Page 25 of To the Moon and Back

A thought occurred to me. If I could be like that , meaning an asshole, and Della stayed close to me—even just literally, physically close to me on this desk—maybe she was a lesbian?

Run , an upperclassman in my stats class had said, only days before.

She wore a flannel button-down every day and held some kind of executive position in the Gay Straight Alliance.

Somehow, she’d already clocked me. And she knew just enough about Della, and about me, about who ate lunch with whom at our small school.

She turned and whispered a warning to me, as our professor handed back papers.

Date a lesbian , she’d said. I’m begging you.

It hurts to watch. She swiveled her chair back to face the front.

I didn’t run. I walked with Della, and with basically every Native American at Hollis, to the frats after the pre-game. She swayed and leaned into me in the back of the group. I knew this was her way of pushing through something that might have scared her, as it scared me.

It was the way she got closer to me with each streetlight, how her breath was warm on my neck as she moved, falling into me over and over in a way that could still look like an accident, maybe.

I glanced down at the thin fabric over her chest—she had left her coat unzipped in this storm, maybe for this, for me?

I looked there, then up to her eyes, a smile, down to her breasts, staring, shameless, undressing her in my head on the snow-covered path, all but fucking her there with the confidence I hoped I’d have if this were real.

If she were really in my bed, under me, and I had any idea what to do with her.

Each time I broke away from her, from the rise in her chest and the dip in her bare collarbone, how it caught the glare of the streetlight and swallowed it, I looked up at Della and she held my gaze. Firm, unshaking, daring me back.

We took off our coats at the door of Alpha Omega and tied them together by the arms. When it was time to go it would be easier to find them in the dark, in the massive pile accumulated on a stranger’s bed.

And it was safer, Sandra said, because the number one rule of going out together was going home together.

In our first week of school, Sandra had stood in the kitchen and demonstrated the arm-tying trick with her coat and April’s coat, saying, “So now if I’m super drunk, like, black-out drunk, and some guy’s trying to take me back to his dorm, I can’t leave without going through the whole rope of coats.

And while I’m standing there wrestling with the arm-knots, you people can save me. ”

In the basement I danced with Della, who seemed like she’d never danced before. She jumped up and down and jerked from side to side. She moved in a way that was exaggerated and silly, shielding her from the embarrassment of trying. I did my best to lead.

What had gone wrong with Meredith, I told myself, was my openness. A willingness to be led, her lifting my hand with her hand and putting it where she wanted it. Me falling into something I couldn’t control. If I were in charge this time, things would be better.

I knotted the back of Della’s shirt in my fist, pulling her closer against me. She breathed hard in the hot air, avoiding my eyes. My other hand was low on her hip, and when I stretched my fingers down I felt the absence of fabric under her skirt. I remembered the change of underwear.

Sandra cut in. I stumbled back into the circle of the girl group, all of them shrieking and laughing. There was so much space between Della and Sandra. They spun around and held hands and swayed from side to side.

In the line for the bathroom I saw the upperclassman from my stats class. She was wearing yet another flannel button-down. We smiled and nodded at each other with our mouths closed; I couldn’t remember her name.

“You brought your girlfriend?” she asked, nodding at Della across the room.

“ What? No!” Immediately my reaction felt unsophisticated and small-town. Things were different here.

“ Geeze . Homophobic much?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Whatever. If she were gay, I’d know.”

“And if I were?” I asked. “Seeing as how you manage the registry?”

The girl from stats leaned back against the wall. She made a long show of looking at me. The hair I’d sprayed into place like Shawn from Boy Meets World , the pegged jeans and heavy boots, the blue satin Goodwill button-down buttoned all the way up.

She laughed. “You are”—she looked me over again—“ obviously already registered.”

I was taken aback. Could Della see what the girl from stats saw?

Could I be recognized, somehow, even by someone from a church with no gay people?

When we’d first met, Della had stared at me from across the picnic table with her head cocked to the side.

Like she couldn’t place me but believed we had met. It made me wish we had.

Della appeared, out of breath. The girl from stats gave me a knowing look like, ah yes, your girlfriend , and stepped into the bathroom.

I felt uneasy. Like I needed to take charge of the situation, or the situation would spin out.

Della stood close to me, silent. Was she waiting for me? Some guy bent over a trash can by the basement steps, and Sam rubbed his back, the gentleness jarring between two men. I felt the beat of the music pounding through the wall behind my shoulders.

“I’m sorry for teasing you and, I don’t know, things being weird tonight?” I said. “We’ve never really talked alone, so I had questions—probably too many? I wanted to know you better. I like you.”

It was a stupid risk. In the girl group, we shared every one of our friends. I felt how reckless I was being, in the long and painful silence that followed.

Then, an almost whisper: “What do you mean by like ?”

I slipped my hand around her waist. She didn’t turn her head to look at me. Behind her back, hidden in the space between Della and the wall, I slipped my fingers under the hem of her shirt. I ran them slow up her spine.

The bathroom door opened and the girl from stats walked out. She nodded so subtly as she passed, like we were both in the cartel and the cartel was gay.

I took Della’s hand and led her into the bathroom.

She locked the door behind us. A click. Her expression was serious, determined, and in it I saw everything she believed I could do to her.

I must have looked this way to Meredith—helpless and wanting, waiting to be taught—the last time I’d been kissed.

Now I steeled myself for what was coming. Della couldn’t know I was nervous.

There were things I knew to be true, some before they even happened:

I knew I could depend on the intimacy of women. Two girls together in a bathroom are presumed innocent.

I knew that the things that scared me would stay with me, as they always had, but that when Della touched my cheek and kissed me, I’d be pulled out of my father’s house in Dallas and back into the world, into a little bathroom.

There’s the soap dispenser, and the paper towel holder, and there’s her heartbeat, warm in her chest, there’s my hand pulling her softly back by the hair, there’s the place between my neck and shoulder, there’s my tongue.

But how could I have known how we would talk, our best and longest and truest talk, in my bed?

Hours. Was there anything she didn’t tell me?

In the early hours of the day she came quietly into my hand, and collapsed in tears.

Deep, heavy sobs. I scooped her up under the blue quilt I’d stolen from my mother’s house.

I rocked her in my arms till she laughed.

How could I have known about the morning? How little time we had. My alarm clock. Della moaning for water, oh my head, what happened, oh no. Della calling it a kiss, a mistake, “so crazy!” How many shots?

Here is what I knew, even then:

The precision of her fingers against me, the focus in her eyes, the perfectly straight line of crescent moons down my shoulder. How carefully she’d marked me with her teeth.