If awkwardness was something she could lose, she would discard it instantaneously, and yet, as she sat there, now, it almost felt like the awkwardness consisted of all of her—her entire being. She couldn’t lose her entire body just as she couldn’t lose the uncomfortable aura that was seated in the bar stool beside them, like a permanent host.
“I—” Lee said, simply, composing the syllable with her tongue before she had even devised the rest of the sentence. As if on cue, Morgan did the same thing, muttering the same word at the exact same time.
“You go,” Morgan added to her own “I—”. “Sorry,” she continued, staring down at the counter as if embarrassed by the intrusion of her words.
Lee huffed, taking a sip of her steaming hot tea if only to buy some time in order to think of something appropriate to say. “It’s been awfully cold, lately,” she said, closing her eyes and scrunching her nose, sucking in air now as if she could suck her words back inside herself.
“It has,” Morgan offered back, a slight smile forming at the corner of her mouth. “You’re good at this, you know.”
“Hm?” Lee responded, wrapping her hands around her mug for the warm comfort it provided; her only comfort at present time.
Morgan Finch began to laugh slightly now, shaking her head in the process. “No, I just mean…” she paused, exhaling. “I was kidding. Being sarcastic. Probably because I’m just nervous. It feels like I’m on a first date with you all over again, paired with sitting in the hot seat at a job interview. And then you make a statement about the weather and it just…” she paused once again. “It was just funny, that’s all.”
It wasn’t at all how she had expected this experience to go, but she found herself smiling simultaneously. Her smile turned into a laugh shortly afterwards, offering her some much-needed release from the pressure that had gradually built up inside of her. Once she had released it, she grounded herself once again, reminding herself that this conversation could be one of the most definitive conversations she would ever have; she needed to get it right.
“You were incredibly honest with me the other day,” she said, looking at the kitchen island where they were seated as opposed to Morgan. “It meant a lot to me that you were able to do that.”
Morgan nodded, tapping at the counter with her index finger. “It meant a lot to me, too. I told you then and I’ll say it again now. I know it’s probably far too late for me to be that honest, and vulnerable with you. I should have done it a lot sooner; I know that now. Believe me, I wanted to. But…” she paused. “Have you ever been so scared of something you couldn’t speak?”
Lee looked at Morgan now, acknowledging the question she had just asked her. She was remembering their time on the rollercoaster more frequently these days, but now, it felt even more prominent at the forefront of her mind. It felt prominent because Morgan had asked her how she was feeling when the ride had already begun, and Lee had opened her mouth to speak, only for no sound to come out, because she had simply floatedout of her body in fear, and was no longer in control of piloting it. Perhaps she and Morgan weren’t so different in that respect.
“I have,” Lee said, returning back to the conversation. “The difference is that once I work through that fear, I speak to you about it afterwards. You haven’t always extended me the same courtesy.”
Morgan stared directly into her eyes, shifting her hand from the counter slightly towards Lee’s own, until their fingers were touching ever so slightly. “Would it make any difference if I told you that I would extend you that courtesy now for as long as you wanted it?” she asked, continuing before Lee could even answer. “You are the only definitive thing in my life, Lee, the only constant.”
What had once felt like a somewhat manageable pebble lodged inside of Lee's throat had now become a stone; an object too large, too prominent, to swallow down. Her legs trembled slightly against the cool metal of the bar stool, and yet, despite everything inside of her screaming that she was too weak, too vulnerable, to speak her truth, she maintained her gaze on Morgan, and stood her ground. “My problem lies now with the fact that I don’t know what a future with you would look like, and that’s terrifying to me.Youdon’t terrify me, at least, not anymore. It’s the notion that I’m not going to know what tomorrow looks like, or the next day, or the day after that. It’s exciting at the same time, I won’t deny that, but being with you sometimes is like feeling like a hunted deer, escaping its predator only to go into cardiac arrest five minutes later.”
Seemingly becoming braver, Morgan grazed the edge of Lee’s finger, so gently that Lee wondered if Morgan had even touched her at all. “Do you feel like you’re being hunted?”
“Not by you,” Lee said, affirmatively. “But being with you comes with the potential that we willbothbe hunted.”
