Patterns of Love

autumn duke

I woke up before her, as I have since we were seven years old. The morning sunlight from her bedroom windows brushed the room in buttery yellow. We were sleeping body-to-body despite the relative grandeur of a queen-sized mattress. I moved to make myself comfortable, carefully avoiding waking her. Her dark, curly hair was everywhere, under my head, on my shoulder. The familiar scent of her shampoo filled my nose. She was snoring. I pressed my shoulder against her back, seeping warmth from her body like a snake on a rock. I could have gotten up, could have started breakfast or read from one of her piles of books, but I didn’t. I took slow breaths and spent the time wondering if we could stay here all day.

I always slept with her at sleepovers. In a group I too-hastily claimed my place beside her and when we were alone it was never in question. We used to sleep in the finished basement, on the gray suede couch with chairs and poufs arranged to increase the number of people who could cram into it. On one of these nights, in the eighth grade, with our friend asleep on the other side of the couch, we lay beside each other, legs tangled up together in the same armchair we were using as a footrest. I was turned away from her. She absentmindedly stroked circles on my back, marking some invisible pattern onto my skin. I held my breath. It felt illicit, it felt terrifying, it felt amazing, and I knew that if she knew any of that, everything would be over. So I held my breath and let her draw patterns of love onto my back.

We came out to each other in hushed voices in the dark. It was a roundabout sort of coming out, each of us offering a small piece of the puzzle as we talked through it, finally creating the first picture of queerness. Were we proud? Maybe, but only because of the false strength the darkness gave us. It is so much easier to say these things when you do not have to look someone else in the eyes and no one is looking into yours. In the light, in the day, in the halls of our middle school, it did not so easily roll off the tongue.

We were always touchy. We sat next to each other in class, leaned on each other during long bus rides, gripped each other tight in crowded halls. It had always been this way, nothing had changed. But everything had changed. She slipped her hand – sweaty, soft, familiar – into mine as we walked down the sidewalk of our small town. Someone else’s warning echoed in my ears – what if people think you’re a – and I wrenched my hand away. My palm was cold and damp as the sharp air hit skin that had just been touched. I flexed my hand, ignoring her confused look, ignoring the twinge of guilt in my chest. When she reached for me again a few minutes later, more out of reflex than anything, I swallowed the creeping anxiety and squeezed her hand back. She rubbed her thumb over the soft skin of my wrist. I was glad that I had not pulled away again.

Our friends liked to play a game where they ran away and hid from us, even though we just wanted to talk to them. We were all a bit old for this kind of thing. They ran ahead of us and ducked behind the benches on the playground, giggling. I walked slowly beside her. The sun was distant and just barely warm enough to keep us outside. She hated this game. The popular girls had played it, too, when they were trying to distance themselves from her. She had tried to explain this to our other friends, but they never listened. I listened dutifully and remembered to tell our friends to knock it off later. It did not matter. I would never have run away from her. I spent my time with her absorbing every second.

In a tent in the back lot of our friend’s dad’s house, we and three other girls played the time-honored tradition of Truth or Dare. There were the standard questions – who do you have a crush on? Have you ever kissed a boy? – and the standard dares – eat this, go stand outside for x number of minutes in the dark. And then there was my dare, a sentence that haunts me to this day. I dare you to kiss me. It did not come from nowhere – the questions and dares had been leaning this way – but it makes my stomach twist with anxiety now as it did then. Our only light came from an electric lantern. Our only guidance came from television and movies. It was strange and sweet, and our teeth knocked together uncomfortably, and our friends followed suit. We did not discuss this night again for seven years. And that is how we became each other’s first kiss.

In the eighth grade, our English teacher made us write letters to our future selves. He would deliver them to us when we graduated high school. I had switched schools and then back again, and he did not know where I was, but he had her little sister in his class at the time. Remembering me, he remembered her, four years since the last time he saw either of us, and gave the letter to her little sister. She handed it to me while I sat on the floor of her bedroom helping sort through her clothes for college. I read it over, laughing at my overly confident future plans and desire to get better hair. But the last line made me stop. Now onto the most important thing – Lilly. More important than college, more important than family, more important than dating. You had better still be friends with her. She came out of the bathroom and asked why I was crying.

I took her to the prom. We laughed, we ate, we danced a bit. During the first slow song, I danced with her and our other dateless friend, pretending to tango them each in turn. During the last one, Lilly put her arms around my neck. I put mine around hers. I stopped functioning for a minute, anxious and tight as a coil. I knew what people thought about her and what they thought about me and it terrified me for a moment. I pictured eyes on us, imagined the assumptions made and what that would mean. She held tight, though, and I held tighter. In spite of it all, we danced. That night, at the after-prom, when we all split up to find a place to sleep, I called the spot next to her in the back of a Subaru Outback. I woke up before her. Hungover, stiff and full of joy, I lay as still as possible and listened to her snore until the sun reached in through the windows and woke her up.