean, what it would really mean , if she’d met Meryl in October on her phone, and they’d passed those messages back and forth, and she’d told Meryl to come to her salon to meet her in person, and she’d also told Meryl to tell her the truth.

It would mean that in October, she would remember this moment. She would remember holding Meryl’s hand. Even though that Tressa Fay hadn’t held Meryl’s hand for a long time.

“More universes,” Linds said softly, “is just more.”

There was part of Tressa Fay that wanted to push back against Linds for saying that, but she took a deep breath instead and let go of the old reflex. Their whole lives, Tressa Fay had pushed back when Linds said anything that bumped against her self-protection. This time, she just exhaled her held breath, letting herself notice where it hitched and hurt on the way out.

Then she did it again.

And a third time.

“That means there’s also more pain,” she said. “Because when you texted me the first time”—Tressa Fay was looking at Meryl now—“you were already gone. Your sister and your friend were already frantic, terrified, out of their minds. And I haven’t heard anything from the three of you that suggests I won’t be out of my mind along with them in just a few months. Why would I get your text just for that? Just to lose you?”

“Because you don’t,” Meryl said. “Don’t you see? I didn’t go. I showed up on your phone after no one had heard from me in a month. And now I’m here with you. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, Tressa Fay, and I think…” Meryl looked down at her knees. Tressa Fay could see the flush race from the collar of her shirt to her hairline. “I think this is some loving world showing us, for whatever reason, what it is we actually have. Here. Then. Now. Someday.”

Tressa Fay’s heart felt wild and feral, hissing like Epinephrine when she’d found him as a wet kitten under the stairs of her building. “You can’t say that. You can’t. You aren’t allowed to say that yet.”

Meryl laughed. “I did. I have. Oh my God. Or I’ve also thought, maybe the energy of us? What we’re putting out there? Is pushing back. That’s why we can see this and feel it.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking a lot . I really, really like you.”

Tressa Fay’s wild and feral heart squeezed, and she thought of something. “My coat.”

“Yeah. In retrospect, if retrospect is the right word to use, I’m glad you were wearing it, because it turned out it was a handy bit of proof to—”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, my mom. She died when I was three. I don’t remember her, except that I do. All the pictures and boxes of clothes my dad kept, and her things, and even sometimes things my dad would let slip, even though he mostly didn’t like to talk about her. He’d do something and say, ‘Your mother would have said’ or ‘Your mother would have been proud, or annoyed, or laughed,’ and so I got to know her after I lost her. The older I get, the better I know my mom.”

“Guy,” Linds said. “We’ve known them our whole lives, never not known them, but they rewrote themself over the Guy we grew up with. Guy coming out made sense of everything that didn’t make sense, until it did. And the Guy we have is the Guy we’ve always had, even when they weren’t—”

“Not weren’t ,” Tressa Fay interrupted. “Just, they were , always. We’ve always, always had Guy, just as they are.”

“Because we act like we’re living one day after another,” Linds said, “but we’re not. Every possible way we could’ve decided to do anything is happening right now.”

Tressa Fay laughed. “You’re trying to get me not to worry about it, you weasel.”

“I’m right here.” Meryl pulled on Tressa Fay’s hand. The red spots high on her cheeks made her freckles seem faded. “The only way I’m even getting through this is the idea that if I disappear, it means that I also don’t. And maybe there is a reason, a big energy reason, a big universe reason, I’m forewarned.” She looked down at their hands. When she spoke again, her voice was rough. “But that’s a lie, because there is this other way I’m getting through it, and that’s you . And Gayle.” She looked at her sister, quickly, then looked away. “ All of us. Those are things I didn’t have before. So, for me, I’m just going to keep choosing you.” Meryl put a hand over her mouth and looked at the ceiling. “Anyway.”

It would be really, really good to kiss Meryl.

That was the thought that stayed still among Tressa Fay’s other frantically darting thoughts. If she had a chance to kiss Meryl, she would start with her fuller upper lip and let Meryl’s freckles tell her where to go next. She didn’t think she could care what universe she was in if her mouth was on Meryl’s.

This told her a lot more about what she needed to know than anything Linds and Gayle and even Meryl herself had said.

“So what are we doing?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Meryl pushed her leg against Tressa Fay’s.

“I mean, surely there’s a plan?” She looked at Linds. “I get it, I do, that Meryl disappears and also doesn’t, but we can’t not do anything, right? Definitely our October gang must have something cooked up? How do we sign up to be their soldiers?”

Meryl grinned at her. “There is a plan,” she said. “ My plan. It starts with this. Finding Linds. Talking to you. Going to my sister’s house. And I have a mission for you, next. I’m going to tell you something you shouldn’t know, and then you’re going to take that out into your life in whatever way you want and see what happens. I feel like it will only be good.”

Tressa Fay tried to let Meryl’s smart-girl confidence infuse her with its powers.

Meryl’s phone lit up with a text. She smiled at it before she put it away.

That was how Meryl smiled at her . Tressa Fay.

It was good to know all the Tressa Fays were on the same page about Meryl. And all the Meryls were on the same page about Tressa Fay.

They chose each other. Every time.