Morgan Finch sat with that for a moment, quietly nodding, so timid in her approach that Lee only barely noticed that she was doing it. “I understand that,” she said, finally. “I would never want you to feel on edge for the entirety of our relationship, especially when I’ve finally been able to relieve myself of that now that you know who I truly am.”
Lee asked the question that had been on her mind every time she had tried to figure out the inner workings of Morgan Finch. She asked it because it might just be the last time she had the opportunity to ask her. “Doyouknow who you are?”
Flattening down her hair, Morgan let the silence envelop the both of them once again. With their fingers still touching, she extended her index finger ever so slightly, and stroked Lee’s own index finger cautiously. This time, Lee knew she wasn't just imagining it. “I do, and I’m worried that scares you, even if you think it no longer does. You know, Lee, I would wait for you forever. I’d wait until the sun expands and engulfs our planet. But the thing about waiting is that it’s something you can do willingly. I can’t willingly change the person I’ve been before, just as I can’t change the person inside that I am now. I could do things differently, say things differently,actdifferently,” she emphasized. “But painting a white teapot blue doesn’t change the fact that we both know who I am underneath.”
Lee Holmes gazed at the teapot now, as if it were the only object in this world that truly mattered, or at least, the only object in close proximity to her that wasn’t composed of the very flesh she had laid her hands upon only days before. She stared into it, or perhaps through it, she wasn’t sure, and upon doing so, allowed its decorations to transfix themselves into her pupils. The design, she deduced, was intricate, each brush-stroke intentional in nature, creating a larger image. The teapot itself was whole, with, or without the decorations, but with them, it made it part of something bigger—ornamental and delicate.
People, in some ways, were decorated in ways that made them more than the flesh as it sat upon their bones, Lee thought. Each and every action an invisible tattoo that made up a larger image that could be seen by those who wanted to see it. Morgan Finch wasn’t one singular thing, just as Lee Holmes wasn’t one singular thing. Morgan’s actions had decorated her in ways that others could potentially never understand, even Lee, herself, but she understood enough to shake her head in disagreement.
“I know who you are, Morgan Finch," Lee stated with conviction, only then noticing that her legs were no longer trembling. "I also know that you’re wrong. People aren’t one singular visage of color. There’s more to it than that. There’s more to usas a species than that.”
“What about me and you?” Morgan asked, her voice practically a whisper as she extended her entire hand now in order to cover Lee's own. Lee felt it tremble against her skin. “Is there more tousthan that? Or will there never be an ‘us’ to come back to?”
A silence enveloped the room, blanketing their previous moments in a shroud of doubt. It lingered, and lingered, and lingered.
Lee Holmes conjured one simple word; the only word that remained in her vocabulary, and with it, the silence was shattered.
Epilogue
It had been three months since she had sat across from Morgan Finch—the world in her fingertips, more delicate then, than it was now. In the three months that had passed, she had thought, and occasionally dwelled, until she had dwelled enough to realize that she no longer wished to do so anymore.
She had pondered the essence of morality, and all of its connotations, and it was only then that she decided that morality was a commodity that wasn’t expensive, but it was a commodity that some could still not afford, nonetheless. She had spent hers, but there was always room to buy it back, and she would continue to try if only so that her world became just that slightly less fragile.
As their tea grew cold that day at the apartment, Morgan had presented her with an ultimatum; an ultimatum that felt as physical as the teapot she had brushed her fingers against, if only to give her body something to do. In exchange, she had presented Morgan with one singular word. She knew that she could have given more, could have given her a thousand words and still had room left over. Because perhaps morality was acommodity she had spent, but her love for Morgan was a well in which she would constantly find another quarter to throw inside of it. And her answer then remained the answer she still adopted now. Three months later, and not a single regret.
Lee Holmes decided at present time that she was currently at peace, no longer trapped by the walls that had become her makeshift prison. She understood, now, that the mask she had worn these past few months was not an artefact she could simply discard like a body in an apartment building. She couldn’t discard it, she could never discard it, but she could put it down occasionally in pleasant intervals—intervals such as this one.
