Fiction First Place, 2021 Doro Böhme Memorial Contest
When we’re first together, I don’t know if we’re together, but before long I’m certain we are. A few nights a week, Laura comes to my third-floor walk-up after work. I cook for her or order in or run to the corner to pick up Chinese takeout. We watch something on Netflix. We make out, then—as the days begin to add up—graduate to sex. She never stays over, preferring, as she explains, the morning commute to work from her own house, which is inconveniently located on the other side of the major highway that divides our small southern city. She never invites me to her house, preferring, as she explains, to see me in my own space, to intrude—her word—on my petless, childless, roommate-less lonely girl life.
I followed Laura on Instagram months before we started dating, back when my friend Rebecca told me I should look up an account belonging to a friend of hers, whose home had just been featured on Apartment Therapy. The Instagram account belonged to Laura, not the house, but nearly every photo she posted was an interior. The saffron sheen of the freshly painted living room. The new tea set, printed with wildflowers and rimmed with gold. The delicate clatter of a spoon against a saucer. Wind chimes caught in a trembling sway on the front porch, photographed from inside the living room. Her posts were still photos, not videos. How did they shiver and clank and smell of new paint?
When I first followed her, I spent the better part of the evening endlessly scrolling back through her life, terrified my thumb would slip and I’d accidentally like some ancient photograph. On our first date months later, when she casually mentioned a newfound interest in quilting, I wasn’t surprised. She’d been posting gifted quilts for years, musing each time that one day she’d learn to sew her own. It was satisfying to make the connection, but I didn’t mention it. I never do.
Sometimes Laura posts a loaf of bread steaming on her rustic wood- topped kitchen island, then shows up with the loaf that night. We break bread together over my dingy beige laminate countertop. One Wednesday her blueberry muffins with an oat-and-streusel topping get 7,000 likes; I eat mine alone the next morning, wondering if she’s having the same breakfast across town.
The gifts from Laura’s house only make me more desperate for an invitation. When she brings me homemade cake donuts in a brown paper bag, I leave the greasy bag on the kitchen table even after the donuts are long gone. Laura’s the one who finally throws it away, oblivious to its precious value. One time she forgets to take back the glass Pyrex that held a chocolate sheet cake. I wash it clean of sticky crumbs and stash it in my cupboard next to all the soup-stained Tupperware, too afraid to use it again and risk Laura seeing that I’ve kept what isn’t mine.
“I’d love to see your place,” I say late one night. We’re in bed, and after the night we’ve had I’m finally confident enough to ask. I’ve made her homemade stew, and rewatched three episodes of a show she doesn’t know I’ve already seen, and given her an orgasm that left her weak-kneed—her word—and dreamy in my arms.
“I really, really like you,” says Laura, and I’m immediately feverish with misery and joy.
“I really like you, too,” I respond. “Really really.”
“When you get there, you won’t ever want to leave,” she says. “You—you won’t leave. I have to be ready.”
Of course I won’t want to leave the pristine walls, the sunlight bursting past the thick brocade curtains, the scent of bread in the oven. Of course I’ll want to call it home. I’m already sure of Laura, sure of her space. I force a laugh. “I’m not asking to move in,” I say, and it’s way too much, way too scary, as soon as the words leave my mouth. “I just wanna come over sometime. Sit on one of those pink velvet barstools and drink a beer while you bake.” She reupholstered the stools herself. The gallery post of the before-and-after is one of her most popular.
Laura looks past my body and focuses on the wall behind me. I already know there’s nothing there to catch her eye. “I live alone for a reason,” she says, and although I’m so, so curious I don’t ask about the resignation I hear in her voice.
She leaves not long after. When she’s gone, I think before I act. I honestly do. I wait long enough for her to walk down the stairs and get into her car, long enough for her to drive home and walk up to the porch and let herself in the front door. Long enough for her to feed the white cat she never talks about but whom I see in the corners of pictures. Long enough for her to brush her teeth and crawl into her bed alone. Then and only then, when those minutes have dripped away from me and I still want to leave, do I drive to her house.
I know where she lives. I’ve never been, but I can get there without having to muddle my Google Maps search history with an entry she’d be disappointed to find. Just last week, Rebecca referenced the street, told me she goes over to Laura’s all the time. She seemed surprised when I told her I hadn’t been to her house yet, but then we both immediately pretended that was normal and fine and not the complete opposite of how lesbianism is supposed to work.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when I arrive. I only know there’s a force pulling me there, a force that presses on my heart and tells me I need to see the house for myself.
Laura’s neighbors are the kind of people who string twinkly lights along their white-painted porches and let them burn late into the night, unnecessary beacons. I can picture Laura and me sitting together on her porch, hands curved around our mugs of hot coffee, waving at the people doing the same thing across the way. I’m close enough to start to look for Laura’s porch, for the lights that shine not to welcome me but to help me recognize the thing I want more than anything.
Finally, I’m sure I’m in the right spot. I slow my car to a near halt. My heart pounds. My palms pour sweat and stutter against the wheel. The house is dark, and by dark I don’t mean a lack of light. I mean the house isn’t there. The lot is just a black smudge of space.
I park, roll down my window, look into a nothingness so deep it hums. A thought pricks at my spine: She isn’t ready. No matter how long and hard I stare at the place her house should be, the air inside the car growing colder and colder, I can’t sense her anywhere.
In my imagination, I split in two. In one nightmare, I get out of the car and walk up to the house. I trip on the invisible stairs, I crawl to the place the door should be and collide with a wall, with solid shadows. The house exists but hides itself from me. Protects Laura from me. In the other nightmare, I wade through the dark and run into nothing. They say a ghost can move through you. I’m the one walking, but the house moves through me.
I don’t leave the car. I drive home and parallel park in the spot I vacated only minutes before. My first attempt is bad, but I don’t correct it. I run up the stairs, breathe in the musty scent of the stairwell, feel the cool grip of the doorknob in my hand. As soon as I lock the door behind me, I pull my phone from my bag and open Instagram, wondering if Laura’s account is still online. She’s at the top of my feed. Just a few minutes ago, she posted a bright white bowl piled with oranges. There’s a shiny spot where the light hits the bowl, and the brightness reflects the phone gripped in her familiar hand.
Kathleen Jones is a writer in Wilmington, NC. She is also a technical writing and knowledge manager, designer, and sometimes teacher. You can find her work in Paper Darts, Screen Door Review, North Carolina Literary Review, and elsewhere. Find her work online at https://kathleenejones.com/.
SPOT IMAGE CREATED BY WARINGA HUNJA
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